The next morning, an exhausted Margot sat slumped in the offices of Elite Elegance as her boss, Carrington Carter-Shaw, slapped newspapers with headlines like FLORAL FIASCO and REAL-LIFE ANGRY BIRDS! on her desk. One particularly cheeky tabloid had printed a picture of Margot beating the smoldering remains of a matron's hairpiece with a wet napkin under the headline FLOWER POWER F***-UP!
"How could you let this happen?" Carrington cried, her carefully blown-out dark hair dancing around her heart-shaped face. "We're the laughingstock of the Chicago social scene. Guests from last night are trying to stick us with dry-cleaning bills, medical bills-Michelle Biederman claims a parrot flew off with her two-karat diamond earring! The mayor's office has contacted us-twice-to call our business license into question. I had to move three guys from the mail room just to handle the incoming phone calls. Margot, you're my star! My rock! You can make a backyard potluck birthday party look like a black-tie gala. You're the planner I call when it's clear in the first meeting that the client is absolutely batshit insane. What happened?"
Margot wanted to blame the untested Chef Jean and his "inspired" impromptu shrimp, but ultimately the fault rested with her. She'd lost control of the party. She'd lost control of the food. She'd lost control of two dozen species of birds.
"I don't know," Margot mumbled, shaking her head. She took a prepackaged stain wipe out of her Prada clutch and dabbed at a questionable blotch on her lapel. "It all happened so quickly. I-I know, at this point, the partnership is off the table-"
"Partnership?" Carrington scoffed. "Honey, I can't even keep you on staff. You're professional poison. I'm going to have to fire you and do it in a very public manner-I mean, picture the polite urban equivalent of putting you in stocks in the town square and pelting you with rotten fruit-so people know that our company is safe to use again."
Margot let loose a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She nodded. In some way, she'd been expecting this. She knew it would be rough for a while and she would have to put off some bullet points in her five-year plan, but she could handle this. She had contingency funds and a secret contact list of important people who owed her favors.
Margot cleared her throat and tried to straighten her rumpled suit jacket. "And what, you'll shuffle me out to one of the branch offices in the suburbs and I'll organize bar mitzvahs until this all blows over?"
Carrington frowned. "No, Margot. Fired. As in employment permanently terminated. The partners are willing to give you a three-week severance in recognition of the work you've done for us. And I'll write you a positive recommendation letter. But that's it."
"But I've worked here for almost ten years. I've put in eighty-hour weeks. Ninety during the holiday party season. I don't have a social life because I'm always here. I haven't been on a date in more than eight months."
"Yes, I know. That's why you get the third week of severance pay. Really, Margot, I think we're being more than generous here, considering the fallout from this fiasco."
As Margot walked out of Elite Elegance's plush offices with a banker's box full of her belongings and a severance check in hand, she told herself that it would be okay, that this was what backup plans were for, that this situation couldn't possibly get worse.
It got worse.
Stage one of Margot's plan had been to retreat to her apartment to regroup, polish up her résumé, and compose a list of companies she could apply to, but her unit's new tenants kept stopping by to measure for new flooring and curtains. Just a week before the "Floral Fiasco," she'd given up her lease in preparation to move to a newly purchased condo in Wicker Park. Between the down payment she'd saved and the raise she was supposed to get with her promotion, she would have been able to afford it. But the day after she was fired, she'd gotten a call from the mortgage officer handling her condo loan. Mrs. Meade had seen the news about the greenhouse incident and her firing, and informed Margot that without a job, the mortgage company could not guarantee her loan. The only good news was that the mortgage company was willing to return 70 percent of her down payment. So now, with her lease running out and her condo being sold to someone else, Margot was effectively homeless.
And still, it got worse.
Without a job, she couldn't get an apartment in a decent building. And the buildings where she could get an apartment were not places where she wanted to live. And she could not find a job. Anywhere. Receptionists laughed and hung up when she called the best event-planning companies in Chicago. Receptionists from second- and third-tier event-planning companies in Chicago also laughed at her. She couldn't get the companies in New York or Los Angeles to call back. Hell, she couldn't get companies in St. Louis to return her calls. She still had her savings, but thanks to MasterCard and her monthly expenses, they were dwindling quickly.