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I hand Thomas my design proposal for the upcoming front window display.
‘Alice, hi.’ Chase runs a hand through his hair, a guilty look on his face. ‘All ready for Vegas?’
As it isn’t his fault his brother is a snob, I force a smile to my face. ‘Yes. Can’t wait.’
Chase cuts his eyes to his brother, widening them as if begging him to say something.
Thomas opens the folder I gave him, skimming over my display proposal. ‘I’ll make notes and get back to you.’
Chase runs a hand down his face. Mike, who I just noticed peeking his head over the chair, meows with more emotion than Thomas Moore probably has in his heart.
‘Great.’ My smile feels brittle, my words clipped. ‘Thanks.’
I make my exit, walking stiffly down the hall.
George’s eyebrows shoot up over the top of his horned-rimmed glasses as I pass by him standing in the break-room doorway. No doubt shocked that the usually perky and cheerful Alice Truman is seething. Because I am not a seether. I never have been.
I’m perpetually polite. I avoid confrontation. I’m a peacekeeper.
But right now, instead of making peace, I want to punch Thomas Moore in his ridiculously handsome face.
Thankfully, George gets distracted by the whistling and beeping coming from the complex espresso machine that he insisted Chase buy him, enabling me to turn the corner and slip into the office supply closet without explanation.
I need to collect myself. I need to forget Thomas Moore’s dismissive words. And I most definitely need to forget the week I spent going from cologne counter to cologne counter during my lunch break trying to figure out how, in the rare moments that I was in the same room as him, the condescending jerk smelled so delicious.
It took five days and a lot of sneezing but I figured it out – money.
Thomas Moore smells so delicious because he can buy a cologne that costs more than the monthly rent of a three-hundred-and-eighty-foot studio in a kind-of-sketchy but not-so-bad part of town.
The part of town that I live in.
Maybe if I had expensive-cologne-buying money, I could afford a real haircut and not an at-home special where I, regretfully, thought I could copy the curtain bang trend, but somehow ended up with a heavy blunt fringe that made me look pre-pubescent.
But while it is not my best look, I resent the hell out of Mr Starched Shirts for pointing it out. Just because he gets his chocolate-colored locks routinely trimmed by the best barber New York City has to offer, not all of us were born with a silver spoon.
Taking a deep breath, I make the most of my hiding spot and rifle through one of the boxes until I find the multicolored packs of Post-it notes. Bell likes to say my office looks like a serial killer’s hang-out. But sticking color-coded Post-it notes and Polaroid pictures on my walls makes it easier for me to organize ongoing projects and social media posting schedules, as well as brainstorm window and floor displays.
I grab more blue ones – the color I use for Moore’s social media posts. I use a lot of those.
Moore’s never had its own marketing team, let alone a visual merchandiser. Instead, they’d hired outside marketing firms for advertising purposes and let floor managers display whichever goods they wanted based on whatever sales numbers they wanted to hit that month.
It was an outdated system that left a lot to be desired both creatively and financially. It wasn’t until the middle Moore sibling, Chase, took over last year that the lack of proper and current marketing strategies was rectified.
I may have come from the shoe department, as Thomas Moore so aptly said, but I’m now Moore’s first hire for their internal marketing department. My official title is lead visual merchandiser and social media coordinator. Basically, when not posting pictures on my phone, I do a lot of dressing and undressing of mannequins.
Not bad for a former shoe salesperson who aged-out of the foster care system.
Cracking the door open, I glance down the hall. Coast clear.
I couldn’t be happier with a job that will allow me to help the people who depend on me, I remind myself as I quick-step toward the elevator.
Well, no, that’s a lie. I definitely could be happier.
When the doors open I jump in and keep pressing the close door button until I’m safely shut inside.
I could not have to deal with Thomas Moore.
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