by Rita Ciresi
After one of the cafeteria lunch ladies gushingly accepted from the CEO the final door prize—two round-trip tickets to anywhere in the continental United States—I joined in the applause and turned away. But my gaze gravitated in exactly the wrong direction. For a horrible moment, as he made pained conversation with Hook Roberts (the blonde still hovering by his side like an about-to-land helicopter), I caught Strauss’s eye.
Judy Garland wished us a merry little Christmas. Strauss turned away toward the shellacked-silver wreath that surrounded the Seth Thomas clock above the door, and my eyes turned onto a tray full of pfeffernüsse nobody dared to eat, because the powdered sugar would leave white spots all over their dry—clean—only holiday outfits—but not before locking, again just for a moment, with Hook Roberts’s eyes.
Hook disengaged himself from his conversation with Strauss and came over to me. I was standing against a pillar, and Hook positioned himself right in front of me, his champagne glass all but emptied and cocked at a dangerous angle, as if it were about to tip the last bit of bubbly onto his Santa Claus tie.
“Has the party started?” Hook asked me.
“Is this a party?” I asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Where’s your holiday spirit?”
“I left it at the dry cleaner’s.”
Hook laughed and downed the last drop of champagne. “I sure didn’t.” He snagged a waitress. “Hey, hon, trade you this one for two.” He put his empty glass on the tray and, against my will, armed me with a glass of champagne.
“Here by yourself?” he asked.
“Looks that way.”
“Where’s your fiancé?” he asked.
“Where’d you hear I had a fiancé?” I blurted out.
“Don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Hook stared at me intently. Then he smiled. “Ah, aren’t you a smart cookie, Lisa. And wasn’t he a convenient rumor—”
“Where’s your wife?” I interrupted him.
“Lorraine’s home watering the plants.”
“You married a gardener?”
“I married a woman who doesn’t like office parties.”
“Can’t say I blame her.”
Hook glanced back over his shoulder at Strauss and the stewardess. “They ought to have a rule, employees only. Don’t you think there ought to be a rule: Spouses and dates—and fiancés—get to stay home and watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the fifty-millionth time on TV?”
I took a slug of champagne. The bubbles coursed up my nose like I had just plunged into a swimming pool and forgotten to hold my breath.
“Maybe I’ll suggest that to Strauss at our next meeting,” Hook said. “Then again, maybe not. I might get a bad reaction.”
“You might.”
Hook leaned in toward me. “Strauss is a pretty touchy character these days, isn’t he?” He looked over at the blonde, then raised his eyebrow at me. “Any idea what’s eating him?”
I was dangerously close to throwing my champagne in Hook’s face. “I haven’t the foggiest. I don’t have touch to do with him.”
Hook’s lips parted into a smile. I corrected myself “I mean much. Much to do with him.”
“I must have misread the situation.”
“You seem to have a habit of doing that,” I said. “As well as the bad habit of spreading gossip.”
“Don’t blame me. I kept my word.”
“Right.”
“Honest Injun. Even your former traveling companion knows that. You want to know who blew your cover with dear darling Doctor?”
I hesitated.
“Give me the next dance,” Hook said, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”
The floor had cleared, and a few of the more daring couples—from the looks of it, mostly older folks who wanted to show they still knew how to cut the rug—were swaying to Perry Como. I was right when I had Strauss pegged as a nondancer. He wasn’t up there. But maybe he’d lead up the blonde in half a second. Although my reason told me I should extricate myself from this encounter with Hook, I suddenly wanted and needed to beat Strauss up to the dance floor. I couldn’t think of a bigger slap in his face than taking my first turn around with Hook. I hadn’t had a good flirt in a long time, and judging from his glazed eyes, I figured Hook wouldn’t remember much of this in the morning. Hook had some useful information. Three minutes in his arms and that information was mine.
“The next one might be fast,” I said.
“You like it slow?”
I put down my drink, suddenly light-headed, and thought, Good God, girl, sober up. Get something to eat. Move away from this man. Just move away. But how could I move other than in Hook’s arms? He had me out on the dance floor before I knew it. I didn’t recognize either the singer or the song. I only knew Hook was a smooth dancer and I was a bumbler.
“Relax,” he said.
“I am relaxed.”
“You keep poking me with those witchy shoes of yours. You’re supposed to let the man lead.”
“So lead.”
“So follow. There you go. That’s right. You’ve got it.”
“No, you’ve got it.”
He brought his head down closer to mine. “Got what?”
“What I want to know.”
He laughed and took me to the back of the dance floor. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out.”
I racked my brains.
“Use your head,” Hook said.
“Karen,” I said.
“Who’s that? That schoolmarm who had your job before you? Nah.”
“Somebody in computer support?”
“Did you and someone else leave a mail trail? Very indiscreet of you, I’d say.”
“I give up.”
“No, keep guessing.”
“Male or female?” I asked. “Animal or vegetable?”
“Pure manly man. Armed and extremely dangerous.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The night and weekend watchman.”
“Gussie?”
“None other.”
“How do you know any of this?”
“I surmised a lot, and Frau Doctor herself filled in the gaps. In our confidential little meeting. This afternoon.”
My heart thumped and Hook stepped on my toe. “Ow!”
“Keep dancing.”
“You met with Peggy this afternoon?”
“I say no more.”
“Come on,” I said. “Finish what you started.”
“Dance is over, Lisa.”
And it was. But Hook took pity on me—or so he said—and led me back to where we had started—a table suddenly surrounded by empty chairs because everybody wanted to swing to Elvis.
“What did you tell Peggy?” I asked.
“I told her nothing.”
“What did Peggy tell you?”
“Corporate reorganization was high on the conversational agenda.”
“Cut the shit. Get to Gussie.”
“I didn’t get this from her mouth. But rumors fly. People see things, such as your lovebird looks in the hall, and a couple of matching muddy shoeprints on the carpet—ha! I’m not even going to ask what you two naughty children were up to that day. You should have realized it would go any—which—way back to Peg. Word is she went back and checked the sign—out log over the summer that showed Strauss following you out the door almost every night he was in town—”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“You were in the building with him almost every weekend.”
“I was working. So was the treasurer. And the comptroller. So were some of the janitors—”
“Ha! You could have messed with any of those guys—you could have done the goddamn CEO—without a murmur. But you played with the Doctor’s pet boy—”
“He’s not her pet—”
“What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you realize she thought he was golden? Mister Do—No—Wrong? Mister Upright? Mister Morality Incarnate? Eve
rybody knows he lost his job once for blowing the whistle at that lab in Princeton—what were they manufacturing? Faulty IUDs? Something that was making women really sick. Shit, I don’t remember. The Doctor hired him thinking he was some great defender of the feminist cause, and then she finds out he’s been screwing some girl who coincidentally gets promoted? You can imagine how well that sat with her.” Hook laughed. “Shut your mouth, girl. You’re catching flies. And relax. She’s known for weeks. He’s all set to take the rap, not you.”
“He’s fired?”
“Temporarily removed from the premises. Commonly known as being sent to Siberia. Taipei, really. A three-month stint. Boorman’s doing a kamikaze on the Oriental market. Sayonara, New York. Hello, sushi.”
“Taipei is in Taiwan,” I told Hook. “It’s Chinese, not Japanese.”
“What the fuck’s the difference? They all eat raw fish.”
“You’ve obviously never been there.”
“But I know the hotels are first-class. And the women are beautiful. And submissive, I’ve heard.”
“If you like that kind of thing.”
“Most men like that.”
“Most men,” I said, “are wienies. And I’m not talking about this anymore with you.”
“Au contraire, Lisa. You and I are going to have a lot more chances to discuss this. Why do you think Peg called me into her office?”
“To ask what you knew about—”
“Ha. She got that straight from the source, I’m sure. Mr. Morals came clean the moment she confronted him with it. No, my dear, she wanted to know how I felt about having you work under me.”
“What?”
“Expect an interoffice memo. On Monday. From Peggy. I’m in charge of Editorial, effective January one.”
I tried not to gasp.
“The look on your face is priceless.”
“You should have told me—”
“I just did.”
“I can’t work for you—”
“So go tell Peg you prefer Strauss’s hands-on management style to mine and see how much sympathy you get. On second thought, why don’t you just try mine for a while?”
He gave me an evil grin. As Sinatra sang “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” loud enough so I couldn’t be overheard, I beckoned toward Hook. He leaned in. Slowly, quietly, with my best beauty-queen smile plastered on my face, I informed him, “Let’s get this straight right now, buster: I wouldn’t sit on your dick if you paid me a million dollars.”
He laughed. “No, but you’d probably suck it for twenty.”
I also laughed. But inside I was scrambling for the right comeback. “I don’t know,” I said. “I got a big mouth. It would take a lot to fill it.”
“I’m your man.”
“Dream on.”
Hook reached over to the table and grabbed a pfeffernüss. “Eat this first,” he said. “No man is ever going to jump your bones until you get some meat on them.”
He held the powdery cookie before me, and when I refused to lean over and bite the pfeffernüss right from his fingers, he thrust it into my hand, then took one for himself.
I suddenly remembered I was at a party. I turned around and called out to my coworkers who had been laying bets on how much I would eat. “Hey, you guys, watch this,” I said, and took a bite of the cookie, sending buttery crumbs—and an avalanche of powdered sugar—down the front of my not-paid-for dress. I half-choked on the pfeffernüss. As I swiped a napkin from the table to brush the mess off my dress, I noticed—for the first time that evening—Peggy Schoenbarger standing solo across the room. Her eyes were on me. I could only imagine what she was thinking of me. It couldn’t have been much worse than what I thought of myself.
Summoned away by some guys in advertising, Hook left me with an empty glass of champagne. The hors d’oeuvres got eaten, the flower arrangements were auctioned off for charity, the CEO made a fatuous speech about the dedication and commitment of Boorman’s employees, and then the music returned. Burl Ives singing and swinging to “Jingle Bell Rock” was the last straw for me. I took my black-velvet clutch purse into the bathroom. As I stared into the mirror, I saw my dress was destined to be delivered not back to Saks, but to the dry cleaner’s. I also noted my hair and makeup were beyond repair. Maybe it was just the lights, but my skin seemed greenish-yellow, like curry powder stained on a spatula—and my curls were so frizzed they looked like a bad mall perm. Champagne may sparkle in the glass, but it dulled the eyes. And what my eyes saw, they didn’t like.
It was time to call it a night.
The cloakroom was small and cluttered. I kicked off my stiletto heels and almost grew dizzy with relief, the way I used to feel after unlacing my wobbly skates after a half hour at the ice rink. My feet were back on the ground. I felt safe. In the vast crush of jackets and boots—worn in case that light snow turned to a blizzard—I located my coat and was just pulling it off the metal hanger when who should come in behind me but Strauss.
My coat slipped off the hanger and fell to the floor. After I leaned over to retrieve it by the collar, I stood up and looked him straight in the eye for the first time in months. I might have bad morals, I thought, but in comparison to that blowsy blonde, boy, did I look good.
Or did I?
“Leaving early?” he asked, and the quietness of his voice disarmed me. The carol playing in the background, “Rudolph the Red—Nosed Reindeer,” seemed loud and ridiculous, and I listened to it—and resented the way he made me hear it—through Strauss’s ears, as tacky and goyish.
“I don’t like these kinds of parties,” I reminded him.
“Neither do I,” he said, as if he were confessing something new to me—me, who knew he preferred a quiet dinner or an evening at home with Palestrina playing softly on the stereo to parties or dances or pool halls or anything that resembled a Carnival cruise atmosphere. Once you’ve done a Boorman holiday party, you’ll immediately see it’s hardly the sort of thing any caring man would inflict upon a date.
As Strauss looked over his shoulder, I suspected his date was a decoy for me—just as my fiancé had been a blind for Strauss. But the blonde wasn’t fictional. She was a living, breathing specimen of womanhood, who probably was primping in the bathroom before she made her appearance at the cloakroom door. She’d better do something about that hair of hers, I thought, if she wanted to score with Strauss tonight. She’d better have an arsenal of Trojans in her purse just in case he wasn’t carrying a safe in his back pocket. Then I wondered how she got into the dress with all the frog-closure buttons up the back. Maybe Strauss was the one who buttoned her into it.
I was determined to be adult about this. As if it were a big vitamin that refused to go all the way down, I swallowed my jealousy partway and asked Strauss if he had a nice holiday. Somehow I couldn’t eke out the word Hanukkah when there was a goofy Christmas tune playing in the background.
“I did,” he said. “Thank you for asking.”
“You’re welcome.”
He pushed up his glasses. He always did that when he got nervous. Finally, after another glance over his shoulder, he said, “Lisar—”
Why did just the mention of my mispronounced name, coming from his mouth, make my heart feel so warm?
“It’s none of my business,” he continued, “but I can’t help noticing—you’ve gotten awfully thin. You haven’t been ill, have you?”
Couldn’t be finer, I felt like telling him. Then I remembered how Hook had told me to get some meat on my bones, and I recalled that specter of myself in the bathroom mirror, and I suddenly realized I didn’t look good—I looked awful. I also suspected Strauss was asking me a coded question, and my heart went cold with anger. I was tempted to say, Yes, yes, I have been sick, deathly sick. Then, instead of going home and taking off the chief stewardess’s dress, he’d reach for the phone and schedule his second ELISA.
I told him, “I took a second test and I don’t have it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He blinked. “That wasn’t what I was asking. But of course, I’m relieved. For you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Was that all it came down to: civility and decency? No, there was something more. There must have been jealousy, still, within him—for why else would his face flush when he added, “Watch out for Hook, Lisar.”
“I’m a big girl,” I said to Strauss. “I can take care of myself.”
“I think it’s only fair to warn you. Peg has her eyes on you—”
I took in a sharp breath. “Is that why you’re being sent to China?”
“How did you know?”
“Hook just told me.”
“He can’t keep his mouth shut, can he?”
“You were the one who told!” I said.
“Goddammit. I had to.”
“Tell me what you told Peggy.”
“The conversation was confidential.”
“But, Strauss, you took the rap—”
“It wasn’t a rap.” He trotted out the company line. “This trip is a good opportunity for both me and Boorman. I want to take it.”
“I hope it’s productive,” I said. “And I certainly appreciate your advice.”
For a moment I had the odd feeling that Strauss was about to lean forward to hold my coat so I didn’t have to struggle into the sleeves, but he didn’t. I left my coat off, as if I had no intention of leaving. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer went down in history and was promptly followed by some wild meowing. It was a ridiculous version of “Jingle Bells,” supposedly sung by a passel of cats, and appropriately, it announced the arrival of Strauss’s date directly behind him in the doorway. First place the mask on yourself, then administer to your child.… To adjust the length, pull on the strap …