“Toodle-oo!” she said as she left the reception area, trailing the box behind her.
My spirits rose - was it possible that she was going to wander around the office, passing out flamingo-colored teddy bears to anyone she encountered? That would certainly shorten the time it took for the guys around the office to turn Affirmation Bear into Withering Insult Bear, Dirty Limerick Bear, Monty Python Quote Bear, or whatever else struck their fancy.
I whacked the bear in the tummy again.
“I always try to see the best in every situation,” the bear advised, and fell off the desk.
As I leaned down to pick him up, I saw a slender black paw reach out to bat at him. I leaned down farther and peered into the space where the drawer would have been if Rob hadn’t removed it earlier that morning to make room for the latest addition to our menagerie: a very small but very pregnant black cat.
“If you want him, you can have him,” I told her. She hissed softly and withdrew as far back into the drawer space as she could. I sighed. Cats usually warm to me much faster.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was everything eke. Especially the number of dogs wandering in and out, not to mention having Spike caged only a few feet away beneath the other end of the desk.
While answering yet another line, I suddenly started. Someone was hovering at my shoulder. It was Roger, my least favorite programmer. He’d been hovering near me a lot, since my arrival - to the point that I’d begun to suspect he was working up his nerve to ask me out. Of course, to manage that, he’d have to figure out how to talk to me, instead of addressing random cryptic remarks to the ceiling of a room we happened to be sharing. I was only half joking when I’d tagged him “the Stalker.” I made a mental note to bring in a picture of Michael and me together, so I could make sure Roger saw me gazing fondly at it. I pretended to be so absorbed in die switchboard traffic that I didn’t see Roger, and eventually he wandered off.
The mail cart chugged through again, with Ted still draped on top. The switchboard routine worked so well on Roger that I repeated it with Ted, pretending the calls absorbed my attention so completely that I could barely be bothered to punch the switch to, set the cart in motion.
Spike barked hysterically until the cart disappeared. I wondered, briefly, what Ted was doing to set him off. But just then my pager went off.
I found the right button to silence its beeping and, after several tries, managed to read the message.
COPIER 2 OUT OF PAPER.
“That’s it,” I said. “Will someone please explain why they think it’s easier to go back to their desks and page me about the copier, when the damned paper is just sitting there on the shelf, waiting to be loaded?”
“Because they’re idiots?” suggested a baritone voice behind me. I turned to see Jack Ransom, one of the team leaders. I’d have nicknamed Jack “the Hunk” if it didn’t feel disloyal to Michael, so I settled for “the Sane One.” He didn’t have a lot of competition for either title.
He had propped his tall, rangy frame against the partition just inside the opening that led to the main part of the office and was watching me with folded arms and a wry smile. I couldn’t help smiling back, although something about the way he was looking at me suggested that yes, it probably was a good idea to buy a nice frame for that picture of Michael and me last New Year’s Eve, and place it prominently on my desk.
“I thought they were supposed to be brilliant and original programmers,” I said.
“Idiots savants, then,” he said. “Want me to see about the paper?”
“You’re an angel,” I said. And then, worried that my enthusiasm would make him jump to a wrong conclusion, I concentrated on frowning at the pager while he strode off.
The pager had served its purpose when we were moving, and no one knew whether they could find me at the old offices or the new or maybe down in the parking lot, putting the fear of God into the movers.
But now that we were settled in and they always knew where to find me… Yes, it was time for a discussion with Rob. About abuse of the pager.
And also abuse of my cell phone, which had started ringing. I reached over and punched the button to answer it.
“This had better be good,” I said.
“Do I sense that you’re having a less than pleasant morning?” Michael asked.
“Sorry. Yeah, you could say that,” I said, sinking back into my chair. “No worse than usual, really. Where are you calling from?”