“It’s not okay.” She pointed a sharp finger at me like I was the bad kid in her class. “I made a thirty-day emergency plan, and it starts now.”
“Now?” I looked at the paper calendar on my desk, speaking as I read over my appointments, “I have a few meetings this morning.”
“This won’t take long, and while we’re at it”–she reached over, scooping up my desk calendar— “you won’t use paper anymore. I’ll recycle this for you.”
Raising my eyebrows, I spoke with skepticism. “Isn’t it more wasteful not to finish using it since I already bought it?”
“Yes, in a sense, but we are cleaning up your image, which starts today.” Her words were choppy, as if they were suffering from too much punctuation. “So, no more paper. I’ll have my assistant upload your schedule into an electronic one.”
“I have an electronic version.” I motioned to my phone. “I just like to keep a hard copy in front of me.”
She kept a straight face and peered down her perfectly straight nose at me. “Not anymore.” That stuck in my throat like hair on a biscuit. I wanted to remind her technology wasn’t always reliable, but she had this hyper-spunk thing going on, reminding me of one of those yippy dogs. I decided to let her do her thing before she peed all over me. I wasn’t expecting her to act this way when I hired her. Yesterday, she seemed so . . . not like this. I bit my tongue, waiting for her to finish her announcements. “So, number one rule of the plan is never, ever, and I mean ever, talk to the media for . . . eternity.”
This was clearly a reference to how the media made me out to be a villain. It was my main concern, and I was glad she addressed this first. Still, I didn’t see how not talkin’ to them would help as they tended to follow me everywhere I went. “So, what do I do when they get in my face and won’t leave?”
“You call me.” She leaned forward and spoke with her hands, as if she was explaining things to a small child, making me wonder if she thought I was stupid. “If they corner you on the street or somewhere, with a camera, you call me at that very moment. You literally give your phone to the media, and I will talk to them on camera, so we have our own record. Don’t ever talk to anyone in public again.”
“I can do that.” A wave of relief washed through my gut. This was exactly what I had needed. Maybe not necessarily this much spunk—I could do without the nose ring—but I had desperately wanted someone to deal with all the noise forever. It may seem trivial, but I had been bullied about my looks all my life. I wasn’t what you’d call classically good-looking, or even average. You could best describe me as the best-lookin’ turd in a punch bowl, and I loathed being in front of the camera. My insecurities take over, and visions of people laughin’ at me as they did in grade school swarm around my head, and I can’t shut out the noise. I always ended up blurtin’ out the most random things, and never the right thing. My relief was short-lived as she went on.
“Rule two.” She grabbed my coffee cup and dropped it dramatically into the trash. “You are done with disposables. I only want to see you using reusable everything.”
My eyes locked longingly on my cup resting in the trash. “There’s still coffee in there.”
She lifted her pale-as-paper foot, clad in a hippie sandal, and stuck it on top of the trash, blocking my view with her shoe. “I don’t care.” Her eye lock was one of those you’d see in fantasy movies between a knight and an evil dragon. She was definitely the dragon, and she looked like she was about to blow smoke right out of her nose. I held my breath as she continued, “Rule three. You give me your passwords to your social media profiles, and you promise never to go on them again.”
Another rush of relief, as I hated social media. “That you can have,” I said with a cleansing sigh.
“Rule four.” She paused, inclining her chin as she looked down at me over her nose again, and I was beginning to see that nose piercing like an exclamation point. Not a good one, either. It was one that screamed danger and don’t proceed. It hooked my attention, even more, when she asked, “Do you remember when you said you wouldn’t be stubborn?”
I sighed heavily, knowing she was playing some sort of game, but I also was sick of people picketing my office and home. I wanted everything to go away—now! So far, she seemed to have a plan. One I didn’tlove, but it wasn’t terrible, so I spoke firmly with conviction, “Yeah, just tell me what it is.”
“This one might hurt, but there isn’t any way around it.”
I wasn’t a child, and resented the way she was treatin’ me like one. I ran one of the most successful drillin’ companies in all of Texas, and I was a hard businessman. I wasn’t afraid of something hurtin’, but her snarkiness was becoming more annoying than a Bible salesman at a church lock-in. “I’m not going to be stubborn.”
“Give me the keys to your monster truck.”
I narrowed my eyes, all trust for her going out the window.Like Sam Hill I will!In the roughest voice I could muster, I asked, “Why?”
“It has to go.” She said it so matter-of-factly, but her facts were messed up.
“Like, storage?” I wasn’t necessarily asking, as I already knew the answer. My mama taught me never to say I hated people, but at this point I knew I wouldn’t even walk across the street to piss on her if she was on fire.
“You are selling it, and the proceeds are going to your new favorite green charity.”
“I don’t have a favorite green charity,” I retorted in a gruff voice.
She flashed her know-it-all smirk. “I’ll find you one.”
“How will I get to work?”
She pulled out a small set of keys from her backpack and slid them across my desk. “I got you an electric scooter. Of course, you are getting the bill.”
If I had felt a tiny bit of relief before, it had all vanished. Now, a sinking feeling set in my gut. Not only was hiring Clover a bad idea, but I knew her game now. She wasn’t about helping me as much as teaching me a lesson. She was one of those young hippies who thought they knew everything.
She stared smugly at me.
But I gave it right back.
