Jim started to laugh and covered his mouth. "You didn't."
"I did. Today she came to work with her eyelashes curled. I should say something about how much better she looks, but truly, it would take a lot more than an eyelash curler to make her as lovely as she could be, if she tried."
"I think she's a little off in the head anyway."
"Do you? In what way?"
"Susan worked for a collection agency, so she's used to making up lies. Ursula needed to find a vendor zip code, and Susan started to make up this long, involved reason Ursula could use as an excuse to get it. Rubbish, I said. I called, asked for the zip code, wrote it down, hung up, and handed the paper to Ursula. It took about two seconds."
She giggled. "You humiliated Susan in front of a co-worker? You're worse than me."
"Maggie, I can't handle stupid sometimes."
"She might try to get even with you later."
"She'll have to get in line behind Nicole." He looked at the clock and stood up. "Time to go back. You coming?"
"In a minute." With two minutes of break time left, Maggie stayed and took another sip of her soda. Being a foreigner in America was harder than she expected it to be. She wanted to blend in, and to do that, she spent a great deal of time learning the American vocabulary instead of the one she grew up with. Even after three years, she sometimes used a word that brought about strange looks.
She only had one American friend, other than the people she worked with. Her friend was a man she talked to in a private chat room every night - at least he said he was a man. Bronco8881 seemed nice enough and she liked him. He could carry on an intelligent conversation, often made her laugh, and talking to him was the highlight of her day.
She couldn't wait to tell him what Jim said, but she had to be careful not to give Bronco8881 too much information. The internet made it easy for people to find someone if they tried hard enough, and the last thing she needed was for him to show up at her apartment.
As soon as her break time was up, Maggie begrudgingly went back to work. The basement was filled with equipment that softly hummed, but she had grown used to that. The top floor held meeting rooms and offices for the owner and his corporate lawyer daughter, neither of whom Maggie saw very often. Her cubical was on the middle floor, and when she looked in the one across the hall, the department manager's desk was indeed cleaned off, and Colleen's chair was empty.