Page 41 of February

Monica smiled and opened her messages app, sending Sophie a quick response, letting her know she was free that night if Sophie wanted to grab a drink or dinner. Then, she tucked her phone into her bag, lifted it, and carried it out the door. By the time she arrived back at the office, Bridgette appeared to be sketching something at her desk. Monica didn’t want to intrude, but she had seen a little of Bridgette’s work online and wanted to see it in progress.

“No need for that search party,” she said as a way of making an excuse.

“Good to know. I’ll call them off. I will, however, have to send you the bill for calling them in the first place,” Bridgette teased.

“You have my email,” Monica said with a smile as she looked down. “That’s good,” she added.

“It’s just a sketch. Dan will make it better.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s the colorist. I sketch. He colors them in.”

“Sorry; he just colors? That’s his job?”

“That’s an actual job. Do you not know that? You own a greeting card company.”

“My company owns a lot of other companies.”

“So, you don’t know how it works, but you’re here to tell us what to do?”

“No, I’m here to make your parents an offer.”

“But to do that, you’d need to know how things really work.”

“He said he was a colorist when we spoke earlier. I just assumed he does more than that.”

“Do you ever read comic books? Graphic novels?” Bridgette asked.

“No. Why?”

“Why am I not surprised? They have colorists, too.”

“So do hair salons,” Monica pointed out.

“You would go to a hair salon where there’s one person shampooing your hair, one cutting it, andonecoloring it.”

“First, my hair is natural. Second, they specialize. You’ll get a higher quality if–” Monica stopped herself, realizing her mistake. “Dan specializes.”

“Dan went to RISD. Do you know that school?”

“Rhode Island School of Design; yes, I do. We have VPs in the marketing department who went there.”

“Well, it’s pretty much the number one school, and Dan went there and learned stuff like color matching, among other things.”

“I see,” Monica said.

“Doyou?” Bridgette asked.

“Yes. I assume we have someone like Dan on our team at Good Day Greetings.”

“You probably have a few of them; we just have Dan. We have several card writers and artists like me who sketch things out, and Dan takes them and elevates them for us. He applies the Southern Hospitality approach to them, making sure they align with our brand so that when someone picks one of our cards up at the store, they know it’s from us without having to look at the back.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Monica said.

Bridgette finally looked up from the card then and lifted a confused eyebrow at Monica.

“I thought you were changing.”

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