What Stays in Vegas

Copyrigh
t
2011 by Beth Labonte
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or 
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First Edition (May 2011)
Cover Art: www.misketch.com
Cover Design:  Kevin Labonte

www.secretary4life.com

I peeled my eyes away from the rain coming
down in sheets across my windshield and glanced at the clock on the dashboard.  2:57 p.m.

"There's no way," I said out loud.  "There’s no
effing
- ahh!" 

A Hummer-driving maniac came out of nowhere and narrowly missed my left fender as they cut into the lane in front of me.

"Jerk!" I yelled.  "The grocery store gonna close soon?"

  I took a deep breath and with one hand reached over to reposition the box of engineering plans sitting on my passenger seat.  This was total insanity. 

Not only was this one of the worst rain storms that I've ever driven through in my life, but I also had a sore throat that every time I swallowed felt like Johnny Depp was swashbuckling his way out of my epiglottis.

The afternoon had started off relatively okay.  I had just settled in at my desk with a nice hot cup of tea with honey, when the annoying little leprechaun's footsteps came to a halt outside my cubicle.  Apparently there was a life or death situation involving these plans getting up to Dover, New Hampshire before the town hall closed at 3:30 p.m.   Otherwise, another one of our precious Jiggly Kitty strip joints might not get built. 

No, that's not true.  It would still get built, it just might be delayed a couple of months.  And in the larger scheme of things, it is much better to risk your administrative assistant's life than to cost your creepy client a few months income.  Besides, it was 1:53 p.m. when I left, which, according to the leprechaun, is plenty of time to get somewhere in the middle of a typhoon.  Especially when you're driving 30 mph on the highway.

My posture had deteriorated into that of an eighty-five year old nursing home patient.  My back was tense and my fingers, the ones that hadn't loosened their grip on the steering wheel in over an hour, were beginning to cramp up.  And yet throughout all of this, there were still people driving like absolute lunatics. 

Just because they drive these monstrous vehicles -

The sound of my ringing cell phone jolted me from my internal rant.

Keith Burns.
  The leprechaun.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a racist towards the Irish or anything.  I don't even know if Keith is Irish.  I'm sure as
hell not involved enough in his personal life to know that kind of information.  I call him a leprechaun simply because he is a bouncy, spritely, little thing with way too much enthusiasm for civil engineering.  If there were ever anybody cut out for scampering around at the end of rainbows, it was this guy.

"
Hello?" I said, trying to keep the car steady while holding my cell.

"Tessa, hey," said Keith.  I could barely hear him over the rain.  "Whereabouts are you?"

Whereabouts am I?  On a fucking merry-go-round.  Where do you think I am?

"Just outside Lowell," I said instead, glancing at a road sign.  "About a half hour from Dover, why?" 

"Ok, cool.  Look, I just got a call from the client and we don't need those plans delivered after all.  So you can just go ahead and come back to the office."

As his words sank in, so did my car.  I'd suddenly become submerged by some kind of tidal wave, and my wipers were struggling to keep up.

Oh God, I'm actually going to die while on the phone with the leprechaun.

For a split second I couldn't see a thing.  For a split second I was lost in a sea of dirty flood water and anger.  Rising anger.

"Oh," I said.  "Um, you realize that I've been driving for an hour in some pretty bad weather, right?"  I forced a laugh that felt like sandpaper in my throat. 

"Yeah, cool," he said, not listening to me.  "So just head on back.  I've got a few proposals for you to type up.  Tessa?  You there?"

Proposals?  But it's already 3:00 p.m.  By the time I get back...  

"Yeah, I'm here.  The rain is just really ba - "

"Hello?"

"YES!  I'm here!  I just have a pretty sore - "

"Tessa?"

"I FEEL LIKE SHIT, OK?!"   I used my throat's last ounce of strength to get my point across.  But there was nothing but dead air at the other end - which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing.  Still, I whipped my cell phone onto the floorboard and violently pulled off at the next exit. 

I came to a stop at the bottom of the ramp and glanced into my rearview mirror just in time to watch myself get rear-ended by an olive green Hummer.  My airbag punched me in the face, just as the back window of my Jeep popped open and icy pellets of hail gusted in- soaking me, soaking the precious plans, soaking everything.  

Cursing the world, I pulled to the side of the road to exchange insurance information.  None of this should have surprised me though.  This day just about summed up my life. 

No wonder I wanted out.

I’ve wanted out since day one.  Not just day one of this job, but day one of every crappy job that has come before it.  Pretty much ever since the day I unintentionally landed myself a career as an administrative “professional.”  Call me what you like, what I really am is a glorified secretary. 

I’ve built up a tolerance to it, for the most part.  I’ve come to tolerate the endless filing, the constant interruptions, the fact that there is a day in April dedicated to the appreciation of me.  You know you’re in a dead-end job when you get a holiday forcing people to appreciate you.  The obligatory flowers that turn up on our desks when the big day arrives are always nice.  Obligatory flowers are better than no flowers at all, though I’d  prefer the extra fifty bucks in my paycheck if I had a choice.   But yeah, I don’t have a choice.

My problem is not that I couldn’t continue to do this job day in and day out for the rest of my life.  I most certainly could.  I could do this job with my hands tied behind my back and my head in a paper bag.  Some Mondays I’ve been tempted to do this job with my head in a plastic bag.  But let’s not get morbid. 

My point is that I work in a nice office and get along with most of my coworkers.  I do not have to clean toilets, make change, or slice deli meats.  Many times I’m able to sneak an extra twenty minutes into my lunch hour.  My cubicle is spacious and I get two weeks for vacation.  There are some sickos out there who might even be envious. 

My problem lies in the fact that if I, Tessa Golden, were to suddenly find myself eighty years old, lying on my death bed and looking back upon my life, would I find anything there to be proud of?  Or would I see nothing but filing and typing and paper cuts?  What runs shivers down my spine is that even after I am gone, the filing will continue to pile up, and a new administrative assistant will be along to continue the cycle.  It will be as if I never existed. 

I will never have made my mark on the world.   The pointlessness of it all is not what dreams are made of.  It is certainly not what
my
dreams are made of.   Or
were
made of.  I’ve lost track these days.

One thing making it particularly hard to keep track of anything at the moment was Nick Trask - tall, dark, and dripping wet - smiling at me from the driver's seat of his pickup.  My Jeep ended up having to be towed, so I called Nick to come and get me.  He's my best friend from work, and before you make any assumptions about my feelings for him, let me just confirm that they are all correct. 

"Did Keith go home yet?" I asked.  I turned up the heat and blasted my face with the most wonderful feeling hot air. 

"Nah," said Nick.  "He was still bouncing around when I left.  We'll sneak you in the back.  You can hang out in my office until I finish up, then I'll take you home."

The rain was coming down just as bad as it had been before, but here in Nick's truck it wasn't scary or annoying at all.  It was kind of cozy.  I turned up the radio and sank back into my seat. 

Nick was single when we met during my early days at Flamhauser-Geist, and we had a good three years to fall madly in love with each other.  At least I held up my end of the bargain.  But for Nick, at least as far as I know, it never happened.  We've been to countless drunken Christmas parties together, movies, lunches - yet he never made a move.  At one point I began to wonder if he was gay, except for the fact that he dated plenty of other girls.  Perhaps he just valued our friendship more than I did, or maybe he simply found me repulsive. 

All I know is that one day, about a year ago, Nick returned from a Caribbean cruise a married man.  He had met this girl on board, a foreclosure attorney, and he married her as soon as the boat docked in Florida.  I cried myself to sleep for a week before I began to turn my anger at Nick into bitterness towards his new wife, Megan.  She was pretty, therefore she had to be a bitch.  She was super nice to everybody, therefore she was definitely a phony.  If he were married to
me
he would never work late.  She must treat him just terribly at home.  All those smiling photographs in his office?  Those were just for show. 

Okay, okay, I'm not that delusional.  I know that he's probably deliriously happy, goes home each night to his lingerie clad wife, and they make love on a bed of rose petals and puppies.  This is just how I cope.  The fact of the matter is that Nick Trask is smart, hot, and completely unattainable.  He is the bane of my office existence, and married or not, he is the only thing that gets me into the office each morning.

We pulled into the parking lot and went up the back staircase to Nick's office.  I sat down in his client chair while he grabbed a red pencil and went to work scribbling on some plans.  Nick is an engineer, but he's more "one of us" than "one of them."  By that I mean he can schmooze with  clients just as well as anyone in upper management, but he can also still appreciate a good article from
The Onion.
  His sense of humor has stayed in tact.

"So, how's married life going?" I asked, hoping to sound casual.

"It's, uh, you know, it's great," said Nick.  He grabbed an eraser out of his drawer and removed a few red scribbles without looking up at me.

"Great like the way I say filing is great?  Or great like 'Hey there's a baby on the way!'?"

Nick looked up at me silently for a second, then arched an eyebrow.  "There's definitely no baby on the way.  Not at this rate." 

Not at this rate?  What did that mean?  My vision of rose petals and puppies suddenly went poof.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"You know, we just don't have much - "

Just as I was about to hear potentially life-changing news about the love of my life's marital status, my stupid boss, Tom Skeeter, had to poke his head through the door.

"Tessa!  I thought I might find you here," said Tom.  "Would you mind swinging by my office when you get a second?"

“Sure," I said.   I was always swinging into people's offices.  One day I want to literally swing in from a chandelier, just for the hell of it.  I stood up to walk back with him, but by the time I got into the hallway he was already long gone.  Nobody at Flamhauser-Geist walked at normal speeds. 

"Be right back," I said to Nick.

As I walked into Tom’s office I saw that the rain had finally started to clear.  It was December and I should probably have just been grateful that it wasn't snowing.  Either way it was cold and disgusting outside.  If I didn’t have family here in Massachusetts I would have left for a warmer climate a long time ago.  Scraping my windshield each winter morning with ice crystals stinging my face and snow soaking into my heels is pretty much hell on earth, except that Hell is much warmer.  And certainly administrative assisting cannot possibly be as depressing if your office is overlooking West Palm Beach, rather than the gloriously scenic MBTA commuter rail tracks.