Benjamin Modine’s heart rattled from the walls of his ribcage. He checked his watch for the umpteenth time as he spun on his office chair. Required duties for the day were all checked off except this one.
The big meeting.
In less than ten minutes, he’d be face to face with a supervisor, and quite possibly, putting himself on the map at this company.
The thirty-three year old ran his fingers through his sandy, mildly unkempt hair again and again like a threshing machine. He told himself there was no reason to be nervous. He was the top Blend specialist still under this roof, after all. Granted, the company was currently tipping downward toward the financial red like the Titanic as other food and beverage conglomerates literally consumed the industry. Which in some ways made him merely the employee-of-the-month on a doomed vessel.
Still, Ben had reason for confidence. After he’d spent the better part of the past two years tinkering in his off time and occasionally during work hours when nobody was looking, the man had put the final polish on his magnum opus. A sheer symphony of applied science and fizzy beverage know-how. The formula for a beverage which could not only be cheaply produced but contained absolutely zero of anything the populace’s health nuts might swoon over. Fat, calories, sugar, sodium, everything. For all intents and purposes, it was like drinking a bottle of carbonated water, and yet the chemical genius of it allowed any number of flavors and combinations to be wedded with his liquid design without altering its health benefits. He’d collected all his findings, submitted his proposal, and waited four weeks; after it seemed his idea was just lost in the upper management slush pile, though, he’d received a call informing him he was to have a meeting with his supervisor and possibly even a higher-up from corporate.
This was that major. And it was all he could do to keep from fidgeting from the build-up of it.
“Hey,” droned a voice from the door. “Captain Einstein. Earth to Einstein. Look at me.”
Ben obeyed and looked to the door. There stood Mariah Tennyson, an admittedly attractive blonde with piercing green eyes and a mouth that would offend any number of biker gangs. Another Blend technician, and his unofficial rival, Ben had been easily keeping ahead of Mariah for the past five years, hence the disdain dripping in her words. She obviously didn’t feel the need to congratulate him on his big meeting.
“Yes, Mariah?” he said pleasantly. “May I help you with something?” There was no better payback than cool passive-aggression.
“Don’t start with me,” she sneered, looking him up and down. “Just get your ass up to the fifth floor. Ms. Hoshoku’s office. Five minutes. And you better get moving, because I may or may not have dawdled on the way here to tell you.”
“Ms. Hoshoku!” Ben gawped. His blood froze in his veins, as his fingers atrophied around the arm of the chair.
There was no way he was actually supposed to meet Ms. Hoshoku: no lowly supervisor, but the actual production manager for his department. Though he’d never met the apparently strikingly beautiful Japanese import woman in person, he’d heard rumor of her ruthless business acumen and terrifying physical presence which commanded the attention of grunts and CEOs alike. She was said to be scaling the corporate ladder two rungs at a time if not faster. In fact, Ben believed she’d actually started lower in the company than he did five years ago, yet here she was, calling the shots and giving the man butterflies in his stomach about meeting her.
No, this had to be a joke. This was Mariah relating the information. She just wanted to screw him over.
“Mariah, I don’t have any time for you to be pulling pranks on me just because you’re jealous I created something useful to the company,” Ben remarked coldly.
The woman blinked. Her lips pursed as if she might spew venom. Instead, she gave her hair a flighty toss over her shoulder and crossed the arms of her lab coat. “Believe me, Benjamin, if I wanted to pull pranks on you, you wouldn’t have noticed it. You’d just be watching your career spin down a drain.”
“Oh, I’m shaking in my boots,” Ben said. He rose from his chair and elbowed past the woman, rougher than necessary. “Now be serious. Where am I going?”
“Like I said. Hoshoku. Fifth floor. Don’t be late,” Mariah groaned, and from the way she rolled her eyes, Ben was finally willing to trust her disgust at his success. With a song in his heart and a lump in his throat, the man bundled his notes and tablet under his arm and power-walked for the elevator.
As he went, though, Ben couldn’t help but steal a glance over his shoulder at Mariah as she stalked off in the other direction. Sure, she was a bitch, but the woman really knew how to pick a skirt that accentuated her firm assets. Her lab coat made it tricky to make out the hump of her ass below, but Ben was patient. It was there, subtle or not. He didn’t like to put unnecessary labels on his tastes, but one thing was for sure, if he was forced to choose a quadrant, he wasn’t a boob man. That was clear, at least.
In the elevator, Ben watched the lit numbers rising higher above his head until the doors slid open, releasing him onto the fifth floor, where he seldom had reason to go. His pulse flared. This story, and higher up dependent on promotion level, generally was reserved for those in management and higher positions. Those who didn’t have to get their hands dirty, unless an underling like himself happened to have a brilliant revelation to pull the Blend company right out of the murky waters of failure.
He marched with confidence befitting someone of his talents. It was getting easier to remember that he had earned this meeting after so much work and effort put in over the tiring months. He was going to meet Ms. Hoshoku, a woman with the power to make or break careers in this new-age Willy-Wonka factory of delicious libations. Ben clenched his fists as he approached the correct office, nodding to himself. This was going to go smoothly.
A single knock. Ben had only just lowered his hand and begun counting the seconds until it was appropriate for a second rap on the door when the handle turned and the entrance swung open. And there, wrapped in a smart curve-embracing top and skirt and an absolute aurora of hungry authority, stood Ms. Hoshoku.
Ben couldn’t help it. His jaw hung open to lay eyes on her for the first time in person.
Sure, he’d seen some blurry motivational video tapes emailed out to all employees, which occasionally included Ms. Hoshoku. From those crappy-quality tapes, he’d determined she was pretty. Probably beautiful, even, in higher definition. But she’d also been sitting down in those videos. Thus, the man was entirely unprepared to be looking almost three inches up into the enchanting dark eyes of his superior. She had to be at least 5’11”, scraping up against six foot. Ben himself stood at a lowly 5’9”, which he knew was average, but before this slender goddess, he felt like less than nothing.
Not to mention her age. Again, the fuzzier quality of the motivational videos had belied the truth. He’d assumed someone in Hoshoku’s position, someone who’d rocketed so quickly up the work food chain, had to be older in order to have the necessary experience to bypass contemporaries.
But not at all. There wasn’t a wrinkle out of place in her pale, creamy complexion. If anything, the woman looked like she could’ve been the same age as Ben, give or take a year.
“Why, hello, there,” Ms. Hoshoku said curtly, her voice twinged by a note of quiet sweetness. Only the tiniest trace of an accent lingered in her voice. Her long olive fingers beckoned him forward, her opposite hand stroking a black bun tied in her hair by carved needles. “You must be Benjamin Modine, correct?”
“T-That’s… that’s me!” he piped. His voice came out far higher-pitched than he was used to. So, of course, it was the first falsetto noise to be choked out of his throat in the presence of Blend royalty. He tugged at his shirt collar and self-consciously adjusted his tie.
Ms. Hoshoku’s lips pursed into what the man realized was a smile of some pitying bemusement. She nodded. “Well, come into my office, then. We’ve got plenty to discuss.”