Dr. Joseph Molesley could actually feel the pressure behind his eyes as they bugged out. His pulse pounded erratically and his hands clenched into fists as the oblivious patron continued to ramble drunkenly about "running this zoo like a bloody business!"
"You've got to be bloody fucking kidding me!" he exclaimed in a strangled voice that carried to the nearest small group of people chatting in the corner he had tried so desperately to disappear into. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his colleague, Tom Branson, hurrying over.
"S'all you need to do, mate," the guest slurred on, completely missing Joe's comment. "When you got too many of a somthin', internet's a answer to evr'thing…"
"You cannot list a juvenile Reticulated giraffe on e-bay you grindingly stupid—!"
Tom's hand suddenly gripped his bicep like a tourniquet tied by an over enthusiastic power-lifter. As the guest squinted in confusion, Joe found himself dragged off towards the bar by a grimacing, muttering Tom.
"You need a drink!" Tom informed him with a warning glare.
Joe shook him off irritably and stared back at the baffled guest in loathing. When Tom shoved a plastic cup into his hand, he nearly dropped it onto the carpet.
"What's this?" He stared at Tom in confusion. "You know I don't—"
"It's just water, you idiot," Tom hissed at him. "Now…drink up and go find another corner to skulk in, alright?"
"E-bay, Tom! Bloody e-bay!"
"Get over it, Joe," Tom ordered, "and stay away from Dr. Hughes. She was standing right next to your stroppy little melt-down over there, and she doesn't look too bloody happy."
Joe cast a frantic look around until his eyes met the piercing glare of Dr. Elsie Hughes, Assistant Park Director and Large Mammal Exhibit Manager, his immediate supervisor. She looked less than pleased with him. One might even say she was seething.
"I hate this," he whinged.
"Everyone hates this," Tom informed him in a bored tone. "I'm three or four drinks behind my usual coping strategy because I knew you were going to make an arse of yourself the minute you stomped off and ran right into our new primatologist. You're in rare form tonight, Joe."
Joe flushed and searched the crowd for the lovely, disgruntled woman he'd nearly flattened trying to get away from a crowd of older women who were determined to quiz him about Okapis. He'd barely had a chance to get a good look at her before she'd been whisked away by Dr. Anna Bates, herpetologist and one-woman welcome wagon among the zoo professional staff. Nobody argued with a woman who usually wore a seven foot Ball Python around her neck.
"Joe? Hey, Joe?" Tom waved his hand in front of Joe's face.
"Sorry, Tom," he muttered dismally. "Go ahead and get pissed; I should be fine." At Tom's skeptical look, he made a game attempt to grin. "Go on then. I'll see if I can't find the new baboon lady and apologize."
"Well…" Tom replied, looking longingly at the tap, "if you're sure….?"
"I am," he assured Tom. He started to wander away, when Tom's voice rose behind him.
"Little advice, Joe…Don't call her baboon lady."
Dr. Bates was a lovely person, but Dr. Phyllis Baxter was relieved when she was called away to explain the difficulties of trying to assist in a captive breeding program for the St. Lucia Racer Snake. She'd been introduced to six new colleagues, two programming staff members, the director of volunteers, and a vociferously inebriated patron who seemed to be under the impression that Phyllis specialized in hedgehogs and who spent nearly ten minutes rhapsodizing about her "precious, recently deceased Flibberget" before Anna was able to escort her to a different group of people.
"Does she expect me to raise her hedgie from the dead? That's neither zoologically possible nor theologically sound…" she'd muttered to Anna, who'd nearly choked on her drink.
"Oh, you're going to fit in well around here," Anna had replied, wiping her chin with a napkin and smirking at Phyllis.
Phyllis had just smiled and hoped she was right. Things hadn't started well when she was nearly knocked over by a fuming wanker Anna had identified as Dr. Mole-something, giraffe specialist. Anna's assurances that Joe was a good bloke, just uncomfortable at these gatherings hadn't made her any more anxious to get to know him.
Managing to sidle over to an unoccupied space against the wall of the room raised her spirits a bit. From there, she was content to observe the laughing, chatting groups of zoo staff, management, board members and patrons. Her immediate supervisor, Dr. Elsie Hughes, had spotted her and looked as if she was about to try to engage with her. But fortunately, she was distracted by something happened near her, and Phyllis silently thanked whoever had pissed her off.
"This would be so much easier if I could drink," she muttered to herself, watching the water in her plastic cup swirl around.
"Why can't you?" a voice asked from her right.
Phyllis spun around to see the man who'd run into her earlier. He cringed away from her glare and gripped his own plastic cup tighter.
"Sorry to bother you," he went on, clearing his throat. "I didn't think anyone else was hiding over here."
"I'm not hiding," she snapped at him.
"Pfft…I am," he replied. "It's been a terrible evening, and I can't drink either."
Phyllis just raised her eyebrows and looked away from him dismissively.
"First, I accidentally run into a new colleague, who probably thinks I'm a total waste of space…and I'm really sorry about that…"
She stole a quick glance at him as he proceeded through a recitation of his woes in a gloomy voice.
"Then I get cornered by old Violet Crawley, who wants to discuss the general cleanliness of the elephant enclosures - which aren't my responsibility…"
Phyllis' lips twitched at his affronted expression.
"Then I'm practically assaulted by some bleeding Tory fruitcake who thinks we should liquidate our excess stock on e-bay for a profit. Tom Branson had to physically drag me away and Dr. Hughes probably wants my head on a wall for insulting a rich bastard. Fortunately, he was pissed off his arse…"
She bit back a laugh as his voice went up half an octave in amazement and disgust. He stole a quick glance at her.
"And now I'm trying to sneak off out of sight until this bunch enters the booze-o-sphere so I can go check on my pregnant giraffe," he finished.
"And you can't drink because you might have to play midwife to a pregnant giraffe?" she replied after a moment.
"Dori could drop any day now, but that's not why I'm not drinking. I never drink at these things."
"Neither do I."
"Why not, if you don't mind me asking?"
"You already asked."
"What? Oh…right," he said sheepishly. "None of my business, eh?"
Phyllis frowned and watched a staff member attempt to explain how an antelope spronks to a small crowd of skeptical observers. Joe snickered as they watched her flailing arm smack a glass of wine out of a guest's hands.
"I'm surprised they haven't trotted you out to introduce you to everyone," he mused, stealing a look at her face. "New baboon lady, and all." At her glare he winced. "Primatologist, I mean."
She gave him an irritated glance and looked away again, muttering "even-toed ungulate wanker."
"Hey, at least primates get funding," he protested. "Primates are sexy when it comes to fundraising. No one gives a toss about even-toed ungulates."
Phyllis looked at him, wondering if he was yanking her chain. He looked back soberly, but his eyes were twinkling with humor.
"I just about cope with the fact that the primate house is stocked with thirty thousand pounds worth of toys for research while I have to go steal tires and barrels from the rubbish tip for my deprived giraffe children," he went on with a heavy sigh, "as I'm constantly reminded that no one cares enough about even-toed ungulates to make large cash donations."
"Are you sure you haven't been drinking?"
"Now, if you were to stroll out there to that group of well heeled baboon aficionados chatting with Charlie Carson, who appears to be looking around the room for someone - I wonder who that might be, and make a few comments about the danger facing our closest relatives and the work we do to ensure their survival, the checkbooks will fly out so fast, Charlie will have to duck to avoid being decapitated."
"I think you need to shut up now," she hissed, as he raised his voice and gestured.
"But you'd rather stay back here with the even-toed ungulate wankers who are rubbish at flirting."
"You were trying to flirt?" she asked in disbelief.
"Nah. I'm rubbish at it. I was just trying to pass the time until I can sneak off to the giraffe enclosure." He looked over at her huff of frustration. "Unless it's working, in which case, I'm very sorry I almost ran you down."
"You already apologized."
"Not very well, I don't think," he said ruefully.
"This entire conversation is a bit surreal," she informed him.
"How about we start over, then." He surreptitiously wiped his hand down his trouser leg and extended it. "I'm Dr. Joseph Molesley, giraffes."
After a moment's hesitation, Phyllis reached out. "I think I got the giraffes part down already. Dr. Phyllis Baxter, baboon lady."
Joe grinned and shook her hand. "I'm not very good about meeting new people," he confessed.
"I'd have never guessed," she replied dryly.
"So….are you having a good time?" he asked.
"No. Are you going to ask if I come here often next? Or tell me you can show me a good time? Or complement my dress?"
"I thought we'd already established that I'm rubbish at flirting."
"That's never stopped most blokes."
Charles Carson's deep voice rang through the room as he asked Anna Bates where Dr. Baxter might be. Phyllis' eyes widened in panic and she looked around frantically as fight or flight started to kick in.
"I'm not sure, Dr. Carson, but I'm sure she's circulating somewhere, getting to know people…"
Dr. Carson made a skeptical noise and began scanning the room. Phyllis had resigned herself to further introductions and unpleasant encounters with strangers when she saw Joe slip behind a pillar near an exit door. Determining on impulse that following the odd zoologist was better than being paraded in front of a mob of donors, she crept after him.
Joe was startled when she appeared next to him. She held her finger in front of her lips.
"Shhh. I'm getting to know people."
"He'll find you eventually," Joe warned her in whisper, feeling absurdly like a ten year old playing sardines again.
"Maybe he'll get distracted," she whispered back.
Joe grinned as he watched her peer around the edge of the pillar and took the chance to look her over a little closer, sweeping his eyes up and down her black dress and staring at her ankles in her heels. When he looked back up, she was staring back at him with a raised hostile eyebrow.
"That's a smashing dress," he blurted. She shushed him. "Sorry."
Avoiding her eyes, Joe took a turn reconnoitering Dr. Carson's movements. A roar of laughter from the middle of the room distracted him as he wandered towards their general area.
"Now would be a good time to find another hiding spot," he informed Phyllis.
Phyllis sighed. Suddenly, she felt too tired to be arsed to even try to avoid Dr. Carson or anyone else. Her feet hurt and she was hungry. The only person she'd passed more than five minutes of conversation with was Dr. Joseph Molesley, who was annoying in an oddly endearing sort of way.
"No more," she mumbled. "I just need to get this over with."
"Probably for the best," Joe agreed. "Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Would you like to meet my pregnant giraffe?"
"Are you serious? Or is that the weirdest pick-up line ever?"
Joe grinned at her at gestured towards the exit door with his head. She looked at him for a moment, then grinned back at him, thinking she'd made worse first impressions in her time.
"Oh, what the hell…why not?"