2. Pippi
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hollingdale. This is Pippi calling from—yes, sir. Pippi. Like the movie. Yep. Oh yes, I’ve got the big red hair and everything…
Don’t often wear pigtails, but I guarantee they’d stick up just like Pippi Longstocking’s.
” I leaned back in my office chair, fighting to grasp the phone in my sweat-slicked hand.
My smile was so forced, so phony , it made my cheekbones hurt.
But the phony smile helped tilt my voice into a chipper pitch.
“Ahhh, I’ll bet I just aged myself getting that reference though, huh?” Old, stuffy Mr. James Hollingdale wheezed into my ear. “Young-sounding thing like you probably don’t get many men your age talking about such an old movie.”
Young-sounding thing…Gosh.
My chipper must’ve been leaning closer to chipmunk if he thought my near-geriatric thirty-five-year-old self young .
I cleared my throat and swiveled a bit in my chair. “My mom loved Pippi Longstocking. The books, movies, the cartoons, everything. So it makes me happy when people get the reference.”
A little white lie never hurt anyone.
My mom had, indeed, adored Pippi Longstocking. And I’d seen every single edition—had basically grown up with pigtail Pippi. But the references didn’t bring me any joy. There were too many bad memories there.
But I wasn’t about to unload my childhood traumas on Mr. Hollingdale. Because this stuffy old toadstool was the lead for one of my biggest clients—VitalTech Supplies—and I was about to tell him we’d screwed the whole dang pooch, and then left it out on a rainy day to rot.
“Pippi,” he formed my name around a wheezing laugh. “I love it. I’ve seen your emails before, but I always thought there was a typo in your signature, so I’ve been calling you Pippa in my head.”
DING!
My eyes dropped to my computer, focusing on the big block of text clunking up the message screen; the exchanges Andy—the actual project manager for the VitalTech account—and I had been swapping all day.
Andy : In short…we’re fucked. Thoroughly. And James Hollingdale has been punching my goddamn number every fifteen minutes like clockwork. I don’t even know how to explain this one. I sure as shit don’t know how to keep him from blowing his top.
Me : You want me to try and soften the blow?
Andy : Would you? Please?
Me : I can try! Hollingdale’s always been nice to me via email and seems the talkative type. Maybe if I chat him up first, it won’t be as bad?
Andy : Yes. Please. See what you can do.
Beneath that old stuff, Andy had snuck a new update in.
Andy : …Parts are backordered. Lead time up to sixteen weeks.
Oh. Fudge.
“It’s lovely to speak with you, Pippi,” Mr. Hollingdale half panted into my ear, “and meet you. Electronically, of course, but phone calls are always preferable to emailing.”
Said every middle-aged white man ever.
My skin crawled, berating me for the rude thought. And my heart dropped to my toes with the next DING from the message app.
Andy : The order is confirmed to be unsalvageable. We need to wait for the back-ordered parts.
“So, I’m not going to complain about hearing your lovely voice, Pippi,” Mr. Hollingdale continued, “but I was expecting Andrew to call. I’ve been trying to reach him all day .”
“Andy’s…busy at the moment.” I winced as a slew of angry and exhausted emojis exploded over my screen with Andy’s next chat. “And, well, there’s no easy way to serve this pill, Mr. Hollingdale. We’ve unfortunately run into some issues with your order.”
Some issues.
Sure.
You see, here at Sunstone Industry, we made circuit boards. But not just any circuit boards; we used parts from Celesta and Elysium…and SorcerSoft, before they’d gone belly up. Companies run by Sorcerers that made parts slathered in runes and infused with magic .
We built that magic into the circuit boards, then shipped them to places like VitalTech, who used them to make diagnostic machines so advanced, they could do full body scans of a roomful of people and pinpoint who had cancer, who was diabetic, who had hypertension, whose heart was about to fail, and much more.
Magic.
Life-saving magic.
And Sunstone boasted about how we hired professionals —using esteemed techs who were well-versed in magic and technology—and placed quality at the echelon of our business.
But somehow, we built an entire gosh-darn order of boards the wrong way .
It wasn’t caught until we did the final testing, and the boards fritzed.
And then, our esteemed professionals broke half the pieces trying to disconnect and reassemble the boards. So now we were up shit’s creek and we might’ve had a paddle to get us out, like rushing new builds through the plant. Might’ve. If half the parts weren’t on back order.
Couldn’t build a board without parts.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Mr. Hollingdale sniffed in my ear. “What kind of issues are we talking about, Pippi?”
“Well, you see…” I drummed my fingers against the desk.
Fiddled with the fat cat pen holder my fellow project coordinator, Kai, had gotten me for our white elephant gift exchange at Yuletide last year.
Flipped through my notebook, my eyes catching on the scribblings I’d made in the corner yesterday morning.
The start of a story. An angsty office romance I’d thought up while watching two of my married coworkers flirt in a meeting.
And they were not married to each other.
What happens if you meet the right person at the wrong time? What happens if the person who uplifts you, soothes your soul, and makes you whole wasn’t the one you married?
Do you risk it all at the call of your soulmate? Or do you play it safe and stay with the life partner you chose—even if that partner is slowly suffocating the light out of you?
Stars, that was terrible.
“Yes, Pippi?” Mr. Hollingdale pressed.
“We…uhh….” My eyes kept roaming. Looking at my email.
Scanning the heads of the people in the cubicles around me, I noticed Kai’s spiky brown hair bobbing along to the music coming out of his earbuds and Jessa’s slick, shimmering curtain of blond hair, which sparkled under the too-bright fluorescent lights.
I was looking for something—a miracle. A shining knight who’d swoop in and save me. A gentle way to deliver the bombshell. Something.
But there was nothing. No one.
My hands left sweat streaks on top of my bland, grey desk as I went back to drumming my fingers. “Mr. Hollingdale, I’m afraid we’re not going to make your ship date.”
“No?” A sniffy response. Not angry, not yet. Because he probably figured I’d come back with something like, “Yeah, we’re gonna be about a week late.”
The actual date would gast all his freaking flabbers.
“No.” I watched the patterns my sweaty fingers left on the desk. “There was an issue in production. A…well…a large issue. But I want to make it clear that this was our mistake, and no extra costs will be incurred on your end.”
A big wet sigh heaved into my ear. “What kind of delay are we talking here, Pippa?”
So much for all that talk about how he likes my name.
DING!
My heart jumped at Andy’s newest message, hoping— praying —it’d be good news. But then my eyes absorbed the text, and my heart flattened itself beneath my feet and died.
Andy : Right now, the best ETA on shipping is August fourteenth.
I gulped.
August fourteenth was four months from now.
This order was supposed to ship this Monday .
“Pippa?” Mr. Hollingdale’s voice thinned. Still not angry, but annoyed.
DING!
Jessa : If the news is that bad, have him call Andy for an update.
I jerked my head up and met Jessa’s big, watery blue eyes over the edge of the cubicle. She emitted a wave of righteous rage as she tucked her chin down, banging out another message on her keyboard.
DING!
Jessa : This was ANDY’S lead, Pippi. Not yours. HE is the project manager. You’re only his coordinator.
My hands shook as I pecked out a quick, Ouch. Harsh.
Jessa’s lip quirked when she zipped another message to me.
Jessa : You know what I mean. HE was the one who okayed the date. HE was the one who tried to rush it through production. Our quality control department sucks, sure, but HE rushed.
DING!
Andy : Tell Mr. Hollingdale we will do everything we can to move that lead time in.
Jessa : If Andy wants to keep shoving these jobs through and making these promises, he needs to own it when things get fucked. Stop letting him push it off on you. You’re gonna end up with an ulcer, Pips. You’re as white as a sheet.
“Pippa? What is our lead-time?”
Oh shoot.
Mr. Hollingdale was mad now.
And my stomach did kind of hurt, as knotted as it was with nerves and guilt.
DING!
Jessa : Ulcers are a bitch, Pips.
I don’t have an ulcer, I typed back. And I told Andy I’d take care of this.
Jessa : I’d tell Andy lots of things. None of them nice.
I sighed. Pinched the bridge of my nose.
Winced when my sweaty hands smeared my foundation.
And said, in the sweetest, calmest voice I could muster, “Boards were damaged during the production process. Unfortunately, they’re irreparable, so we’ll need to go back in with new builds.
Again, you’ll incur no additional costs for this.
But…well…some of the parts are backordered with lead times of fourteen weeks. But, Mr. Hollingdale, we will?—”
“WHAT?”
The yell rattled my ear, making me jump dang near out of my chair.
Kai and Jessa both looked up.
“FOURTEEN WEEKS?! This is unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable. No. Absolutely not. Those boards can’t go out past the end of this month , Pippa. Fourteen weeks? Where is Andrew? Where is your manager? I won’t accept this. Absolutely not.”
I blew out a long breath. One that burned as it left my mouth because I’d held it in so long, it’d festered inside of me.
“Mr. Hollingdale,” I tried, tentatively.
He ignored me and kept right on yelling for a full ten minutes, until he got fed up with my attempts to placate him and snarled, “This is un-fucking-believable.” Then he hung up, probably to go haunt Andy.