… and she wished she didn’t need this job so bad.
But she did, and would continue to do so, especially if she kept making stupid moves like last night—grabbing the check at the Continental, saying it was no problem, she had it covered. Nice one, Felton. Another $119 on the AmEx that didn’t need to be there. Wasn’t even as if she drank very much. Two Cosmos, nursed over a four-hour stretch.
But Nichole and Roxanne and Ethan … oh God, Ethan. He’d knocked back enough booze to curl a human liver.
Damn it, why did she pick up the check? Was she
Ethan not included.
Thing was, Amy knew she was screwed, because this was part of her job.
David had once told her: “You’ve got to be my public face. It’s not good for the boss to be palling around with his employees. But
Sure, take them out for drinks. Pick up the check while you’re at it.
She wanted to ask: Why doesn’t
And this stuff about Amy being the “upper management confidante” was just an easy out for David. He didn’t like socializing with anyone below his rank. Amy was his second in command, and
Especially in an office like this. Considering what they did.
And now this morning’s “managers’ meeting.” People were going to freak. Especially the people who hadn’t been invited.
David wouldn’t even tell her what it was about, other than it was a “new operation.”
As if what they did on a daily basis wasn’t important enough?
Just get through it, Felton.
On weekends—on scorching summer weekends, it seemed—the Market–Frankford El only ran every fifteen minutes. She made it to the platform to watch the air-conditioned cars of the 8:21 train pull away from the station. The sun was like a photographer’s flashbulb set on “stun.” No breeze to cool her down. Not even up here. Philadelphia was in the clutches of still another heat wave—seven straight days of hundred-plus temperatures. Such temperature spikes used to be unusual in the mid-Atlantic, but for the past four years, they’d become the norm.
At least she wasn’t hungover, which would have been intolerable in this heat.
She’d been afraid to drink too much.
Run the tab up too high.
… and his hangover wasn’t just a condition; it was a living creature, nestled within the meat of his brain, gnawing at the fat gray noodles, savoring them, and, as a cocktail, absorbing all available moisture from the rest of his body. The skin on his hands was so dry, you could fling him against a concrete wall, and—if Ethan’s palms happened to be facing out—he’d stick. His eyes needed to be plucked out of his sockets, dropped into a glass pitcher of ice water. Might hurt some, but he’d enjoy the soothing
Oh, Ethan knew better. Knew he had to report to David Murphy’s Big Bad Saturday-Morning Managers’ Meeting.
It was why he’d stayed up way too late last night, drinking those orange martinis with Amy.
Rebel Ethan Goins.
Stickin’ it to the Man, one French martini at a time.
They’d tasted like Tang. That was the problem. Sweet as a child’s breakfast drink. Now, as Ethan stuffed his throbbing, desiccated, burning, aching body inside an aluminum coffin manufactured by Honda, he knew he had only one chance.
McDonald’s drive-through.
Large Coke, plenty of ice, red-and-yellow pin-striped straw plunged down into the cup.
Egg McMuffin. With a slice of Canadian bacon wedged between the soft marble slab of egg and flour-flecked sides of a gently warmed English muffin.
Hash browns.
Three of them. In the little greasy paper bags. Spread across the passenger seat.
Where Amy Felton sat whenever they met to talk, unwind, stare at each other awkwardly … before he drove her home. Which was like returning a nun to her convent.
Sister Amy had been the architect of his misery this morning—Ms. “Oooh, let’s go out drinking after work.” Ethan never even heard of French martinis until Amy had pointed it out on the menu.
Yeah, she could deal with a greasy butt next time she sat in the car.
Come to think of it, maybe he’d buy four hash browns. Have one on hand, just in case. It was probably going to be a four–hash brown morning, all told.
The infusion of meat and caffeine and carbohydrates and protein was the only prayer he had of making it through this morning alive.
He just prayed that the morning meeting would be a brief one—a new assignment, a new bit of training. Whatever. His role at the office wasn’t central to their mission. He was just the protector. The dude who could be counted on to snap a neck if somebody tried to mess with the numbers geeks. So they could jabber on about whatever they wanted to this morning.
Just so long as he could make his way back home as soon as possible, crank up the central air, pull down the shades, crawl under a blanket, and suffer through the rest of his death in peace.
Ethan paid for his breakfast with a debit card, grabbed the bag, placed the Coke in the drink holder, fumbled with the paper around the straw, and drove away. By the next red light, the Egg McMuffin was unwrapped and headed to his mouth.
The third hash brown was history even before he reached the on-ramp to the Schuylkill Expressway.
By the time he reached the off-ramp to Vine Street, there was a rumbling in Ethan’s belly.
By the time he hit Market Street, there was more than rumbling. There was an escape plan forming.
By Twentieth Street, a full-on revolt was in the works.
Ethan, of course, should have known better: The McDonald’s breakfast hangover cure is a fleeting one. A salve to the brain and stomach for only a short while. It is a remedy on loan. The havoc it wreaks on your intestinal tract can be nearly as painful as the hangover itself. It is like pressing your palms to the beaches of heaven shortly before catching the jitney to hell.
Ethan needed a bathroom.
The office. It was his only chance.
… and he was the boss.
David had been in the office since the night before. Drove in under the cover of darkness, parked on a different garage level. Not that anyone would notice. David had rented a different car a few days ago, switched out the plates twice.
