The shaking gets more violent.
“Get orf me!”
“Katie, you have to get up. Now!”
Joanne rips the blanket off my face, and my eyes are flooded with light.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Katie, pay attention. You have an interview in fifteen minutes!”
The world sinks slowly into my still drunk brain.
I. Have. An. Interview. In. Fifteen. Minutes.
Oh my God. The Line. The perfect job. The interview I have to nail. The interview I have in fifteen minutes.
I bolt out of bed and lurch toward the bathroom. The face that greets me in the mirror is a mess. My hair’s sticking out at all angles, and my eyes are ringed with last night’s mascara and eye shadow. I’m not completely sure, but I might also be a little green.
I take several deep breaths and command myself to pull it together. Under Joanne’s reproachful eye, I fly into a fury of preparation, washing my face vigorously while simultaneously brushing the aftertaste of last night out of my mouth. After a few strokes of my hairbrush, I whip my hair back into a loose twist and pick up the clothes still laid out on my unslept-in bed.
“What happened to you last night?” Joanne asks.
I slip into my skirt and pull the sweater over my head. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s obvious.”
“Thanks for waking me up.”
“You know, someday, I’m not going to be around to take care of you.”
“Joanne . . .”
“You’d better get out of here.”
I take a last look at myself in the mirror (not so bad, considering) and run down to the street, searching desperately for a cab. I’d meant to take the subway to save money, but that plan’s clearly out the window.
In a bit of good luck, a cab shudders to a stop the first time I fling my hand in the air. As it jerks and stops its way downtown, I fight a bout of nausea and nervously watch the minutes tick by on the clock.
8:56. 8:57. 8:58. 8:59.
Please, please, please.
9:00.
Shit, shit, shit.
9:01.
Breathe. Nope, can’t breathe.
9:02.
Oh, thank God.
I throw money at the cabdriver and sprint across the street through the rush-hour traffic. Cars screech and horns blare, but I somehow make it across alive. In the glass-and-marble lobby, I blank on the floor I’m supposed to go to. I wait through 9:03 and 9:04 at the information counter before I’m at the front of the line. Twenty-ninth floor, thanks! The elevator finally arrives at 9:05; 9:06 and 9:07 are spent stopping at what seems like every single floor between the lobby and the twenty-ninth floor.
I hurry out of the elevator, fling open The Line’s glass door, and try to walk calmly to the receptionist’s desk. She has spiky purple hair and a ring through her nose. She can’t be more than nineteen.
“Are you Kate?”
“Yes.”
“Oh good, you’re finally here.”
It’s then that I notice the clock on the wall behind her.
9:15.
I’m so screwed.
“I was stuck in traffic,” I say weakly. Even to me it sounds like I said, “The dog ate my homework.”
“Yes, traffic can be bad at this time of day.”
“Yes.”
“They’re waiting for you in the Nashville Skyline room. It’s down that hall.”
“Thanks.”
I walk down a long hall decorated with framed blow-ups of The Line’s past covers, passing a row of conference rooms. Abbey Road. Pet Sounds. Nevermind. Nashville Skyline.
OK. Here we go.
I check my reflection in the glass that frames an iconic shot of Dylan holding his guitar to his chest while he smiles down at the camera. Not quite the impression I wanted to make, but surely I’m not that color.
I knock on the door.
“Come in.”
I take a deep breath and walk in. There are six men and women seated around one end of a long oak slab. Another photo of Dylan, singing close-to-the-mike harmony with Joan Baez, dominates the wall behind them.
I smile nervously. “Hi, I’m Kate Sandford. I’m sorry I’m late.”
A small woman in her early twenties with short mousy brown hair rises to greet me. She’s wearing a tight black sweater dress that emphasizes her ample curves.
“Hi, Kate. I’m Elizabeth. We spoke on the phone? Why don’t you have a seat?”
I sit at the end of the table and face the group. I’m having trouble focusing on their faces.
“Thank you so much for seeing me. I’m sorry about being late. Traffic.”
“We understand? This is Kevin, Bob, Cora, Elliott, and Laetitia? Got it? Great? Let’s begin?”
“Sure.”
“Kate, we’ve been reading your pieces, and we really like them,” says a man in his early thirties who I think is named Bob. Or maybe it’s Elliott.
“Thank you, Bob.”
“It’s Kevin.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No problem. Why do you want to work at The Line ?”
I clear my throat. “Well, obviously, it’s always been a dream of mine. Of course, it would be. Anyway, I love music, and I’ve read The Line forever, and, I don’t know, do you believe in soul mates? Well, I’ve always kind of thought of this magazine as being my journalistic soul mate.”
My heart starts to pound. What the hell is wrong with me? Soul mates? I actually used the words “soul mates” in an interview?
I scan their faces nervously. Cora (or is it Laetitia?) looks like she’s trying to keep herself from laughing.
“What do you think you could bring to the magazine? What do you have that’s different from everyone else out there?” Elizabeth’s lilting voice brings back the nausea I suppressed in the cab.
Let’s try this again. With feeling.
“Well . . . I have this real pure love of music, you know? Like on my application? I had a lot of trouble narrowing down my musical influences because I really love all kinds of music. Like, I might dig a Britney Spears song, and the next minute be listening to, you know, Korn.”
Did I just say I liked Britney Spears’s music?
Cora/Laetitia isn’t even bothering to cover up her laughter now, and I can’t blame her. Elizabeth’s way of speaking seems to be catching, and I’m becoming less articulate by the minute. I feel like I’m about to throw up.
“Talk to me about the bands you’ve been reviewing lately. Who stands out?” asks an older man whose name I can’t even begin to guess at.
“Well, I really like this little neighborhood band called . . . um . . . hold on . . . it’ll come to me in a minute . . .” The color creeps up my face as I draw a complete blank. “Um . . . I’m sure I’ll remember their name in a second . . . Anyway, they’re this great mix of . . . you know, that band that’s always on the radio now . . .”
Total panic. I’ve known and remembered more about music than most teenage boys, and I can’t remember the name of one of the biggest bands of that very moment. One of their songs was even playing on the radio in the cab on the way here.
I’m completely done for.
“Kate? Are you all right?” Elizabeth asks.
“I feel a little dizzy. Could I excuse myself for a minute to use the bathroom?”
Bob or Kevin, or whoever he is, frowns, but Elizabeth tells me where it is, and says they’ll be waiting for me.
I walk quickly past Pet Sounds and Nevermind to the bathroom. The sharp odor of disinfectant catches in my nostrils. I splash water on my face, and grip the side of the sink as the room spins around me.
This cannot be happening! Please, please, please. Not today, not today, not today.
My stomach lurches, and I bolt into one of the stalls and throw up.
And up.
And up.
When I’m done, I slump to the floor and press my aching head against the cold tile wall, wishing I c
ould disappear. The best day of my life has turned into the worst in an instant. I can’t believe the interview I’ve waited half a lifetime for is coming to this.
“Kate? Are you in here?”
Elizabeth. Fantastic. Please, please, let a hole in the ground open up and swallow me. Maybe it can take me right down to hell, where I belong.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
I struggle to stand, and the room begins to spin again. I lurch over the bowl and empty the remainder of my stomach’s contents.
Elizabeth raps on the door. “Kate. What’s going on in there? Kate?”
“I just feel a little sick . . .”
I throw up again, and this time what comes out doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever had to eat or drink and leaves a rancid, metallic taste in my mouth.
“You’re drunk, right?”
“What? No! I just ate something bad. I think it was sushi.”
“I can smell it on you? The alcohol?”
As her words sink in, I slide back to the floor in horror, my legs too weak to hold me.
“Maybe this is none of my business? But I’ve seen this before? There are good places, you know? Like for people with problems with alcohol?”
“I’ll be out in a minute, OK?”
“I could give you a name? Like of a group? You know, AA?”
“I just need a minute,” I whisper. “Just a minute.”
“I don’t think there’s any point in continuing with the interview? When you’re ready you can show yourself out?”
I listen to her leaving the bathroom, immobilized.
I know I have to get out of here, but I don’t have the strength.
This is the worst, worst day of my life.
My thirtieth birthday is the worst day of my life.
Chapter 2
Redemption Song
When I finally pick myself up off the floor, I slink out of the building and somehow make it back to my apartment and my bed.
And that’s where I stay for the next two days. I don’t answer my phone. I ignore all texts. The only email I open is the formal “Thanks, but no thanks” I receive from The Line.
When I can’t stand to be in bed anymore, I move to the living room couch and watch television twenty out of every twenty-four hours in a depressed wine haze.
There’s a lot to watch. After the escape-from-rehab-high-speed-chase fiasco, TGND disappeared. The speculation is that she’s holed up somewhere with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Connor Parks, an actor eight years her senior.
Connor’s career exploded when he made the first Young James Bond movie four years ago, and he now makes ten million dollars a picture. He’s living like it too, having apparently rented (some sources say bought) an island in the South Pacific, and this is where the press speculates endlessly that TGND is hiding.
“How can you watch that shit all day?” Joanne asks in her twenty-seven-going-on-forty voice when she finds me in a nest of blankets on the couch for the fifth morning running.
I kick an empty wine bottle under the couch. “What do you care?”
“I don’t. But it might be nice to be able to watch my own TV once in a while.”
Ah, crap. Who knew Joanne had feelings?
“I’m sorry, Joanne. I don’t mean to be such a bitch.”
She gives me a thin smile. “Apology accepted on one condition.”
“What?”
“You take a shower, get dressed, and go outside.”
“That sounds like a lot of conditions.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
And because Joanne is right, I take a shower and go outside for the first time in a week. The air is clean and mild in the way it only is in spring. The first buds are on the trees, and everyone on the street is smiling, or at least it seems that way.
For the first time in a week, I’m smiling too. It’s hard to wallow in self-pity with warm sunlight on your face and the scent of cherry blossoms in the air.
I walk through my neighborhood, thinking about the state I’m in. Where my life is going. How I’ve been chasing a dream for eight long years without really getting anywhere. Something has to give, and I have a feeling I know what it is.
So, when I get back to the apartment, I call my best friend, Rory. We come from the same small town a few hours north and have been friends since kindergarten.
I fill her in on why she hasn’t heard from me in so long.
“And then she said I should go to rehab, can you believe it?”
“Um, what time did you want to meet?”
Rory’s an investment banker on the verge of a major promotion. We meet for lunch in her office building—the only place I know where she won’t cancel on me at the last minute. There’s this fifties-style diner in a corner of the lobby, and I wait for her nervously at the chrome counter.
“Katie!”
“Rory!”
I give her a quick hug, being careful not to wrinkle her navy banker’s suit. Her olive skin rarely needs any makeup, but today she looks pale and drawn. She’s even thinner than usual, and her cobalt blue eyes have circles under them that make her look more heroin-chic than city bigwig.
“Don’t they ever let you outside?”
She makes a face. “I’ll go outside when I make director.”
“You could at least go to a tanning booth. Or, they have these moisturizers now that have self-tanner in them. They look pretty realistic.”
“You’re one to talk. Haven’t you just spent the last week holed up in your apartment?”
“True enough.”
The waitress takes our orders, and we catch up on the small details of our lives.
“So, why’d you want to meet, anyway?” Rory asks as she picks at the plate of food in front of her.
“I need an excuse to see my best friend?”
“I thought that other girl, Greer, was your best friend.”
“Don’t be silly. She’s just someone to party with.”
“If you say so.”
“Rory, you know you’re irreplaceable, even if you become a big, snooty director-person who never has time for her friends.”
Her eyes narrow. “If I become?”
“I meant when, of course.”
“I hope so. Anyway, don’t worry. I’ll still have time for you.”
“And I promise not to mind if you’re too embarrassed to tell people what I do for a living.”
“What do you do for a living?”
I start ripping my napkin into tiny little squares. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What’s up?”
“I was, um, hoping you could get me a job. I’d be willing to do anything, like start in the mailroom or be your secretary. Whatever it takes.”
She looks surprised. “You want to work at the bank?”
“Sure, why not?”
“But what about becoming a writer?”
Ouch. I thought I was a writer. Unsuccessful maybe, but still . . .
“I’m sick of eating ramen noodles,” I say, trying to laugh it off.
“You can do some awesome things with ramen noodles.”
“Yeah, I should write a cookbook or something. So, what do you say?”
She takes a small bite from her sandwich, thinking it over. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“OK, let me see what I can do.”
“You’re the best, Rory.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
“Like you’d ever let me.”
Two weeks later, after more interviews than it should take to become president of a bank, I’m officially hired as the second assistant to the head of the Mergers and Acquisitions department. I’m assigned a small interior office next to assistant number one and told I’ll be making $50,000 a year.
As I take it all in, I feel both excited at the prospect of solvency and sick to my stomach at the prospect of working te
n hours a day in a room with no windows. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m grateful Rory came through for me.
Besides the money, the most exciting thing about the job is seeing Rory on a semi-regular basis. When my office tour is done, we spread our lunch out on the small worktable in her incredibly cluttered office.
“I know you’re going to tell me you have a system, or something, but how the hell do you find anything in here?” I say, crunching on one of the tart pickles Rory discards from her sandwich.
“It’s camouflage,” she replies, picking up a napkin and tucking it into the collar of her dress shirt.
“Busy office, busy woman?”
“Precisely.”
“You’re pretty crafty.”
Her lips curve into a smile. “Why, thank you.”
“And thank you for the job.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We should totally go out tonight and celebrate.”
“I can’t. I haven’t seen Dave in a week. I need to remind him what I look like.”
Dave and Rory have been together since our second year of university, and he’s the only person I know who works harder than she does. They’re scarily alike, and even resemble each other enough to sometimes be mistaken for brother and sister. On paper they make you want to puke, but in person, they’re just Rory and Dave: best friends and lovers. We should all be so lucky.
“Oh, I think he’ll remember you.”
“Well, I’m not taking any chances.”
She takes a small bite from the corner of her sandwich. The amount she eats every day wouldn’t get me to eleven o’clock in the morning.
“So, I’m on my own?”
She frowns. “Should you even be going out?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“It’s just . . . sometimes you can’t handle your alcohol.”
“What?”
She puts down her sandwich. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you working here in the first place? Because you got drunk when you shouldn’t have, right?”
Excuse me?
“It was my birthday.”
“It was the day before your birthday.”
“Don’t wordsmith me, Rory.”
“That’s not really the point, is it?”
“What is your point?”
She hesitates. “That maybe you should cut down. Especially if you want to succeed here.”
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