Girls Who Travel (3 page)

4

A
RUDELY
SHRILLING
phone yanked me from the Internet rabbit hole.

“Kika Shores, VoyageCorp,” I chirped with counterfeit liveliness. “How may I assist you this fine day?”

I looked at Holland through his glass office, and he curled his top lip in warning. He had been observing my phone demeanor ever since he caught me answering the phone with “Kika Shores, Office Bitch.” (I thought it was my mom calling. It was an innocent mistake that could happen to anyone.)

“Hi, Kika, it's Lynn, Madison's mother. I couldn't get you on your cell, and your mom passed on this number.”

I winced and swiveled my chair to face away from Holland's office.

“Hey, Lynn. Yeah, this is my office number, but my mom really shouldn't be giving it out.”

“Of course,” she said with her heartland politeness, “but darling, I
must
say you do sound
very
professional!”

I loved mothers of young children; they were always easily impressed and quick to dole out praise.
Thanks, I have a big-girl job!

“I was just calling to confirm tonight. I'll pick you up from the train station at six thirty with Madison and then drop you girls off at home. I should be home by midnight. I hope that's not too late for you, is it?”

I jerked my swivel chair one half turn farther, binding the curly phone cord around myself. I was babysitting her five-year-old daughter, Madison, that night. Why did she have to make it sound like we were having a playdate?

Madison's mom insisted that she pick me up from the train station, which was actually fine by me because it saved my own mother the trouble. Of course, the whole production made me feel like a teenager again instead of an early twenties college grad who worked in the city.

But I was desperate for the extra money babysitting generated. I had a giant credit card bill from last weekend when I took an impromptu trip to see a friend in Montreal.

“Thanks again for helping out. Madison adores you.”

Babysitting came naturally to me—as an only child I always wanted younger siblings. I babysat all through high school and the summers between my years in college. In fact, I was our neighborhood's favorite babysitter. Shockingly, my college's career counselor wouldn't let me add this to my résumé, even though watching five-year-olds truly equipped me for dealing with fussy CEOs.

Holland emerged from his office bundled in his winter coat in preparation to go outside.

“Absolutely, so glad we were able to confirm that. Looking forward to working together in the future. Okay, bye now.” I put the phone down before Lynn finished, and I rotated my chair in the opposite direction to face Holland.

“Something I can do for you, Mr. Holland?” I said, fumbling to unravel the phone cord.

“Kika—” he started forcefully and then cut himself short.

I offered him my most impressive Disney Princess smile, and he took a deep breath. The curiously bulging vein in his forehead throbbed up and down.

“Kika, I'm going to the last-call meeting at the Richmond Group to get any final requests. I'll send you Ronald Richmond's changes as they arise so that you can get started on them right away. Just please, I beg you, get everything confirmed. I'm getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups on this one. I'm not kidding around.”

“Right, Mr. Holland,” I said far too cheerily to instill any genuine confidence. Holland put his hand to his temples, and his vein swelled again, but he walked out without another word.

As soon as he was out of sight, I shrugged off my itchy blazer to reveal a cottony soft retro T-shirt that said, in Russian: “Moscow Is for Lovers.” (There was a highly probable chance that it actually said, “Stupid American Tourist”; I never checked.)

I tried to keep up a semblance of my true self whenever Holland was out of the office. Plus, work clothes were so binding and claustrophobic—wearing them was the fashion equivalent of being told to “quiet down.” I was literally unsuited for corporate life.

The only thing about my work appearance that was wholly
mine was my summery, beach blond “Coachella hair,” as Holland called it.

I heeled off my uptight office shoes and curled my legs in a lotus position in my chair, instantly feeling relief.

Contrary to popular belief at VoyageCorp, I wasn't an idiot. I was just understimulated and underemployed. But it wasn't like I was irresponsible or anything. I mean, how hard was it to set up and confirm meetings, right?

But then as if on cue, it hit me.
Oh no.

I snatched my tasks list and flashed over it. There it was, inked in bright red pen and my own treacherous, loopy handwriting:
Set up last-call meeting with Richie Rich re: Dubai.

I was so preoccupied with the actual Dubai conference that I forgot to schedule the meeting in New York
before
the Dubai conference—the one that Holland was en route to right now.

I frantically looked around like the solution was a physical thing that I could find if I searched hard enough.
Holland is officially going to shank me. Or worse, fire me.

I started pacing, but then it struck me: Maybe Richie Rich was available to have a super-quick meeting with Holland. CEOs of multinational export companies weren't, like, constantly busy, right? He had to have five minutes to spare. I speed-dialed his personal assistant.

“Ronald Richmond's office,” answered an impatient, too-cool-for-you voice.

I pictured his PA, Bae Yoon, adjusting her headset, which she always seemed to be wearing—even on social occasions—like it was some sort of high-tech fashion accessory.

“Bae Bae! It's Kika. You have got to help me,” I started.

“Hold please,” she said without emotion.

I tapped my foot. She didn't put me on hold properly, and I heard her whole conversation through the phone:

“Yes, I did just get it cut, Mr. Jørgensen. Do you really like it? You don't think it's too short, do you?”

Bae was a notorious flirt who considered bagging rich men pure sport. At any industry event she could be found shamelessly coiling up the arm of the wealthiest guy in the room like some poisonous snake.

I spanked my palms onto my desk: “BAE!”

“
Forgive me, Mr. Jørgensen—oh, okay
,” (sickly sounding giggles) “
I'll call you Sven. What a privilege. Forgive me, Sven, but I have to attend to this call
,” Bae said in the background.

She came back on the line. Irritated, she asked, “Yes?
Who
is this?”

Bae and I spoke roughly three hundred times a day.

“It's Kika Shores, from VoyageCorp. Look, I have a serious problem.”

Bae sighed, fluttering and wet like a horse. “Don't you
always
, though.”

“No, seriously, this is not a drill. I repeat: This is not a drill. Holland is coming to your office
right now
to meet with Richie Rich, and I totally forgot to schedule it with you,” I said in one breath. “Is there any way to get a meeting with Holland on the books, like,
now
, so they can meet?”

Bae let out another lengthy stream of air, which I
really
didn't have time for.

“So let me get this straight,” she started in her snippy, nasally way. “You forgot to schedule a meeting with Mr. Richmond—excuse me, with
Richie Rich
—wasn't
that
what you called him?”

I dropped my head back and grimaced at the ceiling. She wasn't going to forget that anytime soon.

Bae continued: “—and now you want
me
to
find
Mr. Richmond,
interrupt
him, and tell him that he has a
meeting
with Holland,
like, now
, so that
I
look like the
screwup
who didn't put it in the
books
?”

(Sorry for all the italics, but that's how Bae Yoon really talks:
in
alternating
italics
.)

Bae always took this sort of superior tone with me because back in the day, we were up for the same personal assistant position for Richie Rich. A man named Prescott Darling, the father of one of the families I babysat for, was a financial advisor for the Richmond Group, so when he got word that Richie Rich needed a PA, he got me the interview, even though I was less than qualified with my tourism and travel management degree.

When Richie Rich chose Bae over me, he passed on my résumé to VoyageCorp as a courtesy to Prescott Darling.

Bae acted like she won this big competition when I really couldn't care less as long as I had a job. And at least for now, I had a job.

“Bae, please,” I implored. “Just get someone—anyone—from the Richmond Group to meet with Holland. Look, he's been on my ass about Dubai, and if he finds out I forgot this, I'll be fired.”

There was an unwelcome silence on the end of the phone.

“Will you now?” said Bae in a cool, clear voice.

Unexpectedly, I felt my bottom lip twitch. Sure, I didn't exactly
like
this job, but it was really hard to get one. I only got this position because of the personal favor.

Just then the situation became serious. If I lost this job, it
would takes ages to get a new one, and I could kiss any hope of traveling in the immediate future good-freakin'-bye.

The line went quiet again. “Maybe I can help you,” Bae finally said.

Now I was the one exhaling. “Bae, thank you so—”

“But you'll have to do something for me,” she interrupted.

5

I
PUT
THE
phone down and fell back into my chair with a relieved moan.

Bae consented to meet with Holland herself to go over the itinerary for the conference. She agreed to tell him that Richie Rich had something suddenly come up.

In exchange, I would need to run an errand for Bae since she was giving up her lunch break to meet with Holland and she'd be in Dubai next week because she was just sooo busy and important and cool.

But nothing to panic over. A few little errands bartered for job security? Done. Holland had another meeting this afternoon, so I could leave now and return during his second appointment, and he wouldn't know how long I'd been gone. My job was safe.

While waiting for instructions from Bae, I started prepping
myself for the outdoors. I left my blazer and work shoes behind and slipped on my (in)famous Dr. Martens boots, which I brought along to change into after work so I could be comfy at Madison's house. (Okay, fine, so it sort of was like a playdate.)

By the time I got downstairs and outside the office, Bae had texted me her order: “Pick up six Cronuts from Dominique Ansel Bakery. Anything else is unacceptable.”

I thought to myself:
Enough with the damn Cronuts!
The croissant-doughnut dessert hybrid was still stupidly popular with tourists, and the bakery would be overrun this time of day with a line around the block. Not to mention that there was no way I'd snag
six
Cronuts without trading my immortal soul.

This task was obviously just designed to piss me off; since meeting Bae Yoon, I had never seen her put so much as a martini olive in her mouth.

Still, what Bae Bae wants, Bae Bae gets. I bundled up my coat and darted rabbitlike into the dank 34th Street Subway heading for Soho.

•   •   •

“Y
OU
HAVE
GOT
to be shitting me,” I said aloud as another text from Bae came through.

Some tourist in line for the bakery scowled at me and made her hands into earmuffs for her child's precious ears.

I had just waited in line for forty-five minutes to get the Cronuts and now
this
.

“One more thing,” texted Bae directly after I let her know that I got her Cronuts—I was only able to snag three without resorting to sexual favors or the black market. Her next request was just plain cruel.

“Go to Orifice Depot and pick up . . .”—actually I stopped reading right there and
prayed
that she had made a very unfortunate typo.

She cannot be asking me to go to a sex shop for her
, I silently contested. But when I read the rest of the text, my fears were confirmed. I texted her back: “You must be joking. Please, please be joking?”

Her response was instantaneous: “No.”

In a follow-up text, she added: “And when you're done, make sure you leave the bags with the doorman of my apartment.”

I said the word “fuck” aloud a few times, because it was
clearly
in order, and I begrudgingly made my way to the unbearably named store.

•   •   •

I
THRUST
(
BAD
choice of word) the phone up to the poor sales associate's face so I could be spared the embarrassment of reading Bae's list aloud.

“Please fetch me these things as quickly as possible, mm'k?” I piped, mashing the words together. But of course, it wasn't going to be that straightforward. Why did the sales associate have to be so damn thorough?

“Another question for you,” he chirped (his third). “So this one comes in three sizes and colors. There's vanilla, then there's caramel, or the biggest one is called chocolate. Which one were you interested in?”

I threw up in my mouth when I saw what he was holding, and I inadvertently pictured Bae.

“Um, whichever. Really. I do not care,” I squealed all too shrilly.

The sales associate, a peroxide blond who did not look old enough to be working in a sex shop, foppishly pinned his knuckles to his waist as if I was being difficult.

“Look, they're not for me. Can we please just get on with it?”

“Fiiiiine, suuuuuure,” he said, bringing the item to the register. “Looks like someone needs the chocolate one,” he muttered under his breath.

“Just ring it up.” I checked my phone. I had been out of the office far too long, and Holland had already called me twice.

I dashed out of the X-rated store, out $65 and my self-respect. It wasn't like I was a prude, but call me old-fashioned for thinking that sex toy shopping shouldn't be outsourced. That's what the Internet and discreet brown boxes were for.

Now I was stuck toting around a neon-green shopping bag clearly labeled with the store's disastrous name and filled with things that would make Christian Grey blush. To make matters worse, Bae lived all the way downtown in the Financial District.

My phone buzzed again, but it was a text from Holland this time: “Where are you?!”

“In the fetal position,” I almost texted back, but I left the text unanswered. I didn't have time to go downtown; I had no choice but to wait until after work to drop off Bae's bags.