I'll Be Your Everything Read online

  “I will.” Flight delayed, traffic jam, or illness? Decisions, decisions.

  Corrine flips the overgrown carpet runner—that’s what it is—around her neck and shoulders, and the “tail” hangs almost to the ground.

  I hope that carpet gets caught in the elevator door, and it goes up while she goes down.

  “Um, I’ll be gone until ...” She checks her watch. “I may be back.”

  Do I remind her that I have to have this “cheat sheet” ready for her by two? No. It’s best not to confuse her with her own words. “Yes, Miss Ross.” And the world will go on without you whether you come back or not.

  She leaves looking very much like an unraveling Egyptian mummy with long, black, sparkly hair, and I look at the clock on my computer. Gee. It’s a few minutes past ten. What more could this day have in store for me?

  At least I’ll get paid today.

  Chapter 6

  My phone lights up. Ted again. “Yes, Ted?”

  “Did Miss Cross just leave?”

  I wave at Ted again. “Yes, Ted. But that was Miss Ross.” And stop using my nickname for her. She’s not your cross to bear.

  “Did I call her Miss Cross? Oh, I did.”

  “Anything I can help you with, Ted?”

  “Um, I’ll need Miss Ross’s most recent receipts.”

  I roll to my desk and pull Corrine’s receipts from the envelope. Hair, nails done. I’ll file this one under “business attire.” Hey, she wears her nails and hair, right? A receipt for an Art Deco diamond snowflake brooch. Who wears brooches these days? And why a snowflake? I’ll have to file this one under “business attire,” too. Eight receipts for food and “various and sundry client incentives” at Grace, Koi, and The Ivy in LA, but she would only have had time to eat five meals. A receipt for a facial, too? More “business attire.” She wears that face all right. A few extras on the Chateau Marmont bill, too. The honor bar tab is higher than usual. She called room service to get a bottle of 2007 Beringer Private Reserve Chardonnay? I file these under “meals.” Oh my! Her hotel bill lists an “In-Room Movie” with no movie title listed. A little adult entertainment, Miss Ross? The things I know about my boss that I wish I didn’t know. So this is how she deals with failure. She pampers herself, eats expensively, gets drunk, and watches soft porn. Gee, when I don’t win the lottery, I deny myself some glazed donuts for a few days. “Ted, I’ll try to get these to you as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks, Shari.”

  I wave again. “Anytime, Ted.”

  My phone lights up again. Ah, there’s my man.

  “Hi, Tom.”

  “Hi, Shari.”

  We’re way past “Mr. Sexton” and “Miss Nance” now. We are too cute. It is such a dreadful, frightful shame that Tom just missed Corrine. Transfer his call to her cell? Nah. I’ll just have to talk to him for her. Again. Oh, the perils of this abysmal job.

  “You’re in Detroit, right?” I ask.

  “Um, well, I’m on my way.”

  This is new. “You’re calling me from the plane?”

  “Something like that. I’m at JFK.”

  “So you’re in the city,” I say. This, too, is rare.

  He sighs. “Yeah, but I’m only here long enough to get off one plane and get on another. I didn’t even get a chance to go home for a change of clothes.”

  “Poor baby,” I say.

  “Thanks, Shari,” he says. “You’re the only one who seems to understand what it’s like out here. I’m looking through their business plans right now.” He sighs, and it’s a sexy, breathy sigh. “These guys are living in a dream world, Shari. They want us to shine up their crap and pronounce it gold.”

  Tom is so colorful. And real. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything. I bet his lips taste salty. Where’d that thought come from?

  “But,” he continues, “that’s what we do at Harrison Hersey and Boulder. We shine up crap for a living.”

  “I hear you.” And I shine despite the crap I take from Corrine.

  “Their crash tests are first-rate for a change,” he says, “but they keep making European knockoffs, you know? Yet they’ll probably win some ‘car of the year’ awards.”

  From the American press. Never fails. I swear it’s a conspiracy.

  “They don’t have a creative, innovative bone in their bodies,” he says.

  Unlike me. “Everything driving by looks the same out there when I’m walking to work.”

  “Yeah. Um, if you did ever buy a car, Shari, what would you buy?”

  He is always asking for my opinions, and unlike Corrine, he’s actually interested in hearing them. “I’m a country girl, Tom. I’d probably buy me a truck, a four-wheel drive with high ground clearance.”

  “Like a Jeep?”

  “I would love to drive a Jeep.” I would. Those are bad. “Wind in my hair, sunshine on my face, heading for the mountains every chance I could get.”

  “The mountains, huh?”

  “I like to climb, Tom.” And I’d really like to climb into, well, just about any situation with this man. Where are these thoughts coming from today?

  “When would you head for the mountains?” he asks.

  I look out on Brooklyn, so flat when you remove all the buildings, so urban, so unnatural from this or any distance. “Man, I would just ... go.”

  “Just ... go, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s good,” he says. “I like that.”

  After ten seconds of silence, I say, “Tom?”

  “Oh, I was just writing that down.”

  I smile. “Did I just help you out again?” I just give away ideas all day!

  “You always do, Shari. Just ... go. Simple. Direct. Powerful. Real.” He laughs. “Shari, you’re a genius.”

  The only compliments I get are from a man I’ve never met who works at a rival agency and supposedly sleeps with my boss. Life is a beautiful mess sometimes. “Just keeping it real, Tom. You’ll send me my cut when Detroit eats up my idea, right?”

  “How much do I owe you now?” he asks.

  I don’t want to put a price tag on our friendship. “Twice as much as you owed me before.”

  “I owe you so much,” he says. “And I will repay you one day.”

  And for some strange reason, I believe him. “Just glad I could help.”

  “Corrine doesn’t know what she has in you, Shari Nance.”

  I’m blushing hard now. He said my whole name.

  “I, uh, I guess I should be talking to Corrine now,” he says. “Um, is she there?”

  That was a buzzkill. “Um, no. Do you have a message you would like me to convey to Miss Ross?” And now I’m acting professional all of a sudden.

  “No, uh, it really just concerns Corrine. Something big.”

  And there’s another buzzkill. “Big, huh?”

  “Huge. Hey, how did LA go for her? I’ve heard some disturbing rumors.”

  And that’s where I have to keep the wench’s confidence. Ad people talk. Her Mae West mess will be watercooler talk by the end of the week as far north as Madison Avenue. “You’ll have to call and ask her about that yourself, Tom. You know that.” Though I doubt she’d ever tell him. There is a way I can tell him without telling him. “Should I have her call you if she returns to the office sometime this afternoon?”

  “Ah.” He laughs. “If. Hmm. I understand. Well. Um, no. That’s not necessary, Shari. Oh, there’s my flight. Thank you once again for an illuminating conversation.”

  See, I told you I could shine. “Stay warm out there, Tom.”

  “I’ll try. You stay warm, too, Shari Nance. Bye.”

  I do a little happy dance and stop. I have to keep reminding myself that he’s the wench’s boyfriend. I wish to God that I knew why.

  I turn to my computer to work on making Corrine’s receipts acceptable to accounting, when the phone lights up again.

  “Shari, Dunn. Where’s Corrine?”

  Since Mr. Dunn is the only person at M
ultiCorp with a door he can close, he couldn’t have seen Corrine arrive or vanish. “She’s, um, she’s been delayed from JFK. Must be those extra security precautions again.” How would I know? I’ve never even been to JFK.

  “Peterson Bicycles,” he barks. “Ever heard of them?”

  That was abrupt. “No, sir.” Why should I? I walk.

  “High end bikes. Nearly fifty million in sales last year. I need her to get on it immediately. I need to get my star back into the game after what happened in LA. You did hear about that, right?”

  I smile. “Oh, yes sir. She called me from the plane.” Not.

  “A new client is the best thing for her right now,” he says. “And this time we’re in competition for the first time ever with HHB.”

  Mr. Dunn never says “Harrison Hersey and Boulder.” I guess he thinks saying “HHB” diminishes them somehow, as if that could ever happen.

  “And who knows?” Mr. Dunn says. “She may be slugging it out with Tom Sexton.”

  Whoa. Is that why Tom called to talk to Corrine? Oh my goodness! He called to tell her that—

  “Woody Peterson will be calling Corrine at eleven sharp, so if she’s not here, you’ll have to forward the call to her wherever she is. This is very important, Shari. Think you could do that for us?”

  For us. Go team. “Yes, sir.” I do it all the freaking time. “Um, Mr. Dunn, is there a chance I can get into the JAE”—Junior Account Executive—“program before I have my MBA?” I bug him about this every chance I get, which isn’t that often. “I’m halfway through my MBA, and you know I have five years of on-the-job experience.” I already know his answer. I just like to keep my name in Mr. Dunn’s head.

  “You work for a talented woman, Shari. Learn all you can from her, and once you have your MBA, we’ll look into getting you your chance with JAE.”

  How nice for him to “look into” giving me a “chance.” I wish I had proof in my own handwriting of the George or Jamaica accounts, and then maybe he’d take me more seriously. “You will keep me in mind, won’t you, Mr. Dunn?”

  “You’re on the top of my list, Shari. The top of my list.”

  And then he hangs up. I shake my head. It’s the same exact thing he said last year and the year before that. At least he’s consistent.

  I punch up Corrine’s cell phone.

  “I’m just sitting down to eat, Shari dear,” she says. “What is so important that you have to interrupt my lunch?”

  She’s always a little testy when she’s hungry. Why should I spoil her day with important news? It’s not as if she will do anything about it immediately. She’ll only set me to work on it, and I just want to have a quiet day that ends at five. “I’m just, um, checking in with you, Miss Ross. Where are you eating today?”

  “Delmonico’s.”

  Geez. Home of the ninety-dollar porterhouse steak. She must be really depressed. “Will you be back in the office, say, by eleven, Miss Ross?” Please say no! I need some more blissful silence.

  “Shari dear, I already told you I wouldn’t be in until two at the earliest. Besides, there is no chance of me getting back by eleven, not when you eat at Delmonico’s.”

  As if I would ever know that. “So, you’ll be back in the office around two then.”

  “Shari dear, I thought you knew me better than that after all these years. I am not returning to the office today. I am going straight home to sleep off my jet lag as I do after every long trip, and you will not disturb me in any way, shape, or form.”

  A whole blissful Friday afternoon without her. Yes! “Yes, Miss Ross.” She won’t be here, and Mr. Peterson is calling. She doesn’t want me to disturb her. Hmm. Therefore, I’m in a familiar pickle. “So, I guess I’ll see you Monday morning, Miss Ross.”

  “No,” she says.

  No?

  “I am taking next week and Thanksgiving week off to spend some time with Tom scuba diving and snorkeling in Australia. We’re going to the Great Barrier Reef.”

  Or is this why Tom was calling? He said it was huge. I guess the Great Barrier Reef is huge. But, eww. Scuba diving with my whale of a boss? She’ll need extra weights to keep her cleavage from floating to the surface and being mistaken for buoys. But if Tom is working the Peterson thing, why would he be going to Australia? Maybe he isn’t working that account. Harrison Hersey and Boulder wouldn’t send Tom, a senior account executive, to win such a small account.

  “I want you to start working on my year-end reports,” Corrine says.

  “Yes, Miss Ross.” I’d love to work on those crappy—wait a minute. I’ll have the rest of today plus two weeks without her? This is an early Christmas present. This might not be so bad.

  “File the necessary vacation forms for me with personnel.”

  But something just isn’t clicking. If Australia is the huge thing Tom is talking about and Tom is possibly competing for this account, they wouldn’t be working together on the account on their vacation, would they? Maybe she already knows about the Peterson account. I’ll have to test her. “Um, Miss Ross, will you be conducting any business on this trip?”

  “Of course not, Shari. It’s a vacation. I just told you to file vacation forms with personnel, didn’t I? I wish you’d listen to me.”

  Oh yeah. If Corrine were working, she wouldn’t want me to file those forms, and she’d charge MultiCorp for the entire trip. “And, um, Tom will be joining you, Miss Ross?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. More eww. She sounds like a snake. “But not for a few days. He promised to meet me there after he finishes in Detroit. He just called me a few minutes ago, and I can’t wait to see him.”

  A few minutes ago? I just talked to him a few minutes ago. And he was supposed to be getting on his plane! Tom is really joining her after Detroit? Why? Oh yeah, something huge. Oh no! He isn’t going to propose to her in Australia. I mean, after five years, I suppose they should make it legal. That’s kind of romantic, but the Great Barrier Reef? Aren’t there sharks there? I wonder if any of them are wench-eaters.

  Always the good MultiCorp soldier, I have to ruin her vacation somehow. “Miss Ross, there’s something really important that I need to tell you.”

  “Oh, can’t it wait?” she says.

  Not really. “You see, Miss Ross, there’s a—”

  “Shari dear, don’t worry about a thing,” she interrupts.

  “But a client—”

  “If any of our clients call,” she interrupts again, “you take care of them as you always do. Unless there is an absolute crisis, do not call me, not when I’m with Tom Terrific.”

  Should I ask her to define the word crisis? No. A chipped nail or a hair out of place is a crisis to her.

  “Don’t even text or e-mail me, Shari. I do not wish to be disturbed while Tom and I reacquaint ourselves. I haven’t seen him in so long that I’ve almost forgotten what he looks like! Oh, I must go. My lobster Newburg is here.”

  Click.

  Hmm. I guess I won’t be transferring Mr. Peterson’s call to her anytime soon. Her lobster Newburg is there. Oh, we must eat the overgrown crustacean before it crawls back to Newburg.

  Chapter 7

  I take off my glasses and rub my eyes.

  I am so tired of this!

  All of it.

  Corrine.

  Covering Corrine’s absences.

  Making her shine.

  Lying to clients all day.

  Lying to Mr. Dunn.

  Taking MBA classes one at a time.

  Mr. Dunn and his condescending “maybe next year” tone.

  The elusive JAE program.

  What am I doing here? All I’m doing is chasing the freaking pavement, eight miles a day to and from anonymity, futility, and misery.

  I look at the phone.

  Mr. Peterson is going to call in twenty minutes, I can’t transfer his call to Corrine, and I don’t know ... what ... to ... do.

  Hmm.

  Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.

  I a
m going to take the call.

  As Corrine Ross.

  I did it once before when she was in “vanish mode.” It wasn’t hard at all to mimic her accent and use her high-end vocabulary. I know the lingo. That client never knew, and Corrine never suspected a thing.

  Yes.

  No one will be the wiser. Corrine is going out of the country and will be incommunicado. It shouldn’t be too hard to field phone calls for her as her for two weeks. And when she gets back, we’ll go to work as we normally do on the account, and she’ll probably be just as ungrateful as always.

  Grr.

  I take a deep breath. I’ll just have to look at this as practice. Yes. This is only practice. Mr. Dunn won’t let me into the JAE program, but if I can pull off this account on my own—and make sure he knows about it this time with lots of written proof—I’ll be the only person on that list when I finally get my MBA.

  It’s game time.

  If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. I log off MultiCorp’s network and hit the Internet to research Peterson Bicycles, taking rapid notes. Geez, the prices for these bikes are outrageous. Two thousand bucks for the standard model. I like the idea of getting and staying fit, but I also like eating. They’re called “the Rolls-Royce of bicycles”? That’s so elitist and snobby. I’m surprised their sales are so steady. And they don’t look that special. They look more like longer versions of BMX bikes.

  My phone lights up again. Ted. Again. This is a record.

  “About those receipts, Shari.”

  Shoot! “Just a sec, Ted.”

  God, I hate Excel. I quickly list Corrine’s three extra meals as “client incentives,” lump the facial, nails, hair, and brooch as “business attire,” and call the bar tab and adult movie “meals and entertainment.” I save it and send Ted a copy. “I’m sending the spreadsheet to you now, Ted.”

  “I’ll, um, also need the actual receipts for our records.”

  I slide the receipts back into the envelope and walk all of forty feet to Ted’s desk. Whoa. Ted has some new black hair plugs. They look so fake! The man has jet-black hair and orange freckles, and only a few weeks late for Halloween. I place the envelope on his desk. “Here they are, Ted.”