Giving her soda a morose glare, she cracked the can and had a sip.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been here long enough. She couldn’t use that as an excuse. Hell, Simon had been in New York half the time she had. He’d been born with a gregarious soul and seemed to know half of everyone in no time. Everyone loved Simon.
Her phone rang, so she dropped the can back on the desk and flipped the phone to her ear. “Maddie Grey, Hudson Metro News.”
“Sergeant Malloy, desk officer for 101st Precinct. You had questions about the Redfern Houses drug bust two nights ago?”
Maddie scrabbled for a pen, in a state of shock. The fact he’d called back meant he’d actively had to track down her number, which his office hadn’t taken. Malloy had to really want to talk to her. “Yes,” she said, heart thudding.
“That one was all Queens Narcotics Squad’s baby. This ain’t nuttin’ to do with us. Don’t call again. ’Night.”
The phone went dead. Maddie stared at it. Or he really wanted it on the record that his office was not involved in something stinky.
“Hey, chickee.”
She started.
The editor’s secretary and office gossip-hound, Lisa Martinez, was shoving her cell phone in her bag and smiling at her. “Forgot my phone again. Had to come back for it.”
Lisa wasn’t a friend, but they were cordial enough, and she often passed along the day-shift gossip that Maddie missed as the lone night-shift girl.
“Did you see the new thing? In the lobby?” She leaned over the desk, giving Maddie an unexpected view of her ample assets.
“What thing?” Maddie slid her gaze higher.
“Oh, a li’l thing called Jake. Squeezed into a security uniform. Muscles up to his nostrils!” Her eyes glazed over. “Tell me you wouldn’t want a prime piece of that.”
So wouldn’t.
Lisa gave her hair a toss and told her in a fascinated tone, “I think he’s from Texas. He’s got that way of speaking. You know—all drawled-out words, like he can’t bear to say them fast. He can pat me down any day. Am I right?”
She looked to Maddie for backup, as though she had an ogling comrade-in-arms.
In the eight months Maddie had worked at the Hudson Metro, Lisa hadn’t yet picked up on her complete indifference to girly bonding. Especially on topics she had zero interest in. Like swooning over men with muscles. Or men at all.
“I met him on the way in. He only seems to know five words,” Maddie pointed out with a grin. “None of which are longer than three letters. What would you two even talk about?”
Lisa exploded into a fit of giggles, forcing her mammoth bosom to rise and fall under her blouse. She gave her long, dark hair another flick. “Ha, chica, you seem to think I like my men for their conversation.”
Maddie forced a smile. “Ah. So, anything happening? I wasn’t here yesterday. What did I miss?”
“Oh, honey, it’s all on!” Lisa’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, even though they were the only two people in this part of the building. “So Jake’s been brought over from Bartell Corp, because the tiger shark thought our night security sucked.”
“It does,” Maddie said. “I mean Garry’s a nice guy, but a seventy-year-old with a bad heart and two hip replacements shouldn’t be our first line of defence at midnight.”
“Well, the boss lady obviously agrees cos zzzt…” She ran a finger across her throat. “No more Garry. Hello, Jakey.” Her eyes lit up.
“Lisa, you’re married,” Maddie said, half amused.
“True, but I’m not dead yet. Anyway,” Lisa continued shooting her an unrepentant look, “the other huge bomb is that our big jefe is gone.” She pointed behind Maddie.
Maddie swivelled around to check out the general manager’s glass, corner office. She sat so close to him that she could often hear snatches of his phone conversations. The reverse was also true. Colleagues always gave her sympathetic looks whenever they found out where her desk was. No one wanted to sit under Barry Bourke’s all-seeing gaze.
The only person who sat closer to Bourke than Maddie was his secretary. Melissa had a double-length desk immediately behind Maddie and right outside her boss’s office. His now completely bare office.
Maddie frowned. She suddenly realised Melissa hadn’t talked her ear off tonight, as she usually did between five and six when the secretary was winding up her day. Maddie’s gaze dropped to Melissa’s desk. It looked as bare as the general manager’s. How the hell could she have missed that? Well, she had been kind of preoccupied with her own employment issues.
“So Bartell fired him? And Melissa, too?”
“Yup. Just like that. Guess Elena wanted his office.” Lisa cackled. “And Melissa went with him. Her choice. Guess the rumours about those two were true.”
“So much for Bartell’s fancy speech about us all getting six weeks to prove ourselves.”
“Yeah, but what did Bourke expect? His expenses are…were…insane. I know—I put through some of the invoices to Accounts.”
“I doubt Bartell’s expenses will be any less, though. Come on, the woman owns a private jet for God’s sake.”
“But that won’t be billed back to us. You know, from an accounting point of view, she’s already saving the paper a ton of money by ditching Bourke’s greedy ass.”
“Still seems kind of arbitrary to me.” Maddie shook her head. “How does she know Bourke wasn’t a genius? She barely knows him.” She was still rankled by their elevator conversation, when Bartell had taunted her about possibly firing her on the spot.
“Well, you’ll know sooner than the rest of us what she’s like,” Lisa said with a naughty gleam in her eye. “Hell, now she’s sitting behind you, you’ll be able to hear pretty much everything she’s up to. So, don’t forget to pass on any good gossip.”
Sitting behind me. Maddie glanced back at the glass office with a sinking feeling. She was damn sure she didn’t want to be this close to the woman. Maddie realised Lisa was waiting for an answer. “Um, nope. For some reason I think low-level espionage would get my ass toasted in no time. I need this job to pay rent, especially seeing my housemate’s leaving soon.”
“Oh,” Lisa said with a pout. “Okay, I suppose. Well, enjoy virtually sitting in her lap, though. You two are gonna see an awful lot of each other for the next six weeks. She’ll be peering out at you from her desk every day like el demonio!” Lisa laughed heartily and waved good night.
Maddie recalled Bartell’s snide dig at her—“I don’t want to be looking at a deconstructed beat poet for the next six weeks.” It was going to be awkward as hell if Bartell really didn’t like looking at her. Although Maddie didn’t work normal hours, so the problem of Bartell being unimpressed by her wardrobe wasn’t going to be an issue.
It wasn’t as if some highly successful, world-famous media mogul would want to be sitting in her poky, borrowed office for hours on end. The fact she was here for six long weeks was weird enough. But being here after hours too?
Maddie was pretty safe. She exhaled in relief.
BlogSpot: Aliens of New York
By Maddie as Hell
Expectations are one of life’s most powerful, invisible forces. They crush our throats tighter than any necktie. We chafe at them, deny they exist, pretend we don’t care about them, yet we can’t get enough of them. Expectations alter our world. They can win or cost us a job, a lover, a lawsuit, a life.
We are addicted to expectations. Me, I’m the expectations junkie. Check me out, living the life I’m expected to. I could be failing happily back home. Instead, I’m succeeding miserably here.
I know focusing on expectations is a pointless waste of mental resources. They aren’t real. They’re entirely in our own minds.
And yet, I’m always going back for another hit.
Why?
CHAPTER 4
