We Interrupt This Date by L.C. Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

that I wouldn’t quit without giving him at
least six months notice.
    God, how humbling. I barreled down the hall
to his office before I lost my nerve. I had to hover in the doorway
until he got off the phone with someone who wanted to pawn his
wife’s jewelry while she was away visiting her mother. The slime.
The customer, not Odell. Though he could pass for slime.
    “What?” he said, banging down the
receiver.
    “Mr. Hoganboom, I really need this job. I
don’t know why you won’t believe me when I say I’m not starting a
ghost hunting business or any other kind of business or not leaving
for another office or joining the French Foreign Legion. Please
give me a chance to--”
    “Do I need to make out a pink slip?” He
snorted at his own joke. “You do a decent job training my niece
Brenda, and I’ll put in a good word for you if somebody calls me
for a reference.”
    “I can prove it’s a misunderstanding about
the ghost hunting. All you have to do is…”
    His niece. Click. The light came on. I’d
started to ask him to call Veronica to verify that I wasn’t going
into business with her. It would be a huge waste of time. The truth
was, Odell had been in a bind wanting to help his niece and he
didn’t want to pay two people to work in the office. Patty’s gossip
had given him the excuse he needed to give my job to Brenda.
    “Never mind. I believe I understand the
situation.” I gathered my tattered dignity and marched back to my
desk with my chin stuck out in front of me.
    What was I supposed to do? I fought down
rising panic. The job market wasn’t too great right now. In fact it
was horrible. As if that wasn’t bad enough, how would it look on my
resume when I admitted that I’d been fired? I knew I didn’t have to
say that. But they were bound to ask why I’d left my last position.
How could I smooth that one over? The job interview sites on the
Internet gave lots of advice about how to ace an interview, but I
suspect that only worked if you could pull off the business speak
they touted.
    “Hmm, Ms. Caraway, so you’ve had one employer
in the past twenty years. The job lasted ten months and then you
left. Why did you resign from your former position? What have you
been doing for the last six months other than looking for a new
opportunity?”
    “Well, you see, I’ve been trying to better
myself through a series of self-actualization exercises that will
enable me to move up in the corporate world. I plan to be a great
asset to potential employers and help them achieve their goals and
resolve business issues within a new paradigm shift.”
    I almost gagged. Sure, that little speech
should get me hired in a flash.
    Even if I made up a plausible excuse, they’d
know I wouldn’t leave a job before I had another one, not with jobs
scarcer right now than gold coins lying in plain view on King
Street. Blinking back tears, I put my fingers on my keyboard. Just
because I was fired didn’t mean I was going to sit here for the
rest of the day and feel sorry for myself.
    Odell finally left for lunch, the engine of
his SUV rumbling low and deep outside my window as if the macho
sound could make up for his whiney voice. Patty waited until he
cleared the parking lot before she threaded her way between shelves
and fetched up in my office doorway. Silver earrings the size of
saucers dangled from her ears and a matching necklace that must
have weighed five pounds hung around her neck. She was wearing an
ankle length dress tie-dyed in the blue and yellow colors of an
Amazon parrot.
    “I swear I didn’t mean to tell on you. When I
said you were leaving to start a business, Odell had a total fit.
He kept waving his short little arms around like the flippers on an
upside down turtle.” Her expression didn’t look nearly as
apologetic as I thought it should. She pulled the front of her
dress away from her chest and fanned herself with her other hand.
“It’s sweltering in your office. How do you stand it?