He talked the whole time about the upcoming conference and some people in the department he thought might be helpful, and I wished he’d let me know before he scheduled a meeting so I could have been more prepared. Then he opened the conference room door, and there was a loud shout of “Surprise!”
A Mexican-style fiesta was in full swing in the conference room. The banner hanging from the ceiling wished me a happy birthday, and a mariachi band made up of self-playing instruments played the birthday song, to which the entire sales department staff, along with Merlin, Trix, Owen, Rod and his assistant Isabel, and a few other friends from the rest of the company, sang along, mostly off-key. When the song ended, confetti and streamers materialized in midair and descended on us.
Owen came up to me. “Sorry about this,” he whispered. “I wondered if I should have warned you.”
“It’s okay. In fact, it’s kind of nice.” I smiled at him and added, “I like surprises. Especially surprises involving flowers and chocolate. Thank you.” He blushed adorably.
Perdita walked over with exaggerated care and handed me a frozen margarita. “See, I didn’t spill a drop,” she said proudly, and then she accidentally tilted her paper plate, sending a pile of nachos to the floor. A quick-thinking Owen made them vanish into thin air before they hit the ground. “You’ll have to teach me that spell,” Perdita said, batting her eyelashes at him. “I could get a lot of use out of it.”
Although I had grown weary of the near-daily parties, I was impressed with the attention to detail. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to do all this. Even if it required only a snap of fingers to make it happen, there was still thought and planning. “Do you know who put this together?” I asked Owen.
“No idea. Perdita called and told me to be here and to invite anyone else you were friends with.”
“Oh. Can you excuse me a second?” I meandered over to Melisande Rogers, who, from what I could tell from my previous experiences with this department, involved herself in everything. “This is a great party,” I said to her. “Do you know who does all this?”
“Hartwell’s admin, Rina,” she said with a twitch of her head in the general direction of the woman in question. “She lives for this stuff.” She dropped her voice. “To be totally honest, it’s driving us all stark raving insane. We can barely get our work done with Hartwell wandering the halls the way he does. Throw in a daily party, and it’s a miracle we accomplish anything.”