game of dominoes, something to do with Mexican trains or chicken scratches or whatever Betty dreams up.
It’s not like the traveling trophy is so fabulous or anything. It’s actually a spectacularly ugly lamp with the names of past winners taped to the shade, but such is the competitive element of our office that everyone takes pleasure in displaying it in a place of prominence in their homes. Mitzi won it last year and had a small decorative niche installed in her basement family room to show it off.
After a high-level meeting of the minds over the water cooler, we decided to play a group trick on Harry in retaliation for catching us all so early in the day.
While I distracted him with a bogus question about a spurious client, Mitzi sneaked into his office and took his car keys out of the pocket of his jacket and passed them off to Kim, who, on her break, went outside to the parking lot. Harry always parks in the first row of cars, those nearest our building. In fact, if there’s no opening when he arrives, he circles the area until someone leaves.
Kim reparked the car in the fifth row and returned to the office unnoticed because Betty was intercepting him with another counterfeit question. Kim handed off the keys to Bryan, who put them back into Harry’s pocket and was back at his desk before Betty let Harry return to work.
Then we all sat holding our breath, waiting for lunchtime.
Harry breezed out of his office and called back over his shoulder, “I’ll be back at one. I see I’ve got a luncheon meeting with a client today.”
Mitzi smiled and waved at him as he left, never letting on that she had fabricated the luncheon just to get him out of the office and into his car.
Then we all stood at the window and watched.
Harry strode to his parking space and, without even looking at the car, thrust the key into the lock. When it didn’t fit, he glanced up and did a double take when he saw that he’d been trying to breach a gleaming black Hummer instead of his charcoal Jeep Cherokee.
He glanced around the parking lot, and then at his key. We hooted with laughter as he tried the key in the lock a second time, as if hoping that upon feeling the familiarity of the key, the Hummer, like Cinderella’s coach, would turn back into a pumpkin.
I’ve got to give it to the man, he’s persistent. He stormed up and down the long row of parking places for nearly five minutes before spinning on his heel and marching back toward the building.
When he arrived, we were ready for him.
We greeted him when the office door banged open. “April Fool!”
Harry folded like sails collapsing from a dearth of wind.
“You! You? You…” Then he grinned. “Man, that was good!”
Like sportscasters recapping the game’s best plays, we rehashed every moment from Harry arriving at the Hummer to him returning to the office.
And the day only went up—or maybe it was down—from there. Mitzi put a thin layer of Icy Hot on the toilet seat in the ladies’ room and nearly drove Betty wild. Bryan, with a piece of thin fabric on his lap, waited until I bent over and then ripped it in half. I immediately clutched my backside and headed for the back room to check out the damage. I also vowed to lose five pounds before his laughter stopped me. I’d been had.
There was a fake spider on Mitzi’s keyboard, which stopped all progress in the office for twenty minutes while we talked her down from her chair, and a bloody gash on Kim’s knee, which turned out to be ketchup.
I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I went home and fell asleep on the couch and Chase had to carry me to bed.
No fooling.
Friday, April 2
Mitzi was two hours late for work today and came in white as a sheet. Her hair, a never-a-strand-out-of-place do, looked as though she’d combed it with an eggbeater, her jacket was missing a button, and she had a run in her stockings.
“Are you okay?” I hurried to her as she stood propped against the reception desk. “Did you fall?”
She looked at me hazily, as if she recognized my voice but couldn’t remember my name. “I’ve had the most terrible morning.”
Kim and I helped her to her desk while Bryan ran for water and Betty fluttered helplessly around us.
When her color started to return, Kim demanded, “What happened to you, anyway?”
“Shh. She probably came from the doctor. She said she had to have some tests this week.”
“No tests,” Mitzi bleated. “I had my teeth cleaned. The stress was enormous.”
The stress of having her teeth cleaned had caused this? I hope I’m nowhere near the delivery room when Mitzi goes into labor.
Chapter Eight
Saturday, April 3
“Do we have to go to this party?” Kim bleated as we neared Mitzi and Arch’s neighborhood, an upper-crust outpost where traffic doesn’t make noise, children are born with silver spoons in their mouths and crabgrass never grows.
“Do you want a little cheese with your whine?” I asked sweetly. “Or do you want us to drop you off here and let you walk home?”
“You’re a hard woman, Whitney.”
“You’re the one who made me promise that I’d get you here, no matter how often you protested or how many excuses you had.”
“I left my vulnerable, defenseless child with a babysitter I hardly know, and you made me come anyway!”
“Wesley is as defenseless as a munitions factory, and the babysitter is the girl next door.”
Kim grinned slightly. “That’s true. Wesley has been a challenge lately. But he’s growing so fast and learning so much. I don’t want to miss anything….”
“Kim, he’s learned to burp at will. That is not a good reason to stay home and videotape him. Besides, you said yourself that we’re here to support Mitzi because she’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
Kim quieted at that. We at Innova have formed an unspoken club, one that centers on making sure that whoever is having a bad day gets extra support. Even Harry has noticed Mitzi’s uncharacteristically weak moments, and once told her to “Go make yourself a cup of tea or something.” Meanwhile, Betty Noble, whose sister adopted two children, is showing real tenderness toward Kim.
Bryan, however, is absent from the office more and more, especially from the rooms Mitzi inhabits. I’ve weighed the idea of setting up a mini workstation in the men’s room, so that when he’s hiding, he doesn’t fall behind in his work. I’ve also been waiting for the right moment to approach him about his behavior, but so far he’s managed to elude me. I’ve considered calling his girlfriend to see if something is seriously wrong with him. Unfortunately, she can be as vague as he. Talking to Jennilee is like having a conversation with the Cheshire cat as he fades in and out.
I was pleased to see Bryan and Jennilee pull into
