A Sophisticated Seduction

Cause Baby Now We Got Bad Blood

Excerpt:

The phone began to vibrate again and 'cause baby now we got bad blood' started to fill the bedroom. Zelena wouldn't give up. We both stared at it.

"Answer it," I said.

"Emma, why the hell would I?"

"Suppose she's dying or something? Like she's been kidnapped and they have her at gunpoint or she's calling to say she's sorry?"

"I doubt that at all costs. Really and truly, she's a mean bitch and always will be. Screw her and the leftovers she snatched from me."

Doing the one thing that probably made her insides freeze over, I slide my thumb across the screen and answered the call.

It kind of scared me when, all of a sudden, I noticed that people were getting sent home, their contracts terminated on the spot without notice. Without a declaration to alert them that hey, come tomorrow, you wouldn't be employed with us anymore. They were given one month's salary in advance but still. If you happened to be like Jessie from Marketing, a woman who just had a baby three months ago, and was a single mom, if you happened to be relying on your salary to pay expenses like rent and to buy baby stuff, then what the hell were you supposed to do after that one month passed? What would happen if she couldn't find another job by the end of September?

How could people do that?

The Board of Directors, the CEO and the suits who swept down into New York like crows, hailing from Canada, all of them were behaving weird. Standing in the hallways, whispering behind folders encasing documents and staring at us with hooded eyes. As if we had done something to them personally. Even Larry grew furious with their intimidating stares and voiced his disgust. He spoke to Regina about it but apparently she was a little too busy to even spare a few jokes that could lighten up the mood.

They weren't in her office mostly but did stop in.

It appeared as if they were building their nest in the Accounts and Records Keeping Departments.

I remembered it as clear as ever now. It was in September, because the guys and I were discussing Anthony's decision to study Marketing at this community college. He was eager to pursue something, to keep on studying and we were trying to persuade him to do that. So there were these brochures of the college splayed out across his desk, with like three of us circling his cubicle. It was a fifteen minutes break and we were all discussing the courses to take. Larry was at his desk, on the phone with someone, and it was one of those days where there wasn't much work to be done.

"See, Economics is hard," Peter was saying, studying a green and white brochure, "all the Maths and logical thinking. And you want something to cope with, with two jobs and all."

"What are your timings like?" I was curious, tugging at the collar of my red plaid shirt and still feeling the tag biting into already irritated skin. It was a shirt Regina had bought for me. Banana Republic.

Anthony shrugged, rolling his blue Paper mate pen across the desk, just in front of the keyboard. "I work from two to eleven here, as you know, moving into Customer Service after five. Then from midnight to like six in the morning, I work at this warehouse a couple blocks from here."

"Dude," Jack's eyes were huge. "That's hard."

"These classes are for the afternoons so I discussed it with Larry and Debra, HR lady," he gestured outside, "I could pull an eight to five in here instead of two to eleven and then I go to classes from six to nine, and start at my second job after midnight."