grocery store after she left here, that's how desperate she
was to get out.'
'That's pretty desperate.' I stretched. As I started to get up from the table, pain sliced the back of my thigh.
Brenda startled at my cry. 'What? What's wrong?'
I craned my neck to look over my shoulder, my leg stuck
out behind me like I was a balet dancer getting ready to
perform some complicated dance move. My skirt hit just
above the knee and I could make out the ragged line of a
run in my stocking, but nothing else. 'Something snagged
me.'
'It's the chair,' Brenda said. 'It's ful of splinters.'
I rubbed the spot stil stinging and smarting just behind my
knee. 'I can't tel if it's in there or not.'
'Shoot. I gotta run. Wil you be okay?' Brenda stuffed her
trash into the plastic box where a few scraps of lettuce stil
clung and tossed it al into the garbage can.
'Sure. Of course.' Sort of like a bee sting, the pain had
turned from sharp to a dul throb. I was more upset about
the panty hose I'd have to replace.
In the bathroom I used the ful-length mirror to check out
my injury, but could stil see nothing. I ran my fingers over
my skin around the sore spot but felt nothing poking
through. I didn't have time to keep searching, so I stripped
through. I didn't have time to keep searching, so I stripped
off the ruined panty hose and went back to the office.
'Just in time,' Paul said from the doorway between his
office and my smal work space. 'I was beginning to think
you weren't going to make it.'
I looked at him sharply. 'I'm hardly ever late, Paul.'
'Oh, I know you're not.' He glanced at his watch. 'C'mon, it's time.'
I pushed Brenda's warnings to the back of my mind. This
was the best job I'd ever had, and while I never assumed it
would be the best I'd ever get, I wasn't in any hurry to lose
it.
My task during the teleconference was to type up the
notes. Paul not only had notoriously bad handwriting but
he was a hunt-and-peck typist. As he got settled into his
chair, I picked up my AlphaSmart Neo, the portable
keyboard/word processor I used rather than a notepad
and pen. Paul might be a slow writer, but he could be a
superfast talker, and typing was the only way I could keep
up.
I couldn't decipher half of what they talked about. Profit
margins, balance sheets, long-range planning. I was
ignorant, and fine with that. I didn't need to understand
what they were saying to take it down. In fact, the less I
knew the better, because my mind could wander while my
fingers kept track.
Not so many years ago I'd have been expected to hover
