Chapter 4
If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well
How many times had she been lectured over the years by her parents and teachers with those words? Schoolwork, chores, a performance in the school play…Her mother would flap her hands and pace, repeatedly asking if she was ready for her quiz, knew her lines in the play, had checked over her choir robe.If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, dear!Was it any wonder that she’d taken it to heart?
It had been more than three weeks since she’d completed training at Morning Glory Farm and each day she strove to do her job well—a metric that was easily measured in old-fashioned milk bottles, filled to the brim.A plentiful, speedy collectionhad become her mantra, and each day she sought to increase her bottle count from the day before, besting her personal record, week over week.
When she learned about the cash bonus to the most productive milking associate, awarded on a monthly basis, her competitive streak flared to life, making the calculations on how she’d be able to double her credit card payments with the winnings and vowing to take the top prize at least once. She’d encountered several of the Good Little Cows at that point, had become proficient at getting the Clockwatchers out the door quickly, and laughed with decreasing awkwardness as the predictable jokes and casual banter of the Earners. Her tips were modest but appreciated, a nice little bonus that she saved for groceries, allowing her paychecks to be reserved for rent and bills. There’d been no repeat of the heat that had gripped her after her first solo run, not so much as a shiver of desire as she worked on client after client, bull after bull, every day.That probably happens to everyone at first.
The daily commute had proved not to be so terrible, and Cambric Creek beckoned her with its odd little shops and plethora of restaurants, rolling park and quaint little bandstand. The previous week she’d stopped at a little green market set up in the corner of the big park she drove past, stocking up on some fresh fruit and vegetables for the weekend, ecstatic that she was able to treat herself to such a luxury. She had seen sleek-feathered harpies and towering lizardmen, bulging with muscles; shaggy-haired centaurs and more goblins and trolls than she could count, and she was busting to learn about each of them—their food, their cultures, how everyone seemed to get along so seamlessly in the vibrant little community. She was settling in, Violet thought happily.See? This job really was a lifeline.She should have known then that her blind optimism was steering her towards an unseen cliff.
“Hold on, Violet! This one’s yours . . .”
She turned with a furrowed brow as Magda held out an impatient hand, motioning to her stack of clipboards. The big orc was not her favorite co-worker. Brusque and somewhat impatient, Magda was in charge of organizing each day’s schedule: ensuring each appointment slot had a technician assigned, that there was room on the schedule for the occasional walk-in, rotating technicians around the rooms in a way that gave the janitorial department plenty of time to stay on top of cleanliness and the set-up team adequate time to have the rooms ready for use. Violet recognized it was an important job and likely a stressful one, considering all the moving pieces involved, but the beetle-woman who worked aside Magda in the same capacity managed to be friendly.
The morning had already been harried. She’d been trying a new method of washing her dark brown curls, which entailed not washing them at all. All of the websites said a gentle conditioning was all she needed, that her hair would thank her and she’d reap the benefit of soft, bouncy ringlets. Violet didn’t know how long it took to get to the soft and bouncy stage, but as she’d stared at herself in the mirror that morning: too-pale from never getting out of her apartment, slightly pear-shaped, the curls framing her face looking neither soft nor bouncy and an oily sheen at the top of her head, she determined that she seemed to be indefinitely trapped in the greasy bird’s nest phase, one which was not discussed on the websites, and she couldn’t abide leaving the house for one more day with an itchy, oily scalp.
The unplanned-for shower had set her back, forced to forgo breakfast as she hurried out the door, her wet curls still bound in the sodden t-shirt she used to dry them, arriving at the farm with only a few minutes to pull on a set of lavender scrubs and grab her files. She could still feel damp hair clinging to the back of her neck, as she returned to where Magda stood, wondering if the file being added was one of the Good Little Cows.That’s probably what she’s doing, adding one to your stack, and you won’t even have time to change scrubs.Violet watched in confusion as the stern-voiced orc shuffled through the clipboards she’d handed back, squinting at the files before pulling one out, replacing it with one that bore a purple sticker on the side of the client label.
“Koveh! Take this one.”
The nervous young man that had been in her training class turned in panic as Magda barked, quickly catching the clipboard she launched at him as if it were a shot put challenge, hunching as he did so to keep his own files from dropping, scampering out of the prep room as soon as he recovered his footing.
“What–what is this?”
“A request.” The orc wrinkled her nose, as if Violet’s question was particularly stupid, despite the fact that she was only learning about requests at that very moment. “You need to check for those before you just take your stack, you know, that could have screwed up the schedule for the whole day if I didn’t catch it.”
“That’s not her job, Magda,” Kirime cut in, appearing from the locker room doorway. “That’s not any of our jobs. That’syourjob.Youdidn’t catch the request. What you meant to say was ‘sorry I missed this, I’ll make sure to check the files over more completely!’”
Magda scowled, opening her mouth to reply, but Kirime had already linked her slender arm with Violet’s, turning them out the door before the orc could fully draw breath.
“She’s so full of it,” the black-eyed girl said cheerfully, once they’d turned down the cool blue hallway. “Don’t let her boss you around or blame you for stuff like that. Organizing the schedule isn’t our job and she knows it.”
“What–what does a request mean?”
Kirime shrugged, turning to go up a separate corridor with her own armload of files. “It means a client put in a request at reception. A request is just a request, it’s not a guarantee. You won’t get them very often, most clients don’t even think of doing so. They don’t know when we work and that information isn’t divulged by the desk, so it’s a roll of the dice for them, but they were happy enough with you that they asked!” She beamed, antennae twitching beneath her cap. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to change your schedule or anything. If you happen to be working when they come in, the request is honored. Otherwise,” she shrugged, making a ‘they get what they get’ motion. “If they go through the trouble of putting in a request they usually tip well, so that’s something to look forward to at least!”
Violet forced her lips into a smile, attempting to disguise the spike of nerves she felt at the revelation and the way her stomach flipped. There were more than a dozen clients who could have been responsible for a request, she told herself, any number of bulls who might have been satisfied enough with her clumsy, novice moves . . . but as they turned up their separate hallways lined with doors leading to the milking room floors, the apprehension within her grew, a wave of anxiety lapping at her heart.
“Have a good morning, Violet! Maybe we can grab coffee later!”
Kirime’s parting was bright and Violet waved, hoping the antennaed girl’s words would be prophetic as she tamped back the anxiousness she felt over that ominous purple sticker, but the already rushed morning proved to be anything but good.
Her first appointment of the day had been one of the Earners, straightforward and easy, but the second appointment was not. She had hooked the collection tanks into place more times than she could count at that point, and had mastered the twist-and-click motion needed to lock the heavy cylinders into the base, but as she stood beneath the upholstered bench, the minotaur waiting above, she could not make the tank cooperate. The minutes seemed to tick by as she struggled, the threading on the tank refusing to find purchase, her face heating.Don’t cry. Do NOT cry. If you cry, you’ll never be able to show your face here again.
“Does it need to go counter-clockwise?” he called out, leaning over the edge of the bench to peer down where she struggled. “You probably need to go in at an angle, sweetheart.”
“I am,” she gritted, not needing the extra sugar–baby–sweetheart bullsplaining that day. Turning with a grunt of her own, Violet pulled a fresh tank from the rack, holding her breath as she tilted it into place . . . feeling it click in immediately. “There we go,” she said weakly, attempting to channel some of Kirimie’s effortless cheer and failing utterly. “Sorry about the hold-up, we can get started whenever you’re ready!”
The incident seemed to have set her up for a free fall of bad luck the rest of the day. The bottle label was missing from the second appointment’s clipboard, something she should have caught at the beginning of the session,wouldhave caught had she not been running late from the disastrous first appointment. SomethingMagdashould have caught, she thought furiously, racing to the intake desk to retrieve the missing label once the minotaur had left, running back to the collection room to affix it to the bottle before jogging to her next appointment. The only constant had been the friendly understanding from the endless line of bull men. The minotaurs waved off her tardiness, assured her she was doing fine, that bad days happened. It had lifted her spirits, distracting from the bad day until the purple sticker on the next clipboard, her second last of the day, brought her nerves back to crash around her like a wave breaking on a rocky shore.
She recognized his broad back immediately.
The dress shirt he wore had a subtle mint striping, setting off the russet highlights in his messy hair, which still fell into his face, as it had that first day. He’d not yet removed his pants, giving her a view of the way the fabric strained around his bulging thighs and well-rounded backside, thin tail swishing as he undid his fly, pausing when he turned to face her.
“How are you today?”
She’d not had a chance to appreciate his voice on that first day, as nervous as she’d been, but now the baritone resonance of it made her quake, still on that unsteady shore, waves of anxiety forming foaming white caps, the crash of which would certainly send her off her feet. There was a sharp edge of control in that voice, present even in the benign greeting, as though he weren’t so much inquiring into her day as he was demanding she give him a report.