Wishing for Wonderful (Serendipity #3)(30)

Without looking up from the resume, he replied, “Just Morrissey, no mister, no sir.” After almost five minutes of what to Lindsay felt like the silence of rejection, he looked up.

“Good resume,” he said. “I like that you went to Rutgers. Great school.” He explained that the agency had three new clients coming on board as of January fifteenth, and the position wouldn’t be funded until the first of next year.

“So if you are the candidate selected for the job, you wouldn’t start until January third,” he said. “Would you be okay with that?”

“Yes…” Lindsay started to say “sir” but caught herself in the nick of time. “Yes, I would.”

Morrissey went on to explain the copywriter hired would be working on two of the new accounts—a dog food manufacturer and a dinnerware company—but he couldn’t as yet divulge the names. Although she’d never given dinnerware a second thought, she claimed to be interested in both and told how she was currently in the process of adopting a rescue dog.

“Good,” Morrissey said. “That’s good.” He scribbled something in the margin of her resume then stood. “I’ve got several other candidates to see, but I’ll get back to you within the next two weeks.”

When Lindsay left the building, she sat in her car for almost ten minutes before she switched the ignition on. She was weighing the pros and cons of her interview. He seemed to like her; that was a plus. She’d gone to Rutgers; that was another plus. He’d liked her resume, and that was definitely a plus. The possibility that he might call some of the companies and ask if she’d done those things was a very big minus, as was the fact that he was seeing other candidates.

Lindsay drove home with uncertainty riding on her shoulders.





Cupid

A Change of Plans





The day after Lindsay’s interview, she took to carrying her cell phone around in her pocket. It went to the bathroom with her, it sat on the dinner table and although there was not even the slightest chance Jack Morrissey would call in the middle of the night, she slept with it held in her hand. She did that for seven days. Then on the eighth day she mistakenly left it on the breakfast table when she went upstairs to brush her teeth.

When the phone rang, Eleanor looked at it and hesitated. Her relationship with Lindsay was tenuous at best, so she had to wonder which would be the lesser of evils: answering the phone or not. Answering could be viewed as an invasion of privacy, but she knew Lindsay had been nervously awaiting the call.

The phone rang a second time.

There was a possibility that she could grab the phone, run up the stairs and hand it to Lindsay before it stopped ringing, but that likelihood was slim. The arthritis in her knee forced her to take the stairs one at a time, slowly.

The phone rang a third time. It was now or never; she had to make a decision and she had to make it fast. On the fourth ring Eleanor nervously lifted the phone from the table, pressed her finger to the call icon and said, “Hello.”

“Lindsay Gray?” the caller asked.

“No,” she answered, “but please hold on, and I’ll get Lindsay.”

With the phone in her hand, Eleanor climbed the stairs as fast as her knee would allow and then rapped on the bathroom door. Lindsay knew who it was by the soft tap-tap-tap. When her father rapped on the door it was a loud knuckle knock. Eleanor’s was soft like a kitten scratching to come in.

“I’m busy,” Lindsay garbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.

“Your phone rang, and I thought you might be waiting for this call,” Eleanor said.

Lindsay’s hands dropped to her pockets. She felt for the cell phone, but it wasn’t there. Spitting a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and not bothering to rinse, Lindsay opened the door and snatched the phone from Eleanor’s hand.

“This is Lindsay Gray,” she said in a somewhat gritty voice.

“Morrissey here.” Using an efficiency of words, Jack Morrissey told Lindsay she had gotten the job. He said nothing about checking her references but did mention that one of Rutgers’ new recruits had pulled a tendon.

“Out for at least a month,” he said. He explained that Lindsay was to report to the personnel department to fill out the insurance forms at nine o’clock on January third. After that he wished her a Merry Christmas, said goodbye, and hung up.

When the called clicked off Lindsay, ignoring the toothpaste grit stuck to her lips, kissed Eleanor’s cheek.

“I got it!” she sang out. “I got the job, I got the job!” She grabbed Eleanor’s hands and danced her around until she remembered she wasn’t all that fond of the woman. Lindsay stopped suddenly and said, “I’m sorry. I guess hearing that I’d got the job made me so excited.”

Eleanor smiled. “That’s quite all right, I rather enjoyed it myself.” The arthritic knee that had been troubling her for almost two weeks seemed somehow better.





That evening Lindsay’s new job was the main topic of conversation at the dinner table. When she spoke of it her eyes twinkled. She told of the plush carpet, the numerous cubicles, the art decorating the walls. It seemed that nothing in the Genius Advertising office had missed Lindsay’s notice.

“The only thing is,” she said, “I don’t start until January third, so I’ve three whole months to hang around and do nothing.”