Eleanor doesn't think she'll ever grow to like this woman.

Luckily, the phone rings, while Mercedes goes on about herself, and Eleanor's job is to answer it.

Eleanor can feel Mercedes eyes' boring into her back as she discovers it's her mother on the phone. How does she manage to find her on her first day of work? Eleanor wonders. And then her stomach turns to lead as her mother tells her they are coming out to visit for a week or two, "We'll be staying in Beverly Hills, not far from the gallery you work at," her mother informs her, "Your father & I are very much loking forward to seeing your apartment & meeting your friends." Eleanor cringes.

Mercedes is too important a person to hang around her own office all day, and is gone before lunchtime, not to return until Eleanor is getting ready to leave herself. She did absolutely nothing all day except answer the phone 3 times: if she didn't have internet access on her crappy office computer & some decent CDs in her bag, she would have gone insane from the boredom. And it gave her the whole day to fret over how she's going to tell Justin that her parents are coming, and that they can't know about him.

When she gets home, she goes straight to Justin's room, wanting to get it over with right away.