Diary of a Working Girl (13 page)

Best,

Brian Allen

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This absolutely, positively cannot be. I am speechless. That is, until I scream “Yay!” and begin jumping up and down in my maroon cubicle. I am considering wearing my pink panties atop my head, but then remember that this is not my home, when Tom emerges from his office, bobbing his head up and down to the rhythm of my jumping.

“I got the feeling you liked it here, but this joy is unprecedented in Smith Barney history.”

It is so nice to have someone to share good news with, rather than dancing around your apartment telling yourself “Congratulations!” (Even if I cannot put my panties on top of my head.)

“Looks like we have a star reporter in our midst,” Tom says after my
Post
briefing, patting me on the back, and demanding we share a mini bottle of Pommerey champagne he’s been keeping in his office for a special occasion. (“That is an order.”) “Don’t tell human resources,” he says, placing his pointer across his mouth. “It’s against the rules to drink on the job.”

It’s warm, which doesn’t do much to help champagne, but it’s sweet enough, and by the time we finish it, I am a bit light-headed.

It feels so cool to be sitting in an office, overlooking the water, the Statue of Liberty, and just hanging out after work like this. The champagne loosens my lips a bit, and I tell Tom about how boring his ad in the
Times
looked and how I’d first come across it (stopping short, of course, at the reason I finally followed through with calling). I decide to give him a bit of advice.

“You should make the ads witty and cute, so that people will be enticed to call,” I say.

And at first he looks as if he’s going to crack up, but then, his face takes on a serious look, and he says, “You know Ab Fab, that’s not such a bad idea at all.”

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When, finally, an hour later, Tom’s phone rings, I take a moment to get acquainted with his desk. It’s nice and tidy—the way I always wish mine could be—with very few decorative objects to clutter things. In fact, there is just the one—a frame I can only see the back of from where I’m sitting.

When curiosity gets the better of me (can this be the evil girlfriend of the spaghetti incident fame?), I get up to act as if I’d like to take in the view at the window behind his desk.

He rolls his eyes at the person on the other end and makes that duck quack gesture with his fingers as if the caller may never cease talking. When he turns around and starts to jot down some notes, I’m pretty sure I’ll have a second to safely check out the photograph in question.

It’s all I can do to stop myself from sprinting to the phone to call Joanne and scream, “OH MY GOD.” The photo of the evil girlfriend is so far from anything you’d expect to see within ten miles of Tom that I do a double take, hoping when I turn toward it again it will look completely different.

The photo is unmistakably a Glamour Shot, the sort they’re always trying to sell at suburban malls. She’s got a hazy soap-opera glow about her eyes and a feather boa floating around her neck.

The sparkly cowboy hat tragically elevates the whole thing into another realm.

In a gag reflex, I choke on a sip of champagne. Tom turns around and I quickly transfer my gaze from the photo and before it’s too late, mouth to him that I’m heading home. As he waves me through, pointing at the phone and sticking his tongue out like he’s so sorry to be interrupting fun with work, I think how amazing it is that his job is so demanding, yet he handles himself in such a light, pleasant manner. And I’m considering this as I pack my bag 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 94

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up, shut my computer down, and make the journey up the stairwell to twenty-six to take the express down.

“Red or white?” Despite the fact that this might possibly make me the perfect candidate for the Most Scatterbrained Girl in the World Award, I cannot remember. I am flipping through my little notebook, and while I can’t locate the information in question, I can clearly see that I chronicled Tom’s introduction to the salad bar.

And this is the lettuce, and here is the tomato.

I hadn’t even realized I wrote that down. I wonder what he’d say now that I can’t remember how the stupid elevator works again. Ha! I bet he would really be laughing about that.

I smile, instead of grunt when I take a chance—wrongly—and find myself sailing up towards the higher floors, because I have someone to share this with in the morning.

Finally, I make my way down and through the turnstile and past the security guards, and when I’m outside lighting up a cigarette, I can’t help but wonder if the whole experience was just a dream. I fear that when I come back tomorrow, I’ll happen upon an empty lot, rather than a tower of wonder where dreams come true.

When I return home that evening to my tiny apartment, I feel like I haven’t been there in ages. I think the separation did us both good; I find a new appreciation for my sofa as I sink into it, working a pair of chopsticks through a warm tin takeout tray of steamed chicken and mixed vegetables. (I need to look amazing every day now since being attractive is part of my job, so I am eating celebritylike.) I have a newfound understanding of characters on my favorite television shows, as I now get what all of the corporate jokes are about—nine-to-five living and all that. Smoking outside with the boss; that Rachel on
Friends
is something else (knee-slap).

It has only been one day, but I feel so much has happened al-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 95

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ready. A new phase of my life is beginning. I can feel it all around me, like those childhood moments when you just knew the slowly heating popcorn was about to start popping madly.

Rather than go right to sleep—I am too excited for this tonight—I have a revelation. I decide to input the information from the pile of press releases on my floor into my computer, and then I throw the actual papers in the trash. I had been inputting lots of corporate information into my database at work all day, and I don’t see why the same system wouldn’t work here. It gets rid of the mess, that’s for sure. I don’t finish the whole pile, but I take a very big bite from it, and when I drag the huge garbage bag down to the basement to recycle, I decide to press seven rather than five and visit with Chris before turning in for the night.

“How’s my little Mary Tyler Moore?” he asks, taking in my outfit. I am still wearing the (second pair of) croc heels and he stops at them, asking, “Choos?”

“Yes,” I say, almost ashamed, as I am so used to having no money, and being questioned about indulgent purchases that seem to wind up in my possession anyway. But then I remember I am actually making money—good money—now.

I haven’t exactly seen any of the money yet. But unlike the freelance gigs, where you have to call and call and put all of your pride aside and make your entire personal life public (I have to pay my rent, I need to eat, I blew all my money like a complete moron on this wool Mayle dress with the most adorable antique lace because the forgotten feel of actual cash in my hands brought on such insanity I couldn’t think straight, etc.) just so they can act as if they are really doing you such a huge favor by promising to mail a check that’s already five months late, I now know at the end of two weeks a check for a set amount of money is on 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 96

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the way and will continue to be on the way—for a little while, anyhow.

And, of course, he knows all of this and so, like the mom you wished for your whole life, he smiles, and says, “Well, I guess you’ve earned them now, haven’t you, you little corporate diva?”

It feels funny to be with someone from the other world—meaning the fashion one, rather than the corporate one—which is funny, since it has been my world for so long. There is such a different M.O.: the words, the manner of speech. In the fashion language, “divine,” “genius,” and “bisoux” are Day One required vocabulary words. And don’t get me started on the double kisses. I can never remember a second one is on the way and run a very high risk rate of accidentally kissing people right on the lips when they swing around to plant the surprise bonus no-actual-contact kiss on the opposite cheek.

I had become desensitized to the Planet Double Bisoux after so many years of being smack in the middle, or rather, trying to get smack in the middle of it.

But now the difference is rather striking. Still, Chris, despite walking the walk (hand out, palm down; chin up, lids down), and talking the talk (“That sportif collection by Dolce was brilliant”), is still the sweetest man alive. He can play the role when necessary, but in such a way that it is apparent he is really so above and beyond the brand-name game and the attitude showcase show-downs.

“I know this sounds crazy, but you seem like an entirely different woman. At the risk of sounding like Sheryl Crow, I really think this change has done you good. Twirl for me darling, you must twirl.”

And so I do just that, the champagne, as little as I may have 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 97

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drunk, still holds its grip on my head a bit (probably because for the first time in a while, food without fat has made up my entire daily intake), and so, it doesn’t take much coaxing for me to swivel my hips as I make my rotation and move on to an unprompted catwalk-like journey across the room.

I

Later, as I curl up in my bed, after tackling two hundred sit-ups I might add, I am happier than I have been in months. And thinking over the last half-hour, I am delighted Chris noticed a change because I was beginning to think I was crazy to feel like such a different person in, really, just one day. At first, I thought the happiness factor was on account of the barrage of men who surrounded me all day and the possibility that any of them could be The One (for both professional and personal reasons), but, when I further consider everything, it dawns on me what the biggest change has been.

After hundreds of rejections; months and months of dragging myself out of bed to spend hours coming up with never-to-be-used article ideas; running off copies of my published articles from magazines nobody’s ever heard of (and unwaveringly hoping I would magically come upon one I’d written for
Vogue
or
Elle
); composing pitch letters (this time funny, this time serious, this time mentioning a cousin’s friend’s sister’s ex-boyfriend the editor had once met at a cocktail party) to make myself look bigger and better than my roundup of experience allows me to, only to be appeased by answers like, “Yes, we’ve received your packet. We’ll call if we need anything. Thank you.”—I am actually being praised.

And, it’s not just the
Cosmo
article. It’s Tom and Chris, and now even the
Post.
And I know it sounds funny, but even the fact that I am good at typing up notes and organizing files (who knew?) and 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 98

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answering the telephone in a pleasing manner makes me feel great when somebody actually recognizes it.

When the word “no” becomes so familiar to you, when it barely even fazes you anymore, it takes a toll on you. All of that energy and pride you have when you first start out, that gets peeled away, like the layers of an onion, and with each bit that’s removed, the tears become less and less, because you actually get used to it. And maybe, after years of dealing with such acidic stuff, you kind of enjoy the expectation of the rejection, even if it’s just for the I-knew-it value. Conversations with peers in the same boat, during which we complain and complain about so-and-so who got an assignment at a magazine just because she is friends with the editor (even though she is a
terrible
writer: “I mean, did you see that intro? And was this even edited?”) become so enjoyable that entire friendships are built around them. You can spend a whole day lying in a pile of the
terrible
-but-connected writer’s published articles, discussing via telephone her unacceptable abuse of commas, counting each and every infraction as if it will somehow get you closer to your goal.

But that’s a bad place to be—and it hadn’t even occurred to me before. And despite the fact that I do have talent (which has been difficult to continue telling myself), I have allowed all of those no’s to peel away at me until almost nothing was left. When you’re not getting to use your talent on a regular basis, it leaves you fear-ing, perhaps, that your talent was fleeting. Sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night, positive I will no longer be able to string a sentence together. I’ll sit on the side of my tub for hours para-lyzed with fear that I won’t even be capable of writing the story I’ve just pitched, should they—by some miracle—decide to assign it to me.

And, as if that’s not scary enough, the negativity, not unlike a bad self-image, spills over into basically everything you do. I never 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 99

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think a date will go well or that a trip (not that I’d taken one anytime recently) or a party will pass enjoyably—it’s always a shock when something does.

Go figure. I got all that from a mini bottle of warm champagne, a bunch of flowers, and a pat on the back.

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F i v e

The Princess and the Paper Jam

The next day, I get to work on time (well, five minutes late, but that’s really on time—everyone knows there’s a fifteen minute cushion on promptness); thankfully without snagging any heels or hose. The morning brings with it another chance to stand in wonder at the male population scurrying here and there in black loafers, brown loafers, and (now seeing things with a more discerning eye) sneakers of the traders, and that same excitement ignites inside of me. I decide to smoke a cigarette before heading in, and once again take a seat on the low wall. As this is my second day, I know exactly where I’m going, who to show my ID to, and which elevator is going up (hopefully), and so I get that de-lightful sensation of belonging to all of this activity. It’s nice. It makes me feel chatty, so I glance next to me and see a girl I recognize as the Tiffany of the “Happy Birthday, Tiffany!” sign fame.