Annihilation - h.s.

Chapter Two.

Katie and I make small talk while I show her all that her new job entails.

"First job?" I ask her while I unpin the page of details for tonight's banquet from the communications board. Coulter Law Firm's Annual Gala - simple enough.

"Yeah." Her response is so quiet I can hardly hear her.

Katie remains mute and graceless, but she's learns very quickly. By six o'clock, I'm confident that she can survive on her own, and instruct her to start printing off the name cards while I arrange the ambitious centerpieces of orange and white flowers on each table.

I sweep and mop the dining room, wipe down each table, then begin to set them with cutlery.

As I begin to set table number seven, a light tap on the shoulder, followed by a very panicked voice, interrupts me. I turn to see Katie, eyes wide with a trembling lip. I can't decide if her breathing is heavy from nerves, or because she ran here from upstairs.

"There's a man on the phone - I think I made him angry - I didn't know what to do - I put him on hold - I don't know what to do." She blinks rapidly, shaking her head in frenzy.

It takes me a moment to register what she says. "Angry?" I can't help but smile at the thought of Katie making anybody angry. "What did you do?"

She looks at me quizzically for a fraction of a second - trying to see which part of the situation I find amusing, I assume - then tilts her head to the left, a gesture for me to follow her to the phone.

"I was folding the name cards, like you showed me," she begins as we walk down the hall, "and then the phone rang but I didn't answer it the first time because I wasn't sure how and you told me that you usually don't answer it anyway, so I just kept folding the cards. But it kept ringing. For like three whole minutes."

She turns to face me with a severe expression, trying to convey to me the travesty of the situation. "I figured I could just answer it, I mean, how hard could answering the phone be?" Katie steps aside to let me climb up the narrow staircase first.

"It started out fine, but then he told me he wanted to rent the whole building out next week. I signed on to the computer and looked at the calendar but everything was completely booked until September, so I told him that and then he started yelling at me and swearing and I freaked out and now he's on hold."

I smile. That was the most she's said since we met, I was beginning to think the only words she knew were 'okay' and 'yeah.' We're stood in front of the phone in the office, now, the red light flashing.

"Don't worry, we get calls like this all the time." I assure her before picking up the phone, the limited description I received from Katie about the man on the other end left me excited and unsure of what to expect.

" - fucking bitch has me on hold. Fuck, what kind of service is this?" The man's baritone voice resonates as he speaks to somebody else; he is still unaware that I've picked up. Katie was right - he's furious. Through all the questions littered with growled curses, it's almost impossible to even get even the smallest of words in.

"Hi. Head Bitch speaking, how may I help you?" Dan always says something about keeping my personality out of the phone calls, and how not being polite leads to low ratings, and therefore, no customers - but I don't take much of his 'constructive' criticism.

"Well, finally!" The man's raspy voice grumbles, a thick British inflection playing on each word. "As I was explaining to your lovely friend, next week the whole building will be rented out to me." I glare at the phone, my tolerance for this man already running low. He speaks with too much arrogance.

"Sorry, but we're booked." I make no attempt to mask the harshness of my voice.

I look at Katie to see her features still engraved with fear as she looks down to study her feet, nervousness swaying her body back and forth.

I'm about to tell her to finish setting the tables for me, to clear her anxiety, but my attention is quickly pulled back to the phone by a dry laugh. "Sweetheart, you must have heard me wrong but I was not asking, so go along and do whatever it is you do, and free the whole building to me for next week"

He, too, is growing impatient, and it's apparent that we both want nothing more than to hang up the phone. This will be the most fun I have all night, though, so I figure I might as well make it last.

I lean forward against the podium on which the phone rests. "This is probably not what you want to hear, and frankly I don't give a shit, but we have no room."

It is clear that he's not alone from the shouting in the background as he quips, "Then make some. I will have the building next week either with or without your efforts."

There's a rustling as the man on the other end holds the microphone of his phone, a floundering attempt to block off what he's saying to whoever's with him. "This harlot is useless..." It's hard to hear what follows his statement over the yelling and argument that it initiates. There must have been at least three others in the room.

"I'm not sure if you heard me, but we have no room, Sweetheart." My mock accent matches his perfectly.

Frustrated and mentally declaring an end to tonight's amusement, I reach to disconnect myself from the hostility traveling through the wires of the phone, but just as I'm about to hang up, that irritating voice starts ringing through the speaker again - dominating all other chaos.

"Tell me when your next availability is, then." His demand is built in a solution of acrimony.

"Maybe today will be your lucky day and someone will cancel, but until then we're booked for the next three months. You already knew that, though. Maybe you'll have better luck elsewhere."

A deep frustrated groan fills my ear, followed by the satisfying tone of a phone line gone dead.

"Well," I grin as I turn to Katie. "I doubt we'll be hearing from that jackass anytime soon."

It's evident that she wasn't quite as amused with that conversation as I was, and that she learned nothing from the short experience. If anything, she's terrified, and not likely to take any more calls.

****

Author's Note:

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-Steph and Meg