Plum Girl (Romance) (7 page)

Lonnie leaned her head back against the wall of the T, right under a poster for adult education that read:
Are you tired of your life?
She closed her eyes and thought back to the night before. She and Peach had gone to dinner at their parents' town house in Brookline.

On the T heading there, Lonnie had issued a warning to Peach that if their mother annoyed them—excessively more than usual, that is—it was going to get ugly. Of course Lonnie adored Margot, who was actually a near-perfect mother. She was super-affectionate, and had the self-sacrificing thing down pat. Unfortunately, she was a little bit of an overachiever when it came to that nagging-about-things-you-already-know-but-are-trying-to-forget part. And Lonnie could always count on her to hit the basic talking points. Point one: career update. Point two: husband-prospect update. Point three: you-have-such-a-pretty-face-and-if-only-you'd-just-lose-fifteen-pounds pep talk. Oh, goodie.

Occasionally, Margot tried to be subtle. For instance, instead of making a direct comment about Lonnie's weight, she'd just serve her smaller portions than everyone else, and slice her a super-thin piece of pie for dessert. Then she'd conversationally say things like, "So, I hear Delta Burke's lost some weight." But Lonnie was no fool, and she knew the way her mother's mind worked. Margot figured that if her daughter slimmed down a bit, she'd gain the kind of confidence needed to secure a prosperous career—not to mention, a successful man. Her mother meant well, but Lonnie just didn't share her oversimplified, reductive reasoning.

The night pretty much went the way she had expected. As soon as she and Peach walked through the door, Margot captured each in a loving bear hug and called to their father who was in the other room. "Jack, the girls are here."

"Nazi storm-trooping pigs!"

Okay, so he was watching the news.

"Jack!"

"They're stealing your freedoms! Does anyone even care? They're stealing your
freedoms!"
Margot waved her hand and shrugged: in dismissal. "He's watching his news shows. Jack, I'm putting dinner out in five minutes!"

"Yes,
fine, "
he answered in a very put-out voice, as if she'd been telling him that most of his adult life.

Four minutes later, Margot put out dinner: baked rigatoni with garlic bread and broccoli on the side. Lonnie skipped the broccoli, although she did accept her puny portion without question... or furtive augmentation. The truth was, despite her regular slips, she
was
trying to watch her weight. But not for any other reason than lifting her own mood. She could deal with curvy, and had accepted that she would never be skinny, but chubby just wasn't comfortable to lug around every day. She wasn't there yet, but she didn't feel all that far from it.

There had only been one point when Margot was more direct than usual. Point two. Over dessert, she'd flat-out asked: "So, Lonnie honey, where's this relationship with Terry
going?"
Of course, Lonnie didn't have much of an answer. Somehow, saying "nowhere, that's the point" isn't the best way to pacify your Catholic mother. So Lonnie just circumvented the issue, which she'd had a lot of practice doing in her own head anyway. Sure, Terry was a great kid, but—wait, did she just think of him as a
kid?
This was worse than she thought. Terry was only twenty-five and a silly comedian, and now she thought of him as a
great kid?

The T came to a jerking stop, and Lonnie hopped off the train, bustled past the panhandler who was hitting an overturned bucket again and again with no variation, and walked quickly down the street to Starbucks.

"Venti, double soy, decaf cappuccino, no foam," the man directly in front of Lonnie ordered brusquely. "A grande, caramel macchiato, with skim milk. Light on the whipped cream. And a tall Americano. Don't leave room for milk."

The cashier nodded curtly, and hollered to the drink maker: "Venti, double soy, decaf cappuccino, no foam! Grande, nonfat caramel macchiato, easy whip! Tall, no-room Americano!"

The drink maker echoed fiercely: "Venti, double soy, decaf cappuccino, no foam! Grande, nonfat caramel macchiato, easy whip! Tall, no-room Americano!"

The man moved to the side to wait for his drinks, and Lonnie went up to the cashier, who appeared so expectant and poised to shout, it threw her. "Uh, a grande coffee," she ordered, and watched the cashier's crestfallen expression as he quietly filled her cup. She paid and took her coffee, but just as she was turning to leave, the first man was whipping around with his drinks, and bumped into her.
Of course.
Luckily, she was able to jump out of the way quickly, and her ice-blue coat was spared, as a big splash of soy cappuccino landed on the floor next to her feet. Her wooden heels weren't as fortunate as her coat, but she could deal with that later. She gave the man her best "you idiot" scowl, and left.

As she walked the one block to her office, she started to feel great about how she'd just avoided a disastrous incident. It was a mini-adrenaline rush; she was practically whistling by the time she got to the twenty-third floor. Heading toward her desk briskly, she glanced at the clock on the wall: 8:43. She was early, too? Fabulous.

Just as she was thinking her day wasn't off to a bad start, her soy-stained wooden heel caught on the now
-annoyingly
plush lavender-pink carpet, and Lonnie stumbled. Instinctively, she reached forward to grab her desk for support, and half of her coffee spilled onto the newly cleaned desktop.

"Fuck!" she exclaimed louder than she would've intended if she'd thought about it before it flew out of her mouth. Luckily, she was early and the office was quiet. The one thing she had noticed since she'd started working at Twit & Bell was that while lawyers did stay very late, they often didn't come into work till after nine thirty or ten in the morning. Lonnie tossed her precious, nearly martyred coat onto her leather chair, and went to the kitchen to get some paper towels.

The kitchen was pathetic. Delia usually took care of everything—stocking the drawers with napkins, coffee filters, tea bags, and Sweet 'N Low, not to mention making the coffee every day. For the past week or so, though, Delia seemed to have abandoned the task. Now, Lonnie noticed, there were no paper towels in the rack, or napkins in the drawers.

She headed down the hall to the supply room, where all the paper goods were kept, and as she approached, she heard faint voices. One of them was definitely Lunther's, whose office was next door. Lonnie ignored what she was sure was pointless blather—i.e., Lunther's specialty—and let herself into the walk-in supply closet. Once inside, her balance wobbled slightly as she tried to reach the fourth shelf for the rolls of paper towels. The other voice in Lunther's office got louder, and suddenly became clear. It was Macey Green's.

"Don't you dare threaten me," Macey said.
What?
Lonnie instantly panicked, because she shouldn't be overhearing this conversation, but there was nowhere for her to go without bringing more attention to herself. Obviously, Lunther and Macey hadn't noticed that someone was in the supply room right next door. She tiptoed her soy heels over to the door and started closing it, because the last thing she wanted was for Macey to walk out of Lunther's office and see her standing right there.

Just as she was nudging the door closed, she heard Macey's voice more clearly, as if she were suddenly closer. She had to be at Lunther's doorway, on her way out. Lonnie froze. Impulsively, she decided to stay hidden behind the half-open door and wait till Macey left.

"I've made it very clear—" Lunther began.

"So have I, and at this point, you should be the one who feels threatened."

"Look, Macey—" he growled in an angry voice that Lonnie had never heard him use.

Macey cut him off, in a more impassioned voice than Lonnie had ever heard
her
use, "Don't fuck with me, Lunther. Or your diapered balls will end up in a sling!"

Diapered balls?
It was times like this that Lonnie wished she were more sexually experienced so she would be familiar with all the terms.

Then Macey's voice changed back to cool and even. "Figuratively speaking, of course, since I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole covered in latex."

"You bitch," Lunther snarled.

"Just you remember: you've been warned." And with that, Macey walked down the hall, in the opposite direction from the supply room, thank God.

Lonnie released a barely audible sigh of relief, and crept back to the shelf for paper towels. She could only reach high enough to grab one roll, but that was fine as far as she was concerned; she just wanted to slip back down the hall unnoticed. Just as she was stepping out and silently shutting the door, an abrupt noise shattered the silence. It sounded like an off-key horn blast. Another one sounded. Then another—
oh, no.
Her jaw dropped in horror.
It couldn't be!
But, it was. Lunther was passing gas—and with abandon.

She contorted her upper body to steal a peek into Lunther's office. From where she stood, she could see a beefy hand grabbing a can of Lysol off the desk.
Spritz, spritz. Horn blast. Spritz.
She shut her eyes and shook her head in disbelief.

Chapter 6

"Hey, are you taking lunch today?" Matt Fetchug stopped at Lonnie's desk wearing his characteristic cocky grin. He was actually very cute, with medium brown hair and a nice build... not that she was really looking. He had the kind of generic-handsome look that many women liked. Lonnie glanced up from her computer screen and smiled at him.

"I don't think so," she answered. "I have to finish doing this PowerPoint presentation for Twit. I've got four more slides to go, I think." Earlier that day, she'd made arrangements with Meijing, who'd agreed to cater the holiday party. It had been fabulously easy; she'd simply described the function, gave an estimated number of guests, and Meijing promised to take care of the rest. Lonnie had thanked her profusely and groveled unabashedly, even though it hadn't seemed necessary.

"What, you design his presentations?" Matt asked in a voice that would've been appalled if he cared more.

"Yeah, sort of. Well, how it works is, he gives me a huge stack of incoherent notes on a particular subject, and then I somehow turn it into a PowerPoint slide show by a ludicrous and unrealistic deadline. It's a nice little system we've got worked out." She topped off her statement with her favorite exploited-and-loving-it smirk.

Matt smirked back. "Ah, I see. So what's the deadline for this? You can't break for lunch?" Lonnie figured she technically could, but she'd feel too guilty to really enjoy herself. Plus, she secretly hoped that Dominick would send her an e-mail asking her to lunch. She hadn't heard from him since that night at Rattlesnake, which was three days ago, and almost definitely indicated the blow off. But still, she hoped maybe...

"I'd better not," she said, only mildly apologetic, because she knew that it was probably of little consequence to Matt whether or not she went to lunch. He was a quintessential schmoozer. When he wanted to, he could charm everybody, but he didn't seem to like
anybody.
In fact, the few times she had gone to lunch with him, she'd spent the whole time listening to him make fun of people. Granted, he was usually amusing, but she wasn't going to get behind on her work to catch his act. Now if it were Dominick, that would be another story.

Oh, why hadn't Dominick responded to her email? Okay, so she'd acted sort of weird at Rattlesnake. Was he going to hold a grudge forever? She'd asked him to go to happy hour with her on Friday night. Wasn't that compensation enough?

Fine, maybe not.

Probably not.

Slim-to-none chances, and when it came to men, her luck generally leaned toward bad.

"All right," Matt said. "Well, good luck with your work. Actually, is Twit even in? I haven't seen him today."

"Yeah, he's been holed up in his office all morning, but I fully expect him to come out and verbally abuse me anytime now."

"And call you 'Lola,' " Matt snorted. He glanced over his shoulder and muttered, "Oh, man, look who's coming this way." Lonnie looked past Matt's mocking sneer, and saw B.J. swaggering toward them. It was really a shame that B.J. had the kind of over-compensating personality that lent itself to ridicule, because in some ways, he reminded her of an over eager little kid.

"Hey, you two," B.J. called. "What's this little tête-à-tête about?" He stopped in front of Lonnie's desk, next to Matt, and flashed her a 100-watt smile. Now she felt really bad.

"Hi, B.J. How are you?" she asked.

"Just ahead in all my work, bored stiff, the uzh," he answered proudly.

Lonnie saw a slight jerk at the corner of Matt's lips, and she feared whatever he was about to say. Since she'd started temping at Twit & Bell, she'd noticed that Matt and B.J. had an odd—and distinctly inequitable—relationship. B.J. seemed to be under the impression that Matt was his friend. At the same time, he looked up to him so much it bordered on pitiable, and Matt completely exploited it. Sometimes he'd act as if he and B.J. were close buddies, offering him advice about legal matters or women, and B.J. would desperately lap up the whole big-brother bit. Then, without hesitation, Matt would mock him right to his face, and B.J. would crack up like it was a shared joke.

Now Lonnie nervously anticipated Matt's response. But all he said was: "Man, how do you get your work done so fast?" Good, he was in schmoozer mode.

B.J. shrugged and said, "This stuff's wicked easy." He turned to Lonnie. "By the way, Miss I-Don't-Ever-Go-to-Happy-Hour, don't think I've forgotten about tomorrow night. Don't even think about not showing up."

She smiled feebly and forced a nod. Please, she didn't feel like going now! The reason she'd never gone to happy hour before was that she'd never wanted to spend her Friday night with the bizarre Twit & Bell crowd. TV movies and takeout Thai held a lot more appeal. Sure, she'd been coerced into agreeing during the staff meeting on Tuesday, but who takes anything that goes on in those meetings seriously? Or remembers it?