Fran had been unpleasant, but Gabby wasn’t born yesterday. Any given day, parent pickup could be one hundred times worse. “Kyle—that’s an interesting name for a girl…” “That’s so brave of you to let your kids ride horses. I could never risk their safety like that.” “Being a stay-at-home mom must be so relaxing! Do you go to the spa all the time?”
If she could handle that gauntlet, she could handle anything. She flipped her red hair and walked to George Kramer’s office like she meant business.
Kramer was sitting at his desk scowling at a bank of screens. Even though she could see him through his glass office walls, she knocked.
At his nod, she pushed the door open just enough for her to squeeze through with a hip while her hands were full. Like when kids trip over their newly grown feet, Gabby didn’t quite know the dimensions of her new nose, and it brushed the door. To her horror, the prosthetic nose fell off her face and straight into the bottom of Kramer’s boiling hot coffee.
The makeup person’s advice on the glue echoed in her ears—“less is more.” Why was that always such a hard lesson to learn?
While she stood, paralyzed with fear, Kramer barked out rapid-fire commands. “If you don’t stick it out, you’re gonna lose big-time. Don’t be an idiot.” Without even looking up, he reached for his coffee and flicked his fingers at her.
Her reflexes weren’t fast enough, and he grabbed the mug. Without looking, he took a swig.
“Mr.… Mr. Kramer,” Gabby stuttered. After a couple of fast, shallow breaths, she said, a little louder, “I think that coffee needs another stir.”
He completely ignored her and continued talking animatedly about money, gesturing with his hands while still holding the cup. “The stock price is at an all-time high. You’d be a fucking idiot to sell now. Id-ee-ot!” He emphasized each syllable with his hand, and coffee sloshed up to the rim.
Thank god she’d used the deepest cup in the kitchen. Still. She had about one minute to get the cup back before he sucked the liquid down to nose level. Then it was game over.
She’d never been in a sport, but this must be like the very end of a football game when the team that was about to win lost the ball. Phil always jumped out of his chair and started screaming. Finally, she felt him. She needed that nose back like the guy in the purple needed the ball back from the guy in green.
Kramer shooed her away. “Go get me one of those donuts, would you?”
She made one last reach for his cup, but he pulled it back. “Donut.”
Outside his door, she ran-walked to the kitchen and slammed the door shut. “Markus, can you hear me?”
“Yes. What’s the status of the nose?”
“It’s in his coffee.”
She could hear the effort it took for him to remain calm. “You have the get the nose back, or the entire operation will be compromised. Your cover will be blown.”
Her heart racing and all of her senses on high alert, she grabbedthe entire coffeepot, a handful of sugars, and the requested donut. Her plan: commandeer the cup for a refill. Like her life depended on it, which it might, she speed walked down the hall to Kramer’s office. Without knocking, she pushed through the door, praying that he hadn’t already found the nose.
Inside his office, Kramer was still yelling into the phone, drinking coffee, her fake nose in the bottom like a gross boba pearl. Gabby wouldn’t even let her kids drink out of plastic cups because of the chemicals.
“Baker, you have to learn to pay attention to details. Put your ear to the ground. Stay ahead of the trends. How do you think I’ve made my way? Paying attention.” He swigged more coffee. “Do you watch the news every morning? More than one channel? You can’t trust one source. You have to be smarter than everyone.”
Gabby moused toward him. “Mr. Kramer, let me get you a refill.”
This time he heard her and held out the coffee cup.
She breathed out a sigh of relief. Crisis averted!
Except he had seen her with her normal nose, not that he had said anything.
Apparently, Mr. Paying Attention had missed that detail. If she had to guess, Kramer was one of those guys who put women in two categories: those too pretty to trust with anything besides his dick and those not worthy of notice.
Lucky for her, at least today, Gabby was squarely in camp number two: not worthy of notice. With her back to Kramer and facing away from the prying eyes of people like Fran, she fished the nose out of the coffee cup with a spoon. Her heart sank when she saw that it had melted into a blob. It looked exactly like the Oobleck she’d made with the kids: a mixture of cornstarch, water, and foodcoloring. Lucas had fallen asleep on a glob, and she’d had to cut it out of his hair.
She palmed the nose, refilled the coffee cup, and added a sugar. She just needed to keep her cool. At least he wouldn’t find a melted prosthetic nose in his coffee.
Defeated, she handed him the cup and he took long sip. “Just how I like it,” he said. “That Jan kept getting it wrong.” He scowled at the name.
“Fran,” Gabby corrected him.
For the first time that day, Gabby felt some solidarity with the woman. Fran might be the worst, but she was playing a losing game sucking up to Kramer. The man couldn’t even be bothered to learn her name.
