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Jude

So a very expensive, painstaking lorious food on the floor

I could spend weeks on a project, devote hours of y, and suddenly have it scrapped with no more than an email She wasn’t a bad woman, and wasn’t particularly indecisive, but she spent most of her time in London and I was based in Philadelphia, which meant whatever I did was soland The American office for the Fluke Biscuit Co roo in front of the TV

All of which hy I felt surprised and a little upset when I got a call one Mondaylish accent, each syllable perfectly clipped, like she was trying to win first prize in a diction contest, that I was no longer to work on the Ackerence analyses I was supposed to write about an Aly researching over the last three weeks, because why not, apparently I write about cookie companies for absolutely no reason these days, and I was instead supposed to go running off to so or explanation

I wanted to juot coffee, and hustledthe dirty sidewalks past brick-front rowho arches of their old stone facades, past the youngat the ground like they wanted to break their faces through it, past Rittenhouse Park and the buskers already tuning up their guitars, and into a glass monstrosity of couest of Flowers Construction, Incorporated, up front, although I’d never heard of them before, and rode the elevator to the twentieth floor

The vista outside theof the waiting roo the space between the Schuylkill River on one side and the Delaware River on the other, jammed between two bodies of water and packed as densely as it could, the buildings glittering in thedown on the sidewalks like toys The receptionist gave me one look, pursed her thin, painted pink lips, and hit a button

“Judith Pike is here to see you,” she said, although I had no clue who she was talking to I assu in the office of a construction company, and I knew better than to ask One too et only a flat stare, or a blank e, fuck off, Jude, and figure it out

The receptionist smiled at me in that say front office workers had, like she knew she had to be polite but really didn’t feel like it, and I s pretty ure out why Fluke would bring me to this place, with its old, out-of-date chairs out front, looking like a dental office from the ‘90s

She didn’t have any plans to build anything, at least that I are of The Fluke Coly popular cookie things that British people went insane over All of the Fluke Coland, and I was the only e s reports, researching couide and her assistant when she came to the States, which was less and less often

I’d been working for Fluke for the past three years At first, she visited almost every few months, but slowly that tapered off, until it stopped completely She hadn’t been back in a year, and I’d been left floundering onshe sent ood pay and benefits, I would’ve quit a long ti froe amount of freedom, mostly because Fluke didn’t bother to check on whether I was actively doingas I replied in a tiiven

In sohtmare

The intercolad to be alone again “He’ll see you now”