Melvin's first clue that something was different happened as he rode the elevator to his office, his brain running numbers and fractions and percentages like a human calculator. About halfway to his floor, on the verge of adding profit margins mentally, he noticed the woman standing next to him sneaking sly glances in his direction.
She was a middle-aged woman, blonde, slightly attractive but nothing that would send men drooling or whistling if she passed by on the street. Still, the fact that even a woman as attractive as this one was casting looks towards him made Melvin's neck feel warm and uncomfortable around the collar. He fidgeted with his briefcase and straightened his glasses. He'd lost his good pair sometime during the duration of the previous night, and the spare set he always kept in his briefcase sat on his nose funny.
She made eye contact with him, her face blushing a bright red, and she squeaked, "Hi!"
Melvin's throat felt tight, and he had to force himself to keep from loosening his increasingly suffocating tie. He'd made a woman blush? Something funny was going on here, or this woman had serious problems. Melvin figured her as some kind of head case.
"Hi," he replied and smiled. She smiled back and then glanced away with an expression of embarrassment. Definitely a head case.
The elevator beeped, and the doors slid open.
"My floor," Melvin said apologetically and stepped out. As the doors closed behind him, the woman gave him a shy wave, and Melvin returned it. His head swooned with thoughts, many concerning his strange dream of the witch and the love potion she'd concocted for him.
Her voice: "Melvin, women are going to be eating out of your hands."
But that hadn't been real, had it? It couldn't have been. In his dream, he'd blacked out at her store. How'd he get home? His BMW had been parked in front of his apartment building this morning, so who'd driven it? The events of last night were a fuzzy blur, and he couldn't see through the fog of intoxication that seemed to cover it all.
The only explanation that made sense was that after Crabapple, his cold-hearted bitch of a boss, had chewed him out yesterday, he'd gone to a bar to drink away his problems to nothingness. The whole thing about the witch and her love potion was merely a dream caused by an abundance of alcohol and his lack of luck with women. Right?
He thought about the woman in the elevator. Weird. If only he could remember what had really happened to him. He didn't like the idea of passing into an alcoholic fugue state and waking up in his bed the next day with no memory of the night before. He turned, trying to see if he could get a bearing on Crapabble, the last person he needed breathing down his neck at the moment. She was nowhere in sight, and Melvin made a break for it.
Olivia Crabapple was on him as soon as he stepped into the maze of cubicles that Melvin had to navigate to get to his office. She swooped out of the sky like a vulture setting its talons into fresh road kill, her eyes flaming, her lips curled back in a snarl. Olivia was insanely jealous of Melvin's talent although she'd never admit as much, at least not out loud, and she took pleasure in watching him squirm like a worm on a hook, dangling his work in front of the hungry fishes on the Board of Directors and claiming it as her own.
Did it really matter, anyway? Melvin had no sense for leadership, no business savvy, and that's really what being a partner in the firm was all about, wasn't it? Olivia figured she would be just that, a partner, before the year was up, thanks to stealing everything of Melvin's she could get her claws on.
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