The Wagging Tail

With a sigh, Charles Abbot placed his now empty cup of coffee on the table. He lowered the rims of his horn-rimmed glasses and pinched his nose as if he was willing his headache away. He could feel the eyes of his two colleagues on him, and with a grimace, he said, “This is the second time today that we have a potential candidate not show up for their interview on time. Does your generation care nothing about punctuality, Cassie?”

As Charles Abbot, a man just beginning to gray around his sideburns, sighed and placed his empty coffee cup on the table, his young colleague, Cassie Fisher, frowned. She was now the same age he was when he initially hired her for the company. Ten years later, she had his position, but Charles still insisted on treating her like the newly graduated twenty-two-year-old he had first met.

She looked at her notes and gave him a smirk. “Although I appreciate you still thinking I look like I’m in my twenties, I’d appreciate it if you stopped grouping me with everyone under forty. After all, I don’t curse your name whenever someone is going under the speed limit.”

Charles scowled at Cassie and eyed his last colleague, Maggie Kilfer, who was stifling a giggle. Meanwhile, Cassie checked her watch and lightly drummed on the table. With a nod, she continued, “I don’t see any problem with giving this guy until I finish my coffee. I’m in no hurry to get back to work anytime soon.”

“I’m fine with that,” Maggie said approvingly. She flipped the applicant’s resume before her and reread his name at the top. “Frank Horton seems worth the wait. He’s everything we’re looking for in an applicant. He has a couple of years of experience under his belt, and he even has a couple of solid recommendations.”

Charles waved the comment off and flicked the resume away from himself. “Do we really want some who can’t even…”

Before Charles could even get the last of his complaints out of his mouth, the door to the meeting room flung open, followed by the panicked voice of the receptionist, “Excuse me, miss? I told you! You can’t just barge in like…”

The young woman quickly closed the door behind her and cut the receptionist off. She was out of breath and sweating and leaned against the wall to steady herself.

All three watched the young woman as she finally steadied herself and gave them a rather mischievous grin. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, but this is where you are interviewing for the new sales consultant - the one for The Wagging Tail pet store off of 5th and Lilac?”

Cassie looked at Charles, who stared at the unknown woman with his mouth agape, while Maggie raised eyebrows as if trying to put the situation together. Cassie cleared her throat, and everyone’s eyes fell on her. “That’s right, but you might have gotten the date wrong. This interview is actually for someone else.”

“Frank, right?” The young woman said without missing a beat.

That surprised Cassie, who only gave the mysterious woman a nod.

A look of relief washed over the younger woman who walked over to the seat opposite the table, the one meant for Frank Horton, and began jabbering, “That’s great! I’m here to tell you that he’s running a little late! Also, I hope to convince you not to bail on him. I’m Arty, by the way. I’m not sure if I introduced myself yet, but now I have! Anywho, Frank will be here soon.”

With that proclamation, a dead silence lingered for a good while until Charles took the task of trying to bring the situation under control. “Listen here, miss…”

“Arty!” the young woman supplied with a helpful and youthful tone.

“Yes…Arty,” Charles said with annoyance. “If Mr. Horton was running late, why didn’t he just give us a phone call?”

Arty leaned in conspiratorially as if she had been waiting for someone to ask this question all this time and said with a bit too much exuberance, “Ah, you see, the thing about his phone is…”

—

Frank looked at Arty with the same look he always gave her when she dragged him into a situation that he knew would be a story he would be telling his grandchildren forty years from now or another trip to the emergency room.

“So, let me get this straight,” Frank started as he tried to piece everything together while Arty bounced on her feet with anticipation. “You want to take my old mattress…and you want to ride it down the hill?”

“It’s a perfect idea, right?” Arty said with the amount of energy that only she could muster, and threw her arms up in the air as if she was trying to release some of it before she exploded. “How else will we graduate you into adulthood by getting rid of your old twin bed? Obviously, by riding it down a snowy hill like a sleigh, like any responsible adult would do.”

“Ah, I see…so we are responsible adults because we are riding an old mattress down a hill?”

Arty nodded, glad that he finally understood. “Yup! I’m also sure it will be the most action that bed has ever gotten. I mean, if I walk into a guy's apartment and see that he’s still rocking a twin bed, I’ll assume that he’s never grown up and find myself a real man.”

With that said, Arty jumped on the bed, which was currently teetering precariously on the hill, and beckoned Frank to join her for the ride. “Now I’m only going to say this once, as I’m sure no woman has told you this while you owned this thing - are you ready to ride this thing with me or not?”

Frank gaped at her. “Wait, did someone use that line on you?”

“Someone?” Arty scoffed at him. “I said that line to Caleb. Do you remember Caleb? I wanted to see what crazy things I could say to the guy to where he would consider not having sex with me. It was kind of like a sociology experiment. Turns out that you could say anything to the guy, and he would be more than willing to jump in the sack with you.”

“Wow. Thanks so much for the tip,” Frank muttered as he glanced around for an escape route.

Arty was now patting next to her and spoke in a tone that would suffer no more disobedience. “Now. Get. Into. Bed. With. Me.”

Frank chuckled at that and, without complaint, sat next to his childhood friend. 

“Oh, give me your phone,” Arty said with complete glee. “We should definitely record this.”

“Yeah,” Frank said with a mock groan as he handed her his iPhone. “It’d be great to have something to show the paramedics as they bring us to the hospital.”

—

“...and that’s what happened.” Arty finished as she leaned back against the chair of the interview room, and her audience waited for the rest of the story.

“What?” Maggie said with a frown. She waited a few more seconds until she realized Arty finished with her story. “That doesn’t tell us what happened to his phone.”

“Sure it does!” Arty exclaimed like nothing was ever so obvious in her life. “So, we rode down the hill with the phone recording the whole thing, and that was when we rode straight into a tree, the phone flew out of my hand, landed in the middle of the street, and that was where a Tesla Model X ran over the damn thing. Luckily, no one was hurt…except, you know, the phone…”

Charles could only stare at the young woman sitting across the table from himself. He was tapping his pen against the table, and that was when he asked the obvious question, “How long ago did this happen?”

“About four days ago,” Arty said helpfully.

“And Mr. Horton couldn’t have bought a new phone within that time?” Charles asked inquiringly.

“Well, he just bought a new mattress,” Arty said pointedly. “Mattresses these days are pretty expensive, and he waited until he knew he had a new job before deciding what phone to get.”

 “That sounds perfectly reasonable,” Cassie chimed in, remembering what it was like when she just graduated from college. “I’d probably would have done the same thing. It also explains why he couldn’t tell us he was running late.”

“Silly me,” Charles said sarcastically as he eyed Cassie disapprovingly. Cassie had now finished her coffee, and this “interview” was now running far beyond schedule. He needed to end this nonsense and get on with his day. “So, tell me this, as a couple more questions come to mind.”

“Sure, I’ll be glad to help in any way I can,” Arty replied without missing a beat.

Charles cleared his throat as he leaned across the table inquisitively. “First, how did you know that Mr. Horton was running late if he didn’t have his phone? Second, and probably most important, why is he not here?”

Charles punctuated the last question by pressing his index finger hard against the desk.  

“Oh yeah, I guess you would like to know that, wouldn’t ya?” Arty stated while she gathered her thoughts together. 

Charles opened his mouth to snap, but Cassie interrupted him before he got the chance, “If you wouldn’t mind, we’d appreciate it. At this point, we’ve waited this long. What’s the harm in waiting a tad longer?”

“Our sanity,” Charles scoffed.

Arty snapped her neck to the side with a grimace and began her story, “It was about half an hour before this interview was going to start, and…”

—

“Yup, that cat is definitely stuck in that tree,” Frank said bluntly as he and Arty stared up at the orange tabby, meowing worriedly at the humans below. The tabby's owner, a young girl about ten, stood beside Frank and held his hand for emotional support. “I’d call the fire department, but you know, my phone got Tesla’d.”

“Geez, you still haven’t forgotten about that? And did you just make Tesla into a verb? I approve!” Arty said happily with an impish grin pointed in his direction. As for Arty, she had gone for a run and had forgotten her phone at her apartment. Frank had called her a psychopath for running without music, but she often used her runs to collect her thoughts and enjoyed the silence.

After her moment of self-inflection, Arty waved her finger at Frank and spoke with a lecturing tone, “That was like a month ago. Women don’t like a man who holds a grudge.”

“It was four days ago!” Frank said a little too loudly while giving Arty a look that made it seem like he wanted to strangle her. He glanced down at the small girl who was holding back her tears.  “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can find someone to lend us their phone.”

“Why don’t you go up and get it?” Arty asked inquiringly.

“Because I haven’t climbed a tree since I was her age, and I’m wearing a suit for an interview that starts in less than thirty minutes. Speaking of which, why don’t you climb the tree and get the damn cat?”

Arty punched Frank’s shoulder and pointed at the little girl before he could complain. “Language, mister. I’m afraid of heights, and Frank, we both know it’ll be at least an hour before the fire department arrives. What if something happens to the poor cat before then?”

Frank opened his mouth, but any argument he had died quickly as the little girl’s grip grew tighter, and the waterworks flowed freely down her cheeks. The cat even began to take on a more pleading tone, as if it was asking Frank why he was going to abandon it. 

Frank felt a light pat on his shoulder as Arty grinned at him. Her typically sarcastic and flamboyant nature faded to reveal one with a hint of admiration hidden behind her eyes. “We both know you would have climbed that thing eventually. I’ll tell you what. I’ll run ahead and tell them that you’re running late. I promise that I won’t let them leave until you get there. Deal?”

—

Arty finished her story and gratefully took a glass of water that Maggie had given her. “And that's about it. Do you have any other questions?”

“Do you honestly expect us to believe that story?” Charles Abbot said with an air of frustration.

“Believe what?”

Charles leaned forward and pointed accusingly at Arty. “The whole thing! You expect us to believe your friend is running late for his job interview. Mind you, this is a position for a pet store, and he is late because he was getting a cat out of a tree?” 

Cassie could only give Arty a sympathetic shrug. “He does make a good point, Arty. It seems too fantastical of a coincidence. Plus, your friend still isn’t here.”

Arty opened her mouth to argue for her friend, but at that moment, the door swung open to reveal a bedraggled-looking young man. His jacket had several rips across the sleeves and the shoulder to the point where one looked like it was about to fall off. He had a singular scratch across his right cheek that would match a cat’s paw perfectly, and finally, a few leaves were tangled into his hair.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” the man said, trying to catch his breath. “There was this cat stuck in this tree. I would have called, but my friend threw my phone at a Tesla, and…”

Frank Horton stared at the four people in the small meeting room and flushed slightly with nerves as if he had just remembered that he had come for a job interview. “What? Am I too late?”