The Pinecone
Dead center in the drive, squarely in the middle, blocking her way. It was huge. The biggest, meanest pinecone she had ever seen. More like a porcupine or an aardvark, she thought, crossly. Or a large hand grenade. It wasn’t an identifiable child of Nature.
She didn’t have time to stop and get out to move it, so she swung the wheel of the ancient Honda, trying not to hit it. It would ruin her tire for sure. As she maneuvered up over the curb on the right of the narrow lane, the half-finished mug of Peet’s French Roast coffee she’d set on the floor tipped over and sloshed all over her shoe and the car mat.
She wasn’t what she would call late, getting in only a hair after nine, the beginning of core hours, but her boss called her into his office anyway for a chat about her attitude, because she hadn’t been there for the Crispy Cremes he’d brought in at 7:30 for the early arrivals in the department. (Misspelled doughnuts were another thing she was sick of.) Brad Carson was five years younger than Mandy and imagined that he walked on water because he had his MBA from Stanford. While he berated her, she stared at his screensaver, a picture of his two kids standing next to their black Lexus SUV blocking the view of the Grand Canyon in the background. His pious rebuke reminded her of the humorless patronizing pastor of her mother’s church in Wichita. He, too, she remembered, had been named Brad.
“You really need to be more of a team player, Amanda.”
Granted, she didn’t don spandex and bicycle with the rest of the technical support group up to Skyline on Saturdays, or go to Zombie Runner for coffee at noon, wanting instead to sit outside under a tree with a good book rather than talking about flat screen technology and Unix, EBay and YouTube, and the kids’ new iPhones.
“Sorry,” she said grudgingly, hoping her distaste didn’t show. Biggity boy bosses made her sick, as well.
“Let’s see what we can do, okay?”
*
The pinecone was there as she dragged herself home that evening, through the impatient rush-hour traffic. Lying in wait. A malevolent being that sat in the middle of the drive and taunted her.