I hope and I pray you’ll leave me one day.
– Camera Obscura

10:12 a.m.: Everyone is standing around red carpet girl’s desk and she’s ranting about being arrested at some kind of purse party in Boca.
10:13 a.m.: “You mean like knock-off handbags?” Tiara asks. “No, don’t be silly. I don’t buy fakes. These are legitimately stolen purses - some guy out of New York. The best selection.”
10:14 a.m.: So they raided the place? I ask. “They didn’t mean to,” red carpet girl says. “Some neighbors complained about cars blocking the road and then when the police came my friend Allysa was in the driveway showing some waitress from The Cheesecake Factory a Dooney & Bourke slouch and the cop got curious and Miss Cheesecake got scared. Told him everything. Those Factory girls are idiots.”
10:14:21 a.m.: “Yeah,” new guy says. “You’d think with that big menu you’d have to be smart but I went out with a Cheesecake Factory worker and she was dumber than me.”
10:15 a.m.: “We tried to give the cop a Fendi for his wife and send him on his way but he was a hard-ass about it,” red carpet girl says.
10:16 a.m.: Did you actually spend a night in jail? I ask. “I wish”, she says. “There were so many of us they stuck us in the break room at the police station. It looked like a prostitute roundup only with better pedicures. They made us turn our cell phones off and keep our arms crossed so we couldn’t text. Oh, and the soda machines were out of everything but canned iced tea. I hate canned iced tea.”
10:18 a.m.: Can we go online and see your mug shot? Carrot asks.
10:18:33 a.m.: “They didn’t photograph me,” red carpet girl says disappointedly. “They said some of us are going to be witnesses and some of us are going to be charged. I asked if I could choose and the lady cop just looked at me like she wanted my earrings. I don’t even care but now I have to go for an interrogation at like 4:30 on Friday and I was supposed to leave early to go ‘glamping.’”
10:19 a.m.: Glamping?
10:19:11 a.m.: “Glamorous camping,” red carpet girl says. ”I just went out and bought this metallic silver air mattress and I found a rain fly in a soft-hued lily pattern that I absolutely love.”
10:20 a.m.: “I wish I had your life,” Tiara says. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it,” red carpet girl says. “You’d be like a Cheesecake Factory girl in a trig class.”
10:34 a.m.: Go online to learn what I can about glamping and what kind of equipment I might need or desire.
10:40 a.m.: Put headphones on because Marti keeps complaining about her roommate. “I don’t mind sharing,” she says. “I just don’t like having people around me that I feel obligated to share with.”
11:19 a.m.: Intern stops in the office after a long vacation. Shows me a photo she had taken with the world’s third largest elk that was on exhibit in Georgia. That’s different, I say. Do you know where the second largest elk is? “If I knew where the second largest elk was why the fuck would I get my picture taken with the third largest?” she says getting in my face.
11:20 a.m.: I start quivering and she says, “Sorry, my mom thinks I should get into anger management but I don’t want to not be angry.”
11:33 a.m.: Read in a magazine about what you’re supposed to do if attacked by different kinds of animals. If cornered by a baboon: Start clapping.
12:51 p.m.: Sales guy comes by to tell me he’s been seeing this girl that works in his optometrist’s office. “She’s perfect for me but it’s like I’m falling just short of her expectations,” he says. “It’s like I’m almost…”
12:52 p.m.: That’s exactly it, I say. You’re an avalanche of almosts. You’re almost smart enough, almost good looking enough, almost witty enough, almost tall enough, almost articulate enough, almost make enough money, almost…
12:53 p.m.: ”So she should keep looking?”
12:53:12 p.m.: Definitely.
1:07 p.m.: Go to lunch and eat alone.
1:17 p.m.: Spot a pinecone on the ground near the picnic table I’m eating at. Pick it up and then look around for stuff I can use to make a picnic table centerpiece. Gather up a few small fronds, a handful of gravy-brown berries and some tiny blue flowers that I decide to call tiny blue flowers.
1:01 p.m.: My picnic table centerpiece is beautiful.
1:03 p.m. And I’m glad I have no one to share it with.
2:04 p.m.: When I get back in the office all the employees are in the conference room where some company honcho we’ve never seen before is giving a presentation on why new initiatives are crucial for the survival of the company. On the screen behind him he is showing battle scenes from the 300. Blood is everywhere and he says, “This is how we’re being massacred right now. Am I making it clear enough how imperative change is? Should I go on or do you just want to stand there dumbfounded with your mouths open while you wait to be crucified?
2:05 p.m.: “I don’t want to be crucified,” one employee says meekly.
2:05:37 p.m.: “Then we fight back. We line up and get on the bus to Thermopylae. We put on our Spartan pants and get to work.”
2:06 p.m.: “Are we going to have to buy our own Spartan pants or will the company provide them?” new guy asks without getting a response.
2:07 p.m.: “Does anyone here have children?” the honcho asks and the sales rep - who just had a baby - raises her hand.
2:07:44 p.m.: “Boy or girl?”
2:07:50 p.m. “Girl.”
2:08 p.m.: “Well, do you want her to have to strip to pay for nail tech school or do you want this company to thrive so you’ll be able to pay her tuition to a top university?”
2:08:22 p.m.: “I don’t want Emily to have to strip,” sales rep says.
2:09 p.m.: “Well, these are the kinds of decisions we’re making here today people. The 300 too much for you, how ‘bout the circus?” he says clicking to a circus video image. “Imagine the big top suddenly collapses on itself and begins to smother every living thing beneath it.”
2:10 p.m.: “Tigers and elephants and clowns in little cars crushed. Children swinging little monkeys on a stick one second, gasping for an air bubble in a bucket of popcorn the next. You!” he says to me. “What’s going through your head right this second?”
2:11 p.m.: Well, I say I was thinking how I’m always attracted to trapeze ladies even if they’re not particularly pretty. I have the same thing with women who drive in open jeeps. I just find them sexy no matter what they look like.
2:11:28 p.m.: The honcho suddenly comes at me. I’m cornered, my back pressed up against the copy machine. He’s a big guy and I can tell he thinks I’m about to shit my Spartan pants but I know exactly what to do.
2:11:36 p.m.: Start clapping.