Sometime Soon (3 page)

Tiger, my four-year-old cat, loves
the stairs. At first he didn’t know what to make of them. He stays indoors, and
we’ve never had steps before. Now he regularly dashes up and down for no reason
I can see other than--he can. Tiger is the first pet I’ve ever had. At first I
felt terrible leaving him alone in the house all day while I was at work. I was
tempted to get another cat to keep him company, but I couldn’t bring myself to
do it. That’s how it starts, right? Pretty soon two cats turn into four and
four turn into eight, and then I’m one of
those
women. No way.

I park in front of my townhouse and
drag my laptop bag, purse, and lunch bag through the hallway and into the
kitchen. I’m braced for the attack, knowing it will come as soon as I turn on
the kitchen light. With my bags unloaded, I reach over and flip the light
switch on. Once the room brightens, he comes at me. A beige blur flies toward
me from under the dining room table. I feel his soft, furry paws grab me around
my bare ankle, and then he jumps back and looks up at me. “Gotcha!” his
expression says. Tiger plays sneak-attack every chance he gets. He never tires
of it.

I reach down and pat his little
head, smiling at the immediate purr response. I refresh his water dish, yawn
widely, and decide I don’t have the energy to call my sister back. I pull Jason
Randall’s card out of my back pocket and place it on the counter. I’m debating
whether or not to call him. Not tonight, of course, but at all. I’m flattered
that he’s interested. But beyond that, I’m not sure I want to bother. Dating
just isn’t fun anymore.

I decide to worry about calling Jason
Randall another time, and I head upstairs to bed with Tiger hot on my heels
.

“You’re early,” Joan comments as I
walk by the front desk at the entrance to our company offices. She comments on my
arrival most every day. I’m generally on the early side, and Joan feels the
need to verbalize this each morning. When walking by the front desk, I hear a
variety of the following, “Leaving early”, “Going out to lunch”, “Dressed up
today”, “Mailing something”, “Got a hair cut”, and it continues. I simply smile
and nod at her. Her job has to be terribly boring--answering the telephone and
checking in visitors all day. But maybe for a middle-aged, slightly plump woman
with a variety of illnesses she’s always describing to anyone who stops in
front of her desk--a job sitting all day in a hermetically-sealed,
temperature-controlled office building with free coffee and snacks, isn’t so
bad.

When I get to my cubicle, I’m happy
to see that no one has left yellow sticky notes or other papers on my chair. No
one is looking for me yet today, but it’s still early. My goal for the day is
to get started on creating several white papers that the sales department can
use when trying to sell and promote a new software security solution that we’re
releasing in a few months. White papers basically explain the technology, and
why it’s superior to other technologies and competitors. This is really some
tough stuff to slog through, so I need to buckle down and get to work.

Outside, it’s a steamy August day,
but inside, it feels more like a frigid winter morning with a blizzard on the
way. Despite the climate-confused office atmosphere, I’m stubbornly dressed in
shorts because it’s summer. But I’m forced to slip on the sweater I keep in my
drawer. That’s when I see the top of Rob’s bald head over the row of cubicle
walls as he bops down the hallway toward his office. Robert Reece is my boss
and he’s a bit eccentric. Actually, he’s really kind of an oddball who often
crosses the line into inappropriateness, but he’s nice enough to work for.
 

Once my laptop is booted up, I
prepare for the day by softly streaming my favorite radio station over the
Internet. “The Pit” by Silversun Pickups slips quietly out of the laptop’s mini
speakers.

“What are you so happy about?” Rob
asks. He’s standing outside my cubicle now. Rob is about average height, but he
is seriously scrawny. His jeans are always belted such that large volumes of
fabric are folded over and cinched together at the waist, like he couldn’t find
jeans small enough to fit him. And he isn’t just bald. He’s really bald. He
must have started losing his hair in high school. I picture Rob as an
ostracized teenager.

“Nothing much,” I say, gazing at
him sympathetically now.

“Those sales monkeys are filling my
Inbox with requests for the marketing collateral. You’re going to have that by
the end of the week, right?”

I blink at him. I’ve actually
encountered a bit of a snafu, and I haven’t updated him yet. “Well, the feature
information you gave me to include doesn’t quite match up with the engineering
specifications I saw.”

Rob waves his hand at me. “Talk to
Karthik,” he says dismissively. He can’t be bothered with the engineering
specifics. He’s above details.

“Did you see
The Bachelor
last
night?” he asks before launching into a rehashed version of last night’s show.
Apparently, one of the women took off her panties and handed them to the
bachelor by way of an introduction. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have
seen the show. I do watch my fair share of television, but I missed the panty
episode. After relaying the details and receiving appropriately shocked
responses from me, Rob moves on to discuss the merits of the panty handshake
with other employees.

I have already emailed Karthik
Singh, the engineering lead Rob was
referring to, but he hasn’t responded. I will likely have to hunt him down for
an answer. Karthik is easy to work with, but a bit hard to pin down. He’s the
brightest engineer at BTS Systems. As such, he is harried and overworked and
always looking disheveled and exhausted. I send another email to Karthik
attempting to politely schedule a time in advance to chat before I am forced to
ambush him. Then I buckle down and spend the next few hours responding to
emails before an item marked Urgent lands in my Inbox. Bryn always marks her
emails as urgent. “Meet me at Starbucks. I need your level head for a few
minutes.”

Bryn works about four blocks away.
There is a Starbucks halfway between our offices. I grab my wallet and mute my
music.

“Early lunch,” Joan comments.

I smile, not bothering to correct
her as I breeze by on my way to the elevators.

It’s a beautiful summer day. The
air is still and warm, smelling only slightly of car exhaust fumes. Working in
Cambridge provides an endless number of restaurants, parks, and coffee spots to
visit when you need a break during the day. Bryn and I usually meet at
Starbucks a few times during the week. Soon the bright summer days will give
way to heavy grey skies and the unwelcome fall chill. So, I’m happy for any
excuse to be outside.

Bryn is already there when I
arrive. I get in line behind her. “What’s up?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “My boss
hates me.”

This is a common theme for our
coffee meetings. Bryn is slightly shorter and a lot rounder than me, despite
always claiming to be on a diet. She works in high-tech as well, as a database
administrator for a biotech company. Standing there together in our shorts,
T-shirts, and sneakers, you would never know that we’re in the middle of a workday.
We order frappuccinos and take them to the metal tables on the outside patio.

“I just saw my review,” Bryn says,
brushing at her chair with a napkin before landing on it dejectedly.

I suck up a cold jolt of caffeine,
squint from the brain freeze shock, and peer at her--waiting for the rest.

“She gave me an average rating.
Again. Which means no salary increase. Again.” She plays with her straw
dejectedly.

Bryn has been at this job for about
three years, the same time-frame for which I have been at mine, except I have
received raises and promotions. I can’t understand why she stays. When first
hired, she’d done very well. Then her manager left, and an “evil” new one was
brought in, completely stalling her career.

“Was there any reason given for
your rating?” I ask.

“Not really. There is a section
listing
Areas to work on
. It was blank.”

“Average is better than poor?
Right?”

She glares at me.

“Can you talk to her about it? Ask
her what the story is? Aren’t managers supposed to meet with you about your
review?”

She shrugs. “What’s the point? She
hates me. I’m doing the same quality of work I did when my other manager was
there, and he loved me.”

“Was anyone else complaining?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Maybe everyone is getting rated
average.” I raise my voice to be heard over a bus rumbling by. “Maybe you have
to be extraordinary to pass muster with her.”

“Maybe she’ll get hit by a bus,”
Bryn says smirking, eyeing the passing MBTA vehicle, obviously picturing her
boss being flattened by it.

“Well, you have two choices,” I
begin, about to give advice I’ve already given her many times. “You could look
for another job--or you could talk to her. Those are your options. Well,
besides wallowing.” I try to be sympathetic. Bryn is stagnant in nearly every
part of her life, and I can’t imagine anything less than a crowbar changing
that. She is constantly complaining about her job, or her weight, or her life
in its entirety, but doing absolutely nothing to change things. “Update your
resumé, at least,” I suggest. “It might make you feel better.”

Bryn nods, sipping her frappuccino.
“How was your dinner last night?” She asks changing the subject.

“The food and the service were
lousy--as you knew they would be, but Katie is good. You should call her. This
is getting ridiculous.”

“Did she say anything about me?”
Bryn asks without quite meeting my eyes.

“No.”

“Have she and Mike set a date yet?”

“No, they’re still discussing it.”

“Is everything okay with them?”

“I guess. Look, just call her and
apologize already. She would never intentionally do anything mean to you. I’m
sure she thought that guy was very nice. She thinks everyone is nice.”

Bryn stops fidgeting with her straw
and eyes me over her drink. “It’s not just the terrible fix-ups.”

“What is it then?” I ask, curious about
her suddenly serious expression.

She shakes her head at me, her dark
bob shimmying across her round face, and glances at her watch. “It’s nothing.
I’ve got to get back soon.”

I decide to let it go. She’ll tell
me eventually. “Well, I guess I won’t have a chance to tell you about the guy
who picked me up at Café Blue last night.”

That stops her cold. “What?” She
eyes me with new interest. “What happened?”

I shrug with casual disinterest. “I
got to Café Blue early and thought I’d get a drink. This guy at the bar came
right up to me and offered to buy me one.”

“You wore the strappy sandals,
didn’t you?” Bryn had talked me into buying them.

I smile and nod.

“See?” She pats my arm. “Dressing
like a girl sometimes doesn’t hurt. Are you going out with him?”

“I don’t know. When we started
talking I got a phone call I had to take, and then Katie showed up and we
didn’t really get a chance to chat. But later he had the waiter give me his
card, and he asked me to call him.”

“You’re going to, right?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

“Uh-huh.” Bryn murmurs with obvious
disapproval. She looks at her watch again and begins clearing her napkin and
straw wrapper off the table.

“What?” I ask.

“You won’t call him. And even if
you did, you’d find something wrong with him.” She stands up and I follow,
disconcerted that she seems angry with me.

“I don’t find things wrong that
aren’t there,” I argue to her back.

Bryn stops on the sidewalk and
turns to me. “No one is perfect.”

“Don’t try telling me that I’m too
picky. Anger-management issues are deal-breakers, as are alcohol issues and
unemployment. I’m discriminating. Why would I want to saddle myself with
someone who has all kinds of problems?”

“You wouldn’t. But you don’t know
that this guy has any issues, and you still won’t call him. Will you?”

I open my mouth to argue, but I
know she’s right. “I’m tired,” I finally say, my shoulders slumping.

She nods sympathetically. “I know.
Me, too. But we can’t give up.”

I could have mentioned that she was
doing nothing on the dating front these days. Nothing she’d told me about, at
least. It was the one part of Bryn’s life that hadn’t been stagnant, before
now. But I kept that thought to myself. I couldn’t figure Bryn out lately. When
Katie first introduced us over a year ago, I thought Bryn was a perfect
partner-in-crime. She was another single friend to spend time with, and those
numbers were dwindling. She was far more outgoing than I was, so going out with
her provided unexpected adventures. It was her idea to head to the Bahamas this
past winter. But since we’d been back, she’d been acting differently. She
hardly ever called me to go out. I could call her, I supposed, but she
generally initiated our outings to new restaurants and clubs. Mostly, she had
to drag me with her. But in the end, I always enjoyed myself.

I sigh. “Okay. I’ll call him.”

“You could sound more enthusiastic.
But at least you’re agreeing.”

“Is everything okay with you?” I
finally decide to ask. “You haven’t seemed like yourself lately.”

“I’m fine. And if my boss could
meet with a terrible accident, I’d be even better.” She turns to go, but
hesitates. “Oh Andy, if you decide to go out with this guy, take your cell
phone with you and tell someone where you’re going. You know, in case he’s a
serial killer.” She smiles sweetly and heads off back to work.

“Very funny,” I yell at her
retreating back.