Office Duties #4

"You ever wanted to live a little?"
"Yeah, but if you stop like that again I won't have to worry about living." Her heart was beating wildly as she looked down the flights of stairs below. Moderate heights she could handle, but glancing down those swirling flights of steps was both nauseating and frightening.
"Just think of this as a little adventure." Sam wondered if Slinky feared anything. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"We lose our jobs and get jail time," she curtly pointed out.
"See? That's not so bad." Slinky proceeded down the stairs, leaving her friend dumbfounded on the landing.
"You're kidding, right?" Sam had to remember her friend had the luxury of her father's bank account. She had no such piggy bank to fall back on. "If I lose my job, I lose everything." Slinky paused on a step and thought about that for a moment.
"Well, if you do lose your job you can come live with me or we might share a cell together. You can be my bitch so no one would suspect we're not lesbians," she comically offered. Sam wasn't sure she would take the first as a good arrangement, and the second definitely was bad, but at least she had someone to fall back on. "And we have to sneak down the stairs. Someone will see us if we take the elevator and they might snitch to Mrs. Winkle that we went down to the lobby."
"Does she even have someone who likes her enough to do that?"
"I doubt it," Slinky snorted. "But there's a couple of people on some of the other floors who wouldn't mind a promotion, so I'm not taking any risks." She resumed her stepping and reached the next floor. "But that's why we need to hurry up, slowpoke," Slinky called back over her shoulder to her friend above. "These keys aren't gonna copy themselves."
"This is so going to go wrong," Sam muttered as she went after her companion.
The two women reached the bottom floor and snuck into the mail room without a single soul seeing them. They soon found the mailman, Mr. Cass, getting ready to ship some items out to other offices operated by the company. Slinky put her finger to her lips and, with a grin on her face, slowly snuck up behind the elderly gentleman. Her body was tense for the pouncing, and Sam crossed her fingers that they weren't about to have a heart attack victim on their hands.
"You should ease up on that perfume, Miss Slink," Mr. Cass commented.
"Damn it, Ed, why'd you have to go and ruin my fun?" she complained.
"Because you're not very good at sneaking up on people. I've told you before to lay off that stuff." He turned around and smiled at his pretty, young visitors. "Now what can I do for you ladies?"
"We need some keys made, Ed, and real quick." Slinky held up the chain with the wide assortment of keys. He squinted at the items and frowned.
"These kinda look familiar," he commented. He glanced between his two visitors. "You ladies aren't doing anything illegal now, are ya?"
"Nah, just a prank on someone, honest, Mr. Cass," Slinky sweetly lied. She jingled the set in front of him, but he wasn't convinced. She sighed and rolled her eyes. "If we promise to give the copies back to you in a week, will you make them for us?"
"Certainly," he agreed as he took the set. There was an evil twinkle in his eye. "And if you don't keep your promise, I can't promise that weekly box of chocolates ya get through the mail won't disappear. Those things smell mighty tasty. I wouldn't mind having a few of them sometime." Sam wouldn't have thought the gentle, quiet old man had it in him to blackmail someone.
"You drive a hard bargain, old man, but I'll make sure they're back and you get what you want," Slinky sullenly promised.
"Now that's the way to do business," Mr. Cass agreed. In a jiffy he disappeared into a side room and they heard a machine start up.
"So why couldn't we just try the old set on the door upstairs?" Sam asked over the sound of the machine.
"With how the old witch makes her rounds, we probably wouldn't have had time to test half of that stuff," Slinky pointed out. "Now we've got a whole week to try these babies out on that door."
"Unless Ed decides he doesn't trust us and says something to someone," Sam countered. Anyone who could blackmail could also back stab. Her sneaky friend, however, wasn't too troubled.
"Believe me, this isn't the first time he's helped me out on stuff like this," she intimated with a wink. "He just asks for a small gift and that I give up or destroy anything that could lead back to him."
"And that's why he wants the keys back?"
"Yep," Mr. Cass interrupted as he stuck his head out of the room. "Don't want anything tempting her with bigger trouble than she gives herself already. Besides, some of those managers lose their keys enough I'd like to have an extra set to hand ‘em when they come crying to me." He ducked back in and closed the door.
Sam picked her jaw up off the floor and glanced at Slinky. "How did he hear that?"
"He's just that good," she replied with a shrug.
They only had to wait a few minutes before he was finished with his work. They thanked him profusely and Slinky grinned at her new set of keys as they marched back up the stairs.
"I wonder what else I can open with these things…" she mused.
"Probably a can of trouble, like Ed was saying," Sam scolded. She glanced at her watch. They'd been gone for a while, and it was nearly time for them to leave for the day. She hoped their absence hadn't been noticed, or at least presumed had left early without permission.
"You worry too much," her friend countered as she plopped the new set into her pocket. She still held the old copies in her hand. "Just gotta return these things and we'll just get back to work."