Melvin's first clue that something was different happened as he rode the elevator to his office, his brain running numbers and fractions and percentages like a human calculator. About halfway to his floor, on the verge of adding profit margins mentally, he noticed the woman standing next to him sneaking sly glances in his direction.
She was a middle-aged woman, blonde, slightly attractive but nothing that would send men drooling or whistling if she passed by on the street. Still, the fact that even a woman as attractive as this one was casting looks towards him made Melvin's neck feel warm and uncomfortable around the collar. He fidgeted with his briefcase and straightened his glasses. He'd lost his good pair sometime during the duration of the previous night, and the spare set he always kept in his briefcase sat on his nose funny.
She made eye contact with him, her face blushing a bright red, and she squeaked, "Hi!"
Melvin's throat felt tight, and he had to force himself to keep from loosening his increasingly suffocating tie. He'd made a woman blush? Something funny was going on here, or this woman had serious problems. Melvin figured her as some kind of head case.
"Hi," he replied and smiled. She smiled back and then glanced away with an expression of embarrassment. Definitely a head case.
The elevator beeped, and the doors slid open.
"My floor," Melvin said apologetically and stepped out. As the doors closed behind him, the woman gave him a shy wave, and Melvin returned it. His head swooned with thoughts, many concerning his strange dream of the witch and the love potion she'd concocted for him.
Her voice: "Melvin, women are going to be eating out of your hands."
But that hadn't been real, had it? It couldn't have been. In his dream, he'd blacked out at her store. How'd he get home? His BMW had been parked in front of his apartment building this morning, so who'd driven it? The events of last night were a fuzzy blur, and he couldn't see through the fog of intoxication that seemed to cover it all.
The only explanation that made sense was that after Crabapple, his cold-hearted bitch of a boss, had chewed him out yesterday, he'd gone to a bar to drink away his problems to nothingness. The whole thing about the witch and her love potion was merely a dream caused by an abundance of alcohol and his lack of luck with women. Right?
He thought about the woman in the elevator. Weird. If only he could remember what had really happened to him. He didn't like the idea of passing into an alcoholic fugue state and waking up in his bed the next day with no memory of the night before. He turned, trying to see if he could get a bearing on Crapabble, the last person he needed breathing down his neck at the moment. She was nowhere in sight, and Melvin made a break for it.
Olivia Crabapple was on him as soon as he stepped into the maze of cubicles that Melvin had to navigate to get to his office. She swooped out of the sky like a vulture setting its talons into fresh road kill, her eyes flaming, her lips curled back in a snarl. Olivia was insanely jealous of Melvin's talent although she'd never admit as much, at least not out loud, and she took pleasure in watching him squirm like a worm on a hook, dangling his work in front of the hungry fishes on the Board of Directors and claiming it as her own.
Did it really matter, anyway? Melvin had no sense for leadership, no business savvy, and that's really what being a partner in the firm was all about, wasn't it? Olivia figured she would be just that, a partner, before the year was up, thanks to stealing everything of Melvin's she could get her claws on.
"Where have you been?" she spat at him. Melvin checked his watch.
"I'm early," he said.
"Who cares what time it is? I need you here when I need you, and I needed you twenty minutes ago!" she paused for a moment, her snarl disappearing, her face subtly changing expressions, and added, "What's different about you today?"
Melvin was caught off guard by the question and thought fleetingly of the woman in the elevator and his odd dream about the witch's love potion before he said, "Nothing. Nothing at all."
Olivia regarded him for a moment. She tapped a finger against her chin, her long nail painted dark red. Olivia wore a smart charcoal business suit, oozing professionalism but at the same time accentuating her curvy femininity, making her an intimidating sexual being. It was as if she was daring some poor schmo to make a pass at her, if only so she could tear out his throat and threaten him with a sexual harassment suit. Her green eyes narrowed suspiciously as she looked over Melvin.
"Something's definitely different about you," she said.
Melvin shrugged and said, "I'm just gonna get to work." He slipped past her, ducked into his office and closed the door behind him.
Olivia continued to tap her chin with a finger. She had approached him this morning with every intention of declaring that Melvin would be no longer in need of an office before stripping it away and demoting him to a tiny cubicle like everyone else on the floor (except her, of course, her office was large and luxurious as suited her engorged ego). She'd wanted to see his hopeless expression of resignation before he gave in, but now a new feeling stirred somewhere in the bottom of her stomach. She could still humiliate him, but there were better ways to do so. More fun to be had. Yes, much more fun.
She swiveled on her high heels, growled at an underling to get busy, and thumped her way to her office. She had to prepare for her weekly meeting with the Board, and there was so much work to do, considering she'd have to familiarize herself with the numbers she'd taken from Melvin the day before. Her humiliation of Melvin MacMuffin would have to wait until after hours, anyway.
In his office, Melvin collapsed into his chair. What was going on today? He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The woman in the elevator. Olivia. They both had seemed to think something was different about him. His dream of the witch, her naked body gleaming as he knelt in reverence before her, seemed more vivid than it had when he'd first woken up in his bed, his wrinkled clothes from the day before still on him.
A knocking rapped from the other side of his office door.
"Come in," Melvin said, and Richie Golding poked in his head. Richie, the office clown, was one of the few faces that Melvin felt he could trust. They hung out from time to time, but Richie was a bit of a party animal and was more interested in attempting to get his "wicky sticky" (as he liked to say) than in sipping beers with a poor loser like Melvin. Still, Melvin considered him a friend.
"My main man, Mel! Saw that you got a visit from the Wicked Witch of the twenty third floor already this morning," he said with a grin. Richie stepped into the room, his arms stuffed with various files and documents. His light brown hair stuck up in the back as if it hadn't been combed after he'd slept on it. Most likely, Richie hadn't gone home last night and had crawled straight to the office from some poor girl's apartment that he'd tricked into sleeping with him.
