"That's it," Fat Charlie mumbled, "I'm ruined. I'm absolutely destroyed. If Rosie's mum didn't hate me before, she does now."
He was talking to no one, of course, unless you count the strange old man with a cane whom he'd just passed, ogling at him like an owl sporting a pair of rather unflattering spectacles. But this was it. There was no going back; there was no way he could possibly take back what Mrs. Noah had just seen.
Right. Well, he would just have to explain to her that...Daisy couldn't come to the wedding because she had some important family affair to tend to. And of course, he didn't know what that was, so please don't ask anymore questions. That is, if she asked. And of course she would ask, Fat Charlie thought, because if she didn't ask, then that would be something to worry about. The woman would remember every last detail about his life if it ever hinted that he would be a bad match for her daughter.
He sighed. It was all that Spider's fault. Spider who was...well, he was probably at the agency right now, pretending to be him when really, the two of them could never look more unalike. While Spider was someone cool and suave, Fat Charlie was...unfortunately just Fat Charlie.
He rubbed his temples, unaware that his legs were still moving but in which direction, his brain was not registering. The only thing on his mind was the dreadful feeling that his life was ultimately over and there was no way he could fix it. He had never been very good at fixing things anyway, but this was about to hit an all time record. Perhaps he would go to work anyway, march right on up to Spider and demand that he leave and with him, he could take all his recent troubles, put them in a bag and keep them as souvenirs.
Looking up, Fat Charlie found himself staring up at the great building he came to work at every single day. The Grahame Coats Agency. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the revolving door, letting himself through without tripping over (for once) and marched straight towards the stairwell, the same stairwell he always took.
But when he got to his office, he found that his door refused to budge.
"Uh--excuse me sir, it's locked."
Fat Charlie paused. He turned around. "What?"
"The door," Annie the receptionist, sitting behind her desk, chimed pleasantly. "It's locked."
"Well, could you unlock it?" he asked.
"I could," she said easily, "if you worked here."
Fat Charlie frowned. "Annie, it's me, Charles."
The receptionist frowned. "No," she began slowly, as though she were speaking to an underdeveloped five year old, "Fat Charlie's in Grahame Coat's office right now."
"What?" Oh no. Fat Charlie traced back his steps until he was in the right direction, heading straight for his boss's office. All right. This was going to be messy, there was going to be some yelling and possibly some firing, but if he played his cards right...
Fat Charlie gripped the knob and turned it, fully expecting to find Grahame Coats and Spider singing karaoke with their arms around each other, or something that often happened in his worst nightmares, but was surprised to find himself walking straight into an
unrecognizable space with seats and stools and people he'd never seen before, shuffling about in an animated fashion.
"Well, I'm certainly not in Kansas anymore," he muttered to himself. And then a hesitant, "...Spider?"