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“I was in the zone. With work.”
“That was a lot of typing for work.”
“Our bosses like thorough reports.” It wasn’t technically a lie. “What can I help you with?”
“I realized I forgot to thank you for signing for my delivery,” he said as I carefully reached out to discreetly minimize my document window. “That was meant to come much later so I could sign for it.”
“Oh, right. Well, no big deal. How was your show?”
“The usual. One genuinely interesting conversation and an hour and forty-five minutes of people calling in to tell me about their feelings.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if I was that interesting conversation. It was kind of embarrassing how much I wanted that to be the case.
I was quick to try to convince myself it was only because I wanted Silas to keep taking my calls so I could maintain the ratings up and prevent his show from being canceled.
But I was totally lying to myself.
“Hey, one good caller makes it worth your time, right?”
“Does it?” he asked.
“Considering your time slot, I think so.”
“Perhaps. Do you always work this late?”
“Umm, I don’t even know what time… oh, no, not usually.”
“If you stay much longer, the morning shift is going to file in and start piling on more work.”
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed. I made sure my document was saved and backed up before closing it out and powering down the computer.
“Is there no day shift studio manager?”
“Nope. Just me.”
“Which is why you always seem to be carrying around a forest’s worth of paperwork when you are shuffling around.”
Did I maybe object a bit to the idea of me ‘shuffling’ around the studio? Sure. But he wasn’t wrong about the workload.
“Do you work the evening shift purposely?”
“I started here on the morning shift, then the afternoon,” I told him as I grabbed my raincoat and purse. “But it was almost impossible to get any actual work done when someone was always at my door. Or I was forever putting out mini fires—both literal and figurative. So, eventually, I started coming in later. The higher-ups don’t really care when I work so long as everything gets done. And day shift has two assistants to pick up the slack.”
That was way too many words.
“You don’t worry about being here so late?”
“With Grum at the front door?” I asked as I moved into the hallway with him.
“He barely looks up from his… books.” I heard the disgust in his voice at Grum’s chosen genre of literature.
“You’d be surprised. He knows everything that’s going on around here. He just doesn’t care about most of it. Just the threat of a troll at the door keeps people from trying to come in.”
“The general public, perhaps. But not the… guests.”
“It’s kind of impressive how easily you make an innocuous word sound like an indictment.”
His brows drew together at that, and I worried for a second that I was found out since we hadn’t actually spoken enough in person for me to make that kind of observation about him.
