The Night I Got Lucky (2 page)

I thought about Dustin and Hadley as I sat in a meeting for a new business pitch. Roslyn Jorno, my boss at the PR agency of Harper Frankwel , stood at the head of the conference table.

Roslyn was a smal woman who almost always dressed in dove-gray. She didn’t look happy today, and we al knew that couldn’t be good. Roslyn lived for her work (in fact, it was rumored that she actual y
lived
at our offices on Michigan Avenue), so when she was unhappy, the rest of us were soon to be miserable, too.

“This isn’t going to work, people,” she said, pointing to a board behind her. On it was a list of suggested headlines we might obtain for our client, Grenier’s Stud Finder, whose product used NASA-like technology to find wal studs. The headlines read: “Ladies Can Find Studs at Chicago Hardware Show,” “Studs Aren’t Hard To Come By Anymore,” and “Find the Stud That’s Right For You.”

“‘Ladies can find studs’?” Roslyn said mockingly.

I shot a glance at Alexa Vil a seated next to me. Alexa, an annoyingly beautiful woman with dark hair and fair skin, had come up with that first headline.

“And ‘find the stud that’s right for you’?” Roslyn said. “Are we sel ing sex or hardware?” She crossed her arms and stared pointedly at me.

Apparently, she didn’t like my work so much either. I had to admit I’d written the other headlines.

“I believe that was Bil y’s,” said Alexa Vil a seated next to me.

“Elegant, people! I want elegant. Understand?” Roslyn always preached elegance, which kil ed me. We crafted publicity campaigns for everything from power tools to pharmaceutical drugs to local news shows, but none of those products or clients was particularly elegant. It wasn’t as if we were pushing the symphony orchestra.

Even though I rarely saw them, I thought of my sisters then because I was sure Dustin and Hadley not only owned stud finders with laser technology but knew how to use them. Yet Dustin and Hadley were both the epitome of elegance, the kind of women whose angular frames looked stylish in jeans and a man’s T-shirt while they wielded a power saw.

I, on the other hand, would take off a limb if I tried to use a power saw. I wouldn’t know a putter from a hockey stick, and the mere whiff of scotch makes me flinch.

“Elegant,” said Evan across the table. “Very interesting.” As if he hadn’t heard this thirty-three thousand times before. “You’re absolutely right, Roz.”

Since Evan had made vice president, he’d been cal ing Roslyn “Roz,” something no one else had ever attempted, and, Evan being Evan, he got away with it. I couldn’t help but grin when he turned his head and winked at me. Although I’d been married for two years, I had a little crush on Evan. Okay, more than a little. My friend Tess liked to cal it the Everlasting Crush.

“Bil y,” Roslyn said, “you do know that most of our target demographic is male, right?”

I glared at Alexa, then cleared my throat, and sat tal er. “Of course, but the point is to grab attention. And these headlines, if we could talk the press into them, would grab anyone’s attention, male or female.”

“Wel , let’s not alienate our male audience, okay?”

I hated Roslyn’s habit of speaking in questions. It made me want to do the same thing. It made me want to ask,
Wouldn’t it help all of us if you got laid?

“No problem,” I said instead. I batted away the thought that it would probably help if
I
got laid once in a while.

“And Bil y,” Roslyn said, “you realize this campaign is important for a number of reasons, right?”

If it were possible, I would have crawled under the table. Lately, Roslyn had been making ominous threats (always posed as queries, of course) that not only might I miss the VP

promotion I’d been waiting for since the Mesozoic Era, but I might be demoted (or worse) if my productivity didn’t improve. And now this loosely veiled threat in front of the team let everyone know my ass was on the line. I saw Alexa suppressing a grin. Evan, God love him, looked miserable for me. The rest of the group shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Should I quit now? I wanted to. I
desperately
wanted to. But the truth was I’d been putting out my feelers for months and the industry was in a lockdown. No one was hiring.

“I understand completely,” I said. With the last shred of dignity I had in my body, I looked right at her. There was a painful silence during which Roslyn and I stared at each other. No one muttered a word. Wil iam, the guy to my right, shuffled some papers. Alexa cleared her throat.

In my mind, a montage of photos from my career at Harper Frankwel flashed before me—first as an eager intern rising quickly to assistant and then account exec and so on. It seemed I was a natural at the job, and I adored it. I loved writing press releases, creatively shading words and drawing out sentences to make our clients appear more worldly or accomplished or cutting edge. I loved pitching those clients to the press, subtly hounding producers and editors until the victorious moment when they caved and agreed to cover us. It seemed right to everyone, including myself, that I was heading straight for a vice presidency. I’d been told by Jack Varner, my old boss, that it was a formality, merely a matter of months. But then Jack found God, or something approximating God, and fol owed that deity to California where he was now training to become an instructor of Bikram yoga. In came Roslyn and out went my thoughts of professional glory.

In the boardroom now, Roslyn and I stil stared at each other. I could feel a bead of sweat col ect under the waistband of my pants. I could feel the glances that the team members shot from one of us to the other.

Final y, Roslyn dropped her eyes to the pad of paper in front of her. She crossed something out, probably my future, and cal ed the meeting to an end.

Evan waited for me outside the doorway.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said as we walked down the hal . He gave me a thump on the arm worthy of a linebacker.

In the PR world, which is populated by so many women and gay men, Evan was the token straight guy. The token straight guy who happened to have thick yel ow-blond hair, mint-green eyes and dimples that creased his cheeks when he smiled. The linebacker pats were for the best, I knew. I couldn’t be tempted by someone who thought of me only as buddy material.

“Seriously, don’t listen to her bul shit,” Evan said. “Just do your normal stel ar job, and maybe this wil be the campaign that gets you the VP.”

“Right,” I said. I prayed he was correct. I prayed that Roslyn’s threats were real y just tough love maneuvers designed to motivate me.

We reached Evan’s office, the one he got when he was named VP. The wal behind his desk was covered with an eclectic combination of Renee Magritte prints, Notre Dame footbal posters and framed handbil s from the band, Hel o Dave.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen those guys.” I pointed to a Hel o Dave poster announcing a show at the Aragon.

Before Chris and I got married, Evan and I used to see Hel o Dave together. We would drink way too much and dance until way too late. The music made my heart thump with happiness; it made my body feel light and free. The music seemed to separate me from myself in the most wonderful way. It made me bold enough to bat my eyes and drop some not so subtle hints, hoping Evan would make a pass. He never did. The next morning, we’d huddle around the pretzel tin in the company kitchen, deconstructing the set list, the people we’d run into, the women who’d given Evan their numbers. But then, I met Chris and my crush on Evan disappeared. Eventual y, I stopped attending Hel o Dave shows.

“They’ve got a gig this Saturday,” Evan said, sounding excited. “Yeah, it’s at Park West. You’ve got to come.”

“Maybe.” But I knew I wouldn’t go. My crush had returned sometime in the past year—residing back in my subconscious—and thinking about Hel o Dave reminded me how hot and bothered Evan could make me. No need to torture myself, and besides, Chris and I were supposed to have dinner with my mother in Barrington.

“Oh, c’mon. For old time’s sake.” He smiled, and those dimples pleated his smooth golden skin.

“Who’re you bringing?”

“Shel y.”

“A new one?”

“Yep, and she’s hot. God, you should see her. You wouldn’t frickin’ believe how hot this girl is.” This was how Evan talked to me—again, like a fel ow linebacker.

Strangely, many people in my life seemed to think I was a man, or asexual in some way. This now included Evan, and even my husband. We had gone from having sex at least twice a week prewedding to, if I was very lucky, twice a month postwedding.

“Who loves ya, girl?” Evan said as I neared the door.

I answered as usual. A listless, “You do.” Because Evan didn’t real y love me, except as a close friend. That was enough, I knew logical y—I was married, after al —but this little ritual often depressed me.

“You got it,” he said.

“Bil y, honey, how did the new business meeting go?”

My mother knew entirely too much about my life. I’d mentioned once that such meetings usual y took place on Monday mornings, and now here she was cal ing me, at precisely 11:00 on Monday.

“Not so great.” I put on my headset and clicked on the Internet. If I gave my mother’s daily phone cal s my undivided attention, I’d never get any work done.

“What happened?” she asked. “Didn’t Roslyn like your stud finder ideas?”

Damn, had I told her about the Grenier’s campaign? That would add an extra ten minutes to this cal .

“You should ask Dustin or Hadley about it,” she continued. “They probably know about those tools.”

This immediately saddened me. It was true that Dustin and Hadley knew something about hardware, but it was also true that they both avoided our mother, claiming busyness and time changes. My mom was only mentioning their names now to see if I’d spoken to them, to learn about the two daughters she didn’t know very wel anymore.

“I got an e-mail from Hadley last week,” I said.

My eyes shot to the black-framed photo next to my computer monitor. In the picture, my mom and I, the short women in the family, are flanked by Dustin and Hadley, who rise over us, looking like twins. It was taken in San Francisco, right after Dustin moved there and a few months before Hadley was transferred to the London office of the investment bank she worked for. That was four years ago. I’d seen Dustin three times since then—once at her wedding, once at mine and once when I was out West for business. I’d only seen Hadley the one time at Dustin’s wedding. Hadley and her husband, Nigel, hadn’t been able to make it to mine. There was no great rift, no great drama, except for the little fact of what had happened twenty-five years ago—our father took off. None of us had seen him again. None of us had been the same since. It had wounded us each separately and we’d never been able to truly help one another. And so over time, Dustin and Hadley had drifted farther and farther away.

“What was in the e-mail?” my mother asked, her voice forlorn.

“Hadley is real y crazy right now,” I said, hoping to assuage the melancholy in her voice. “The bank might be bought out, and so she’s in meetings al the time.”

Roslyn stopped by my cube and waved one of my press releases. “Can I see you?” she said in a loud whisper.

I put on a serious face and nodded. I pointed at the phone and mouthed, “Client. One minute.”

Roslyn sighed, gestured toward her office, then left.

“Is Hadley stil trying to get pregnant?” my mom said. If it was possible, her voice became more heartbreaking. She knew little about Hadley’s procreative attempts, and since Hadley had sworn never to move back to the States. (“Why should I?” she’d said. “It’s more civilized here and people aren’t so nosy.”) We’d probably never see the result of those attempts, even if she were successful.

“I think so,” I said.

“Ah, wel , I’m sure she’l be cal ing to tel me soon.”

“I’m sure, Mom.”

I opened my e-mail program.
You have 67 new messages,
it said. “Shit,” I muttered.

“What’s that, Bil y?”

“Nothing.” It was hard to cut her off, even when I had no time to talk. Somehow, I’d become my mom’s only daily social outlet. She had sisters who lived on the North Shore, but they hadn’t had much contact since my mom married my dad so many years ago. My aunts had foreseen what an utter schmuck he’d be, and my mother was too embarrassed to give them the satisfaction of admitting they were right. And since her second husband, Jan, died three years ago, she’d almost secluded herself, rarely visiting with the few friends she had in Barrington.

“What are you doing today, Mom?” I asked. “You should get out of the house.”

“I know,” she said simply. “I’l try.” My mom kept saying how she wanted to move on—she wanted to get over Jan’s death and get on with her life, but her motivation seemed to have disappeared.

“So anyway, sweetie,” she said, changing the subject, “are you stil seeing that therapist?”

I groaned and began reading my e-mail in earnest—one from Evan reminding me about the Hel o Dave show on Friday night, one from my husband asking me to buy his flaxseed oil when I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. “Yes,” I said. “I’m seeing her tonight, actual y.”

“And what wil you discuss? You and Chris, I assume. How is he?”

“He’s fine, mom, and I’m sorry but I’ve got to go.”

“Maybe you can talk to her about your father, too. I was able to let that go when I married Jan. But you stil need to work on that.”

“I know, Mom, I wil . Love you. Bye now.”

“Bye, baby dol . And don’t forget to talk to that therapist about work, too. I think you’re angry.”

My mother was right. I did have some anger socked away. It had started smal , somewhere in my rib cage. I’d trapped it there for a while, ignoring that tiny but festering wound, because I didn’t want to be one of those people who hadn’t a single good thing to say about their life. Yet that pocket of anger had grown over the past few years, despite my best intentions. I expected certain rewards from my life, I had worked to achieve certain milestones, and yet I’d missed the meeting when recognition and happiness were passed out.

The vice presidency was one issue. I’d earned it.