"Lemme check my schedule. I'll get back to you," I say, nodding as I step past.
"I'll be waiting," she purrs.
The office layout is simple-but it works. A vast bullpen of shared desk spaces cover the center of the office. Tables with four or five stations to them, all decorated with random personal effects, coffee cups, art books, and photos. The desks are cramped enough that you're never more than three feet away from being hooked into something or overhearing another idea you can help out on. Half the time nobody's at their desks though, as they run between the studios downstairs and the bullpen.
Down one side of the office the windows look out onto the city of L.A., and from up here on the fifth floor you can almost catch sight of the beach on a clear day. On the other side are the offices of the higher-ups. The decision-makers and puppet-masters who guide the whole thing from behind closed doors.
"It would be really great if you could!" Sara, Davina's curvy, redheaded desk mate (and frequent partner in crime), calls out behind me as I shuffle past a couple of co-workers carrying cardboard cutouts of the Kardashians. "You'd look so good in lipstick!"
I raise my cappuccino and kiss the air in their direction before walking a bit quicker to my desk.
In a funny kind of way this place saved my life. Before my college friend Margo helped me get this job just over a year ago, I was partying like crazy. All I did was drink and dance, fuck and fight. All I cared about was the next crowd, the next hot girl, the next thrill. I'm not gonna lie and say it wasn't fun, but even fun can be dangerous when you're as insatiable as I am.
///
So here I am, putting Margo's cinnamon latte beside her on our shared desk (without a hello, since she's hunched over her cell phone with her back to me), and dropping myself into my chair. I wake up my laptop to reveal the half-written article I've been pecking at today, all about hot beach dates. My inner bad boy not so much tamed now, as focused. Enjoying life as much as I ever did, but with the addition of a steady paycheck and a 401(k). The best of both worlds.
Six seconds later I hear a quiet, stifled half-sob beside me. The kind of helpless, feminine sound that cuts through ten thousand years of civilization and makes me want to club whatever caused it. I look toward Margo and see her staring down at her keyboard, one hand still holding the phone to her ear, the other buried in her hair. She's so distressed she hasn't even noticed the coffee I brought her yet.
If there's one con to working in the offices, it's that there's not much privacy, and right now it looks like Margo's desperate for it.
"Why do you have to be such an asshole about this?" she whispers harshly into the phone. "No. I never said that … whatever, Carl … you're my-you were my boyfriend, not my father, don't talk to me like I'm five … Look, I only called to ask when I can pick up the rest of my stuff … Yes, actually, it is over! Oh god … just forget it!"
My eyes on my screen, I hear Margo toss her phone clumsily onto her desk-the modern equivalent of slamming a receiver down. When I glance at her again she's hunched toward her screen determinedly, as if about to try and climb through it, rattling away on the keyboard like she's playing a Bach variation on it. She still hasn't noticed the coffee.
I open my mouth and then close it, weighing her possible need for words of comfort against her possible need for space. She'd been tight-lipped and tense all morning, and now it appears that things have gone full nuclear status with her and that film school douchebag Carl. Good riddance. She deserves better.
Margo and I go way back. We met our first year at college. More specifically, we met at three AM outside the girl's dormitory when she was coming home late from a party, and I was in the process of trying to get back into the dorm after sneaking out through a window to avoid my date's judgmental roommate. Being naked at the time was a hell of a conversation starter.
It was friendship at first sight-for her, anyway. I spent the first six months I knew her trying to find out what her tight body would look like on all fours, but she kept me at bay just about long enough for me to realize that she had a lot more going on than just legs I wanted to wear like a belt and tits like a three-star dessert.
Turned out Margo was a party animal just like me. Drinking, dancing, and fucking with an appetite almost as big as mine. We started hitting places up together, the rest of our friends only holding us back. Having a wingman can help you lay hot women, but turning up at a bar or party with the hottest girl there made it almost too easy.