My cardigan was beige. My slacks were beige, a light, warm, sandy color the catalog calls oatmeal. My blouse was ecru, which is a word for beige that costs four dollars more. My flats were a tan suede, worn pale at the toes. My coat, hanging on the hook behind my desk downstairs, was a long camel-colored wool that I had owned for nineteen years and had relined twice. I had worn some version of that outfit to work every day for eleven years, and for most of my life before that, and in the whole of the fifth floor of Brecken Benefits Group there were maybe a handful of people who could have told you my last name.
They had a name for me, though. I knew it. Winona had told me once, angrily, as though I ought to be angry too. They called me the Beige Lady, or just Beige. "Ask Beige," they said, when an invoice needed digging out. "Beige'll know." It wasn't cruel, exactly. It was just what I was. I had spent a great deal of effort, all my life, being exactly that.
Dwayne clinked a plastic fork against a plastic flute, which made no sound at all, and then gave up and stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The floor quieted. People drifted in from the far pods, from the third-floor stairwell, and some of the implementation team had come up from four to stand with Talia, and a few managers leaned in the doorways of the glass offices with their arms crossed and their faces arranged into indulgence. I stepped back a little further, so that the corner of the copier was between me and the room.
"Okay," Dwayne said. "Okay. I am not gonna make a speech."
"Boo," somebody said, and everyone laughed.
Dwayne put his hand on Derek's shoulder. "I've worked with this guy six years. But I have never seen him as happy as he's been since this lady came along. So. Derek. Talia. Get up here and make it official before the champagne gets warm."
Derek stepped forward. He held up a flute of André, and the light from the windows came through it and threw a little wobbling yellow spot on the carpet at his feet.
"I'm going to keep it short," he said, and somebody groaned in a friendly way, and he grinned. "No, really. I just want to say — most of you know how we met. You've heard me tell it way too many times."