Chapter 1Lorna Now
They called her king kong.
Not to her face, of course. In polite company, they said Lorna Lott was a hard nut to crack. One tough cookie. All business, no play.
Behind her back, they said something else. Lorna knew this because she had a habit of striding into conversations around the proverbial watercooler. It didn’t take a genius to know that when the conversation came to a dead halt just as you entered, you were the subject. But since she had a bit of genius in her, Lorna knew to slow her steps before entering the break room to catch the whispers and comments.
As best she could tell, the King Kong moniker had popped up after the unfortunate incident during the quarterly sales conference. She’d broken the heel of her shoe by getting it stuck in a grate on the way to work—a classic romantic comedy maneuver without the requisite hunk to save her. No one in the office had or would admit to having a shoe that fit her size 10 dogs. So Lorna hobbled through several presentations, and apparently her hobble gave off a gorilla vibe. Well, she couldn’t help her feet. They matched her five-foot-nine body. Her late uncle Chet used to say she was builtlike a farmer. “Some of my favorite people are farmers,” he’d add cheerfully.
She also tended to scowl, which probably didn’t help. “I’m not telling you to smile,” her boss whispered at the same sales conference, “but could you look less... mean?” Lorna tried. She really did try.
Anyway, they called her King Kong in the break room, and she tried to laugh it off and tell herself that it didn’t matter what they called her as long as they met their sales quotas. But she wasn’t unaffected by the name. She was not an automaton; she had feelings and very much wanted to be liked, even in her role as a sales team leader. She just didn’t know how to get people to like her. She’d been leaning into the awkward side of things most of her life, and now that she was in her forties, it was clear she didn’t know how to be un-awkward.
And there was the whole low-key rage thing. The vague feeling that she needed to clock someone for no good reason. She didn’t like that feeling, and she’d been working on developing a different mindset. She was a frequent visitor to the library, checking out self-help books. Edward, her favorite librarian, had nodded along sympathetically as she explained she needed to learn how to be more likable, and he’d directed her to guides that advised her to smile more, ask questions, and soften her approach with humor. Then when she told Edward she needed to learn how to harness a killer instinct to make more sales, he showed her all the books designed to help her reach a million dollars in sales or climb the corporate ladder. Those advice books tended to be a little more aggressive in their approach—work hard, know your product, don’t give up,persist, persist, slay.
She was very good at persisting, anyway. She was a goal setter. When she had the idea to learn how to row after watching one summer Olympics, she did it, right here in Austin on Lady BirdLake. Create needle art? The angel on her cubicle wall was her own creation. Sing? She’d absolutely nailed it as an alto in the community choir until Jed Faris took over and turned it into a show choir singing pop tunes. Lorna did not believe that choirs were meant to sing pop tunes.
The point being, Lorna looked tough, acted tough, and knew how to achieve goals. Sure, she could be a little hard on her sales team when they lagged behind the quotas she set, but it was her job as team leader to light a fire under their butts. That she seemed “mad” or “pissed” was just their way of deflecting.
Once, a therapist had suggested she work on being more in the moment and aware of how snappish she could be.Snappish?That hardly seemed fair. Wasn’t everyone snappish at times? Wasn’t everyone subconsciously mad about something? Sure they were—politics, gas prices, extreme temperatures, tornadoes, wildfires, ice storms, barking dogs. Social media, long queues, not enough cashiers. Zoom calls, traffic, poverty, high heels, skinny jeans. More ice than soda, more bun than burger, more noodles than shrimp. There were any number of things on any given day to set off even the saintliest person. Such was the nature of modern times.
But she was working on it. And in the meantime, she was trying very hard to be likable.
So when no one even made eye contact when she came back from lunch, Lorna thought through what might have upset them. It probably had something to do with the sales team meeting she’d convened yesterday. Their cubicles were built around a “discussion pit” made of couches that were too low to the ground and sprinkled with colorful pillows that smelled like mildew. In the center was a scarred table for drinks and pastries. The pit sort of looked like a giant flower. Lorna had gathered everyone together to discuss quotas because, as she liked to say,quotas were set to be achieved, not waved at as they flew by. She’d indicated she didn’t think they were working smart (she’d read that in a self-help book:Work smart!).
What else had she said? It wasn’tthatbad, was it? She was pretty sure she’d said worse in the past and they’d all survived. Why this should put their panties in a twist, she couldn’t say. Except... except maybe she’d been a smidge harsh. Lorna was hard on herself, and sometimes she found it difficult to discern where her internal self-flagellation ended and her inappropriate comments during pep talks began. They tended to be the same in theme and tone.
Okay, she’d bring donuts tomorrow. People would forgive a multitude of sins if there were donuts, and even more if strawberry sprinkles were involved. She’d just pulled out her cell to check which delivery service would bring donuts when her office phone buzzed. “Lorna Lott speaking.”
“Good morning, Lorna.”
It was Deb, Lorna’s boss. Unlike some of her colleagues who found their bosses to be insufferable, Lorna really liked Deb. She looked up to her, admired how she’d risen to the top of management with hard work and dedication. That was what got you places—whining did not get you anywhere.
“Could you please step into my office?” Deb asked.
“I’d be delighted.” That wasn’t a lie. Lorna popped up and briskly traveled the ten feet to Deb’s office.
Deb was standing behind her desk. She was sixtyish, short and round, with a bowl-shaped head of curly gray hair. She always wore a pair of glasses on her crown and preferred a standard daily uniform, a move that was either genius or insane—Lorna could never decide. Black pants and a black cardigan or blazer. The only thing that varied day to day was the color of her blouse. Today,Deb’s silk blouse was peach colored, with tiny swans dotting the fabric. Personally, Lorna favored tailored suits. Her self-help books had taught her that suits give an air of authority. Particularly dark colors.King Kong.
“How was your evening?” she asked Deb. They weren’t friends, exactly, because Deb’s large family and many children kept her from socializing outside of work. But they were friendly. They sat together at company meetings and often had lunch together in Deb’s office to talk about work.
“Good, thank you. Shut the door, please.”
Lorna hesitated. Deb never asked her to shut the door, and her trouble meter began to tick. “This must be about that raise,” Lorna said, and chuckled at her joke in a feeble attempt to gauge the seriousness of this door-shutting business.
Deb did not smile. “Have a seat, Lorna.” She gestured to the small, round conference table where they often had lunch.
This was not good. Lorna’s scalp tingled with dread. “We don’t need to sit, do we? I know you’re very busy—”
“Sit,” Deb said more firmly.
Lorna sat.
Deb took a long, deliberate drink of water, then came around from behind her desk and sat next to Lorna. She sighed. She glanced toward the window, which overlooked several massive transmission towers, and sighed again. “Lorna, Lorna, Lorna,” she said sadly.
Oh no. Lorna’s belly began to somersault. She hadn’t been fired from a job since she was a teen. Quite the contrary—she had worked her way up through employee of the month awards to sales achievement awards. Yet she had an uneasy feeling that something bad was about to happen. Her immediate thought was to head off whatever it was, to correct whatever mistakeshe’d made before Deb could act. “Is this about the new sales quotas?” she blurted. “I know they’re high, but you don’t win the blue ribbon for going easy.”
“No,” Deb said. “But the quotas are insanely high. We’ve discussed that.”
