Dance With the Devil: Chapter Two

Five days after she put in the request for the tetracycline, she received a post card from Miss Lovell informing her that the box had gone out in the morning mail. She had written on the bottom of the card that it should be there in three days. So she had worked some magic. Sheila was elated. She called Nicholas and he congratulated her on a job well done.

Sheila's life had become one round after another of work, looking for a condo, sorting through her possessions, and packing. Nicholas called her while she was at work to shore her up. He went with her from one condo to another in spite of the fact that she couldn't make an offer on any of them until she had her money. He carried items to the thrift store or to the trash bins behind the Von's store on the corner of PCH. He took her out to dinner near midnight when she worked long hours to make up for being out looking at condos during the day. He helped her pack. And most importantly, he never mentioned moving in together. How could she not love a man like that?

All of this was stressful business. A plastic zip bag of carrots, celery, apples, and grapes took up most of the space in her purse and was usually empty by the time she arrived home. A meltdown was inevitable. A mini meltdown came when she had punched in early to catch up on archiving documents. She was exhausted and her nerves were frazzled. Only two days until she went back to Richard's law office. The thought that he might not have the statement and check for her sent pains shooting through her stomach. She munched vegetables and fruit and watched the image of a document flash on the monitor for half a second only to be replaced by the next.

"Damnittohell!" she said. She backed the memory file up to make sure she'd caught the first of blurred papers. They were, of course, mail room shipping labels and postage requisitions filled out by Carl. He did this as a favor to people who came down without the proper paper work to send out packages. He'd have them sign the bottom and then he'd fill them in. The postage machine printed the weight and shipping charges on the box and the requisition so that part was clear on the documents. It always seemed to be the department of origin and contents that he scrawled illegibly. She grabbed the one that had gone through the scanner and half a dozen more of Carl's requisitions, with the department of origin impossible to read, and, although she had no authority to do so, she headed for the mail room.

She found Carl running shoe box sized packages and requisitions through the postage machine. "I need to talk to you," she shouted over the noise.

"Who are you?" he said without pausing the machine.

"It's really important," she said anger rising in her voice.

He shut off the machine, "You got a minute."

She waved the postage requisitions in front of him, "Your handwriting is so bad these documents are useless."

"After you file those, no one is ever going to look at them." He restarted the machine.

"People look at them all the time," she yelled.

He shut the machine off. "Why would anyone to do that?"

"To settle customer disputes about packing or billing. Beckman has a whole legal department that works with these. Not to mention the accountants."

"Really?"

He suddenly seemed very interested. She said, "You seem like a nice enough guy. No point in getting fired for poor penmanship."

"Who did you say you were?"

"Sheila. In Archives."

"Thanks for the heads up," he said and went back to running his boxes and requisitions through the postage machine.

Sheila felt so much better after that exchange, she allowed herself to have five Mike and Ike's while she scanned and shredded more documents.

In the middle of the next afternoon, her cell phone rang and showed her brother Tom's number. She smiled as she said, "Hello, Tom. I hope the box I sent wasn't too bashed up by the time it arrived."

"The box of tetracycline never got here."

"It should have been there five or six days ago."

"I forgot to ask you to black out any reference to Beckman Pharmaceuticals on it. Damn. The box probably never made it through customs or was stolen along the way. Can you get another and send it super fast?"

Sheila bit her lip to keep from saying no, but she couldn't imagine Miss Lovell working her magic again, especially not for a temp. Her brother sounded so exhausted and desperate she said, "Don't worry, Tom, I promise another box will go out first thing in the morning."

She went back to scanning and shredding. As the papers flowed, she decided to go around and asking various people if they'd exercised their drug donation option. Once again, she turned off the scanner and shredder without having even made a dent in the growing rows of documents that lined the shelves. She made a promise that she would work day and night until she was caught up.

A guy in the lab, running experiments on horse urine, told her he hadn't designated his box. When he agreed to donate it to the clinic in Colombia, she put the correct form on his desk, handed him a pen, and guided him through the paper work. The was the end of her part one of her plan. The tricky part was circumventing the days of delay while corporate wheels turned again. Part two of the plan came to her in a flash of inspiration. She prepared some phony documents and made several phone calls. The last was to Nicholas.

As soon as he picked up, he said, "Are you ready to go out to look at condos?"

"Change of plans," she said.

"One of the girls here asked me if I'd like to go on a three day cruise."

"What?"

"Another girl here was going to go with her, you know double occupancy and all, but she go sick. This couldn't have come along at a better time. Three days of rest will set me up to power through getting a place and moving."

"What about tomorrow? You were going to get your money from Richard. I made special plans for dinner." He paused and then added, "To celebrate."

"I'll get the money as soon as I come back. We can celebrate then. Please don't be disappointed. I really need the rest."

She worked until the building was nearly deserted. With the request in her hand, she headed to the mail room. No on was around the big table where temps sat to stuff envelopes. The postage machines were silent. It was kind of scary. "Is Carl here," she asked a kid pushing a cart full of letters.

"Dinner," the kid said.

Perfect, Sheila thought. She said, "I need to check the address on a box to make sure the information on it is correct."

"Good luck in finding it," the kid said and pushed the cart toward the letter processing center at the opposite end of the the huge room.

Sheila set to work looking through the stacks of boxes for one that contained tetracycline. After a few minutes, she found one. She took the packing and shipping labels off and went to find the kid.

"You were right," she said. "I couldn't find the right box. I left the paperwork with the correct address on Carl's desk. Please tell Carl that Miss Lovell, in Philanthropic Services, would like it to go out right away."

"No problem," the kid said.

Sheila went back to the stack of boxes waiting to be sent. Trying not to look suspicious, she glanced around to see if the coast was clear. She picked up the box of tetrcycline and walked away with it. If anyone stopped her, she would tell them that it needed a new packing label. She didn't need to tell that little lie because, for once, luck was on her side.

Security had top priority at Beckman and Sheila was sure her actions were being recorded, if not watched on spy cams. Night guards might descend on her at any moment. She slipped into the nearest ladies room where she had stashed her work out bag in hopes spy cams were illegal in restrooms. After ripping open the package, she put all of the drugs into the bag and then piled her work out clothes on top of them. She removed the shipping label from it's sleeve and stuffed it into the bag, too. She had crammed the collapsed box into the trash and was just finishing up stuffing the packing material in on top of it when a woman came in."

Sheila said, "I wish people would clean up after themselves."

"Kids," the woman said and entered a stall.

The night guard knew her quite well because of her irregular schedule. Her heart pounded so hard as he unzipped her bag and pawed through the top layer of clothes she was sure it would give her away. He stopped when he came to her jogging bra. She feared his fingers had brushed against the hard plasitic of the pill containers. But he just covered her bra with her sweats and said, "Have a good evening."

It was all she could do to keep herself from running out of the building. Once outside, she ran as fast as she could to her car. She made a quick stop home for a change of clothes. She transferred the pills to a backpack and picked up her passport. In less than ten minutes , she was on the 405 freeway driving toward LAX and her flight to Medillin.

Comments

Jean: Thanks to Sheila,I am reading your book. Reading is my passion!!!!! I think you have something special here. This is from Tony's Mom,Carol. Keep up the good work

Posted by: Carol Gubaci | August 05, 2006 at 05:03 AM