Page 4 of Meet Stan

Then I hadn’t heard anything else from him. I figured maybe he was busy with the acquisition of DM, which stood to reason. I’d begun to put it out of my mind. It was going to look nice on a resume, but I wasn’t expecting to move into upper management anytime soon.

I picked a shirt with a high collar, to hide the hickeys Stan had left on me. What a wild man. I smiled as I checked my lipstick. Things were looking up for me, even if my heroic act of accounting had been forgotten all too soon.

I caught the train to work, yawning into my coffee as I tried to come to life. New Yorkers are the hardest-working people on the planet. I wasn’t the only one having trouble staying awake while downing caffeinated beverages. The struggle is real.

I got to work and rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, where my office was. I smiled at Deb, one of the other office accounting drones, as I entered.

“Hey, there you are.” Deb’s blue eyes flashed with hidden knowledge. I stopped and gave her a look.

“What do you mean, here I am? I’m twenty minutes early.” I checked the clock on the wall just to verify, and found out I was right.

“Oh, it’s just that I’ve been given specific instructions by none other than the CFO himself.”

My heart skipped a beat. Was I about to be fired? Why?

“And what were those instructions?”

“That you are to immediately report up to his office on the sixty-ninth floor.”

“Did he happen to mention why?”

“No, but it has to be something really good, or something really bad.” Deb’s brows arched high on her face. “Maybe even both.”

I put my hand on my hip and scowled at her.

“How did you figure all of this out?”

“Oh, it’s simple.” Deb’s eyes grew distant. “Number one, if you’d done something only sort of good, you’d have gotten a thank you memo. On the other hand if you’d done something bad, you’d just get a pink slip.”

I sighed and turned around to fill a cone of water from the nearby cooler. A big bubble rolled up to the top and let out a belch as it erupted to the surface.

“Number two,” Deb said as if I wasn’t exasperated. “If you’d done something really bad, like really bad, you’d get called up to the office and likely escorted from the building by security. Or police. Conversely, if you’d done something really amazingly good, then he could be giving you a promotion.”

“I think it’s best not to speculate at all,” I said. “It could be something really simple, like a bit of paperwork I have to fill out.”

“Then why wouldn’t you be doing that at HR?”

I had no good answer for that. I just drank my ice-cold water and headed upstairs while trying to maintain an ice-cold heart. I had to admit that Deb’s words had gotten to me. I had a feeling that whatever was about to happen, good or bad, it would change my life forever.

I got off the elevator on the sixty-ninth floor. It felt weird up there. I seldom left my own office during the workday. Everyone seemed to be in a great big hurry. Nobody stopped to gossip, and I gaped as one of the firm’s founders, Jonathon “Tiger” Thomas, strode by rapidly while juggling two phones and as many conversations in as many languages.

In a weird way, I felt like Dorothy when she landed in Oz. Only I felt like I was the one with a house sitting on my chest.

I found my way to Chandler’s office. I had been there maybe once before, when I’d first been hired. The assistant let me in and I gaped at how freaking huge his office was. I mean, fuck, you could fit two bodegas, a donut shop, and a decent-sized deli in there.

I decided that whatever was about to happen, I was going to meet it head-on like a true Brooklynite. So I strode up to the desk with a confident swagger and smiled.

“Hey, boss, I heard you wanted to see me?”

“I did, yes.” Chandler stood up upon my entry, as did his lovely wife, the creator of one of our most successful pieces of IP, the Riverwind universe. “You remember my wife, June?”

“Yes, of course. How ya doing?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, shaking my hand.

By mutual unspoken agreement, we all sat down. Chandler folded his hands on his desk and fixed me with a frank gaze.

“All right, we’re all very busy people so I’m going to cut to the chase. We’ve been very impressed with the work you’ve done for us so far. Not just the error in the Forrester account, though that was a huge deal. Your working late and coming in early, and your meticulous attention to detail have not gone unnoticed.”

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