The first time I walked through that door I was barely eighteen, recently graduated from high school, and I could still remember it; I could feel that day, right now, all around me. I was so nervous, so green, so determined. I loved everything about the agency from day one, including the original owner—a model and businesswoman who opened the agency herself back in the early eighties.
I loved that I was given a chance to become what I’d become within these walls. That people believed in me here. I loved the bustle of the staff and the smell of coffee and paper. I even loved the smell of the carpets.
This office was my home away from home and I knew every inch of the place. I knew every chip in the paint.
Shit, we really needed to paint.
I stared at one particular chip on the wall and wondered how long it had been there. Running a business, there were always dozens of things that needed doing. That was just one of the things I loved about it. And yes, I pretty much ran this place. Even though I didn’t get credit for it. Or paid for it.
I’d definitely been holding us together for the last six months, though I highly doubted anyone beyond these walls knew it.
Including the people who worked at head office, in Toronto.
I glanced at the giant, obnoxious gold logo on the wall, the one Janelle had been so quick to have mounted—the split second she sold our fabulous boutique agency to the largest talent management company in the country, Superior Talent.
She. Sold. Us. Out.
She was supposed to sell us tome.
That was the plan.
Then Janelle changed the plan. Without telling me.
Since then, things had been… shall we say… uncomfortable… between us. At least,Iwas uncomfortable with our new working reality. I had no idea if my boss really felt it when she slid the blade into my back. She was aware I was upset, yes. I made that pretty clear the day I found out about the sale of the agency. But usually Janelle Gorman was too overly concerned with her owneverythingto notice how others were feeling.
I’d never met a worse narcissist in my life. And I worked with people who were beautiful for a living.
“Hey, Devi.” Suri greeted me as I approached the wide slab of the reception desk, where her fingers were softly tapping away at her keyboard. I could hear my other coworkers in their offices up the hall, on their phones, bustling about; this small, passionate army, keeping the place buzzing.
“Good morning,” I said, sounding so marvelously breezy I almost bought it.
“How were your meetings? How was the shoot?” Suri spun toward me and leaned on her palm to listen, her raspberry hair in a spunky, amazing pixie cut. Our receptionist/admin assistant had been with us almost as long as I had, and when I walked up to her desk she always dropped everything, like I was the only important thing happening in her day.
One more reason not to slap our boss. I’d really miss Suri if I got fired.
“Great.” I manufactured a smile for her. “Both meetings went well. The shoot looks gorgeous, and our girl is really catching her stride.”
“Fabulous!”
It was fabulous. One of our new faces, a fourteen-year-old girl with ridiculously long limbs and cheekbones that could already cut glass—whom I’d personally discovered and had been grooming myself—had a very bright future ahead of her in the fashion world, if she wanted it. Her mom had been accompanying her to every job, but I was also checking in, making sure that everything looked good, that she was comfortable, and that she was well represented.
It was barely eleven in the morning and I’d already been all over town, working. I wasn’t sure I could say the same for my boss. Half the time I had no idea where she was.
“Has Janelle been in?”
“No. Haven’t seen her yet.”
Of course. God forbid she showed herself before lunch time. For the manager of a bustling agency, the woman kept incredibly limited office hours. This had become the key to her success: leaving the lion’s share of the actual work to the rest of us.
This agency wasn’t built that way. But that’s what it had become. The entire vibe of the agency had changed in the last six months, dramatically. And it was heartbreaking, watching something you loved being taken for granted and mistreated like that.
“Not late. Totally at my desk before you are.” The door breezed open behind me, and I glanced at the stylish human hurricane that was Chaz, one of our junior agents and my roommate. He sped-walked past me and up the hall to his office with a vaguely snooty smile—his specialty—and shut the door. Then the door opened again. “Pastries! Scones! Suri, I need carbs!” Then the door shut again.
“Take your time,” I told Suri. “I saw him inhale two Danishes with his morning coffee. He’ll survive.”
She grinned. “I’ll hit the bakery in a bit.”
“And if he doesn’t start sayingpleaseandthank you, cut him off.”
