He retrieved a lozenge, taking his time to unwrap it while staring at my screen.
Roger had a process. I knew this. Everyone knew this. Stephanie, the features editor and the woman I vaguely wanted to hit with my car, knew this too and was watching the process of Roger putting the lozenge in his mouth, pinching his cheeks together as he sucked on it.
If Roger didn’t like the story, the crunch of the lozenge against his teeth would be the only thing communicating this. It would echo through the busy newsroom as the harsh sound of failure.
That meant a complete rewrite.
Silence followed by a borderline disturbing heavy swallow of a half-sucked lozenge meant work had to be done to make it publishable.
A stiff nod meant passable.
There had been a handful of actual verbal responses, but they were not for someone who spent her time writing about shoes. Mario, from sports, of all places, got a smile and a clap on the back for uncovering a famous football player who was not only cheating on his pregnant wife but taking steroids like candy.
I knew Stephanie was hoping for the crunch.
We had not become swift friends. In fact, I really hadn’t become swift friends with anyone apart from Carrie, my copy editor. She braved the resting bitch face and demanded we go out for drinks because “someone with that good of a taste in shoes can’t be someone I’d ever hate.” She was married, happily so, and she had twelve-year-old kid who was “the spawn of the Devil.” She was crazy too.
Although I had conversed and had drinks with most other people at the office, I mostly kept to myself. Well, as much as I could. It was literally my job to mingle and make connections and go to ‘the hottest’ parties.
Luckily, Jon, my roommate, who I’d gone to college with, was all about the hottest party. Well, any party.
He was my perfect plus one: crude, more judgmental than Anna Wintour and gayer than Elton John.
All the things you want in a friend, especially when your best friend was MIA for nigh on six months, and the rest of your girls were living back in your hometown.
Stephanie was not girlfriend material. She was one of those women who smiled to your face while underneath that mask she scowled and plotted your demise.
She was watching Roger with eyes slathered in too much shadow and not an ounce of genuineness.
I didn’t waste my time focusing on her, careful to keep my expression even and on Roger.
His eyes moved from the screen to me. They glowed with something that made a small smile tease at the side of my mouth.
The corner of his mouth tipped up.
“Send that to Carrie. Right now. We’ll make primetime at this rate. You’re good at shoes and bags, Walker.” He gave me a pointed look that was swimming with something that rather looked like pride. “You’re better at murder and blood.”
On that, he turned on his cheap and vaguely offensive shoe and left.
Without his considerable expanse, I was able to get the most glorious view of Stephanie’s pinched face before she quickly turned it into a plastic smile, hampered by Botox and collagen.
“Wow, Lucy. Good on you. You must be so proud. You know, it’s a shame that someone had to die for this, though. You didn’t murder her for the story, did you?” she asked, her voice saccharine sweet and ending with a laugh that was worse than any fingers on a chalkboard.
I pushed my chair back to my desk, clicking to send my story to Carrie. After a much longer than normal silence between a barb like that and response, I turned to glance at Stephanie. “Of course, I didn’t kill her for a story,” I replied evenly. “I’m more than capable of finding stories without resorting to murder. I only kill people who do things like piss me off or stab me in the back.” I gave her a faker-than-her-Rolex smile and stood, bending to retrieve my bag—fabulous and not fake at all.
I treated her gaping and pale face as the victory that it was and then turned to leave the office behind in the direction of the place where I lived—and more importantly where my wine lived.
“Yes. Of course,” I muttered to myself as I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building in West Hollywood to see a large truck parked right beside my designated spot.
I wondered how he knew that was my spot. Then I remembered he owned a security company.
Irritation bloomed in the bottom of my stomach.
Then traveled all the way up to my face, which I was more than sure was pinched into my number one bitch stare underneath the huge aviator sunglasses I reserved for hangovers and bad moods.
Finding a dead body and then running into the ex who broke your heart filled the quota for a bad mood.