Falling in Love (8 page)

Paul and walked out together. We hadn’t spent anytime together outside of the therapy sessions and, once more, I was afraid that I might never see him again. Maybe Paul had the same feeling, or maybe he was just being polite, but he asked me to lunch. Because Paul was due back at his office shortly, we went to a nearby fast-food restaurant called Burger Heaven. We made small talk, avoiding this huge weight between us but neither Paul nor I had the courage to talk about it, to talk about us.

A guy eating a burger in a corner booth kept staring at me. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him and figured, or at least hoped, that I didn’t know him. But when Paul returned to the salad bar, the guy finished his burger and came over.

“Hey, Honey, how about a nooner?”

I looked up at him, startled. Then I recognized him. He was the guy from the party they called Tex, and he was one of the guys with which I had humiliated myself. I felt sickened. “Forget it,” I snapped back.

“I could never forget you,” he said with a wicked smile.

Paul returned to the table. “Hey, Manning. Are you really with this babe? I heard you thought she was a virgin.” He laughed.

“Get lost, Tex.” Paul looked like he wanted to hit him. Other patrons began staring at us.

Tex turned toward the door, saying, “Manning, you’re the dumbest guy on earth.” He glanced back, laughing, “Have you even had her yet?”

When Tex got to the door, he turned around and acted like he was pulling a train whistle near his crotch, saying, “Choo, choo.” Then he walked out, laughing.

I sat there, too disgusted and humiliated to eat. Paul didn’t sit back down. Finally, he said, “I can’t take this. I can’t.”

He walked toward the door and I began crying. I couldn’t let him just walk out of my life. I ran out the door.

Paul had already started his car. I ran up to him, pleading, “Don’t leave, Paul. Please. I can change.”

A family heading inside the restaurant stopped to stare at me. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but Paul. I cried out, “I love you, Paul. I do.”

Paul hesitated for a moment. Then he backed up and raced out of the parking lot. “Please! Paul!” I screamed after him. But he was gone.

I fell to my knees, heaving and crying. After a bit, I felt an elderly man trying to help me up but I twisted away, too mortified to even touch anyone. I jumped into my car and raced out of the parking lot, almost hitting a truck. After a few blocks, I pulled over and sat there crying. I knew I had to get out of that town. Immediately!

I headed for the biggest city I could find, where I could get lost. Where no one knew who I was or about my past and all the mistakes I had managed to make during my short span on this planet. I was going to start a new life.

As I crossed the George Washington Bridge, I began reciting an Emily Dickinson poem. “
Two butterflies went out at noon and waltzed above a stream. Then stepped straight through the firmament and rested on a beam.
”

The cheapest room I found was in a women’s only hotel in Greenwich Village with the shower and toilet in the hallway. I hoped that the money I had saved while working for Paul would last me until I got a job. I made the rounds of temp agencies, offering my meager office experience. But filing and light typing in Rosebud, Indiana, didn’t make much of an impression in the Big Apple. I thought of mentioning that I had worked for Paul as a legal secretary but I was petrified that someone might call him for a reference.

Within a week I was out of money. I was so depressed that every night I went out drinking and every morning I ended up in a strange apartment. I wasn’t sure why I was paying rent when I rarely slept in my room. But somehow giving up my room and living from guy to guy didn’t seem to be moving in the right direction. My new life was beginning to look a lot like my old life.

I decided to sell my car. I couldn’t afford a garage and parking on the street was a real pain. I drove out to Queens and took whatever some dealer gave me. How I intended drive to California without a car was something I hadn’t quite yet worked out.

Soon, I was nearly out of that money. After applying at my seemingly hundredth temp agency, I was heading into an elevator when I heard someone yell, “Hold it! Okay?” I tried to push the right button to keep the door open but failed miserably. After sprinting down the hallway, a young woman slid to a stop in high heels in front of the elevator and quickly kicked up her leg as a wedge between the closing doors. They reopened and she joined me in the elevator.

“Sorry,” I said, still staring at the array of buttons trying to determine which one would have parted the doors.

“Not to worry,” she said. She was tall attractive brunette with a full-figured body, a regal air and carried one of the largest purses I’d ever seen. “I really don’t have to be anywhere for an hour. I just hate waiting. Right?”

I shrugged in agreement, even though I really didn’t have that strong of an opinion regarding waiting for elevators.

She stared closely at me. “You okay?”

“Sure.”

She kept staring at me and I began to feel uncomfortable. “Come on, really. What’s the problem?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she added, “Look, I read people all day long and you’ve got a problem? Okay, so it’s none of my business but tell me anyway. We don’t know each other, right? So what have you got to lose, and maybe I have an answer?”

“Are you an analyst?” I asked.

She laughed. “An actor. Brimming with talent but still undiscovered so I play the role of legal secretary to pay the bills and I read people to help with my characters. And when I look at you, I’m reading a big problem.”

“Well, I’m broke and can’t get a job,” I admitted, finally. “I’d love to be just a secretary, period.”

“So be one. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Of course it is. You’re beautiful. You’ve got a nice voice. So be a receptionist if you can’t type.” The elevator reached the bottom. “Come on. Let’s go have coffee. On me.”

Suddenly, she was out of the elevator and halfway across the marble foyer as I stood dumbfounded in the elevator. She turned around. “You coming?”

I tried following her as she effortlessly threaded though throngs of people that I subsequently bumped against. For someone who had no where to be for an hour, I couldn’t believe how fast she walked. I ended up at a window table in a gourmet coffee shop while she got our order. I had asked for coffee, thinking what else are you going to order in a coffee shop? But she returned with cappuccino, saying that I looked like I “needed a lift.” She had ordered chai tea for herself.

Her name was Dede Dalton and she spent the next fifteen minutes talking about the audition she had in an hour for an off-Broadway play about some scandal in the Twenties and that if she got the part, it could lead to her big break. She talked so fast that I had trouble keeping up. Then she reached down and pulled a vintage silk dress from her purse and held it up. “What do you think?”

I really didn’t have a clue but said that it looked fine to me.

Then Dede got around to the reason we were there and grilled me about my meager work experience. When I told her that I had worked for Paul her eyes lit up, so I quickly added that because we had gotten involved, I was worried about using him for a reference.

Dede didn’t seem to care. She took a notepad from her purse and scribbled on it, while asking, “You ever been to L.A.?”

“No.”

She ripped off a page. “Now you have. You worked for these three firms for eight years.” She looked closely at me. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

She crossed out one of the firms and changed some dates. “These two firms for five years.”

I was shocked. “What if they check them out?”

“They can’t. Both of these firms went belly up. But they were big. Offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Every agency in New York has heard of them. You worked in the L.A. offices.” She handed me the paper. “You now have five years of top drawer legal experience.”

“You don’t think it’s a coincidence that both the firms I worked for went out of business?”

“Think anyone cares? This is like underage drinking. The bartender asks for an ID, you show him one and he doesn’t care if you’re twelve. Same here. You know what a brief is?”

“I think so,” I said, not exactly sure.

“You can type?”

“Yes,” I replied more emphatically.

Dede gave me the names of five temp agencies. “These are the best in the city. Go to them last. Go to any others and take their test. Make sure you are confident that you can pass the typing test for these agencies before you go to them. Then you’ll always have a job because lawyers are never going away. You may not like the job but you will always have one.”

I couldn’t really believe that this false resume would get me work as a legal secretary but I was grateful to Dede for at least trying to help me. “Thank you so much.”

“No problem,” she smiled. “We Geminis have to stick together.”

I gaped, surprised. “How did you know?” I didn’t know much about astrology but I did know that my June birthday made me a Gemini.

“You’ve got split personality written all over you.” Dede laughed. “Just kidding. I don’t follow it that much but I can always spot another Gemini. When’s your birthday?”

“June thirteenth.”

“Sixteenth. We’re almost celestial twins.”

Then Dede was off to the bathroom and in a few minutes emerged in the silk dress, gloves and a new hairdo, coming over to me with a twirl. “What do you think?”

“Fantastic.” It truly was a stunning transformation into some kind of flapper.

Dede dropped her card on the table and said, “Go do it. If you have any questions or problems, call me. Drop my name as a reference. The top agencies all know me and one day everyone will know me,” she made a grand gesture, “as a star.” Then she was gone.

The next day, I began doing exactly what Dede said. I was so nervous that I failed the first test, barely passed the second one and did respectable at the third agency. By the fourth one, the woman said that she would send me out. But when she didn’t call the next day, I finally went to the first agency on Dede’s list, passed the test, smiled a lot and the next day they sent me to a midtown law firm to fill in for three days.

The firm was on a high floor with light airy offices and plush carpets. I worked for a young woman associate who was a gift. She did almost all of her own work and mostly just asked me to print out her documents. On Friday, after the secretarial supervisor signed my time card, I skipped my way to the elevator. I even knew what a brief was! Lawyer slang for a Memorandum of Law. I was a legal secretary, a working member of society. I knew that somehow, some way, I was going to make it.

I got paid the following Tuesday. I called Dede and offered to buy her a drink out of my newly-earned legal-secretarial wages. We agreed to meet at a swank Upper Westside restaurant. But I got on the wrong train and arrived late. Dede was perched on a bar stool dressed in a low-cut blouse and a skirt that slid well above her knees when she crossed her legs. The empty stool beside her was evidently reserved for me because, although several men in suits hovered around her, none had attempted to sit there. Dede shared smiles with each of them, as if unable to choose between such a wealth of manhood.

When she saw me, she cried, “Sherry, over here!” The men parted to form a path to the empty stool and I took my place beside Dede. “What are you drinking?” Dede asked.

“Mineral water,” I replied. I didn’t want to begin my career as a bona fide New York secretary mouthing excuses for being late and hung over. Moderation had never been my strong suit so I decided to give temperance a try.

“You sure?” I nodded. “Mick? An Evian, please,” Dede called out to the bartender who was shaking a cocktail. “Put it on my tab,” Dede laughed, and three men leaned over the bar armed with cash.

Wearing only simple slacks and a sweater, I wasn’t decked out like Dede, whose skirt seemed to slide up even more when she turned to me but the men still smiled eagerly at me so I guess I passed some kind of test. After glancing around the bar, I noticed that the guys greatly outnumbered the girls and I figured that anyone remotely resembling a female would have passed that same test.

Dede gave me a look and leaned over to me, “You okay? Anything the matter?”

“I just thought that we would be having a drink together, and that I was buying.”

Dede smiled and whispered, “We can go out for a bite afterward and we can talk then. But, hey, why pay when you don’t have to. Living in New York is too expensive to not enjoy a few freebies when they come our way.”

For the next hour, Dede swapped stories with the guys, expertly playing one off against another. A couple of guys edged up to me and tried a few lines, some sincere, some not so sincere, but I acted like I was fascinated by Dede’s every word. Drinking water gave me some kind of new resolve and I was surprised at how easy it was to fend off guys when I was sober. I wondered if I didn’t drink anymore that somehow I might not only rid myself of hangovers but also rid myself of waking up besides nameless guys.