Slim Chance (2 page)

“Evelyn…” Bruce got down on one knee on the floor in front of me. Instantly, my cheeks start to burn. In my peripheral vision, I could see open mouths and stunned faces. None more stunned than mine, I’m sure.

“Evelyn, I came here today to tell you that I love you, that the past six years have been the best of my life, that I cannot imagine my world without you….”

Was he really talking to me?

“…From the day we met in the cafeteria at NYU, when we reached for that same pudding, I knew you were special….” Somebody behind me giggled loudly. Panic set in, along with elaborate fantasies of revenge.

I can barely breathe—how can she laugh? She’s ruining my moment. I will kill her, whoever she is, I will kill her. I will drill everybody later and find out who laughed. I bet it was Violet from Skincare. She never really liked me, even though I visited her twice in the hos
pital after she had those polyps removed. It really makes you wonder how some people can be so selfish and intrusive, especially regarding things that don’t even concern them. When it comes to their own amusement, jealous people will do just about anything to take the focus and attention away from those who deserve it….

All of a sudden, everybody laughed, shocking me out of my reverie.

“…which is why you finally agreed to let me take you out to dinner, and promised to throw out that hot plate and never try cooking in your dorm room again!”

Oh God, was he still talking?
I had no idea what he’d just said. What the hell was the matter with me?

“So all that to say, that if it wasn’t for the New York City Fire Department, I might not be kneeling here before you today,” Bruce concluded. Everyone laughed again.

Bruce put the roses down on the table beside me and grabbed my hand. “You’re my best friend, Evie, and I adore you. I love you more today than I did yesterday, and I will love you more tomorrow than I do today. And that will be true for every day of the rest of my life…”

Tears suddenly filled my eyes. I blinked and they fell onto my lap. It was undeniably the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. But he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

“…So I want to know, Evie…will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” And just like that, he pulled out a little blue velvet box and opened it up. Everyone gasped.

But I didn’t even see it. The room started to spin.

For the next few moments, it was like I’d somehow been dropped into someone else’s body on the other side of the world, and everyone was speaking a different language. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Where was I? Who was this guy with the glasses in front of me? He needed a haircut, that was for sure. Time stood still.

“Evelyn?” the man said.

“Evelyn?”

And then, just as quickly, it all came thundering back. It was Bruce, the love of my life. Asking me to marry him. I guess I must have been on autopilot or something because I jumped up and someone that sounded an awful lot like me shouted, “Yes! Yes! Of course I will!” He scooped me up in his arms and then the tears really started and I was laughing and crying and I couldn’t stop. Everyone burst up out of their chairs and began clapping and cheering. People from outside heard the fuss and came flowing into the boardroom, incredulous that such a spontaneous display of romance and drama could ever invade the unlikely weekday world of Kendra White. And it was all happening to me. Everyone was looking at
me.

And then I was running from the room.

When I opened the stall door, four blank faces stared at me through overly made-up eyes.

“I’m all right, I’m all right. I just need to freshen up a bit,” I sniffled, managing a smile. “I’m just so
excited.
I mean, I guess I’m in shock. I never expected it, well not like this, anyway. I just can’t believe it.” It was the truth.

“Aw, it’s just like being tossed into a tub full of icewater, hon,” laughed Cheryl-Anne, who works in Sales Rep Training and looks the part. “You’ll get over it soon enough. When my Dickie proposed to me, I just about flipped my wig.” Chuckles all around—she really does wear a wig.

“It was New Year’s Eve, and I’d had more than one too many,” she continued unnecessarily. “I sure do like to have a good time, though, as you ladies already know. Remember the Christmas party of ’98? Oh,
Lord
—the buns on that copy boy. Anyway, when Dickie popped the question, the whole world started to spin, and I just fainted dead away. I was sick for two months after that. But I guess it musta had something to do with the morning sickness!” she shrieked and slapped her thigh.

Everyone hooted like it was the funniest thing they’d ever
heard. As if a drunken, unwed pregnant woman falling flat on her face in the middle of Times Square were a legitimate source of amusement. How could they laugh? I’d seen pictures of her children. They were very disturbing.

“I think you’re right,” I managed in a weak voice. “It must be nerves.”
Back to me now, please.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Winnie from Cosmetics said and grabbed my hand. “This is your day and here we are going on and on. You just have a good cry if you need to and don’t worry about a thing. You don’t have to go back out there before you’re good and ready.”

I hugged her and nodded. I didn’t really know her all that well, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. She was sweeter in one instant than my own mother had ever been, and I vowed then and there not to ditch out on the surprise 50th birthday party I knew was planned for her next Thursday night, although I normally try and get out of those types of things. Hell, I might even chip in for the present.

I straightened myself up a bit and faced the mirror.

Pathetic. I looked as bad as the rest of them. Puffy black eyes, puffy white face, puffy alien body. A distorted imprint of Winnie’s pink-and-tan face remained on my collar. My wrinkled, camel-colored CK jacket (
Glamour,
March: “15 Work Essentials You Can’t Live Without”) strained at the chest, buttons silently groaning. The size twelve felt like a size two.
When did this happen to me?

But Bruce doesn’t seem to mind. He’s good that way. In fact, he never really says a thing about my weight, even though I’ve gained about thirty pounds since we met in my junior year. He just listens patiently as I rail on and on about it, fit after fit, diet after diet, year after year.
Feeding me M&M’s all the while… Oh God, that’s it, isn’t it? He must actually like me fat.

Funny how it had never occurred to me before now. He must be one of those guys who gets off on it (
Marie Claire,
October: “Men Who Like Their Ladies Large”). But should that piss me
off or not? I couldn’t decide. Was it wonderful that Bruce loved me no matter how I looked, or was he betraying me by fattening me up just to satisfy his own twisted sexual fetish? My heart began pounding again.

Courage, Evie. Pull it together—now is not the time to lose it. Bruce loves you, you love him, and it’s all gonna be okay.

Pruscilla caught my gaze in the mirror, sighed and looked over toward the door dramatically. Bruce was waiting outside.
What to do? What to do?

I loved him. I really did. Besides, I’d said yes. How could I have let myself say yes if I didn’t really want to marry him? And if there was only one thing in this world that I knew for sure, it was to trust my instincts. Always listen to your inner voice—I’ve taken away at least that from years of watching
Oprah
(plus the fact that liquid diets don’t work in the long run).

Bruce was the best thing for me. Everybody knows it—Morgan, all my other friends, Mom, my grandmother. Bruce grounds me. He accepts me. He
loves
me. And even though he usually drives me crazy, we’re a perfect match. I’d be a fool to let him go.

So there really was only one thing I could do—plan a fabulous wedding. That, and lose about forty pounds.

L
ater that afternoon, Pruscilla Cockburn stood over me dictating her latest memo, shifting the ample burden of her weight from foot to foot. With each lumbering sway, a noxious waft of Kendra White’s “Honeysuckle Garden” perfume, discontinued since 1996, assaulted my senses. Through watering eyes, I squinted at my screen.

“Evie, please try and pay attention. I’ll start again. Date it for today.” Obviously. “And send it out to the usual team—all the Division Managers.”

I typed dutifully.

“Do you think half an hour is long enough?” I interrupted, remembering my evaluation last year. Pruscilla spent the whole meeting extolling the virtues of a serious attitude. If I ever expected to be promoted, she’d said, then I’d have to start buckling down, taking things seriously. She never so much as glanced at my list of grievances (“Nobody else I know has to work between Christmas and New Year’s”; “Why can’t we have fat-free creamer in the coffee cart?”) and helpful suggestions (“Yearend bonuses should be scaled according to company profits and not employee salaries”). In the end, we ran out of time before I even had the chance to plead my case for a raise, which to my mind, is the whole point of these meetings in the first place.

Pruscilla glared at me and continued.

“…and do not engage in endless discussions regarding salary increases. Notify me regarding any employee whom you feel has met the requirements for a raise…”

“That’s good,” I assured her. “You’re definitely right about that. No sense in wasting time.”

“I’m not done yet,” she said. “I will be out of the office from October 16 to December 1, so all five Product Division Managers will need to see me within the next two weeks to complete their own evaluations. Please make an appointment with me as soon as possible, as my schedule is already quite full. Pruscilla Cockburn, Director of Product Marketing, East Coast Division.”

Pruscilla, gone for six weeks? This was the woman who’d notoriously used a personal day to clean out her desk. She hadn’t missed a single day of work in the three years I’d been there.

“You’re leaving for
six
weeks?” I asked, barely able to contain myself. My mind was reeling with the possibilities. I could come in late, leave early, take long lunches…

Wait a second…instead of just slacking off, this could be a great professional opportunity, provided I take proper advantage of the situation. After all, there’s supposed to be more to work than just getting away with things and looking busy
(Cosmopolitan,
September: “Seven Secrets to Job Security”). And everyone knows that the higher up you climb on the corporate ladder, the less you actually have to do yourself and the more you can delegate to others, not to mention perks like expense accounts and parking spots.

This was brilliant! Pruscilla would probably entrust me with everything. As chief note-taker at her biweekly brainstorming sessions, I know exactly how her mind works. Once or twice I even had the feeling she’d taken credit for my work. My gift for product names, especially lipstick, has gone completely un-appreciated (Prissy Persimmon, Sycophantic Cinnamon—those were mine!) and I also have a way with words, as my contributions to the wildly successful direct-mailing campaign of the Fall of ’99 can attest (“Why Buy Foreign Makeup at Department-Store Prices When You Can Have American Quality for Less, Delivered Right to Your Door?”). With her gone, I could make a real name for myself, maybe even get promoted before she gets back….

Pruscilla interrupted with a thoughtful wheeze, “I’m just taking some time off for personal reasons.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to sound concerned. I was still pissed off at her for not giving me the afternoon off. True to form, Bruce had to go back to work anyway, but still—it isn’t every day a girl gets engaged, and it’s not like I was going to get anything done here. I’d spent the last hour staring at my ring and graciously fielding congratulatory visits from co-workers who’d heard about the proposal.

“I’m fine, nothing to worry about,” she replied in a singsong voice about an octave higher than normal.

“Well, I certainly hope so. Six weeks is a long time to be away from the office,” I continued, trying to play to her insecurities.

“Thelma Thorpe from Haircare will be stepping in to my position
temporarily
to make sure things run smoothly.” Shit.

“Are you sure that’s necessary? I can handle…”

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” she cut in, “but I need somebody I can trust to stay on top of things. As it is there’s going to be a lot more for you to do so you’ll have to try very hard to stay focussed, Evelyn. Especially since I’m sure you’re going to be preoccupied with your engagement for the next little while.”

Nice reversal. I had to hand it to her.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m up to speed on everything,” I said with a wave of the hand. “And you know I’m not one to get distracted easily. But can I call you if I need to after you’re gone? I mean, if there’s an emergency or something I can’t handle?” I
had
to know what she was up to, if she was leaving town or something.

“No…I don’t think so,” she said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “At least not for the first month or so. But we’ll work out all the details later. For now, why don’t you go home early? You’ve had quite a day!”

Pruscilla smiled beneficently. I looked at my watch. Five-fifteen. Thanks a lot. I grabbed my bag and coat.

“But come in a bit early Monday morning, say around seven-thirty?” She was still smiling. “We’ll sit down and have a quick meeting when it’s nice and quiet.” Then she leaned in for a hug. “Congratulations again, dear.”

“Thanks.” An invisible cloud of Honeysuckle Garden all but consumed me.

The subway ride home was a long one. As the train lurched forward, my stomach bubbled and my mind raced, playing over the day’s events. Sure, my private life had been dragged kicking and screaming through the office like some kind of circus
sideshow, but aside from that, I felt quite good. And the rest of the day had passed pleasantly enough.

Most days at work, I tend to keep to myself more or less, especially since there are really only a handful of people there I actually like. All in all, I think I’ve managed to maintain just the right combination of professional courtesy, friendly water-cooler approachability and social aloofness. That way, after I’m promoted, the respect I’ll need will already be in place. Without that, things can get pretty messy—I heard of one girl down in Accounts who, after a promotion, ended up having to fire her daughter’s godmother, a woman she’d worked side by side with for years. Eventually, she became so reviled by the underlings that she was forced to quit, and ended up playing the fiddle in the subway for spare change.

But today, anonymity shattered, I decided to make a show of it. At the coffee cart, I let Andrea, a bitter marketing drone who works in Fragrances, grab my hand to get a better look at The Ring. On cue, it sparkled brilliantly under the fluorescent lights. Inspired by her courage, two other girls skulking nearby came in for a peek.

“That’s at least a carat and a half, you know,” Andrea said. “I thought your boyfriend was a teacher.” The girls behind her laughed. It was well known that Andrea had been expecting Phil, her boyfriend of far too many years, to propose during Labor Day weekend on their romantic Caribbean cruise. But Phil, an actuary, had booked during hurricane season to save a few bucks. He ended up spending the rainy days in their cabin with his laptop, while Andrea played bingo and shopped for gold-plated chain by the foot.

“Oh, he
is
a teacher,” I replied coyly. “He teaches gifted children at a private school on the Upper East Side. He went there himself, actually.”

“Really? Must pay well,” she said, releasing my hand and reaching for a Sweet’n Low.

“Not really,” I told her, leaving her to wonder about Bruce’s mysterious and wealthy family.

So I’d managed to keep it together quite nicely, apart from that little thing in the bathroom. But Bruce was a pretty good sport about it. He always is when it comes to my dramatics. After I came out of the bathroom, there he was, surrounded by five or six women hanging on his every word, and looking remarkably pleased for a guy whose girlfriend had vomited at the thought of marrying him.

“…I wanted it to be old-fashioned and romantic, a real public declaration of my love, you know?” I heard him saying as I walked up behind him. His fan club quickly scattered at the sight of me and my puffy eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stifling a laugh.

“Yeah,” I sniffed, and laughed myself.

“You know, if I didn’t think you could handle this, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“You mean ask me to marry you?”

“No, stupid, I mean ask you here at work!”

“Oh,” I replied, feeling a bit foolish. Loud shushing sounds came from behind the bathroom door, but Bruce didn’t seem to notice. “Of course I can handle it. I guess I just never expected my professional life and my personal life to collide in exactly this way.”

“I just wanted it to be something you’d remember forever. Like a story we’ll tell our grandkids, you know?”

“Well, good job, then. But I’m pretty sure I would have remembered it no matter what, even if we were, um, I don’t know…walking in the park or something,” I said, glaring at the crowd of women pretending to be fixing a photocopy machine nearby.

Bruce just laughed and hugged me. His shirt smelled good, and I buried my face deeper.

“But we never go for walks in the park, Evie. If I’d asked you
to go for a walk in the park, you wouldn’t have wanted to.” True. Walks in the park are for old ladies and people without cable.

“You needed this, Evie.
We
needed this. Shake things up a bit, you know?” He held my tear-stained cheeks between his hands and kissed me. Not a long kiss, but it was more than just a peck. And then he looked at me with a face that, in an instant, said, “You silly, silly thing. Don’t you know that I’ll take care of you? And whatever problems we may have, we’ll work them out. These people, this job, the rest of world, none of it matters. What matters is us, so let’s forget all this crap and get on with it!”

Yes, let’s get on with it.
Bruce has a wonderful way of forgiving me no matter what; it’s really one of the things I love most about him. So, once again, even though I’d behaved like a complete idiot, he managed to make me believe I was a completely normal person, and not the freak I truly was.

He kissed me again. Whether it was all the crying or the barfing or the seven cups of coffee or the kiss, I felt a little wobbly. I took it to be the kiss—even though it had been a long time since Bruce made me weak in the knees. He looked into my eyes and smiled. It was pretty obvious that he was pleased with himself. I guess he deserved to be.

We’d talked about getting married before. You don’t date a guy for six years and not talk about it. But I really, truly didn’t expect it to happen any time soon. For us, or for me, rather, it was more of an abstract idea, like “Of course we’ll get married one day. Then we’ll move out to the suburbs and buy our kid a pony.” But this time it was for real. And the more I thought about it on the ride home, the more I saw that it was a great thing. And on top of it all, for what might have been the first time in his life, Bruce had done something completely on his own. Made a real decision, without consulting me, his mother or anybody. He deserved to feel good. And so did I. Something was finally happening in my life, something real. Like I’d been asleep for years, content to play the woman in the gray flannel suit, only now the alarm clock was ringing.

The train was pretty crowded, and I hadn’t noticed till then but the man sitting on my right was leaning up against me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was clutching a ratty pink Barbie backpack tied up with brown cord. His left knee bounced up and down frenetically as he tapped his heel against the floor. On one foot, he wore a filthy Reebok cross-trainer smeared with what was probably not rust-colored paint. On the other foot, a purple toe with a black nail stuck out of a dirty sock. Disgusting.
I’m so sick of this shit.
His bulging eyes darted from my hand to my chest then back down to my hand. My Ring! He was staring at my Ring!

Normally, in situations like these, which occur not altogether infrequently on the A Train, I get up and move. But today, the sight of this greasy interloper inspired within me the courage to take a stand for all peace-loving female commuters everywhere.

I looked directly at him and cleared my throat. Bruce would have absolutely killed me. The guy looked up suddenly and when his eyes met mine, he let out a shriek so loud that the force of his very bad breath blew my bangs up off my forehead (
In Style,
April: “The New-Fashioned Fringe: Bangs Are Back!”). With a gasp, I jumped back onto the lady beside me. But she was wearing a Walkman and I guess she hadn’t heard him yell, so she freaked out and reflexively pushed me forward into the group of stunned passengers. I reached out wildly for the man standing in front of me wearing a black trench coat (as it turns out, a very sensible color for a trench coat). But he just deflected me and used the opportunity to slide into my seat. I landed on my hands and knees on the floor of the car. The crazy guy, whimpering a little, just rocked back and forth, staring at someone else’s hands.