When Echo had applied for a personal assistant position, she was thinking of it as one more in a series of embarrassing personal choices that life forced her to make. She hadn’t expected that she’d enjoy it, especially after learning who she’d be working for.
But Willow was easy enough to deal with. It turned out that what she really wanted was something more like a manager, and so when Echo had ordered business cards for herself and letterhead for the gallery, she’d gone ahead and given herself that title. Willow wasn’t interested in dealing with the contractors, the decorators, the caterers… outside of securing samples… or any of the gallery’s small staff besides Echo herself. She only seemed to come down from her loft in the middle of the night in order to prowl around.
Though Echo was never around to see it, it seemed like during those times Willow was a completely different person… she moved things around, she left notes with suggestions that ranged from arbitrary but doable to completely off the wall to freaking brilliant. She also left a few criticisms of Echo’s handling of things which generally proved to be well-founded. Echo might not have agreed with Willow’s assessment of herself as a “genius”, but it seemed like she had good instincts.
Outside of those pointers, she was content to let Echo run things as she saw fit. She never said anything about Echo’s assumed title.
Echo had also found that putting her hair up and wearing a sharp skirt set did a lot to stop people on the street from recognizing her as “the girl caught having sex backstage on American Hero.” No, she was a briskly-walking business woman, with the PDA and the latte to prove it. When she interacted with people, her distinctive name was a bit of a giveaway, but her professional demeanor made people embarrassed to bring it up.
If anybody did, she found it easy to brush aside with a slightly rueful grin and a comment about preferring to move forward… and if the person she was talking to didn’t want to let it go, she could end the conversation by telling them that Galerie Awesome, L.L.C., preferred to deal with people who took their business seriously. It was fun watching them scramble backwards after that.
When the trenchcoated man covered in angry-looking red tattoos who wouldn’t be turned away by a firm refusal via the door intercom asked her, “Haven’t I seen you before?” she put on her wry smile and started to give her standard spiel.
“No, I mean… do you live in the Twist?”
Of course, she thought. A guy looks like this has got to be from Twistville. He wasn’t a mutant, as far as she could tell… whatever was going on with him, he didn’t have any powers that she could feel. It could still be magic or some kind of technology. She wasn’t frightened, though. She was still using Slam’s power set, and she was getting better with it all the time.
“I’m not in the habit of giving out my home address, sir,” Echo told him. “I’m afraid Galerie Awesome is not open to the public at this time. Our grand opening is by invitation only…”
“Oh, I’ve got one!” he said.
“Well,” Echo said, not quite believing him. “You’ll have to come back then, then.”
The man’s eyes flicked back over her shoulder, and she braced herself in case he was about to shove past her. He’d get a surprise when he found her rooted immovably to the floor.
He wasn’t the one who shoved into her, though… that was Willow, who’d come slinking up from behind.
“God, move!” she said, and Echo slipped away to the side. Her boss had put on a black caftan with a beaded fringe on the bottom hem and the cuffs. “Hello, Ray,” she purred. “You do keep turning up.”
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