"Ms. Potts?"
"Yes, Jarvis."
"The dry cleaning is ready," Jarvis intoned in his exaggerated British butler's diction. I detected, as usual, a hint of amusement in his measured voice. How on earth did Tony manage to program a sense of humor into a robot's voice, I marveled, not for the first time.
"Thank you, Jarvis."
The phrase "the dry cleaning is ready" had become code for "The young woman currently occupying Tony's quarters is awake and it is time to escort her from the premises."
I sighed, rose from my desk, and walked to the service entrance to gather up whatever outfit had captured Mr. Stark's attention the evening before. As usual, the dry cleaning bag didn't weigh much. Very little fabric in there.
One of the reasons Tony values my services is my ability to maintain a professional demeanor in all situations, including providing hospitality to his overnight guests. And professional I remain in most instances.
But something about this particular woman rankled me.
Perhaps it was seeing her attempt to enter a portion of the house to which she had no access that set me off? No, that wasn't it exactly. Was it the possessive tone she adopted when she spoke to me? No, they all felt smug the morning after, until a few days later when they had not heard back from Tony and realized that a phone call or even a text was highly unlikely.
I knew this one, the Vanity Fair reporter. I had read, even admired her articles on occasion. Standing in front of me, light-headed from less than 3 hours of sleep and God only knows what else, Christine Everhart looked as pretty as her pictures. Not all of Tony's bimbos were beauty school drop-outs, and this one certainly housed some brains under her tousled blonde bed head.
"Oh, so you must be the famous Pepper Potts," she said cattily.
"That's right," I smiled. I handed the package to her. "Your clothes have been dry-cleaned and there is a driver waiting to take you wherever you would like to go."
"So you've worked for Tony all these years? And he still has you doing the laundry?" she asked. Rhetorically.
I decided to answer her anyway.
"I do anything and everything Tony asks of me," I replied coolly. Then I leveled my clear blue eyes at her in an effort to incorporate a little cattiness of my own. "And sometimes, at his request, I even take out the garbage."
She scowled at me in surprise, then clutched her garments and retreated hastily to the master suite.
Like I said, I'm used to the smugness. It's only temporary. Normally it doesn't bother me. But this time something in me snapped, penetrating my professional veneer. Maybe it was the combination of her looks, fame, and brains. Eventually, the law of large numbers says Tony is bound to fall for one of these women. He can't stay aloof forever.
I take Tony's steady stream of women in stride. I know my boss and his habits. He is frank with me; I even tease him about his bon vivant playboy lifestyle. So although I did not articulate it to myself at the time and I haven't told a soul since, just between you and me … I was jealous! I was thoroughly jealous of that young, brainy, blonde Vanity Fair reporter.