Lottie's Point of View

I couldn't recall the last time I had seen the sky painted so vividly.

The sun had never looked more like a flaming ball of fire, swimming in a sea of orange and pink that flooded the sky above me. All of the colors that stretched across encased the neighborhood like a dome or the icing of a cake you couldn't wait to taste, sitting ever-so perfectly along the tops of the roofs around me. The entire world seemed to be sleeping, all except for me. Me and the silent life that thrived only for those who looked for it.

I drew in a deep breath of the fragile morning air, letting it fill every inch of my lungs. A soft breeze toyed with the ends of my hair hanging down my shoulders, gently brushing past me as if welcoming me gracefully. The leaves rattled against the trees, rustling under the influence of the wind. Not a sound out of the ordinary came between me and my natural surroundings for as long as I sat on my front steps, taking it all in. Some might have wondered how I possibly could have no issue waking myself no later than six thirty in the morning, but it wasn't even a question for me.

It was almost like a symphony, in a way. A carefully crafted melody composed with countless different and equally important instruments creating what was undeniably a magical work of art. I could almost close my eyes and dance along, drifting with every step to the rhythm of natural life. I wondered if that would have been truly living, to surrender yourself to how the world was made for you, to return yourself to the core of your existence. What an enlightening experience that would have been.

Slowly, the lively colors faded into a pale blue, a sure sign that the morning had begun. I'd started to see lights in windows come to life behind their curtains as the world began to awaken. As I was sitting outside in my nightgown unprepared for the day, it was reaching that point that I headed back inside. After all, it was about time for me to start getting ready for work.

I recollected myself and climbed to my feet, quietly easing open the front door in my return. Quietness still crept through the house as I stepped inside, making clear of the fact that I was still the first one awake. The table in the kitchen in the right segment of the entryway was empty as it had been before I had crept outside with subtle lights touching the corners, the gathering of dark chairs positioned in the left segment untouched. I would have to begin the day as silently as I could, since I did not live alone but instead with my currently sleeping uncle.

I snuck a glance up at the clock above the door. It was a hint past six fifty now, just twenty minutes after I had pulled myself out of bed for the morning and leaving a little less than an hour before I would make my departure. I at least had some flexibility in that. First, I dismissed myself to the kitchen, firing up the stove and setting out a pan to prepare a set of pancakes for breakfast. I even sprinkled in a cluster of blueberries for extra benefit. The sound of the crackling batter as the pancakes gradually cooked must have stirred Uncle Lyle to consciousness, since shortly after seven o'clock had come and gone, I caught the sound of heavy footsteps approaching through the hallway.

I flipped a pancake over in the pan to find it a lovely shade of golden brown with blueberries bleeding through the surface before I tossed a glance over my shoulder to look at my uncle as he entered the room. Uncle Lyle was a blue otter with a tired expression etched into his face and a sort of unconcerned tone hanging over his voice. Sometimes, I thought I could almost see the struggles that he had fought through in his life through his dark, intelligent eyes that peered behind thick black glasses. As he shuffled drowsily into the room after emerging from the hallway, I noticed that he was already dressed for the day in his work uniform of a red suit jacket with a formal white shirt behind it, a set of navy blue pants, and a brilliant yellow tie.

"Good morning," Uncle Lyle mumbled, walking to the table and lowering himself into a seat to wait for breakfast. "Thank you for doing that."

"It's not a problem at all," I replied, sneaking a glance at the plate to the right of me on the counter which already held three stacked pancakes. Once I finished the one I had just flipped, the meal would be ready. "I just need about five more minutes."

The pancake sizzled as it sat on the pan, drifting throughout the room with its warm scent. I prodded it softly with my spatula, pushing it against the pan to help it cook. I continued to poke at it for the next few conversationless minutes with the batter hissing at me with every jab. Every once in a while, I could hear Uncle Lyle shift in his seat as he continued to wait patiently.

I couldn't tear the image of the intense sunrise from my mind for the longer time that I cooked. "I'll bet it's going to be a great day today," I declared, cautiously slipping the spatula under the pancake, but the batter stuck to the surface like butter on toast. It wasn't quite ready.

"I'm glad that you're feeling optimistic about it," Uncle Lyle replied. He shifted in his seat again behind me. "It doesn't feel much different to me."

I pressed the flat side of the spatula down onto the pancake, hoping that it would cook faster. That was something that happened often in casual conversations for us. I found delight in thriving in the beauty of the day while Uncle Lyle looked forward to the end of each day. Sometimes, it seemed like I was happily pulling him forward in life while he only complained how tired he was.

I flipped the pancake over to find it cooked brown at last. I wedged the spatula underneath it again, loading it onto the plate with the rest of the stack.

"Well, every day has the potential to shape your future," I reminded my uncle, reaching up to one of the cabinets to withdraw a second plate from inside. "You never know when something is going to change your life. I know that I've definitely been having a lot of ideas come to me to be put to use in the future somehow, even for the HHDA."

"In that case, you can come by my office after work and we'll talk about them," Uncle Lyle agreed as I set down the second plate, moving the top two pancakes from the stack to the new dish. "I'll see if I can make them happen."

I fetched some silverware for both plates and carried them over to the table, seating myself so that we could begin our meal. The minutes crept by as we ate, silverware clinking against dishes where speaking was not present. Slowly, I cleared away the food from my plate as the clock ticked with every second spent at the table. I finished ten minutes after seven, discarding my used dish into my sink, and went off to continue getting ready to leave.

I showered swiftly, dressed myself in my own work uniform—It was the same as Uncle Lyle's instead with a skirt that fell to my knees and a ribbon tied around the collar of my shirt in a bow—And dried my hair to style it. The whitish lights beamed down on me as I stood in the bathroom in front of the sink and the gold-rimmed oval mirror that was positioned above it, thoroughly brushing out my hair and tying it up into a careful and precise bun on the top of my head. I ran a hasty and thick layer of mascara over my eyelashes and, as a final touch, wrapped a spotted sky blue and white bow around the bun I had pulled my hair up into. It had been a gift for my sixteenth birthday from my Shih Tzu coworker Digby's twin sister Isabelle, whom I had been close with both farther back than I could remember, memories etched into my experience as early as I could walk. I wore the bow in my hair every day since.

Twenty minutes after seven had just come around by the time I emerged from the hallway to the joint entrance space, as displayed on the clock positioned above the door. Every morning, there stood a five-minute range of the right time to leave before we were late, and we had just arrived at the start of it. Uncle Lyle was still sitting down at the table, his elbows propped against the surface of the table in his casual seat, and he heaved himself to his feet at the sight of my arrival.

"Are you ready?" Uncle Lyle asked me, jolting down his sleeves to adjust them. He snuck a glance up at the clock for a couple of seconds, examining the time before he returned his focus to me. "You seem ready."

"I'm ready," I agreed.

"Good. Let's go," Uncle Lyle decided. He stepped out from around the table, shuffled to accompany me at the door, and reached out to run a gentle paw across my back in a soothing motion on our way through the doorway.

Uncle Lyle locked the door of the house behind us and we started off down the path on our way to work. At almost half-past now, the sky had completely lightened, leaving the pale blue and the fragile early morning light. A crisp breeze swept across the land, flicking at my cheeks and almost threatened to begin drawing wisps of hair from my updo, if it had been stronger. My high heeled shoes clicked across the sidewalk with every brisk step, the hem of my skirt swaying at my knees with each puff of wind. There wasn't much to say, so neither me nor my uncle ambling at my side spoke as we endured the lengthy walk.

It wasn't the building itself that alerted me that we were nearing our destination, thirty-five minutes after our last departure, but the arranged scenery that surrounded it. Smooth pathways the color of salmon-pink twisted and winded in conspicuous designs, bordered by scattered hedge blocks of healthy green leaves. Beyond the arcs of paths and a trickling fountain that shimmered under the meek morning light stood an utterly monumental building, both in size and commanding appearance. White walls held up a maroon roof, a matching-tinted arrangement of three windows across the top, an immense clock pointing to the suspected time, and a lineup of bold letters fixed across the front of the building, stating its name in a striking prominence. The Happy Home Designer and Academy.

I had been working in this building for almost thirteen years now, ever since I was soon to turn fifteen. I was twenty-seven now, but the looks about this place, both inside and out, imprinted so distinctly on the pages of my memory that it genuinely was a second home. And considering my working shifts stretched for nine hours nowadays—A break for lunch was crucial, of course—This only assisted the familiarity. At this point, I lived and breathed my work as an interior designer. To an outside perspective, I understood how this might have seemed like a load of effort and energy. The simple truth was that it wasn't, not that I would call it. It was life. It was my life.

Uncle Lyle owned this building. In fact, he had owned the entire company since the doors first opened in December of 1985. A lifetime of history had already come and gone before it had been my turn to step up and help out, some of which in particular my uncle avoided mentioning and others I did. For being open and available for the past thirty-six years without reaching a point of shutting down once, the company was doing impressively well for itself under my uncle's authority, but he didn't need to say the words for me to know that the responsibility would have been mine one of these days, probably sooner rather than later. Next month, he would be turning sixty-seven years of age. For that age, working was risky on its own, never mind managing a multi-million company. I supposed I hesitated at the thought of blinking and finding him gone from my routine, left alone to figure out the colossal task by myself.

Uncle Lyle bowed his head over the doorknob, unlocking the door with the jingling set of keys he had removed from his jacket pocket, and tugged open the door. He held open the door to me as I emerged into the dense shadows of the formerly-closed building, hearing the door latch shut behind us as my uncle followed me inside. A click turned my focus back to the door to notice that the numbered keypad beside the flap concealing the light switches had lit up, faintly slicing through the shadows and vaguely highlighted my uncle's face as he punched in the passcode. He unlocked the flap, cracked it open, and proceeded to flick the switches on. Instantly lights flooded the space to reveal that we stood in a broad hallway amidst a luminescence that looked specifically white. Having lit the way, we shuffled onward through the pearly hall, my shoes clacking echoing across the floor with every step as we advanced upstairs.

Each of us had our own individual office on the second floor—The offices were what the three windows noticed from the outside of the building led to—But it was an uncommon day when we traveled there first. Instead, our typical day initiated with a trip to the break room for breakfast beverages and a sit-down for perhaps an hour before we would disperse for the day. The main doors didn't open to the public until nine o'clock, so arriving at seven fifty left plenty of time to adjust to the morning before interaction began. We ascended the steps to the second floor, guided ourselves through the turns of halls housing staff-benefit rooms and areas, and reached the door to the break room.

The break room truly was a comfy space. Every inch of the floor was blanketed by carpet, gray like the darkest clouds in a storm. Three velvet chairs of purple were positioned in a gathering area at the center, each facing each other to form a triangle. Marble counters stretched across the front wall, overshadowed by cupboards bolted into the wall, and a white minifridge propped against the counter at its end near the door. The lights were softer here, holding less of a glare and thriving with more of a homey feel, like the room was encasing you in a warm embrace. Just like every other day that we stopped by here first thing, our first move after filing through the door was on our way to the counter.

"What would you like?" Uncle Lyle asked me, reaching down into the sink and retrieving the coffee pot that had been set there yesterday evening after being washed out. "Coffee? Tea?"

"Tea, please," I decided, watching him turn on the warm water and spill it down into the pot. If he was preparing coffee for himself, he would have had to go out of his way to make tea for me. "Don't worry. I'll make it."

As Uncle Lyle poured the water into the coffee maker and dumped in scoops of ground coffee to prepare a cup, I had dragged the basket of various tea packets closer to me on the counter to study the flavors that were present. I flipped through the arranged bags, noting flavors and the colors they had been associated with. I found lavender in a purple-rimmed packet, honey-lemon in a pink-rimmed packet, peppermint in a red-rimmed packet, chamomile in a yellow-rimmed packet, and more. I set aside a honey-lemon tea packet, plucking the kettle from its station and dismissing myself to the sink where my uncle had stood just a second ago. I poured hot water into the kettle, planted it back onto the station, and waited for the water to boil as the coffee maker nearby began to splatter the dark drink into the white mug that had been perched under the sensor.

Just minutes later, I had torn open the tea packet and poured the boiled water into a second mug, dipping the bag into the clear liquid to steep it. I watched the gold colors seep out of the bag, swirling in the lightly-bubbling and heavily steaming water, and bobbed it under the surface a few times to help steeping. It was an eight-minute steeped tea, so I would have been here for a while. Uncle Lyle removed his mug of coffee from the machine as I continued to dunk the tea bag, setting aside the drink to retrieve the milk from down in the minifridge at the door, but I was immediately rattled out of my vibe at the sound of the door being slung open with the aggressive push of a confident manner.

"Good morning, everyone! It's time to begin this beautiful day," an easily identified voice declared, directly accompanied by the striding footsteps that followed the flinging open of the break room door.

Oh, I knew this moment was coming. My heart picked up the pace of a hundred miles a minute as the voice swam through my head, skipping like a jutting motor when my stomach flipped over itself. I recognized the voice without a thought as belonging to Digby, my best friend of twenty-three years, my colleague of eight, and the animal with whom I shared ages of history, with all of its triumphs and breakdowns. Too much history. I made a point with myself to keep my eyes locked on the bobbing tea bag in my mug, avoiding any sneaking glances of my approaching Shih Tzu friend.

"Everything good?" Digby went on from somewhere behind me, seemingly addressing both my uncle and me. It was a spunky attitude that came around to this building here and there on the day of a critical event or even on just some random Tuesday. That was a thing of his. Sometimes, it was like he was two different animals co-operating the same suit and it was a question each morning of which one we were about to get that day. On some days, he was just a sweet and polite little friend, and on others, the situation was this. It would have been a lie to deny I crushed heavily on them both. "Excuse me, I'm just going to sneak by you real quick to grab some coffee. I see today's a tea day for you."

That last part was for me. I deserted my dunked tea bag and turned in the direction of his voice to speak with him, a source that had since appeared close on my right, and the stun of discovering him not even a foot in front of me was nothing short of a smack in the face. His paw was perched upon the top of the coffee maker, ready to prepare himself a mug of coffee, yet he was completely facing me as he awaited my response. He was half a foot taller than me, looking down at me with his round, gorgeous black-brown eyes sitting perfectly placed in the middle of a fuzzy brown face and under unkempt brunette bangs.

In the split second that I first looked at him, several thoughts hurtled through my mind at once. One of them, of course, being just how visionary he looked. But another was the image of a memory, a clear-cut illustration of an instant that still snaked into my dreams in the dead of night even now, three years after it had even occurred. The recollections spun through the features of his face, a long-dissipated scene that refused to leave me alone.

The faint breeze of nightfall. The scattered stars above our heads. The crickets whirring in the shadows. My paws on his cheeks. His arms around my waist. The way that the night engulfed me whole as I pulled his face closer.

"Hate to interrupt, but I'm going to head back to my office. I'd like to get a jump start on my work this morning," Uncle Lyle interjected, raising his mug from the counter as I stifled a cringing shiver at my big mistake from years ago. He carried the mug with him as he crossed the carpet back to the floor and I watched him leave, ducking through the door, remembering just as instantly that he hadn't the faintest idea what I had done that day.

"So, how'd you sleep?" Digby asked me, finally turning away to grab the coffee pot that Uncle Lyle had abandoned next to the coffee maker. "All good dreams, I hope."

"I'd say so," I agreed, watching him as he ducked around me to reach the sink, pouring hot water from the tap into the pot as everyone else had done. "I sat outside to watch the sunrise."

"Did you?" Digby twisted the water handle to shut off the water, stepping back around me and draining the water into the machine. "How was that? You'd think it would be pretty cold outside at that time."

"No, it was surprisingly warm out, actually," I recounted. The utter dreamlike vision of the pastel colors swiped across the base of the sky plastered across my memory. "There were so many different colors and the sun was so bright. It was absolutely beautiful. I wish you could have seen it."

"Well, I'll take your word for it. You don't need to convince me," Digby told me, finishing pouring the water and setting down the empty pot as he spoke.

He tossed in a few scoops of ground coffee, shutting the lid of the machine and reaching a paw up into the cupboard. He withdrew a white mug, identical to mine and Uncle Lyle's, positioned it under the sensor of the machine, launched the pouring with the click of a button and a noisy beep from it, and turned back to face me.

"Although, I can't imagine how anything could be quite as beautiful as you," Digby admitted, resting his paw on the counter in front of me as his dark eyes burned right through mine.

In my mind, I was positively screeching, but I kept an indifferent expression washed over my face. Digby was known to tease me here and there. That wasn't a new thing. He was a very teasing animal in general. But every time his words ran along a line such as this, my mind was immediately robbed of any possible response I could use. I tore my gaze away, focusing on the tea bag I bobbed in the hot water of my mug instead. The need to answer swelled with every fraction of a second until I finally blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.

"You don't mean that," I murmured timidly, shying from eye contact, but the words were already out there before I could snatch them back. Great. Now I was fishing for compliments.

"I do, though. I really do," Digby told me from beside me. His voice resonated deep within me as if it were my very own.

Coffee trickled down into Digby's mug while I continued to bob my tea bag into the hot water. Digby, however, disregarded his drink, ducking away from the machine to reach down to the minifridge at the floor next to the counter. I watched the bronze colors of the tea swell through the darkening water, listening to him open up the small door, retrieve something from inside, and shut the door again. It wouldn't have been the milk he was grabbing—Uncle Lyle had already abandoned it on the counter for him. It was only as he set down a wide glass jar next to my mug for my convenience that I noticed what it was.

"Honey," Digby said, meeting my gaze again, and added, "For the tea."

I thanked him and made a mental note to remember to use it once the tea was steeped, but since I had a few minutes left, I had some more time on my paws to watch Digby prepare his morning coffee. He removed the mug from the machine, pressed a button to turn it off, and poured his serving of milk in the inky-colored drink. I watched as the milk swarmed the mug, turning the drink a pale tan instead. I'd only had coffee on rare occasions in my life—Was it the taste that was addictive to others or the caffeine? He sprinkled a heap of sugar from its white vessel, whisking the drink with a coffee stirrer and tossing it into the trash.

"That'll be my leave, then," Digby said, gathering his mug by the handle with one paw and offering a short wave back to me. My eyes still tracked his movements as he walked to leave, striding confidently to cross the room, and vanishing through the door just as my uncle had minutes ago.

I carried my tea back to my office minutes after the last interaction had all unfolded. A burn sprung to my paw when the liquid sloshed a few drops after a step a little more careless than the rest, but I ignored it and continued on my way with the heels of my shoes clicking against the surface of the floor with every step. I sat myself down at my desk in front of my computer, keeping my mug of tea at reach, my paws dancing across the keyboard to type and racing against the rhythmic ticking of the clock hanging from the wall. I had a progress report due in a little under two weeks, an extended essay of the work I complete over the month, and though the minimum was fifteen pages, I had already cleared away seventeen this month so far. Once nine o'clock struck, the final fleeting moments on my own came to an end and the next portion of my schedule began. The doors had opened to the public at last.

Every morning at nine o'clock, once the doors opened, I played into the role of an instructor or a teacher of sorts, educating animals in three hour-long classes until noon with a lesson in the study and technique of design that changed by the day, according to the lesson plans I was offered each week. It was truly a learned skill, wriggling into the best forms of description for the clearest image. Once nine o'clock came around, I gulped down the rest of my cooling tea, gathered up my lesson plan for the day, and set off on my way.

With my arms clenched around a stack of papers bound together by a thick clip, I swiftly descended the steps to the first floor, crossed pearly and fluorescent hallways, passed Uncle Lyle on his way back towards the offices, and emerged into the academy. The entire segment was an image thriving with the vision and concept of education; antique brown-brick walls bordered the halls, separated only by glass doors and plates protruding above them, labeling rooms with numbers and letters like "2-A" or "3-C". I carried on to my own classroom.

"Good morning, everyone!" I greeted warmly as I thrust my way through the door, already clicking my way across the front of the room to my desk in the corner at the other end of the room as every pair of eyes in the room bounced to notice me from a full number of seated students. "I hope you all are as excited for a wonderful day of learning as I am."

After three hours of scribbling information on a whiteboard with a squeaking marker and wiping it away with a matching eraser as well as two sessions of rotating crowds, my lunch break arrived at twelve noon. I proceeded back upstairs to the second floor, hustling with every clicking step through the halls to reach the cafeteria. That was yet another bonus of my work: I didn't need to take even more time out of my mornings to prepare a lunch, as there was already ready-made portions of meals to stack onto a tray, thanks to my uncle's persistent and thoughtful efforts. And just like every other day, I savored the opportunity by joining him and Digby in the cafeteria amidst spurts of conversation at the round table.

"I'd love to put some of my new ideas to use and implement them into my schedule, but there's still work to be done before that happens," I pointed out, poking together a clump of green beans together with my fork as my two colleagues listened silently with every word. "I need to get clearance before anything. Once I can get clearance on the big picture itself, it's an all-clear for developments to take place. I'm just struggling to shrug off the feeling that I'm putting so much out there that isn't even going to end up all that popular."

"Well, it sounds like you're proud of your ideas, and if that's true, then they have to be something special," Digby told me. Uncle Lyle had scooped up a spoonful of rice drenched in soy sauce, popping it into his mouth as he followed the conversation. "But I already figured that anyway. Every idea I've seen from you has been fantastic. Didn't you see how Happy Homeroom turned out?"

"That was only partly my contribution, of course, but thank you for easing my mind," I replied, pausing to take the bite I had gathered up and continuing once I had gulped it down. "Uncle Lyle and I agreed to meet tonight after work to discuss my newest project and the basics that come with it."

"Wait, we did?" Uncle Lyle said at once, drawing all the attention of the room as he glanced between us. A foggy, puzzled expression blanketed his face. "Oh, I'm not saying we didn't or that you're lying. I just don't remember talking about that. I'll take your word for it."

I returned promptly to my regular schedule as soon as my break came to a close at half-past noon and thus began the chunk out of my day where my presence and supervision was available to the general public. I hustled back down the steps to the main floor on my way to a place known as Open Advisory, an especially broad room right smack in the middle of the majority of client and customer gatherings. As the clock bolted into the wall ticked through the hours, I supplied responses to feedback and offered answers for questions of tidbits of exemplary home designs lined up across the wall—One of which even being of my own design submitted from years ago. I accepted requests of assistance and rearranged notes to fit into a schedule. But as soon as three o'clock struck, I had already gone from that restless room on the travels to the next and final portion of my day.

Uncle Lyle, Digby, and I all came together once more for the most recent branch addition to the HHDA, established just eight years ago, a vastly demanded activity titled Happy Homeroom. It was almost a game of sorts and among the favorite parts of my day, due to the relaxed atmosphere amidst a mostly visual participation from my end and the flow of classical piano that enlightened the space. The three of us sat behind a judging table to supervise a participant situated at the front of the room at a massive screen reaching from floor to ceiling, filling in the prompted blanks of a design base by the touch-activated sensors and forming a design by their own paw. The finished design was then judged in numbered scores from my colleagues and me, ending in a concluding product that, if reaching a certain height, determined whether the participant was eligible to return for a more complex challenge.

The time flew by quicker than I could register the contents it held, maintained by the familiarity of the event that I was easily accustomed to by now. The first participant, hesitant and uncertain of their actions from the beginning, emerged just fifteen points from the success range. The sessions rotated out twice more afterwards, leaving room for one each hour, as per usual. The next two participants greatly exceeded that range, earning hearty congratulations along with the invitation back. As I set off from the room at six in the afternoon and the very end of my shift, sensing the day winding down and easing into something a little less pressing, I took notice of a little twinge of satisfaction of suitable efforts. Digby exchanged his goodbyes and wrapped up his shift before disappearing from the building, but it was a bit premature for me to do the same. After all, I still had a meeting to attend.

. . .

The bustling day behind me still perched upon my shoulders with every clicking step through the pearly hallway. The burning lights scattered in an orderly fashion above me accompanied me on my way past the turn of the corner, the short descent to the cafeteria, and then the double doors to the break room. The emptiness of the building seeped into my senses, reminding me of my solitude with every step forward. Well, what was almost my solitude.

Just ten minutes ago, Digby and the remainder of the current Happy Home population had filed through the doors to mark the ending of the workday. Throughout every corner of the building, the only animals still occupying the place were my uncle and myself. This morning, we had set up an agreement to join together in conference to discuss the newest project, one of my own in-progress concept. This conference was about to change more aspects of my life than I could list off of the top of my head and yet, somehow, I approached it just like any other. Like it was nothing more than the regular Thursday biweekly constructive meetings.

I embraced the new isolation in the building that I seldom witnessed, briefly stopping by at my office to collect my notes in a pale folder. This folder I wrapped up between my arms and my chest, carrying it with every sweeping step through the hall. I nudged my way through the door to the conference room to find my uncle already seated at the rectangular ashy-colored meeting table, facing the door and raising his head to meet my gaze as I entered. He adjusted his thick black glasses sitting atop his nose, pushing them closer to his face as I withdrew the chair across from him and lowered myself into a seat.

"Thank you for joining me," I said, inching my chair up to the edge of the table to initiate the conference. I planted my folder on the surface of the table in front of it, peeling it open to reveal the first page of typed notes that it had concealed. "Let's begin."