The Design(14)

“This will be your team, Cammie,” Beatrice said with a distracted smile before wandering off and leaving me with my new tablemates. The man sitting across from the empty desk smiled up at me. His wild red beard was so outgrown that it nearly covered his neck.

He shot his hand out and smiled wider.

“I’m Peter, the person you’ll be staring at for the foreseeable future.” His tone was playful and I found myself smiling for the first time since walking into the office that morning.

Sitting next to Peter, diagonal from my desk, was a rail thin man with a terrible comb over—most of his balding head was visible through his stringy black hair. His mustard yellow shirt assaulted my eyes and he didn’t even bother glancing up from his work.

“That’s Mark,” Peter filled in with an apologetic smile.

I nodded and turned my gaze to the final man, and then I paled. It was the rude man from other morning, the one who’d bumped into me on the sidewalk and then kept right on walking as I crawled around to pick up my spilled papers. What were the odds?

When he turned to look up at me, I expected some sign of recognition, but instead I was on the receiving end of a bored glance.

“I’m Alan, the senior associate assigned to you. I supervise you, Peter, and Mark. I don’t exactly have time to train you, but you have an education, so I expect you to keep up. We’re finishing up the final stages of a residential project and then we’ll begin designs for a competition the firm will be entering in a few weeks.”

After saying his name, he’d turned back to flip through papers on his desk, licking his thumb and using it to pry the papers away from one another.

“What’d you say your name was?” he asked, opening a drawer on his desk and pulling out a straight edge.

“Cammie,” I answered, glancing over to Peter to see what he thought of Alan. He shrugged and gave me a half frown.

“Candy, I need you to stop hovering over my desk. Either take your seat or move somewhere else,” Alan snapped at me.

I didn’t even think. I turned back and corrected him. “My name is Cammie. Not Candy.”

Without a word, he picked up his phone and dialed out, continuing to flip through papers.

How could someone be so rude?

“Cammie, how about I show you where the coffeemaker is?” Peter asked, smoothing a hand over his red beard.

He tilted his head toward the kitchen and stood and I followed after him. It’s not like I had a choice. I could have either gone with Peter to the kitchen or stared at Mark’s comb over while Alan shot me death glares.

In the kitchen, Peter turned on the company’s industrial-sized coffeemaker and then he held up two different flavor pouches. “Do you prefer ‘French Vanilla’ or ‘My New Boss Is a Giant Asshole’?”

His joke caught me so off guard that I couldn’t contain my laughter. Peter smiled and held up the two flavors. “Just kidding, French Vanilla is really your only choice. I took the last of the ‘Donut Shop’ flavor earlier this week.”

“Thanks. French Vanilla is fine.”

He nodded and dropped the pouch in before pressing start.

In that moment I decided Peter was someone I could trust. Also, I just really wanted to tell someone about my incident with Alan.

“I’ve actually kind of met Alan before. The other day, before my interview, Alan bumped into me down on the sidewalk and I fell and ripped my tights. I had to crawl around to pick up all of my stuff, all while he yelled at me for being in the way. But I don’t even think he recognized me this morning.”

Peter didn’t seem surprised by my confession.

“When I started here last year, Mark wouldn’t talk to me and Alan made me nearly cry every day.” He paused and lowered his voice for the next part. “A lot of us think he killed a temp once.”

“What?! Are you serious?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly. I think the guy just found permanent work elsewhere. He sent me a LinkedIn request last week. The point is, at the time it seemed equally plausible that Alan could have offed him.

“So did it get better?” I asked, just as the machine finished sputtering out the last of my coffee.

“I hate to say it, but not really,” Peter said with a sad smile. “The work is great, but Mark still rarely speaks. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of social anxiety disorder or something. And Alan is, well… it’s no mistake that his name is so close to “anal”. He’s meticulous and rude, so I just keep my head down and do my work.”

I nodded. “Well, now I’m here, so you don’t have to keep your head down,” I said with a smile. Peter wasn’t the type of person I usually found myself around. His beard was awesome, but probably warned most people away from him. He was tall and had the build of a rugby player, but as I followed him back to our desks, I found myself relieved to have him at my desk cluster on my first day.

However, as soon as we arrived back at our seats, my optimism was squashed.

“First rule, Candy,” Alan began, “when you get up and make yourself a cup of coffee, you bring me back a cup as well.”

Peter coughed under his breath and I tried to fight back the urge to dump my coffee out onto Alan’s hideous green shirt.

Dump it on him. Do it. Do it.

I sighed and shoved down my inner devil. There’d be plenty of time to dump coffee on Alan.