A Quiet Man

Geoffrey Downing is poking through the Archives when his assumptions about Mickey Magee’s employment status are confirmed.

He is trying desperately to find a pattern in Mrs. Bates filing system. The dates are completely out of order, and the cases she lumped together are completely unrelated to each other. This is inconvenient, as it means he has no idea what she’s done with the most recent case files he’s given her. This also means he cannot locate other case files for reference. However, Geoffrey is not a quitter, and so he keeps himself buried in the narrow, dusty shelves during his lunch break.

Once again, Mickey Magee manages to catch him by surprise.

“There you are!”

Geoffrey starts, accidentally knocking his head into the shelf in front of him. As he rubs his head furiously, he can hear her giggling next to him. Geoffrey doesn’t believe he has ever liked a person less after only knowing them for a few hours.

“Mr. Clarke sent me to find you,” Mickey tells him after he turns to glare at her. “I got the job!” She smiled brightly at him. This makes Geoffrey dislike her a little less, against his better judgement, of course.

Geoffrey straightens his jacket and smoothes his tie. “And Mr. Clarke sent you to locate me just to share that bit of news? It hardly seems worth the effort. I would have figured it out eventually when you just started hanging around the office.” Wait. Geoffrey Downing would like to retract that statement, if you don’t mind.

He sees her smile falter ever so slightly. To anyone else, it would have been imperceptible, but thanks to Geoffrey’s near obsessive-compulsive attention to detail, it does not escape his notice. He tries to remember everything his brother ever told him about speaking to people, girls in particular. Somehow, the only things he can think to say may be perceived as rude.

She chews on the inside of her lip and shuffles from foot to foot. Geoffrey stands with his hands firmly in his pockets and stares directly into the carpet, feeling for all the world like a complete moron. Mickey huffs loudly all of a sudden. “Ok, I know this is unprofessional as all hell, but these heels are killer. Mind if I ditch these for a bit?”

Geoffrey’s eyes snap to her face. He wants to tell her that his and Mr. Clarke’s clients probably wouldn’t appreciate seeing a secretary parade around in just stockings. However, he’s still having trouble formulating a sentence that doesn’t sound rude.

He opens his mouth, hoping his mind will work something together as an answer leaves his lips, when Mickey speaks again. “It’s not like I’m going back up there, anyway. Mr. Clarke has already given me my first assignment.” She throws her arms out on either side of her. “This!”

“This?” Geoffrey is confused.

“This!” she says impatiently. “As in the Archives. He says this place is a nightmare to navigate, and it’s my job to figure out Whatsherface’s old filing system and fix it!” She says this proudly. Geoffrey wonders if she’s ever held down a real job in her entire life. One look at her sunny expression and he very much doubts it. He simply nods at her.

“So, do you mind?” she asks.

“Mind what?” His brain finds it very hard to function normally when she speaks to him like that, like his answer is actually important to her.

“The shoes?” she points to her feet. The shoes look monstrous, tight and black with a slim heel that cannot be structurally sound. He gives what he hopes is a noncommittal shrug.

Mickey interprets this as ‘Of course! Go right ahead!’ “Oh my gosh, thank you so much!” She leans forward and knocks both shoes off of her feet, giving Geoffrey a quick flash of her lacy bra. He flushes slightly and trains his eyes on anything that is not the woman in front of him.

“I don’t even know why I bought these damn shoes,” Mickey babbles on. “They pinch and give me blisters. And they were really freaking expensive.” She straightens up and smoothes some hair off of her forehead. She is several inches shorter now, though still tall. Her expression turns sheepish. “Ok, well I do know why I bought them. I mean, they just looked so cute in that window, and as I walked past they started calling me to me like little orphan puppies. You know, like,“ she sharpens her voice to a much higher pitch, “’Please, oh please take us home! We are so cute and lovable! We promise to never ruin your clothes or piss on your carpets! Please, please, please?’” She accompanies this with a few pathetic ‘yips.’ “I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right?”

Mickey looks directly in Geoffrey’s eyes again, her expression completely open as if speaking to an old friend. He sees her eyes close off slightly as she remembers that it is Geoffrey she is talking to. “Or maybe you don’t… Anyways. I better get to work. Craig from Public Relations swears this is going to take me weeks, and by the looks of this place, I don’t doubt it. By the way, have you met Craig? What a nice guy! I mean, really, really nice.” She leans against the inside of the shelf, about a foot a way from Geoffrey, and chews the inside of her lip again. “He gave me his phone number, but I don’t think I should be dating co-workers, especially not this early on. I mean, can you imagine? Awkw-a-a-a-ard.”

She stretches out the last part of ‘awkward’ in that annoying way that some people do. Geoffrey doesn’t tell her that he’s feeling awkward standing there having to listen to her babble about her shoes and her job and Crag from Public Relations who isn’t really all that nice. It is especially awkward knowing that she expects him to have listened to every word and will probably find some way to bring it up later to check that he actually heard her.

“When did you have time to meet Craig?” he asks her, the question surprising him.

“Well Mr. Clarke told me to go look for you, so I did. The third floor is just you and Mr. Clarke, so I decided to try to the second floor. That’s where I ran into Craig. He said you would probably be down here in the Archives with your nose buried in a case file.” Geoffrey unconsciously pushes the file in his hand into a nearby set of files. “Anyway, isn’t it kind of weird that you and Mr. Clarke shove everyone who works for the firm onto the second floor? I mean, you guys have your own private floor, and everyone else is crammed onto the second floor. Why is that?” Mickey is puzzled, He can tell by the slight furrow of her brow.

The truth of the matter was, Mr. Clarke didn’t have to patience to deal with Accountants and Public Relations people and underling lawyers who mostly handled tax and insurance issues and who never had a prayer of rising to junior partner (Geoffrey’s current position) or, one day, full partner. When the firm was created and as it grew larger, he and the late Mr. Zuckerman had decided it would be best for Mr. Clarke’s temperament if the new employees were all kept separate. “It’s how Mr. Clarke likes it,” is all Geoffrey tells her.

He goes to step around her, the space suddenly seems not big enough for the both of them, but Mickey reaches a hand out to stop him. “Wait,” she says. “Your tie is crooked.” She then steps into his space—completely uninvited—and with nimble fingers quickly fixes his oversight. Geoffrey can feel his entire body freeze up when she moved her hands to flatten and fix his collar. He can’t remember the last time a woman who wasn’t a client touched him in a non-professional sort of way. It may have been his senior year of law school four years ago. Or maybe it was the summer after… Either way, Geoffrey is suddenly realizing that Mickey Magee is quite attractive.

His eyes travel up and down her face, studying every inch of her with the same intensity he would pour over studying a case. Her eyelashes are impossibly long, just brushing the skin under her eyes. He can spot a freckle or two scattered here and there on her face, including one just off the corner of her left eye that is driving him to distraction. There is a tiny scar that starts a few centimeters below the right corner of her mouth and runs about an inch to the right, sloping down toward her chin. Geoffrey’s fingers itch to trace it. He focuses intently on the rosette shaped earring in her left earlobe as he tries not to think about how nice she smells. Like rain and spices he doesn’t know the name of.

“Done!” Mickey proclaims, her eyes snapping to his as she smiles brightly. He holds her gaze for a few seconds, but it’s enough time for her to see every thought that has just run through his mind. She steps back abruptly and composes her face into a mask of professionalism that Geoffrey decides does not suit her at all. He slips on his own cool and collected office face, though his insides are square dancing.

They stand there awkwardly for another minute of so. “Right, well, you should probably get back to work,” she says.

He nods quickly, getting the message perfectly. He has calls to make anyway, one in particular to Amanda Park. “You’re right,” he chokes out. “Thank you.”

Her eyes are blue, Geoffrey concludes on the way out. Mickey Magee definitely has blue eyes.