Cheapskate in Love (6 page)

“Will be dear doctor Linda,” Matt suggested. Debbie, Claire,
and he burst into laughter. Katie didn’t join in, but that wasn’t due to any
consideration for Bill’s feelings. She was thinking of all the personal emails
she had yet to send and wished to do whatever Bill wanted quickly, so he would
go away.

“The lobby is a good place,” Bill said to Katie. “The one on
this floor.”

“There’s no window there,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter,” he replied.

“OK. Let’s go,” she said. She pulled out a digital camera
from a drawer in her desk. Then she left with Bill for the lobby.

“I have to see this,” Claire announced, standing up.

“Me too,” Matt seconded.

Debbie had to finish some writing and her cookies, so she
remained in her seat. “I’ll expect a full report when you return at an
emergency meeting in the conference room,” she told Claire and Matt.

“It’ll be a laugh storm, not a brainstorm,” Claire promised.

“Who could care for him,” Debbie replied, “unless it’s
another sadist?”

“You’re so right,” was Claire’s response, as she hurried
with Matt toward the lobby, both eager to watch the photo shoot.

Debbie devoured a cookie, as soon as they were gone. Then
she passionately began to type.

Chapter 6

The lobby down the hall from the marketing office and across
from the elevators wasn’t a place to impress anyone, at least in a favorable
way. Two of the walls were white, and the third was electric blue. Standing in
this lobby, visitors felt as if they had been dropped into a slice of frigid
ocean between two icebergs. The funky furniture made out of geometric shapes in
bright primary colors provided some visual warmth, enlivening the space. But it
heightened the sense of displacement visitors experienced, and to a few it
suggested global warming and the tasteless consumerism polluting the globe.
Crude paintings of nightmarish city landscapes for sale on the walls seemed to
confirm that the decorating style was pro-environmental. Those paintings gave
the place a threatening aspect. They appeared to be the visual ravings of a
psychopathic hermit with apocalyptic opinions, which probably explained why
they had been on the walls for a while, without anyone expressing any interest
in buying them. Because there were no windows, the two ordinary office plants
in separate corners of the lobby were weak and wilting from lack of sunlight.
Their appearance seemed to strengthen the message of world destruction that the
lobby conveyed. If anyone stayed in that lobby for long, they seemed to wilt,
too.

After leaving the office with Katie, Bill had made a trip to
the bathroom to comb his hair and check his appearance in the mirror, sprucing
up what he could. He arrived in the lobby at the same time as Claire and Matt.
While all four were there during the photo shoot, other workers on the floor
would pass by from time to time and stare at them, curious at what was going
on. Frequently, the other office tenants would smile at what they saw or heard.

“Do you want to sit or stand?” Katie asked Bill.

“I’ll sit,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you look thinner, standing?” Claire wondered.

“His posture isn’t good,” Matt pointed out.

“I’ll sit,” repeated Bill, more firmly than before. He then
sat down on the couch where bright red-, blue-, and orange-colored square
cushions, connected by white metal tubes, pulsated around and underneath him.

“Not there,” warned Claire, pointing to the wall behind
Bill, where there was a painting of skyscrapers, which resembled a bouquet of
bloody knives under a sooty sky. “Scary picture.”

Bill looked behind him at the picture, shrugged his
shoulders, and moved to a chair made of blinding yellow discs that looked like
a display of super-large lemons. Striking a rather sour pose, he looked at
Katie, who was ready with the camera.

“Are you going to smile?” she asked without showing one
herself, indifferent to what he did with his face.

“A mug shot isn’t attractive to most women,” Claire noted.
She was a born leader and perceived that she had to manage the picture taking.
Since she bossed Bill about in his professional life, and everyone knew he
lacked such assistance in his private life, she clearly thought that she was
doing him a favor.

Bill smiled a little.

Matt had been surveying the scene, and his eye for design
was coming into focus. “Sit up straighter,” he said. “Maybe you should put an
arm around the back of the chair, like this. It’ll push your chest out. Make it
seem as if you actually
have
a chest.
Now you look like a Buddha statue.”

Matt went to show Bill what he meant, taking his arm and
positioning it until it looked right. At one point, he pushed hard on Bill’s
shoulder to see if Bill’s deflated chest would rise more, which caused Bill to
jerk back in pain. “
Ow
. That’s my bad shoulder,” he
said.

“Sorry,” Matt said, continuing to position him, now turning
his head to different angles. “Perfectionism hurts sometimes.” Bill submitted
as best he could. “Sit up. Suck your belly in,” Matt ordered.

Unable to tolerate how she had been sidelined, Claire
stepped in to take over twisting Bill’s limbs and prodding him. “Let me fix
him,” Claire told Matt, who moved to the side.

With more force than Matt had used, she pulled and squeezed
Bill’s body, as if he was a creature made of clay. After trying a number of new
poses, she came back to the one Matt had left him in. “That’ll look manly,” she
said. “You look like you want to squeeze her shoulders.”

But after a moment’s deliberation, she still wasn’t
satisfied. She told him to stand up. She took him through some yoga poses to
loosen his limbs and spine in an attempt to straighten out his shoulders and
posture. Bill was put through considerable discomfort, because the last time he
had done so much stretching was fifteen years ago when he had dated someone who
competed in triathlons. That romance was very short-lived, because she insisted
that he train with her, if he wanted to see her. While Claire led him through
yoga moves, Bill’s body recalled long-forgotten aches that had occurred during
that brief season of athletic love, but the benefit was negligible. When he sat
down again, he was tired. Instead of sitting up as straight as he could, he
drooped like one of the lobby plants and wanted to take a nap.

Unwilling to admit that her efforts had been
useless,
Claire had another idea and told Katie to go grab
her purse. Bill and Matt wondered what Claire was up to. “What does every woman
want?” she announced mysteriously.

“Money,” said Bill.

“A baby,” said Matt.

“Wrong,” said Claire. “They want a movie star.” She spoke
with the assurance of the best authority—herself. “You may not be one,
Bill, but you can look like one. A little blush will give you a California
glow. A little mascara will draw attention away from all the bags under your
eyes. And a dash of lipstick will make you look hot-blooded. You’ll be sexy,
movie-star material.”

To Matt, what Claire said made a
little
sense. He had to see first.
To Bill, it
made none.
“No, no, no,” he insisted. “I just want a picture. Just take
the picture. I don’t need makeup.”

Claire, however, had her way. She was after all his boss and
knew best. Two visitors, who disembarked from the elevator during Bill’s
glamorization, saw Claire coloring his face and asked if they were having a
costume party. Bill twisted his head to them suddenly and responded with New
York crotchetiness that there wasn’t any party, which caused the red lipstick
in Claire’s hand to streak across his cheek. Claire had to grab his chin
tightly to prevent another mishap. The visitors were amused to hear from Matt
that Bill was only having his picture taken for a dating website.

“There,” said Claire, beaming with satisfaction at her work
when she finished. “Doesn’t that look better?” she stated out of politeness as
a question. Bill had no mirror to see for himself. He looked at Matt’s
reaction. Matt thought it best to stifle his opinion and bobbed his head
without nodding yes or no. Katie kept looking at her cell phone to see what
time it was.

“
Now
we can take
the picture,” Claire trumpeted. She put Katie in the right spot to take the
photo. Claire and Matt stood behind Katie.

“Wait, Katie,” Claire said. “One more adjustment. Cross you
legs, Bill. You’ll look more like a gentleman, a cultured man of the world.”
Bill crossed his legs.

Matt objected. “No. Don’t cross your legs.” Bill uncrossed
his legs.

“Tilt your head a bit to the right,” Claire directed. Bill
did.

“No, to the left,” Matt urged. Bill obeyed.

“The right side shows your softer features,” Claire
explained, insisting. Bill turned there.

“Your face has a more masculine look when you turn to the
left,” Matt responded.

Tired of turning his head from left to right and all the
other preparations, which he did not think were going to help him in his online
wooing, Bill looked straight ahead. “Katie, take the picture.”

“Smile,” Claire said. Bill crinkled his face into a fake smile
with his teeth showing.

“No teeth,” Matt said. Bill sealed his lips.

“A genuine smile shows teeth,” Claire observed. Bill’s teeth
reappeared.

“His teeth are bad,” Matt replied. Bill’s teeth disappeared.
With a strained, half-smiling look on his face, as if he was walking into a
wind storm, Bill held his body rigid in its staged casualness, looking as
comfortable as a monkey in a medical experiment.

Claire had another idea and burst out, “He would look better
with a facial. He has so many blackheads on his face, and they’re so big, he
seems to have a rare form of chicken pox.”

“His hair should be dyed,” Matt added. “There’s too much
grey in it. Dark hair would easily take twenty years off his appearance.” He
gave Bill another look. “Well, at least ten.”

Bill was fed up with such helpful advice. “Katie, I’m
ready.” Katie took three photographs. The first two times he blinked with the
flash.

As Katie photographed him, Claire remarked to Matt with a
lowered voice that Bill could still hear, “He has a fifteen percent chance of
succeeding with these photos, I think.”

“You’re optimistic,” Matt replied. “I think it’s less than
two percent. He’d probably have more responses without posting any picture at
all.”

“Thanks, Katie,” Bill said, relieved that the ordeal was
over and he could finally relax. “If you could send me those photos, that would
be great. I’m going to stay here and make some calls.”

“Sure, no problem,” Katie said, fleeing back to her desk and
all her electronic socializing that had been interrupted.

Claire and Matt looked at each other, certain that one of
Bill’s calls would be personal. They had both known him for a while—three
years for Claire and a year for Matt—which was ample time to understand
the elementary workings of Bill’s mind.

“Is doctor Linda on that list?” Claire simpered.

“She must be wondering why you haven’t called yet,” Matt
snickered.

“I have work to do,” announced Bill, appearing to be
completely unruffled by their impertinent remarks. He didn’t even look at them,
because he had already started to read through the messages on his Blackberry.

Claire and Matt walked down the corridor, back toward the
office. When they thought they were out of Bill’s hearing range, peals of
laughter broke loose. The merry sounds still reached his ears.

Chapter 7

When Bill could no longer hear his coworkers, he rose and
looked down the corridor where they had gone. Then he looked in the opposite
direction. Seeing no one, he pressed the up button on the elevator controls. When
an elevator came, he quickly entered the cab.

He exited the elevator on the floor above and snuck into a
small meeting room, which was empty. Inside, after he shut the door, he looked
at his Blackberry and thought for a few moments. With a sinking feeling, he
decided he would surrender himself to the hands of fate and make a call. A
voice he recognized quickly answered on the other end, full of annoyance and
accusation. “What took you so long?” it demanded.

As she spoke with Bill, Linda was busy with a patient in the
alternative medicine clinic at her house. She wore a white lab jacket and stood
near a male patient in his fifties. He was exposed, except for his boxer
shorts, and
lay
on a treatment table with needles
stuck in him from head to toe. Linda had just finished placing those needles in
the appropriate spots when Bill called. The patient had come on account of a
car accident that had given him a whiplash injury six months previously. On
this day, he was receiving acupuncture for the first time. He had not wanted to
come. He was deeply skeptical about the usefulness of alternative medicine and
fearful of needles. The only reason he had made the appointment with Linda is
that his regular physician had failed to diagnose or eliminate the persistent pain,
which he felt from the accident, and urged him to try acupuncture. The
physician knew several patients whom Linda had helped.