"Is my clone going to come escort me to my desk, too?"
"Yeah, he's not going to let that twinsies thing go for a while." After a moment of grim contemplation, Jane turned a bright smile on me. "Let's get you started!"
She showed me her schedule on her computer, assigned me a username on the network, made me a secondary on her e-mail account, and did various techie chores to get me set up as her full-time minion. I searched through the drawers, finding a wealth of binder clips and Sharpies. There was also a laser pointer, which Jane immediately snatched out of my hand.
"What is this?"
"A correction laser. Margaret didn't think Wite-Out was enough of a statement when she made a mistake."
"What?"
Jane pulled out a piece of paper, aimed the laser pointer at it, and clicked the switch. A jet of red light shot out of the tip, burning a hole through the paper.
"Wow."
"Margaret wasn't much fun to work with."
I pulled a face, which Jane ignored.
"Your most important task is protecting this." Jane opened a document on my computer called "nopelist.xls." It was an Excel spreadsheet of names, phone numbers, and "reasons for calling." One column ranked each of the names with a one-to-ten "PITA Factor."
"What's the PITA Factor?" I asked. "Their ranking of favorite Mediterranean foods?"
"Their ranking as a ‘pain in the ass' on a scale of one to ten," Jane told me.
"Wow again."
"Before you make an appointment for someone to see me, you check this list. If their name is on the list, they don't get an appointment. Make any excuse you have to. You have to check my schedule. I'm booked up with meetings. I'm traveling. I'm having an emergency dental crown installed on a chipped fang. Whatever. Just make it believable, and shield me from the crazy. I deal with enough of it in the business I'm supposed to handle."
"I will do my best."
"And I'll give you weekly updates, because the list grows like shower mold."
"Ew. And that's awful."
"Heavy is the ass that sits in the big chair," she said, shrugging.
"I am ninety percent sure that is not the expression."
Jane waved me off as she walked back into her office. "Agree to disagree."
From what I could see, the administrative job focused on keeping Jane on task and on schedule and preventing her from being annoyed. Also, I provided her with a chocolate-based coffee-blood concoction every night at two A.M. That was very important. To humanity.
Ben and I were still on a pretty short leash. We weren't allowed to leave the building, for fear that he would attempt to contact his parents. We weren't allowed in the few departments with human employees. And it was more than a little embarrassing that Jane insisted on driving us to and from work.
But still, I had a desk, a real grown-up desk at a real grown-up job. All of my previous jobs had involved name tags and grease traps, so this was definitely a step up. I stood at my dignified-though-less-ornate-than-Jane's desk marveling at everything the Council was trusting me with-a computer, drawers full of pens, mailing supplies, Post-its, and petty cash. It was like gathering all of your school supplies together when you were in elementary school, to survey your bounty. And you always swore that everything would stay organized in your little backpack. But it never did, just like I was sure that my desk would be covered in paper-clip chains and discarded Faux Type O lids within a week.
But for right now, it was mine, and it was clean, and it was pretty awesome.
My computer didn't send messages to nonapproved e-mail addresses, log on to nonapproved Web sites, or upload files to anything, and when I tried to get on Facebook, a red banner appeared on my screen that read "LOL, NO."
But I could do word processing, which was fun.
It was eerily quiet, sitting outside of Jane's office by myself, basically waiting for someone to walk down the hall and beg for an audience with her, but at least I didn't have to share a wall in some cubicle farm, like the poor bastards in the accounting department. According to old episodes of The Office, that could lead to hostile Jell-O-based pranks.
///
Jane didn't seem to have much for me to do on my first day, other than learning how not to electrocute myself while using the intercom system. I buried myself in first-day tasks. Organizing my desk. Figuring out the shockingly complicated phone system. Finding the break room. Learning the name of Sammy, the delightful Samoan coffee-blood mixologist. I was just coming back from my lunch break, catered by said delightful coffee guy, when I saw Ben walking down the hall with a tall brunette.