Page 6 of The Virgin Romance Novelist Chronicles
Deflated, I leaned back in my chair and said, “Don’t you get tired of being in this office? The cats are starting to drive me insane. This can’t be sanitary.”
“Hey, just be happy you’re not an intern whose duties are feeding the cats, grooming the cats, and making sure the litter boxes are always clean in the shit room.”
The shit room.
I’d only been in there once, and it was during a tour of the office on my first day. The offensive cat pee smell was so awful I haven’t gone near the room since. The shit room was where all the litter boxes were, and I wasn’t talking about the little tray litter boxes. I’m talking litter boxes the size of a ship from Battlestar Galactica. They were perched on different shelves and different levels of the room. It was an intern’s nightmare.
“How do we hold interns for so long?”
“Desperate college students,” Jenny replied while looking at her nails. “They will do anything to get an in with a print magazine these days, even if it means being a walking scratch post.”
“That reminds me, did a shipment of cat emery boards come in for me? I’m supposed to do some kind of exposé on them but haven’t received the box.”
“Not that I know of, but I can ask Susan. She’s the one who handles the UPS shipments. Did you see her outfit the other day? She was in full-on slutty grandma mode.”
Susan was our receptionist, a certifiable crazy cat lady herself, who had a major crush on the UPS man. Whenever she knew he was coming in she donned her red lipstick, which always wound up on her teeth; her blue eye shadow, which was sixty years too young for her; and a low-cut top, which always caused havoc with her old-lady bras.
“I didn’t. I was interviewing a shelter downtown. What was she wearing?”
Jenny leaned forward and looked over her shoulder at Susan who was picking at her teeth with a toothpick. In a hushed voice she said, “She had on a Hannah Montana shirt with a low-cut neckline that she must have created herself and a pair of purple pleather pants.”
“I don’t think I can believe you right now,” I said, trying to hold in my laughter.
Jenny pulled out her phone and showed me a candid picture of Susan talking to the UPS man. Her belly was hanging out the front of her clothing and lipstick caressed the front tips of her teeth.
“Oh my God”—I covered my mouth—“that is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I was about to grab the phone for a closer look when Sir Licks-a-Lot jumped on my desk, starling us both and started using my keyboard as a scratch post.
“Eh, get out of here. Pssst!” I tried to shoo him away.
He scrambled off my desk but not before popping off the “D” on my keyboard and taking it with him.
“That little bastard,” I yelled as he scurried out the door but not before smiling back at me with the “D” in his mouth. “He now has my D and E. How the hell am I supposed to write upcoming cat articles in an environment like this?”
Shaking her head and laughing, Jenny said, “He only hates you. You know that, right?”
“I stepped on his tail once. Accidently. Is he going to hold that against me for my entire life?”
“Pretty sure he is. Hey, what do you suppose he’s trying to spell?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, he has your D and E, so he must be trying to spell something.”
“Probably ‘die, bitch, die,” I joked. Mainly joked.
“He would need too many ‘i’s for that.”
“Well, let me know if you see other keyboards being scratched to death, so we can try to break his code before he acts.”
“Will do,” Jenny said with a smile. “So, I came in here to ask you something.”
“Oh, no. I don’t like that look on your face.”
Jenny held up her hand and said, “Before you say no, please hear me out. I know you’re not into the whole blind date thing, but I know this guy who would be perfect for you.”
“Jenny . . .” I drawled out.
