“Exactly!”
I fix Bulan with my stink-eye. He wouldn’t have been involved in this, would he? He knows I can’t take on employees for my sham company. Much less nonhuman ones.
“Who put you up to this?” Bulan asks, in an obvious hurry to shift blame.
Mandy huffs. “I read about this on the job board, silly head!”
I pause, reeling. This is all happening quickly and it doesn’t strictly make sense. I only decided to continue wedding planning yesterday. But on Saturday night, I had a conversation with a certain handsome guy who was convinced I needed an assistant. Could said someone have then mysteriously posted a listing on my behalf?
I doubt it.
“Did the listing say to get in touch with someone named Hanry Burleson?” I demand.
Mandy worries her lip. “I don’t think so…”
“Are you sure?” I won’t push it, but if Hanry’s interceding that far on behalf of my fake business, that kind of swings him into psycho-stalker territory. For one paranoid second, I fight off the notion that he might’ve made some kind of deal with Grandma Rose to try to keep me here. I’d probably prefer a run-of-the-mill stalker.
“Some crows might have posted the job,” Bulan reflects. “They’re very helpful, crows.”
“Oh, are they sentient?” asks Mandy.
“Yes indeed, mine are! And poetic.”
Enough with the supercool crow friends Bulan hasn’t introduced me to, and who may or may not exist. I need to know who’s recruiting for me. It’s creepy, yes. But I am reluctantly—a little, very small, tiny bit—grateful to them. If I end up having to work another wedding before going home to New York, Iwillneed an assistant.
One with limbs.
“I might have a job,” I say slowly, hedgingly, “but just so you know, working for me won’t create money out of thin air. If you need to get paid today, I can’t help you. So far, I haven’t been given a dollar. Or a dime. Or a penny.”
“Do you even carry change?” Bulan asks.
“The point is, Mandy, I might owe more money than when I started last week.”
“That’s all fine!” Mandy says with a giggle-beam. “I don’t care where the money comes from, as long as you pay me eventually.”
“If you take the job, you’ll be paid under the table,” I say.
“I can crawl under tables!”
“The other thing is—”
“Tell me, tell me! I can do it.”
“Without knowing what I’m going to ask?”
“I can get anything done. Anything! I have my ways,” says Mandy, exposing two rows of sharp teeth with her smile. They look like they belong in the mouth of a toy shark.
In spite of this, I consider Mandy’s offer. Since I’m officially sick of Grandma Rose’s defrosted, mushy pastas, I come up with a quick grocery shopping list. After I arm her with that, plus a request to market to customers of the non-creepy variety, she scurries off with glee.
Once she’s gone, I perch on a table, facing Bulan in his high chair.
“Did I just hire someone?” I ask. “Someone nonhuman?”
Bulan nudges the iPad screen with his nose and pauses on a close-up of Regé-Jean Page’s glamorous calves.
“Seems like it,” he says. “She’s a pixie, you know!”
“A… manic pixie. That’s a movie trope, right?”
