By midevening, my nerves reached the snapping point. I pounced every time my phone rang, but each time, it was friends or family calling to catch up. When the phone shrilled for the fifth time with someone other than Ben on the caller ID, I gave it up as a lost cause and turned the phone off.
Sandy wandered in from her room with a book in her hand, her finger marking her spot in Healing the Inner You. “You should read this,” she said. “I’m learning a lot. For example, did you know that whatever our predominant emotion is, it’s almost always just a masking emotion for something else?”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “So what your book is saying is that whatever I’m feeling is not what I’m really feeling? That makes total sense.”
“You keep joking, but you’re as messed up as me in a whole different way, girl-who-haunts-her-phone. You’d be having a more satisfying life experience if you did a little soul-searching.” She floated toward the kitchen with a serene New Agey expression on her face.
“You know, there’s a book I could suggest that would probably do more to help you figure out your life than anything you’ve picked up so far,” I said with a grin.
She poked her head back around and scowled. “No church talk. It’s on my list of stuff to work through, but I’m not there yet.”
I held up my hands in surrender and tried out an innocent expression.
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, you need to think through your emotions. Avoiding them isn’t helping you.”
She reached for a cookie, and I decided not to warn her about the measurement mishap. It served her right for snitching. And pointing out uncomfortable truths. She took one bite and spit it out. “Mean,” she said.
“No one told you to take it.”
“Point goes to Jessie,” she grumbled and then fished a yogurt from the fridge and retreated to her room.
I dumped the rest of the salty cookies into the trash and considered her advice. I had nothing else to do. Maybe I should muck around in my muddle of feelings to see what I could find. In my room, I stretched out across my bed, feet propped against my wall in my favorite thinking pose. Trying not to think about Ben certainly hadn’t gotten me anywhere, so I gave in and brooded over him instead.
I peeled back the lid I kept on my feelings and stirred them up a bit, examining each one that rose to the surface. Anxiety and curiosity mingled with longing and insecurity and anger.
What?
I separated anger out to study more closely. Why was I mad?
It was a subtle feeling, much less obvious than when my temper flared over Craig’s antics. But anger definitely underlined some of the other anxiety and insecurity. I explored the possibility of being mad at Ben, but I didn’t turn up much. While I didn’t love his Saturday ultimatum, I understood why he’d given it. Kind of. He didn’t exactly demand that we do things on his terms, but he controlled the pace right now. I found that uncomfortable. But not maddening.
Something else was at work here. Frustration, confusion . . . about what? Ben had been direct in his intentions. I was the problem.
Wait. I was the problem.
My confusion frustrated me. I felt like every dumb girl in every dumb chick flick I’d ever seen who gets in her own way with the guy she likes. She has commitment issues or workaholic tendencies, and it makes the audience want to whack her in the head with their overpriced theater sodas and say, “Go for it, already! We want the big kiss!”
Maybe I needed my own head whacked, but for the first time ever, I found myself in sympathy with the Dumb Girl in the chick flick. If I were living a movie, I’d take a long walk in the rain, leave a voicemail at work that I wouldn’t be back, and then I’d drive over to Ben’s house in soaking wet clothes but perfect makeup and pound on his door. It would fly open, and I would profess my idiocy and my love, and we’d have our own big kiss. So exciting.
In my real life though, I felt something more like a boring responsibility to my job and absolute confusion about Ben. Was Ben even the right guy for me? He respected my commitment to my job but not enough to tolerate the long hours it sometimes demanded. Driven women attracted him, but it hadn’t worked out for him before, so maybe that wasn’t what he really wanted. Did I want to risk another relationship implosion if he changed his mind? I thought about the year after my breakup with Jason, the days where it was hard to even get out of bed and face the day because the hurt made it hard to breathe after losing someone who had been woven into my life’s fabric. I wasn’t sure I had the emotional currency to invest in a compromise that would let Ben in further but that also might fall apart. Who knew how different our priorities would be if we sat down and hashed it all out. The more entangled we were with each other, the worse it would feel if I wasn’t what he really wanted after all.
Tension squeezed the back of my neck, sending a headache creeping behind my eyes. It matched the twisting in my gut as I examined each fear, looking for a resolution. Ben embodied the guy every girl wanted; he had success, good looks, a sense of humor, and a testimony. He treated me like gold, and if I were a braver girl, I’d go tearing down the freeway in search of my movie ending on his doorstep.
Instead, indecision paralyzed me and made me furious with myself.
Rolling off the bed, I landed on my knees and took some of my dad’s advice. God probably wondered what had taken me so long. Offering a simple thank you for my many blessings, I then asked for clarity and courage to find the right course. Then I collapsed back into bed, exhausted, and listened until I fell asleep.
* * *
When Monday dawned, for the first time in a month, I welcomed my alarm clock’s announcement of a new work week. At least with work, I could concentrate on something other than Ben.
Ha.
I sat in our Monday management meeting and watched Craig do his thing. He wore a lavender shirt with shiny gray trousers, a skinny man belt and pointy-toe shoes. His hair didn’t move with the roar of air from our overtaxed office heating vent, and his voice maintained a pleasantly calculated cadence. Surveying the faces of the other managers, I saw one woman listening with a dopey smile on her face. The other women were all married and indifferent to his show. The men mostly watched with polite interest, one of them contributing a head nod here and there. A couple of people jotted notes, but I suspected it was only to convince Dennis that they were paying attention.
Craig concluded his update about three minutes after he should have and sat down with a self-satisfied smile. The group moved on to the next report without any discussion, leading me to wonder how Craig could dominate so much of my work energy when he barely registered as a blip on anyone else’s radar. Did I rate any higher than he did with my peers? Surely hours and hours of extra work deserved some type of recognition.
Three more managers presented their productivity recaps and outlined their tasks for the current week, and then it was my turn. Normally, I said my piece and hurried to reclaim my seat as someone who didn’t enjoy public speaking. Today, I paid closer attention to people’s expressions while I delivered my weekly report. The captain of Craig’s fan club had lost her grin and now looked moderately bored. Other than that, I faced the same range of disinterest to polite attention that Craig had faced.
For some reason, this floored me. How could I have pulled in my team and invested twice as much time as Craig had last week and garnered exactly the same level of inattention and, in a couple of cases, borderline disrespect? I made my report succinct and sat down to consider this.
Somewhere between my promotion and this latest project, my focus had switched from doing the best job I could to beating Craig. I told Ben I liked to be the best, but I realized that wasn’t strictly true; I liked to give everything my best, but I disliked competition. It didn’t matter whether I beat someone else as long as I met the standard I set for myself. Often I ended up “winning” anyway, but it was a fringe benefit, not a goal. So why this fixation on Craig? True team spirit would be congratulating him if he im
proved the company’s profitability, not pushing to keep a foot on his neck in a mad scramble upward.
I thought back to the view from the Space Needle, the moment of clarity I had when I realized how small Macrosystems measured in the big picture. Craig’s significance measured even smaller compared to the important people in my life. It bothered me that it was so hard to maintain that perspective in the middle of things. When the morning briefing ended, I walked back to my office in deep thought, oblivious to the swarm of cubicle dwellers rushing around me. Katie had to shift out of my office door so I wouldn’t collide with her on my way in. Only her amused, “Jessie?” dispelled my daze.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Are you trying to drive me to quit or to the nuthouse?” she asked.
“What?” I felt cotton-headed.
“The raging shred and copy piles? Really?”
“Sorry about that,” I said, finally picking up the thread of the conversation. “Mike and I audited a couple more months on Saturday.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a couple of years? Those are huge piles,” she said.
“No, I promise. We didn’t have the stamina for more.”
“I guess the piles you made reproduced and spawned more evil paper files. This is going to take all morning.”
“Don’t worry about it. Do what you can, and I’ll make Mike work through his lunch to finish whatever you don’t.”
“You’re the best boss ever.” She grinned, satisfied. She whirled around and hurried to share her good news and his bad news.
I shook my head and opened up my e-mail, hoping maybe something from Ben might be waiting for me. Nothing more than the usual clutter of spam and family messages filled the screen. I guess he really meant that he would wait to talk to me until Saturday. If I showed up. I mean, he had practically threatened me with a define-the-relationship talk. No one with good sense would walk into one of those if they saw it coming.
But . . . I wanted to see him, no question there. And the crazy hours were paying off; the report would be ready on Friday. I could easily meet that condition, but more than that held me back. I was caught on my own mental merry-go-round, spinning the same questions around like mad. If I showed up, what was I agreeing to? That I would hang out with Ben for a month and then wave bye-bye, like he hadn’t gotten under my skin? That if we totally clicked for a month, I’d accept a long-distance relationship when he went back to Arizona? Would my showing up to Ben’s house signal my readiness for some kind of leap? Of faith? Of hope?
I closed my e-mail in frustration and clicked open the next report in the massive string of remaining files to audit. Thinking about Ben accomplished nothing. I got off task and confused, and I found no answers. At this rate, not only would I not “beat” Craig, but I’d also fall far short of my own expectations. I had no answers and no time to find them while we hit the home stretch of prepping our presentation for Dennis. I told myself to get through five more long, fatiguing days in the office, and then I would think about Saturday and what to do.
I had that conversation with myself on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I had that conversation with Sandy when she asked why Ben hadn’t been over in a while. Her side of the conversation involved a whole lot more answering back and sassiness than when I talked to myself, but the gist was the same. I would think about Saturday when I finished this stupid report. I mean, this incredibly important report.
The conversation would not go away.
I suppressed it, repressed it, oppressed it, and ignored it. It lingered there, asking, “What are you going to do about Saturday?”
I desperately wanted to see Ben. But I didn’t feel ready to sign up for a new complication. For the fiftieth time since hearing the news, I cursed his contract expiration. The curse sounded something like, “Dadgum-shoe-licking-ditch-dwelling-puppy-kicker-of-a-contract.” Which almost covered my utter contempt for its existence. Almost. It would take real curse words to encapsulate my full loathing. I needed more time with him. Way more.
Grrr. Thursday offered me my only break from the stupid internal argument. In the insane crunch of last-minute preparations for the presentation, the question of what to do drowned in a sea of spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides as I worked with my team to polish our projections for Dennis. Once, late Thursday as I drifted out of an argument between Mike and Doug the New Hire about whether blue or red looked better in the slide background, the dilemma intruded again. In barely over twelve hours, this whole project would be over, and I’d have all day Friday to think about anything besides our audit findings. I’d have to spend it figuring out the best thing to do. I wanted to show up at Ben’s on Saturday, but that didn’t make it a smart move. I distracted myself with a meditation on why Doug the New Hire held that title when he’d been with us for almost three months.
Near midnight, I dragged myself into bed, exhausted but ready for my meeting with Dennis and Craig. I stared at the ceiling, willing sleep to come and running through the facts and figures I would unveil the next morning. Satisfied I had every last statistic at my fingertips, I rolled over to crash for the night, but my cell phone caught my eye. A red light pulsed, indicating a message. I flipped it open, and my stomach fluttered when the screen said, “1 new text msg.” It was from Ben.
I pulled it up. I know it’s a big day for you tomorrow. Good luck, although you’re so good you won’t need it. I’ll be thinking of you.
Well.
Who was I kidding? I knew exactly what I’d do on Saturday.
Chapter 31
CRAIG MET ME IN FRONT of Dennis’s door. He smiled and exuded smugness like a cheap cologne.
I smiled back. “Ready to go?” I asked him.
“I was born ready.”
I refrained from blowing a raspberry of disgust and was saved when Dennis opened the door and herded us in.
“I know you both worked hard over the last two weeks, so how about if we dive in?” he suggested.
“Absolutely,” Craig said. Kiss up. “Do you mind if I go first?” he asked.
I waved for him to continue.
He powered up his presentation, opened with his first slide, and announced, “Audit Findings and the Profitability Implications for Payroll Adjustments.”
Oh goody. A real barn burner.
Next came a forty-five-minute analysis of the last three years of Macrosystems payroll records, suggestions for curtailing payroll costs, including layoffs in nonpriority departments like shipping and data entry, and an impressive bottom line savings bigger than the number my team had produced. But Craig had reduced payroll costs to mathematics and had overlooked the “resources” part of human resources again, leading to a flawed analysis.
Dennis studied the report for several minutes after Craig had wrapped up, flipping through pages of the hardcopy overview and asking questions, which Craig answered readily. Dennis turned to me. “Do you agree with his findings?”
“Some of them, yes.”
“But not all of them?”
“No, sir. We interpreted the data differently,” I explained.
“Let’s take a look.”
I pulled out my jump drive. “We’re going to bounce through a couple of different programs to examine the data.” Working through a quick overview in PowerPoint, reviewing a few condensed spreadsheets in Excel, and returning to PowerPoint for a summary, I completed my presentation in fewer than fifteen minutes. My report was much shorter and offered less payroll savings, but I knew it had addressed some weaknesses in Craig’s analysis. Since a smile played around his lips, I could tell he didn’t know he’d been beaten.
Dennis said nothing for a few minutes as he clicked back through the documents.
“Thank you both for investing time into this. Craig, good work. Why don’t you take a long lunch and revisit your supply audit to investigate whether or not we’re experiencing any savings yet?”
“Sure, Dennis,” he said. “Can
I bring back some lunch for you?”
Gag.
“No, that’s fine. I’ll send Leslie out for something later,” Dennis demurred.
“Okay. I’ll probably eat at my desk, so feel free to call me if you have any questions about my report,” Craig said.
Dennis fingered Craig’s bound report. “It looks pretty comprehensive. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I do have some questions for Miss Taylor here, so if you could get the door . . .”
“Of course.” Craig left, pulling the door closed behind him and then practically strutting back toward his office.
Dennis gave the door a small head shake and turned to me.
“You gave me a lot less information than Mr. Jaynes,” he said.
“Yes. I gave you bullet points. We have all the hardcopy details if you want something more in-depth.”
“I really, really don’t.”
I smothered a smile.
“How did you come up with a smaller savings than Craig?” He sounded curious rather than disappointed.
“Like I said, we interpreted some of the data differently. I don’t think he took into consideration how eliminating some positions would negatively impact worker productivity when those tasks are transferred back to individual departments,” I said.
“I see. So you feel in the broader scheme of things, there’s a more efficient solution?”
“Yes. I think if you can get supervisors to quit forcing overtime out of their employees and monitor departments with high absenteeism more closely, you’re going to reduce payroll expenditures significantly.”
“Cut back on overtime, huh?” He eyed me. “Seems like I’ve heard your team has made a significant overtime investment of its own over the last week.”
“Not exactly.” I flushed. “Several of us stayed to correct a data error that threw our reporting off. We didn’t charge the company for the time.”
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