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

up with a girl wearing fairy wings. I wasn't sure if it was the same Miss Airy Fairy I'd
seen the day before or if I was wrong about those things not being a fashion trend.
The elf and the fairy gave each other an enthusiastic kiss. Nobody else in the park
seemed to notice them.

Then I wondered what I found so weird about the situation. It wasn't like there really
was a roller-skating elf kissing a fairy, given that neither elves nor fairies actually
existed. It was just two people in costume, and that shouldn't faze me at all. I'd
known people in college who'd gone to class for weeks in their live-action
role-playing game costumes when they were in the middle of a major campaign, and
that wasn't even in the weirdness of New York.

I turned my head and noticed a man in silver skin paint and a metallic jumpsuit doing
robot mime for a crowd of tourists. I didn't think that was particularly strange, so
why did all this other stuff bother me so much? I guess I wasn't as sophisticated as I
wanted to be.

With a sigh, I shook the crumbs out of my sandwich bag, folded it up, and put it
back in my paper lunch sack, which I then folded neatly and stuck in my purse. I
dropped my apple core in a garbage can as I passed it and headed back to my office
with a heavy heart. Every time I went out for lunch, it grew more and more difficult
to force myself back inside. That was yet another reason I usually ate at my desk.

Mimi must not have found a group to go out to lunch with, for she was already back
in the office when I returned. "Where have you been?" she shrieked, loud enough for
the whole floor to hear. Dogs in Battery Park City whimpered and put their paws
over their ears.

"At lunch," I said as calmly as I could. Getting mad back at Mimi only escalated the
situation.

"I thought you said you weren't going to lunch," she accused.

"I said I'd brought my lunch. I just took it out of my office to eat it."

By now people were staring, heads peeping up over the top of cubicle walls like
prairie dogs peering out of their holes. "You should tell me when you're leaving the
office."

"You were at lunch." I frowned in fake concern and tried to keep my voice from
shaking. "Am I supposed to get permission to take a lunch break? I wasn't aware of
that policy."

There wasn't anything she could say to that, not with so many witnesses. She'd
never get a reprimand about daring to leave the office for lunch while she herself was
gone to stick. Unfortunately, she knew she was powerless, and she hated that more
than anything. "I needed the draft of that news release from PR before I could go to
the executive meeting," she snapped. "I tried calling you from the executive
conference room to bring it to me, but you weren't at your desk."