Page 11 of Emergency Exit
She tried not to resent Cooper for encouraging her to dump her savings into several Certificate of Deposit accounts when she moved in with him. She believed that he’d meant well at the time. He said they were a no-risk investment. That was a nice theory. In reality, it meant that she couldn’t get her money back out without a massive penalty. And that had left her practically penniless when she’d had to move out and then change states.
Harper walked the three steps over to the sink and rinsed out her coffee mug. Then took the one step into the bathroom to grab her favorite lip gloss. Then the four steps back to the clothes rack that took up most of the space in her one-bedroom apartment to pick up her coat. The clothes represented not only a considerable investment of money—they represented her struggle to claw her way out of the demented nerd basement and into girlfriend-worthy hot-girl status.
She didn’t mind being a nerd, but she had always hated being an embarrassment to her family. Harper’s life and family relationships had all gotten magically easier—not perfect, buteasier—when she’d figured out how to dress. The clothes had to make the move with her. Everything else—except for the coffee table—had been negotiable. Not that she had much. She’d gotten rid of almost everything when she’d moved in with Cooper. He said her furniture was eclectic and didn’t match his interior designer’s palette. Harper had learned thateclecticmeant ugly, but she didn’t see why beige automatically meant tasteful.
Harper looked at her coffee table and smiled. The thick, rough-cut pine gleamed with a warm golden glow as the morning light bounced off the glossy finish and lit up the deep blue resin filling the crack running down the center. Her apartment might be tiny and have only a two-burner cooktop and a mini-refrigerator smaller than Cooper’s wine fridge, but it was all hers, and no one would tell her that the décor looked too artsy.
The walk to the bus stop was fraught with the usual puddle avoidance and short detour around someone who was obviously not occupying the same reality as everyone else. Seattle’s homeless population was a source of much handwringing on the news, but Harper suspected that the noise would die down after election season. She supposed that was cynical, but it was an undeniable pattern. She just wished someone would come up with an actual solution.
But despite the bus ride and the October wind trying to blow its way through her jacket, Harper entered Shaw Emergency Management Training and Planning in a sunny mood.
“Hey, Harper,” said Piper, exiting the break room, twirling an empty coffee mug around her finger like a gunfighter.
“Hi, Piper!”
Piper was an engineer with an awesomely asymmetrical haircut and a habit of wearing the same black pants and button-up under a company-branded Northface vest every day. Harperhad been shocked to realize everyone at the company was fine with it. Piper said she wouldn’t waste creative dressing on work and refused to do it unless there was a creative dressing bonus. Harper hoped this meant she could shorten her outfit rotation to one week and incorporate a comfy sweater day, but she hadn’t risked it yet.
“You missed a major banger,” said Piper, falling into step with Harper as she headed for her cubicle. “KPFF must have let the potheads pick the food because it was a total munchies menu, and the slideshow they did on Rich’s career was hilarious. Possibly unintentionally because they went full Boomer transitions on the PowerPoint, but still… it was giving major nineties vibes.”
The office had once been open plan, but everyone had decided that they hated it, and there had been a switch to everyone having their own cubicle. It cut down on noise and gave everyone privacy. Harper had seen the layout on her first day and gotten far more excited about it than she probably should have been. Her last job had been very loud because of the open concept, and it gave her headaches.
“I tried to go,” said Harper, feeling guilty. “But I went to the wrong building.”
“Oh, no! You should have called. I could have made the brotards in traffic engineering talk you in.”
“I would have, but…” Harper hesitated. She could feel the truth welling up inside her, wanting to burst out. In her experience, nothing good ever came from confessing to a Harper Moment, but she had to tell someone.
“But what?” Piper’s head cocked to one side like she was genuinely interested.
“I went to the wrong building, then to the wrong party, I called this woman a bitch—to her face—and then I went on a date with someone else’s boyfriend!”
“Wow. Apparently, you would have been bored at the Rich Landers event. You party way harder than I would have thought.”
“No! It was an accident!”
Piper’s eyes narrowed. “OK, don’t take your coat off. I need to hear this story, but I can’t do it without coffee. Unfortunately, the break room is giving full Monday aura and shit coffee creamer.”
“The caffeine must flow,” said Harper understandingly as Piper walked toward their boss’s office.
“Yo, boss-bruh!” Piper said, leaning through the door. “Harper and I are drama-talking and walking to the Starbies.”
“We’ve talked about this,” said Donald, looking up from his computer. He was a forty-something ginger-haired man who was still rocking his Covid beard. “Not a boss-bruh.”
“Big Man?” suggested Piper.
“Donald?” suggested Donald.
“Boring,” said Piper, and Donald’s head hung down with a sigh.
“D-Boss?” suggested Harper, looking over Piper’s shoulder.
“I will accept that,” he said thoughtfully. “On a trial basis.”
“Bet,” said Piper. “Text me your order, D-Boss, and I will bring you back a fix.”
Twenty minutes later, they walked back from the Starbucks, each with a full drink carrier for the office and steadily chiming phones as the Venmo payments popped through.
“And then I saiddealand shook his hand,” said Harper, finishing her story. “I may have been a little drunk.”
