Working Lunch [Marina]

"So push them out of the water."

The only thing visible from behind the turned leather chair were a pair of small boots, laced up and kicked up on the desk. A large map of the oceans hung behind it, marked and pinned with colored routes.

"Why should we spend more money just to make sure we don't run into another ship?" Every once in a while a small hand reached around the chair to grab the cigar guillotine. "Airplanes? Don't trust them, not gonna use 'em.  ....Yeah, well, people do illegal things all the time, why not put guns on a commercial vessel?"

The squabbling on the other end of the line ceased.  "....Hello?" It wasn't unusual to be hung up on.  And if they had seen her in person they might have been even more disinclined to take her seriously.  On the phone one might have assumed she was a middle-aged man with a beer belly and something to prove if it wasn't for her voice-- which sounded more like a prepubescent boy, so those who called inevitably find themselves confused.  

Having held her breath to hear the silence on the other line, she finally exhaled gray smoke and immediately became bored of the quiet office.  "Food." She mumbled, rising from the chair and extinguishing the cigar on the underside of her desk. 

Making her way to the break room, she first tried to find enough change in her pockets for the vending machine.  Not much.  And though she was against stealing, she wasn't against taking something and pretending it didn't have a name on it.  

Some of them looked too terrible to eat anyways, and even though she thought she was tough, she wouldn't ever be daring enough to try and take Valentyna's lunch.  She finally spotted a neat-looking lunch, not in a paper bag or a flimsy package.  She still had trouble reading things that weren't cyrillic, but the name was short enough-- and embroidered on the bag: 'Van Den Haag'.  What? Whatever.

Unzipping it, she found it so fancy that beams of heavenly light could have been coming from the inside.  A note inside made it too perfect to be real-- written in a different language, but recognizably written by children, more scribbles than anything.  "Jee-sus Christ." She snorted, taking a bite of his sandwich.  She almost felt bad-- but from the looks of it, he looked like he could always buy another.  But what kind of white-bread loser brought a sandwich in to get soggy when he could have gone out? And was that a bottle of milk? She would leave that. This was proving to be more fun than she thought.  And of course she would leave a note saying it was her, having come to the conclusion that she could take the obvious weakling.  Having had enough and having been thoroughly dissatisfied with the food (but well entertained), she put the partially eaten sandwich back in the bag and wrote a note on the napkin to accompany the sickly sweet note from his kids.  

She left it out, just in case she didn't have enough money in her pockets for anything more than a pack of gum.  Rummaging around again and counting the coins in her hands (it did cross her mind that having a purse might be easier, but it wasn't worth the sacrifice), she did have just enough to avoid eating the sandwich again (not that it was even here in the first place).  

However, when she entered in the code, the pack of doughnuts on the top shelf wouldn't fall down.  Double jeopardy for someone of short stature-- too high to reach and separated by a sheet of plexiglass.  

Being highly rational, Marina immediately began swearing and hitting the giant box.  Slapping it with her hands from the front, running into it from the side like a miniature battering ram, shaking it, pressing every button... All the reasonable things someone with a Napoleon complex would think of doing.  And, of course, swearing like a sailor.

She had wished earlier that she would find something to do-- perhaps she should have been more careful.