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301, "Ghosts".
If all went as planned, Monday morning would be a disaster. Client files would be piled on her desk – clients that had had a problem with their deliveries or had had clients of their own who had had a problem with their medication. Why the pharmaceutical sales company would get the complaints and not be put directly through to the manufacturer was beyond her understanding. On top of paperwork that should not be part of her job, Mr. Haversham would need some consoling. He would have had another big fight with his wife and would ask of her something that she knew she should not give him. And yet, despite the moral dilemma that Mr. Haversham presented, she would never deny him – mostly she would go along with what he wanted because of the advance that she would get in her career. After all, he controlled her pay increases.
In the whole grand scheme of things, being a secretary for a pharmaceutical sales company and the mistress of the vice president was not what she had thought about when she had planned her life out on paper. She had planned on being an actual doctor – someone who could pay someone to do her paperwork for her and never have to worry about bosses taking advantage of her because she would be the boss of everyone in her field, neurology.
But disastrous Mondays – at least the mornings – could be forgotten at lunchtime when she tasted her homemade pappardelle. She waited more or less impatiently for her lunch break at twelve thirty when she could take her hand-rolled pasta out of the company refrigerator, place the bowl in the company microwave and watch as it spin around and around for fifty-two seconds on high, and finally press the "release" button only to be greeted with the friendly smell of the combination of reheated pasta and the delicious sauce recipe from her grandmother.
This Monday had the prospect of being just as glorious as the rest of the Mondays she had known since she began making her pappardelle every Saturday. It took her all day to roll out the little egg creations, but in the end, the result was completely worth the effort put into making them.
The walk from her desk just outside of Mr. Haversham's office to the company kitchen was too long on Monday afternoons. From time to time, she would speed up her walk despite the difficulty that wearing a gray pencil skirt and three inch heels presented. She would smile at everyone she passed wondering if they knew the joys of homemade pappardelle. Those thoughts would immediately diminish when she opened that refrigerator and saw that bowl of leftover pasta waiting for her to devour it.
Wait – where was it? Her hopes for Monday drained and she felt a sinking feeling in her gut. Frantically, she pushed everything in the refrigerator to the side and searched for her bowl of pappardelle. Her search was in vain – there was no bowl of homemade pasta in sight. Who would be so cruel as to take this one joy from her?
She left the kitchen in a huff and went out in search of Burton Guster – she remembered only faintly that Mr. Haversham had wanted to see him. "Burton?" she called, still approaching. He shoved something into the drawer of the copier.
"Bianca!" he greeted, smiling a bit defensively.
"Paul would like to see you."
"Mr. Haversham? Really? Lovely. I'll be there in a second," he answered, turning back to his friend. She walked away – imagining the beautiful smell of pappardelle.
Before she turned the corner to go back to her desk without a lunch and without any more hope for anything good to happen for the rest of the day, she looked back at Burton and his friend conversing. All of a sudden, they started to wrestle. Wrestling was a loose term, though, as they looked as if they had no idea what they were doing. Burton's friend flopped to the floor and Burton dragged him the rest of the way out the door. She hurried back to her desk as he started walking toward Mr. Haversham's office.
Once he had entered, she started to walk the short distance back to the copy machine that she had just left Guster and his friend at. But as she was approaching, Burton's friend reentered the building and opened the drawer – revealing a bowl of food. Not just any food, but her pappardelle.
"Hey! You– you friend of Burton!" she called, running towards him. He lifted his head from her luscious bowl of pasta just in time to see her approaching rapidly.
"Bianca," he greeted calmly. "My name is Shawn Spencer–" he paused as he realized that she was not interested in who he was or his manly charms whatsoever. She was after the bowl of food in his hand. "Is this your pappardelle? It's delicious–" he said as he turned and ran to the front doors.
Once outside, Shawn ducked behind the wheel of a car. He had learned from an early age that if one is to hide in a parking lot, to hide behind a tire – they are the only part of the car that touches the ground, thus giving the perfect hiding spot for someone ducking their head down to see where that person is hiding. He did not dare check for himself to see where Bianca was – there was no way he was going to willingly face that wrath.
"There you are," she said. He jumped, surprised, and turned around to see her standing over him with a menacing look on her face. "Hand over my pappardelle. Right. Now."
His shocked expression faded as he slowly backed away. "But Bianca, I didn't know! I thought the company fridge was for everyone to use."
"It is," she answered. "For people who work at the company! You do not work here and even if you did, my pappardelle would be still be off-limits to you because it's not your lunch. You can't just take people's lunches without asking!" Her tone was indignant. "Now, if you don't want your foot to be crushed by the full weight of a woman's body through one stiletto heel, hand over my lunch."
Without any warning, Shawn stood up and took off again, weaving through the rows of cars lined in the parking lot. He jumped over a guard rail at the end of the long parking lot; its function was to block cars parked in the pharmaceutical lot from driving directly into the lot for the chiropractor next door. His back foot skimmed the top of the metal obstacle and his feet toppled over his head as he plowed head first into the ground. The pappardelle was abandoned from his hands in an effort to get his arms down in time to save his neck from whiplash.
The scrumptious pasta tumbled out of the bowl and fell limply to the ground.
Immediately Shawn jumped to his feet and despite the dizziness he felt having just suffered a fairly gruesome fall, he took off running – not looking back at the fuming woman standing on the other side of the guard rail staring at the pasta that she had not reached in time for the five second rule to apply.
She marched herself right into Mr. Haversham's office, assuming that Burton was still in there. She did not knock on the door nor return Mr. Haversham's welcoming greeting. She walked straight up to Burton and slapped him across his right cheek.
"Give the message to your friend. And don't you dare ever bring him here on a Monday again!"
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Monday morning came and Bianca set her things on her desk. She started to walk towards the kitchen to put her bowl of pappardelle in the refrigerator – hopefully until lunch this time – before she realized that there was a note on her desk.
She walked the few steps back and picked it up. In all caps messy scrawl, it read:
Bianca,
I'm extremely sorry about the pappardelle that I spilled on the ground last week. Yes, I'm only apologizing because Gus told me to, but I really would love to make it up to you. Dinner?
- Smooth trippin' Shawn
She smiled as she crumpled the note up and tossed it into the trash can beside her desk – but only after she had put the number he had provided into her phone.
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