Gabby tried to leave as early as she could. She didn't want to be almost late again. She rode the bus with her purse squarely on her lap. She was lucky enough to get a window seat considering that the bus was filled to the brim with other rush hour riders. She ignored the people squished up against her and looked at the scenes outside. The streets were dirty and yet at the same time colorful, bustling with activity, with happiness, misery, indifference, with people and animals, with cement and plant life. Gabby may have felt groggy but the streets certainly weren't.
She thought about how her father seemed disappointed that he was losing an employee and that the others at his store had to perform her tasks. But this was only going to be for three months.
The bus dropped her off at the correct location and she ended up waiting around for a half an hour since she ended up being early. She looked at her watch and waited for it to say exactly 9:00 before she entered the headquarters.
When she arrived, she saw Janine at her desk, looking relaxed and happy while talking on the phone. She fiddled with a pen as she spoke through the receiver. She clearly wasn't responding to an emergency call.
"Yeah, that's why I like fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt," she said, "It gives you a prize at the end for eating through the yogurt part… No, I was no aware that you're supposed to mix it thoroughly. Where's the fun in that?" She noticed Gabby standing there and widened her eyes while straightening her position. "I have to go, Carol. The temp is here and I need to show her the ropes. Okay, love ya." She then hung up the phone and gave Gabby her attention.
"Gabby!" she said, "Good to have you here on your first day! Why don't we start with a tour of the place, shall we? I figured that you should know your way around the building before we get into the nitty-gritty of your job."
Gabby liked Janine. She was warm and welcoming, even if her Brooklyn accent was a little obnoxious. She was quite comfortable around her. It was a shame that this was probably the last time Gabby would see her.
Janine got up off her chair and walked to the front of her desk. "This main area here is where you will be working and where most of the action is. Right here is where the Ecto-1 sleeps and it works just as hard as the boys who drive it do."
Gabby knew that she was referring to the car. She remembered being in freshman year of college and seeing it on the news when Gozer attacked the city. And here it was in the flesh, or rather, steel.
Slimer floated up to Gabby with a toothy smile.
"And this floating booger you met the other day is the firehouse pet named Slimer. We all agreed not to trap him with the other ghosts."
Gabby pet the top of Slimer's head, only to be given the nasty surprise of green slime all over her hands.
Janine ripped off a paper towel and gave it to Gabby. "Just a warning, he'll eat anything and I mean anything. We need to put our lunches in these ghost-proof safes when we put them in the fridge upstairs. And speaking of which, let's continue our tour upstairs."
Gabby was shown the sleeping quarters and the rumpus room on the second floor, along with the kitchen and eating area.
All four of the ghostbusters happened to be in the rumpus room since they weren't on a mission at the moment. They were playing a game of pool to pass the time. It was Egon's turn and he had not quite gotten to the point of aiming his pool stick yet. He was busy reading a softcover book called "The Statistician's Guide to Bar Games."
"Egon, will you hurry up and get your turn out of the way?" asked Peter, "Do it sometime before the year is up."
"I will in a moment," said Egon, concentrating on the page, "I want to guarantee the best outcome."
Janine led Gabby over to the others.
"Hey, everyone!" said Janine, "This is our temp Gabby. She's be doing my job while I'm on leave."
Peter, Ray and Winston all looked at Gabby at the same time and smiled.
"Hey!" they said cheerfully.
"Welcome to the team, Gabby!" said Ray.
"I hear you're from Spanish Harlem," said Peter.
"Yes, I am," said Gabby.
"So, how many members of Menudo do you know?"
Winston responded to this by slapping Peter upside the head.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Venkman, you cracker-ass!" said Winston, "You don't just ask somebody from Spanish Harlem how many members of Menudo they know! That would be like asking me how many members of Earth, Wind and Fire I know!"
"So… how many members of Earth, Wind and Fire do you know?"
Winston sulked a little. "None, unfortunately."
Gabby giggled.
"You guys are funny," she said.
"Sometimes, it's on purpose," said Ray.
Egon was still reading his book, ignoring the situation around him.
"Egon, put down that book and be social, will you?" asked Janine.
"Oh!" said Egon, "Hello, Gabby."
Gabby wasn't so sure about Egon. From what she knew about him, he seemed calculating and joyless. Sure, her father could be that way sometimes but he was never afraid to smile at new people. Apparently, this man was. One thing that she had to do that wasn't mentioned in the job description was to figure out what made her boss tick. Or maybe he didn't tick at all, like an unwound coocoo clock. In the meantime, she figured that she should just do the rest of her job and not get on Egon's bad side.
Either way, she didn't have to talk to him right now. He went right back to reading his book. She had to admit, the man was dedicated to his tasks.
Once Egon felt like it, he tagged along on Janine's tour. They found themselves in the basement of the building, where Gabby saw a massive holding tank, bigger than anything she saw at a hardware store, with easily-accessible buttons and a screen. It was so towering and unyielding that she almost wanted to bow to it. But being around other people who were used to this behemoth made her feel a bit more at ease.
Egon explained that whenever they trapped ghosts, the traps were emptied into the tank. He told her about the electronic and industrial components but what fascinated her was that the tank managed to hold a pocket dimension that would contain whichever spirit was put in there. She wondered what those captured, previously misbehaving spirits were doing in that pocket dimension and what they would say if she were to make contact with them. But she was not required to make contact with those spirits. She was required to make contact with employees, customers and outside vendors. If she got anything out of her trip to the basement, it was that science and the paranormal could be fused into a confusing and potentially dangerous dance.
Back at her desk, Janine showed her all of the tasks that Gabby's position would entail: answering the phone, paging different places, invoicing, payments, payrolls, reports, ordering necessary equipment, etc. Gabby was essentially going to be the backbone of this enterprise, a one-woman show. If anything, this was more intimidating than any ghost that could potentially escape the containment unit. But a small company like this should ensure a manageable workload.
Then came the part where Gabby would start performing her tasks in the way in which she was instructed while Janine shadowed her. After all that walking, Janine needed to sit down since she was carrying the equivalent of a small boulder in her midsection. This was the first time that Gabby was performing financial tasks on an office computer. The screen was black but the blocky text and numbers were slime-green and easy to see. The keyboard was really no different than the typewriters that she'd used before. Whenever she invoiced a customer, she could print it out on the dot-matrix printer, translating the digital to the physical.
Eventually, the phone rang.
"Remember what we've practiced," said Janine, "Say, 'Ghostbusters, what's your emergency?'"
Gabby picked up the receiver as quickly as possible, fumbling the phone while she did so.
"Ghostbusters, what's the emergency?" she asked. One word off but not bad.
The woman over the phone was panicking about bug monsters in her freezer. After getting her information, she hung up the phone and used the pager to relay the message to Egon. Then, the fun part began: The alarm rang, the boys went down the pole and the garage door opened so that they could get to their destination as quickly as possible. The garage door then closed, leaving the two women and Slimer at the firehouse.
While Gabby was performing the administrative tasks, Janine was happy to make conversation. She used this time to eat her cup of fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt (yogurt first, no stirring of course). She waved around her spoon as she spoke between mouthfuls of her snack.
"So, Reagan tells us that single moms are destroying the backbone of society," she said, "I say, good riddance. Have you seen society? Maybe it should be destroyed. Maybe we can build a better society, ya know?"
Gabby evened out the pile of papers in front of her.
"I guess it's a good thing he's not president anymore, huh?" she said.
"Although I'm not sure about this current guy. The Shrubbery Guy. His name is George Bush but I call him The Shrubbery Guy."
This wasn't so bad, thought Gabby. With each paper filed, with each envelope opened, with each key typed and turned into a symbol on the screen, she thought, I can do this.