Chapter 2-2

700 Words
Bill Cullen really was so cute. Perrin knew she had the ability to shock. But to make a married man turn into a gibbering i***t, that was a new one. Well, not really. But she did thoroughly enjoy doing it. Had the last thirty hours of frenetic work been worth it? She was now so tired that her body had gone past aching and numb right into zombie. Zombie girl. Her body so disconnected it could wander off on its own and she’d never notice. She giggled at the image. “What?” Bill Cullen was still being monosyllabic, she’d really gotten him good. “What’s so funny?” “Wow! Back up to polysyllabic, Bill. Well done, you! Gonna go for three syllables together anytime soon?” That brought the Dark Overlord scowl back. She decided that made him fair game. “Me. As a zombie, you know, green-and-ghoul makeup, singing opera in a killer dress. It has real possibilities.” She started dancing, Madonna-style bends and hair swoops, and began singing a KT Tunstall song that she didn’t really know the words to, so she made them up as she went which was okay because sometimes she wondered if KT did just that. On the third dip and whirl she was so lightheaded that she almost collapsed. She stopped and had to brace herself to remain upright while her head spun. Her palm landed in the middle of Bill’s chest. He didn’t waver, the man was solid as if built from the rock of the Earth’s very core. She could feel the hard muscle through his thin shirt. She’d always been a fan of hard muscle. “Are you okay?” His deep voice rumbled in his chest and tickled its way up her arm. “Solicitous? Are there no ends to the wonders of Bill Cullen?” The receptionist actually snorted with laughter. Perrin shot her a smile, but she couldn’t stand up on her own just yet. Her head still whirled viciously. “I’ll try once more. Are you okay? Do you need to sit down for a moment? Can I get you some coffee?” “Coffee? s**t no. If I’m like this normally, can you imagine me on caffeine? So not a pretty sight. I need sleep and food, in that order.” Feeling a little steadier, she managed to stand on her own, brushing his shirt smooth as she did so. Nice chest. She wanted to pet it, but it belonged to another woman so she stopped herself. “How about we go to my office? We can talk over the schedule and then tour the scene shop so you can see the sets, to let you see the tone of the production.” “Uh, as long as we can sit down real soon. It’s been so long since I slept that I’m starting to hallucinate tiny conga lines of opera-singing mice swirling about my ankles.” She might have slept an hour or two last night, she usually managed at least that—even when a design bit her hard. If she had, she didn’t remember it. This design had been ripped out from somewhere deep. Bill offered his arm. She steadied herself with a hand on his elbow, the only thing that made her steady enough to walk. As he led her back through the offices, a ripple of whispers ran ahead of them and gawkers were soon lining the aisle. Bill was mumbling something about ticket sales department, production design, education…indicating one cluster of cubicles that looked exactly like the last. A guy walking along carrying a computer monitor actually ran into a wall while looking at her. By that time she was able to make some sense of the whispers. “The Empress!” said with a touch of awe that she found quite cheery. That was all that sustained her until she reached Bill’s office. It was a smallish space that had a window looking down over an old section of the warehouse district that now housed a Taco Del Mar fast food restaurant and an Asian furniture importer, despite the ancient paint on brick that declared it as “Johnson Expeditors 1914.” The office walls had drawings done by children. There were several framed photos of Bill with two kids, but she couldn’t seem to make her eyes focus on them well enough to even pick out gender or age. Then she spotted the couch along the side wall. The last thing she remembered was planting her face into one of the cushions.
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