I freeze. At no point in the last two weeks of me rushing to get all thedeliverables done for this project did she mention my being responsible for the media list.
Not that she’ll care. Forgetting last-minute deadlines is her specialty. As is foisting her work on other people.
“Oh,” I say, “I assumed that was done.”
“Never assume, Hope,” she says. “You should be all over this.”
“I’ll have Lana put one together,” I say. Lana, our publicity assistant, is very capable of the task. She actuallywantsto work in gaming PR, unlike, say, me.
I don’t want to work in any form of PR. But shilling iPhone games for app developers is right at the bottom of the list.
“Fine, just be sure to check it before you shoot it over to me,” Magda says. “Rockabye is averyimportant launch for the client.”
“Yep, of course,” I say.
“Great. Have a nice trip. Where are you? Greece?”
“Um, no. The Caribbean.”
“Lovely. Bye.”
She hangs up.
Lauren is glaring at me from her bed.
“Was that your boss?”
“Yep.”
“You have to be kidding me. She just gave you work on vacation?”
“Yep.”
“Can’t you say no?”
“Nope.” I need this job. I’m financially depleted from my breakup, and my résumé is a mess from bopping around from role to role for years. Magda can smell my desperation and liberally takes advantage of it. She “delegates” so much work to me that at this point I’m doing at least half her job.
“I’m going back to bed,” I say, jamming a pillow over my face to block out the aggressive glare of the sunlight reflecting off the ocean.
“No you’re not,” Lauren singsongs. “We have aquacise in half an hour.”
“Aquacise? Are you joking? Can’t we just sleep until noon and then lay out on deck chairs and read books?”
She comes over and pries the pillow off my face. I shout and turn over.
“Come on, up and at ’em, sunshine. I’ve already done a livestream and gone to breakfast. Met an oil man from Houston named Cliff. Bald with good glasses.”
One of Lauren’s lessons to her followers is to cultivate a taste for bald men.
“Well, go flirt with him. Have his babies. I don’t care, just let me sleep.”
“Hope, aquacise is an excellent opportunity to show off our bods. Look, I brought you a latte. Oat milk and two sugars, just the way you like it.”
I grudgingly accept the beverage.
“I hate exercise classes,” I say.
“Oh, come on. This is in a pool. It’s forty-five minutes. And we’ll look very alluring and find men to have affairs with.”
