All Eyes on Her

by Poonam Sharma

  “Whichever game you want, babe.” He spoke with the voice of a man who was used to getting his way. “The sailor and the streetwalker?”

  My head spun.

  “The war hero and the naughty nurse?” He took another step forward.

  I knocked over a small potted plant.

  “The plumber and the desperate housewife?” Definitely, a little too close for comfort.

  The gladiator and the runaway princess? I thought. But wait! No! I hadn’t come here to flirt with my contractor.

  “Luke, I’m flattered.” I tried hard to convince the both of us. “Really. But you must have misread my signals. This isn’t a good idea.”

  “I apologize, Monica.” He turned to lean his hands on the railing and look out over the manicured lawn. “But I thought I felt something here.”

  “I told you that I’m engaged.”

  “Okay, but there is something else I should say then.” He elaborated, “Especially if we’re gonna continue this weird working relationship. I should apologize for my behavior the first time we met. I got defensive. It’s that I’m not used to being around such a smart, beautiful woman. I was rude.”

  “Oh, come on.” I fiddled with one of my earrings, sort of hoping that he would go on, needing the validation.

  “It’s true. And I’m sure that you know it,” he said and turned toward me. “I don’t know you that well, but all this and you’re faithful to your guy, whoever he is. That’s pretty rare.”

  I bit my lip. Did I even have a fiancé anymore? Was I technically allowed to be enjoying all this flattery? All I knew was that standing on that porch, being complimented by my contractor, bathed in the moonlight, surrounded by the scent of those flowers, and listening to the burbling of the fountain…it was the most romance I had had in my life in quite a while. So I took it in, even though I felt a little guilty. And to my surprise I was okay with that.

  “But you know,” he spoke tentatively, taking my silence as an invitation to go on. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. And I wonder…are you the kind of woman who doesn’t mind having a secret, or the kind of woman who would slap me for doing this?”

  As if in slow motion, his face moved to mine. It was too late to move or duck. Impact was imminent.

  And as it turns out it was also electric. So I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him right back. Because the second I got comfortable with a little guilt, a little more just seemed too marginal to matter. But instead of the gratification of his hands clawing their way around me, all I felt was the sensation of him going frigid in my arms. Extricating myself from the lip-lock, I pulled back to see the horror on his face and to watch him mouth the words I’m Sorry.

  …in the milliseconds before the camera lights flashed on.

  “You really had no idea this was a reality show?” Cassie waved a latte before my eyes as a way of coaxing me from inside my parked car.

  I would rather have made sweet love to a Dumpster than looked any of my coworkers in the eye the following Monday morning. To get that point across, I hung my head over the steering wheel.

  “Yes—” I spoke into the airbag-container “—I really had no idea.”

  “But you’re never naïve, Monica. This just flips my whole worldview upside down. Even I would never have believed that a guy that hot was really a roofing contractor. Not that roofers can’t be hot, but come on…that guy’s skin was clearer than mine.”

  “I know, I know.” I inched open the door and sulked out of my car, yanking the latte from her hands.

  “I mean, if roofing contractors really looked like that, I would go out and like…I don’t know…get a roof!”

  “I know,” I quieted her with my tone as we headed for the elevators.

  “Sorry.” She got the hint and scaled back the enthusiasm. “But what are you gonna do about Raj?”

  There was that. As if it weren’t bad enough to have been the victim of a prank by Luke and his fellow producers of that godforsaken Sunday night hidden camera show, appropriately titled Smacked! As if it weren’t even worse that I actually kissed Luke, rather than slapping him across the face like the producers had expected. And as if I wasn’t already planning on spending the better part of the day hiding from meetings, phone calls or any other form of human contact on the off chance that my coworkers had managed to catch the show, there was also the slim possibility that Raj might have gotten wind of it, and that whatever was left of our relationship was now effectively out the window.

  Like any of my clients who had ever lived to regret signing a fidelity clause, I decided to handle the incident by acting as if it never happened. But empathizing this much with my clients was not in the game plan. First, it was my hankering for tinted windows, and today the very worst of my private behavior was literally on televised, public display.

  Lovely.

  Pure vulgarity, my father used to say, whenever he saw celebrities on television, twirling and begging for the attention of the cameras. As he described it, If an actor is a true artist, then he should never obscure the focus on his art by seeking attention for his affairs. Accomplishment should speak for itself.

  True to my worst nightmare, I found that the footage had been made viewable online. Under the title “Producer’s Prank Gone Wrong” was a clip of Luke kissing me, me swallowing his face, and him pulling back and mouthing the words I’m Sorry for the whole world to see. Or at least the 5,255 people who had downloaded the clip so far. Given the theory of six degrees of separation, I figured that the video would make its way to Raj’s in-box by the following evening, at the very latest.

  I was thumbing through the case law on legal action against a television network for public humiliation and marital destruction when Cassie knocked on my door and informed me that it was the third time Lydia had called the office that day.

  “And she said she would come down here and kick my ass if I told her you were in a meeting one more time,” she said, before patching through the call.

  “Girl, I admire your technique,” Lydia said. “I wouldn’t have figured you for a biter.”

  I hung my head. “I take it you saw Smacked! last night?”

  “Yeah,” she chortled. “Me and the rest of L.A. I’m addicted to that show. Probably because it punks regular people, instead of celebrities. That’s very satisfying for me.”

  “Always glad to help,” I sneered.

  “Not only that, but you got my respect now, for real. I never had the balls to break up with someone through to a television show. Even when my publicist told me it would sell more albums.” She laughed. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  Right around the moment when I had inadvertently decided to throw my own relationship out the reality TV window, it turned out, Cameron and Lydia had decided to step back from Steel and think things over before moving any further with their divorce proceedings.

  “And I know I don’t have to remind you that we chose Steel Associates because we expect discretion,” she told me, while I slumped over my desk, dreading the process of getting to know a new client once I told Niles that I had lost Camydia. “So of course we will expect Steel not to comment on our marriage, or on whether or not we’ve ever consulted you, okay?”

  “Of course, Lydia,” I said, wondering why she felt the need to reinforce the point. “And good luck.”

  “Yeah, thanks. And, hey, if it’s any consolation…it definitely looked like that guy wanted to kiss you back,” she said before hanging up.

  Trust me, it wasn’t.

  thirteen

  ANYBODY UP FOR A LATE LUNCH AT SPAGO’S? JONATHAN replied within seconds of my e-mail announcing Camydia’s attempted reconciliation.

  “They’ll be back within a month,” he predicted, heaping three layers of beef carpaccio onto his fork, and then shoveling them into his mouth.

  “So this is what Steel has reduced us to? Hoping that people’s marriages fail?”

  “I don’t hope it,” he told me midchew, �
�I recognize it.”

  “Such an optimist,” I observed.

  “I am pessimistic where pessimism is due.” He snapped a breadstick, sending little bits of it flying into my martini. “And I am an optimist about things that are worth being optimistic about.”

  “Like?” I swirled the thin layer of pumpkin soup around its oversize bowl, wondering whether the chef had chosen the bowl to imply that a measly twenty dollars only earned you half a bowl of a soup this good, or to give weight-conscious diners the illusion that they were eating less.

  “Like…I am optimistic about my chances of drinking you under the table today.” He leaned in and raised his eyebrows. “And…I am pessimistic about your chances of making it big as an actress…however impressive your reality TV credits may be.”

  “Oh, crap,” I said too loudly. “I didn’t think you watched reality TV.”

  He sniggered. “You know, I’ve never seen you kiss anybody before. May I say, nice form.”

  “Thank you. But this is not funny!” I insisted, gulping down half of my martini. “Raj might see this. Then what happens? We haven’t been having the best relationship lately. I don’t know how I’m gonna explain this. I never thought I was gonna be one of those people who claims that it ‘Just happened.’ That sounds so weak, but I have no other way of explaining myself. I don’t even think I can forgive myself.”

  “Maybe he didn’t see it. He’s overseas, right? What are the chances?”

  “Wait a minute.” I tilted my head, while a waiter replaced my empty martini glass with a newer, fuller one. “How did you know about this? Don’t you normally have a date on a Sunday night? On every night?”

  “Well, that’s kind of why I’d planned on taking you to lunch today. I thought you might prefer to hear it from me.”

  “Hear what from you? Oh God, what happened?”

  “I don’t really know how to tell you this, Mon.” He looked like he had smelled something rotten. “Someone sent the online clip around the office this morning to all the attorneys, anonymously.”

  “Even the senior partners?”

  “Afraid so,” he replied. The waiter appeared at our table.

  Struggling to balance two water glasses, my steaming salmon and Jonathan’s heavy Osso Buco all at once, he never had a chance. In one swift move, he laid my entrée before me, Jonathan’s plate before him, and knocked my glass of Perrier right off the table.

  “It was Stefanie,” I said, paying no attention to the commotion, as if I’d just awakened to what had been right in front of me all along.

  I was in grade school the very first time that I can remember another woman trying to ruin my life. At thirteen years old, Vicky had the nicotine habit of a supermodel, a body that I’m still hoping to develop myself and the distinction of being the most popular girl at Hermosa Junior High School. I had the misfortune of being new to the school, having the least generic last name, and therefore I instantly became the target of her aggression.

  By the end of September, I was used to the snickers whenever Mr. Weiss mispronounced my name during attendance for fourth period art class. To this day I wonder why he failed to hear the laughter, and insisted on inserting random S’s and J’s into my last name where my parents had not. A bad eyeglass prescription? Perhaps. But I’m quite sure that his ears worked just fine. Then again, childhood always screams much louder at the person living through it than at anyone seated nearby. After a number of years in the system, children who are in any way “different” learn the drill.

  Like any relatively scrawny newbie being transferred from one prison to another, I expected a certain amount of disdain from the other inmates. At least until I had the chance to show my colors (student government or mathlete?), establish my alliances (who would share their seat on the bus?) and be publicly accepted into any particular gang, that is. So far, the worst of it had been sitting alone or with the pocket-protector and retainer-set at lunch, while waiting to be invited to a more normal table. But it was precisely the moment when I spilled bright green paint onto the floor during fourth period, that I knew I’d made my fatal mistake. Honestly, I would have preferred for the paint to have splattered across my face than to have had one drop soil Vicky’s spotless, pearl-pink Candie’s.

  Clupta-Gupta, she sneered, and everyone in the class burst into a chorus of laughter. Why are you so clumsy, Clupta-Gupta?

  And that was pretty much it. The name calling over the next few months was almost as brutal as the fact that even the non-English-speaking exchange students refused to sit with me. Aside from the occasional distorted face or the fact that she stopped speaking in order to sneer at me whenever I walked by, Vicky never directly engaged me again. The problem was that neither did anyone else. Ever. And social isolation for a sixth-grader is about as bad as if a lover starts withholding sex when you’re about thirty; you just don’t know what to do or who to tell, but you are sure that something is very wrong. I kept it from my parents at home, and mastered the art of moving among my peers almost undetected at school. It wasn’t until the school guidance counselor Mrs. Loeb got fed up with my weekly sobbing in her office that she finally hauled Vicky in one day, despite my protests.

  I didn’t mean it, Vicky told me in the waiting area through tear-soaked eyes an hour later. She’d emerged from what must have been a very intense little chat with Mrs. Loeb. I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you.

  You know what you can do for me? I was as defiant as was possible for my age. You can just shut up and stop making fun of me and let me make some friends. I don’t need your help. I need you to leave me alone!

  And she did. Somehow, even in the pre-e-mail era, she managed to get the word out overnight. Because the teasing ceased immediately. Despite her remorse, however, forgiveness wasn’t an option. I just wanted her out of my life. I declined her invitations to go to the mall, join her table at lunch, or work with her on any class projects. Slowly but surely I gathered the nerve to put myself out there. To make friendships that were strong enough to last through the rest of high school. Vicky’s parents divorced soon after the third of her increasingly infamous parties that she threw whenever they were out of town.

  By the time she dropped out of high school and went into rehab during our senior year, I remembered feeling something resembling sympathy. At the very least it was clear that there really was nothing personal about why she had singled me out. We were simply children then, and children are as cursed with awareness as they are infuriated by the recognition of what little power they actually have at their disposal. Vicky exercised her popularity as the tool to extract some marginal sense of control over a life that she must have known was spiraling beyond it. I was mere collateral damage in the story of that life, and in the end, I think we both knew it. Although, I am sure that I slept with a smile on my face. I’d already lived long enough to see with my own eyes that sometimes karma works. True, for me it was only one half of a hellish year, but what I had always hoped it had taught me was that living well really was the best revenge.

  And I’ve not dignified any woman’s pettiness or attempts to undermine me with anything other than complete composure ever since. I’ve either ignored these women, or tried to reason with them instead. Failing that, I felt well-assured with the idea that karmic retribution was always on my side. The more Stefanie pushed me, I thought, the more likely it had to be that the universe would give it back to her tenfold. But then again, how long could I wait until I’d have to take matters into my own hands?

  On the way back to the office Jonathan agreed with me that the best response to the scandal was no response. In front of the senior partners or anyone else.

  “The less you talk about it, the quicker it will go away,” he said, leaning into my door frame.

  “This came in for you while you were at lunch.” Cassie slid past him to drop off a fax.

  “Hey,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Hey, uh.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, taking surprisingl
y little notice of her cleavage, and searching suddenly for something on the ground. “Hi. Anyway, I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on, too. So I’ll see you later.”

  “Look,” she said, closing the door gently after he’d left, “you’re not gonna let Stefanie get away with this, are you?”

  I exhaled. “This is not Melrose Place, Cassie. What do you expect me to do? Sleep with her boyfriend on the conference table?”

  “No, not that. Besides, I don’t think she has one.” She examined her fingernails, and then smirked. “But you could spread a rumor that she’s a lesbian.”

  “Yeah, sure. Surrounded by an office full of attorneys who attend lifestyle-sensitivity-training seminars every year. Brilliant plan.”

  “It’s not the lesbian part that would cause the scandal.” She came closer, not even trying to stifle her excitement. “It’s the fact that she would be having an affair with one of the partner’s wives!”

  “You’ve lost it.” I laughed.

  “Actually, I’m thinking a lot more clearly than someone who just had a three-martini lunch. Nobody would even have to know that you started the rumor. It’s the perfect crime!”

  “It’s character assassination.”

  “You know she deserves it.”

  “I’m not saying that she doesn’t, Cassie. And I appreciate the loyalty, I really do. But—”

  “Monica, stop making excuses for her. She’s not just bitchy…she’s bitchy with an agenda. And what she did by sending that video around demands retaliation.”

  “Cassie,” I tried again before she cut me off.

  “No, you don’t even see all of it. I mean, I’ve never really liked Stefanie—you know that. It’s not just that she’s the only junior associate who talks down to me because I’m an assistant. I can handle that because I don’t care what she thinks. But she always finds a way to make some small comment to make me look like an airhead in front of the male staff. She never does it in front of the women. I think she wants the men to think I’m incompetent. Like it’s a threat to remind me that I’m not a lawyer and I don’t really have as much right to be here. To keep me in my place.”