Pencil Him In. Molly O'Keefe

      “I don’t want a sabbatical,” Anna spat.

      “Well, that’s too bad, sweetheart, because you need one.”

      “I don’t need one!”

      Camilla’s lips pursed for a second. “Anna,” she said carefully. “Yesterday you threatened to shove chopsticks up Andrew’s nose.”

      Well, Anna slouched a little bit in her chair. She had been working hard, she had been stressed out and Andrew, the little rat, had thrown out her leftovers. Perhaps holding the chopstick to his throat that way might have been a little much, but…

      “Okay, that was too much,” Anna admitted. “But that hardly translates into me needing six months off. Camilla, this is crazy.”

      “It’s six months off. You come back and Arsenal is all yours. It’s your company. President, just like we agreed.”

      “What if I say no?” Anna asked, her brows furrowed and the pain behind her eye nearly blinding. This was a nightmare. This day should have been a celebration and now it was hell.

      “Then you’re fired for real,” Camilla told her in dead seriousness and Anna felt her heart stop for a moment. “You need these six months to get a life.”

      “I have a life!” Anna protested, hotly.

      “Really?” Camilla asked and the pity in her eyes sent Anna to her feet. The chair spun out behind her and hit the glass of the window.

      “Yes, really, this company is my life.” Anna slammed the bag of candy on her desk. “I have devoted everything to Arsenal, every single thing….”

      “That’s the problem, sweetheart,” Camilla said, standing to face Anna.

      “How can that be a problem?” Anna was beginning to shout and she didn’t care at all, which if she had been rational, would have alarmed her. “In this business, my kind of devotion is usually rewarded.”

      “Sit down, Anna,” Camilla said in her persuasive tone usually reserved for tough clients.

      “No!” Anna refused. “I won’t sit down, Camilla. Not while you stab me in the back.” Anna began to pace the small distance between the windows and Camilla. “Does this have anything to do with my job performance?”

      “No,” Camilla sighed and settled back down on Anna’s desk. “You do an excellent job.”

      “Excellent, not just good. Not just fair, but an excellent job.” Anna’s finger jabbed the air right in front of Camilla’s nose. It wasn’t the job that drove Anna. Surely, Camilla could see that it was the excellence she was after. It was the details. It was perfection.

      How does a perfectionist get fired?

      “Yes.”

      “So excellent in fact…”

      “Anna.” Camilla crossed her arms over her chest, indicating her temper was wearing thin. “How many times have I come into the office in the morning and found out you spent the night on your office couch?”

      “What does that have to do with anything?” Anna shrieked, unable to see the correlation.

      “How many?” Camilla asked her voice cutting the air.

      “A few,” Anna answered throwing up her hands.

      “Three hundred and sixty-two times.”

      “So?”

      “What was the last play you saw? The last concert or movie?” Camilla continued.

      “I just saw the new Brad Pitt movie!” Anna said, trying not to sound to triumphant.

      “Brad Pitt hasn’t been in a movie in two years,” Camilla pointed out.

      “Brad Pitt shouldn’t have any kind of bearing on my job,” Anna cried then shook her head. “Do you see how nuts all of this is? I must have fallen asleep at my desk, because this can not be real.”

      “How many dates have you been on in the last two years?” Camilla asked relentlessly.

      “A few,” Anna answered trying not to appear uncomfortable. That was a bit personal. And frankly, her love life was seriously…well, non-existent probably best covered it. But that hardly had anything to do with her job.

      “Three. Three blind dates that I set you up on. Brent, Charles and Luke. Three nice, handsome and successful men that you completely rejected out of hand.”

      “Well, I didn’t totally reject that Luke guy,” Anna mumbled, feeling a blush creep up her throat.

      “Anna, I am not talking about getting drunk and mauling some guy in the back of a cab.”

      “How’d you…?” she asked, feeling like a sixteen-year-old caught by her mother.

      “Marie told me.” Of course. Anna’s sister who couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.

      “I took a date to Jeanie and John’s wedding,” Anna protested, talking about a coworker’s wedding earlier in the year.

      “You took your next-door neighbor who is gay!”

      “I don’t understand…”

      “Besides Jim, have you ever had a man in your life for longer than one dinner?”

      Anna’s mouth fell open. Jim Bellows. Camilla was really reaching to be bringing up Jim. Anna had dated Jim when she first started working at Arsenal as a receptionist. They broke up when Anna started getting promoted. “Is this about a boyfriend? Because I think Jim proved that this job isn’t all that conducive to relationships.”

      “The way you do the job isn’t conducive to relationships.” Anna opened her mouth to defend herself, but Camilla kept talking. “When was the last time you did something, anything that was fun?”

      “I do fun things all the time,” Anna answered, even as the words came out of her mouth she knew she was lying and that it would be only one more nail in the coffin Camilla was making for her. The coffin she was going to have to spend six months in.

      “Anna.” Camilla’s tone softened and Anna’s backbone stiffened in response.

      “Fine, have it your way. I quit.” She jabbed her finger at Camilla. “I don’t want to have anything to do with an organization that treats its hardest workers like this.”

      Part of Anna had believed Camilla would quail under this threat. She had a half-baked notion of Camilla taking it all back and offering her the president position immediately.

      But Camilla’s eyebrow arched in the silence and Anna felt sanity slipping right out of the room.

      “I could get a job anywhere,” Anna shouted and Camilla’s other eyebrow arched. “Don’t play with me, Camilla.”

      “I know Mernick and Simon would kill to have you….”

      “That’s right, Mernick and Simon and a dozen other companies,” Anna shot in.

      “Is that what you want?” Camilla asked softly.

      “It’s the only choice you’re giving me.” Anna couldn’t believe this conversation was continuing.

      “Look, I’m giving you six months. If you want to go to another company, fine. You want to forget about all the work you put in here, go right ahead. Andrew will have every one of your accounts. You can say goodbye to Goddess Sportswear.”

      Ouch. Camilla really knew how to kick a girl when she was down, which used to be one of the things Anna kind of admired about her. It wasn’t so pretty being on the receiving end of that honesty, however. Goddess Sportswear was Anna’s baby, her very own. She had cultivated Aurora Milan, a ditzy woman with a good idea, had spun her designs into what was going to be the leading sportswear line for women in the country.