Earth Girls Make the Best Cheesecake
an excerpt

I went looking for Jeanette’s office. She split her time between corporate offices in the various cities where our new owners had a presence, and I had about a thirty percent chance of finding her at ours. I found her, alright – in what had, until that morning apparently, been my conference room. This was not an auspicious beginning.

Her door, however, was open, and she was not obviously concentrating on anything. I knocked, said “Jeanette?” in a pleasant but neutral tone, and introduced myself.

“Yes?” her tone said clearly that until further notice she would give me about as much attention as she might a pop-up ad that was obscuring her web page, and for more or less the same purpose – to ensure I went away quickly and never came back.

“I heard you had a concern with setup – facilitating Facilities as it were,” I said, smiling but not twinkling at her. Obligatory ice breaker: token humor that she need not trouble herself to appreciate. She smiled mechanically, acknowledging my gambit. I planted myself just inside her door and leaned back against the door jamb.

Ten minutes later, we parted, if not friends, at least not sworn enemies. She had learned something about local norms for corporate culture and that I was unstompable. I had learned where her buttons and switches were and how to manage ‘em. Textbook, she was.

Out of curiosity, I went looking for Jeanette’s husband, wondering what sort of man would marry a monster like that. And thus I got my first glimpse of an alien – my first recognizable glimpse, that is. Not that I believed it, at the time.