Diamond Girl

4: Going Goldsmithing

Lily slid into an available gap between 'Goldsmith Gary' and 'Rico the Resizer'. The red pleather making a particularly loud squelch beneath her. Both men kindly ignored the sound. 

Lily had long since confessed the silly nicknames she had given them to help her remember their names and both had just laughed. Now, years later, they gamely introduced themselves to new hires with her monikers. Rico even engraved two silver dog tags with "RR" and "GG" and they wore them most days. (Gary had shaved his down to be less ostentatious though) It always made Lily smile when she spied them.

For her birthday last year Gary and Rico had gifted her with her with a custom pendant necklace they had made her. It was a tiny banana-shaped dog tag with "LL" engraved in the center. She had laughed, her heart in her throat before asking them what it stood for.

"Whatever you want it to stand for." Gary had said.

"Luminous, lively, level-headed... lavish!" Rico had added. He'd stressed the last word, still not done giving her grief over her latest "favor" she can come knocking on the shop doors for.

She touched the pendant at her throat for the hundredth time. L turned out to be a hard letter for good adjectives. Lumbering Lily, laconic Lily, lazy Lily... So she'd begun using it as a reminder to keep her cool.

"Alrighty! Now I have a few gift cards to hand out!" Mr. Daveney was grinning, arms thrown wide with magnanimity.

This is his moment to be Benevolent Dad, Lily thought.

Mr. Daveney called out several names of employees that had gone "Above and Beyond" during the quarter. Though he tried to pick one person from each department, he often seemed to choose the same person from each department quarter after quarter. He knew he did so, he simply thought it would motivate the others to try harder.

The Minotaur would never know how much Lily coveted his quarterly $50 gift card to mediocre chain restaurants. 

I mean, who does he even go with? She asked herself as she narrowed her eyes at the side of Aaron's annoyingly coiffed head while he reached out those long fingers to pluck the plastic card from Mr. Daveney's giving hand.

A sudden vision of Aaron sitting alone at the local Chili's, smug - with napkin under chin and forks akimbo-  mowing his way through an entire order of hot wings, then a full rack of ribs and fries, then that chocolate funnel cake...

She groaned inwardly when she realized she was failing horribly at leveling-out.

Lily's job at Daveney Diamonds was a little... unique. She had been hired for Sales, but, seeing as her and Aaron had immediately clashed - literally and figuratively- she had had a hard time getting comfortable in the role.

Fortunately for her, another coworker had discovered she had other skills. After discovering Lily's precise DD map, she asked her to draw up an engagement ring idea her customer had. DD had never worked much in custom engagement rings, their company's focus was elsewhere. At some point in Daveney Diamonds history one of their new expansion spaces was used to create an amateur goldsmithing suite (which was rumored to have caught fire not once, but twice in its first year of operation "just for a minute").  Men's bands turned out to be the easier to fabricate, so they began making their own simple men's wedding band line, "Dapper", for their showroom.

Now, decades later, that part of the business had outgrown the rest. Men's bands were now what Daveney Diamonds was known best for. Goldsmithing spaces were now littered all throughout the Labyrinth as they were now shipping their various men's band styles to other businesses all over the country and, increasingly, the world.