“I wasn’t planning on eating lunch with anybody.”

“Then you’d be the first.” She handed me a temporary badge with a lopsided photo.

My hair looked gray in it.

I clipped it onto my blouse, and the clip pinched my collar.

The lobby smelled of carpet shampoo and stale coffee.

Diane told me my desk was on the third floor, close to the file room.

“And Charlotte,” she said.

“Don’t correct Derek in front of his team, even when he’s wrong.”