by Theresa Alan
“Oooh sheeet.” Susan chuckles.
“‘Women Only’?” I say.
“It’s a lesbian porn calendar,” Ashley says. “Très scandalous.”
“Oh.”
“We had a nice conversation. Unfortunately, she was only in town for that one day, but we promised to keep in touch. I was in a rush because my clients were waiting, so I just gave her my business card. I don’t know if you’ve ever bumped into the lust of your life, but let me tell you, it messes you up. I returned to my clients a totally dysfunctional, babbling idiot. I mean she’s in town one day and we just happen to go to lunch at the same place? That’s crazy.”
“That is so bizarre. Fate,” Ashley says.
“I haven’t even gotten to the best part. So yesterday, I get the calendar in the mail, at my office.”
“Whoa,” says Susan.
“So, I get my mail, I sit down at my desk by the door, and open this calendar, my heart leaps, my jaw drops, the works.”
“That calendar is fucking hot. Which one’s the famed Gina?” says Susan.
“She’s March. She has dark, olive skin and dark hair that goes like this,” Bev takes her finger to indicate bangs that fall across one eye. “In the picture she’s topless and her eyes are closed and these thin pale arms reach from behind her and undo her jeans.”
“Yum. I love that picture,” Susan says.
“Any you don’t like?” Bev asks.
“No. You’re right, I like them all.”
“I have the calendar open to Gina when my phone rings, and the phone is way on the other side of the room. I have a pretty big office because I have drawing tables and a lot of computer equipment. I have this chair with wheels, so I fly across the room and answer the phone. I get all into this conversation with a client, yada yada yada…I’m jotting down some notes, writing down what my client is saying, I’ve totally forgotten about the calendar, when my very conservative manager walks in. I wave him in, smile, gesture to let him know I’ll be done in a minute, then I go back to what I was doing. I’m still on the phone when I notice he’s checking out the calendar. Now, I’m not closeted at work exactly, but I’m not out either, and this is one of those guys who can really break my career. I scream into the phone, ‘Doug, I’ll call you back!’ I slam the phone down, zoom across the floor in my chair, and come barreling into my desk, I just crash into it, I start babbling, trying to explain…”
“You, Ms. Calm and Collected?” Cara says.
“Yeah, well first, it is totally unprofessional to have porn at the workplace, unless you work at an automotive garage or something. Second, I really hadn’t wanted to out myself in this manner. So anyway, I’m trying to explain that an old friend of mine is in the calendar and she sent me a copy, which is why I have it at the office; I just opened it a second ago. I hold up the envelope as if that’s the proof I need to get me off the hook. I’m brandishing this envelope like a ‘Get out of jail’ card, like it’s my key to freedom or something. He says, ‘Are these lesbians?’ I’m like, ‘Ah, yeah.’ He just kind of nods, all casual. Then he asks about how Ashley and I are doing, do I think it could lead to wedding bells. Under my breath I say, yeah, if it were legally recognized. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m so confused because I figured I’ve been outed for sure. Not only had I been gawking at naked women, I had been gawking at naked lesbians. Then he says something referring to Ashley and uses ‘he.’ He thinks I’m straight. Despite the considerable evidence at hand, nothing can dissuade him from the idea that I’m straight.”
The waitress stops by as we’re all laughing. “What’s so funny, girls?”
“My boss,” says Bev. “He’s a wee bit dense about certain things.”
“How are you all doing on drinks?”
Bev nods and indicates that we are ready for another round. When the waitress turns to get our drinks, Bev finishes her story. “Just as my boss is about to leave my office he says, ‘I think it’s great that you’re friends with a lesbian. That’s so like you to embrace diversity like that.’ I say, ‘Well, you have to keep your mind open to all the possibilities.’ My voice is dripping with irony, let me assure you. I mean what the hell do I have to do to let people know I’m a dyke? I could be eating Ashley out on my desk and they’d be like, oh Bev, you are just so sweet to lesbians, you’re such a humanitarian. I mean, how much more evidence do you need? I’m looking at lesbians fucking each other. Clueless.”
They keep me laughing the whole night. At one point Gabrielle and Cara go off on their own to the dance floor. They dance a number of slow dances, so I take it that things are going well.
I have fun talking with the other women and after I’ve had enough drinks they even manage to get me out on the dance floor with them. When a slow song comes on, I want to hide my engagement ring to see if any women will ask me to dance (just out of curiosity’s sake, of course), but ultimately I chicken out.
I’ve completely lost track of time when suddenly we’re being urged out of the place by the waitstaff.
“We shut the place down?” I say drunkenly. “I haven’t stayed ’til a bar closed in years.”
“It’s a new, more exciting era in our lives, Eva,” Gabrielle says.
As she drives me home, I grill her about Cara. “Do you like her? Do you want to sleep with her? Do you think this might get serious?”
Her answers are yes, yes, and maybe, respectively.
I keep rambling on until we get to my place.
I simply can’t wait to hear the details from the rest of her night.
Chapter 21
E mail and the telephone are simultaneously the greatest friends and worst enemies of the independent contractor who works from home. All day I check my email approximately a jillion times, awaiting news on how the rest of Gabrielle’s date turned out.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
So?!?
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
So, we have a date to go out to a comedy club tomorrow night, just the two of us.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Did you kiss, have sex, anything?
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
A girl never tells.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Don’t you dare pull that shit with me. I want details.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I’m joking with you. There are no details to tell. A chaste kiss. C’est tout.
Chapter 22
A fter three months on the market, Will finally sells his house, which is a huge relief because now he can help me with the mortgage payments on my place. I mean our place.
I spend my entire Saturday doing research on caterers and wedding menus. I didn’t sleep well the night before and I’m beat. The work is utterly exhausting. I think back to Mom’s suggestion that we just fly to Bermuda to get married. Suddenly that seems like a really good plan, and I toss the idea out to Will.
“Will, what would you think about eloping in the Bahamas? We could invite our closest friends and family to see us get married. They could have a mini-vacation and seconds after we exchanged vows we could get started on our honeymoon.”
“I’d love to, hon, but how important is it that my mother sees our wedding?”
“What kind of crazy question is that? It’s critically important. She’s like the third or fourth most important person, right after you and me.”
“Well, then, I’m afraid the Bahamas are out. My mother doesn’t fly.”
“What? Never? Can’t we just knock her out with some kind of drug and drag her on the plane with us?”
“She’s never flown in her life. I don’t think she’s going to start now. We can go to Vegas. That’s withi
n driving distance.”
“You know I hate Vegas.” I took one weekend trip to Vegas. I enjoyed the first day of checking out the kitschyness of it all, but since I’m not much for gambling, the last two days of the trip were an exercise in surviving the torture of excess and ringing bells and twinkling lights. I vowed I would never set foot in Vegas again, much less get married there.
“We can just go to the courthouse or something,” he says.
“Did you have a big wedding when you got married the first time?”
“We eloped.”
“At the courthouse?”
“In Vegas.”
“So you thought you could do the exact same thing with me? Just another bride on the assembly line?” Is it wrong of me to want to kill him right now? Is my irritation with him reasonable or a product of my lack of sleep? I’m not sure, but I scowl at him anyway. How else will he learn how not to piss me off, right?
“No, Eva, I was just throwing out some ideas.”
I can’t believe he’d take me to Vegas like he did with his last wife. Now I really have to throw the wedding of the century, God damn it. I’m not really a superstitious person, but if he went to Vegas the first time and that wedding failed (how many Vegas marriages last for more than a few years, that’s what I want to know?), then we have to get married in the opposite sort of ceremony to placate the capricious gods of fate.
“Come on, Will, let’s go taste wedding cake.” I sigh. I’m still irritated with him, but I still want to marry him anyway.
“Wedding cake?”
“Yeah. I asked Mom where she got her wedding cake for her wedding to Frank, and she told me about this pastry shop in Arvada. They give free tastings on Saturdays.”
“Free cake? I’m there!”
Deciding on a wedding cake is probably the least pressing thing on our to-do list, but it sounds like the most fun, so I’ve moved it up on the priority list. I’ve printed a map from MapQuest on how to get to the pastry shop. Will and I get into Will’s car and begin the journey to the suburbs.
It will never cease to amaze me just how long it can take to get from some place in the city to some place in the suburbs. On a map, it doesn’t look that far away, but then you start driving down the endless streets and getting stopped at stoplight after stoplight, and you may as well take a detour on foot through the Serengeti to get there, because it would take just as long.
As we drive, a wave of exhaustion nearly knocks me flat. Coffee, I need coffee. I look around hopefully for a coffee shop, but I don’t see a thing. Starbucks are located every four feet in most places, until you really need one.
“Where do I turn next?” Will asks.
I read from the directions I printed out from MapQuest.
“That’s like seventy blocks away. Are you sure that’s right?”
“That’s what it says. Hey, why does that street sign say fifty-fifth? We were supposed to turn on sixty-fourth.”
Will turns around at the next light. In addition to being tired, I realize I’m dying of thirst. When are we going to get to the stupid cake shop? I need coffee. I need water. My needs aren’t being met. Wah!
Will and I drive in circles for fifteen minutes before it occurs to me to call the cake shop and get directions from them. I hand the phone to Will since he’s driving.
“Yeah, I know where that is. Okay, thanks,” Will says, then hangs up the cell phone. He turns around once again. “We were going in the completely opposite direction. It’s a good thing we called. I don’t know where MapQuest was taking us, but it wasn’t to the cake shop. It’s like they left out a major street for us to turn at.”
I look at the MapQuest directions again and realize that MapQuest didn’t leave a street out, my tired eyes simply skipped from one step to another without even noticing. I decide not to tell Will this. I’m going to let MapQuest take the blame for this one.
When we get to the cake shop, a friendly young girl points to a list of cake options and tells us we can choose to taste as many samples as we’d like. We choose several and she cuts us thin slices of each, then we sit down at a table, and she brings us coffee and water. I’m so happy to be able to quench my thirst and drink coffee and eat cake that my irritation quickly evaporates and I decide wedding planning is pretty fun after all.
The tiny cake shop is simply hopping with young couples. Will and I flip through photo albums of cake ideas and we walk around the shop looking at sample wedding cakes. There are a couple really cool ones, like one three-tiered cake decorated with a marine theme. Each tier is separated by a glass fish bowl, and within the fishbowl are fake seashells and starfish and plants. It’s not the right look for our wedding, but it’s fun and different nonetheless.
“I like the more colorful designs as opposed to plain white,” I say to Will.
“Cool,” he says. “That’s fine with me.”
“Maybe we could get the fondant frosting in a deep pink color with red ribbons and flowers or something.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“What flavored cake do you like? We need to pick three, one for each tier. I definitely like the chocolate lovers.”
“Me too.”
“I also think we should get a plain vanilla cake, maybe with fresh strawberries in the center.”
“Sounds good.”
It occurs to me that I asked him for his opinion and then went on to not listen to his opinion but to impose my own. I need to stop being a dictator about this. This is Will’s wedding, too, after all. “How about for the last cake? You pick the flavor.”
“I like the orange blossom.”
Ick. “Um, but that’s a dark orange color. That won’t go with red and pink frosting.”
“Sure it will.”
“No. No, it won’t.”
“Nobody will see the cake anyway.”
“As soon as it’s cut open they will.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Compromise. That’s what partnership is. So I smile. “Okay. You’re right. That’s fine.”
Why on earth did I ask Will’s opinion? Men don’t know anything about weddings or tasteful elegance. Note to self: Only pretend to solicit Will’s opinion in the future. Orange wedding cake. I mean really.
Chapter 23
I t’s going to take several months for the accountants to do the due diligence work necessary to purchase Ridan. Still, I’m frantically planning marketing strategy and drafting a communications plan, both to communicate the purchase internally and to the public.
At a meeting with Kyle and other executives, Kyle tells me that I have to tell the regional directors around the country the news of this acquisition forcefully.
“We want to make sure everyone is on board with this change in focus,” he says. “I don’t want any dissension. We have to go in and set the mandate that this is the priority. If they had different sales and marketing goals, well, they are going to have to push those aside and revamp their plans. We have to go in and vehemently state that Exploran takes precedence over everything else. We can’t be wishy-washy about this.”
“Kyle, I absolutely see what you’re saying,” I say, choosing my words carefully. When you encounter a wild animal, you need to show no fear and proceed cautiously. That’s the tactic I’m taking here. “Let me just throw out this idea, and you let me know what you think. The deadline you’ve set on sales goals for Exploran is very aggressive, as you know. I think that before we go into the branch offices and dictate the change in focus, what might be helpful would be to get buy-in from our regional directors. What I’m saying is, that our approach could be simply to let them know what an exciting opportunity this is, and how much potential there is for everyone to make money. I think if we went in there and set this down as a mandate from above, there might be some initial resistance. But if we point out what a great opportunity this is, they’ll see that this change is to their benefit.”
Kyle’s brow furrows and his lips purse. My heart stops for a few mome
nts as I wait for him to bite my head off, fire me, or some combination of the above. Instead, he takes a deep breath. “I see what you’re saying. What are you thinking exactly?”
Oh, thank God. I exhale and go on to tell him my plans. It seems to me that Kyle is genuinely grateful to get some management advice, no matter what the source. He wouldn’t thank me directly, but I can see the relief in his expression.
I routinely put in twelve-hour days working for WP. I’ll work from seven in the morning till six at night, then I’ll take a break to make dinner, then I’ll go back to work for a few hours. While I’m killing myself, Will watches football or plays computer games or plays around on his guitar. It’s not his fault that the WP project is really too big for me to handle on my own, but I can’t help envy his leisure time. I can’t wait until I’m done with this contract. After WP, I’m going to do a better job picking projects with reasonable timelines, so I don’t have to bust my ass to meet the deadlines. I’m so jealous that for Will, after he’s put in an eight-hour work day, that’s it; his time is his own to relax and do with it what he wants. Plus, he gets two full days off every weekend, while I’m working my tail off to plan a wedding. And yet I’m still the one cooking dinner every night and doing the bulk of the housework.
If I ask Will to do the dishes or the laundry, he’ll do them without complaining, but he never, not once, has gone and done a domestic chore on his own volition. One important lesson I have learned in this life is this: Boyfriends and husbands need to be strictly project-managed when it comes to household tasks.
On Saturday morning, I want desperately to spend the day at a spa doing nothing but getting massages and facials and sitting in a hot tub whiling the hours away in leisure. But that fantasy is not to be had. Today I have meetings with two caterers to try to plan a menu.
Before I have to go meet with caterers, I try to clean up around the house. I have very low standards when it comes to housecleaning. Even so, it boggles my mind how much time it takes to maintain even a low standard of cleanliness.