Giving the matter of my assistant some serious thought, I decided to try what I had been thinking about doing, and “promoting” from within, so to speak. The firm I ran had a good pool of quality talent, highly educated, very capable women. Sure that among their number I could find what I required, I scrolled through the index, trying to guess at who had the look.
When you’ve been at it as long as I had, you learn to recognize the signs. I searched the faces of those pictured for any indication, finding none, though I did find quite a few very accomplished and dedicated employees who were also very beautiful.
I felt I should try to narrow the field down a bit before sending out the invite. But this did not seem to be an option in this instance, given the time constraints, so I decided to take a bit of a gamble.
Cuing up Thornography by the almighty Cradle of Filth – I had crazy taste in metal music – I set about composing a carefully worded missive that I would send to every prospect listed in the index and then go from there. I was careful to emphasize the ‘extra duties’ so no one could be caught too off-guard, and I made sure to mention the pay.
It was an important assignment and I wasn’t goofing around. The position offered a thousand dollars a day with a five-thousand dollar bonus no matter how many days it went on – money I could find in my couch cushions if I was honest.
I really wasn’t trying to buy a woman, though the financial compensation could be considered substantial by regular standards. The money genuinely was mostly for her work on the project and for being willing to go out onto a mountain for an undetermined amount of time.
It’s not something a lot of people had the ability to do on such short notice. The “extra duties” were exactly that and just another part of the assistance that I needed to be able to work effectively.
I had heard about the dangers of mixing business and pleasure, but if I paid any attention to conventional wisdom I never would have gone into computers. The consensus when I was growing up, at least among the alleged experts, had been that the Internet was just a fad and wouldn’t last.
So, here I was trusting my instincts to bring me the perfect assistant/pet to get me through this period of strict orders to work from home by the government. I just hoped it ended up working out as well as my career choice had.
Chapter Two
Angie
Of course there was a traffic jam. They occurred almost every day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon, like clockwork. They had become such a part of daily life in our area, in fact, that it had been nearly ten years since someone had died in a road-rage incident.
It wouldn’t have been so annoying had I not left my house in such good time. For once in a long while, I had woken up before my alarm and had gotten out the door in what I thought was plenty of time.
Who could have guessed that a tanker truck full of milk would flip itself in the middle of the freeway? One of those out-of-the-clear-blue-sky freak accidents where God might as well have left a note saying: NOT TODAY ANGIE!
Since I didn’t have a chance of being on time anyway, I stopped in for a souvlaki on my way to the office. Having skipped breakfast in my concerted attempt to get to work early, I was not only late but also really hungry by my arrival.
At least the firm had its own parking lot, with enough spaces to allot one even to the likes of me. At best I could call myself a mid-level administrative worker bee. On the other hand, at 22 I was one of the youngest employees at the firm outside of the interns.
Brown bag in hand, I headed into the office block, three floors of power from which nearly a quarter of the western world got its Wi-Fi connections. At least, that was how the marketing department liked to sell it.
“Late again?” Mitch asked from behind the security desk.
“Looks like.”
“Seagulls again?”
“Milk truck. Flipped itself right over on the freeway.”
“Terrible,” Mitch said, shaking his head in sympathy.
Foregoing the nation’s slowest elevator, I took the three flights of stairs to the tippy top, where I was one of a crew of assistants dedicated to serving the brass of the company. Including, on rare occasion, the founder and president himself, Viktor Hallgrimsson. Rarely seen by mere mortals, he mostly kept to himself in his corner office.
I had seen him more than most, my cubicle being near the glass wall of his office, the blinds of which were sometimes left open. I could honestly look at him for hours if it wouldn’t have been really creepy. He really was beautiful. Big, but still graceful. Strong, but with skin as smooth as gouda cheese. At least according to Mary, his receptionist, who claimed to have shaken his hand when first hired. I could honestly only imagine.