by ROCFanKat

Disclaimers & E-Mail: See Chapter 1.

•••

Monday morning, I wore the new sunglasses into the building. Cassie had found them at a kiosk at the mall and insisted that I buy them, which settled that. They were the wraparound kind, very fast-looking, like something Italian race-car drivers would wear, and they looked indescribably silly on me. But I wasn't up to trafficking with co-workers at the moment, and the sunglasses at least made eye contact impossible.

More to the point, Cassie and I had spent the night apart, to make sure that we both got our space. It was the reasonable thing to do; it was the mature thing to do; it was the reason why I was in such a bad mood. Without a word to man, woman, or beast, I swept through the lobby, took the stairs, and made straight for my office. The idea was to not have to talk to anyone until the first meeting, and maybe not ever again. Unfortunately, Jack's path crossed mine.

He took in the dark clothes, the black raincoat, and the black shades, and laughed. "Which one are you? Heckle or Jekkyl?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Crows don't wear sunglasses."

"Well, I doubt they'd wear those. But you're too big for a crow anyway. Maybe you're really a raven."

Everything stopped, including time. I'd had that very thought on that hot, hungover morning in July when the world stopped making sense. There'd been a blood-red sky, with three black birds circling in it, and then Monica had landed. I hadn't known that yet, though. She'd been just a shadow in the dark, a flash of red in the rear-view mirror, a whisper in the night...

Just like now. This was just like how it had started.

"Kerry?"

Startled, I jumped a little. "Sorry. What were you saying?"

"Forget it. It was a bird joke. You feeling OK?"

"You really want an answer?"

He shook his head. "Not today. Listen, I was looking for you anyway. I need to call a standup with your team in about an hour. We've got a new hire. She's going to sit in with us on the Tom's meeting, and I thought you should all do a meet-and-greet first."

The Tom's meeting. Damn, I'd forgotten about it. "Fine. But do I have to be at the meeting? I've got another..."

"There might be videotape," he said, grinning.

I shoved him aside with my attaché, hard, and stalked on down the hall.

•••

There is no such thing as a normal ad agency, but J/J/G was insane even for that business. Take the concept of teams. We'd once worked pretty much according to Hoyle, in that a team was a copywriter and an artist. Period. But then Jenner had gone to one of those Outward Bound-type weekends for business owners, and it had warped him even further. He'd come back from the woods with a glorious vision of Community, in which the creative staff worked in brotherhood with the Philistines of the business department, so we'd wound up with these damn teams. If one of us had a meeting now, all of us had a meeting, unless we had a good excuse, like being dead.

No one had died lately, which was why I was standing in Jack's office that morning in communion with two copywriters, an art director, an account executive, and an account manager. At the moment, the account manager was secretly running a fingernail up and down my spine, and I was doing my best to look noncommittal.

Jack kept us waiting a while. When he finally showed, he was in high spirits, which always meant trouble. "My people. How good of you to come to me on such short notice. I want you all to meet someone. She's with Jenner right now, but she should be..." A soft knock interrupted him. "Yo!"

The door opened, and a beautiful woman walked in. She might have been a cover girl for one of the kinkier magazines that Kurt read: tall, thin, blonde, cruel, very minimally dressed. I was irresistibly reminded of a black-leather getup I'd seen on TV somewhere...and bit my lip hard to block the thought. Not my type, whatever that was; not only that, but the blonde on her probably wasn't real. Something about her coloring didn't go with the hair color.

Guiltily, I glanced at Heather, who was a slightly different shade of redhead this week. The girl changed hair color like it was underwear. She always went with red, but she'd gone from Rita Hayworth to Howdy Doody more than once, and for one terrible week last March, she'd even been magenta--a hairdressing accident, but still painful to witness.

"Everyone, this is Vanessa," Jack said. "No last name; she's been a model. Vanessa, this is everyone."

She smiled, or at least changed the position of her lips a bit. There was something unnervingly feline about her expression. "Charmed, I'm sure. Do they have names, Mr. Harper?"

"I think I'll let them tell you themselves. We'll go around the room, like small children. Who's first?"

Chip, always the gentleman, started. As he spoke, I turned to see what was wrong with Cassie, who'd stopped torturing me the moment Vanessa had walked in. She was staring at the woman as though she couldn't believe such things existed. When her turn came to introduce herself, she said only, "Cassandra Wolfe," and not very nicely, either.

Cassie was rude only to her friends, so her tone surprised me. To make up for it, I tried to look friendly. "Devlin Kerry. I'm associate creative direc..."

"...director in charge of sex. Yes, I know." The woman's smile shifted slightly, making her expression even more feline. "Mr. Jenner had a great deal to say about you."

I felt Cassie grab the back of my sweater--the one she'd bought me the day before. Around the room, everyone else got very busy coughing and shuffling their feet.

"Mr. Jenner is a creative man," I said carefully.

The woman held the smile, but didn't reply.

"I wonder, Jack," Cassie said, "whether you're going to let us in on what her job here is. Or did you want us to go around the room again and guess?"

Jack leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. "Well, we haven't quite decided that part. Jenner thinks we'll start her off as his special assistant. Send her to client meetings, have her report on how we're doing, let her find her own niche. He thinks she'll be a good fit for this team down the road, so we're starting her with you people today. Do what you can to make her feel at home."

"Happy to be of service," Troy told her, with his very best smile.

Her black eyes flickered over him with a trace of amusement and then settled on Cassie, for some reason. Sensing bad karma, I checked my watch. "We've got Tom Johnson in 5 minutes, Jack."

"I know. Somebody fetch him up from the lobby. They said he's been here for half an hour already."

Chip sighed. Trouble. "I'll go."

"I'll go with you," Vanessa said, unexpectedly.

The look on his face was the look of a man who'd won the lottery on Christmas morning. I didn't like it. Cassie grabbed my sweater again and whispered, "I'll talk to him."

"You and me both," I whispered back.

We all watched Chip hold the door open for her, and as they left, Kurt exhaled sharply. It was the first noise he'd made the whole time, except for introducing himself.

"Special assistant, is she?" he asked Jack.

"Very special." His grin grew wider, which might have been painful, considering that his split lip hadn't quite healed yet. "I know something about her that you don't."

"I'll bet," Heather all but spat.

I could bet, too, but didn't really want to know. "Which conference room for the meeting?"

"B," Jack said. "Strange that you're not more interested in our new employee, Kerry. I would have thought that you would be."

"Why?"

"Oh, no reason. No reason." He had always been a bad liar, and he knew I knew it, because he turned the grin up a notch. Then he clapped a hand to his lip. "Ow! Damn!"

"Get stitches, you nimrod," I told him, and left the room.

•••

"A fat man in a Santa suit, on a sleigh," Heather complained, as we went back to our offices after the meeting. "Dev, honestly, I can write something better than that."

"I know you can. But it's what the client wants."

"But it's stupid!"

"I know."

Troy snorted. "You think you got the short end? I've got to find a reindeer on two days' notice. And a damn hibachi. Where am I supposed to get a hibachi this time of year?"

I felt their pain. Three meetings with this man, and we'd finally caved and agreed to what he wanted: Santa, grilling Tom's cocktail sausages during a rest stop on Christmas Eve. Heather would have to write copy that explained this bizarre situation; Troy would have to work with live animals and artificial snow. They would both be extremely unhappy, which meant they'd be in and out of my office, which meant I would have to start locking my door again. At least we'd talked the client out of TV. There wasn't time now anyway, and print was bad enough.

"I've had those sausages," I remarked, trying for a little positive spin. "Tom's catered an Ad Club party last year. They're not bad."

"Maybe I'll write that they're made out of reindeer," Heather grumbled.

"All right, Ebenezer. Point taken." I smiled at Cassie, who'd been unusually quiet. "Just do your best. I'll see what I can do about a little extra bonus at the end of the year. God knows you've earned it."

She muttered something about blood money and went into her office, followed by Troy. No doubt they wanted to get started complaining about the project--a welcome sign of initiative on both their parts. Cassie and I continued on down the hall.

"Everything all right?" I asked.

"I don't know yet. What do you think of Vanessa?"

Was that all? Relieved, I pulled her over, out of traffic. "I think she's just a side effect Jenner's having from all that Viagra. And she's nowhere in your league."

"That's not it," she lied, "but thank you. What I meant was, do you trust her?"

"No. Something about her...something's not right."

"Exactly. I'm keeping an eye on her, just in case. I'll be keeping an eye on you, too."

I started laughing. "Cass, you're losing traction. She doesn't do a thing for me."

"I mean to keep it that way," she said grimly.

"Give me a little credit. I've got better taste than that. Wound up with you, didn't I?" I checked my watch again. "Look, I've got to hear audition tapes. How about lunch later?"

"Can't; I've got a client. After work?"

"Trainer at 6. Dinner? Say, 7:30?"

"Your place?"

"I'll order in," I promised. "I've got to go. Consider yourself kissed goodbye."

"Coward," she said, mussing my hair. Then she went her way, and I went mine. First, though, I watched her go. It was all right to do that now, and it was a nice sight.

•••

The day crawled. I kept busy, but my mind kept drifting, and always to things that a decent person doesn't think about at work. Everyone knew what was going on, and they went all out to encourage it. I was forever getting pulled over to hear X-rated jokes or learn techniques from male masters of the art (as if that information would help). Down in Video, where I'd gone to see the final cut of the Kester Mortuaries ad, J.B. insisted that I take his chair at the console. Then he reached over me to start the tape. It was, of course, the security-camera footage.

"Oops. Wrong button," he said, between snorts of laughter.

I finally retreated to my office, even though I knew Kurt would have less trouble finding me that way. When he walked in, I mentally drew my sword. Cut off the head, after all, and the body dies.

"Filthy day," he said casually, settling into my guest chair without an invitation. "Drizzle and gray as far as the eye can see. It's not good writing weather. I can't get motivated."

"And...?"

"Well, you're the boss. I thought maybe you knew some tricks that would motivate me."

"I filled out a request for termination for you this morning," I told him.

He froze in mid-smirk, one end of his walrus mustache drooping weirdly. "You what?"

"It's already attached to e-mail to Jenner. All I have to do is send."

"But you can't do that, Dev. Is this about that tape? C'mon, it was a joke. I do stuff like that all the time." With a visible jerk, he got the mustache straight again, but his color was still bad. "I thought we were friends. I thought you'd get over it."

"You're already working the angles," I said, with no particular expression. "You're thinking that this has to go through Jack, because I report to him, and you figure that Jack won't let me fire you. But you forget that Jack reports to Jenner."

Kurt considered that fact. "Jenner won't let you fire me either. He loved the tape. Hell, he was going to fire you Thursday night."

"You also forget why he didn't."

I sat back and watched him fumble with the puzzle pieces. There was no hurry; he wasn't dumb; he'd get it soon enough.

"No," he finally said.

"Cassie trumps you, boy. Sex always wins. You thought you knew that, didn't you?"

"But she won't sleep with him. Especially not if she's g..."

"There's a backup card, too. That tape business might be illegal. Everyone in that room heard Jenner say it was your idea, so the average juror..."

He was on his feet now, in a full-tilt panic. "Dev, I beg you not to do this. I've got a wife. We're going to have a baby...someday. Where would I find another job?"

"There are other ad agencies in town."

"But they're not like this one."

"No. They're normal. Any other agency would have fired you two years ago."

Kurt just stared. It was true; everyone knew it, including him.

"I'm sorry, Dev," he said.

"Are you?"

"I didn't know you'd take it this way. It just didn't seem like that big a deal. I wasn't out to get you."

"Of course you are. But let's not talk about me right now. Let's talk about Cassie."

That caught him way off guard. "Cassie?"

"Playing games with me is bad, Kurt. I'm your boss, so that was way beyond stupid. But playing games with her is unforgivable. You owe her an apology."

"All right. OK. I can do that. I owe her."

"A public apology," I continued. "In front of as many people as you can round up."

"OK. Sure. No problem."

"Tomorrow would be good."

"Tomorrow? But I've got those Hairport auditions tomorrow, with all the models. You prom..." He checked my expression, and almost bit his tongue in half. "Tomorrow. You got it. I'll get right on it."

"Another thing."

"Anything, Dev. What can I do?"

"You owe Cassie some money. She would've bet on us, too."

Kurt collapsed into the guest chair bonelessly. My guess was that sudden release of tension--any kind of tension--was too much for him.

"No more pools, Kurt."

He shook his head.

"No more jokes."

"Absolutely not," he agreed. "Never again. Thank you, Dev. I mean it. Thank you. I promise I'll..."

"One more thing."

"Name it. Shoot."

"What's the story with this Vanessa?"

It had been the right question, because some of the tension snapped back. "I don't know any story. What do you mean?"

"Attached to e-mail," I prompted. "One click, and..."

"She's bi."

"Bi what? Biracial? Bipolar? Bituminous?"

"Ha ha. Bisexual."

"There's more to it than that," I said.

"I don't know all of it. Honest. I think it's just coincidence. Jenner met her at some club over the weekend."

"And that's why Jack thought I would be interested in her?"

All the tension was back now. He squirmed in the chair as though I'd just switched on the current.

"Kurt?"

"That's all I know. Really, Dev. If something's up, I honestly don't know what it is."

It was a lie, of course, but I'd already had enough fun with him for one day. "You'll let me know the minute you find out. Don't try to pretend that you won't."

"Sure thing. Right away. I swear."

"Now get out of here before I change my mind."

It was all Kurt could do not to sprint to the door. When he got there, though, he paused. "Boss?"

"Subordinate?"

"Thanks."

"Remember this," I told him. "Close the door behind you."

He did. Then it was my turn to collapse. There was a request-for-termination form somewhere on the J/J/G server, and I'd have to find it, in case somebody asked, but right now, I just wanted to enjoy the victory.

The better to enjoy it, I put the Top Gun soundtrack in the Discman and cranked up the volume--another guilty pleasure that was none of anyone's business. Not even Cassie knew I had this CD.

Halfway through "Danger Zone," I felt someone walk in, and swiveled around to see who the problem was now.

She leaned over the desk to lift off my headphones, a mocking little smile on her lips.

"Hello, Devlin," Monica said.

•••

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 6