“This is Lizzie,” I say, as pleasantly as I can, considering his tone.
“You the temp?”
“No, sir,” I say. “I’m the new morning receptionist. How may I direct your call?”
“Get me Jack” is the terse reply.
“Certainly,” I say, frantically scanning my little shrink-wrapped list. Jack? Which one is Jack? “Who may I say is calling?” I ask, stalling for time as I look for the name Jack.
“Jesus Christ,” the man on the other end of the line yells. “This is Peter fucking Loughlin, for fuck’s sake!”
“Of course, sir,” I say. “Please hold.”
“Don’t you fucking—”
I press hold with trembling fingers, then turn toward Tiffany, who is dozing in her seat, her lusciously long black eyelashes perfectly curled against her high cheekbones.
“It’s Peter Loughlin,” I cry, waking her up. “He wants someone named Jack! He swore at me! I think he’s mad I put him on hold… ”
Tiffany is on it like a frat boy on a pizza, snatching the receiver from me and muttering, “Shit. Shit shit shit,” beneath her breath before leaning over me to press the hold button, then saying smoothly, “Hi, Mr. Loughlin, it’s me, Tiffany… Yes, I know. Well, she’s new… Yes, I will… Of course. Here he is.”
Then her long, manicured fingers fly over the keypad, and the call—and Peter fucking Loughlin—is gone.
“I’m sorry,” I say tremulously, as Tiffany hangs up. “I just couldn’t find anyone named Jack on the list!”
“Stupid bitch,” Tiffany says, pulling out a ballpoint pen and scribbling something on the list Roberta gave me. Passing the list back to me, she sees my alarmed expression, and laughs. “Not you. That whore, Roberta. She thinks she’s so great, because she went to an Ivy League college. Like, so what? All it got her was a job scheduling people’s vacations. A monkey could do that. Big fuckin’ whoop.”
I blink down at the change Tiffany’s made on my list. She’s crossed out the first name “John” in front of the last name “Flynn” and written “Jack” over it. Because she’d used a ballpoint to write over clear contact paper, the change is barely legible.
“John Flynn’s real name is Jack?” I ask.
“No. It’s John. But he calls himself Jack, and so does everybody else,” Tiffany assures me. “I don’t know why Roberta put his real name instead of what people actually call him. Maybe because she wants to fuck with you. Roberta’s totally jealous of girls who are better looking than she is. You know, since she looks like a horse-faced troll.”
“Oh, there you are!” Roberta cries, as she pushes open the glass door from the elevator lobby and steps into the reception area. She’s wearing a trench coat—from the lining, I can tell it’s Burberry—and carrying a briefcase. For someone who only “schedules people’s vacations,” she looks superbusinesslike. “Everything all right? Tiffany showing you the ropes?”
“Yes,” I say, throwing Tiffany a panicky look. What if Roberta overheard her calling her a horse-faced troll?
But Tiffany doesn’t look the least bit worried. She’s fished a nail file from one of the many drawers into which she’s crammed her personal belongings, and is working on one of her gel tips.
“How are you this morning, Roberta?” Tiffany inquires sweetly as she files.
“I’m great, Tiffany.” Roberta, now that I look at her, does sort of resemble a horse. She has a really long face, and superbig teeth. And she’s kind of short and has terrible posture, making her, truth be told, a little bit troll-like. “Thanks so much for helping us out by pulling a double today in order to train Lizzie. We really appreciate it.”
“I’m making time and a half after two o’clock, right?” Tiffany wants to know.
“Of course,” Roberta says, her smile tightening perceptibly. “Just like we discussed.”
Tiffany shrugs. “Then it’s all good,” she says in a syrupy-sweet voice.
Roberta’s smile tightens even more. “Great,” she says. “Lizzie, if you—”
The phone chirps. I leap upon it. “Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn,” I say into the receiver. “How may I direct your call?”
“I have Leon Finkle for Marjorie Pierce,” a woman’s voice purrs.
“One moment please,” I say, and press the transfer button. Then, highly aware that Roberta is watching my every move, I find Marjorie Pierce’s extension on my cheat sheet, press the numbers, then say, when a voice on the other end picks up, “Leon Finkle for Marjorie Pierce?”
“I’ll take the call,” the voice says. And I press send and watch as the little red light by the transfer buttons disappears. Done. I hang up.
“Very nice,” Roberta says, looking impressed. “It took Tiffany weeks to even learn that much.”
The look Tiffany darts Roberta would have frozen the hottest mochaccino. “I didn’t have as good an instructor as Lizzie does,” she says coldly.
Roberta gives us another brittle smile and says, “Well, carry on. And, Lizzie, I’ll need you to stop by my office before you leave so you can fill out those forms to get you on our insurance.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, and since the phone is chirping again, leap to seize the receiver. “Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn,” I say.
“Jack Flynn, please,” a voice on the other end of the phone says. “Terry O’Malley calling.”
“One moment, please,” I say, and press transfer.
“Stupid fucking bitch,” Tiffany is muttering beneath her breath, as she nibbles a Twizzler.
“Terry O’Malley for Mr. Flynn,” I say, when a woman picks up Mr. Flynn’s line.
“Her vagina has cobwebs from lack of use,” Tiffany says.
“Send the call, please,” the woman says. I press send.
“You know she had the nerve to tell me not to paint my nails at the desk?” Tiffany is rolling her eyes in the direction Roberta has just disappeared. “She said it wasn’t professional .”
I refrain from pointing out that I don’t think it’s very professional to paint your nails at your job in a law office, either.
The phone chirps again. I answer it. “Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn,” I say. “How may I direct your call?”
“To yourself,” Luke says. “I just called to wish you luck on your first day.”
“Oh.” I feel my knees melt as they always do when I hear his voice. “Hi.”
I’ve gotten over the thing from last night. The thing where he’d said people our age are too young to know what love really is. Because he said he didn’t mean us. Obviously he was just making a generalization. Most people our own age probably don’t know what love is. Tiffany, for instance, probably doesn’t know what love really is.
Besides, after dinner, he illustrated very competently that he knows what love is. Well, making love, anyway.
“How’s it going?” Luke wants to know.
“Great,” I say. “Just great.”
“You can’t talk because there’s someone sitting right next to you, right?” Which, of course, is one of the reasons that I love him so much. Because he’s so perceptive. About most things, anyway.
“Right,” I say.
“That’s okay, my first class starts in a minute anyway,” he says. “I just wanted to see how things were going.”
As he’s speaking, the glass door to the reception area opens and a blond, slightly stocky-looking young woman comes in. She’s dressed in jeans and a white turtleneck sweater that does nothing to flatter her, along with a pair of Timberland boots. You don’t really expect to see a lot of these kinds of boots in the Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn offices. The woman looks familiar for some reason, but I can’t place her.
I do notice, however, that Tiffany has looked up from the nail she is repolishing and that her jaw has fallen.
“Uh, I gotta go,” I say to Luke. “Bye.”
I hang up. The young woman is approaching the reception desk. I see that she’s pretty, in a healthy, all-
