Private Relations

Chapter 7

“That is literally every firm in New York.”

She shrugged and rolled back to her desk to retrieve something. When she rolled back out, in her lap was a stack of printed papers. She divided in by half and put it in my lap.

“That is a list of all of the PR agencies in NY that fit the criteria along with their phone numbers. Call them up and find out if they represent Victoria Hernandez, okay?”

Before she got a chance to roll away, I grabbed her arms, mindful of the stack of papers sitting across my lap.

“Wait, wait, wait. I have to call up all of these places? There has to be a thousand numbers in this stack! And even if we did find the right agency, why would they tell us who they represent?”

“Yes you have to call up these places! And they will tell us who they represent if you say you are from a talk show or magazine.”

“So you want me to lie?”

“Of course! That is what you get paid to do.”

Well, technically yes.

“Fine,” I said with groan as I let her roll back to her desk.

I seriously didn’t want to do this. If I had honestly known that saving someone’s career could be this much work, I would have stuck to writing apologies for the newspaper of something. But now I was stuck with it and I couldn’t back out. Not because I cared very much about Peter’s career or anything, I just didn’t want James to swoop in and steal this case. Perhaps all of this suffering would be worth it, just to see the look on James’ face when everything went spectacularly.

It was just, so much work, though. I could literally feel the follicles on my scalp turning grayer by the second. I seriously still didn’t understand how Yi Wen did this.

Complaining would not get through these stacks upon stacks of paper. So I rolled up to my desk, picked up the phone and started dialing. Somewhere into the third page of numbers, I started to zone out. I just couldn’t help but notice how weird I found the color of the office to be. It was not a blue, but it was a blue? It was ugly. I also hated the color of the floors. They sort of reminded me of the color of coffee that tasted terrible so you loaded it up with milk and sugar to make it taste better. Blue and brown? Probably one of the worst color schemes in the world.

“Thank you for you time,” I parroted as I crossed another agency off the list.

I flipped another page over to reveal a fresh list of numbers I didn’t want to call. I was doing a lot flipping. My pen brushed against the surface of my desk and I noticed how weird the color my desk was. It was a white desk. Who really thinks about white work desks in office spaces? Brown is a good color for desks in an office, not white. But perhaps whoever designed the color scheme of this place thought white desk would be cute or something. I had no idea why I was being bothered by it right that moment. Turning my head to the side, I picked up my phone and realized I had only been at work for 2 hours. Somehow  I felt like a whole day of work had been done. God my life would have been so much easier if Peter Bens could have kept his dick in his pants.

I was thinking about jumping out of the poorly framed window across the office when I felt some one jostle my shoulder. I blinked up and Yi Wen stupidly, wondering how I had not heard her squeaky office chair roll all the way over here.

“What is it?”

“I found the agency that represents Victoria.”

I hung up the phone the second the sentence came out of her mouth.