"Shanna Swendson - Enchanted, Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swendson Shanna)

another message from Rodney. I added his address to the spam filter and deleted the
message, unread, along with all the messages telling me I could lose weight, increase
my breast size, make money at home, grow a bigger penis, buy herbal Viagra without
a prescription, and get a lower mortgage rate. If all those messages were true,
everyone would be slim, attractive, wealthy love machines. Obviously, that wasn't
the case, so odds were, the job offer was no more real than all the other junk mail.

Mimi was her usual charming self when she arrived, meaning that she really was
acting charming, and anyone who hadn't seen her evil incarnation would think she
was just the coolest boss ever. Maybe ol' Werner had bought some of that herbal
Viagra stuff. She remained that way all morning, but the daggers made an appearance
at lunchtime.

I was sitting at my desk, trying to salvage one of her memos into something readable
by English speakers, when she stuck her head into my cube. "Are you going to
lunch?" she asked.

"Not right now, thanks," I said absently, still focusing on my computer screen. "I
need to finish this, and I brought a sandwich."

"You know, it wouldn't hurt you to be more sociable around the office. Eating lunch
at your desk every day isn't good for office unity. I'd prefer for you to go out with
the rest of the staff."

I had to bite my tongue to hold back all of the responses that popped into my head,
like telling her that she was the main problem with office unity and that I'd go out to
lunch with her at the pricey bistros she preferred when she paid me enough money to
be able to afford it. I certainly wasn't going to waste my precious entertainment
dollars on socializing with her.

Fortunately this was just one of her drive-by shootings and she didn't seem to want a
response. Before I could think of anything to say that wouldn't get me fired on the
spot, she was gone. Feeling lower than a snake's belly in a wheel rut, as my grandma
used to say, I went back to work on the memo. My one spark of rebellious revenge
was to leave a grammatical error. She'd never know the difference— obviously,
since she was the one who'd written it—and since it was her name on the memo,
anyone who did know the difference would get at least a whiff of incompetence from
her.

Then I got my sack lunch, changed into my walking shoes, and headed out to
Battery Park. There was something about looking at the water, with the Statue of
Liberty looming not too far in the distance, that helped calm me down.

Plenty of other people were out enjoying the gorgeous early fall day. There were a
couple of busloads of tourists toting cameras, a few classes of schoolkids waiting
for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and a lot of lower Manhattan business types
enjoying the same kind of office escape I was.

A guy roller-skated past me, and I wouldn't have given him a second thought if it
weren't for the elf ears he wore. I watched as he skated down the sidewalk and met