Cover Me

Her forehead wrinkled. “You did?”

“Yes.”

“Well…” She recovered and crossed her arms over a crisp periwinkle-blue Marie Gray jacket. “You didn’t answer my pages.”

As always, I was torn between anger and flattery. “My battery died. What do you need?”

I began walking toward her office, and she fell into step next to me, her hands agitated. “Something came up and I can’t make an appointment. I need you to go in my place.”

I perked up—cover for Helena? Until now, she’d never asked me to do more than cover her behind. I was momentarily dazzled by her confidence in me. “Sure, Helena, I’d be happy to.”

My mind spun with the possible exposure and what it could mean for my career. A Chamber of Commerce meeting? A symposium on periodicals at the Guggenheim? An advertising think tank? I was relieved I’d worn a decent suit and shoes—both a half-season old, but passable if I snagged a Hermès scarf from the prop department. “Just tell me where.”

Helena smiled, all congenial and girl-friendly now. “I can always count on you, Kenzie. I have everything ready for you in my office.”

My stride was instantly longer, my posture two inches taller, and I fought to control the giddy grin that threatened to burst over my face. Helena was finally making good on her promise to delegate visible assignments. If this one involved Donald Trump or the mayor, I’d simply have to endure my man allergy for the afternoon for the sake of my new assignment. A girl had to make sacrifices to get ahead.

Helena swung open the door to her office and I followed, but my elongated stride was cut short by the sight of the visitor sitting in Helena’s leather guest chair. A little dog covered with hair longer than mine sat on her pretty little haunches, took one look at me, and yawned. A bad feeling settled on top of my Caesar salad.

“This is Angel,” Helena sang, scooping up the pooch and bringing it close enough for me to see that the pink ribbon between its pointy little ears was silk. And Versace. “This is Kenzie,” Helena cooed to the dog.

The only thing that surpassed my surprise over seeing the frou-frou dog in Helena’s pristine office was the sound of my boss speaking in baby-talk. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“I bought her last night at a pet store on Fifty-Third. Isn’t she adorable?”

“Adorable,” I agreed.

“She’s a Yorkie, a former show dog,” Helena gushed. “Her ancestors belonged to royalty.”

“Ah.” I extended my hand for a trial stroke, and Angel emitted an un-angelic growl. I withdrew my hand.

Helena laughed. “Oh, she didn’t mean that—Angel is as tame as a stuffed animal. She just needs to get to know you better. By the time you get back from Tatum’s the two of you will be fast friends.”

I stared at the creature that resembled a miniature version of Cousin It from the “Addams Family.” “This—” I swallowed and started again. “This is the appointment you can’t make?”

“Uh-huh,” Helena said ruefully. “I just got a thank-you call from the mayor’s office about the public service ads we ran last month on tourism—they want to get a handshake picture, and of course I couldn’t say no. But Angel has an appointment at Tatum’s, the most exclusive grooming salon in the city, and if I miss this appointment, they’ll blacklist her.”

I’d lived in Manhattan long enough to know that those things did happen—even the animals here had a social circle. Still, as far as executive assistant duties went, dog-sitting went a little beyond the normal tasks of picking up the dry cleaning, getting theater tickets and making dinner reservations. “Helena, I’m not a concierge. You said you were going to give me an assignment that would make a difference in my career.”

Helena nodded. “You’re so right, Kenzie, and I promise the next big assignment that crosses my desk will be yours. Just do me this one teensy favor.”

I looked at the little mutt and groaned inwardly. “But I’m allergic to pet dander.”

“I’ll owe you one,” Helena said in her most cajoling voice.

I sighed. “In that case, I’d like to leave the office early on Thursday.”

She pursed her perfectly penciled mouth. “How early?”

I narrowed my eyes.

“I mean…it’s a deal.” Helena recovered with a magnanimous smile, then shoved Angel into my arms.

2

“SO WHAT did you have to do to get out of the office early?” Jacki asked me over the top of our sweet and sour margaritas. Over the past couple of years, my girlfriends and I had gone through a martini phase and a Cosmopolitan phase and now were back to good old tequila…although we had graduated to El Tesoro Platinum. Olé.

I didn’t want to admit to the girls that I’d been reduced to a dog valet (simply thinking about the horrid afternoon at the pet salon made me flinch), so I shrugged. “Helena isn’t as evil as everyone thinks. She has a soft spot.” For her pooch, I didn’t add. When I’d delivered news from the groomer that Helena should consider having Angel’s wings (i.e., ovaries) clipped, my boss had been outraged. I suspected her reluctance to fix Angel had something to do with Helena’s own well-publicized struggle with the onset of menopause.

And I promised myself this would be the last time I would defend my boss until the career-altering project she promised materialized. In truth, a festering resentment against Helena had been building inside me all week, and today I was feeling defiant of her and of life in general. I was thirty-one, and Thirty-One Candles was not the title of a movie because, as birthdays go, it was an unremarkable milestone. But I was decidedly restless and looking to be liberated from my six-month career marathon. Plus tequila always made me a tad horny. Olé.

I did a slow scan of the bar—between the regrettable one-year stint with my ex James and my new job, I’d been off the market for a while. Among the sea of faces, a boyish grin caught my eye. A sandy-haired man was chatting with the bartender and tossing back a handful of nuts. He looked out of place—woodsy almost, with his L. L. Bean T-shirt (I knew T-shirts) and sunburned cheeks. That was no tanning salon tan. He seemed to be comfortably alone—no guy (or girl) friends on the periphery, and he wasn’t looking up every few seconds to see if anyone was on the make.

Like me, for instance.

“So how’s your man allergy?” Cindy asked, jarring me out of my reverie.

Darn, I’d almost forgotten. “Active,” I murmured, realizing that the man at the bar was just the kind of guy I normally went for. Which meant he’d probably throw my body into metabolic chaos.

“Don’t tell me you’re still hanging on to that pitiful excuse for not meeting men?” Jacki said.

“I’m telling you, it’s for real,” I insisted. “And it’s for my own good.”

“Well, you’re going to have to risk an outbreak,” Denise said, then exchanged devilish grins with Cindy and Jacki. “At least for one night.”

I squinted. “What are you three up to?”

“Happy Birthday,” Denise shouted, then plopped a gaily wrapped package onto the table. “It’s from all of us.”

“You shouldn’t have,” I said, but I welled with pleasure.

In my lifetime I had experienced a high rate of friend turnover because I and everyone I knew seemed to be in perpetual motion—every apartment and every job seemed eerily temporary, a pit stop to somewhere potentially more fulfilling. I had met Denise, Jacki and Cindy when we all worked for a textbook publisher over four years ago. From there our careers had taken different paths, but we had managed to stay in touch. I treasured the low-maintenance, high-gossip bond I shared with these three women.

I dutifully read the humorous card, then tore into the package thinking jewelry! Perfume! Handbag! The girls always knew just the right gift.

When the paper revealed a description of the box contents, however, I decided they must have run out of good ideas. “A Make Your Own Dildo kit?”

“Isn’t it great?” Denise asked, squealing.

I stared at the box, which portrayed a woman from the waist up. Her hands were out of sight, and she looked pleased with herself. “M-make my own? I’m not much of an artist.”

Jacki scoffed. “You don’t sculpt the dildo—you make a cast.”

“From what?”

“From the real thing, silly.”

I gaped. “You mean…?”