Diary of a Working Girl (33 page)

Only I’d tried to change the assignment before, and it hadn’t gone so well. After all, magazine editors are not in the business of helping Lane Silverman to find out the truth about love. They are in the business of getting the story—no matter what the price.

I try some meditation to clear my mind, only I don’t really know how to meditate, so I just sit in what I hope is the lotus position, with my fingers on my knees and my eyes closed. Far from being relaxed, all I can think about is the fact that I am about to toss aside the biggest career opportunity of my life. After five minutes of this, I get up and decide to just jump in. If I write the best story ever, if I convey the magnitude of what I have learned and experienced, then perhaps everything will turn out okay in the end. This will have to work. It is the only way.

And I haven’t even finished typing in the name of the file in the

“save” window when a tiny envelope appears at the corner of the screen. I am sure it can only be some kind of bad news, probably an alert from the
New York Times
online that there are now ten women to every man in Manhattan—signaling that now that I’ve come to my senses it is actually too late to do anything about it. But it’s from Lisa, successful Lisa who probably never had to dash her hopes and dreams to bits just for an article assignment.

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Lane,

I am just getting back from a week at the Cape, and I’m glad to hear that the article you’ve written about me is to your liking. If I think I know you at all, I’m sure it is fantastic. Congratulations on the
Cosmo
gig, but darling, from what you’ve written, I feel I need to give you the sort of advice that only experience can provide. Never, never put such unnatural stakes on something as organic and wonderful as love. I know it does seem impossible to find it sometimes, but believe me, honey, once you have opened your mind to delight in each smell, taste, and sensation of that heavenly emotion, you will see that it is not something you can just will into being.

It takes time to appreciate the subtleties that make someone the love of your life. Even those who feel they are victors in the game of love at first sight, when ticking off the reasons they love someone, will never mention a beautiful face or a great pickup line.

Love is in the subtleties—and two months’ time will never reveal that sort of thing.

Your predicament is probably confusing and worrying but listen to your heart. And no matter what sort of lessons you have learned, please don’t ever forget that mysterious power known as fate. Love, although possibly not the ideal you’d thought upon setting out on this venture, does, above all else, have a mystical element, and happens when you least expect it.You can quote me on that.

Please give a ring if you need anything.

XOXO,

Lisa

It is no wonder that Lisa has done so well for herself. She is one very smart woman. Without even telling her how the whole scenario worked out, she knew what would happen. But she did bring 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 261

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up one thing I’d tossed away with the rest of my romantic notions—fate. Am I still willing to believe in this? Is Fate Avenue a dangerous one to turn down? It does take some of the power from your hands and at present that is a scary notion.

I type the word atop the blank document on my screen in capital letters.

FATE

I bold it.

FATE

I look it up in the dictionary.

fate
(fat)
n
.: The supposed force, principle, or power that pre-determines events.

It is too large an idea to think about at the current time.

I erase the bolded, capitalized letters and table them for the future. For now, I need to know that my future is in my hands. I need to write an article saying so, for all the world to read.

The only thing I can bring myself to chalk up to a higher power at this point is the fact that Lisa has offered her services just when I’ve made up my mind to change the direction of the article. I know that I had asked for a similar change when (wince) Liam was once lying in my bed, to receive a very definite answer of no. But if Lisa believes I can do such a thing, than I am sure that she can help me to make Karen see it through her eyes. I pop her a quick e-mail asking for her opinion and advice and it turns out that Karen is actually a good friend of hers. She is sure we can work this out. She tells me to pour my soul out into this article, finish it up, and then we will present it to Karen together.

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I should be happy. And although I have decided that my recent experiences have changed my life for the better, the fact remains that this is not the happy ending I had hoped for. Couldn’t I have learned the lesson
and
found someone anyway? It definitely would have made for a much better story, and, let’s face it, a much happier me.

Fate
. The word comes to me again. I try to resign myself to fitting this idea into my understanding of love. But I can’t quite comprehend where it might go. I’m holding a single piece of a very large puzzle and no matter which angle I look at it from, which side of the table I try to work it into, it doesn’t seem to fit.

If love is about finding the ability to love someone for who they are, doesn’t that mean it really is all up to you? Haven’t I tried to twist—in reality—the hand of fate with very dire consequences?

Perhaps fate is angry with me. Is it possible this is the reason I haven’t met anyone, because I have played with fate, attempted to control it? If fate can bring two people together, then fate can also decide that you will never find true love, no matter how much you open your mind and alter your expectations. This idea brings me back to the point where I start worrying about the future, perhaps not in the same way as before, but worrying all the same. Maybe Lisa, as smart as she is about most things, is possibly wrong here. For now, I’ll have to make myself believe this and carry on as planned.

DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL

Once upon a time, I was a little girl with long pigtails and lots of plaid, pleated skirts. Like most girls my age, I amassed and coveted a large collection of Barbie and Ken dolls. But probably a bit unlike most girls my age, I spent hours pairing 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 263

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the couples. Now I know what you’re thinking. They all look exactly alike! And you are one hundred percent correct in that assertion.

But, early on, somebody very wise taught me that it wasn’t what was on the outside that mattered, but what was on the inside. So, after I’d spent long hours working out the life stories of each Barbie and Ken, I decided which male candidate was perfect with each female candidate. I named each one.

Sally, a lover of the outdoors, animals, and any type of adventure sport, had dreamed about finding a man who knew how to make life exciting every second of every day. He would always have a fantastic excursion planned for the two of them.

After a hard day of white-water rafting or climbing Mount Everest, though, he would never be too tired to think of a wonderfully romantic way to express his love for her. Rather the opposite, all the while they were rowing or grabbing hold of rocks, he would compose rhymed couplets of love poems in his head, and when they lay in the sun, sipping mint-infused iced tea and staring into each other’s eyes, he would recite his words of love to her. Sally, therefore, was paired with Marco, who, graced with strong limbs and nerves of steel, was an aesthete adventurer, and because he was raised by a widowed mother who’d spent her days spinning tales of her wonderful late husband and speaking of how true love never dies, even after your lover has left this world, was a romantic soul like no other.

Each identical blond doll had her own story, and her own unique love match. The Barbies, though, were just the beginning of my affair with love. The next several years marked my fascination with cinema. It was the era of
Grease
and 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 264

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Xanadu
. While my friends loved the films for thier campy music, leg warmers, hot pants, and synchronized dance routines, I held them close to my heart for a very distinct reason.

I’d watch them over and over again to learn exactly what the sort of man you can fall in love with would be like. From Danny Zuko, I learned to covet danger, good looks, dark hair, and leather jackets. I also took note of the fact that a great guy is one who’s not so easy to attain. It would be difficult to make it work with The One—but the work was worth it in the end if you’d get to fall in love on a carnival ride and have the whole school sing about it.

From
Xanadu
, I’d garnered that you’d need to be an inspiration to the one who really loved you. They couldn’t imagine life without you and they wouldn’t have any trouble at all conveying that to you. He would have to be creative and talented, sensitive and open to change.

Books only increased my research cannon. The leading man was now the captain of the football team. He’d ask you to the prom even if his friends disagreed. He’d defy his parents to steal a moment with you and his kiss would send actual electricity coursing through your veins. He would cherish every inch of your body, and literally shake when the opportunity to touch it presented itself. If he’d lost you somehow, he’d devote years to the challenge of getting you back, or die trying. He’d grow up to become a successful, wealthy world traveler, and he’d sit patiently while you shopped, got your hair colored. He’d eagerly participate in frivolous escapades, have a Cracker Jack ring engraved at Tiffany’s. He’d gladly leave his bride at the altar for you, and given the choice, would throw his career into the trash just to have one minute with you.

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Fast-forward to my mid-twenties. By then, Ken dolls and movies had been joined by yet another litmus test—the real test—actual men. And none of those men ever broke my heart. I never gave them the chance. No matter how sweet the sentimental deed (an e-mail with the words “I’m thinking of you:” an all-nighter dedicated to helping me edit an article) he couldn’t stand up to the checklist of characteristics I’d compiled through my research.
But he’s not the best kisser.

But he didn’t ever whisk me away to the Caribbean. But why didn’t
he want to have sex every single night? But how could he not make
lewd suggestions at a restaurant?
And after it became clear that he would never allow me to check off those boxes, I would have to put the kibosh on the relationship. I had to find The One. And apparently, he was not it.

Often, after the fact, I’d pass a coffee shop where we had laughed on a Sunday, seen a movie we had both hated and made fun of for days, or come across someone who had a Yankees cap as ripped and torn and aged as his was and I’d feel a loss. And sometimes, in my mind, I’d miss him so much that I would build up our relationship in my mind. Only now I’d fill in the checklist boxes by imagining what a rekindling would be like—in my script, he would do all of those things this time. And when we would reunite, and he failed, once again, to meet my expectations, I’d be devastated all over.

So, there I was, just two months ago, with a string of failed relationships under my belt and a freelance writing career that didn’t offer much in the way of male contact, when I woke one day with what I fancied to be a marvelous idea.

What if I increased the chances of meeting Mr. Right by taking a position in a male-dominated industry? Increasing 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 266

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the odds absolutely must increase the likelihood that I’ll bump into him, right? (Well, we’ll get to that later.) But just changing geography would have been too easy. I had to complicate matters by bringing my career into the picture. I pitched the idea to this very magazine. We all chat about how difficult it is to meet men in the magazine business, don’t we? Don’t others always advise us to “get out more?” Isn’t work always cited as a top place to meet Mr.

Right? Well, this magazine seemed to think so. And so, under an agreement to meet Mr. Right in two months and describe him in three thousand words, I swapped my writer’s notebook and my late mornings in pajamas at my home office for an attaché case, an adorable camel-colored overcoat, and one very official-looking name badge, with the sole purpose of finding The One. This might sound extreme, but you know that saying about desperate times calling for desperate measures. Well, at least I thought I knew what that saying was about.

After seeing
Pretty Woman, Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet,
and reading
Bridget Jones’s Diary
and
Confessions of a Shopaholic,
it seemed the ridiculous was actually a crucial part of finding The One—a precursor even. How could I fail? And walking through the doors of my new office on that first day, it didn’t seem there was a chance of anything but success. An explanation of the scores and scores of men (tall, short, bespectacled, with long hair, with short hair) seemed to require an exorbi-tant amount of expletives just to convey to my friends. Out of the thousands that walked past me, rode in the elevator with me, ate lunch across from me, one of them had to be The One.

During my first few days, I made diligent notes about the 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 267

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men I came into contact with—noting which I thought might fit my profile. I did my part. I looked cute, dressed in my best shoes, had my hair done, came up with witty comments, even read the financial pages (and that was some feat, let me tell you). One day, I met a nice enough guy who rode into the copy room like a knight in shining armor to save me from the big bad Cannon color machine. Everything seemed to be coming together perfectly. Like a movie. Like a book.