‘So what?’ Magenta said impatiently. ‘He’s got a damn nerve.’ She was still looking round, trying to take everything in. She could understand Quinn wanting to live the sixties in order to give the campaign that final fizz of authenticity—hadn’t she done the same thing herself? But didn’t he know there was such a thing as going too far? ‘Nancy, what’s been going on here?’
‘The usual?’ Following her glance, Nancy gazed around the office.
‘The usual,’ Magenta repeated grimly. ‘Is it usual to remove the computers?’
‘The what?’
‘Okay, so Quinn’s got you playing his game,’ Magenta said. ‘I can understand that you don’t want to lose your job—I’m just thinking of all the expense involved in putting this right again—’ She had already reasoned that the reorganisation of the office would have been fairly easy if Quinn had copied the layout from the old photographs on the wall, but there were other things she couldn’t account for. There was a different feel to the place, never mind the look, which was dated, a little drab and definitely not the right environment to encourage cutting-edge design work. She thought it boring, not to mention inhospitable. There were different phones too, but it was the ergonomically unhelpful furniture that really concerned her—and single glazing? Had Quinn gone mad? Never mind the expense, what about condensation? Cold? If people were uncomfortable at work, productivity would suffer. Didn’t Quinn know anything?
And there was a different smell too…
Cigarette smoke?
‘Nancy!’ Magenta exclaimed with increased urgency.
‘Are you all right, Magenta?’ Glancing round, Nancy grabbed a chair and tried to press Magenta into it.
‘I’m fine.’ She was anything but fine. What had happened here? Had Quinn got people in to dress the offices like a sixties stage-set? And how was it possible she had slept through those changes? But it wasn’t just the noise element that concerned her; these changes were too thorough, too perfect, too convincing…
Magenta’s throat dried. This wasn’t some office team-building exercise. This was reality. This was reality for Nancy and for all the people here. It was Magenta who was out of sync. She must have fallen down the rabbit hole, like Alice, while she’d been asleep and landed in the sixties. And now the shock of being trapped inside a dream was only exceeded by her dread of meeting Quinn. From what she’d gathered, he was just the sort of man who would slot right into the sixties, where men ruled. Quinn obviously thought they did.
Magenta took a few steadying breaths while Nancy looked on anxiously. Magenta’s heart was pounding uncontrollably, but whatever had happened she would have to manage it.
She looked as much a part of the sixties as everyone else in the office, Magenta reassured herself, with her carefully made-up face, perfect hair and vintage cream wool dress. Though you could have bounced bullets off her underwear, it did outline her shape to the point where her breasts were outrageously prominent. That, believe it or not, was the fashion. It could best be described as ‘sex in your face’. No wonder Jackson had commented; she should have known better than to dress like this, but had done so innocently. Back in the real world, it had made her feel sexy—and after the encounter with the biker she had wanted to prove to herself that she still could feel that way. Now she realised drawing attention to herself in a sixties office was asking for trouble.
But, on the plus side, she had been researching the era for quite some time, so even locked into this bizarre dream she wasn’t entirely out on a limb. She could even accept and be a little reassured by the fact that the dream seemed to be influenced by her research; there was certainly plenty of raw material here. Although quite how the summer of love, the sexual revolution and the Whisky a Go Go, the first disco in America—which just happened to be Quinn’s homeland—would manifest themselves remained to be seen.
She would have to rely on what she knew if she was going to anticipate and avoid some of the problems, Magenta concluded. She would draw on that knowledge now—and her first action would be to open all the windows and let the smoke out.
Predictably everyone complained that it was too cold. ‘Well, you can’t smoke in here,’ Magenta insisted. ‘It’s against the law.’
‘Since when?’ one of the younger guys asked, swinging his arm around her waist to drag her close so she had no alternative but to inhale his foul-smelling breath.
‘And that is too,’ she informed him, removing his searching hand from her tightly sculpted rear end.