One
Mina
In a world of uncertainty, there was one thing I knew about my life: I absolutely didn’t belong here.
“Here” being a supply closet deep in the prestigious offices of Morgan Financial Holdings in downtown Manhattan, staring at a wall of packages of printer paper and checking them off a list. I was wearing a knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse, sensible low heels, and pantyhose. Actual pantyhose! I didn’t know they even sold those anymore, but apparently they did, and when you worked at a place like Morgan Financial Holdings, you were expected to wear them.
Pantyhose were not supposed to be my destiny. I was supposed to be on Broadway. Better yet, I was supposed to be the next Adele, singing my heart out and rocking my curves the way she does. I was supposed to be putting my heart and soul into music, rewarded by sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall and millions of dollars. Why else does anyone come to New York?
It wasn’t to do this, standing in this dim, silent supply closet with a clipboard, listening to the scratch of my pencil as I made checkmark after checkmark. My job technically had a title—Sub-Assistant to the Office Manager—but in reality, everyone called me what I was: the office supply girl.
That’s right, instead of belting out mega-hits in front of an audience of thousands, I spent my days making sure that no employee of Morgan Financial went without Post-It notes (correct size, yellow only!) or ball-point pens (the expensive kind for the executives, the cheap kind for everyone else.) I made sure the mail room had every kind of envelope—large, small, bubble-wrapped—and the accounting department had mechanical pencils and calculators. And don’t even start with me about printer toner—printer toner was the bane of my existence.
Printer toner and pantyhose.
“Mina.” My boss, Helen, appeared in the supply closet doorway. She was the actual Office Manager at Morgan Financial, the woman I was sub-assistant to, even though she was probably two years older than me at most. “What’s taking so long in there?”
I blinked at her. “This is a big shipment,” I said, motioning to the printer paper that had just been delivered by our supplier. “I’m making sure we received everything we ordered.”
“Well, it’s taking too long,” Helen said. “The inventory check needs to be finished in twenty minutes.”
I looked at my watch—yes, I’d had to buy a watch for this job, because Helen didn’t want her employees looking at their phones at work. “Twenty minutes? Why?”
Helen rolled her eyes as if repeating herself for the dozenth time, which she wasn’t. “HR needs three reams of printer paper, Shipping needs envelopes and two packs of pens, and Greta needs toner to make printouts for Mr. Morgan.”
I stared at her in terror. “For… for Mr. Morgan?”
“Yes,” Helen said, putting a hand on her hip. Helen was sort of attractive, I supposed, if you liked tall, wispy, humorless blondes. I was petite, dark-haired, and curvy, so I was pretty much her opposite. Also, she said things like “ASAP,” which she pronounced as a word, which might be why she was still single, like me. “You heard right,” she said. “Mr. Morgan is coming in late this morning, but he has an important phone meeting. Greta has to have the reports he needs printed before he arrives. So hurry up.” She turned and walked away, presumably to go manage someone else, somewhere else.
As soon as her back was turned I dropped my clipboard, grabbed the supplies that were on Helen’s list, and hurried out of the closet. My first stop was the shipping department, a room down the hall from the main reception desk. Two guys worked in there—I couldn’t remember their names, so in my mind I called the blond one Shipping and the dark-haired one Receiving. I’d only been working here for three weeks, and I was terrible with names.
“Thanks,” Shipping said, grabbing the envelopes and the pens from me. “Helen’s in a real mood today, huh?”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I can see it in your face. You get a cute frown between your brows when Helen is giving you grief. When are you going to go out with me, by the way?”
“Don’t do it,” Receiving said, not looking up from the mail he was sorting. “I’m warning you, he’s a total player.”
“I am not,” Shipping shot back. “Mind your own business.”
I smiled at Shipping, who was actually kind of cute. “Blonds aren’t my type, sorry.”
Shipping sighed, opening the package of pens and tossing one to his coworker. “Okay, fine, but the offer’s open anytime. The fact that you’re still single blows my mind.”
“That’s actually kind of nice, even though it’s a line,” I said. “Also, still no.”
“Good call,” Receiving said, giving me a thumbs up.
“Tell me when you change your mind,” Shipping said as I turned to leave. “You should probably hurry. I heard a rumor that Mr. Morgan needs a report printed.”
Damn it. I turned and hustled down the hall to HR, where Jenny Lim was standing next to a printer, staring dejectedly at the empty paper tray. She lit up when she saw me. “Is that our paper?”
I nodded and she grabbed it from me. “Who’s that for?” she asked, seeing the box of toner in my hand.
“Greta,” I said. “She’s printing a report for Mr. Morgan.”
Jenny looked alarmed. “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no. That’s the wrong one. Mr. Morgan’s assistant has a different printer from everyone else. There’s special ink for it. I’ve heard him fire assistants for not having things printed in time.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
She looked at her watch. “You have three minutes. The right toner is the one labeled PS-3389067. Hurry and you might not get fired too.”
“This is insane,” I said, but I took off down the hall as fast as my sensible heels would take me. Mr. Morgan—Graham Morgan—was the CEO of Morgan Financial Holdings, and everyone was terrified of him. He was known to fire people when he was in a bad mood, and he was almost always in a bad mood. Hence, in order to keep my job, Greta’s printer had to be filled with ink, it had to be PS-3389067, and it had to be done in the next three minutes. “Adele never has to deal with this crap,” I said as I slid back into the supply closet, dumped the toner, and grabbed the right one.
Mr. Morgan’s assistant, Greta, looked panicked when I came around the corner to her desk. “He’s going to fire me!” she hissed. I threw the toner at her. “Oh, thank God you got the right one. Now help me load this thing.”
Together we pried open her fancy printer. I yanked the old toner out, getting black powdered ink all over my hands as Greta opened the new toner and shoved it in. “Please work, please work,” she said, pushing the button on the printer and praying to the god of office supplies. “I need this job. Please work.”
The printer hummed, and paper started spitting out. “Yes!” Greta clapped her hands, then looked at me, standing there holding the old toner with black ink all over me. “Mr. Morgan can’t see you like that,” she said. “Everything needs to be perfect when he walks in. Get out now!”