I resolved to hang around until he came out and I could convince him that hiring me was the best decision he would make this week.
I stood, pulled off my coat, and hung it next to Natalie’s scarf, took out a notebook from my purse and started to look around. The first thing I could do was tidy up. Not that the place was a mess, but judging by the fact that the entrance lobby looked like it was ready for open-heart surgery, I guessed that Andrew liked everything just perfect. Yes, I’d show him, not just tell him, how helpful I could be. Prove to him that there was no task too menial.
I set about clearing the desk. I took Natalie’s coffee cup and went to find the kitchen. It was completely spotless. I dunked the cup into the dishwasher and set about making myself a coffee in a fresh cup. Something told me that winning Andrew over was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. For a moment I thought about making Andrew a coffee, but he didn’t look the type. With his bod, he probably only ever drank glacier water and protein drinks.
“Can I help you?” a man asked from behind me.
I turned to find an older man looking at me like I was an errant schoolgirl. My heart began to scamper in circles around my chest. I was at a crossroads.
Not much defeated me, but I would struggle to make up a believable story even if a lifetime supply of Ferrara’s cannoli was at stake. It was why I’d initially started spending Saturday mornings emptying trash cans with my mother rather than doing whatever it was that eight-year-olds did on the weekends. I’d told her I’d finished my math homework. My mom could tell from a mile away I hadn’t been telling the truth, and for the next five years, my Saturday mornings were lost. Swift and severe punishment had always been Mamma Rossi’s style.
But now it was sink or swim. I needed this job, and I wasn’t a kid anymore.
“Good morning,” I said like I’d known the stranger in front of me our whole lives. I beamed up at him. “I’m Sofia, Andrew’s new assistant. I’ve taken over from Natalie.” Was it technically a lie if I was going to be Andrew’s new assistant but I just hadn’t been hired yet?
He stepped back. “He recruited someone new already?”
I shrugged. “I started this morning. Can I get you a coffee?”
He pulled his eyebrows together. “You don’t need to do that. We get our own coffees around here.” He pulled off a checked hat that made him look like an old-school private investigator and headed out of the kitchen. “But . . .” He turned back. “Next time you go in to Andrew, could you take some data I have on—You signed an NDA, right?”
I nodded, trying my best to look convincing.
“Some stuff on Verity.” He pulled open the bag he was carrying and brought out some paper. “It’s a complete disaster and I need Andrew to see it.”
“Sure, no problem.” I took the three sheets of numbers from him.
He nodded but didn’t move away. “A word of warning. He won’t like what you’re giving him, so hand it over and . . . duck. Or run.”
I kept my smile firmly fixed on my face, wondering whether or not I was about to be a victim of a 217—assault with an intent to murder. “No problem,” I said. “Leave it with me. Should I tell him who it’s from?”
Too late. The man in the hat had disappeared. Apparently, my storytelling had levelled up some time in the last twenty years. I scooped up my coffee cup and headed back to my desk—or what would be my desk once I actually worked here.
After I’d finished tidying the office and brewed my second cup of coffee, I called Natalie to get the password to the computer. Despite the fact that she begged me to come home and offered to lend me money to get me through the next month, she relented. She gave me the password (g0_2_He11_BLakE) and a truncated list of her day-to-day duties, and explained where she kept her electronic to-do list. I skipped over the part where Andrew hadn’t yet agreed to have me as an employee. I was manifesting hard enough to rip a hole in the universe, so I didn’t need to dwell on the fact that it hadn’t happened yet.
I’d not heard a sound from Andrew’s office and half suspected he wasn’t there at all. Maybe his office was three miles away through a maze of endless corridors, and I was sitting in front of an empty room.
Each of Natalie’s saved folders were organized by company. She had said something about how Andrew went into companies that were facing collapse and fired all the workers and made lots of money. From a brief Google search last night, I’d worked out that he was a turnaround specialist. He turned around failing companies. Natalie had made him sound like a monster, but surely if he stopped companies going to the wall, he was saving, not destroying, jobs.