Conquest

Episode Seven: A Threesome

I have a document for you. No, he might not remember the joke. Should I call missing persons? Nuh uh, that's an accusation. Early riser. Better, but still designed to make him answer for himself. Did I dream that you were over last night? Eww, creepy. Glad you traced my license plate. Now he sounds creepy. Come stai? She had to use Google Translate for this, which makes it inauthentic, but it's cute—a subtle reference to their night together without asking anything of him. But he could misread it, thinking she meant to write Come stay (on the keyboard, the y and the i are only separated by the u). Whoa, she has to think about that for a moment. Why and I are only separated by you. This could be a clue, or a sign, or some significant riddle. Or not. Oh dear, crazy woman alert. Abort mission. Do not text him. I repeat, DO NOT TEXT HIM!

Brie looks at her phone. It's 12:03pm. Five hours have passed since she woke to find her bed vacant of Danny. Geologically speaking, six hours is a speck on the flea of time, but romantically speaking, it's a week, at least. People are always complaining how fast time goes by, but just get yourself enamored with a handsome new man with whom you have intense sexual chemistry and time will turn into an injured snail traversing a sludge field. This has come down to a matter of impulse control. It's the blockbuster companion to Be Yourself. Don't be psycho. It's called Act Like an Adult, and Also a Normal Person.

Adults focus on their work during the day. Henceforth, she is diving into the new literature on next generation growth factors in skincare when a text comes in. Her elbow bends spasmodically, sending her phone sailing over her shoulder and skittering across the gleaming white tiles of the Waitrium. She scurries after it, her mind already churning with the calamitous chance her phone's impact with the floor deleted the text he just sent her—some soft chide about her adorable snoring or a pic he snapped of her as she lay sleeping—wait, that'd be weird—and now she'll have to devise a strategy for teasing out a resend.

Brie goes down on bended knee to reach for her phone, but Dita comes clomping by in her boots and sends the phone shooting towards the bamboo grove and into the footpath of pretty much the most annoying human ever to be birthed alive, who stops, picks up Brie's phone, and begins to examine it like it's a baby bird freshly fallen from the nest. Carol. Who names their baby Carol?
Uh oh. Brie stops herself and draws a self-admonishing breath. Carol is a perfectly lovely name. Let's call a spade a Kate Spade. Brie is cranky because she likes a boy and she doesn't know if he likes her back.

Brie reaches out an upturned palm to Carol.

"I was thinking of getting a new phone the other day," Carol is saying, not handing it back, "but then I went into the Sprint store to check out the latest models..."

Brie snatches it and opens her messages.

Mom – cell: I made the most AMAZING wild mushroom risotto last night!!!!!

She growls in disappointment.

"... and I decided that it was just too overwhelming of a decision right now, with my mom's cataract surgery and all these screen sizes and operating systems..."

"Brie," the Appointment Coordinator says. "Your client is here."

She'll just have to make him the most AMAZING wild mushroom risotto. She is Italian, after all. It is customary to prepare for a meal reflective of your heritage. And he's, well, she's not sure what he is, but he speaks Italian and it doesn't matter anyway, unless he actually is Italian and then his mother will be ecstatic that he's finally found a nice Italian girl.

Nice. You've got to be nice. Brie turns to the techno-stressed shiatsu practitioner. "Carol, I'm going to make it easy for you. You're either getting an iPhone 6 or a Samsung Galaxy."