What? Oh, great. Now Tim saw her, Gen, as the snob who enjoyed good wines and custom mustards and kicking the white-trash lady when she was down? The shallow elitist, bashing the trailer gal?

What could she say to make this right?

Tim, just so you know? I only said “Whoa” because, before you came in, Brenda had been speaking rather disrespectfully about you, and the reason I didn’t confront her was because I was trying to be compassionate, precisely because she’s had a rough hoe to row, or however you just now put it.

Too much.

Plus, Brenda might hear it from her office.

Anyway, Tim was gone. It was just her in here. And Tim’s coffee cup, spinning around on that glass plate, giving off sparks, because the genius didn’t know you couldn’t put a cup with a metal rim in a microwave.

Back in her office, Brenda was manically wiping her keyboard with a Kleenex. Ah, jeez, she thought, did I just now throw the kids under the bus? By calling them “deadbeats”? No, I wouldn’t do that. That’s not how I am. Plus, anyways, they are deadbeats. Ha. Whatever, they can take it, they’re not made of sugar, they won’t melt. Also, probably shouldn’t have said that thing about stealing coffee. Because now Gen might think I actually have done that.

Which, in fact, she had been doing that, since the day she came back to work here two months ago after the little issue with the bounced checks and the, uh, stint, or stent, of jail time or whatever, but you know what? Coffee was ten bucks a can. Paper towels were seven bucks a pack. It helped! Maybe, for some people, ten bucks was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing for her. If only they’d leave some steaks and veggies and gas money and rent money out where she could get at it. Ha ha. No: she was no thief. I mean, she was but she wasn’t. Okay, she was. Ha. The thing about it was, there was a shit ton of stealing going on around here all the time. Mike G. called his fiancée in England on the office phone every day. Gen went on long lunches with Ed Maxx from Kodak and Brenda knew where (Olive Garden) and where they went after (Riverside Marriott) because she made the frigging reservations. Gen would breeze back in around four, still buzzed, just boinked, hand Brenda her leftovers in a wadded-up tinfoil swan. Did Gen then turn right around and bill those hours to Kodak? With a straight face? Yeah, she did! Was that stealing? Hey, that was big-time stealing.