“HI GUYS,” I said, grabbing a chair at a gleaming conference table that could accommodate a family of twelve for Thanksgiving dinner. It was almost the size of my entire cubicle. I set down my Diet Coke and watched happily as it formed a fat wet ring.

Lizbeth Austin Adams’s office reminded me more of a living room than a place of business. She’d brought in plants and lamps and other homey touches-each new addition a knife in my heart, as it meant she was setting down roots.

“Her Majesty will be here in a few,” Lizbeth’s assistant, Brie, informed me, barely glancing up from her issue of Us magazine. “Dang, I can’t believe that Beyonce acts like she invented the whole bootylicious thing.” She crossed an ample thigh, exposing the control-top line of her panty hose. “I had a booty when that girl was still running around in diapers.”

“Wait a minute-you can’t be any older than she is,” I countered. “Wouldn’t that mean you were in diapers, too?”

“Yeah, but I had a booty.”

It was three o’clock on the dot, and the marketing department, such as we were, was assembled. Gazing around at my co-workers, I almost had to feel sorry for Lizbeth. After she’d joined as director of marketing for L.A. Rideshare two years ago, unexpected budget cuts brought a wave of layoffs. The empire she’d moved from Texas to lead dwindled to the four of us. Like strangers thrown together in a lifeboat, we seemed to have only one thing in common: an instinct for survival. Besides Brie and me, there was Greg, the designer, and Dominic Martucci, known only as Martucci, whose job it was to drive the Rideshare Mobile. Martucci had a thin-lipped smile and a habit of fondling the tiny braided rattail that he’d let grow like a hairy tadpole from the nape of his neck. Sometimes I shuddered to think he had his hands all over my brochures.

“Good afternoon,” Lizbeth said as she breezed in. Martucci and Greg straightened in their seats. She had that effect on men. I half expected them to chant like schoolboys, “Good afternoon, Miss Austin Adams.”

She tossed a manila folder in front of me. “Nice work on this brochure. I made a few comments.” I thumbed through the draft copy I’d given her to review. There was so much red ink, I thought perhaps she’d opened a vein over it. As if I’d be so lucky. “Overall I’d prefer that you make it less”-she gave me a patronizing smile-“Jane Fonda.”

“Jane Fonda?”

“You know,” she said, wrinkling her nose and whispering as if saying a dirty word, “strident.”

“All it says is that cars cause pollution.”

“Right.”

“But isn’t that the-“

“All right, people, we’ve got quite a bit to cover today,” she said, ignoring me as she always did and addressing the group instead. “Let’s get started.”

I tucked the brochure away. I’d make the changes she wanted-what was the point in arguing?

As at every department meeting, Lizbeth went around the table having each of us report the status of the projects we were working on. When it was my turn, I mentioned a brochure on carpool lanes I was writing and a press release announcing a new bus pass. I bored even myself as I talked about it.

When people discover I work as a writer, I’m quick to point out that I’m not a real writer. I see their eyes light up-ooh, a writer?!-so I try to squelch it before it goes any further. While I’m not exactly ashamed, let’s face it: My job lacks glamour on a level almost impossible to comprehend. Carpooling isn’t exactly sexy stuff.

That’s why it baffles me how someone like Lizbeth Austin Adams wound up working here. Well& besides the fact that Lou Bigwood, our agency president, discovered her at a conference she’d put together-a tale passed around the office with the same reverence as the one about Lana Turner getting discovered at Schwab’s. That was Lizbeth’s forte: event planning. At our first department meeting two years ago, she’d boasted that she’d planned the Bush twins’ coming-out party, to which Brie had slapped her ever exposed thigh and exclaimed, “I knew they was gay!” Bigwood, apparently impressed with Lizbeth’s credentials-or impressed with something, at any rate-had offered her a job on the spot.

Not just any job.

My job.

Granted, it wasn’t mine technically. But my old supervisor had groomed me for the position. I would have been managing a staff of twelve, in charge of ad campaigns and publications, plus running promotional events-big parties where we’d feed people hot dogs and, once their mouths were full, talk to them about how very fun sharing the ride could be.

Instead, I’d had to force a smile and applaud as Lou Bigwood had trotted Lizbeth out at a staff meeting and introduced her as the new director of marketing.

I suppose it shouldn’t have been such a shock. He was notorious for finding stunning women and-to the endless frustration of the human resources manager-offering them hefty salaries and the plum jobs at the agency without consulting with anyone else. He was a maverick that way. Lizbeth, blond and in her late thirties, was conventionally attractive in a TV-weather-girl sort of way. That in itself was a surprise. Bigwood’s tastes usually leaned more toward the exotic-dark-haired beauties like my friend Susan. In fact, not only like Susan, but Susan herself had at one time been the object of his interest, much to my horror.

“You mean you’re one of Charlie’s Angels?” I remember exclaiming after Susan had casually mentioned that Bigwood had hired her after they’d met at (where else?) a conference. I believe I’d been working at L.A. Rideshare for only a few weeks at the time, Susan having recommended me for the copywriter position.

“At least I’m the smart Angel,” she’d replied.

“But that’s horrible! He hired you based on your looks!”

She’d shrugged.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Not particularly.”

I must have gotten puffed up and judgmental and strident looking because she’d said, “Look, I know Bigwood’s an ass, but that goes for anyone who runs a company. I get the job done. People respect me. What do I care why he hired me? Besides, turnabout’s fair play-do you have any idea how many men get the job over a woman for the sole reason that they are the proud owner of a penis?”

She had a point.

And now, I realized with a sigh-watching Lizbeth slice Greg’s web designs to ribbons in her cool but impossible to contradict manner-that I had a female boss who had balls of steel.

“I spoke with three reporters today,” she said briskly when it came to her turn to talk. “I have nibbles but no bites.”

She was talking about the Friends of Rideshare project. It was one thing that made me cringe as much as the memory of that typo I’d let slip through in a newsletter back in 2002. (I’d accidentally put pubic transit instead of public transit.)

Friends of Rideshare was an idea that I’d pitched as part of my failed job proposal. I suggested that we ask local traffic reporters to mention carpooling when they did their on-air traffic reports. They might say things along the lines of Rubbernecking is causing slowdowns on the 405 don’t you wish you were ridesharing? My old boss had marveled at the simple brilliance of the plan. Except when Lizbeth came on, she’d claimed the project as her own and started going after big-name celebrities. I heard she’d spent months calling Brad Pitt’s people, trying to get him as a spokesman. She couldn’t even get through to his people’s people. The project was tanking, and Lizbeth made sure everyone knew it had been my idea. “I’’doing the best I can to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” I’d overheard her complaining to another director.

So now, she told us, she was giving up on movie stars and musicians and had an idea-and how novel!-about approaching on-air reporters who specialized in traffic. Although& and she gave a woeful sigh& she wasn’t certain there was any salvaging things.

“No offense,” she said.

None taken. Bitch.

We wrapped up the meeting and were gathering to go when Martucci said, “Maybe June could talk to Troy Jones.”

Uh er what? Why was he mentioning Troy Jones?

Lizbeth wondered the same thing. “What about Troy Jones?”

“You didn’t hear? June ran over his sister back in July.”

“I didn’t run her over!” I protested.

Martucci snapped a folder shut. “Fine, then. She didn’t run her over. But that girl in her car was Troy Jones’s sister. Right, Parker?”

Lizbeth looked at me with interest. “Is that true? That’s who was in the accident with you? Why didn’t you say anything?”

A cold finger of dread wormed its way up my spine.

Everyone obviously knew who Troy Jones was-besides his being Marissa’s brother. I sure wished I did, but I wasn’t about to ask.

Luckily, Greg came to my rescue. “Who’s Troy Jones?”

“Traffic reporter,” Lizbeth said. “Recently started on K-JAM morning radio. Very up-and-coming, gets a lot of airtime.”

So Troy was a traffic reporter. I supposed I should have known, but I’d let my interest in the industry slip right around the time I lost out on the promotion. There was no point in being in the loop if they weren’t going to pay me for it.

Lizbeth leaned forward. “So will you be talking to Troy soon?”

“For what?”

“Oh, the usual. Memorials. Ashes scattering. That sort of thing. I’d love to get him to work with us. Now that we have you as a personal contact”

I gaped at her, my jaw dropping on its hinge. Was she serious? “I met him at a funeral.”

Martucci, ever the kiss-ass, said, “Now this sounds to me like an opportunity. What’s that old saying?” He snapped his fingers. “Ah, yes when a door closes, a window opens.”

My brows shot down in a scowl. How dare he attempt to quote The Sound of Music against me!

“That’s right, you never know,” Lizbeth said. “Sad as his sister’s passing is” -she held her hands out across the table& and fortunately I was sitting too far away, or I suspected she might have tried to clasp mine-“from these sorts of tragedies, bonds can form.”