Chapter 3. Replace Me

Someone slammed a paper on Elaine’s table. She looked up, pushing her glasses down her head in time to watch the person walk away.

She pushed back her swivel chair and leaned toward the table. Trying to peer through the glasses gave her headaches. She needed to change the lens as these ones were as good as gone.

She took off the glasses and laid them on the table, beside the mountain of manuscripts that she had to edit. Since she made the mistake once of signing an author that the company didn’t want, they’d unofficially demoted her to slush pile reader, and she now had the pleasure of reading the terrible manuscripts of hundreds of wanna-be-authors and rejecting their letters.

She picked the paper and held it closer to her face so that the letters would not all fade into some indecipherable blur. The first bold word on the middle of the page had her sitting up straight.

An interview.

With whom?

Her eyes scrolled down the letter and back up again as she rose to her feet, grabbing her glasses and fitting it on her face.

She had to squint to make out the shapes of things clearly so that she wouldn’t bump into anyone on the road.

She squeezed the paper in her hand as she marched through the open office space and came to the office beside the main entryway.

Jean’s office was one of the few ones that had a faux wall forming some kind of a cubicle. Elaine used to have one of those too, until the incident.

“What is this?” She held the paper in the air.

The slender woman kept typing on the computer, her pointed ivory nose, with a pink gem nose ring, faced the screen. “What is it, honey?”

“This letter was addressed to you. Why is it on my table?”

“Darling.” Jean faced her with those shocking violet, almost pink eyes.

Elaine dropped her gaze to Jean’s blue spaghetti’s shirt glued to the white albino skin. No matter how many times she stared at Jean, she could not get used to those unnatural eyes. They unnerved her and Jean seemed to know what they did because she made it a point of duty to stare at Elaine whenever they met.

“Don’t darling me.” She’d had it with Jean’s endearments. The woman seemed to have a name for everyone. “You can’t expect me to do your interview for you.”

“I’m taking up your failed project, and I am not complaining.” Jean eyed her.

Elaine took a deep breath and placed her hand on the sketch pad on the desk. “Listen. That’s different.”

“How so?” Jean reached into her desk and pulled out a couple of Taffy gums. “You want some?”

“No. I don’t want some Taffy, and I don’t want to interview anyone.”

“Your loss.” Jean opened one of the Taffy and popped it in her mouth. “All you have to do is show up. You’ll most likely meet the executive assistant or maybe the assistant, and they’ll most likely reject the proposal. That’s all.”

“But that means I have to go there. It’s all the way on the other side of the city.”

“That’s not a bad thing. You need to get out more.” Jean faced her system and her fingers began to tap the keyboard again.

“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. If I miss it, I’ll have to reschedule. Who knows when the doctor will be free next?”

Dr. Roberts was the only doctor she could trust that would give her an eye exam and help her get her lens without emptying her account. He didn’t charge much and he knew what he was doing. Because of this he had a lot of patients. She’d been on the waiting list for three months and her glasses were beyond damaged at this point. Probably detrimental to her eyes now.

“Not my problem.”

“I’ll do this any other day and take your next two interviews, but I just can’t do this one tomorrow.”

“Ellie.” There it was again. The pointed pink stare. “If you don’t go to Swernback Co. for this interview tomorrow, I’ll drop Timothy, and that’s all there will be to this.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Elaine picked a pencil from the stationery kit and pointed it at Jean. “Timothy is a slacker. You have a lot of free time. I barely have time to breathe.”

“Yes, but I didn’t ask you to sign his book. Now, I have to rewrite everything if we are to meet his impossible deadline. I have to get all the free time that I can squeeze out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to look for how to make the story of his first vomit sound less vomity.”

Elaine squeezed the paper as her shoulder dropped. “Jean, please, I can’t miss tomorrow’s appointment.”

“Do you even care about me at all? I am your friend, and I am trying to make things better for you. All you’re doing is whining. If you don’t want to go then, I’m not going to do Timothy’s book anymore. Good luck finding someone who cares about you enough to do it, doll.”

“No. No. Please.”

If Jean quit, word would get back to the management and the management would get back to her. She couldn’t afford another query. Living check to check meant that if she got another query, she’d have to go back to Aunt Meghan and Uncle Richard. Nothing in the world could be a worse fate than proving them right.

This Saturday was the first free one she had managed to squeeze out in four months and now she’d have to give it up as part of her compromise to get Timothy’s book printed and keep her job. She was compromising on far too many things than what she really wanted to get her dreams. It seemed like nothing she valued was hers any more.

And Jean was passing the buck to her because Jean knew the interview would be a failure and if she failed, it wouldn’t be a bad record on Jean’s book but it would appear on hers.

“Fine, I’ll call Dr. Roberts and tell him to reschedule.”

“That’s great, sweetheart. Now, what’s a less disgusting word for vomit?”

Elaine frowned, regretting the day she opened Timothy’s first email.