Diary of a Working Girl (29 page)

I can’t bring myself to face Tom right now, as I know I will start crying the second I try to speak. So I dial his extension instead.

“What is it, Ab Fab?” he asks. “Got a new project you’d like to make me a guinea pig for? Going to give me a new hairdo? A mul-let? Mohawk? Pluck my eyebrows maybe?”

And he’s being funny, and part of me would love to laugh with him right now, but I have that distinct feeling in my chest that I am not part of the rest of the population right now. I’m someone who can’t laugh with the crowd at present, like when you’ve just had your wisdom teeth out and your friend calls to tell you she’s going out to your favorite bar.

“Um, I’m not feeling very well. Is it okay if I take the afternoon off?” The last word barely comes out as my voice trails off.

“Everything okay? Can I help you at all?”

He’s concerned and that feels nice, but really, I just want to be alone.

“That’s okay, thanks.”

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“Well, call a car then, I don’t want you standing outside trying to get a taxi forever. No, never mind, I’ll do it for you. I’ll call you as soon as it’s here.”

I don’t want to wait here, but I don’t know what else to do. I’m actually glad that Tom made a decision for me, because I doubt whether I would have been able to do something as simple as raise my hand to hail a cab.

When I hang up with Tom, I am just sitting, staring at my computer screen. I can’t even shut the thing down. I can’t put my coat on. All I can think is how stupid I have been to once again put all of my eggs in one basket. Every time it doesn’t work with some guy, you promise yourself that the next time, you won’t let yourself get swept away, you’ll keep your sense of self and just hope for the best without letting it get the best of you—but that never works when you’re in the middle of something.

My feet are somewhere below, but I can’t feel them at all. If I could, I would try to kick myself in the ass. I am so stupid. But I guess I don’t have to kick myself in the ass. Life has already done this to me, as if to say, “Wake Up! This is not reality!” I am again thinking of myself as the old woman with the birds, perhaps ca-naries. They seem nice. Yellow.

“Hey, Lane, don’t let him get you down,” John is whispering, and bending down next to me. It doesn’t occur to me that I’ve never mentioned anything about Liam to John, and that he must have a very sensitive side to see what’s going on here.

I just say, “I know, I know,” and start shaking my head from side to side.

I’m so pitiful, but I don’t even care.

It’s a miracle that I make it down into the car service, and this is in no small part thanks to Tom, who pulls one arm after the other through my coat sleeves as one would with an infant, shuts my 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 229

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computer down, leads the way to the twenty-sixth floor and into the elevators, past the turnstiles and the guards, through the courtyard, and to the car.

Of course, it’s pouring rain and I don’t have an umbrella. In a masochistic way, I am glad for this. It’s the perfect scene for a perfectly horrid turn of events. Tom is holding his suit jacket up over my head.

When he helps me into the car he looks at me, as if he’d like to say something, opens his mouth, and says, “I—” but then stops and closes his eyes. When he reopens them he whispers, “I’m here if you need me,” and passes me a slip of paper.

I take it, without looking. I am numb and say thank you but I’m not sure if it was actually out loud. After a second, he puts the blazer around my shoulders, gently closes me inside, and the car drives off.

The driver tries to make small talk with some comment about cats and dogs, which I guess is referring to the rain, but rather than egg him on, I act like I haven’t heard. Every store we pass seems to be there just to remind me of Liam. A pet store—Liam has a dog.

A shop called Good—I remember him using that word. A coffee shop—he likes his black. The driver misses my block and I find my voice somehow, to tell him this. And even though I would normally be incensed by something like this, I behave very unNew Yorkeresque and barely even notice. Instead, I watch the raindrops hit the window and eventually slip down until they are gone. Like my relationship with Liam. Like the idea that I’d met my M&M.

M&M, M&M, M&M . . . I say it over and over until it is just

“mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.” It, too, is nothing now, a meaningless nothing. Like my article and my career, which I’d foolishly tossed away for a fantasy.

When I get to my apartment, which is dark in the way only 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 230

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rainy days can make a space, I don’t even bother undressing. I just throw myself onto my bed, next to an open window, which affords the raindrops the chance to hit me every now and then, and fall into a deep sleep. In my dreams, Liam is sitting with a beautiful girl, tall with long black hair to her waist, and they are looking at me in my bed and laughing hysterically and he keeps saying,

“Splendid, absolutely splendid.”

By the time I wake, it’s 11 P.M. My breath tastes stale; my bags are strewn on the floor. I’m wearing my coat and I’m soaked through with sweat. I’m so thirsty, but I don’t want to stand up.

The phone rings.

On the desperate hope that it might be him, I throw the blankets from my body and run for it.

“Hello?” I ask, breathless.

“Hey, what’s up?” It’s Joanne.

“You’ll never believe this,” I say, and tell her the whole story. All I want to do is run through the episode from beginning to end, feeling the faster I get it out, the faster it will all be over.

But now that she’s just worked everything out with Peter, she feels like a relationship guru, and so she keeps interrupting with irritating detail-oriented questions like, “So what time exactly did he leave your apartment on that last night?” and “Did he write the number quickly?”

Each time she stops me it’s physically painful.

When, finally, I’m done, she sums it all up. “What an ass. Well, at least you know now, before it’s too late.”

And I’m listening, and thinking that it is already too late, and wondering why people always say this, when obviously, you are already hurt. Then the oddest thing happens. My mind turns to a picture of Tom, not in one of his beautiful new suits, but in that 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 231

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funny globe tie, making that half-smile, amused by something I’d just said without meaning it to be amusing.

And that made me think of before I’d met Liam—when I walked into that office with hope and confidence and felt like the whole world was mine for the taking. If I could have just gone with my head instead of my heart, just this one time, maybe everything would have been okay.

Still, I think, If I get anything out of this experience, I’ve made a fantastic friend. Tom had been so kind to me earlier—it turned out in the end to be a good thing I’d told him about Liam. I feel the need to call him. Thank him. I fumble for the paper he’d given me in the car, wondering if it was his number, but I can’t find it anywhere. I give up the search when I realize that I couldn’t deal with that world right now, the one where I was failing to do what I set out to, and finally, I’d have to face the reality of it all.

“Yeah, before it’s too late,” I say.

“There must be someone at work you’ve spotted,” she says, looking towards the future, which is very easy to do when it’s not you who’s right in the middle of a major crisis.

And then I hear a beep, signaling another call. Again, my heart jumps and I squeeze my palm into a fist, thinking just maybe, just maybe.

“Hello?” I say, clicking over. It’s a friend from college I haven’t spoken to in quite some time. And of all things, she wants to know if I feel like meeting up for a drink. And at any other time, I’d doubtless have all of the catty resignations about this—her calling out of the blue when obviously I am the last one in her telephone book, the fact that there’d been some boyfriend whose presence in her life marked the end of my presence in her life. But at the current moment, she fills the exact qualifications I am looking for in a 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 232

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companion: She is not male, and she doesn’t know anything about my current state of distress, something now that I’d gotten it out, I don’t feel the need to think about anymore.

“Sure,” I say, “How about The Reservoir?” suggesting a little neighborhood spot.

I don’t change. I don’t apply deodorant (despite the unattractive aroma emanating from just about every inch of me). This is a pity expedition (embarrassing, but much more mature that I actually recognize it).

By the time tomorrow rolls around, I’ll need a new plan, and most importantly, a new attitude. But for now, the only thing I want to think about is getting drunk. One thing at a time. I figure this first goal is something I can at least succeed at. And if I’ve learned anything in the past month, it’s that successes help—no matter how small.

The Reservoir is pretty packed. And mainly this appears to be due to the fact that it’s the middle of the workweek—everyone’s in after-work garb, and although I might look to be in the same boat, I can’t feel the rift between them and me could be any wider.

Whenever you’ve had a breakdown and cease to worry about the little things that consume your thoughts every other day of your life—hygiene, projects at work, eating—there comes along with it, the freedom from responsibility that I imagine lunatics enjoy. And with that sort of no-worries attitude, I am actually good company to Jenn: not calling her on anything she says, like Pearl Jam is a better band than Nirvana (a topic I would normally argue to the death); acquiescing to her every desire—“Let’s sit near those cute guys,” and “Why don’t we play pool?”—not commenting on the extra weight she’s put on or the “Rachel” ’do she’s wearing nearly a decade after its popularity has waned; or asking why she hasn’t called until tonight.

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Fidgeting in her barstool, her face takes on that look you get when you’ve caught the eye of someone from the opposite sex.

Ah! I remember how this used to be such an enjoyable pastime for me! Before my hopes and dreams had been dashed about.

All of a sudden she is more animated than she has been all night.

She shakes her overly feathered and voluminous, dark hair back.

Are all women this transparent? I wonder. If so, then maybe it’s our fault that men get the best of us. We never play our cards close to the vest like they do. If you give everything over to someone, obviously, they won’t want it. Everyone knows that. So why have I done this very thing? This, I am right at this moment quite positive, is the reason Liam does not want me anymore. I’ve been accused of it before. But games have just never been my style.

“There are so many guys here!” says Jenn.

“Ya think? I hadn’t noticed,” I say, and honestly I haven’t. I feel like everyone is faceless, a bunch of Mr. Potato Heads sans eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. And then (as she readjusts herself once more, pulling her shirt down over her skirt) whomever she’d been making eyes at pushes his way through the crowd to her.

“How you ladies doin’ tonight?” asks her stranger, never even looking at me as he speaks. He pulls the rim of his Yankees cap up and down again. He’s sort of cute in a boyish way.

“Good,” Jenn says, dragging the word out and nodding her head up and down.

“I’m Liam,” he says.

Oh, no, he didn’t.

“Excuse me, did you say Liam?” I ask his back, which is still towards me.

“Um, yeah, is that okay?” he asks to Jenn’s face, raising his eyebrows to her, as if to say, “Your friend is insane.”

He doesn’t think I can see him, but I catch the whole thing in 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 234

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the mirror behind the bar. I don’t really feel the need to excuse myself to this person, who is too stupid to realize there is a giant mirror in front of him, but still, I say, “I just wasn’t sure I heard you right,” half attempting to swallow my words.

Jenn begins to ignite the memories I have of her by being totally disloyal and sending me down the river by shrugging her own shoulders in agreement. “Yeah, she’s bonkers, she said half-kidding.”

I have to agree. I am bonkers. I am totally and utterly nuts. I have lost all semblance of reality. But surely it has to mean something that this person’s name is Liam when here I am right in the middle of a crisis over my Liam. Since this Liam is obviously a jerk, it must not be a good sign.

Liam and Jenn are exchanging pleasantries and I’m doing what The Other Girl always does—smoking, taking extra interest in every inhale and exhale, peeling the edges of a coaster, and checking myself out in the mirror, while taking long, slow sips at my straw. Every so often I look at my drink as if it is the most interesting thing I have ever seen. (Who does this fool? Ooh, ice! Bubbles!) After a few moments, I take to looking around at people, you know, moving my head from one side of the room to the other, in a half attempt to act like I’m looking for someone (and not drinking alone at a bar) and partly just to keep myself entertained.

I can’t help but notice that everyone seems to be talking to someone of the opposite sex. I imagine that they are all in love, planning trips to the Caribbean, and ready to head home to have amazing sex. I notice a couple at a corner table. She’s pretty in an unassuming way, and he is dressed down in a sweater and jeans, definitely the intelligent and funny type that doesn’t have a big ego.

They are speaking in the most hushed tones and their heads are so close their foreheads are touching.

I gather, in a very scientific way, that only a girl lapping around 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 235

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