Dead End Job by Ingrid Reinke Page A

out his Facebook page, and when seconds later he picked up his phone to make a call, it clicked that he was dismissing me.
    “Oh. OK, well, anyways—thanks!” I said, louder than I’d intended to. Feeling like a complete moron, I backed away from his desk, turned tail and marched away from him, into the kitchen, as quickly as I could. I wanted to pretend like I was getting a coffee or picking something up from the printer, anything so I could avoid running into Clark again by his cube until the weight of rejection had lifted a bit off of my heart. Jesus Christ, so much for moving in together. I poured myself half a cup of the overwhelmingly potent, black, tar-like substance masquerading as coffee that the IT department brewed up each morning, diluted it with some hot water and dumped four mini creamers and two sugar packets in, stirring it slowly. I was plotting how I could talk myself out of the current feeling of abject humiliation that had overtaken me as I quietly scooted back over to my desk and sat down as quickly as I could, barely avoiding dumping the hot cup of liquid I was carrying all over my crotch. Unfortunately I still splashed a bit on my hand. “Fuck! Shit FUCK!” I cursed to myself in a scream-whisper.
    I was frantically grabbing tissues out of the box on my desk and dabbing my fingers when I was interrupted by Martin arriving for the day. Luckily I’d already put the coffee down, because instead of going straight to his desk, he rushed over to me, sighing loudly, and gave me a big bear hug.
    “Oh. My. God. Lulu!” he gasped as he smothered me in the embrace of his big fat hairy arms. “I seriously was going to call you yesterday. I am dying to know what happened. Are you OK? Wait, why are you even at work? Like, what the hell? I need to know all of the details! What happened at the police station? Did you stay overnight?” He let me go and pushed me away back into my chair, where I flopped down abruptly, almost tumbling out onto the ground. “Bitch, sit down and tell me everything,” he said, squatting down on the carpet in front of me.
    He listened intently as I recounted the events of the day. He too, had been told to take the day off yesterday by HR. He told me that the police had only questioned him briefly at the office on Wednesday morning, asked him what group he worked in, his relationship to Sarah, and where he was on Tuesday night.  Because he did not work in legal, and he had a solid alibi (Mitch, the German Viking), he wasn’t asked to go into the station.
    “OH, MY GOD. I would have been so freaking scared if I was you, girl! This whole thing is so majorly scary and fucked up!” he decided, after I told him about Detectives Wang and Schreck and the “voluntary” blood/black light test they’d had me do.  I also told him about the email from Elaine, not-so-gently suggesting that I get myself back to work today. He shook his head and clucked. “That woman is one crazy-ass bitch. You should seriously look for another job. I would not put up with that shit if I were you, Lulu.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I replied.
    Inwardly, I just brushed it off. Even though I was now absolutely sure that I work in the most murder-y office of Seattle, the stress of looking for another job was not what I wanted to experience at the moment.  Plus, until this thing had been solved, who would want to hire a possible murder suspect? I looked over at Martin, who himself looked quite a bit worse for the wear. His big, round face was unshaven and covered with splotchy, red stubble and looking abnormally sweaty and rashy, and he had large, dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing his normal ensemble of khaki slacks and a plaid, button-up T-shirt, but the number of wrinkles in his clothing exceeded even what I would deem ‘work-appropriate.’ He looked a total fucking mess.
    “Um, Martin, how are you doing?” I asked, cautiously.
    “Oh, I’m fine,” he replied, waving his hand in the air as