“Yes, Mr. Gorczany,” Vanessa said. Braining him with the softball trophy on his desk would only get her talked about. Besides, who said any brains lurked inside that skull?

“I dunno. It looks funny,” he said, frowning.

“The object of a preposition takes the accusative-the objective, if you like that better.” All she had to do was reach out, grab the ugly trophy, and… “If you don’t believe me, see what the Word grammar checker says.” She never bothered with the Word grammar checker, but it wasn’t-quite-dumb enough to make the moronic mistakes Mr. Gorczany did.

“Maybe you know that, but I bet Don Walsh over at Consolidated doesn’t,” he said. “Change it back to you and I. I don’t want him thinking we’re a bunch of yahoos.”

“But it’s wrong that way,” Vanessa said helplessly.

“If he doesn’t know it’s wrong, then it’s not wrong for him,” Nick Gorczany told her.

She rolled her eyes. “Good God in the foothills! Why do I bother?”

“That will be enough of that, Miss Ferguson.” Now Mr. Gorczany spoke with some snap: the snap of a boss putting a third-tier employee in her place. He sometimes looked at her in a way she found mildly annoying-not enough to call him on, even for her, but annoying even so. The way he eyed her now scared her, as it was meant to do. “I begin to see why you’ve worked at so many different places the past few years. If you can’t get along with people, you’re going to have problems. Now fix that letter, please.”

By get along with people, he meant do as you’re told. She almost choked on the injustice of it. She also almost told him to fold the letter till it was all corners and shove it up his wazoo. But the economy, not to put too fine a point on things, sucked. If she punted this job, how long till she snagged another one? Longer than her savings lasted? It might be close.