Marrying Up (17 page)

“Shit,” he says. “No—no—don’t cry.
Please
don’t cry. I didn’t mean to… I was just teasing….”

I look up and sniff. “
Et tu,
Remy?”

His features register a strange mix of fear and sympathy.

“Please, Holly. I’m sorry…”

But I jump up as fast as I can and run downstairs.

When George comes home from work that night, she finds me in a crumpled mess on the couch, surrounded by Kleenex and an empty box of Twinkies.

I tell her what has happened and she shakes her head. “That
snarky bastard. You need to get away from him,” she says. “Find a job.”

“I’m trying, George. I read the paper every day and have, like, twenty job search sites bookmarked. I check them every night.” What I really need is a job with health insurance, so I can get my ass back into therapy. God, I miss therapy.

“I know you do, sweetie,” she says, pushing my bangs out of my eyes. She’s been at Venus Books for only two weeks, and is already loving it. She only wants the same for me. “Just keep at it. Something will come up. And in the meantime, don’t you go back up there till you feel ready. I don’t think he’s going to be bugging you for a while.”

“I just can’t believe it got so ugly. We’d been getting along so well.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“I’m so mortified. He read all that stuff….”

“Forget about that—just concentrate on finding a job.”

I nod and try to smile.

“Or we could start looking for another place, if you like.”

“No, no. We’ll never find anything better than this.”

“Still…”

“It wasn’t really that bad. I’m just totally humiliated right now. Everything will be fine once we make up.”

“If you say so.”

To give my wounded pride a chance to recover, I decide to avoid Remy for precisely four days. In the meantime, I put my free time to good use for a change and blitz the job thing. I apply for positions I wouldn’t normally consider, including one horrid-sounding retail gig at a suburban electronics superstore and one equally frightening prospect that involves commission-based fund-raising for a “grassroots environmental initiative.” I also put myself on the lists at three temp agencies. Anything to get out of the house and make a few bucks.

When I finally head upstairs to make peace, Remy is so sincerely apologetic (and so damn cute) that I catch myself secretly wishing I won’t get any of the jobs I’ve been so busy applying for. Which in turn leads to a bit of a lightbulb moment—I realize that before the whole Ides of March incident, I hadn’t really been trying all that hard to find a job because I was enjoying hanging out with Remy so much.

But all that is over now. That much is evident the moment I start back upstairs. Remy, being a gentleman at heart, tells me I don’t have to work with him anymore if I don’t want to, but I tell him a deal’s a deal, and I am nothing if not true to my word. We both apologize for taking cheap shots; we agree things got a bit silly. He tries to convince me he didn’t really think I was a bad worker, that he only said that because I accused him of being amoral. I explain that I’d been overly sensitive and that I don’t normally cry like a baby when things don’t go my way, just that I was mad at myself for forgetting to sign out of Hotmail.

Despite clearing the bad air between us, things aren’t the same as before. For days, Remy seems to tread on eggshells around me. And every time we make eye contact, all the embarrassment I felt comes flooding back.

Exactly why this man’s impression of me matters so much, I can’t say. For some reason, he makes me doubt myself, the whole plan, everything. I know I have nothing to be ashamed of—it’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man, after all, and becoming the successful writer I’ve always dreamed I could be is possible now that I have something bankable to write about—but Remy’s disapproval bothers me more than I care to admit.

I reason that what I’m really feeling isn’t so much shame as disappointment that things have changed between us. I’d been enjoying my crush on him immensely, but now I can tell that the dynamics of our relationship have been altered
by the things we said. (Once that toothpaste leaves the tube, you can never get it to go back in.) It isn’t only that he knows I’m attracted to him, while I have no idea how he feels about me; that, I can get over. I’m sure it came as no great surprise to him, anyway—Remy knows damn well how good-looking he is! What bothers me more is the possibility that he now sees me as something I’m not, or at least some things I like to think I’m not—shallow, ill-informed, weepy.

After a week or so of working together side by side again, the tension dissipates, as I knew it would. But things are definitely different. I can feel it.

“Hello? Holly?”

“Yes?”

“Hi! It’s Vale.”

“Who?”

“Vale! Jeez—I guess I didn’t make as much of an impression as I thought! It was a few weeks ago…on Folsom Street.”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whisper to George, “Who’s Vale?”

She shrugs.

“Oh, hi!” I say. “Nice to hear from you.”

“I’ve been meaning to call you, but I’ve been away on business and just got back into town a few days ago. But I’m glad to hear you gave me the right number, at least! You and your friend George were, uh, pretty happy…and, well…I wasn’t sure if you’d even remember us.”

The guys from the bar that night?

“Yeah, we were just blowing off a little steam. Long week, you know?”

“Sure, sure. I know what that’s about….” He pauses.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, still here. So…my friend Quentin and I were won
dering, maybe you and George would like to double date sometime?”

“You mean we didn’t frighten you off with that whole drunken desperation thing?”

George, who is glued to my side listening in by that point, gives me a good smack in the arm.

“Is that what that was?” he chuckles. “Well, we don’t scare too easily. And your friend left quite an impression on Quentin.”

“She did?”

“Not too many girls who say they can tie a maraschino cherry stem into a knot with their tongue actually have the goods to back it up.”

“I can do that?” George mouths to me.

I nod. “She’s got a lot going on, that’s for sure. What about me, though? I must have made some sort of impression too, or else you wouldn’t be calling.”

“Of course you did! While a simple man like Quentin might be impressed by parlor tricks, I myself am partial to a more sophisticated woman…a woman who has a lot going on under the surface.”

“I did my Lucille Ball impression, didn’t I?”

“Yup! Like I said, we don’t scare easily.” He laughs again and I try to remember what he looked like, but all that pops into my mind is a featureless blur and a striped blue tie. His voice is cute, though—gravelly, like he smokes two packs a day, although I doubt he does. It seems like nobody out here smokes.

“Well, that’s good, I guess, because girls from Buffalo are very, very scary,” I say, and George smacks me again.

“Stop it,” I whisper to her. “It’s working.”

“Okay, then. So how about next Saturday? We’ll take you out and show you the town.”

George nods frantically.

“That works for us.”

Just when I am about to consider putting my new skill-set to good use and apply for a job as a construction worker or, worse, contact the
San Francisco Chronicle
to see if they happen to have any openings for freelance obituarists, I get a call for an interview.

Despite our cheap rent and George’s much-welcome new paycheck, things are getting a little tight. This city is plenty more expensive than Buffalo (our daily lattes cost twice what they did at home, and even the homeless people flip you off if you proffer anything less than a five). George and I are also both quite possibly on the verge of scurvy—weeks of two-for-one pizza and onion bagels from Starbucks have left us soft and slightly disoriented. Scary, yes. I know. But I don’t want to call my dad and tell him we’ve burned through his first check in less than two months, when I’d been hoping it would last us three. So landing this job is important—our health
and
our pride depends on it.

I fluff my hair, do a quick breath check and push the buzzer. A little brass plaque next to the door reads E
NCYCLOPEDIA
G
IGANTICA
. The hallway is dark and dingy; the neighborhood, not so hot. My heart sank with disappointment when I saw the building, one of those late-sixties architectural missteps that resembles rusty turquoise graph paper from the outside and feels like a rabbit’s warren on the inside.

“Who is it?” a voice crackles through the intercom.

“Holly Hastings. I have an 11:15 interview.”

More crackling.

“Okay. Hold on.”

Encyclopedia Gigantica? Sounds vaguely pornographic… Come to think of it, the directory in the lobby seemed to have more than its share of “So-and-So Productions” and that top-heavy platinum blonde outside sure did look a little sketchy….

The door opens slowly, and the receptionist who wel
comes me inside sets my mind at ease immediately; if
she
were in the adult film business, then the objectification of the fairer sex on celluloid has become more of an equal-opportunity venture than I had realized. Kitty, as she introduces herself, though friendly, is eighty if she’s a day, and not much to look at, with horn-rimmed glasses and a nearly hairless, liver-spotted head and a neck that sticks out from her shoulders at nearly a right angle.

“Nice shoes,” she says as she leads me into the empty waiting area. “My daughter will be with you shortly.”

A family business. How nice.

Three minutes later Kitty reappears in the doorway. “Holly Hastings?”

“Yes?” I say, when it appears she’s genuinely wondering who I am.

She curls a gnarled finger at me. “This way.”

I follow her down the hallway into a small office, where a pleasant-looking woman in her late forties stands up to shake my hand.

“Hi! I’m Cinda Jarvis.”

“Holly Hastings. Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks, Mom, that’ll be all,” she says as she shoos Kitty out and closes the door behind her. “Please, Holly, sit down! Shall we begin?”

Half an hour later, I am back outside, gainfully employed as the proofreader for “a thrilling new line of hardback educational compendiums for nine- to thirteen-year-olds,” as my new boss put it so happily, adding, “Trimmed in faux gold leaf!”

I already have the vague sense that the Encyclopedias Gigantica are probably not going to be quite the thrill Cinda Jarvis thinks they are, but they’re her dream, and her enthusiasm was heartening. From what I could tell from our interview, she’d quit her job as a schoolteacher and bet the
farm on this venture, which all depended on a publisher and national distributor picking up the line and marketing it door-to-door one day. First, though, she needed a product to sell, and that was where I came in—to verify, fact-check and proofread the prototypes she was writing. Two volumes,
A
and
Z.

I call George at work to tell her the news, which I suppose is good. She confirms exactly what I’d been thinking.

“It can’t be worse than writing obituaries or putting up drywall.”

“I know. But it’s the kind of work that’s going to make it hard to write at night, not that I’ve been doing that, anyway, but still. Proofing gives me a serious headache. I used to do it at the
Bugle
sometimes….”

“Which is why you got the job! Because they could tell you’re going to be great at it! You have the experience, the discipline, the—”

“George,” I interrupt. “I don’t need a pep talk. I know I can do this. It’s just going to be so
boring.
And it’s a contract position, which means no health insurance.”

“Boring isn’t necessarily bad. Boring’s the new not broke! And if you need a therapist, just call Dr. Ben and Dr. Jerry.”

I giggle. “But I didn’t tell you the worst of it.”

“What?”

“It smelled like tuna fish there. It was kind of a gross place.”

“It smells like lilacs and jasmine here,” she says dreamily. “Chloe says that fresh-cut flowers increase employee productivity. And even if they don’t, they sure are nice to have around, aren’t they? She comes in with big bunches of them every Monday and replaces them even before they start to wilt.”

“That’s very helpful, George. Thank you.”

“Sorry,” she laughs. Her boss sounds like an amazing person, and I’ve heard quite a bit of “Chloe says this” and “Chloe says that” since George started there.

I suppose the tables have turned.

While I’d spent years honing my skills in the antiseptic but largely inoffensive environment of the
Bugle,
George had been paying her dues ringing up Isaac Asimov books in a musty turn-of-the-century shop with rodents scrambling behind the walls. She’s a talented and thoughtful writer, and I know she’s going to make a great editor. At last, someone she respects—someone she can learn something from—has taken her under her wing. To say that I was really, truly happy for her would be an understatement. She deserves it more than anyone I know.

Yet, once again, here I am complaining to her about the faint odor of failure in my life.

“You’re right, G. I’m going to make the best of it.”

“Of course you are,” she says. “And you can keep looking for something better. But in the meantime, you’ll have a nice, steady paycheck. And we could use the money, honey!”

“The money’s not so good. Less than I was making at the
Bugle
…”

“It’s okay! My salary’s pretty respectable, if I do say so myself, and besides—we’re DINKs now! We’ll shop till we drop!”

“DINKs?”

“Double Income, No Kids!”

“Oh my God, George—you’re a yuppie! I never thought I’d see the day when you were excited to go shopping.”

“I know! There were pigs flying by our window this morning!”

“I guess I must have missed that….”

“Sorry, Holly—I gotta go. Chloe needs me!”