Boyfriend Material(51)
“Oh.” He frowned. “I’m afraid to say that I just don’t get it at all. I mean, the one about going to Wales wasn’t funny, but at least it made sense.”
“It wasn’t a joke, Alex. I was trying to apologise for last night. I thought maybe my use of the words ‘sorry’ and ‘last night’ might have clued you in.”
“In that case, think nothing of it, old boy. And, honestly, it’s my fault. I should have said something at the time. Because we skipped the fish course, you should have skipped the fish fork.”
I gave up. “Okay. Great. Glad we cleared the air. Sorry again about the fish fork.”
“Happens to the best of us. Why, once at high table I had a moment of mental abstraction and tried to use a salad fork to eat cooked vegetables. And everyone had a jolly good laugh at my expense.”
“Gosh. Yes. The mental image alone is hilarious.”
“Isn’t it? I mean the tines are completely the wrong length.”
“The tines,” I offered, with a confidence my history with Alex did not at all support, “they are a-changin’.”
He gave me a blank look. “I suppose so. That’s why you swap forks between courses.”
Back at my desk, I ran through what was becoming a slightly depressing morning ritual: drink coffee, worry about alienating more donors, check scandal sheets. As it turned out, I was barely in them, and not just because I was mostly hidden against Oliver’s body. Pretty much every article was about Miffy—what she was wearing, where she was going, when she and Alex might be getting married. Oliver and I were blissfully relegated to the “also withs” although some enterprising intern had managed to unearth the designer of Oliver’s coat. And you knew it was the right kind of press coverage when people wrote more about what you were wearing than what you were doing. I even got a glancing mention in Horse & Hound, despite being neither.
This just left me to deal with the endless stream of unnecessary crises that always afflicted the Beetle Drive, like the time Rhys Jones Bowen told me the venue was double-booked because he’d got the Royal Ambassadors Hotel Marylebone mixed up with the LaserQuest he was trying to arrange for his friend’s stag-do. Or the time the printed invitations went missing and we thought they’d got lost in the post, but it turned out Alex had just been using the box as a footstool for three months. And let’s not forget when Dr. Fairclough briefly cancelled the entire event because she decided that the term beetle was insufficiently scientifically rigorous, and backed down only when we reminded her that it wasn’t actually in the official name of the event.
Today, it was Barbara Clench, our dogmatically frugal office manager, questioning the necessity of releasing funds for the purposes of, y’know, operating our fundraiser. Which meant I was tied up with email for most the day, since our ability to successfully cowork was built upon a mutual understanding that we would never, ever speak to each other in person.
Dear Luc,
I’ve been looking at the costings for the hotel and am wondering if we really need it.
Kind regards,
Barbara
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Dear Barbara,
Yes. It’s where we’re having the event.
Kind regards,
Luc
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Dear Luc,
I’ve been thinking about that, and was wondering if it wouldn’t be more practical for donors to remain at home and contribute by telephone during a preapproved window.
Kind regards,
Barbara
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Dear Barbara,
I appreciate your commitment to helping the Beetle Drive run smoothly. Unfortunately, the invitations have already been printed, and the event has been advertised as a “dinner and dance” and not as a “stay at home and phone us maybe.” The cost of the hotel should be more than covered by the ticket price.
Kind regards,
Luc
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Dear Luc,
Could we at least choose a cheaper hotel?
Kind regards,
Barbara
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Dear Barbara,
No.
Kind regards,
Luc
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Dear Luc,
I consider your last email inappropriately curt. I would take this matter up with our Human Resources Department, but we do not have one.
Kind regards,
Barbara
PS—Thank you for raising a requisition request for a new stapler. This requisition request has been denied.
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Dear Barbara,
Perhaps you could ask the Office Manager if we could release sufficient resources to hire a Human Resources Department. Maybe I could also borrow a stapler from them.
Kind regards,
Luc
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Dear Luc,
There is no room in the workplace for facetiousness.
I refer you to last month’s memo on the new paper-fastening policy. For financial and environmental reasons, we are requiring all documents to be bound with recyclable treasury tags. We expect these to be reused wherever possible.
Kind regards,
Barbara
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Dear Barbara,
Please pay the hotel. The manager just called me, and we are at risk of losing the room.
Kind regards,
Luc
PS—We have run out of treasury tags.
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Dear Luc,
If you have run out of treasury tags, please submit a requisition form.