Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(18)

“I didn’t want you to come in because you don’t have an appointment,” the receptionist said.

“Yeah, but you prejudged me,” Lula said. “And anyways, I do have an appointment. I’m with Stephanie.”

“Who’s Stephanie?” Bogart asked.

“I’m Stephanie,” I told him.

“That’s right,” Lula said. “And I’m with her. We’re a team.”

“I don’t know anything about a team,” Bogart said. “I wasn’t told about this.”

“Well, lucky you,” Lula said. “You get the two of us. In my former profession as a ’ho it was considered a treat to get two women.”

Bogart’s ruddy cheeks had turned purple, and it seemed to me he was having difficulty breathing.

“Do you know this woman?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “Don’t know her.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Kathy said, herding Lula and me out of the office. “I’m sure Jim can find jobs for them.”

We followed Kathy down the hall, into the main production area and through a door marked “Ladies’ Locker Room.”

“You can have lockers 17 and 18,” Kathy said. “You can get suited up and leave your personal possessions in the lockers.”

“Say what?” Lula said.

“Everyone working on the floor needs to wear a sanitary cap, booties, and a jumpsuit,” Kathy said. “You’ll find them in your lockers. I’ll tell Jim you’re here, and he’ll meet you just outside the locker room.”

Lula looked at the jumpsuit assigned to her. “I picked out a special celebratory ice cream outfit for today, and this is going to ruin everything. I don’t see where this is going to contribute to my experience.”

I shrugged into the jumpsuit and covered my sneakers with the booties. I didn’t care a lot about it since I hadn’t worn a special celebratory ice cream outfit. I put the yellow disposable shower cap on, and Lula looked horrified.

“You look like a idiot,” she said. “You look like a giant deranged minion from that movie Despicable Me.”

“Are you getting dressed? Or are you going home?”

“I’m thinking about going back and demanding a office job. It would be something more suited to my wardrobe and unique talents.”

“What talents are we talking about?”

“Office worker talents. I got a lot of them. And I got a good chance of getting a excellent office job because I got cards. You gotta take what they give you, because you got almost no cards. You got the woman card, but it’s about worthless on account of you’re thin and white. I’m a plus-size black woman. Bam! That’s three cards. It’s like I hit the political-correctness jackpot. Only thing better than what I got is if I lost a eye or a leg to police brutality.”

“That’s horrible.”

“No way. It’s using what God give you. I got a personal relationship with God, and I know he’d be disappointed in me if I didn’t use my gift cards.”

I guess she could have a point with using her gift cards, but I didn’t think those cards were going to help her when she had to figure out how to read a spreadsheet.

“I have to go to work,” I said to Lula. “I’ll try to hook up with you at lunch.”

“They give us ice cream for lunch, right?”





NINE


JIM WAS WAITING at the locker room door. He looked like he drank a lot of beer and was ready for retirement.

“So,” he said. “You want to make ice cream?”

I adjusted my shower cap. “Mostly I want to make money.”

“I hear you. We’ll start you out on the cup dropper and filler. It’s a real no-brainer. You watch the empty cups when they come on line and make sure they’re straight. If they aren’t straight you fix them. Then you watch that the ice cream goes in them okay. If it doesn’t go in perfect you pull the screwup off the line. If it happens three times in a row you shut the machine down by hitting the big red button that says ‘Stop.’ A buzzer will go off and I’ll come over to take a look.”

I gave him thumbs-up and he walked away. A minute later the machine went into action. After forty-five minutes of watching the cups go by I was hypnotized. I jumped up and down, stamped my feet, and sang “Happy Birthday” to myself. After an hour and a half I was afraid I was going to go into a catatonic stupor and face-plant into a pint of mint chocolate chip.

A young woman tapped me on the shoulder. “You get a fifteen-minute break,” she said. “I’ll watch the machine.”

I shuffled off to the break room next to the locker room and went straight to the coffee machine. Two women were at a round table that seated six. I got my coffee and sat at the table with them.

“I’m Tina, and this is Doris,” one of the women said. “How’s your first day going so far?”

“I’m having a hard time concentrating. All those cups going by one after the other. It’s hypnotic.”

“You get used to it,” Tina said. “You need to drink a lot of coffee. And if that doesn’t work I’ve got some red pills that’ll perk you up.”