Bad Intern Page 2

  For the first time ever, I lament being a woman in the IT department: everyone stares at me, no matter how bad I look.

  Being pretty doesn’t excuse lateness, especially with my horrible manager. Tom would be more than happy to can my ass. He doesn’t like anyone, but he really doesn’t like me. Probably thinks only men should be in IT. The jerk.

  The doors open. I rush inside and slam the door-shut button, then lean back and relax.

  And relax.

  And relax.

  What the Christ-fucking fuck?

  “Dummy,” I say and push eight. The elevator lurches into a descent and stops seconds later. The doors open and I’m running down the hall.

  I slow to a quick walk, then a steady stroll like I haven’t a care in the world. Breathing heavily, I open the conference room and ponder where to sit. There’s about ten people here, including Tom and Pete. Brett’s nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s Brett?” I say, wincing at how loud I sound. Everyone turns to stare.

  “Excuse me?” Tom says.

  “Oh, I just … That is, what I mean is—”

  “Everything okay?” Brett says from behind me, scaring me out of my skin. I turn quickly and look at him up close for the first time ever. Mid-forties, clean-shaven but deeply shadowed. Full head of hair with a dusting of gray at the temples. A good enough face. Not pretty-boy cute like Pete (currently pantomiming karate chops from across the room), and not grandpa-old and plain, like Tom. A hint of aftershave, and it’s driving me wild.

  Get hold of yourself! And move!

  “Oh, excuse me,” I say and step back, holding the door wide.

  Brett nods at me and steps inside. “Thanks.”

  Behind him come two men and a woman. The men wear suits, and their hair is gelled to GQ perfection. The woman has long blonde hair so shiny it’s almost metallic. She’s simply gorgeous. Her skirt-suit is skin tight and curvy as hell. Almost everyone is looking at her.

  Everyone except Pete. He’s still looking at me. I toss him a small smile for the show of loyalty. He pulls back a seat beside him.

  “You okay?” he whispers when I sit down.

  “Yes, and stop asking me that.”

  “Shush,” Tom says, glaring at both of us.

  Brett introduces the three sales reps from Oracle, and I tuck in for two hours of the most boring crap in my life. I have no idea what they’re talking about. Replication? Hash tables? Master and slave servers? Sounds like a wild fucking party, but I refrain from saying that. I wonder why I’m even here. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life locked in rooms like this talking about multi-tenancy? And what the heck is storage virtualization? They do know I’m a Java programmer, right?

  I alternate between yawning and looking at my phone. Tom notices and mouths, Put it away. I click off the display and cover it in my lap.

  Pete puts on a good show for the first hour. I wonder if he’s trying to impress me. He nods his head at every point the sales reps make. When someone from our company asks a question, he nods at them too. An hour later, he’s hiding a little behind me so Tom can’t see him. His phone is out and he’s tapping something. I lean over to look and he edges away so I can’t see his screen. The bum.

  Seconds later, my phone buzzes. Tom’s attention is totally focused on the blonde, who’s using a laser pointer now. She looks so hot with that laser pointer it makes me feel like a ragamuffin. Now I want a laser pointer. She’s facing away and pointing at little boxes and circles on a flowchart. Her butt wiggles every time she twists back to say something. She’s doing it on purpose, and I’m sick with envy.

  My phone buzzes again, and Pete knocks my chair leg with his foot.

  I suppress a sigh and check it.

  Pete: Wanna get lunch after?

  Tom’s still watching the show, so I type back: I have a boyfriend. I told you.

  I don’t have a boyfriend, but Pete doesn’t know that. I feel a little bad lying to him. He’s a nice guy, if a bit of a pest. My only friend at the job if I’m being honest. But I can’t encourage him. I don’t kick puppies and I don’t lead people on. Especially nice guys like him.

  The Oracle reps leave and the sales presentation morphs into a quick staff meeting.

  “Now that we have everyone together,” Brett says, “I thought we’d cover a little administrivia.”

  My heart’s aflutter. He’s so practical. Administrivia—what a great word!

  My phone buzzes again and I let it go. Brett’s asking for volunteers to do something tedious but high profile. I was born for tedious. Before anyone else snags it, I raise my hand.

  “Way to go, Jen,” Brett says. “But, uh … hmm. It’s an awful lot of work, and you’d be here alone, so … Hmm, maybe work with a buddy on it? How about you, um … sorry?”

  Pete reminds him again.

  “Pete, yeah, that’s right,” Brett says, shaking his head apologetically. “It’ll be a long weekend. You’re both interns, so I can’t pay you overtime. Tom’ll make it up in comp time. Oh, and I have free coupons to Top Golf. They keep trying to get us out for a team thing, but it’s way too expensive.”

  Laughter around the room.

  Pete smiles widely and flashes everyone thumbs-up. More laughter.

  Brett says, “I’ll tell the security desk you’ll be here at nine tomorrow. I’ll ask for both days just in case.”

  Comp time. Top Golf too, whatever that is. And my weekend ruined.

  Shit.

  Four

  It’s Saturday morning, and I consider calling Pete and saying I’m sick. There are a few problems with this. One: if I call him, our non-relationship will have progressed from texting to phone calls. Very bad. Two: I could reply to yesterday’s texts, but that’d seem cowardly, and I don’t want him knowing I’m a coward. Three: I promised Brett I’d do the work.

  VP Brett doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d be impressed with a girl who doesn’t do what she says. He trusts me to get the job done. So if I have to spend a day—possibly the whole weekend—with Pete and his dumb jokes, then so be it.

  Coming from the parking structure, I run into Pete outside the building. He’s not a smoker, so I’m not sure why he’s out there except to wait for me.

  “I don’t need an escort,” I say and start to push past.

  “Hold on, karate girl,” he says, coming around to stand in front of me. “Truce?” He holds out his left hand. I start to push past him and he blocks me. “I’m joking, sheesh! Come on, hear me out.”

  Against my better judgment, I fold my arms and wait patiently. “Go on.”

  “Let’s get breakfast,” he says. “If you’ve eaten already, just have coffee. I’m starving. No need to rush. This stuff’s been sitting in storage so long, if they needed it they would have converted it already.”

  Our job is to scan a bunch of old papers through an OCR (optical character reader) and store them on a shared drive. Monkey work. My hope is Brett will recognize my commitment and then tap me for more important stuff later. Maybe I’ll even get to work directly with him.

  “Earth to Jen,” Pete says, waving his hands in front of me. “What do you say?”

  I huff and roll my eyes so he doesn’t think I’m a pushover. “Fine. But I’m not eating until lunch. I’m keto.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I can eat whenever I want without regard for blood sugar or the things you grain eaters suffer from. It also means I don’t pack on the pounds.”

  We’re walking now. This early, the town center is mostly closed, except for the Subway shop and the cafe across the street. No traffic, so I cross in the middle rather than going down to the intersection and using the crosswalk. During the week, it’s as much as your life is worth to do that, it’s so busy. Now, it’s my chance to screw with Pete.

  Pete hesitates, looks both ways for some reason—it’s totally empty—and then crosses behind me.

  “What do you mean?” he says. “You just e
at meat? Get it? Meat?”

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

  “Look,” I say, “if we’re going to do this we may as well be friends. That means you don’t hit on me any more. I mean it. I’m saving myself for someone.”

  “Who, Brett?”

  Shit.

  I shake my head angrily and continue walking. He doesn’t try to stop me or apologize. Which is fine, because I want him to stay in the doghouse for a while. Much easier to deal with a man when he’s in the doghouse.

  I pick a table near the window so I have something to look at except him. Pete kindly takes my order—large coffee, no sugar, tablespoon of cream—and he’s back five minutes later with cookies, cakes, and two coffees.

  “I said I’m not eating that crap.”

  “Would you stop being so bitchy?” he says.

  I’m shocked to my core. No one calls me a bitch, let alone bitchy. The nerve of this guy! I have a good mind to take my coffee and dump it on his head. Well no, that’d scald him and that’d be horrible, and…

  He’s sitting there watching me, and for the first time ever, he looks a little afraid. Am I really that scary?

  I can’t help it—I burst out laughing. I cover my mouth to hold it in, but that makes me laugh harder. It’s sort of embarrassing, because I’ve totally lost the upper hand now. He’s gotten away with it—calling me bitchy—and I’ve let him. He’ll be impossible after this.

  “Bitchy McBitch-Meister,” he whispers, pointing at me.

  I’m howling now. It’s too much. The worst thing I want said about me uttered from the last guy I want to see.

  “Would you shut up?” I say, smiling, and wipe the tears from my eyes.

  Without thinking, I reach out and snag a cookie. My eyes flash dangerously when he starts to point out my hypocrisy. I pull a piece off and pop it in my mouth. I take a sip of my coffee and wince at how hot it is.

  “Why are you so happy all the time?” I say.

  Pete frowns briefly in thought. “I’m the youngest of five. We had to fight for affection in my house. Smiling and being fun gets more attention. Now I’m just a smiling and fun guy.”

  “So you never feel depressed?”

  Pete shrugs. “Sure. Who doesn’t? But life’s too short. Plenty of time to feel like shit when we’re in the grave. In fact, I can’t think of a better time. Have another cookie.”

  I’ve finished mine already. He scoots another one over. Pretty soon, I’ve finished that too.

  I’m happy.

  Five

  Work is work, and there sure is a lot of it. A whole roomful stacked in dusty old boxes half falling apart and leaning precariously. We’re supposed to take each box, gather dates and topics, and record all of it in a spreadsheet with the filename of the newly created PDF. Tedious beyond belief, and I’m so glad Brett volunteered Pete to help.

  “What do you think they’ll use the room for when it’s empty?” Pete says at one point.

  I drop the latest box on the conference room table and wipe my hands on my jeans. “Probably lock us in there and throw away the key.”

  Too late, I realize what I’ve just said, what I’ve invited. To his credit, Pete says nothing. I’m surprised to learn I want him to say something suggestive. Maybe I was too harsh with him earlier? Maybe I should lighten up?

  Maybe you’re just bored.

  Pete’s sitting next to me with his laptop open, busily plugging metadata into a spreadsheet. I’ve brought mine, but his is a little newer. At my insistence, we each take turns at the keyboard.

  His face is so serious, I can’t help myself: I reach over and nudge the laptop about an inch, causing him to mess up.

  “Hey, what did you do that for?” he says, staring at me like my hair is on fire.

  I shrug. “Just because.”

  He shakes his head and fixes the mistake. He looks at his notepad and goes to make an entry in the next cell.

  I nudge the laptop again.

  “Really?” he says, turning to stare at me. There’s a light in his eyes that’s been missing since I told him to stop hitting on me. I’m happy to see it back, but I leave him alone now. Leading him on won’t get me any closer to bagging a VP.

  We run that box through the scanner and move on to the next. Now it’s my turn at the keyboard. And of course he’s poking the laptop every time I go to write something. I start giggling, and then he starts giggling, and pretty soon he’s poking me and not the laptop—just under the ribs where I’m super ticklish. I slap his hands away, but not hard.

  I like Pete, even though I’ve treated him kind of shitty these last couple days. So I pretend not to notice when the rib-poking slips down to my butt. My gift to him—something to masturbate to when he gets home.

  After we finish off the next box and stow it away, Pete says, “What do you say we take a break?”

  “And do what?”

  Usually he’d say something teasing and suggestive, like Whoever you feel like, or Whatever’s not legal in Kentucky. Again, I’m weirdly disappointed. What the heck’s happened to me all of a sudden?

  Pete shrugs. “Go exploring? Remember how we’re not supposed to do that?”

  I roll my eyes, but not at him. During orientation, HR told us and a bunch of contractors who started the same day that we could work in our areas, sure, go to the break room and bathrooms, fine, no problem. But wandering around exploring was strictly prohibited. Apparently, the company also does government work, and the people on that side of the office are jumpy. The work on our team is strictly commercial.

  “I’m not going to the government side,” I say. “They have cameras and stuff over there. But I know where we can go…”

  “Lead the way.”

  As we approach the familiar little office with no windows, Pete’s eyes widen. “Hey, wait a minute …”

  “Shush,” I say.

  “But that’s Tom’s office.”

  “Relax, it’s probably locked.”

  It’s never locked, and never closed all the way. None of them are. I noticed early on that managers and executives keep their doors ajar as part of Brett’s “open doors” policy.

  Tom’s office is loaded down with a million tons of family stuff on the walls: crayon drawings of houses, stick figures with enormous heads, pictures of him and the family at sporting events, that sort of thing. He also has a shelf laden near to breaking with about a million books on leadership, business, and personal success. Of them all, only the self-help stuff looks to have been read. The rest are clearly there for decoration, or maybe protection. Totems saying, “Don’t fire me—look how in-it-to-win-it I am.”

  Staring around the little room with the family pictures, a frozen spot way down inside me warms and softens just a little bit for grumpy ol’ Tom. He has a family to provide for, and he clearly loves them.

  “Now what?” Pete says, peering nervously around. If he’s turned warm and soft inside, he doesn’t let on.

  I try a couple of drawers in Tom’s desk, but they’re all locked. My eyes stray to the family photos, and my guilt intensifies.

  “Let’s try another,” I say and lead the way out. We go down a few doors and into another office, this one with a window. No family pictures on these walls—just a lot of sailboats, including a model sailboat on a big, shiny desk. When I try one of the drawers, wonder of all, it opens up.

  “Jen, I don’t think we should be here …”

  There he goes, trailing off again. I’m about to mock him for being too serious, when suddenly the grownup world feels hot and stifling as I stare at my discovery: the key to boredom, the gateway to fun, and very likely the undoing of everything I’ve accomplished in landing this internship.

  Oh, shit. Close it!

  I gaze at the little drawer, fascinated, unable to look away. I don’t close it.

  “Jen? What’s wrong?”

  He’s on the other side of the desk, so he doesn’t see.

  Come on. You can do it. Just nudge
it shut with your foot.

  Instead, I lift a fifth of Jack Daniels out and set it next to an incredibly detailed model sailboat with three masts. There are two more bottles in the drawer, making me think whoever’s room this is, they have a serious problem. That softening part inside rears its sappy head again. I chase it back with a stick and marshal my arguments.

  This time will be different.

  It’s Saturday.

  No one’s here.

  You can’t possibly drink it all yourself.

  I’m fucking bored.

  I peel off the safety seal, unscrew the top, and take a quick sip. Yummy. Stupid yummy.

  Pete says, “Jesus, Jen, what are you doing? He’ll notice.”

  “Two things,” I say. “One: he could be a she. Two: what’s he or she gonna do, run to Brett and say someone drank his or her stash?” To emphasize the point, I take another swig. It’s really, really good. Warms me right up. I feel tingly as hell, the way I always do when drinking the hard stuff. I sort of want to get naked.

  Don’t you dare!

  Pete stands there frowning at me. He peeks behind him as if expecting someone to show up any minute to arrest us. He’s so nervous he’s got me looking, too. But we’re totally alone.

  “Well don’t hog it all,” he says, “you trespassing drunk. Come on, share.”

  I hold the bottle out of reach. “Sorry, Pete, I have cooties. No hooch for you.”

  “I’ve already had cooties. You can only get it once.”

  He reaches out and I fend him off, a smug smile plastered across my face. “You really want some?”

  He nods.

  “Open your mouth and close your eyes, and I’ll give you a big surprise.”

  His gaze meets mine and there’s a spark. A big spark. A damned big spark, and I feel myself melting for entirely different reasons this time. I’m about to cap the bottle, put it back, and suggest we return to work. But then Pete closes his eyes and opens his mouth. Now I have to make with the big surprise.