Hot Mess (9 page)

“So, like, what exactly is your internship, Em?” she asked, both of us diving into the mountain of edamame between us. We’d found a sushi place down the block that wasn’t crazy expensive and didn’t seem to be overrun with flies. As we sat munching our steamed soybeans, a waitress came by and slid a boat of sushi onto our table, which we attacked. We hadn’t really celebrated getting internships yet, so that was the excuse for the sashimi dinner. And when my dad got the bill for it, I’d just tell him that I’d taken Jake out to thank him for helping me get situated in the big city. Totally valid reason that my dad would buy.

“It’s media buying. The marketing department.” I stuffed a soy-sauced piece of tuna into my mouth and licked my fingers loudly, not caring that the two immaculate gay men at the table next to us probably thought I looked like a competitive eater. I felt sophisticated saying “media.” Who uses that word?

“Media?” Clearly, Rachel was wondering the same thing. “Media buying? Like, what does that mean?”

I realized, somewhat uneasily, that I had no idea. Like, none. I felt a stab of worry. I was so unprepared and I started tomorrow. But internships were about learning. If I already knew exactly what media buying was, they wouldn’t have hired me as an intern, right?

“Is it picking which DVDs are at Target and stuff?” Rachel pressed.

“Umm…” That sounded logical enough. “Yes, kind of. Sure,” I said with a mouth full of fish.

We finished up our sush and trekked back to the apartment. I didn’t even partake in my typical Sunday evening
Law & Order: CI
marathon on Bravo because I wanted to be sure that I got a full night’s rest. And watching an eighteen-year-old girl getting abducted on a block that could be right outside my building probably wouldn’t make for the sweetest of dreams. But as I lay in my bed at nine p.m., I couldn’t fall asleep. I had just woken up about ten hours earlier. So I pulled out my journal and started venting big-time. This was my first time cracking the journal open since landing in the city a week ago, so I started from the very beginning. As I scribbled about the skank hole hotel we stayed in and the deets of Jayla’s celeb face-sucking, I felt myself getting super-nervous for the next day. I mean, I’d spent more time picking out my pink and brown faux Kate Spade planner than actually researching my position. And that was so not like me. I was always prepared—even for pop quizzes. I flashed to scenes from
The Hills,
which, aside from my interviews, was my only glimpse into the world of internships. I tried to calm down by comparing myself to LC. And I’m pretty sure that I have at least thirty IQ points on her. So if she could be an intern without getting fired on the spot, I’d be fine, too. Right? Well, I guess I’d find out soon enough. I placed my journal on the nightstand, closed my eyes, and tried my hardest to fall asleep. Trying to sleep never works, so of course I ended up flicking on the Bravo marathon and catching an episode of
Law & Order
. Thankfully, it wasn’t an episode about a high school intern being abducted on her way to work, so I was nightmare free once I managed to fall asleep.

The next day, Rachel and I woke up early to get ready for our first day as interns. I buttoned up the same pink shirt I had worn to my first interview. I never did make it out for my planned working-girl shopping spree, so it was either that or the pirate outfit.

I slipped my day planner into my bag and popped my head into Rachel’s room. She was tripping into a pair of tights and had some sort of cutoff shirt on. She looked at me with desperation. “I want to look funky but professional. I’ve tried on everything I have and nothing’s working.”

“R-Dubs, you need to start setting out your clothes the night before. Seriously, it saves like a million hours in the morning.”

At the beginning of junior year, I made this weird resolution to always set out my clothes for the following day. That way I could just roll out of bed and into whatever jeans-and-sweater combo I’d picked out and devote my morning to more important decisions, like Frosted Flakes versus Pop-Tarts. I’d tried to get Rachel to do it about a thousand times, but she seemed to prefer racking up the tardy slips over just taking my advice. Being late for art history was one thing, but to cruise in ten minutes after everyone else at a
job
was really bad. I briefly thought about approving her outfit just to get her out of the house on time. But I couldn’t, with a clear conscience, give her a thumbs-up looking like she just crawled out of a Mötley Crüe video.

“Well, that certainly looks…
funky
.” I cringed. Sometimes you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.

“That bad?”

I nodded and she looked like she was going to cry. I wanted to help but I couldn’t be late for my first day of media buying. I headed out the front door, calling over my shoulder, “Have a great first day, babe! I’ll call you when it’s over, and we can meet up for dinner or whatever.”

Even though it was only eight-thirty in the morning, the heat of the day immediately enveloped me, and within the four-minute walk to the subway, the humidity had already managed to obliterate the twenty minutes I’d spent straightening my hair.

I hopped on the subway, smushed among all of the other work-bound commuters. Normally the subway was a stinky, unsanitary adventure that I loathed, but today I was excited. I felt like a grown-up, riding the train with all the businesspeople going to their very important, very adult jobs. It was weird to be among so many people and have it be so quiet. Not a single person was talking. I silently judged a lady who was wearing a full skirt suit with nylons and scrunch socks and sneakers. So ugs. I cranked up my iPod, held on to the pole, and tried not to inhale too deeply—someone nearby had definitely forgotten deodorant this morning. I wondered what it would be like to be an actual adult, instead of half-faking it for the summer. What would life be like without summer breaks or getting out before three p.m.? But then again, you’re making money and you don’t have anyone telling you to clean up your room and please put down a sheet of tinfoil when you make Bagel Bites in the toaster oven. Maybe I’d like it.

After we stopped at Times Square, I shoved my way toward the door, proud that I knew that my stop was next. But then I saw the sign for the Forty-ninth Street stop flash as we sped by. Dammit! What was going on? I broke out in a not-so-cold sweat, picturing me frantically calling Mr. Dorfman and telling them I’d gotten on the wrong train and was now in Hackensack, New Jersey, or wherever.

“Hey, how do I get this thing to stop? I wanted to get off there,” I said, or actually probably yelled, because I still had my earphones in.

“Lady, this is an express. Don’t stop at Forty-ninth,” a man said, and then laughed to himself.

Oh, well, that’s just great. I got off at the next stop, Fifty-seventh Street, and bounded up the grimy stairs into the humid world above. Sweating from stress, heat, and panic, I tried to run the ten blocks downtown to MediaInc as inconspicuously as possible, shuffle-skipping down the sidewalk. I nearly knocked over an old woman and stepped on a Chihuahua’s paw, earning myself a nice “Fuck you!” from its owner. I wondered if all my makeup had sweated off and if my pink shirt was now dark red. Huffing into the front door of MediaInc, I realized that I had no idea what to expect from a first day at an internship. A welcome party? A nameplate for my desk? A company Treo? They’d want to be in touch with me at all times, right? There was no way to predict what I was in for.

The horrible ice queen from my interview turned out to be my greeter. I saw her waiting in the lobby for me and tried to kill her with kindness.

“Hi, Mrs.—I mean, Ms. Pavese. So good to see you again. Can you tell that I’m wearing the same outfit? Well, of course you can now that I’ve pointed it out.
Duh!
” I babbled, somehow sounding even more nervous than I actually was.

She held up her hand. “I haven’t had my coffee yet today. Could you keep the chatter down to a minimum?” I nodded, feeling like a total tool, and followed her as she swiped me into the building and took me up in the elevator. Our first stop was the coffee machine, where she made a black cup with two Sweet’n Lows. Gross. What was the point of coffee if it wasn’t a vessel for chocolate syrup or whipped cream?

I then trailed after her and followed her to her office, where she wordlessly sat down and checked her e-mail. I wandered around her office, checking out the books and family photos she had on display. Hmm, fat husband, bland-looking vacations, one vaguely cross-eyed child—it was non-stop glamour for Ms. Margaret Pavese. After a few minutes of silent snooping and vowing never to become such a suburban bore, I was sure that she’d forgotten about me and whatever first-day festivities she had planned. I coughed, trying to remind her of the future Intern of the Year’s presence.

She snapped her head up from her keyboard. “Fine,” she said as if I’d just verbally assaulted her instead of gently cleared my throat. “I’ll drop you off at security, okay? I’ll get more done when you’re not skulking around my office anyway.”

She led me down a few flights to a door with black lettering spelling “Security” and then turned on her sensible pumps and left me there. I knocked on the door, completely uncertain if that’s what I was supposed to do.

“Um, hello in there,” I yelled into the pine of the door between knocks. “I’m a new intern.” The door opened and a small man in a blue uniform stood in the doorway, revealing a room with lots of screens that flashed from shots of hallways to offices and then to the inside of the elevators. I made a mental note to refrain from wedgie picking anywhere in the entire building.

“I’m Carl,” the security guard said, and pointed to his name pin at the same time. “And you must be Emma Freeman.” I nodded. “They told me you were coming today. We’ve just got a bit of a background check and some paperwork for you to fill out.” He handed me a stack of paper that weighed more than the entire duffle I brought to New York. I got to work bubbling in Scantron-like forms and checking boxes affirming that I had never been convicted of any violent crimes as Carl photocopied my driver’s license.

“Sheesh, Carl. This sure is a lot of security. This is MediaInc, right? I didn’t get so lost on the subway this morning that I ended up at the CIA or something, right?” I kidded.

Carl didn’t respond. So I giggled awkwardly at my own joke. I looked at my watch. Not even a full hour in and I was already counting down the minutes until the end of the summer.

He thumbed through my papers. I seemed to have passed the security portion of the test, and moved on to the picture section, which I can say I failed miserably.

“Okay, one, two,” Carl said from behind a digital camera.

“Wait, can I fix my—” Flash! Too late. The camera went off mid-sentence and I looked like I was mid-sneeze. And I was so greasy in the picture—leftover sheen from my humid subway-and-sprinting commute—that the pic ended up looking like a “before” shot from a Proactiv commercial. Carl ignored my pleas for a redo and gave me a laminated version of my heinous pic to wear on a lanyard. “Keep this on at all times in the building.”

“At
all times
?” I asked brattily, annoyed that he hadn’t let me take another picture.

He gave me a stern look and I felt a twinge of guilt for being such a bitch. Wearing my ugly mug-shot pendant, I waited outside the security room for Ms. Pavese to pick me up. Once she did—almost half an hour after Carl had phoned her to tell her I was done—she led me up to Derek’s office and left me there without even a “Good luck.” Honestly, I felt bad that so many trees had to be cut down to make a stick that big to go up her butt.

“Mr. Dor…I mean, Derek?” I stood in the threshold of his office, trying to get his attention.

“Emma baby, you’re here!” He leaped up from his desk to greet me.
“Welcome to the jungle!”
He shrieked, Axl Rose style, and did the rocker’s trademark crab dance. Then, with his hand on my back—which totally icked me out—he led me to my cubicle.

“Thar she blows!” He made a Vanna White gesture, displaying the three half-walls of the cube, and I inwardly cringed at the pirate joke. “Feel free to decorate it any way you like. You know, pictures of you and your little friends or even you and your boyfriend, if you’ve got one. You got a boyfriend, Emma?”

Wasn’t this totally inappropriate first-day banter? None of my teachers had ever asked me that on the first day (or ever), and weren’t bosses supposed to be über-professional or something? “Um, no.” I don’t know why, but I was almost going to explain my Brian situation. Thankfully, he interrupted me before I could even collect my thoughts.

“Hey, whaddya say I take you out to lunch?”

“Sure, I guess.” I looked down at my watch—it was only eleven forty-five, which felt really early for lunch. But he was the boss, and if there’s anything I’ve learned from sitcoms, it’s that when bosses tell you to do bizarre things, you do them and you do them now.

I followed him out of the building and noticed that he was pretty much wearing the same pleated-front khaki Dockers and collared shirt that he’d worn to both my interviews. I didn’t feel so bad about my recycled ensemble.

The place he chose for lunch was crazy expensive. With its cloth napkins and tuxedoed waiters, it felt more like a once-a-year-celebration place than a casual lunch spot. I looked over the options and realized I was screwed. I didn’t want to order something way expensive and look greedy, but I couldn’t order the cheapest thing on the menu without looking like a money freak either. Next to a cup of soup and a glass of water, the chipotle Caesar salad was the most reasonably priced thing on the menu at twenty dollars. As I overanalyzed how ordering the second-cheapest menu item would be interpreted, Derek made a huge deal of his selection.

“I’ve got a few questions to ask about your fish tacos. Exactly how fishy are they?” he asked our waitress.

He shot me “Get it?” looks and thought the whole thing was side-splittingly amusing. I started my fake oh-Derek-that’s-so-funny laugh, but then I saw that the waitress had a look of restrained contempt on her face and I pictured her spitting in my soda. Trying to avoid a saliva special while still making a good first-day impression on Derek, I pretended to be really consumed with my salad selection, burying my face in the menu.