Three o’clock came and Annie was pretty sure she wasn’t going to make it home without a lift from somebody. Tony offered to stay behind in case she needed him, but she was averse to that scenario, as she was aware of the way he looked at her when she passed by. He was most certainly an “ass man,” tried and true. Something in that was flattering.
Winnie was still in the office. Her station wagon parked right next to Annie’s car. Good old Winnie was always good for a favor. That is, if Winnie’s car was any better at traversing the snow. She’d been bragging about her new snow tires recently, something that Annie took note of. Always take note of any and all options, her father used to say.
As she approached Garrett’s office, ready to fire financial theories on all cylinders, she saw a scrawled note pinned to the door: All meetings cancelled for today. Head home and drive safe! –Garrett.
The bastard. His goddamned car was still in the parking lot!
How could the weasel pull such unprofessional bullshit on her?
Didn’t he check his fucking schedule? Didn’t he have any couth about him?
Annie was on fire, fully ready to eviscerate anybody that came near her. She could feel her face flushing with an unpleasant warmth, as if she’d been drinking too much wine, but was absent of that type of euphoric feeling. When Tony approached her, he asked if everything was all right, and she laid it all out with such rapid fire that she couldn’t keep up with her own words: “That cocksucker left me hanging here all day, thinking we had a meeting. This is what happens to me. This is what happens to women in this company. I go above and beyond to protect us (listen to me saying us, like they care about my ass) from a serious monetary loss and this is how he repays me? I swear the men in this company treat us like doormats.” She scowled at Tony, but he wasn’t shaken by her comment as she expected him to be, probably because he was just like the rest of them.
She bit at her lip, staring at Tony’s mug, and then dug in deeper, “He can’t give me the courtesy of a cancellation? Even my four-year-old son would know it’s not nice to cancel on somebody without telling them in person. Jesus Christ… I emailed him twice today. You know he saw that damn email, right? I bet you he read it and didn’t feel like he needed to reply. You know why? Because I don’t matter, that’s why. I’m a peon. I’m a cog. I’m a fucking puppet. This is what I get for being a loyal servant to this place, to this goddamned boy’s club. I get stuck in a snow storm, that’s what I get.”
“Come on now, it’s not so bad here is it? At least we’re warm. Sleep it off before you go storming into his office tomorrow morning. You don’t want to piss Garrett off. Bad idea for your career.” Tony hadn’t seemed too interested in fueling her well-justified anger. Instead, he changed the subject as she glowered at him, as though he was the reason for all her problems, even though she very well knew he wasn’t. “Do you want me to walk you to your car?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, grateful that he was at least attempting to be a gentleman amongst pigs. She was careful to walk behind him, instead of in front of him. She loathed the thought of his eyeballs on her backside. Why, she wondered, were all men pigs? What was it in their brains that made them strive for the bottom of the barrel?
So they had trudged through the first layers of snow, Annie fretting the whole way that it was unsafe to drive. Tony agreed with her in an almost unconvincing manner. She wondered why he hadn’t escaped yet, and he offered up an explanation that his car was currently in the shop. Tony intended to call a cab once the snow let up a bit.
“I’d be glad to drop you off at your house,” Annie offered (hoping he would not accept, for several reasons) as they brushed the thickening layer of snow off her windshield. She only had one brush, so Tony used his forearm to brush away the opposite side. Maybe he wasn’t such a pig after all. But still, she couldn’t forget the way his eyes regularly surveyed the crack of her ass.
“No way. My house is out of the way for you. You get home safe and I’ll be just fine. The taxis will be running again once the storm eases up. I’m fine.” Annie didn’t argue with him, though she was sure he wanted her to. When somebody denied help, Annie had always found that usually they were just being polite.
Once they had the bulk of the snow off, Annie opened up the driver’s side door, slipped into the seat, and turned the key. Nothing. She felt an immediate rage welling inside of her, seeping out of her through steamy breath. Of course, her car was dead. She was ready to blame everything on Garrett again, the bastard bean counter without any respect for his peers. The discourteous cunt. It was all his fault, every last bit of it.
She looked up at the interior light, which she now realized she had left on. When she first arrived in the morning, it was dark outside. She was looking for a bit of peppermint gum in her purse, which she found. The traitorous nub of gum had lasted about a half an hour in terms of flavor, but the light had stayed on all damn day. If she had stolen away in the afternoon, like the rest of her presumably warm co-workers, she’d be home. After a ten-hour day, there was little hope for even a twinge of battery power.
Tony leaned in towards Annie, which was way too close for her comfort. She could see the plumes of her breath, encircling her head as he spoke. “I can stay with you. We’ll call a tow truck and see if we can get you a jump.”
“They’ll have bigger things to take care of in weather like this,” Annie replied.
“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to camp out overnight, you and I. We can have a pajama party,” stated Tony. She could feel him leering at her. There was that piggish demeanor again, that rapist wit.
Annie snapped out of her deep daze, bringing her mind back to the here and now, feeling the nastiness of the wind ripping into her from what seemed like all directions. She couldn’t feel her face, even with several layers of fabric covering her. It was starting to feel more and more like The Purple Cat would be a good stopping point after all.
She turned a bit, looking back towards the building they came from. It was much smaller now, barely visible through the churning tornadoes of snow that covered the distance. Tony made significant progress while she was daydreaming.
A hopefulness sprung up in her at the thought that they hadn’t sunk. Yet. They hadn’t died. Yet.
Annie started to think about Paulie again, about how nice it would be to cuddle him close, both for the physical warmth and affection he could provide her. The image felt like an ungraspable dream. It seemed like—
She nearly choked on the air escaping her throat.
A dirty blonde tangle of hair, unwrapped from its ponytail, poked up through the fluffy, swirling snow. The wind caught up the stiffened locks, whirling them wildly. The long strands reached towards the sky like thin fingers, separating and rejoining, finally lying flat on the surface, then whipping again. It reminded Annie of those inflatable characters that used car lots always put out front, filling with air when a gust of wind caught it, then sputtering and deflating when the air released.
“Oh, my God,” Annie said, clutching her eyes shut again. Maybe this was the real reason he warned her to close her eyes.
She knew that Tony could see the hair as well, as he eased off on the ski poles for a moment, then started in again, this time with a more forceful stroke, presumably to distance them from the sight.
He shoved them by at only a three or four-foot distance from Winnie’s only uncovered body part.