I shook my head sleepily. We might work for the same company, but Rose and I had very different jobs.
“So what have you been doing?” She stretched out and gazed over my ocean of papers, looking bored by the very sight of them. “What’s all this?”
“Oh, these?” I smoothed them over with a drunken fondness. “These are my friends.”
She snorted and slipped off the couch to join me. “Wow, they’ve certainly gotten you drinking the Kool-Aid.” Her eyes drifted to the vodka. “Or...something.”
I raised my hand charitably. “Help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
One of the things that Rose and I had bonded over in the beginning was that, if given the opportunity, we both preferred to drink from the bottle.
“So why are we imbibing so heavy so early? It’s only four,” she joked.
I tossed back my bangs and gave her a wry smile. “We’re celebrating my first and last day on the job.”
She gasped. “Oh no, Jen! They didn’t fire you!”
“Nope, but they will.”
“What are you...?”
I tossed up the remaining papers into a heavy cloud of financial confetti. “This, all this, I have to know it by tomorrow morning. I’m giving a presentation.”
She raised her eyebrows and picked up the nearest page. “Chinese market risk analysis of 2004? You’ve got to summarize it or something?”
“Their overall percentages dropped from point eight to point six, but what was of greater concern to me was the turnover rate at the start of the new quarter. You can’t make up thirteen weeks just by laying off forty-seven employees, am I right?” I hiccupped and waved my arm in a dismissal. “Granted, that’s just my humble opinion...”
There was a brief pause as she gave me a hard look.
“Jenna...did you memorize all of this?”
I struggled to keep her in focus. “You know, I always said that I had a budding photographic memory.”
“Be serious.”
“Of course I memorized it! They said I was giving a presentation and I didn’t—”
She leaned forward and took both my hands. “Jenna Harks, repeat after me: I am a ridiculous perfectionist who’s already gone above and beyond so now I’m going to bed.”
My head tilted to the side, and I squinted at her. “Could you just say that last part one more ti—”
“Okay.” She heaved me up by the shoulders and started herding me to my room. “That’s it; you’re done. Shower then bed.”
I glanced longingly over my shoulder as I was manhandled down the hall. “I’d like to read through them just once more before—”
“Nope.” She sat me firmly on the counter then started up the hot water. “There is such a thing as over-preparation, and I for one, am going to make sure you don’t burn out in the first week. Now get in—then straight to bed.”
She left, closing the door behind her, and I obediently began to undress, muttering statistics under my breath to commit them to memory.
“And if I hear you doing that weird numbers chant you do when you think no one’s listening, I’m turning off the hot water!”
I took the rest of my shower in silence.
* * *
Thanks to a miracle hangover cure I’d discovered in business school, I made it into work the next morning symptom-free. I was even a little early as I breezed up to the receptionist’s counter and took a new picture for my name badge.
“There,” she said as the computer printed it out, “that’s much better.”
I tucked it into my briefcase. “Last night was pretty bad?”
“Honey, I’ve seen better mugshots.” She smiled sweetly.
My returning smile morphed into a frown as I turned my back on her and headed to the elevators, wondering why the hell that was her automatic comparison. Did she spend the long hours waiting to lock up trolling those ‘Criminals Near You’ sites? On that note, I wondered how many of these hypothetical mugshots could be working in the building. I’d thought that janitor shooting me the dirty glares last night looked especially sinister—
“Jenna!”