about Mike. He doesn’t give orders. He asks me to do things. Getting his cash from AP is part of my job, but he makes it seem as though I’m going out of my way for him. He really makes being a secretary bearable for somebody who has bigger aspirations.
Someday, I hope, I’ll be a copywriter like Buckley. But until I am, working as a secretary at Blaire Barnett is pleasantly painless. I even get to sit in a cubicle instead of in the secretaries’ bay, where I was when I worked for Jake.
I head toward the elevator bank. I reach it just as a junior account executive does. Her real name is Susan, but Yvonne calls her Miss Prim, and I have to admit, the shoe fits. She’s always buttoned up in a tailored suit with pearls and pumps, her hair pulled severely back in a clip, and I’ve never seen her smile at anybody who isn’t an executive.
“Hi,” I say, since we’re both going to stand here waiting for the down elevator, which is bound to take a few minutes. The elevators in this building are notoriously slow.
“Hi.” She studies her sensible pumps.
You just wouldn’t catch her picking up a total stranger and having sex with him in some godforsaken borough.
“These elevators take forever, don’t they?” I feel compelled to say.
She merely presses the lit Down button again, as though she can’t stand another moment trapped here with lowly me.
It irks me that she won’t make eye contact, much less conversation, with a mere secretary. I want to tell her that I have an English degree and a future in copywriting. I want to tell her to let her hair down and live a little; or at the very least, unfasten her top button, for God’s sake.
I wonder what she’s going to wear to the Christmas party. Somehow, I can’t quite picture her in anything remotely festive.
Again, my mind flits to that article chock-full of Don’ts.
The hell with the article, and with Miss Prim, too, I think, as I step into the elevator with her.
I’m going to wear my red dress, and I’m going to get there when it starts, and I’m going to have a helluva good time.
Just watch me.
“Hold the elevator!” a voice calls.
I half expect Susan to reach for the Door Close button, but she doesn’t. Nor does she hit Door Open as they begin to slide closed, even though the button is like, two inches from her claw.
I wedge my shoulder between the doors to hold them for whoever is rushing toward the elevator, heels tapping hurriedly along the floor, accompanied by an odd jingling sound.
When I see who it is, I almost wish I’d let the doors close.
“Hi, Mary,” I say, as she steps on board with a huge, panting sigh of relief.
“Hi, Tracey,” she trills. “Hi, Sue.”
I get the impression Susan doesn’t appreciate being called Sue.
Mary Kohl doesn’t seem to get this impression, or any impressions at all. She’s too busy plucking an oversized round jingle bell from the crevice between her oversized round boobs. The bell is suspended around her jowly neck on a red cord and festooned with sprigs of plastic holly.
If I were sharing this elevator with anybody but wenchy Susan, I might be inclined to turn and share an eye-roll with them. Mary, who is an administrative assistant in our department, is easily the most annoying human being of all time. In fact, if this elevator happens to get stuck between floors, as elevators in this building have been known to do, I’m going to find myself wishing I carried cyanide capsules in my pockets like the astronauts do.
Mary presses her floor with a chubby forefinger, and the doors slide closed with the finality of clanking steel bars on death row.
“Did we all sign up for Secret Snowflake?” Mary wants to know.
She wants to know this in the chirpiest voice ever. Think Baby Bop on helium.
I sort of smile and shake my head.
Susan plays deaf and dumb.
“Uh-oh.” Mary shakes her head sadly, her jingle bell jangling noisily from boob to boob. “Didn’t everyone hear that Secret Snowflake is mandatory this year?”
I murmur something about it being news to me, although I knew damn well. Who could miss the bright red memo Mary sent out on December first? She signed it with her name spelled Merry, and requested that we all use this spelling for the duration of the season.
“You’re kidding! Didn’t you get the memo?”
“I guess not,” I tell Mary, as Helen Keller pointedly ignores both of us.
“Not only is Secret Snowflake mandatory, but I’m matching up the names on Monday,” Mary informs us. “So you’ll both need to sign up by the end of today. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agree, because mandatory is mandatory.
“Great! Sue?”
“What the fuck is a Secret Snowflake?” Susan barks, just before the elevator bumps to a stop.
“Oh, it’s really fun. It’s where the whole department picks names and we all—”
Too late.
Susan has fled. This wasn’t even her floor. A bike messenger steps on board.
“Happy holidays!” Mary chirps at him.
He glares at her, clearly wondering who died and made her Mrs. Claus.
Unfazed, Mary turns to me and breezily resumes her Secret Snowflake monologue. “Anyhoo, we all pick names and then buy a gift for our Secret Snowflake each day for a whole week. The following week, we have the luncheon and find out who our Snowflake was. It’s just a blast.”
I smile and nod at Mary, thinking she really needs…what? A life? Some serious counseling? To be smacked upside of the head?
Um, how about all of the above?
Okay, maybe I’m just being mean. Maybe the whole New York attitude has gotten to me at last and I’m too jaded. Maybe I could use a little of Mary’s childlike Christmas spirit. Maybe we all could.
I look at her, taking in the jingle bell, the mistletoe earrings, the sprig of holly tucked into her graying bun.
The woman is a freak. That’s all there is to it.
“Going to the party on Saturday, Tracey?” she asks.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I say truthfully. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’ll be there with bells on!”
Right.
I find myself picturing her hitched to Santa’s sleigh. On, Dasher, On, Dancer, On, Mary. Er, Merry.
The thing is,
