Page 19 of How To Plot a Payback

Stephanie (555.585.2322); Mark (555.119.1295)

Chapter 3

Finn

Monday, Script Edits, Writers Room

I’ve got coffee down my freshly pressed dress shirt.

Not a drop, not a splash on my dark trousers, where it would have just barely been seen if you looked at it from a very specific angle under very specific lighting.

An entire, mind you entire, twenty ounces of ink-black liquid poured down the front of my heretofore white oxford. And blue blazer. And blue trousers. And belt.

And a dog peeing on my shoe.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman repeats for the thirteenth time, crouching down with what appears to be a thousand leashes wrapping tighter and tighter around me. Dogs scratch madly on the concrete floor of the hall, squeezing me beneath a python’s grip.

It’s my first day, nay, my first hour in my new job.

With impostor syndrome clinging to my body like the wealth of cats hanging off my neighbor Mrs. Teaberry anytime she opens the door.

With a notoriously intimidating boss known for his demands and peculiarities—which I’m almost certain include things like not showing up ten minutes late and carrying the stench of urine.

Which I am.

“Again. I’m just so, so sorry,” she repeats, pulling a leash off her throat as she wipes frantically at my shoes with an old Kleenex. “I tried to hold them back. But you wouldn’t believe just how strong they are. And these shoes. They’re four years old. They have absolutely no traction. I knew I should’ve put on something different, just in case—”

Her cheeks are two blazing red spots, and it’s clear from the way she keeps looking at my suit and laptop bag that she thinks I’m someone important.

Which, now that I think of it, I guess I am.

Watching her, I’m sharply reminded of those first days when I, too, was at the bottom of the ladder. I distinctly recall that one story about my supervisor who allegedly threw out a PA on his first day because he commented that he watched a TV show from another network. It turned out to be nothing more than a rumor, but still, tiptoeing around the big names is part of the job description.

I do my best to step back and get her to stop.

Stop with the tissue on my shoe.

Stop with the perception that I am anything besides what I really am: absolutely petrified on my first day.

It’s challenging, given I seem to have stepped into a sort of dog tornado, but I manage to break free from at least one leash.

“It’s fine. Really.” I lie because, of course, it’s the only course of action. After all, what can I say? No, it’s not fine, thank you very much, and yes, I do very much wish I had listened to my mother and packed an “emergency” set of clothes for just such an absurd and absolutely-out-of-the-realm-of-possibility circumstance. It turns out ten monstrosities of dog can and do drag young women down narrow corridors and bowl you and your coffee over moments before you open the door and enter into key places where attendance is vital.

But here we are.

And there’s no need for her to feel mortified.

I hold steady to the doorframe with my crumpled coffee cup as an angry little dog begins gnawing on the foot of a much larger breed, and the larger breed growls in a way most terrifying. The big dog’s twin sniffs at the ground and I jolt as it pushes its head between my legs. A handful of people about to enter the hallway pause midstep, see us, take great pains to pretend not to see us, and turn around.

Wonderful.

You really know who your colleagues are in a moment like this.

The one bright spot in this moment is that the dogs have become temporarily distracted, and in that second I seize the opportunity to quickly maneuver myself over and under several leashes until, at last, I’m free.

“See? Nothing—to—worry—about.” I yank my leather laptop bag from a yippy little one-eyed growler.

Check my watch.