Say the Word(55)

When I was finally released from Starbucks duty, I found Angela and quickly discovered that despite her short stature, she was a force to be reckoned with. In fact, she was kind of a self-important bitch — one of those people who thought the world would cease to turn if they failed to show up for work one day. She didn’t even look up from her clipboard when I asked her for an assignment.

“See those issues?” she asked, gesturing at the mountain of magazines sitting on the conference room table across the room.

I nodded.

“Some of the designers flipped through them for historical inspiration earlier this week and scanned the images they liked onto their computers. Now the magazines are a jumbled mess. They need to be reorganized and carted back to the stockroom. Go through each issue and catalogue it by month and year. You’ll find boxes, string, and a label-maker over by the wall,” she said, her brow furrowed as she scribbled a note on her clipboard. “Tie the 12 issues from each year together, ordered by month, with a piece of string. Then stack the years together by decade. Each decade gets stored away in a box.” She spoke rapidly, flipping through her notes as she fired off instructions. “And don’t forget to label the boxes by decade.”

“Alright, thanks.”

“Oh, and — what was your name again?”

“Lux.”

“Well, Lux,” she said, finally looking up from her notes to examine me. Whatever she saw, she evidently found lacking, if the slightly distasteful crinkling of her nose was any indication. “Make sure you finish them before you leave tonight. Men will be coming to take the boxes back to storage first thing tomorrow morning.”

I nodded and walked away, figuring any assignment was better than an eternity of coffee runs for Cara and her snooty posse.

My mistake. I might not be a math genius, but even I should’ve realized that organizing 100 years worth of magazines — in which each year has approximately 12 issues — is equivalent to a hell of a lot of work.

Unfortunately, I had this realization a little too late — pretty much the exact moment I reached the conference room table and saw the extent of back-stocked magazines littering the tabletop and stacked in messy piles inside the ten large cardboard boxes beneath the table. The stack sitting on the tabletop was in a similar state of disarray, seemingly having been piled without order or organization. It looked like a pack of rabid toddlers had been looking through the stacks, rather than a group of professional designers.

Joy.

Four hours later, my stomach was rumbling in protest after skipping lunch, my eyes were tired from ceaselessly reading issue dates, my back was aching, and my fingertips were coated in a slightly dusty residue from flipping through century-old pages. With a growing sense of dismay, I glanced from the watch at my wrist to the still largely unorganized pile of magazines. Work would be over in an hour or so, and people would soon start to filter out of the office. Seven boxes sat on the ground to my left — organized, labeled, and ready for pickup. But to my right, nearly four hundred remaining issues were still piled in a haphazard fashion.

I sighed and got back to work, subtly slipping my phone out of my purse to text Desmond.

Stuck at work. Can’t make it to dinner. Sorry.

Poor Desmond. This was the third time in a row I’d cancelled on him. He deserved better, but I could honestly say that — this time at least — it wasn’t my choice. I also texted Simon, warning him that I’d probably miss happy hour. If I failed to show up without any explanation, he’d be on the phone with the police trying to issue an Amber Alert within the hour, regardless of the fact that I was a legal adult.

The thought of Simon cheered me enough to jump back into my task. I picked up my pace, becoming so absorbed that the rest of the office faded away and the next time I looked up, I was nearly the last one left on the floor. A few costume designers conversed by the fitting area, and Angela was seated at one of the workstations, her cellphone clutched in one hand and her clipboard in the other, but other than that, everyone else had gone home for the day. I hadn’t seen Sebastian since our terse encounter this morning, and I thought that was probably for the best. If we were going to attempt to be civil and professional, he’d likely steer clear of me from now on.

I tried to be okay with that, reminding myself that I was here only to serve my sentence and move on. I shouldn’t have expected him to treat me with anything but disdain. After all, I was here to be punished — and on his orders, no less.

It was already well past five, and magazines from two whole decades remained on the table before me — at least another hour’s worth of work, maybe two. Once Angela — and her watchful glare — left for the night, followed soon after by the two designers, I was alone on the floor and could finally collapse into one of the conference table’s leather swivel chairs. The lights, programmed on automatic timers, dimmed considerably after their departure, but I didn’t bother to find the switch. I was far too comfortable to move.

I began to pick through the issues spread across the table, thinking as I did so that the 1990s grunge fashion era was better left unresurrected in Luster history. I stretched my arms above my head and arched my back, letting out a low groan as my cramped muscles found some relief. Hunching over a table for the last five hours had pulled my muscles tighter than a bowstring.

When I’d worked the kinks out of my spine, I made short work of pulling the clip from my hair, the intensity of my headache ebbing as soon as the heavy locks tumbled free. My fingers combed through the strands, then moved to rub my temples in an attempt to eliminate the ache altogether.