In this particular round, the editor had signed off after finding nothing but a few art issues — close up this space a hair, are you sure the logo is flush right with the block of copy, is the blue on this page the same as the previous pages or is it just a printer problem? The editor had found no copy mistakes, a miracle given his heavy hand with the red pen.
Jenny picked up her green pen to initial the cover sheet, then stopped. The editor had had it in for her ever since she’d thrown him under the bus for an error that had crept into print. It had cost the agency about fifty thousand to correct and someone was going to take the fall. Jenny already had a couple of strikes against her and had managed to buck that one to the editor. He hadn’t been pleased. Tonight, it would be just like him to leave an error in and somehow make sure she was blamed. But he had already initialed the top page, so they were both on the hook, if it came to that.
“No worries if you need more time,” Traffic lied. Tomorrow, the whole agency would know that Jenny had held up the job and kept everyone here an extra hour. Gordo would know.
“I just finished,” Jenny lied right back. “I was just about to sign off.”
She initialed the top page with a flourish, silently praying that the text was perfect. She couldn’t afford another error.
Jenny was idly straightening her desk, surfing the Web, waiting for Traffic to bring around the release copy for final sign-off, allowing her to leave, when she saw Carol come up the aisle to her cube, right across from Jenny’s. She gave a groan. Carol was the dimmest bulb in the agency and Jenny generally ignored her. But it was late and she was tired of checking Facebook and Twitter.
“Carol, what’s up?”
“Got a call that some genius in the studio dropped out a whole page of the sales aid. The team all got called in to restore it and sign off again.” Carol shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the cube wall hook. She sighed. “I actually had a date.”
“Really? That sucks.” Jenny hadn’t had a date in months. Advertising wasn’t conducive to relationships and the men inside the industry were all notoriously either gay or sadistic, or sometimes both.
Carol sat in her office chair, punched out an extension on her office phone, and told her team’s Traffic that she was in.
She swiveled around to face Jenny.
“You guys are going late again?”
“Blame the FDA. We had released a set of convention panels early, and now they make a label change at the last minute.”
“I thought you had a grace period before label changes had to go into effect.”
“We do. But the client insists that we show the FDA how on top of it we are and get them done for Chicago. It’s going to cost them half a million to rush these things through.”
“Ka-ching, ka-ching. The agency loves that sound.”
“Sure. And the hell with the human cost. Late nights. No sleep. No social life. So, tell me about your date.”
“Ah, it probably wouldn’t have worked out. Even if I didn’t have to leave before the tiramisu. I wouldn’t have gone out with him again anyway. He reminded me too much of my uncle. I mean, I loved my uncle, but I wouldn’t want to date him.”
Jenny raised her eyebrows.
“My dead uncle. Rest his soul. Just last year. Cancer.”
“Sorry,” Jenny murmured. Christ, this is why she always shut Carol out. Conversations like this one.
“Yeah, thanks. You know, I was there. I was with him at the end.”
Jenny shook her head, looking up the aisle to see if Traffic was coming back yet. Carol was rattling on about her relative’s difficult last days. Carol was too sincere for Jenny’s taste. She didn’t have the hard edge that Jenny required in her friends. But Traffic was nowhere to be seen. She glimpsed Gordo skulking past the head of the aisle. He flicked a glance in her direction. She felt a chill.
Jenny had fairly successfully timed Carol out, but now she snapped back around. Something Carol said had caught her attention.
“What? Sorry, Carol, I was distracted for a minute.”
“Oh, I was just saying that at the end he was in such awful pain, even with all the morphine they could give him, and he begged me. He begged me to help him. I had seen the nurse checking the connection on the morphine drip that went to the automated monitor that lets only so much through at certain intervals, and I knew that there was a manual override. So, when the nurse wasn’t around I turned the little thingy to open it and let it flow.”
Jenny held her breath and nodded for her to go on.
“So I watched as he felt better. He smiled at me and looked drowsy and then he closed his eyes. I waited until he stopped breathing before I tightened the connection again. Then a machine started beeping and I sat down and took his hand. The nurse came in to check. She told me he was gone. He had a DNR, so there was no fuss. And they were expecting it, so there were no questions. I felt good. I knew it was the right thing to do.”
Jenny nodded again, then impulsively got up and took Carol’s hand. Carol teared up a little at the unexpected sympathy. And at that moment, Traffic hurried down the aisle to tell Jenny that, no worries, they were going to do a group sign-off in the studio, then she could leave.
Jenny took her coat and bag and followed Traffic, pausing only to tell Carol good night. “Thanks for telling me about your uncle,” she said, giving Carol a pat on the shoulder. “I think you were wonderful to do what you did for him.”
“Thanks for being such a good listener.” Carol had always thought Jenny didn’t like her and she warmed to the possibility that she had won her over.
She didn’t notice the triumphant glitter in Jenny’s eyes. Carol was right. Now Jenny liked her. Carol’s little story was a gift. A gift Jenny could use. Carol had just unwittingly confessed to murder. Just that quickly Jenny had a plan.
The next afternoon it only took a second to slip the top piece of paper out of the job jacket on Carol’s chair. When Carol came back from the ladies’ room, she studied the job for a minute, leafing through the papers, before she called her team’s Traffic.
“I already signed off on this round. We all did. Shouldn’t there be a new one?”
Jenny could hear Traffic sputtering on the phone, then he came over to check the job jacket himself. Then he stormed away to see if the missing page was still on the editor’s desk. And before long, it was officiaclass="underline" Carol’s entire team would be working late. Again.
Jenny and Carol ate their Chinese takeout from the waxy cartons at their desks. Jenny went to the ladies’ room and, on the way back, sauntered up and down the aisles of cubes, making sure no one else was in earshot of their aisle. Resuming her desk chair, she leaned back and stretched, glancing over at Carol, who gave her a touchingly pleading look. Jenny smiled an invitation and Carol wheeled her desk chair over for a cozy chat.
“Tell me about your family,” she begged. “I’m embarrassed that I did all the talking last night. You must have been so bored.”
“Not at all, Carol. I was fascinated. I’m so glad we’re getting to be friends.”
Carol beamed and clapped her hands together. “Me too,” she said fervently.
Jenny leaned forward. “I want us to be friends. Best friends. Can we do that, do you think, Carol?”
Carol couldn’t believe her good fortune. After all, Jenny was known for her skills and her wit. Her snarky sendups of bosses, colleagues, and clients were the talk of the agency. Carol was nodding like a bobble-head doll. “Yes. Yes, we can. I don’t have that many friends. I mean, I do, but not like, not like you.” She was babbling.
Jenny took her hand and leaned closer to whisper intimately. “I’m so glad. Because we need to be the best, best friends if we’re going to kill Gordo.”