Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
To Do:
- Stare into the void
- Order some bird-repelling spikes for the roof?
- Get my job back
“Okay, what are we going to say?” Mindy said quietly to Claire as they took a seat on two plastic chairs shaped like hands. While Brad’s office was decorated like a supervillain’s lair, his waiting room was decidedly more eclectic. The cellophane crinkled loudly on the gift basket as Claire set it on the carpeted floor.
“That I was deluded because of my past trauma. I’m in therapy and I’m working on it.” LA people loved mental health. “Wait, what’s your excuse?” Claire glared at Mindy.
“You’re the boss. I just follow orders.” Mindy shrugged to proclaim her innocence.
“Great, thanks for that.” Claire leaned back in her seat. Her stomach was in knots. Was this sleep deprivation or nerves? It was impossible to tell.
The office door swung open behind them, and they both flinched. “Ladies?” Brad said in his raspy voice.
They jumped up and hustled into the office. Claire gripped the gift basket so tightly that the wood bent under her hand.
“For you,” Claire said, handing over the gift basket and a calligraphed apology note.
“That wasn’t necessary—wait, are these Middleswarth chips?”
Claire and Mindy nodded.
Brad tore open the cellophane and pulled out the bag. “I haven’t had these since my last trip back east.” He opened the bag and popped a chip in his mouth. “Mm, barbecue. My favorite.”
“We just wanted to apologize,” Claire said in a rush. She wasn’t normally afraid of public speaking, but Brad held the future of their business in his hands. “What we did was incredibly unprofessional,” she continued. “Working with Barney really messed me up, and I’m having a hard time trusting people. I’m in therapy for it, but some of the coping mechanisms I developed during that time are still here. Such as spying on clients to make sure they’re not cheating on their significant others or killing people or secretly running a drug ring.”
Brad put up a hand to stop her. “I’m familiar with your history. I didn’t want to work with you because you know Luke, or because I felt bad because of your damaged past. I agreed to work with you because you do good work. You’re a professional, like me, and I thought you were committed to your job. But I was wrong. I don’t like to be wrong, Claire.”
Her nails bit into the palms of her hands. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Next to her, Mindy squeezed her purse, and her rage was plainly written on her face.
He leaned forward and put the tips of his fingers together. “I’ve decided to go without a planner. Most of the big stuff is already in place. I’m sure my receptionist can handle the rest.” Light glinted off a gold pinky ring as he tapped a binder on his desk.
Here it was. The worst thing that could have happened. If the floor had opened up into a black hole and sucked her in, she would have welcomed it. Images flashed through her mind—disabled dogs rounded up and swept into a van. A hard look in Luke’s eye as he set her suitcase on the front porch. The stuffy guest bedroom at her mom’s house in Florida. This was the first domino in her personal apocalypse. Everything was going to come crashing down.
Claire gripped the arms of her chair so hard that the wood creaked. A rage she had never known was bubbling inside her. How dare he? She had sacrificed so much for this project—her sanity, sleep, countless date nights, family dinners. And now he was going to take credit for everything she slaved over for months and fire her days before she pulled off the crowning achievement of her career? Not today. Not ever.
She rose to her feet like a volcano bursting from the earth and reached across his desk to snatch the gift basket back. Brad didn’t deserve it. The Middleswarth bag crinkled as she yanked it away from him, sending a spray of chips across the carpet. Good.
A thousand words flowed through her mind, threatening to come tumbling out in an unintelligible scream of rage. She could flip his stupid mahogany desk over. Or smash his tacky art prints. Her fingers twitched, like they might start hurling things of their own accord. She paused, mouth pursed. The inside of her cheek throbbed from her teeth clamping down.
The last time she had lost control of her anger and punched someone, they had almost taken her business from her. And Brad had far more resources than Wendy. She needed to get out of here before she fed Brad through his industrial-sized paper shredder.
“Good luck to you, Brad. Coming?” she asked Mindy.
Mindy stood with a testicle-shriveling glare. She reached out one elegantly manicured hand and slapped the pencil holder off Brad’s desk. Highlighters and fancy pens rolled out of sight. She linked arms with Claire, and they walked out of the office together.
Claire resisted the urge to pick up one of Brad’s stupid hand-shaped chairs and punt it through a window. His assistant’s desk was unoccupied, a half-finished matcha latte sitting next to the unlocked computer.
Claire glanced around, but none of the other people at their cubicles were paying attention. She slid behind the desk and glanced at the computer screen. Brad’s schedule. Tingles ran up and down her spine as she clicked through the rest of the week. Perfect. In two days, Brad was meeting Rita at the ranch. She tucked this information in the back of her mind and backed away from the desk.
Instead of relief, the California sun brought panic as they burst through the double doors. Everything they had worked so hard for had been eviscerated. Spots appeared in Claire’s vision and her ears rang as if Brad had dismissed them with a giant gong.
“Mindy?”
“Hmm?” Had Mindy sprinted to the end of a tunnel? Her voice was so far away.
“Is there an unscheduled solar eclipse happening, or am I about to pass out?”
“Whoa.” Mindy caught Claire’s arm and guided her to a bench, then pushed her head down between her knees.
Slowly, the spots receded from her vision. But nothing abated the panic. “They’re going to die. All those dogs. We have interviews and vendors to cancel and now we need a Plan B and—I just—I really didn’t think he’d fire us.”
Mindy’s shoulders slumped. She plunged her hand into the open bag of chips and popped one in her mouth. Why was she so nonchalant? Normally a betrayal of this magnitude led to her threatening to drive a vehicle through someone’s home.
Claire jumped up, and a new wave of dizziness almost took her to the ground. She whirled around, heart thudding against her chest like a drum line. “What are we going to do? We have to cancel the interview. Do you have Ashley’s phone number?” Her synapses were already firing, half-formed plans spiraling out like a spider’s web.
Mindy rolled the top of the bag of chips down and put it back in the basket. She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back. “I say we do the interviews anyway.”
Claire spluttered. It was an insane suggestion. “Why? We have no clients. There’s no money to pay a new person.”
Mindy waved a hand. “We have the loan. And we weren’t planning to utilize this person during Brad’s proposal anyway. We’ll get more California clients, Claire. We kind of have to, because our entire stock of items in West Haven were burned to a crisp. You said yourself it’s going to take months to get everything replaced. We’d have to charge West Haven clients way more if we had to rent everything again, and then we run the risk of only being able to plan proposals for rich douchebags. And you’re going to be out here anyway for Bri’s premiere and Luke finishing up his doc. We have nothing to lose. We might as well find some replacement clients out here while we’re waiting for the insurance company. Maybe a B-list celebrity or an influencer like I mentioned earlier. Someone who can get the word out.”
Claire stared at her. “Why the hell are you so calm? We just lost our biggest client ever.”
Mindy shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m angry and I think Brad’s a self-righteous douchebag. But I’m not worried about it. You know why?”
“Because you have carbon monoxide poisoning from Luke’s guest room?”
“No. Because you’re Claire Freakin’ Hartley. And we’re Happily Ever Freakin’ Afters. We’ve been through so much worse. This—” she pointed at the studio—"isn’t the end.”
Claire slumped. It sure felt like the end.
“An interview doesn’t necessarily mean we need to make an offer. But we might be surprised. Not to mention an LA native would be better equipped to find the best local spots and know the reputable companies to deal with. No matter what way you look at it, we still need someone else.”
Claire collapsed on the bench again. “But how will we even attract any clients?”
Mindy snorted. “I guarantee if I go through the email right now we’ll have a dozen requests from LA alone. And I’ll ramp up our location-based social media campaign.”
Claire was silent. All that work. The ranch, the Hollywood sign, Santa Monica, the Getty, the friggen New Jersey ice cream. Hours upon hours of painstaking planning and micromanaging from Brad. And now they were starting over with nothing to show for it.
Mindy dropped down into her eye level and grabbed her hand. “Hey. I meant what I said. This is not the end. Screw Brad.” She jabbed a finger at his office window. “Sure, we might have to do a half dozen smaller proposals to make up for the lost revenue on his, but we have faced worse odds. We can do it. It’s just one interview since Heather and Jenna can’t meet until next week. Let’s meet Ashley and then we’ll go home and eat pizza and be a little bit sad.”
Claire rose again, numb. Mindy might as well have been speaking Portuguese. How could she concentrate on interviews when they had just lost their biggest client ever?
“Onward and upward. Let’s go.” Mindy grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the car.
Claire’s limbs were like jelly as they trudged through the parking lot. The failed apology basket weighed her down like an anchor. Brad’s steely gaze was burned into her brain as if he had taken a brand to her. Surely he didn’t mean it.
Maybe she hadn’t apologized hard enough. Should she have brought a different rum?
“Hey.” Mindy nudged her. “You’re fixating. There’s nothing we could have done to change his mind. You want to check the car for murderers? That usually makes you feel better.”
Claire took a deep breath and performed her vehicle safety check. It was time to compartmentalize. They needed a new plan. She pulled her interview binder out and grasped it like a lifeline.
“Alternate nostril breathing?” Mindy suggested as she flopped into the driver’s seat. “We have plenty of time.”
It couldn’t hurt. They both plugged one nostril and took deep, steadying breaths, then switched sides. The storm inside her subsided just enough to refocus. Was this really wise? An interview when they had no clients? She was so upset that at this point she welcomed the chance to think about something else. Anything else.
The interview binder might as well have weighed a thousand pounds. She flipped through the pages unseeingly, willing it to distract her. Line by line, she re-read Ashley’s resume. Focus, Claire. Don’t think about Brad.
The weight of what they were about to do settled in her chest. Dread and anxiety swirled around her insides like a black hole.
“Why am I so nervous?” Claire stared at the sheet protector that enclosed Ashley’s resume. A breakdown of her social media profiles and a list of potential red flags followed. “I shouldn’t be nervous. We’re the ones doing the interviewing.”
Mindy flopped into the driver’s seat. “It’s a big deal. We’ve never added a permanent staff member before.” She swept her dark hair over her shoulder and started the car. “Let alone one that would be running things pretty independently three thousand miles away from our home office.”
Ah, yes. Their home office which was currently a pile of ashes. “What if they don’t like us? We can’t even offer health insurance yet. Who wants to work for someplace that can’t even offer them a comprehensive benefits package?”
“They wouldn’t have applied if they weren’t interested,” Mindy said as she pulled out into the parking lot. “And they’ll buy their own health insurance just like we do.”
Without announcing their intent, both of them lifted a hand and flashed a middle finger at Brad’s office building.
“Should we have a code word in case the interview is going really poorly?” Claire asked. “So we don’t waste our time?”
“Should we just go classic ‘platypus’?” Mindy suggested.
Claire nodded. It wasn’t going to be easy to work into conversation, but they’d find a way. Alice had suggested the safe word long before Claire had been kidnapped. It hadn’t really helped yet, but it had stuck.
“Okay, I’ll give the company spiel and an overview of our services,” Claire said, running down her checklist. “And you can ask the first question.”
A tiny sliver of hope slid into the mire of her mind. Maybe Ashley would be exactly what their crew needed. She might even come up with a plan to save everything.
“Sounds good,” Mindy said. “I asked Sawyer’s mom for tips, so she forwarded some stuff about body language and traits of narcissists.”
“Great. How is Sawyer doing?” Maybe running Mindy through the pre-marital questionnaire would distract her from the fact that her life had just imploded.
“Good. Missing me too, he says.” She sighed wistfully. “This weekend can’t come soon enough. Oh, I guess I can leave sooner now since we got fired. Maybe we can move Heather’s interview up and I could check for flights on?—”
“Have you guys thought about kids?” Claire interrupted. “It’s been on my mind since Nicole told us.” Okay, that wasn’t super subtle.
“Kids?” Mindy arched a dark eyebrow. “I’m only twenty-seven.”
Claire tried to look nonchalant. “But you’ve talked about them? With Sawyer? Since you’re planning on getting engaged, I mean.”
The car rolled to a stop at a red light, and Mindy turned to look at Claire. Her mouth was hanging open, and she looked like Claire had just gravely insulted her mother. “Stop it. Right fucking now.”
“Stop what?” Whoops. She should have given Mindy more credit.
“You’re questionnaire-ing me.” Mindy slid her sunglasses down her nose. Her green eyes burned into Claire’s with laser intensity.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Admit it. You think we’re moving too fast. That’s why you’ve been asking me about his mom and our plans for the future. Was your next question going to be about finances? Division of household chores?”
“No.” A total lie. “I was just curious. With everything happening with Kyle and Nicole. Luke and I talked about kids the other day.”
Mindy pushed her sunglasses back up and drove forward. “You can say whatever you want, but I know what you’re trying to do. And frankly, I’m insulted. You know Sawyer’s a good guy. He saved your life. How else do you want him to prove himself?”
“I know he’s a good guy!” She should have kept her mouth shut. Mindy was an adult, and she could make her own decisions. Maybe Claire really did need to sleep—she seemed to be losing control of her inner monologue. “I just want to make sure you’re ready. Marriage is a big commitment.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Mindy’s voice had reached an octave only dogs could hear. This was bad. She hadn’t seen her this mad since Claire had tagged the ESA house at Venor while sleepwalking.
Great, now she had pissed off her best friend too. She needed to dial down the meddling. “I’m sorry. You know I love you. I just wanted to be sure that you’re both ready for this. Do you really feel like you’ve gotten past what Gavin did to you?”
Gavin, Mindy’s boyfriend the previous spring and summer, had turned out to be in ESA. She had punched him in the face during the fake event they had thrown to save Wendy.
Mindy squared her shoulders and the car continued down the highway. “I appreciate your concern,” she said carefully. “And I’m sorry for snapping. I think I’m just hungry. And maybe a little stressed since we got fired. But I don’t think I need to remind you that we work for the same company and have the same feelings about love and marriage. Have you ever heard me even mention marriage with any of my exes?”
It was a good point. For someone whose career revolved around planning proposals, Mindy herself had never expressed interest in getting married, even to her serious suitors.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll stop grilling you. I understand if you want to make Nicole your matron of honor.”
“Nicole will be responsible for an entire human being at that point. She’ll have enough to worry about. The job is yours. As long as you stop questionnaire-ing me.”
“I promise.” Claire crossed her heart. “Oh, is that the place?”
A turquoise building with a bright orange sign that read Espresso Yourself stood to their right.
“Yes. You’re sure I can get real cream here? Not something that was squeezed out of an almond?” Mindy asked as they parked. She wrinkled her nose.
“Positive,” Claire said, getting out of the car. She pulled a lint roller from her purse and quickly ran it over her blouse and pencil skirt. The amount of animal hair in their home seemed to have increased five-fold since Winston came home. “The reviews online specifically mentioned animal milk, which is apparently what milk is now called.”
“LA is just the worst,” Mindy muttered.
Claire almost smiled. “Okay, you go pick a table and I’ll grab us some muffins and lattes. Do you think I should get one for her too? Is that too presumptuous?”
Mindy shrugged. “Do it.”
When they finally emerged from the café an hour and a half later, the afternoon sun shone oppressively overhead.
“Well, we’re not hiring her,” Mindy said as the door swung shut behind them. “I don’t think she’d ever stop talking long enough to figure out what a client actually wants.”
“I didn’t see her take a breath for ten minutes straight when she was describing her work history. Or blink. She’s a medical marvel,” Claire said, shaking her head.
“I don’t like to say unkind things,” Mindy began. Claire snorted. “But I think I would rather hire Luke’s crazy, drainpipe-climbing ex-girlfriend to work for us.”
Claire collapsed in the passenger seat and hugged the binder to her chest. “Don’t even speak her name. I fully expect her to try to sue Luke even though she was the one trespassing on his property.”
“At least we have the security cam footage,” Mindy said, reversing out of her parking spot. “It won’t hold up in court.”
“Thank god. So one interviewee was a huge flop already. And we only have three more scheduled. What if they all suck?”
The tiny sliver of hope she had been carrying was effectively extinguished. What a fucking day . Everything was trash. She shouldn’t have been surprised after how the morning had started. Clearly the universe was punishing her for something.
Mindy shook her head. “They can’t all suck. Ashley was an anomaly.”
“I’ve never seen such a chatty goth,” Claire marveled. “Can we stop at the liquor store?”
“Obviously,” Mindy said. She was already headed toward the nearest one. “Maybe check on your mom before we start drinking, though?”
“She’s still screening my calls.” Claire rolled her eyes as she picked up the phone. It was already ringing.