Dead End Job

by Ingrid Reinke

  With that, he turned away from me and stormed out of the cell. The door clicked shut before I could think of a clever reply.

  After he left I paced back and forth for a while, muttering to myself. I’m absolutely positive that I looked and sounded totally insane, but there was no one watching and I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I realized that the biggest mistake I’d made was to trust Rocky. While my legal trouble should have been foremost on my mind, or the now-apparent imminent danger of working at Merit, all I could focus on was the growing resentment that I felt toward him for what he’d done. The more I thought about the situation, the dumber and dumber I felt. His speedy and aggressive pursuit of me, showing up at my apartment unannounced, omitting important details about his personal life and tossing out any regard for professional conduct by seducing me...Putting the pieces together made it seem obvious that Rocky was in the rebound phase of his love life, looking for some quick sex and maybe an emotional boost from an emotionally vulnerable woman. An emotionally vulnerable woman like me.

  I cursed myself for being so stupid. No matter how many times I went through the same thing, swearing up and down that I wasn’t going to fall for an asshole, I had proved to myself yet again that I was still an easy victim of this type of romantic terrorism. How many times would I have to experience this brand of heartache and self-hatred before I could ever learn? I should’ve seen through Rocky’s passes at me and known that he was using me to get back at his wife, or forget her, or whatever. It didn’t matter, because what he’d done was wrong. I vowed then and there not to make the same mistake again, no matter how charming the man or how lonely I got. My heart couldn’t take another all-out gang-banging like this one.

  After making myself that solemn promise, I looked around the cell, wondering what I could do next. My first instinct was to try to repair the situation, but I could not for the life of me come up with anything productive that could be accomplished within the confines of the shitty little room. The complete lack of control made me antsy, and I continued to pace the room. Back and forth I walked, trying to flee the tornado of bad feelings swirling and swelling in my chest. At various points I was teary, back to angry, then embarrassed, then afraid. Eventually I sat back down on the cot, completely emotionally drained, and stared without seeing at the ceiling of the cell.

  I’d been spacing out in that position for at least an hour when my cell door was opened again by a uniformed officer and my lawyer. If Adrien was shocked by my appearance or behavior, he didn’t give it away.

  “Good news Ms. Hallstrom,” my lawyer said cheerfully, tactfully ignoring my state of emotional disarray. “The DA has decided not to file charges against you and agreed to release you based on Rocky’s statement. You’re free to go.”

  Chapter 14: Hot Mess

  Adrien stayed with me at the station for the next hour while I finished signing all of the release paperwork. He politely offered me a ride home, but I declined. The last thing I wanted to do was have an awkward conversation with a perfect stranger. I walked several blocks away from the jail down to First Avenue and waived down a cab, then happily paid $25 to sit in the backseat in silence, mulling over my situation.

  When I got out of the cab in front of my apartment, I had no idea what to do with myself. I sat down in one of the wooden patio chairs on my tiny front porch and stared off out across the road in the direction of the lake. It was almost 6:00 PM, and the sun was shining in an insultingly idyllic fashion, gleaming off of the gentle waves on Greenlake. The weather was finally getting close to something I’d consider ‘warm,’ (just above 70 degrees), and the path around the lake was bustling with hundreds of happy Seattleites, pale from the long grey winter, enjoying the first few official days of summer. I could hear the laughter of the kids splashing in the wading pool, recently opened for the season over the weekend. I glared at them darkly for a couple of minutes, barely resisting the urge to give everyone who was having fun the finger. Then, disgusted, I got up, stormed into the house and slammed the front door.

  Over the next two days my primary activities were limited to not much more than moping around the house, drinking vast amounts of pinot grigio out of one of those double bottles, taking handfuls of anxiety pills and complaining on the phone to anyone and everyone who would listen to me. I had managed to explain the entire saga of the last week to Elin, Beverly, Alex, Amanda, Kathy and my very patient mother at least three times each, in varying states of anger, sadness and self-pity, depending on who I was talking to and how much wine I’d downed prior to the call.

  Fiercely loyal, I could depend on Elin and Beverly to both react with appropriate outrage:

  “What the FUCK?” Elin yelled to me over Skype. “That Rocky is a total douche prick! Seriously, fuck that guy. I know, I know: we should mail him a box of dog poop. That would be so funny!”

  Her voice suddenly quieted after my baby niece toddled over to the screen, smiling, and started repeating the word ‘poop’ over and over.

  “Oops,” she said.

  Beverly’s preferred method of communication was text message, so we chatted in sporadic bursts throughout the day. After the twenty or so messages that it took for me to explain the situation, she suggested that I either ask my lawyer if I could sue Rocky (under what grounds I have no clue), or I have her husband go punch him in the face. I appreciated both suggestions, but I declined.

  Alex and Amanda showed up at my door together the second evening with a bottle of whiskey and a goat-cheese pizza. Instead of letting me prattle on endlessly, they distracted me by reminiscing about our early twenties: the cocktails we drank, the men we dated, and the endless entertainment of working in a bar. We sat outside in the yard for hours, drinking the whiskey and watching Alex chain smoke. They only left after half of the bottle was gone, and they were both assured that I was good and buzzed and not dwelling on my misery.

  Then next afternoon, while I was alone and basking in self-pity, Rocky called me several times. He didn’t leave messages, probably figuring correctly that I wouldn’t listen to them, but instead sent a series of text messages that I was forced to read, just in order to delete them.

  “I miss you”

  “I am unbelievably sorry”

  “Please forgive me”

  “I just want to make you happy”

  Ignoring the simple, heartfelt messages was one of the toughest things I’d ever done, but I set my jaw and reminded myself of my promise. As much as I wanted to answer, I’d learned over the years that sometimes the best way to say no is to not say anything. Any type of response would just the door a little wider for Rocky to push himself back into my life. Maybe a harsh word from me would lead to an apology, an excuse, or an explanation that would create seeds of doubt in my mind, tearing down my self-protecting resolve. I would listen, understand, and have unavoidable feelings of empathy. Rinse and repeat: I would always get hurt again.

  After a particularly wine-soaked conversation with my mom, she gently suggested that I schedule an appointment with my therapist. I realized it was time to end to my epic pity party and try to move forward as best I could. This was decidedly more challenging than it sounded, because the office was closed and I had very little on the agenda to keep me busy for the next however many days it would be until the office re-opened. I was also on a budget. Rent was due in a week and I couldn’t go out and spend what little money I had on meals or shopping, which was exactly how I would’ve soothed my achy heart and mind before I forced myself to address my debt problem by cutting up all of my credit cards and chucking them in the trash a year ago.

  Even so, I spent Friday afternoon poking around the University Village shopping center with Alex. Listlessly I watched her buy exquisite lace up boots from the trendy boutique Mercer; I was so depressed that not even good shopping cheered me up. She dragged me out to a free show in a dark bar on the Ave in Seattle’s University District, where she bought us pitchers of beer while we listened to a tortured-looking ki
d in flannel singing non-descript songs through his long bushy red hair.

  After several beers and three rounds of tequila shots, I was feeling quite a bit better. Alex was chatting up a couple of guys who were right up her alley: long hair, bushy beards, skinny jeans and loads of tattoos. They were both in a local band that she’d heard of, and she was geeking out to me about how underground cool they were. I was less than enthused, but I kept her company while she flirted with them. When the three of them decided to step outside for a smoke, I declined and stayed at the dark table by myself, rolling my eyes at the musician on the stage, who was now playing a strange, sitar-like instrument and repeating the word ‘orgasm’ over and over in a trance-like monotone.

  I must have been making quite the stink-face because the bartender, a slim, pale haired- twenty-something with dyed black hair and a pentagram tattoo in the center of her chest, looked right through me as I tried to flag her down to order myself another shot. Fuck, I thought to myself, I should just go home. I was plotting my exit when a familiar voice spoke from directly behind my chair.

  “I thought that was you.”

  I turned around in my barstool and found myself face-to-face with Clark. He wore a light blue band t-shirt with grey jeans and old converse sneakers. His bright blue eyes stood out piercingly against his tan skin and closely shaved dark hair as he leaned next to me with one hand on the bar, the other on the back of my chair. His arms were a perfect shade of brown, and I noticed for the first time that he had almost no arm hair. His skin looked so soft and moisturized, I was wondering if he shaved it, or if he was just naturally hairless. I was about to say something really embarrassing to that effect, but as soon as Clark started to speak the bartender noticed him, perked up, and abandoned her hobby of ignoring me. Now that I was standing next to Hottie Mchotterson, my corner of the bar was much more appealing. She came over and leaned up on the bar top, pushing her breasts together so that a thick line of cleavage was exposed directly under the pentagram.

  “Hi. Can I get you a drink?” she asked in sultry tones, gazing only at Clark. Jesus, I didn’t think it was possible to stick both your ass and your boobs out so obviously at exactly the same moment, but she was somehow pulling it off.

  “What would you like, Louisa?” Clark asked me, totally ignoring the frontal onslaught of tittage and assage. “Let me get you something.”

  “I’ll have another Cazadores, no training wheels,” I said to the bartender smugly. I probably shouldn’t have another shot, but what the hell.

  “I’ll have the same,” said Clark, looking at me. “And two Stellas as well, thanks.” The bartender, dejected, slunk away to make our drinks.

  “Thanks Clark,” I said, as he sat down in the chair beside me. I could feel myself blushing tomato red as I thought about all the inappropriate things I had daydreamed about in the office of what I wanted to do to this man and his amazing body. I’d been so consumed by Rocky that it felt like a long time since I’d thought about Clark in that way (the quiz night back in Ballard seemed ages ago), but I was pleasantly surprised that he was there, and figured that maybe this was exactly what I needed—a distraction. At that moment I was grateful for the dim lighting in the bar. “Uh, do you come over here often?” I asked sarcastically.

  “No, I live over in Ballard,” he said, smiling. I already knew that from snooping through the personal records that I kept for Elaine on the legal department employees, but I feigned surprise as I didn’t want to highlight my stalker-ish tendencies. “I have some friends from high school playing here a little later tonight, so I thought I would come down and support them. What are you doing here? I wouldn’t have picked this place as your kind of scene. No offense,” he quickly added.

  “None taken,” I laughed. “This is totally not my scene at all. This is actually my friend Alex’s scene; she’s outside smoking right now with two Jesus impersonators.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you here. I’ve been worried about you this past week. Things have been so fucked up at Merit.”

  Uh, OK. This was news to me. First that Clark had been thinking about me at all, and second, that he would actually be worried about me—he’d been so cold at work. I didn’t know what to say back without having very un-sexy emotional diarrhea all over him, so I figured I would just answer with something generic.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I lied. The bartender returned, sans skanky boob display, and plopped our drinks unceremoniously in front of us.

  “Twenty-three fifty,” she said. I went to grab my purse but Clark pulled a twenty and a ten out and handed it to her.

  “Keep the change,” he said. Good tipper too. Clark was full of surprises tonight.

  Right then I smelled a whiff of stale cigarette as Alex and the two Jesuses walked back in.

  “Who’s your cute friend, Lu?” yelled Alex, right into my eardrum. I was glad that she didn’t seem to recognize Clark from last week, because she was getting to be buzzed Alex, which meant more chain smoking, glossy eyes and talking at me in an extremely too-loud voice.

  “Alex, this is Clark. He works with me at Merit,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t say something too completely embarrassing about my crush on him.

  “Hey, hey!” Alex’s hand was raised and she was pointing at Clark across my body in little jabs. “You’re that drink guy from trivia. I didn’t know you were coming down tonight.” I don’t think Clark could hear what she was saying in the loud bar, but either way he seemed unimpressed and gave her an apathetic wave of his hand. Alex sat on my left, but there was only one open seat, so the Jesus twins had to sit next to Clark on my right. They ordered a round of Jameson shots and PBRs. Soon I was trying to have a conversation with Clark, a conversation with Alex about the conversation with Clark, and also listening to Alex and the Jesuses outright yell at each other over my and Clark’s heads. Twenty minutes later I’d finished my fourth tequila and things were starting to get confused. I wasn’t catching on to exactly which Jesus Alex liked and which Jesus liked her. Clark was in one ear talking to me about the documentation he’d been drafting for the merger, and Alex was in the other telling me that she really needed to go buy toilet paper because she’d been out for a week and was currently wiping with a stack of thin, ass-chafing napkins that she’d stolen from the bar downstairs from her apartment. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “OK guys,” I announced loudly, interrupting everyone. I stood up woozily. “I’m out of here.” I started marching towards the door before anyone could say anything or realize how fucked up I was. I got outside without incident, which was fantastic because I’d been known to fall right onto my ass as a result of too many shots.

  “Louisa, wait!” a voice called out from behind me. Just when I thought it was safe. I stopped dead. Clark ran up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, wait! I’ll give you a ride home.”

  Even in my tequila haze I didn’t think this was the best idea. I’d learned over my years of drinking that I should avoid situations where I could and would make a total asshole of myself. A car ride with a relatively sober Clark was just one of those scenarios.

  “Uh, no, that’s cool, I’ll just get a cab home,” I said, slurring a bit.

  “No, I insist. Look, my car’s right here,” he said, pointing to a small, sporty, black BMW parked off the street. Well, fuck.

  “Whatta bout your friend’s band?” I asked, my resolve crumbling.

  “Don’t worry about it, they don’t come on for another hour,” he said. “I’ll take you home and then swing back to see them. Come on, it will give me something to do. I don’t want to sit here with that crowd for the next hour.” He had a point.

  “I live right over in Greenlake, it’s only 10 minutes away...”

  “Perfect, get in.”

  Clark flashed me his 1000 watt smile and released my hand to click the unlock button on his car keys, and my libido did a mini back flip. I couldn’t stop my mind from picturing dragging this man into my apartment and having my
way with him. Whoa boy, restrain yourself, Hallstrom.

  He started the engine and we pulled onto 45th, driving West over I-5 through Wallingford on the way to Greenlake. The BMW was basically sound-proof, so I couldn’t hear the powerful engine revving outside. The only sound in the car was Mumford & Sons playing softly on the stereo. I found myself staring at Clark’s muscular arms, and decided to try to snap myself out of it by reminding myself of exactly how “not his type” I was.

  “How is your girlfriend? Ivy, right? Or is it Lynn?” I wracked my brain, trying to remember which hot Asian he was seeing at the moment.

  “Oh, you’re probably talking about Veronica. We actually broke up last week. She started bringing all of this shit over to my house all the time. I think she wanted to move in. I wasn’t ready for that, well at least not with her—you know how it is. So…I am officially single I guess.” He looked over at me and smiled.

  What was this? Was Clark seriously hitting on me? ‘Cause that’s what it felt like. Uh, no way Louisa, you are drunk, I lectured myself. He’s just talking to you. Just a normal, friendly conversation. I smiled back, nervously.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. Then before I could stop myself, I blurted out: “Being single is hard.” Oh god, here she was: Truthful Louisa.

  “It’s not so bad. Sometimes it’s fun.” Clark tried to derail my impending rant, but to no avail.

  “People are just assholes, you know? Seriously dicks,” I continued. I sensed the impending disaster but was unable to stop myself from speaking. “This last guy I was seeing, he was MARRIED. So: disaster.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s horrible.” Clark looked over at me sweetly and put his hand on my knee. “I would never lie to you like that.”