Unprofessional by JD Hawkins
1
Owen
The elevator doors open and for a second it feels like a theatre curtain unveiling. It’s three PM, and the TrendBlend offices are buzzing with the kind of vibrant, frenetic energy you only get when you put some of the West Coast’s most creative people in one place. The kind of energy you get when those people are allowed to create work that they love, then put it out to millions of fans. Our website is as likely to release a viral video about sex as it is to start a national discussion about ethics. It’s a site that’s got the first scoop on the latest trends and the last word on the zeitgeist. And it all originates in an office with as many fashion bloggers as there are political reporters; where feminist activists rub shoulders with movie critics.
Christ, I love my job.
I step out of the elevator clutching my remedy for the mid-afternoon slump: a tall cup of cappuccino (I usually maintain enough coffee in my system to wake the dead) for me and Margo’s cinnamon latte in the other. Back into the bustle of the bullpen.
“Hey Owen,” Davina, the site’s resident make-up expert calls from a three-way conversation she’s having.
I turn in her direction without breaking stride. “What’s up, D?”
“Wanna do a video with me and Sara tomorrow?” she says through purple-colored pouted lips, angling her mini-skirt-clad hips the way she always does when she talks to me. “‘Hot guys try make-up for the first time.’ We’re looking for volunteers.”
I sip my cappuccino to hide my wincing at the idea.
“Uh…”
She moves away from the others to get a little too close, tongue tracing her lips as she says, “Just tell me what it’ll take for me to get my hands on you…” and as her gaze drops below my belt I’m not sure she’s even talking about the video anymore.
Davina’s got the body of the ballerina, walks like she wants to seduce everybody in the room, and dresses like she’s at the beach half the time. She’s hot as hell and knows it, and even though she’s got a few million followers online who agree, she’s been chasing me since I started at TrendBlend. The more I say no, the more her mascara’d eyes flutter at me from across the office. Another place, another time, and I’d let the spark between us flare up, but when you’re surrounded by journalists, gossip columnists, and a couple dozen other women trying to jump your skin, you need the diplomacy of a hostage negotiator just to keep your job.
“Lemme check my schedule. I’ll get back to you,” I say, nodding as I step past.
“I’ll be waiting,” she purrs.
The office layout is simple—but it works. A vast bullpen of shared desk spaces cover the center of the office. Tables with four or five stations to them, all decorated with random personal effects, coffee cups, art books, and photos. The desks are cramped enough that you’re never more than three feet away from being hooked into something or overhearing another idea you can help out on. Half the time nobody’s at their desks though, as they run between the studios downstairs and the bullpen.
Down one side of the office the windows look out onto the city of L.A., and from up here on the fifth floor you can almost catch sight of the beach on a clear day. On the other side are the offices of the higher-ups. The decision-makers and puppet-masters who guide the whole thing from behind closed doors.
“It would be really great if you could!” Sara, Davina’s curvy, redheaded desk mate (and frequent partner in crime), calls out behind me as I shuffle past a couple of co-workers carrying cardboard cutouts of the Kardashians. “You’d look so good in lipstick!”
I raise my cappuccino and kiss the air in their direction before walking a bit quicker to my desk.
In a funny kind of way this place saved my life. Before my college friend Margo helped me get this job just over a year ago, I was partying like crazy. All I did was drink and dance, fuck and fight. All I cared about was the next crowd, the next hot girl, the next thrill. I’m not gonna lie and say it wasn’t fun, but even fun can be dangerous when you’re as insatiable as I am.
So here I am, putting Margo’s cinnamon latte beside her on our shared desk (without a hello, since she’s hunched over her cell phone with her back to me), and dropping myself into my chair. I wake up my laptop to reveal the half-written article I’ve been pecking at today, all about hot beach dates. My inner bad boy not so much tamed now, as focused. Enjoying life as much as I ever did, but with the addition of a steady paycheck and a 401(k). The best of both worlds.
Six seconds later I hear a quiet, stifled half-sob beside me. The kind of helpless, feminine sound that cuts through ten thousand years of civilization and makes me want to club whatever caused it. I look toward Margo and see her staring down at her keyboard, one hand still holding the phone to her ear, the other buried in her hair. She’s so distressed she hasn’t even noticed the coffee I brought her yet.
If there’s one con to working in the offices, it’s that there’s not much privacy, and right now it looks like Margo’s desperate for it.
“Why do you have to be such an asshole about this?” she whispers harshly into the phone. “No. I never said that…whatever, Carl…you’re my—you were my boyfriend, not my father, don’t talk to me like I’m five… Look, I only called to ask when I can pick up the rest of my stuff… Yes, actually, it is over! Oh god…just forget it!”
My eyes on my screen, I hear Margo toss her phone clumsily onto her desk—the modern equivalent of slamming a receiver down. When I glance at her again she’s hunched toward her screen determinedly, as if about to try and climb through it, rattling away on the keyboard like she’s playing a Bach variation on it. She still hasn’t noticed the coffee.
I open my mouth and then close it, weighing her possible need for words of comfort against her possible need for space. She’d been tight-lipped and tense all morning, and now it appears that things have gone full nuclear status with her and that film school douchebag Carl. Good riddance. She deserves better.
Margo and I go way back. We met our first year at college. More specifically, we met at three AM outside the girl’s dormitory when she was coming home late from a party, and I was in the process of trying to get back into the dorm after sneaking out through a window to avoid my date’s judgmental roommate. Being naked at the time was a hell of a conversation starter.