Up & Out - Ariella Papa [5]
I should give Esme more scenes at school. I’m always trying to think of ways of making her more real to kids. Maybe she can figure out who stole the class hamster. No, I’ve got to come up with something better.
Luckily, I don’t have a long trip. The subway brings me a block from the Explore! offices in Midtown East. I hate this neighborhood. ARCADE, my last job—the first one I had out of college—was over on the far west side. I felt more comfortable around the truckers and transsexuals there than I do around the finance suits, who are ubiquitous in this neighborhood.
I go through a lengthy but halfhearted security check from one of the guards in the lobby. Once he’s assured that I’m not carrying any explosives in my knockoff purse, I head up to our floor. I pass the giant poster of a spacecraft in the lobby. As I pass the kitchen, I realize I forgot to bring lunch, leftovers from two nights ago. Damn! Coffee may be cheap in this city, but lunch in Midtown is another story.
As I expected, Jen was in early. She is Hackett’s niece and also the production coordinator for my team, the group that works on Esme. Jen is going places in this business and I’m not sure I’m the right person to be managing her.
“Good morning, Rebecca.”
“What’s up, Jen?” I expected (hoped) to hear “nothing,” but Jen is a woman on top of things.
“Well, we have to go over the title test for episode seven with my un-Hackett at eleven. We’ve got a script meeting at twelve. There’s a programming waste of time at one. Before you get any ideas we are required to be there. We really have to figure out the second segment of episode nine this afternoon. Oh yeah, a budget thing at four-thirty. And Janice has a dentist appointment she forgot about and John is running late because his electricity is out.”
We smirk at each other. We strongly believe that our two animators, Janice and John, are an item. In a group of four it creates an interesting dynamic.
“Well, with any luck their morning will put them in an agreeable mood.” Jen and I keep tabs on their relationship by observing how well they are able to work together. There were times it got downright ugly. “Did they say how late they would be?”
“They were both curiously evasive.”
“Well, I’d like to have them around for the title test. Shit!” Already my day was sounding crappy.
“I’ll call Meg and try and push it back.” Meg is Hackett’s assistant and I swear she runs the company.
“Thanks, Jen. I mean, I could do that if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. I think you should take a look at the scripts.”
“Okay.” I go to my office and shut the door.
I’m not really comfortable being in charge of a team. I have a hard enough time being responsible for myself, and now I control the livelihood of three people under me. I always feel strange when Jen does stuff for me. She keeps offering to fax things for me and do my expense reports, but I just can’t handle that. It makes me feel helpless and worse, it makes me feel like a boss, which I guess I am.
I take a deep breath and stretch. I can do that because of my door. I always worked in a cube—and it was fine with me—but now I have an office, which means I have a door. A door is a very big deal. If I close it, I have my own little space. I can surf the Net for porn, listen to loud music, sniff my armpits or scratch my ass. I can do anything—if I can just find the time.
I also have a window. Granted, it’s small and it looks right out at a brick wall, but it is a window. It’s silly, but I’m proud of it. My mom cut hair in Pennsylvania and my dad worked in a factory. All their lives, they worked at the same place. They never seemed to believe that I made a living at what they thought was drawing. It seemed like no matter what I did, they didn’t get it. And they still don’t, even with Esme on TV. But, I bet