Chapter 6 #2
Both women laughed easily, Maureen following Harley around the building to the small breakroom that had a mostly-eaten box of donuts on the table – left open, mind you – and a scattering of crumbs beside it.
Harley just sighed good-naturedly and grabbed a Lysol wipe from a nearby container like this was an everyday occurrence.
It was kind of nice to see that they were just normal people with mundane quirks like anyone else, putting her immediately at ease.
“How do you take your coffee?” Harley asked, throwing away the wipe and opening a cupboard.
“Oh, I’ll make mine,” Maureen replied immediately – only to see Harley smile at her over her shoulder.
“I’m not offering to make it,” Harley chided almost playfully.
“I was just going to point you in the direction of what you might need. If you want a ‘Mocha-latte’ like Glory calls her sludge, the hot cocoa packets are in this cabinet. If you want it straight up with a dose of ‘moo’ like Firefly prefers, then you want the little blue cow dispenser. If you need ‘chemicals’ to function, the flavored creamer is in the door – and last time I checked, Inferno had a slew of different frou-frou girly flavors,” Harley chuckled, rolling her eyes.
“The man is a freak with a heart of gold – but heads-up, you should sniff it before you pour it in. He’s not here as much as he used to be, so it might have gone bad. ”
“I’ll stick with the ‘moo’,” Maureen replied, relaxing once more after her faux pas. Of course the woman wasn’t going to make her coffee, but the simple question mixed with a bit of nerves threw her for a loop – or maybe it was all the ‘Archangel’s Girl’ comments from a moment ago.
“Sooo?” Harley began, filling two mugs before looking at her once more. “Do I have to pull it out of you?”
“Pull what?”
“The details,” Harley replied, pulling out a chair and taking a seat.
There was a cup full of spoons on a Lazy Susan in the middle of the table, complete with a pink crystal sugar bowl next to an upside-down butter dish lid that had a variety of colored sugar packets.
“What’s Archangel like? How long did you talk?
Did you go out for a date?” - And Maureen almost dropped the ceramic cow she’d just withdrawn from the refrigerator, gawking at Harley.
Harley simply lifted an eyebrow knowingly, before reaching for a spoon.
“I see – so no date after the wedding... Gotcha,” and then cursed, tossing down a spoon onto the table in disgust. There – on the spoon – was a torn sticky note that said, “Licked”.
It was so weird, so unexpected, that a bubble of laughter escaped from Maureen before she could stifle it as Harley rolled her eyes, withdrew another spoon, and then did it again.
Another spoon – another torn note warning the next user that the spoon had already been used.
“Why don’t they just put them in the blasted sink?
” Harley gritted out tersely, frowning. “I swear, I’m gonna get disposables…
” and paused, chucking a third spoon into the sink with a clatter as it contacted the stainless steel and whatever dish was lying in wait in the sink.
“They’re like children – only bigger…” and pulled another spoon, slumping in defeat in her chair as she held up the fourth one for Maureen to see.
There, on the spoon, was a sticky note taped around the entire piece, so it didn’t come off with scrawled handwriting that said, “I’m MARY POPPINS, boyzzz! ”
“They're morons,” Harley groaned. “This is my ‘zoo’ and my ‘monkeys’ are running wild, completely out of control, possibly rabid… definitely insane.”
Maureen smothered a laugh with her hand, unsure what to say or do, but the spoon thing was kinda funny… if it wasn’t your problem to deal with. A man entered the doorway, took one look at Harley, and started to back out, but Harley was faster.
“OHHHH, NO YOU DON’T!” Harley yelped, coming out of her chair as she shook the spoon angrily at the newest arrival. “Who is doing this? Is this you? Was this your idea? These… these sticky notes?”
“I was just doing…”
“Nope!” Harley barked, cutting him off, and for a moment, Maureen actually felt bad for the guy.
He looked awfully concerned, like a child whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar, desperately searching around him for the real culprit that had crumbs on his chin still – and he was simply caught in the crossfire…
ahem – friendly fire, because the man standing there was none other than Thumper, Harley’s husband.
“Honey, I was just saying that…”
“Nope!”
Oh boy, Harley was in a royal snit – and this was probably a private moment that nobody should be witnessing between spouses, but here she was – stuck.
The man glanced at Maureen almost like a silent glare of ‘Did you start this?’ written all over his face.
Maureen shrugged. She looked at him innocently, picking up a spoon from the table and plucking the small piece of Post-It note off… which did not help the situation.
“Is. This. You?” Harley gritted out, holding up the offending spoon. “There were four of them in the ‘clean’ spoon caddy and so help me, if I pull a fifth one out…”
Thumper took two strides toward the table and yanked the spoons away before Harley could withdraw another one.
He obviously knew the culprit – and the dangers he was facing.
Coffee was apparently a very serious matter here at Flyboys, Maureen thought, watching the entire thing unfold as this big man ‘solved’ the problem temporarily.
He was clutching it to his chest and carefully extracting a ‘clean’ one – holding it out toward her like he was placating a tiger.
“I’ll handle this for you. You’ve got enough on your plate,” Thumper began in a steady voice, looking at his wife in a silent communication that wasn’t hard to miss. “You should probably just sit there and enjoy your – No, Valkyrie. Not right now…”
The change was so abrupt, Maureen did a double-take and then craned her neck to see the newest arrival before the bloodbath. Perhaps clean dishes were the key to a happy marriage – or congenial workplace.