Daddy and give him the news. That’d sober him up. Quick.
I pushed back my chair and sat down at my desk, grabbing the Cool Cucumber file from my inbox, where I’d shoved it this morning. And then that call…It’d be time for my meeting with Naomi soon. I’d probably have to skip lunch and just—
“So there you are.” Naomi’s voice grated like cat claws on a kitchen sink.
Smile. No matter what she says, smile.
I swallowed hard before turning to face Naomi Titan, a thirty-eight-year-old barracuda in heels, recently overlooked for a promotion she’d worked three years for. She’d been hunting heads ever since, and from her tone, it was my braids she wanted on her platter today.
“Hello, Naomi.” I used my best conflict-management voice.
She puckered her lips and yanked her blazer closed. “It’s nice of you to come back to work. Sorry to break up your little phone call—”
“I was—”
“I know exactly what you were doing. We had a phone monitoring system installed last month. Didn’t you get the memo?”
Monitoring? She had to be kidding. Was that even legal?
Her nostril—yes, nostril, very scary—flared. “Don’t even think about it. All legit. The whole team signed off on it at the quality assurance symposium.”
My eyes bulged. “That was over a year ago. How am I supposed to remember that? And I definitely don’t remember anything about monitoring being mentioned.”
“I believe it was called productivity banking, a consultant-based analysis of how we spend our time.” She grinned wickedly. “And I’ve been assigned as the consultant conducting the analysis.”
I blinked. It was a first, this smile of Naomi’s, and a much more hideous sight than I’d imagined. It looked as though her adult teeth had staged a sit-in and her baby teeth hung around to watch. There had to be fifty-two on the top alone. With shoes like that, you’d think she could afford an orthodontist. People were weird that way.
Naomi lingered on each word to let the implication soak in, twirling one of her frizzy curls. I stared at her hair, trying to figure out, once again, what nationality she was. She had Jennifer Lopez hips, Barbara Streisand hair, Angela Davis rage and a nose that curved like the photo of my Cherokee great-grandmother’s. Today I didn’t ponder the question long. Whatever she was, she wasn’t happy.
Neither was I.
“So I talked on the phone a minute over, Naomi—”
“Ms. Parker.”
Back to the maiden name, were we? This could get ugly. “All right…Ms. Parker, I’m sorry for my infraction. Now if you’ll let me get back to work so I can prepare for our meeting this afternoon—”
Another sinister smile zipped across Naomi’s lips. If her lipstick had been a few shades redder she’d have been a dead ringer for the Joker.
“You won’t be meeting with anyone today, Dana. Not here anyway.”
The stale Cheerios I’d eaten for breakfast knotted in my stomach. I suddenly wished I’d downed a few bear claws, too, so I could offer them up on Naomi’s precious shoes.
We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers….
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. God was right, of course. Naomi wasn’t my real problem…but she sure did a good acting job. Very convincing.
“What do you mean?”
Like a super villain in a very cute skirt, she snatched a sheet of paper from her clipboard. A Fingerhut receipt. Naomi turned the paper over to reveal a massive order from Renee, now gone to lunch, scrawled in blue eyeliner.
I grabbed my throat. My hand rose to the healing cut beneath my eye. It burned as though it’d been sliced afresh. “I told her I couldn’t take orders here—”
“And yet she did it anyway. Perhaps because of the allure of your products? Products which, interestingly enough, I’ve never seen or been offered any samples of.”
Huh? Now she sounded like the Abominable Snowman from one of the Rudolph Christmas specials, attacking the world just to get a little love. “I didn’t think you wanted any. I’d be glad to make you a basket—”
She snorted. “I’m kidding. I don’t want any of your kitchen sink cosmetics. It’d probably eat my sensitive skin right through.”
One could only hope.
Lord, forgive me.
Triumphant, Naomi dropped into the seat beside me—Tracey’s old desk. How I missed her right now. I never realized how much of a buffer she had been between me and, well, everyone.
“I’ve talked to Steve and we decided that this whole enterprise of yours is a conflict of interest. You’re probably using our connections with fragrance suppliers for your own personal gain and who knows what else.”
As if I’d want to use that wretched smelling stuff? It was bad enough to have to sample it.
“On top of that, our productivity inventory has shown the decrease in your work product over the past year. A direct result of your outside enterprise in our estimation. So…go home and talk to your little buddies all you want.” She leaned over and clapped her palms like a seal. “You’re fired.”
With that, she strode toward her office, never bothering to look back.
I sat frozen for a few seconds and then mashed three numbers on the phone before I remembered that the line was monitored for “productivity assurance” or whatever she’d called it. I shrugged and punched the remaining digits. What did it matter now?
“Shoes of Peace.” Rochelle still sounded like someone had shot her with a tranquilizer.
“You’ll never believe it.”
“What? Is it Tracey?” I could hear her scrambling around the register. “Don’t tell me. Jordan called you, too—?”
My stupid brother was the least of my worries. Visa was going to come and repossess my teeth if I didn’t figure a way out of this one. And just when I was considering that saving-up-for-a-rainy-day thing. “She fired me, Rochelle. What am I going to do now?”
“Fired you? Naomi?” A cheerleader’s voice replaced her melancholy tone. “Get over here as fast as you can!”
I stared at the receiver. My friend had sprung to life at the news of my financial demise. Was I missing something here?
“Come over there? Now? No, I’m going home. I’ve got a date with some ice cream.”
“No, little sis. You come by here. I’ve got something better than ice cream.”
Better than ice cream? Now we were talking. “Whaddya got? Baklava? I knew you weren’t serious about starting our food program today. Baklava is in the
