Romantically Challenged

by Beth Orsoff

  Simone, who was seated across from me, inconspicuously drew the number one in the air. Rosenthal’s first malapropism of the week. His record was five, but we were sure he could beat it.

  “What we need,” he continued, “is a client party.”

  That’s a brainstorm?

  “We could invite the clients to the Christmas party,” Parker, the firm’s most senior associate and designated scapegoat, suggested.

  “No,” Rosenthal said and pressed his lips together before the words “you idiot” escaped. “We need to have one now. Something big and glitzy. We need to remind them that we’re here, we’re talented, and we’re ready for their business.…”

  Rosenthal droned on for at least another half an hour before Parker excused himself to go the restroom. Five minutes later a greenish Greg followed, then an extremely pale Simone, then me.

  * * *

  We all waited together in the Cedars Sinai Hospital Emergency Room. It didn’t take us long to figure out we’d gotten food poisoning. Everyone but Rosenthal. He was the only one that hadn’t eaten the tainted deli meat.

  None of us wanted to go to the emergency room, but Rosenthal insisted. He wanted medical records for the lawsuit against the restaurant. He told us we could each keep whatever settlement he extracted for pain and suffering, but since he paid us for sick days, he was keeping the payment for lost wages himself. We weren’t in any condition to argue with him.

  * * *

  I’d been lying on the table in Exam Room Two for what seemed like hours when my knight in white lab coat walked in. “So how are you feeling this evening, Ms. Burns?”

  I lifted my head off the table and stared into his dark brown eyes. He was medium build, had light brown hair, and adorable dimples in both cheeks. I really wished I didn’t smell like vomit.

  “I’ve been better,” I said, trying not to breathe on him.

  I read his name tag while he examined me. D. COHEN, M.D.

  “What’s the D for?”

  “David.”

  David Cohen. He had to be Jewish. I was about to look for a ring when I started to feel the bile rise in my throat. He must’ve recognized the signs because he handed me a silver basin and told me the nurse would be right in.

  * * *

  I sucked on ice chips before I left, just in case I ran into Dr. David. But by the time I was released, he was gone. As were all of my coworkers. They’d all been picked up by their boyfriends, husbands and wives. If it wasn’t after eleven, I might’ve called Kaitlyn for a ride. Instead, I called myself a cab, picked up my car at the office, and drove myself home.

  I walked into my dark apartment and turned on all the lights. I checked my answering machine—no messages. I flopped down on the couch and tried to tickle the Elmo doll that now lived with me instead of my niece Ashley. No response. His batteries were dead. I’d tickled him so much lately, I’d worn him out. I glanced over at the plant in the corner of my living room, the last remaining vestige of Scumbag. The once thriving palm was brown and withered. I was the only living being in the house.

  That’s when I decided. Cosmic karma be damned.

  Chapter 7

  A Whole New Me

  The shot they’d given me at the hospital the night before had worked. I woke up the next morning feeling fine, but that was no reason not to take advantage of bona fide sick day. Besides, I needed some free time to buy Elmo fresh batteries, pick up a new plant, and find my soul mate.

  I left a voicemail at the office, shut the alarm clock, and went back to sleep. My mother woke me an hour later.

  “Are you okay?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Of course, Mom. What’s wrong?”

  “Your assistant called us this morning and told us you had to go to the hospital last night.”

  I was going to kill Lucy. I spent the next ten minutes reassuring my mother that I wasn’t going to die of food poisoning any time in the near future and promised to “doctor myself up,” whatever that meant. Then I called Lucy.

  I didn’t even wait for her perky voice to finish saying “Julie Burns’ Office” before I interrupted with “Why did you call my mother and tell her I went to the hospital?”

  “Because she’s your emergency contact.”

  I imagined her innocent, freckled face and instantly felt guilty for wanting to strangle her, even though I still wanted to strangle her. “But there was no emergency. And how did you even know?”

  “Greg told me this morning.”

  “Greg’s in the office?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about Simone?”

  “She’s here too. I think you and Parker are the only ones out.”

  Not a good association. I liked Parker, but I wanted to be made partner next year, not the new firm scapegoat.

  “I’ll be in at eleven.”

  “I thought you were sick?”

  “I’m feeling better,” I said and hung up. God knows what she’d tell Rosenthal. If she wasn’t his step-daughter, I would’ve replaced her ages ago, but I couldn’t even get her transferred to another attorney. I’d tried, but Rosenthal wouldn’t allow it. He told me she’s my “pendant to bear.”

  * * *

  I called Kaitlyn from the car on my way to work. I was hoping she’d meet me for dinner and a soul mate searching strategy session. Her assistant told me she was out sick. Since it was one of those rare, smog-free Los Angeles summer days, I tried her cell before finally reaching her at home. She greeted me by coughing in my ear.

  “I guess that means you’re not faking,” I said.

  “No,” she coughed again. “You know I’d never do that.”

  That made one of us. “What’s wrong?”

  “Summer flu. It’s been going around the office.”

  “Do you need anything? Food? Drugs? Entertainment?”

  “No. I’ll just lay here and pray for an early death.”

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  After a loud nose-blowing she said, “I don’t know. Last night maybe.”

  “I’ll be there by eight.”

  After work, I stopped at the grocery store for orange juice and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, then Jerry’s Deli for some chicken noodle soup, and finally Best Buy for a copy of Out of Africa, Kaitlyn’s favorite movie. It wasn’t the evening I’d envisioned, but Kaitlyn needed some TLC.

  Kaitlyn answered the door in her short-sleeve cloud pajamas, her red hair flattened on one side of her head and puffed out three inches on the other. She laid on the living room couch while I set our plates on the coffee table. Kaitlyn had a kitchen table, but in the ten years I’d known her I’d never seen her use it for anything other than storage.

  “Hallelujah,” she said and threw up her gangly arms when I’d told her my decision.

  “Calm down, I haven’t found him yet.” I was trying to soak up the soup she’d spilled before it reached her Persian rug. “I’ve just decided to look. The problem is, I don’t know where.”

  “Singles bar,” she suggested.

  “Only someone who hasn’t been on a date in four years would think you could find your soul mate in a singles bar.” Kaitlyn had gone directly from her college-sweetheart, to her law school sweetheart, to Billy, her first and only blind-date. They’d been together ever since, although the last nine months had been long-distance.

  “I know,” she said, practically throwing her spoon at me. “The guy from the plane.”

  “Are you out of your mind!”

  “I’m not saying he’s necessarily The One. But you should at least get to know him before you rule him out.”

  “First, he never even called me and—“

  “Yet,” she said. “Did you check your messages today?”

  “No, but—“

  “No buts, go check your machine. And get me the ice cream while you’re up.”

  I did as I was told and found a message from Plane Guy asking me to call him back. I hate it when Kaitl
yn’s right.

  “Call him back and tell him you’ll go out with him Friday night.”

  “But he can’t be The One,” I whined.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you Prince Charming might not come in the package you expect?”

  “No, and even if she did, you know I never listen to my mother.”

  “Then listen to mine.” Kaitlyn’s mother was a psychologist and had been married three times, the last one when she was sixty. I had to give the woman credit. She had a career when most women didn’t and she knew how to find a good man.

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means keep an open mind.”

  “I have an open mind.”

  “No you don’t. Since Scumbag, you run every guy you meet through your mental checklist and if he fails in any category, no matter how minor, you immediately eliminate him.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why haven’t you gone on a date in almost a year?”

  “Because I find great parking spaces instead of great men. It’s my karma. I have to find a way to reverse it. Maybe I should start valeting everywhere I go.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Finding your soul mate has nothing to do with parking and everything to do with your attitude.”

  “What’s wrong with my attitude?”

  “Why won’t you go out with the guy from the plane?”

  “Because he’s annoying.”

  “See.” (I didn’t.) “You talked to him for a whole five minutes and you’ve already ruled him out.”

  “What are you saying? Prince Charming is disguising himself as an annoying skinny guy with a receding hairline?”

  “I’m saying give him half a chance before you blow him off.”

  I was about to say no, when I realized maybe Kaitlyn was right. Maybe plane guy was Prince Charming wrapped in annoying paper and I just had to open the package to find out. And if, as I suspected, he really was a frog, then I could prove Kaitlyn wrong. It was a win-win scenario.

  “Fine,” I said, “but if I have a terrible date it’ll be on your conscience.”

  She took the spoon out of her mouth and gave me her widest self-satisfied grin. “I can live with that.”

  Chapter 8

  Prince Charming

  The new, open-minded me reluctantly agreed to go out with John on Friday night. He called me Thursday night to work out the details.

  “So what do you want to do tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “How about dinner?”

  “Dinner? That’s so boring.”

  “Then how about a movie?”

  After a few seconds of silence he said, “Nah, I don’t feel like a movie.”

  “Okay. Then what do you feel like?”

  “I don’t know, I just moved here. You need to show me around.”

  Prince Charming was trying my patience. “That’s fine, but you’ll need to give me a hint about what you’re looking for.”

  “Forget it. I’ll come up with something and surprise you. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  * * *

  I snuck out of work early Friday night so I would have time to shower, dress, and eat dinner before John arrived. I wasn’t going to spend the entire evening hungry just because he thought dinner was boring. When I buzzed him upstairs at ten minutes to eight, I intended to chide him for being early, until I opened my front door.

  “What are you wearing?” I said, despite it being quite obvious that he was wearing sweatpants and a torn T-shirt under his raincoat.

  “My workout clothes,” he said and held up his gym bag as an offer of proof.

  “Why?” was all I could manage.

  He walked into the living room, sat down on the couch, and put his sneakered feet up on my glass coffee table. “I joined a gym on Monday and they sent me a free guest pass. I thought we could go work out, then grab a coffee.”

  Maybe I’d been out of circulation too long, but when did working out become an acceptable first date activity?

  “It’s on Roberston,” John continued. “Just a few blocks from here.”

  “I know the one,” I said. “I used to belong there.”

  “Used to?” He took his feet off the coffee table and sat up. “What’s wrong with the place?”

  “Nothing, I just got really busy at work and let my membership lapse.”

  He relaxed back into the couch. “Good, then you can sign up again tonight with me as your referral. That way, I get the free gift. I think they told me it’s a voucher for a health food restaurant. We can go there afterwards for dinner.”

  At this point, the close-minded Julie would’ve told him to get the hell out and never call again. But as the new open-minded Julie, I just said, “I wasn’t planning on renewing my membership.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve decided to join a new gym by my office.”

  That wasn’t a total lie. I’d driven past the gym near my office a few weeks ago and had momentarily considered joining. I just hadn’t thought about it since. Not that I didn’t need to--I did. I’d gained six pounds since Scumbag left me, although I could only attribute three to the break up. The other three could be directly traced back to last Christmas’ cookie binge.

  “Well we don’t need to go to dinner, you can still use my guest pass.”

  Lucky me.

  * * *

  I left John in the living room while I went into my bedroom to change. It took me ten minutes just to locate my sneakers. I found them buried in the back of my closet under an old black leather purse I hadn’t used in years but couldn’t part with, and a jumble of dry cleaner’s hangers.

  By the time I’d peeled myself out of my black jeans (the only pair I still owned that didn’t make me look fat) and pulled on my baggy sweatpants, I was starting to think maybe this hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. John was definitely a cheapskate, but if we were only going to the gym it would be a short evening, and at least now I was comfortable.

  * * *

  “Which way is your car?” I asked John as we stood under the awning of my building waiting for the rain to let up.

  “That way,” he said, pointing towards the end of the street, “but I figured we’d walk.”

  “In the rain?” It was obvious John was new to Los Angeles. Los Angelenos don’t walk. Anywhere. Ever. Especially not in the rain.

  He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and said, “C’mon, I have an umbrella in the trunk.”

  “Do you have two?” I asked.

  “It’s a big one,” he said. “We can both fit. It’ll be romantic.”

  I could imagine strolling through an unexpected tropical rain shower, hand in hand with a gorgeous guy. My hair would be mussed, but my makeup would still be perfect, and my floral sun dress would be clinging to me in all the right places. The guy would only be wearing Bermuda shorts. His muscular upper body would be glistening with a mixture of sweat and raindrops. He would be holding his soaking wet T-shirt over our heads in an ineffectual yet gentlemanly attempt to keep us dry. That would be romantic. Walking six blocks to the gym in a cold downpour with John the Annoying Cheapskate was not going to be romantic.

  * * *

  John held the umbrella at an angle in his left hand. This succeeded in keeping the wind from blowing the rain directly into our faces, but also meant that he was the only one actually under the umbrella. By the time we reached the gym my fingers were numb and the right side of my body was completely soaked. Except for a few wet spots at the bottom of his sweatpants, John was completely dry.

  Luckily, the woman at the reception desk remembered me from the years when I had been a regular. She let me borrow shorts and a T-shirt from the lost and found box while she ran my clothes through the towel dryer.

  I found John upstairs on a treadmill. He’d already started a slow jog.

  I stepped onto the treadmill next to him. “I’ve never seen it this empty before. When I used to come her
e there were always at least five people ahead of me on the waiting list and tonight there’s not even a line.”

  “Isn’t it great?” he said. “I love to work out on Friday nights.”

  I just nodded. On the rare occasions when I’d even considered working out on a Friday night, Scumbag had always talked me out of it. He told me only losers without friends went to the gym on Friday nights. I decided to be nice and keep this opinion to myself. Instead, I asked John how his week had been and he started telling me about his job in marketing for a petrochemical company. I asked questions and nodded dutifully on the off chance that my initial impression of him had been wrong and that he was actually a good catch. We were forty-five minutes into the date and so far he hadn’t said or done anything to change my mind.

  Abruptly, John asked, “Are you going to walk the whole time?”

  I looked down at the timer on my treadmill. I’d only been trotting for three and a half minutes. “I’m warming up,” I said. “I haven’t worked out in a while.”

  “There’s no point in working out if you’re not going to raise your heart rate. If you’re just going to walk at that pace, you might as well not even bother.”

  I increased the speed on my treadmill from 3.3 to 3.6 and immediately started to sweat. John seemed satisfied and went back to talking about himself. A few minutes later John pronounced that we’d warmed up enough and it was time to run.

  “John, I haven’t worked out in almost a year. I’m not running.”

  “Coward.”

  I should’ve bailed on him right then, but I took the bait. “I’m not a coward. I just don’t want to hurt myself.”

  “You won’t hurt yourself with a slow jog. It’s the same as walking fast, only you burn more calories.”

  I was about to ask if he was implying that I looked like I needed to burn more calories, but stopped myself. I was afraid he might answer truthfully.

  “C’mon,” John said. “We’ll only run for ten minutes, then we’ll take a break and move on to the free weights.”

  Free weights? “I’ll run for ten minutes John, but then I’m done. You can finish your workout while I shower and change.”