A/N:
Thanks to all for the warm welcome to fic-land…I am hoping for a long and pleasant stay. The six of you that reviewed chapter one at Twilighted are my new favorite six people in all the world. I have a whole new appreciation for reviews after putting a chapter of my own out there. Thank you, thank you, more than six times thank you!
I completely made this up, but in this world CCR does NOT equal Creedence Clearwater Revival (ick). Instead, CCR = Consumer Censure Representative, now ya know.
And if I failed to mention this earlier, my E&B will be OOC at times. Especially Bella. Because dog garnet, she deserves to be a better character.
These two sweet, misunderstood kids are not mine.
If you like-ah the tunes, song for this chapter is Private Idaho by the B-52's. I feel groovy just thinking about it.
2 – In the Last Ten Years
In the last ten years, Edward had held a series of very similar jobs. Always with companies that had never existed long enough for him to have to quit in order to move along to the next thing. The flavor of the last eighteen months had been Vitamin Direct - the world's virtual leader in discounted online nutritional supplements. What the fancy corporate slogan failed to note was that most of their stock actually came from sell-offs of B-grade merchandise from reputable vitamin companies. The rest was merely floating about in FDA purgatory, waiting to be eventually banned from the shelves.
For a total sham, the office looked like any honest company's might have.
The walls were not quite white, the line of cubicles that transformed the large room into a grid not quite gray, and the looks in each employee's eyes not quite dullish-beige as they sympathetically chanted "I understand" into their wired headsets.
This room was the heart and soul of the entire Vitamin Direct empire - the CCCC, or the Quad-C, C to the Fourth, or in very official terms, the Consumer Censure Call Center. This was Edward's work. He neither enjoyed it nor found any pride in furthering the wrongs of the bogus organization. But in this particular department of this particular company, he felt some peace in lending his ear to those who'd been had by the same greedy suits who fueled his strange addiction. He figured that since companies like this were going to exist anyway, he might as well offer a bit of his good energy to the people who've been screwed over by it.
This was Edward's karmic balance beam.
As an added bonus, the working environment was so emotionally ragged, the employee turnover rate was very high and very fast, which complimented Edward's need for interpersonal disconnect, even off the stage.
Each day he sat reclined in his chair with his street-worn boots resting on the desktop, absentmindedly weaving a pencil between his fingers, half listening to the constant outpouring of grievance while mentally strumming a new tune or replaying some blaze-of-glory moment of an open mic past in his head. He didn't even know the names of any of his coworkers. And he very much doubted that they knew his.
In the last ten years, Edward had pretty much mastered the art of invisibility. Or so he liked to convince himself.
In the room, bits of angry dialogue crept out into the air from the forty or so headsets in the room, coming together and rolling around like train cars of a coaster built of steel and rage.
From a headset in cubicle thirty-six, CCR Michael Newton, an all-American happy-go-lucky sort, fresh off a sports medicine degree, just biding his time waiting for an entry-level opening with the Knicks:
"This is fucking bullshit! I ordered your free trial, paid nine bucks for shipping, the pills did NOTHING, and a month later you con artists charged $79.95 to my Visa without my permission!" Awkwardly stuttering through the provided spiel, Mike managed to sell the customer on a discount for more vitamins.
From a headset in cubicle eleven, CCR Jane Volturi, a tiny blonde in phase one of her long-term plan of total world domination:
"These things were supposed to give me a goddamn hard-on, not give me leg cramps, pain worse than anything I felt in the war, I tell you! I demand some sort of retribution!" First, she offered him her middle finger up to the mouthpiece and then free shipping on all products for a year.
From a headset in cubicle seventeen, one padded wall away from Edward, CCR Isabella Swan, ("Call me Bella"), an energetic young brunette with a artist's sketch pad laying on the table before her:
"Whatever this…'stuff'…is you sent me made me piss green! And I'm not talking about yellowish-green here, I am talking full-on Elphaba-slathered-in-ectoplasm green. I want your boss's email address and I'm going to personally send him a picture of my toilet bowl full of it!"
Bella's already large eyes went even wider with surprise as the request yanked her from her doodle, an intricate cartoon drawing of a cat with a polka dot bow in its hair being violently strangled by a telephone wire. She brought her feet up to a crouch and then slowly rose up on her office chair, wobbling like a toddler with her arms straight out to each side, as she scanned the room for a worthy candidate to receive said photograph. She smirked defiantly as he practically chose himself.
Cubicle twenty-one, CCR Peter L. Green, a know-it-all slacker who made everyone else look bad by wearing a tie to work every day. He wore it loose though. Peter was in the process of convincing a customer that her daily diarrhea couldn't possibly have anything to do with the 1000 mgs of rose hip vitamin C tablets she'd purchased from Vitamin Direct.
The lot had been factory-processed incorrectly. They had everything to do with her raging runs, and he knew it. Welcome to the CCCC.
As Bella's eyes passed over him, they paused and narrowed, watching him gaze at his computer monitor, slowly tracing the body line of a topless model with his mouse cursor. He caught a glimpse of Bella's teetering figure out of the corner of his eye, turned and winked at her suggestively, raising his brows and offering a sly nod towards the janitor's closet. He made no move to disguise the soft-core porn in front of him.
Bingo. Bullseye. Canasta. Eight ball, corner pocket. She winked right back at him.
"Sir, are you still there?" she asked Green Pee Guy. She awkwardly grasped the top of the cubicle wall for support as her chair twisted and turned under her, threatening an embarrassing but not uncommon moment of clumsiness in the calm of the room. On the other side of the wall, Edward half glanced up, pretending not to watch the struggle before quickly looking away as she caught sight and smiled shyly at him, relieved when her butt found its way safely back into its nest.
Bella loved a good mystery, and Edward Masen might just be one.
Out of a general sense of neighborly curiosity (and boredom), she had, over the course of her four months across the wall from him at Vitamin Direct, deduced a few things about him. A, he was potentially deep. B, he was potentially dark. C, he was definitely cute, but D, abnormally disengaged from others.
These findings led her to a series of potential conclusions regarding him. He was clearly A, insane. B, wildly antisocial. C, an ass. or D, hiding something.
She loved making lettered lists to work out her musings. Never numbered, always lettered.
Her first edition copy of The Secret of the Old Clock desperately hoped for D, but Bella tried to let it down easy, convincing it that he was probably just a jerk. She didn't tell the book this, but she'd known a lot of jerks in her life, and this guy wasn't exactly sending out the vibe.
But he was strange. And others seemed equally repelled by him as he was of them. It was subtle, but if you paid attention, it was real. Sitting adjacent to Edward every day for months, she couldn't think of one time when anyone in the office had had any sort of interaction with him. He was good at his job. She had eavesdropped on him performing Olympic-caliber damage control, but aside from taking calls, she had never heard him speak out loud to anyone. He never attended workplace outings, and he mysteriously appeared to schedule all of his doctor's appointments during scheduled staff meetings.
Then, every day at five o'clock sharp, he laid his chin to his chest and walked a straight line to the elevator and out the door.
"Hello! Do you have that email address or what?" came the belligerent cackle from the other end of the headset, interrupting her thoughts.
Oh. Right. Pee Guy.
"Sir, yes sir, I have it right here. I'm sure he'll be very happy to help you. Pen ready? Okay, it's ."
Her hand instinctively flew to her mouth as she gasped. She barked out half a hysterical laugh before quickly snatching her bottom lip between her teeth and whittling it down to a modest snicker.
"P. Green. Oh my God. Wow. Now, is it just me, or is that a crazy coincidence? Sorta like fate!" And then, realizing she'd spewed more than enough, she cleared her throat, "So, umm… I'm sure that he can help you with whatever you need from this point forward. Yeah, so, thanks for calling Vitamin Direct, your online source for discount vitamins and supplements!"
Bella thumbed the big red "End" button on her phone with force, vocalizing her exasperation in a loud sigh-slash-groan that was easily audible to neighboring coworkers. A common reverberation in the CCCC. She reclined back in her chair, closed her eyes, and blindly flung the Ghastly Headset of Great Anger and Wrath loose from her head.
This extreme moment of frustration accidentally projected the headset further than she'd intended. It scaled the cubicle wall and came to rest over on Edward's side.
Edward vaulted backward in surprise, his chair rolling and hitting the side wall of his cubby, making the papers tacked there wrinkle. He sat gawking in horror at the dangling accessory, as if a blood-drained corpse had just been tossed over. He froze as the chime of a musical giggle preceded the sight of a head of shiny chestnut hair and a pair of big brown eyes as they poked over the crest.
Her face was amused. And apologetic. And kind. And a bit uncertain.
"Oopsie!" she blurted, searching his face for some shared sense of humor, "Occupational hazard! Sorry, Edward!" She smiled shyly as she reeled the headset in like a fish by a thin black wire.
Edward didn't move. He appeared rooted in fear or shock. For a moment she actually wondered if he was going to be okay.
"Edward?" she asked tenderly. He twitched. He stared. She stared back, out of sheer mystification.
After half a second too long, he swallowed hard, blinked three times fast, shook his head a bit as if to rid a nagging housefly, and finally spoke, his eyes lingering on hers for another moment before turning them down to his hands with an exhale of relief.
"Well, I've been here a long time Ma'am, and I've never heard of a reaction like that. If I were you, I'd think about calling a doctor."
Bella cocked her head to the side and shot him a questioning look. Definitely option A. Without a doubt.
"A doctor?" she asked dumbly.
He glanced quickly back at her, this time with hard, angry eyes, and his mouth in a thin, stern line. He had obviously completely shaken free of the odd moment of vulnerability a moment ago. He curtly gestured towards his headset.
Oh, right.
"Sorry, Edward, seriously. I didn't mean to…" she offered in a shrill whisper, trailing off as she disappeared back behind the wall. She stuck her hand up over, waved once for good measure and plopped back into her seat, completely flustered. She didn't want to admit it, but she was shaken by him. Perhaps it was A mixed with a bit of C?
She cringed. That would make for one nasty cocktail.
She turned over a page in her notebook and carved out a quick distraction for herself, stroking the beginnings of a new cartoon.
The kitty with the polka dot bow was back, flinging dozens of wired headsets into the air over a cliff side, landing in a massive pile on the ground below. A pile with a head sticking out of it - another cat, this one with messy hair, thick-rimmed glasses and a grumpy brow. It might've turned into a mountain encompassing the cat's head completely, but a flashing green light on her phone beckoned her attention back. She cringed and reached for the blinking button with a slow and shaking finger, afraid to know what might await her on the other end.
"Thanks for calling Vitamin Direct, this is Bella. How may I help you today?"
That night, Bella couldn't sleep.
Her thoughts drifted about like dandelion fluff, replaying the strange interaction with the strange man on the other side of the wall. The way he'd stared like he'd never seen another human being before, and then afterward, appeared almost, pissed off at her?
Surely it couldn't make someone angry to have a telephone accessory accidentally fly over their wall? Or could it? Was Edward's cubicle some sort of no-fly zone?
Tomorrow, I will confront him, she thought with sleepy confidence as fatigue snatched her up, shipping her towards a dreamland filled with polka dots and headset confetti.
That night, Edward couldn't sleep.
He was appalled by his behavior with the girl at the office. He had no idea what on earth had caused him to lose control of his cool like that, at work of all places. It had never been difficult to avoid interactions in New York. Was he now so effing out of practice with real people that he couldn't even conjure up a few words to keep up the charade?
He was fully aware that she probably thought him a lunatic, ogling at her like a bewildered moron over the ridiculous headset incident. He hoped that perhaps she had taken his bizarre behavior as a sign that he was best when avoided.
Convinced of this new reality, he relaxed down onto the pillow he shared with a curled-up and purring Alice, and he gave her a soft pet and let himself indulge in knowing that tomorrow night he would be on stage again.
Twenty-four more hours 'til life makes sense again, he thought, allowing himself to dive heartfirst into the lucid fantasy that always paved his way to sleep.
But as he let the vision materialize, it wasn't himself on a stage, feeling whole and full he saw. Instead, an invader - a pair of chocolate-colored eyes staring back at him through his closed lids, confused and perhaps a little hurt. And he realized then what might be bothering him.
In the last ten years, no one had looked directly at him said his name, Edward, with genuine interest. He had worked hard never to let anyone get that close. Until today.
A/N
I admit, I don't really know anything about the vitamin sales industry, only that my cousin actually had a job like this once. Though I admit, I cannot imagine him handing these calls with the level of finesse that our friends E & B do. The other details I made up to suit the scene.
Tell me about your most peculiar coworker?