Page 10 of A Ticking Time Boss

Audrey: Still only a few years younger than you.

Carter: Ah, but you’re coming to me for advice. I’m clearly the mentor here.

Audrey: Aaaand now you’re obnoxious again.

Carter: It’ll keep happening. Might as well get used to it.

Audrey: I’ll consider myself warned.

Carter: When are you meeting guy-with-dog?

Audrey: Next Thursday. I got a new job, so I want a few days to settle in before I throw myself into the fire again.

Carter: Congrats. And it won’t be that bad. Debrief with me after.

Audrey: I will. Thanks for this. Weird as it sounds I’m glad I was freaking out at that bar.

Carter: Me too, kid.

THREE

My faucet is leaking again.

“Crap.” I bang on it, hoisting my bag up on my shoulder to avoid the spray, but it doesn’t help the slow and steady drip. My little duct-tape fix from last night isn’t holding up. It’s soaked through.

Shit, I’m going to be late… and on my second week at the Globe. I crouch down low and open the cabinet. Where is it… aha! I grab the duct tape and start wrapping it around the pipe. Hopefully it’ll last another twelve hours. Then I shove a clean towel under the cabinet and hope it won’t be soaked through when I get back home.

I make it out of the tiny room I rent, past the closed door of my never-awake, constantly weed-smoking neighbor, and downstairs.

There’s mail on the stoop. Of course there’s mail.

I grab it and rush back in to my landlord’s door on the first floor. Pierce owns this brownstone, and rents the converted bedrooms upstairs out to students or penniless young professionals.

“Mr. Pierce?” I half-scream. He’s hard of hearing. “You’ve got mail! I’ll put it outside your door!”

There’s a thud inside. “Is that you, Audrey?”

“Yes!”

“Noted,” he calls back. His voice is rusty, like always, and his choice of words makes me smile. The old man barely says thank you.

Time for the tough conversation. “My faucet is leaking again! Any news on the plumber?”

Another thud inside, and then his heavy footfalls. “Yes, yes, I called him yesterday. He’s on it,” Pierce says.

Which, if I know my landlord, means he forgot and is about to call the plumber right now.

“Thank you!”

Then I have to race to the subway.

I make it to the Globe with a few minutes to spare. Walking through the prestigious lobby, past the gold-framed articles of legend, the sleek logo behind reception, and pulling out my employee keycard… even now, two weeks in, it makes me feel giddy. This job is like winning the lottery, and not even the paltry salary can make me think otherwise.

I ride the elevator up to my floor with a smile on my face. Ridiculous, perhaps, and I’m sure the stressed journalists and department heads who ride with me think I’m nuts. But I’m just a junior investigative reporter at the Globe who just got the greenlight to investigate my first story. And probably a little bit nuts too.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and my smile widens. It’s past eight thirty, when he drinks his first cup.

Carter: You’re wrong. Flavored creamer makes it worse, not better, and I’ll fight anyone who tells me otherwise.

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