Size 12 and Ready to Rock (Heather Wells 4)

“What’s going on?” I ask Sarah when she picks up.

“Where are you?” she asks. “You’ve been gone forever. Are you looking at that ring again?”

“No,” I say, startled, and turn away from the window. How does she know? “Of course not. Why would I be doing that?”

“Because you make me go by that store on our way to Barnes & Noble so you can stand and stare at that ring, even though it’s completely out of our way. Why don’t you just buy it? You do have a job, you know. Two of them, as a matter of fact. What do you work so much for, if not to buy yourself stuff?”

“Are you kidding?” I laugh so nervously I sound like a hyena. “It’s an engagement ring.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Sarah says. “It can be whatever kind of ring you want it to be. You can be the boss of the ring.”

“I can also admire something and not buy it,” I say. “Especially if it’s not practical and probably costs a fortune.”

“How would you know? You won’t even go inside to ask how much it is, even though I’ve told you a million times—”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” I say, cutting her off, “since I don’t really want it. It’s not my style. It’s too fancy. And you never answered my question. What’s going on?”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “I got a call from Dr. Jessup’s assistant over at Central. It looks like they did it.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Did what?”

“They picked the new hall director for Fischer Hall. What else?”

“Holy crap!” I freeze in my tracks.

I’m standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street. A Sex and the City double-decker tour bus is going by, taking summer tourists to see all the places where Carrie Bradshaw and the girls used to have Cosmos and cupcakes.

People glance at me, alternately concerned and annoyed. New Yorkers aren’t as hardened as the media makes them out to be. If I were to fall down in a dead faint on the sidewalk right now because of Sarah’s news, I’m positive several good Samaritans would stop to call 911 and maybe even prop up my head to make sure I had an open airway. But only because I’m wearing clean clothes and don’t appear to be intoxicated. If I were drunk and covered in my own vomit, people would continue to step over me until the smell became too intolerable to bear. Then they might call the cops.

“Are you kidding me?” I yell into the phone. “Who? Who is it? Is it Simon? I swear to God, if it’s Simon, I’m going to jump in front of this bus—”

“I don’t know who it is,” Sarah says. “Dr. Jessup’s assistant called and said he’s coming by right now with some people so he can make the introduction in person and tell us some news about the building—”

“Now?” I break into a jog. Big mistake. I’m not wearing a jogging bra. I don’t even own a jogging bra. What am I thinking? I slow down. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Are you sure he said ‘make the introduction’? Because if he said that, it can’t be Simon. We already know Simon. Why would he introduce us to Simon?”

“Maybe he means make the introduction as in, ‘This is your new boss, Simon,’ ” Sarah says. “ ‘You might know him as the former director of Wasser Hall, but now he’s the director of Fischer Hall. Have a nice day, losers.’ ”

My heart feels as if it has sunk to my knees, where my boobs are, because I’ve been running in a bra not made for that kind of physical exertion.

“Oh God,” I say, trying not to gag. “No. Anyone but Simon.”

“Of course,” Sarah says, “it could also be this woman I saw coming out from Dr. Jessup’s office over at the Housing Office earlier today when I went to drop off the time sheets. Either way, we’re dead.”

“Why?” I ask, panicking. “Why are we dead if it’s her? Did you look her up on the FBI’s Most Wanted? Is she on there?”

“She just looked so . . . so . . .” Sarah seems unable to find the word she’s looking for.

I start running again. I don’t care how many tourists from the Sex and the City tour buses get photos of me holding my boobs up with one arm.

“Corporate? Stick up her butt?” I try to think of all the kinds of women I’d least like to work with. “Wants to marry for money? Sociopath?”

“Perky,” Sarah finishes.

“Oh,” I say. I can’t run anymore, and I’ve only reached Fifth and Fifteenth Street. A ribbon of sweat is trickling down my chest, always an attractive look when meeting your new boss for the first time. “Perky is good,” I say between pants. “Perky is better than Simon, who’s . . .” I can’t even think of a word to describe Simon, my hatred for him is so blinding.

“Not this kind of perky,” Sarah says. “She looked like a sorority girl. The bad kind. Like she majored in perk. The I-want-to-cram-my-fist-down-her-throat-she’s-so-perky kind of perky.”

“Sarah,” I say. It doesn’t seem possible, but her attitude is scarier than the idea of Simon becoming my boss. “She can’t be that bad. What’s wrong with you?”

Sarah’s been in a horrible mood all week—more than a week, actually—and she hasn’t explained why, at least not in a way that makes sense. She’s tried to blame it on everything from the cafeteria in the building being closed so she has to walk all the way across the park to get her coffee at the Pansy Café, to the fact that I hired too many females to work in the office, which isn’t even remotely true, because it’s only the two of us and Brad, a resident whose father told him not to bother coming home for the summer when he found out Brad is gay, so Brad had nowhere to live, being a work-study student on a very limited income.

That’s how Brad became another one of the misfit toys, when it was unanimously decided by myself and Sarah that Brad would be offered a free room in Fischer Hall for the summer in exchange for working twenty hours a week in the office, covering our lunch shifts.

So when Sarah starts complaining over the phone as I’m standing there on Fifth Avenue, “Our ovulation cycles have synchronized. Everyone knows this happens when women spend too much time together. And this woman Dr. Jessup has hired is only going to make things worse. I almost wish he’d hired Simon,” I nearly burst a blood vessel.