“I kid you not, Rob told me, and I quote, ‘if any of you ever pull this kind of shit again, I will pull the entire Jiggly Kitty account and your company can burn in Hell’,” said Chris. “ I swear to God he said that. I feared for my life, Tessa. Dan and I both did.”
“We were almost holding hands under the table,” said Dan. “From the terror.”
“Aw, I’m sorry! But I brought you a little something to help make up for it.” Their faces lit up when I returned from my office with two large Starbucks iced coffees. Bringing in coffee from the outside world is a huge deal to office workers - it's like smuggling drugs to a prisoner.
“You are the best secretary ever,” said Chris. “Can we keep you?”
God was I relieved to hear him say those words.
“I’d love to,” I said. “But not if Rob Dorfman is going to be around here all the time.”
“Rob who?” asked Dan, taking a long sip of coffee and lounging back in his chair.
“That guy,” said Chris, stirring his coffee with a straw, “can go to Hell.”
Dan rolled over to the television and popped in a video game. “Come on Tessa, there’ll be no more work taking place in this office today. Let’s see how you do with some Mortal Kombat. Chris can play winner.”
He handed me a controller and I settled into one of the video game chairs. I wasn't particularly a fan of Mortal Kombat, but it had been an interesting day, and I was ready to fight.
- 10 -
I watched the white plastic disc sail past Chris’s hand and slide, with a satisfying clink, into the goal.
“Score!” I yelled. Several fifth graders turned to watch my victory dance.
“You realize that I lose on purpose so you’ll continue to do that dance?” asked Chris. We pushed our paddles into the center of the table and headed toward the exit, casually bumping shoulders.
“I don’t believe you. But it is an awesome dance and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
Chris and I were at the arcade where we had been hanging out during our lunch hour for the past week. It began the day after the Rob Dorfman meeting fiasco. Dan had pretty much given up on life and called in sick, taking the day to recover in front of the television. And Kendra, understandably, had decided to take the rest of the entire week off. I called to check on her periodically throughout the morning, but by eleven-thirty she seemed to be on some sort of cleaning rampage and I decided to just let her be. This left Chris and I alone in our corner of the office fielding phone calls and picking up the slack.
By noontime Chris declared that the only way to take his stress level down a notch would be with a game of air hockey. It took a good ten minutes before I realized he was serious, but when I did, I happily tagged along. Our business attire made us stick out like sore thumbs among the tourists and grade school children, but it also added to the silliness. I ended up having more fun than I’d had in a long time, and we have been going back ever since. We liked to laugh about the fact that people like Roberta, who saw us leave for lunch together everyday, probably thought we were having some kind of torrid affair.
We ordered two slices of pizza from the outdoor vendor, and took a seat on our favorite bench which overlooked the bumper boats. Making fun of passengers on the bumper boats was quickly becoming our favorite past time.
“Look at that kid,” said Chris pointing to a boy, around twelve, who was making his boat repeatedly spin in circles. “He thinks he’s the first one to figure out how to do that.”
I laughed and pointed to the same kid's dad who was reaching into the water and splashing strangers in the face. “I would punch that guy if he splashed me.”
“He’s gonna get kicked out by bumper boat security," said Chris. "I can’t wait.” Sure enough, a pimply sixteen year old blew a whistle and Splash Dad was ordered out of the pool. His son looked humiliated.
“Look, now his kid’s ramming the hell out of that other kid because he’s angry at his dad,” said Chris. “We could do a case study on this family.”
“A case study?”
“I minored in psychology.”
“You should write a research paper,” I said. “And maybe you could also answer the question of why that guy over there is wearing green socks with sandals and black shorts.”
“That one's simple. He’s not concerned with fashion. He put those socks on because he needed something to cover his feet. And he put the sandals on because they’re comfortable.”
“And the shorts?” I asked.
“It’s hot outside and those keep him cool. A guy like that doesn’t think about color coordination or style, he thinks about putting clothes on his body for utilitarian purposes only.”
“But how gross," I said. "His socks are all wet.”
“Tessa, the guy is hanging out by himself at the bumper boats. Do you think he cares if his socks are wet? He’s in his own little world, and he’s probably much happier than the rest of us materialistic jerks.”
“Are you materialistic?” I asked, looking up at him with a serious face. “You don’t seem that way to me.”
“Maybe not with brand name clothes, but come on, look at my office. And what do I do all day? I help some sociopath make money off of his strip joints. This entire city is the most materialistic piece of work on the planet. You go out on a Friday night around here and it’s nothing but fake girls in thousand dollar shoes latching on to whoever has the most money, and lining up for the most exclusive clubs they can pay their way into.”
“Geez," I said. "I was kind of hoping to hit up some clubs one of these weekends, but maybe I'd better go shoe shopping first. You know, if I want to catch a man.”
“Your shoes are perfect,” said Chris, playfully stepping on my foot. I cringed as I noticed the scuff marks all over the toes. How the heck old were these things?
“You don’t want to be like those girls anyway," he said. He reached down and brushed some pizza crumbs off my leg. “They don’t have any interest in air hockey.”
I smiled up at him, and then looked quickly back down at my pizza. Perhaps it was the Las Vegas sun, but my face suddenly felt very warm. I stared at Splash Dad as he kicked angrily at the bushes by the bumper boat waiting area. A woman wearing a lot of gold jewelry hurried over to comfort him. Splash Mom, I assumed.
“So,” I said, changing the subject, “not that I don’t enjoy it, but we always seem to be making fun of other people or talking about work. I still don’t know very much about you. There’s got to be more to you than just designer of strip club parking lots and air hockey phenomenon, no?”
“Well, when you put it that way, could there possibly be anything more?”
I giggled. “Let me rephrase that. Once we get past all the glamour, there must be something that brought you to this point in your life. I can tell you quite simply that I was born and raised in Massachusetts, have hated the snow ever since I got too old to play in it, and have a very real fear of dying an administrative assistant. Now you go.”
“First of all, you’re never too old to play in the snow,” said Chris.
“Tell me,” I said, “have you ever had to scrape ice off your windshield before leaving for work on a ten degree February morning?”
“No, but once when I was six we took a ski trip to Colorado and I think my parents had to brush some snow off the car,” said Chris. “But, you know, I was all snug in the back seat with the heat on.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to hear about snow from you, Mr. I Live In The Desert.”
“Touché. But I haven’t always lived in the desert. I grew up in San Diego and went to UCLA for my engineering degree. Right before graduation my roommates and I decided that before we sold our souls to the corporate world we wanted to do something for ourselves. So we moved to Vegas and tried our hand at amateur pornography.”
I wish I could have seen the look on my face, because Chris only lasted about three seconds before he broke out laughing.
“I’m just kiddin
g! Believe it or not we opened a paintball field, but it tanked. I don’t think any of us had the drive or the experience to make it a success. But we had fun while it lasted.”
We watched as Splash Dad made it loudly known to everybody who passed him that he would never frequent these bumper boats again.
“Do you still talk to the other guys?” I asked.
“I do. Randy is still my roommate. The other guy, Ryan, met a producer of Cirque du Soleil when we were out at the bars one night. He ended up marrying the girl and now he travels the world. Every few months I get a postcard from some new country that he’s in.”
“Well there you go,” I said. “Every decision you make, no matter how insignificant it seems, can change the direction of your entire life. I mean, what if he hadn't gone out that night? He'd probably still be here like the rest of us corporate chumps."
“True, true.” Chris nodded slowly. “And if you hadn’t carried a tube of stain remover in your purse, you may have never ended up in Vegas at all.”
"Exactly. And if Kendra's husband hadn’t left, she never would have missed her meeting with Rob, Rob never would have tore you a new one, and we may never have ended up hanging out at this arcade together like a couple of dorks.” I kicked him gently under the bench.
"Now that would be a shame."
We watched in silence as Splash Dad put his son in a headlock and administered one hell of a noogie.
“I’m guessing that guy never thinks about these things,” said Chris.
“Good call.”
***
We made a stop at the arcade gift shop before returning to the office as we still had a few precious minutes left of our lunch hour. We wound our way up and down the aisles laughing at the miscellaneous junk for sale. You could pretty much slap a pair of googly eyes on anything and sell it in one of these places. We had just finished giggling over a pink t-shirt emblazoned with several hundred kittens and, of course, the words ‘Las Vegas,’ when something caught my eye.
“Hey look at these,” I called to Chris, picking one up. It was a small sculpture made from pieces of junk metal, nuts, bolts, and various other parts. The one I had picked up looked like a dog with its head in a toilet. “This is kind of cool, huh?”
“Not bad,” he said. “You were an art major right?”
“Sure was,” I said. “I used to make stuff like this.” I turned the dog around in my hand, studying it. It wasn’t anything that I couldn’t have made myself. The tag told me it was made by a woman in Carson City who worked out of a studio in her home - and she was charging thirty-two dollars. Boy was I jealous.
“So you don’t anymore?” asked Chris. “Make stuff like that, I mean.”
“Not really. I have to concentrate on my career you know.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “Typing, filing. Once you let creativity into the mix you’re just asking for trouble.”
“You should try to get back into it. I tell you, the year and a half we spent running paintball was the best time I’ve had since college.”
“Well I haven’t totally given up on it. I still make things out of office supplies sometimes. Usually when I’m on hold with Jiggly Kitty tech support.”
“Office supplies?”
“That’s right. I made the Eiffel Tower out of binder clips.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” I put on a leopard print cowboy hat. “What do you think?”
“I think that hat has been on more heads than you realize. What else have you made?”
I tossed him the hat and did a little skip down the next aisle. “Uh, oh yeah. Before I left I was starting to work on a diorama of Dogs Playing Poker.”
“Out of office supplies.”
“Yup. It’s hard to find the right stuff though with stupid Margaret Sherman always nosing around when I’m in the supply closet. What do you think of this?” I put on a pair of battery operated sunglasses. Red and blue lights chased each other around the frames, and Chris snapped a picture with his cell phone. I smelled his cologne as he moved in close and plucked the sunglasses from my face.
“I think,” he said, looking into my eyes, “you’re hiding a lot of talent from the world.”
***
I started sculpting as soon as we returned to the office. With my door closed, a pack of sticky notes, a box of paperclips, some pushpins, and various other items I snagged out of the supply closet when Roberta had gone to the bathroom, I set to work. At three-thirty I stood in Chris’s doorway and proudly presented him with a tiny air hockey table and two tiny players, all secured atop a green file folder.
“For you,” I said. “It’s us.”
The look on his face when he saw my work was priceless.
“You weren’t kidding.” He whistled. “This is unbelievable. I shall give this a place of honor.”
Chris rolled his chair over to the windowsill and placed my sculpture in the center, reminding me of Nick on the day I left Massachusetts. For the first time all day I felt a little sad. Then Chris pulled a dog sculpture made out of nuts and bolts from beneath his desk - the one that he had probably purchased while I was in the gift shop's restroom - and my heart skipped a beat.
"I thought you could use this," he said with a wink. "For inspiration."
"You're something else, you know that?" I said. I took the little dog out of his hands and smiled the whole way back to my office.
- 11-
Sophisticated slutty. I stood in Kendra's doorway twirling my hair and turning the words over in my head. My mind ran through all of the outfits that I had brought from home, and they all seemed so lame. I mean, I could definitely pull off slutty if I mixed the right pieces together, but sophisticated? Not a chance.
"Tessa? You okay?" asked Kendra, snapping me back to reality.
“Exactly how hot are we talking?” I asked. I suddenly remembered what Chris had told me about phony girls and thousand dollar shoes and boob jobs. Did he really say boob jobs? I glanced down at my chest and panic started to set in again. "Are you sure you want to hang out with me tonight?"
I had assumed that Kendra had loads of rich and exciting girlfriends who she hung out with, so when I found myself invited to accompany her to one of the newest clubs on The Strip, I was more than a little surprised.
“Of course I want to go with you, silly, who else?” She effortlessly swished her hair up into a clip and I wondered what on earth somebody like Kendra wanted with somebody like me. Little, old, secretarial me.
Just as I was surprised to find myself being flown to Vegas after merely helping her remove a stain from her dress, I was equally surprised to find myself suddenly elevated from the position of assistant to the position of somebody worth hanging out with. But this was the new Kendra, the one who returned to the office. She was truly a changed woman. No longer depressed and moping, she was full of life and spirit, ready to head out on the town and revel in the fact that she was once again a single woman. I was not quite sure how that change had happened, but as I'd yet to experience much of Vegas nightlife, I was too excited to care.
There was just one minor catch. In order to actually get into this club, we had to look really good. Not trashy, as Kendra explained it, but "sophisticated slutty." Being a hot girl is a sure ticket into the Vegas club scene, and I did not want to let Kendra down.
Kendra must have finally noticed the worried look forming on my face because she suggested that we go shopping during lunch, and I eagerly accepted.
We drove to shops at The Venetian where Kendra marched me straight into several of her favorite stores. These were the types of stores I would never dream of going into by myself - where there are four racks of clothing and the employees stand at the entrance judging your worth. But it was different walking in with Kendra. Some of the employees knew her by name, and instead of looking at me like I was a hillbilly, they assumed that I belonged.
“I don’t know if I can afford this stuff, Ken,” I whispered, getting nervous when I spott
ed the price tag on a mini-skirt. I would have to work ten hours to pay for that thing. No, I take that back, I would have to work ten hours just to pay for the front half of that thing. If I felt like walking around bare-assed tonight we'd be in business.
“Oh don’t worry about money,” said Kendra, holding a purple sequined tube top up against me. Almost everything in the store was purple. “I’m the one dragging you out tonight, I’ll take care of your outfit.”
As much as I didn’t want to let her buy me any more stuff, there were so many beautiful things in the store that I figured I would let it slide this one last time. The clerk eagerly brought several items to the dressing room for me, and I got the distinct impressions that we were the only customers she’d seen all day. I cringed at the price tag on the mini dress I was slipping into, and prayed that nothing ripped as I zipped up.
All concerns about money disappeared when I saw the person looking back at me from the mirror. She was nobody I had ever met before - she was rich, she was glowing, she was ready to mingle with celebrities! I had to have it. Kendra and the store clerk both gasped when I stepped out of the dressing room. This dress had "sophisticated slutty" and Tessa Golden written all over it.
“We’ll take it,” said Kendra nodding approvingly. “Now we just need to get you some stilettos.”
The fact that I was going to be seen in public in a dress that short barely had time to sink in, and now we were talking about stilettos?
“Do they sell mace in this mall?” I asked, only half joking. I went back into the dressing room and reluctantly took off my heavenly new dress.
Kendra just laughed.
“Don’t worry, you’ll blend right in.”
***
And blend in I did. We stood in line outside the club with at least a hundred other girls dressed just like us, or worse. The amount of skin was shocking and I elbowed Kendra every six seconds.
“Look at her!” I whispered as a girl walked by in a dress that barely grazed the bottom of her behind. I looked around at the men, trying to figure out what was going through their minds. The sad part is that most of them did not even seem phased, as if they were desensitized to seeing that amount of skin. I guess they had to be, otherwise they would have a heart attack every time they turned around. But it made me wonder what went on inside the clubs to keep them interested. Before I had a chance to ponder it further, a bouncer motioned for Kendra and I to come to the front of the line. Several girls gave us filthy looks.
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