Plutus's Greedy Little Mate

Chapter 1

“Edith…” Her full name slithered out into the world like a snake ready to strike, making her face scrunched in distaste.

A heavy hand tapped her arm and she shrugged it off, accidentally bumping the magnifying lenses into the incredibly old, incredibly rare book perched on her elevated workstation.

“Edith!” No snake slithering there, just plain old admonishment.

She sighed, pushed aside her desk-mounted magnifying glass and turned her pink-dyed head to face her boss.

Technically he was her internship mentor, but he was unlike her academic mentors in the Library and Media Studies Department where she was completing her master’s degree.

They were at least earnest in their occupations and focus, if a little snooty or dismissive at times.

They respected books first and foremost, maybe even at the expense of reality.

It gave her some solid footing with them.

Common ground she didn’t usually have with the type of people who usually populated academia.

Mitchel, however, held no common ground with her or the books she loved.

He was concerned with spreadsheets and timecards and the “well-oiled machine,” which was, regrettably, what he called the rare books section he managed in the private library and museum where E worked.

A beautiful collection which grew constantly, but one he only saw as numbers.

Which was likely why he was there, looming over E, that very moment.

Sadly, the LMS program was strapped. As was she.

As she’d always been, coming from her small rural town’s trailer park all the way to NYC as a graduate student.

To offset her stipends, the program required paid internships.

“Paid” was laughable, for the amount of work performed versus the amount listed on her direct deposits every month.

E was broke. No lies. Loans were tapped out for the year, and it was only June, meaning she had two more months of rent, bills, and food to somehow manage on only her intern dollars.

Three, if she were honest, because she had to move after she graduated and sustain herself until her first paycheck.

She couldn’t get a second job. Besides the fact she’d had to sign a contract stating she’d not work anywhere else while in the LMS program, she was frantically finishing her thesis.

Her eighteen-hour workdays went from the museum library to home or the university library where she researched, wrote, and edited.

In two months, she’d be free. Graduated and ready to take on the actual, factual, living-wage paying job she lined up for herself.

Didn’t help her in the present, when bills piled up and her cupboards were nearly bare. Sure, she’d made this choice.

She hadn’t gone into Library Sciences for money.

No librarian made a lot of money, but they cared for books and people, a combination she loved.

Loved since her early years, when she was far too young to furiously pedal her bike the four miles round trip to her local library and spend hours in the stacks, on the computers, chatting with all the librarians who watched her grow up.

Watched her more closely than her parents could at times, what with the number of hours they had to work at their minimum-wage jobs to stay afloat, even in a trailer park.

No, she wasn’t in for a life of wealth. Wealth wasn’t what she needed. She needed good work, meaningful work, helping people and preserving book history. She also needed to eat and keep her lights on, which meant she needed to suck it up and have a conversation with Mitchel.

Mitchel craned his neck over her head, wrinkling his nose as he did. “Are you still on the York manuscript, Edith?”

E bit her tongue, as she did so often with him. He refused to call her E, her preferred name. Instead, he called her Edith, which was technically her name, but still, decent people took into account what others preferred.

She nodded. What could she say? The manuscript was a bound collection of broadsheets detailing the Siege of York during the English Civil War.

An interesting piece filled with numerous documents of historical significance.

Her job was to catalogue, report, and carefully release each from the four-hundred-year-old binding.

A tedious process, as Mitchel knew. So why he questioned her still being on it when she received the assignment only four days ago was a mystery.

But a lot in life mystified E, so she simply chose to not engage.

He sniffed, tugged his immaculate and likely expensive shirt sleeve down under his impeccable navy jacket and looked into E’s eyes.

She knew what he saw: pink dyed hair to her shoulders, copper-brown eyes, a too bulbous nose on an otherwise small face, and an average, though short, body wrapped in a thrift store button up and slacks, which were clean and tidy but threadbare around certain seams. He didn’t like any of it.

Fine with E. She wasn’t there to impress him with her looks.

She was there to do a good job and complete her internship for her degree, which she did magnificently, in her opinion.

Her mind back on track, she squared her shoulders and looked Mitchel in his mud-brown eyes, which happened to be almost level with her own. Possibly one reason his attitude was bad: he chose Napoleon complex over short king energy.

“Did you receive my message, Mitchel?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning to her side to straighten a metal ruler on her desk. “What do you wish to discuss?”

E looked around the room. She shared a workspace with three others who worked full-time in the book preservation department. They were all studiously ignoring the two talking in the quiet space, but they could hear every word. “Could we talk in your office?”

Mitchel let out a sigh as if the request ruined his entire life before he spun on his heels.

“Come,” he called to her, not even bothering to look over his shoulder at her.

It grated more than a bit, but she followed, because what else could she do?

She needed to eat, and this man might as well hold the keys to her refrigerator.

She settled into the artfully worn brown leather chair in Mitchel’s office. The walls were a deep burgundy, the chairs all leather, and the lights were absurdly dim for someone who worked on, or at least with, books.

Mitchel leaned forward at his desk, placing his elbows on the gleaming wooden surface, lacing his fingers together before cocking his head her way. “Again, what do you wish to discuss, Edith?”

“Well, Mitchel, I was wondering if there was any wiggle room in the intern budget.”

At the mention of money, Mitchel’s back went ramrod straight.

He was notoriously tight-fisted, which was why he used interns whenever and wherever he could.

Likely also why he rose in the ranks so quickly.

He was better at budgets than books, from what E saw, and libraries needed a bit of both to run smoothly.

She recognized that, but it didn’t mean she appreciated Mitchel and his ways.

“Now, Edith. Your internship compensation was negotiated months ago, with your department. If you have an issue with your compensation, you really should speak with them.”

An exasperated sound leaked out before she could trap it. “I did. Yesterday. Which is why I emailed you for a meeting today. They say they can’t do anything about the compensation package offered by an institution outside the university. That’s all you.”

Mitchel leaned back in his chair, looking down at his neat and tidy desk for a beat before meeting her eyes again. “Edith, you signed a contract.”

“I know, Mitchel.” Stating the obvious didn’t help the situation.

E decided to swallow the lump in her throat and be honest with the man.

“I can’t keep up with my work and my bills right now.

I need a little more to get by until the end of this internship.

I’m not looking for a huge raise, Mitchel. Even a dollar more an hour would help.”

He looked puzzled. “Why not ask your family for assistance if it’s only for a short time?”

E instantly went rigid, rage and a hint of bitterness coursing through her veins at the question.

The department chair had asked the same thing yesterday.

It was infuriating. One, she did the same type and amount of work as the full-time employees here, and she was paid a fraction of what they made.

Two, the assumption she came from a family who could help her financially, even briefly, always grated.

Most in academia or in careers fed by academia had this attitude.

Mainly because it was the case for centuries, she supposed, but it was the twenty-first century.

Assuming people came from money was absurd.

She rarely even got a chance to talk to her parents because they worked so much.

She visited them once a year, if she could, because none of them could afford the price of a plane ticket without planning and saving.

Her parents barely made rent and bills on their own old-ass trailer in Ohio.

No way they were helping her with money.

“No,” she bit out without explanation.

“Loans?” he asked.

“Tapped out.” She couldn’t get any more this year. Maybe she could get a private student loan, but that was asking for more financial disasters down the road, what with the debt she now had.