Bond Girl (13 page)

I'm sorry, but a girl has limits.

I reached my workstation three minutes later, to a round of applause from the rest of the desk. I collapsed in my chair. Drew chuckled first, then his laughter grew louder until he was roaring like a crazy person on his way to a padded room.

“Stop laughing at me. This isn't funny! Chick's going to kill me, Drew. What do I do?” I pleaded with him to give me advice.

“Sorry, you're screwed, my friend. You broke the proof-of-life policy.”

“The proof of
what
?” I asked, terrified. How was it possible I'd never heard about this? It definitely wasn't in the handbook.

“The proof-of-life policy. Bad enough if you're going to be late and miss the economic data that comes out at eight thirty, but if you don't call in by eight fifteen or so and let him know that you're alive and on your way in, he'll kill you himself.”

“No one ever told me about it!” I wailed.

“I guess everyone assumed you knew, or that you'd never be dumb enough to come in this late. One or the other.”

“You're not helping!” I hissed. “Seriously, Drew, tell me what to do.”

“I don't know what to tell you, A, but do me a favor and move over. I don't want to get caught in the cross fire.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall. Nine twenty.
How did this happen?

“Hey, wait a second,” he said curiously, as he swirled his index finger in a circle referencing my upper body. “Isn't that the same sweater you wore yesterday?”

“No.”

“Yes, it is,” he countered, more confidently this time. “That's definitely the same fucking sweater you had on yesterday. I was calling you the Great Pumpkin all day. Don't tell me it's not the same sweater!”

I tried to think of something to say. “This is tangerine, not orange. It's a completely different shade.”
Of all the days to do a walk of shame at work, it had to be the day I wore a bright orange cardigan. Couldn't have been one of the days I wore black, no. That would just be too convenient.

“Bullshit!” Drew yelled as he erupted into laughter. “You didn't go home last night!”

“STOP!” I yelled. “It's not the same sweater. Yes, they're similar, but this is NOT the same one. Now drop it. I'm going to have a hard enough time today.”

“Okay, Girlie, it's not the same sweater. You stick to that story,” Drew said.

“Well, well, well. To what do I owe the honor of your presence?” Chick strolled down the row toward my desk, his hands in his pockets, his eyes intently focused on mine. I stood to apologize.

“Boss, I'm so sorry. I overslept, there's nothing I can say.”

“It's not just that you're late, Alex. It's that you completely ignored my proof-of-life policy. I've been calling you, but every call has gone right to voice mail.”

“My phone's dead,” I whispered.

“Do you know what I think, Alex, when I have a young girl working for me who doesn't show up, doesn't call in, and can't be reached via cell phone for over two hours?”

I shook my head.

“I THINK YOU'RE DEAD!” he screamed, causing my body to go rigid and my breath to catch in my throat. “I think maybe you're lying in a morgue or in an ER and don't know your own name. This place”—he swept his arm in a wide arc, as if he were a
Price Is Right
girl modeling the first showcase in the showdown—“is the
first
place someone will notice if you don't show up. You could be missing for hours, even days, before your friends or your family notice, but if you aren't at your desk and we don't hear from you, we assume something's wrong. I was about an hour away from sending the cops to your apartment. I'm not a fucking babysitter, Alex. I have kids at home, I don't need them in my office!”

“I . . . I . . .” I struggled to find words but was too afraid my voice would crack.

“Don't say you're sorry. I don't want to hear it.” He exhaled. “I'm happy you're okay, Alex, but now that you are, your ass is mine. Not that you don't belong to me every day. But today, ohhhh today you
really
belong to me. You seem to have forgotten my rules, Alex. Safe money is on you never forgetting again.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when he returned to his desk.

“Well, that could have been worse,” Drew said.

“Are you insane? How could this be worse?”

“He could've noticed your sweater.”

I answered phones and kept myself busy, trying not to imagine what Chick was planning for me. At 10:30 I got an e-mail.

MSG FROM PATRICK, WILLIAM:

How bad was it?

MSG FROM GARRETT, ALEX:

It was a train wreck. This is your fault.

MSG FROM PATRICK, WILLIAM:

I'll take responsibility for the alarm clock, but I can't be held responsible for the fact that you find me irresistible.

MSG FROM GARRETT, ALEX:

Bite me.

From my desk I could hear him laughing, and a smile crept onto my face.

MSG FROM PATRICK, WILLIAM:

For what it's worth, I had a great time.

MSG FROM GARRETT, ALEX:

Me too.

I was so screwed.

An hour later Chick whistled in my direction. “Get over here, slave. Charge your phone?”

“Yes, it won't go dead ever again.”

“Good answer. You're buying lunch today for the group, and we decided we want meatball parm and eggplant parm heroes.”

Okay,
I thought.
This I can handle
. It could have been way worse. Chick could have sent me to Chicago for deep dish pizza if he wanted to. Meatball parms, I could do. No problem. “Okay, where should I order from?”

“Arthur Avenue.”

“In the Bronx?”

“Do you know of another Arthur Avenue famous for its Italian food?”

I shook my head. “How many am I getting?”

“Twenty-five or thirty of each. Will is taking the orders now, and he'll call it in.”

“No problem.”

“And one more thing, Alex.”

A sudden sense of doom washed over me. “Sure boss, anything.”

“I want a wheel of Parmesan.”

“What? What do you mean, a wheel?”

“I mean, I want a fifty-pound wheel of cheese.”

The expression on Chick's face assured me he was deadly serious. Picking up lunch wasn't my punishment; figuring out how to wrestle fifty pounds' worth of cheese from the Bronx to the southern tip of the island was my punishment. Lunch was just a bonus.

At least he was original.

“Leave. Now. The sandwiches should be ready by the time you get there.” He handed me a Post-it note. “This is where you're going. You're picking up twenty-five meatball subs, twenty-five eggplant subs, and a fifty-pound wheel of cheese. And it better be fifty, Alex. I want to see the receipt. Capiche? Hope you have a credit card with room on it. You're going to need it.”

I dropped my head in shame, grabbed my bag, and made my way down to a car. I sat in the backseat listening to 1010 WINS on the radio, staring at the East River as we snaked north on the FDR Drive. I had made a mess of my personal and professional lives in one shot.
Why do you do this to yourself?
So much for developing a healthy friendship with Will. That was clearly out of the question.

We reached the Bronx. I handed the driver the address and asked him to wait for me while I picked up a few things.

“Sure, no problem. Just this stop and then we're going to head back to Cromwell?”

“Yeah, I just have to pick up some food, and umm, a cheese wheel.”

The driver turned and looked at me over his shoulder as we were stopped at a red light. “A what?”

“A cheese wheel,” I repeated sullenly.

“I've been driving cars for Cromwell for ten years and, believe me, I've seen some strange stuff, but this one might top the list.”

Joy.

We pulled over in front of a deli and I walked up to the counter. A small heavyset Italian man with a jovial face, and a belly that suggested a life well fed, smiled at me.

“Yes, miss, what can we do for ya?” he asked, with an accent as thick as the tomato sauce smothering the veal cutlets in the glass case next to me.

“I'm here to pick up an order for Ciccone, please.”

“Chic-cooo-nayyy,” he repeated to make sure he understood my pathetic Americanized pronunciation of an authentic Italian surname. He scanned boxes of sandwiches and platters of meats and cheeses that awaited pickup. “Ahh, va bene,” he said as he picked up two large cardboard boxes filled with foot-long subs tightly wrapped in foil and slid them across the counter. He ripped a green order slip from one of the boxes and read it out loud. “Twenty-five-a meatbawls, and twenty-five-a eggplant parmigiana. Va bene?”

I nodded.

“That's $227.00. You pay cash or card?” I removed my American Express from my wallet and placed it gently on the counter.

“Credit, but I actually need one more thing.” I nervously fidgeted with the leather band of my watch. “I need a large wheel of Parmesan.”

He nodded, unfazed. “Okay sure, how much-a you need?” He moved behind the glass case and removed a large wedge of the cheese from a display. “You show me what size and I slice it for you.”

“No, actually, I need an entire wheel. A fifty-pound wheel if you have one.”

“Fifty-a pound?” he squawked, his mouth gaping in surprise. “Mamma mia, how you gonna carry fifty pounds of parmigiana?”

“I have a car outside. Maybe you can help me get it in the backseat?”

“You gonna put the parmigiana inna that car?”

“I hope to, yes.”

“That going to not be so cheap, fifty pounds of parmigiana.”

I motioned to the card still lying on the counter, about to be stressed to within an inch of its life.

“I know.” I sighed. “Just add it to the bill.”

The man picked up a calculator and began to punch numbers, adding fifty pounds' worth of curdled milk to my tab. “Okay, $984.61, signorina, and I give you a break because you cute, eh?”

“Nine hundred and eighty-four dollars?”
That's an entire new wardrobe! That's at least nine really nice dinners out in Manhattan! That's almost half a month's rent!

“That's-a how much it cost to buy fifty pounds of parmigiana. Don't forget you have the meat-a-bawls and the eggplant heroes, too.” He swiped my card. I did quick addition in my head. The heroes and the cheese combined cost over $1,200. I thought I was going to throw up. “Me and Gino, we bring-a the cheese outside for you.”

“Great, thanks,” I all but cried as I grabbed the two huge boxes of heroes off the counter and walked outside to the sidewalk.

“How much did it run ya?” the driver yelled out the window as he popped the trunk.

“Almost a grand, not including the sandwiches,” I replied, placing the cardboard boxes of heroes carefully on the floor of the trunk. I stood on the sidewalk and waited for the wheel of cheese to be rolled out.
I have no one to blame for this but myself. This is what you get for being the biggest idiot on earth,
I thought to myself.

He whistled long and low. “That's gonna leave a mark.”

Before I could reply, the two Italians approached the car from a side alley, carefully holding the cheese as if it were a ticking time bomb. I opened the car door and slid across the seat, reaching out to help maneuver the cheese through the door as they carefully placed the wheel next to me. Well, not so much next to me as on me.

The backseat wasn't large enough for the cheese and me to fit comfortably, so I was forced to rest part of it on my lap. The Italians waved good-bye, and we began the drive south back to Manhattan.

Riiiing
. I fished my phone out of my bag, no easy task since half my body was incapacitated by cheese. I glanced at the number.
Now what?

“Hello?”

“Hey, Girlie,” Marchetti said. “How's the Bronx?”

“Swell. What's up?”

“Did you confirm the three hundred million Feb elevens I did this morning? The back office said they aren't instructing on them yet.”

“I confirmed it with Tracey in the back office. Tell Reggie to call her.”

“Will do. How long until you get back? We're hungry.”

“Half hour if traffic is okay.”

“Cool. Hey, wait, Kate needs to talk to you.” He added in a whisper before she picked up the line, “This should be interesting.”

“Alex, did you type up the trades I did this morning with Colony Capital? I'm checking my messages and I don't see them. How harrrrd is it to type up a confirm? I'm not asking you to execute the trades, just take your little fingers and type up the details.”

I felt like telling Cruella that she was the only salesperson who didn't type up her own trade confirmations, that no one else saw it as an optional part of his job. “Yes, Cru, I mean Kate. I sent them to the client and to your e-mail.”
You high-maintenance prima donna, I'll show you something else I can do with my finger.
I waited in silence as she searched her messages.

“Found them.”
Click.

I dropped my phone in my lap and closed my eyes.
You just have to pay your dues,
I reminded myself.
Everyone has to pay their dues.

The phone rang again. “Yes?” I said, trying desperately to not sound irritated considering I was two hours late for work.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Mom.”
Thank God,
I thought. Someone who doesn't want me to do anything for her.

“Are you okay? I just called the desk, and some man told me you were on a scavenger hunt for cheese in the Bronx! What does that even mean? Are you in the Bronx by yourself?”