6. Court
6
COURT
I f Lucy thinks she’s converting me to her impractical, judgmental, all-granola, off-the-grid lifestyle, she can ride out of here on that pain-in-the-ass goat she arrived with.
Devin makes a strategic exit as I storm throughout the office, picking up the papers that wound up on the floor.
I can’t make phone calls without her disapproving gaze. I can’t hold meetings in here with her goat overlord.
And Devin leaves without any updates on the progress in finding a home for her.
I shove the mangled pages into my drawer and clear the desk for the inevitable return of the goat. Lucy has chomped into her sandwich with gusto and pays me no mind.
Time for a temporary exit. I step outside of that hellscape, carefully closing the door. Can’t have the goat getting out.
Devin looks up from a spread of printouts.
“What’s the progress in finding her a place to stay?” I ask.
“I had Angelique keep looking while I was gone.” He neatly stacks the printouts with images of cabins and barns. “She brought me these in order of likelihood.”
There are quite a few pages. That’s promising. “Just choose one and make it happen.”
“Are you okay with her being upstate?”
I hesitate. “What do you mean?”
“If we admit to having a goat, there’s no place in Manhattan.”
“How far?”
Devin shuffles through the papers. “Warwick. Patterson. Syracuse.”
“Syracuse? That’s hours away.”
“You want her close?”
“Not necessarily.” I gesture for him to keep talking.
“There are some goat farms with spaces you can rent. Some are B&Bs, others cabins.” He glances up. “Warwick is the closest at an hour and a half. There’s not a lot of options. Places are rare and often booked out.”
“You think she’ll go for that?” I ask.
“She loves her goat.”
“Which one is that?”
“A dedicated goat farm. Halson Family Farm. It has tiny houses to rent. There’s goat yoga. A whole barn and milking operation. Should be right up her alley.”
“Print out some nice pictures of it. We’ll convince her. Get her out of here.”
Devin’s face is pinched as he stacks the papers. “We’ll have to find a doctor out there. What if she expects you to be involved?”
“She called me a damn fixer-upper. We’re completely incompatible.”
“But if she’s having your baby.”
“If it’s mine, we’ll work custody out with lawyers like any civilized set of parents with irreconcilable differences.”
Devin’s face is a mask of disapproval.
I sigh. “What?”
“You’ve been concerned about morale. Leadership. Company culture. She could help.”
“How? By parading around barefoot with her goat?”
“I’m just saying, I think she could make you seem softer. More people oriented.”
“No. Hell no. Send her to Warwick.”
He stares down at the printouts. “Yes, sir.”
God, I hate it when he reverts to formal talk, like I’m his military commander.
I turn around to return to my office, then decide, no, I don’t want in there, either.
The conference room. I’ll hole up in there with a phone and my laptop.
Except my laptop is in my office.
“Need something else?” Devin’s voice is dark. He’s annoyed with me. It’s not unusual. Most people are.
“Would you please retrieve my laptop?”
“No.”
I whirl around. “Why not?”
“I haven’t completed your last task. I’m printing pretty pictures to convince that perfectly nice woman to get out of your hair. And I don’t like it. Plus, you owe me an hour off.”
As if I’m following Lucy’s cockamamie idea. “Never mind,” I tell him.
I’ll work from my phone. My files are all on a cloud drive.
I only take three steps when a heavy thud rattles my office door.
What now?
Devin and I look at each other.
Then there’s another one.
Is it Lucy? Is she having pains again and can’t open the door?
I yank on the handle and throw the door wide.
A white fuzzy head rams my knees, knocking me backwards. I fall on my ass, my head barely missing Devin’s desk.
The goat takes off down the hall.
I scramble to my feet to follow it, then a wild flash of color crashes into me.
Good God. It’s Lucy, and I’ve tripped her. I cradle her to stop her fall.
We make a slow-motion descent to the shiny floor. I carefully hold her up so that my shoulder takes the brunt of the landing.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Are you?” Her eyes are wild.
“The goat is gone,” Devin says.
Both Lucy and I look up from our position on the floor. We can hear the surprised cries down the hall.
“Matilda!” Lucy fights to disentangle herself from me and push to standing. But she no more gets to her knees when she grabs her belly. “Oh, these stupid pains!”
“Whoa, whoa.” I scramble upright and lift her to her feet. “Take it easy.”
“I’m a very self-sufficient woman!” Her face is red as she pokes my shirt. “Now let me go get my baby!”
She tries to take off, but I hold her shoulders. “You need to think about our baby.”
“Oh, now it’s yours.” She shakes herself loose from me. “Let go!”
I release her, and she takes off in a run-walk, both hands holding her belly like it’s about to bounce off her body.
Staff members have come to their doors to watch the commotion.
“We’re all right,” I say. “Just a situation with a goat.”
I catch the murmurs as I follow her.
“Is she pregnant?”
“Does she not have any shoes?”
“What does he mean, a goat?”
I hate this. Fucking hate it. I take off in a sprint, quickly overtaking Lucy.
“Get my goat!” she calls after me.
Oh, yes, I’m definitely going to get her goat.
We arrive at the elevator bank. Several shocked and laughing people stand there, peering down the hall. One of them is my VP of advertising, Brent.
“You looking for a goat? Yay high?” He holds out his arm.
The woman behind him points across the elevators to the other hall. “It ran past us.”
The building is a letter “H” of hallways, with the elevator bank as the bridge between them.
I rush beyond the onlookers, but on the other side, I’m not sure which way it went. I pause, my dress shoes squeaking on the glossy floor.
Then I hear a roar of voices to my right.
That way.
I take off again. The individual offices in this hall are all closed up, but the corridor ends in an open section of cubicles.
When I get to the large room, a dozen employees have circled up by the back wall.
Hopefully, they’ve cornered it.
I slow down, straightening my jacket and checking my hair. I don’t like to appear disheveled or flustered.
Among the tech support crew, I recognize Ian, the supervisor.
“Everything all right?” I ask as if I haven’t been chasing livestock through Pickle Media.
He looks up. “You know anything about this?”
“About what?” I attempt to nonchalantly rest my elbow on a nearby shelf, but it’s less sturdy than I expect, and it tilts, sending a cascade of white binders crashing to the floor.
The noise draws everyone’s attention, and I see a flash of white.
She was in there, and now, they’ve let loose of her again.
The pain in the ass interloper thinks she’ll duck by me again, but as she navigates the narrow lanes between cubes, I throw myself in her way.
“I wouldn’t do that!” someone says right as her hind legs kick out, nailing me in the balls.
I can’t stop my long, rather impressively loud, “Fuuuuuck” from drawing everyone’s attention a second time. I drop to my knees.
“She doesn’t have a leash or anything,” Ian says, run-skipping around my body to go after her.
Several others follow him. I can’t move yet, the fire in my groin showing no signs of ebbing.
A woman approaches. “Are you okay, Mr. Armstrong?”
I nod. “Go find the goat.”
“Who does she belong to?” she asks.
I don’t even know how to explain that. I wave her on. “Just go.”
Only when the cubes have cleared out, the entire tech department disappearing down the hall, do I let out another squeal of pain.
That damn goat.
This damn day.
It’s never going to end.