"You took the interview? Why?" Dan asked him before taking a huge bite of his meatball sub.
"I had some free time and I'd just made her spill her coffee, so I figured—."
"How'd you make her spill her coffee?" Dan raised an eyebrow.
Nate sighed. Dan was doing his Spanish Inquisition thing. It made him a great journalist... but a terrible employee sometimes.
"I was texting and I wasn't looking where I was going so I ran into her."
"Oh..." Dan trailed off, before screwing up his mouth discontentedly. "Nate, I appreciate that you were trying to take something off my plate, but you can't just take interviews with entry level writers..."
"This girl isn't going to stay a first level writer for long, Dan. Trust me."
Dan eyed him suspiciously. "You know, Karen told me that this girl was pretty attractive."
"So what," Nate replied dryly.
"So... you didn't just take her out for coffee and step all over any semblance of authority I have because this Eleanor girl was hot, right?"
"First of all, her name is Ella," Nate corrected him, "Secondly, what the actual fuck, Dan? You really think I would do that? This is my newspaper you're working at and I'm not just going to hire some girl because she's attractive—."
"I'm just saying! Nate, no offense, but you have a history of—."
Nate raised a hand to point at him, "Thirdly, you were the one who brought me her samples remember? She can write almost as well as you can—."
"That's... kind of insulting."
"Dan, if it means so much to you, you can interview her yourself. The final decision is yours... but just remember how much you hated all the other candidates."
Dan pursed his lips. "I'll think about it. But I'm definitely calling her references and if even one of them is fake, she's out, Nate."
"Fine. Perfect." Nate acceded exasperatedly. Humphrey was already miffed with him about restructuring his department, no need to continue poking the Brooklynite.
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Dan, being Dan, ended up requesting a second interview with Ella. She waved at Nate through his open door and the sight of her brought a smile to his face. Hopefully, Dan wouldn't be unreasonable on purpose just to discredit Nate's choice.
A half hour passed. Then an hour. Finally, a whopping two hours later, Ella walked back past his office, this time not remembering to wave. Nate moseyed on over to Dan's office once she was gone.
The door was ajar, but Nate rapped on the frame anyway. Dan looked up from the book he had been rapidly flipping pages through.
"How'd it go...?" Nate asked, noting the frown on Dan's face.
"She... ugh, she doesn't like Tolstoy!" Dan exclaimed. "Said that War and Peace was, and I quote, "a snooze fest." What kind of English major says that?"
"An honest one," Nate observed under his breath. "Is that War and Peace?"
"No, this is Shakespeare, my complete works copy. She bet me there's a "Your Mom" joke in Act 4, Scene 2 of Titus Andronicus..." Dan kept flipping, "Now, I know Shakespeare was definitely one for toilet humor, but Titus Andronicus isn't one of his comedies, it's— oh. Oh, shit."
"What?" Nate asked, moving around Dan's desk to peer at the book.
Dan pointed:
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Dan and Nate looked at each other. Nate burst out laughing.
"I guess I owe her 20 bucks..." Dan said quietly.
"And a job, Humphrey! Unless you hated her."
"Hate is a strong word... She annoys me."
"Does she annoy you because she's incompetent... or because she knows more of Shakespeare's dick jokes than you do?"
"The latter," Dan sighed. "I interviewed her for... Christ, two hours, and despite having terrible taste, she's read all the cornerstones and has fantastic commentary on all of it. And her references love her. Like, legitimately think of her as a daughter."
"Might mean they're biased about her," Nate played devil's advocate.
"Or she did a great job for them," Dan argued back. Nate smiled. If Dan was convinced, they could give Ella a call tomorrow.
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When Ella received the call, she was bouncing off the walls ecstatic— an energy she brought with her on her first day on the job. She knew this annoyed the hell out of Dan but harbored hope that she was simultaneously charming him.
"See, this is not making me feel better about hiring you!" He admonished her when she started spinning around in her new desk chair. The cubicle was about five square feet, but Ella didn't care-- she had a job at an actual newspaper with her own desk and her own chair and--
"And work," Dan reminded her, dropping papers on her desk. "These are a list of articles with sources that need to be verified-- you're going to go to the scanner and send a copy of our release forms to the emails specified on this list--."
He handed her a packet of emails with names and other information. Sobering a little, she nodded. She'd done this for the Washington Square before she'd worked her way up to Editor in Chief. With a little hop in her step, she made her way to the printers. She was going to get this done so quickly Dan would have no choice but to be impressed.
Once this task was finished she was given some copy to look over and edit-- but only a couple before she was sent back to the printers.
"You just got it done so quickly this morning," Dan explained, with a pointed look at the other intern who, apparently, had all the speed of an arthritic elephant when assigned the same task.
She realized he had a good reason to be pissed. After all, it turned out that his whole section was littered with newbies. And his assistant? God awful. He seemed almost new himself, like he'd been given the position recently. Taking all of this into consideration, thus, she did not sigh resignedly as she took the documents from him and went on her way to the printer room
Nate, exiting his office, almost bumped into her on her trek past his door. Already wobbling under the huge stack of papers because of the near miss, a few papers slid off the top to the ground. She froze and closed her eyes.
"We really need to stop meeting like this," he chuckled apologetically, taking in the frenetic energy rolling off of her and the harried expression on her face with some amusement. She opened her tightly shut eyes.
"Mr. Archibald, please, could you--."
"Nate, Ella," He reminded her, stooping to grab what had fallen. He placed them back on her stack carefully. She almost rolled her eyes but stopped herself-- she was talking to the CEO after all, even if he was being all cool boss™ with the first name thing.
"Right, yes-- I need to know, is bumping into me going to be a tradition for you?" She managed a friendly smirk as she re-adjusted her stack. "Because, if that's the case, I'm certain we can think of something less destructive."
Nate burst out laughing.
"I want to argue that it takes two people to bump into each other..."
"And I want to argue that I obviously had the right of way," She returned, then smirked. "But whatever you say, boss!"
"Nate!" He insisted as she rushed off. Karen, approaching for a meeting, gave him a curious look. He wiped the smile off his face quickly and re-entered his office, waving her in.
"She's pretty," She commented, a little pointedly. Nate rolled his eyes.
"You know, that's the third time you've said that. You sure you don't want to ask her for her number or anything...?" That got Karen to laugh and move on from the topic pretty quickly, thankfully. He just didn't understand why everyone was still so hung up on Ella's appearance. She so obviously had talent coming out of her ears, god damn it!
Nonetheless, despite lingering looks and some oddly suspicious whispering around the office, Ella got into the rhythm of things. The other ("Totally incompetent!" Dan insisted) intern was let go. The other newbies got their shit together. They even bumped up her salary a little now that she was on the permanent payroll. An official Spectator employee, she found herself splitting her time a little more evenly between writing copy and turning the printer room into her natural habitat.
Were vapid lifestyle columns precisely what she had wanted coming into this job? No, but she didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. She knew she'd work her way out of there one day. Besides, as weeks passed and she became familiar with everyone in the office, the job only got more fun. Sure, the deadlines were stressful, but she was doing exactly what she loved. She loved writing. And editing... oh god, it was almost embarrassing how much she absolutely adored editing.
She'd proven herself so good at it, in fact, that the other Lifestyle writers started coming to her for a quick check before submitting things to Dan— less yelling and red ink involved that way. Dan noticed, but, surprisingly this didn't upset him. Whatever had crawled its way up his ass when they hired her, he'd slowly mellowed out and he had to admit... He'd started to take a liking to her. The girl was talented. One day, he started leaving the other writers work on her desk for initial revision. He, of course, always got the final say, but the honor he was bestowing wasn't lost on her.
This honor, after a few days, started to feel a little like she'd been promoted to his personal assistant. This was both good— yay for being needed!— and bad. Bad because now she was still stuck at the printers for at least a third of her days, scanning a different but still incredibly boring array of documents. ("You just get it done so quickly, El...") The sound of the printer as it churned out copies was deafening— so much so that she took to humming while she did her work. No one could hear her over the noise, so she sang— quietly and almost never on key— while she fed the mighty machine it's paper sacrifices.
What she sang to pass the time varied with her mood. One particularly trying afternoon-- Dan had only given her an hour to write copy before he sent her to do slave labor-- she was humming songs her mother used to sing to her before bed. Her family was on her mind more than ever and the songs were stuck in her head. The printer listened to her atonal humming, droning raptly on. She stapled leaflets together with a flourish of the stapler.
When she'd run out of lullabies, her memories took brought to mind other songs from childhood movies, classics her parents had seen in theaters back in Cuba and then shown to her when she was young in the United States. Quite a surprising bit of Rodgers and Hammerstein— and there was one musical of theirs that, once she started singing it, she just couldn't stop. She'd forgotten how many absolute bangers there were in The Sound of Music.
Following an enthusiastic, if unimpressive, rendition of Do Re Mi, she mellowed out a little. Her stack of documents was almost completely scanned, so, quietly, she sang:
Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning you greet me...
Small and white, clean and bright, you look happy to me... to me...
She swayed back and forth gently, hands moving with exaggerated grace as she placed paper in the tray and pressed the appropriate buttons.
Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow! Bloom and grow forever...
Edelweiss...
She held it for a moment, longingly, getting into it.
Edelweiss...
Now with a sense of resolution, she grabbed the originals back out at the other end:
Bless my homeland forever!
She straightened the stack of papers against the table top next to the printer, two taps to signal the end of the song. Her moment of self-satisfaction at having done all of this in time to the song was short lived when she heard slow clapping coming from behind her. She whirled around, clutching a sheaf of paper.
Nate, leaning against the door way, finished his standing ovation.
"How long were you standing there," She asked, feeling an embarrassed heat crawling up her chest. She hadn't realized that she'd been louder than the printer this time.
"Long enough... I think we got through about half of the Sound of Music," He watched as her cheeks turned a neon pink, a grin twitching onto his face. "Is scanning Dan's weekly samples usually such a production?"
She bit her lip nervously, but smiled now as she regained some of her usual insouciance.
"Oh, yeah... you should have seen the costuming when I did the Phantom of the Opera. Real professional stuff," She replied. He shook his head as she returned about her business.
"Well, save me some seats to the next showing, I'm sure it will be entertaining," And with one last laugh, he continued on his way to get coffee. Without really meaning too, he found himself humming Edelweiss throughout the remainder of the day and each time he had the same thought: What a banger.