She was fuming. I could tell that she knew they weren’t very good and she desperately needed my help. But what could she say? Nothing.
“I’ll need them mocked up for the Tuesday meeting,” she said disappointedly.
“Okay.”
“And I’m going to let you sit in on the meeting.”
“Neat,” I said.
“And take notes.”
“Okay.”
“So you know where Caroline Keeps is, the art director, on the tenth floor?”
“I’m sure I can find her.”
“Okay then,” she said. “She needs this job bag back.”
I wasn’t sure if “Okay then” meant we were finished. That’s not entirely true. I knew that we were finished. But I liked the awkward pauses. I liked watching Lydia get flustered. She had treated me like an idiot for so long, I liked watching her do it from this new perspective. So I stood there and looked at her.
“That’s all. You can go now.” That’s what I was waiting for. I smiled, and my smile seemed to piss her off. Then again, everything I did that wasn’t benefiting her somehow seemed to piss her off. She narrowed her eyes at me as I turned to leave.
* * * * *
Todd met me at the concrete park across from my office for lunch. I shouldn’t call it that. It was really a cute little park with a pretty garden. “Concrete parks” are what suburbanites call the city parks once they’ve moved out to the suburbs and turn up their noses at our little sanctuaries. They get spoiled with not having to actually work to get a little greenery. Even though it was December, it was one of those random warm days that you feel like you have to take advantage of. The bittersweet upshot of global warming.
It was hot dogs day. Todd and I usually had lunch together three times a week, and at least one of the three times we’d eat Sabrett’s hot dogs. I know they’re disgusting, but for me it was comfort food. When I was a little girl and my mom and Walter would take us into the city, I’d always get excited about getting a hot dog from a stand. I had no idea how many stands spanned the city and I actually thought we were getting hot dogs from the same guy every time.
So once a week I’d get a foot-long with the works—this time from the same guy. “The works,” included a healthy topping of sauerkraut—which repulsed Todd no end. I don’t know if I even loved sauerkraut all that much or if I just got pleasure from grossing Todd out, but either way it made for a tasty lunch. And every time, Todd had to make a stink about it.
Like clockwork, Todd watched me sink my teeth into my first bite and offered, “I don’t know how you can eat sauerkraut. It’s fucking disgusting. It’s rotten cabbage!”
“It’s not rotten,” I said back, mouth full of food, as he shuddered. These were the little things that made me happy. Complaining about Lydia was always good times as well.
“Her ideas were completely pathetic. I mean—really bad.”
“We have that at our agency too. People fail upward. It’s part of life,” he said.
“But her ideas can’t have always been so insipid, so . . . silly and shameless,” I said.
“Like for instance?”
“She’s thinking of using Dr. Martin Luther King to sell colored contacts.”
He made a face. “Ouch. That ranks up there with the line she thought up for that new drug . . .”
“‘Kiss your genital herpes good-bye ’?”
“Bingo.”
“It’s not fair.” I sighed.
“What’s fair, Jordan? Is there an overwhelming glut of fairness in the world? Most days suck. Most people suck. What are you gonna do?” he said, with a shrug of acceptance.
“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do,” I answered. “Whatever the hell I can. Right now I have somewhat of a pass—carte blanche to do things I’d never have done before. And I can do it under the guise of not knowing it wasn’t okay.”
“Uh-oh . . . I smell a plan . . .”
“You always did have a keen sense of smell.”
“Thanks. It’s this new stuff I’m putting on after I shave,” he joked.
“Which makes up for your dumb jokes.”
“Anyway . . . what’s the plan?”
“Well, after she not-so-politely excused me from her office, I got this idea. She keeps telling me how ‘instrumental’ I used to be and then gives me her lame copy to storyboard. She’s also going to let me sit in on the meeting. Such privilege. Meanwhile, I’m getting zero credit for any of my previous ideas, which she blatantly stole.”
“Corporate America.”
“Yeah, well, the new Jordan doesn’t just write it off as corporate America. The new Jordan doesn’t get mad—she gets even.”
“What evil have you planned?”
I smiled. He knew me so well. But this wasn’t evil. This was me finally taking control of my life. By seeming just a bit out of control.
* * * * *
On my way back to work, I spotted Lydia and Kurt canoodling in an alcove between two buildings. I sped up my gait so they wouldn’t see me, but it surprised me that they were being so careless—right near our office. I busied my mind by taking in the scenery. New York in December is something to behold, and I worked just blocks from Radio City Music Hall—home of the famous Christmas Spectacular, with the glittering nativity that suggests that since there was no room at the inn, the Holy Family just parked it for the night in a suite at the Four Seasons.
Back at the office Mr. Billingsly walked up to my desk and looked into Lydia’s office, seeming distressed that she wasn’t there.
“Where’s Lydia?” he asked, as if I were her keeper. I felt this low-level panic in my stomach, but I didn’t know why. I’d never actually confirmed that he and Lydia had a thing, but I was almost positive that at one time or another—if not still—they had. And what if one illicit lover should find her with the other? Call it confirmation that I’m basically a squeamish person that I wanted no part of it.
“She’s at lunch.”
“Well, can you make sure she knows that Tuesday’s VibraLens meeting has been moved from two o’clock to one o’clock?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
“That’s an hour earlier,” he added, in case I couldn’t figure it out on my own.
“Yeah, I got that. Thanks.”
“Getting back in the swing of things?” he asked. And then before I could open my mouth to answer, he shuffled away down the hallway.
I opened up my e-mail program and clicked Compose. At the very click of it I started beaming. You wouldn’t think that writing an e-mail to your boss to let her know that a meeting had been changed from two o’clock to one o’clock would bring such joy, but it did. It did because Lydia never, never, never checked her e-mail. I was supposed to tell her everything verbally, and/or leave her a Post-it note, and/or send her brain waves to remind her in case actions one and two failed. But I didn’t know that Lydia didn’t check her e-mail. I had amnesia. So as far as I knew, I was being responsible and doing exactly as Mr. Billingsly said. It was perfect. I couldn’t have orchestrated it better myself.
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: **Important** Tuesday Meeting—Time Change
The VibraLens pitch meeting has been moved up an hour. Instead of taking place at 2 p.m., the meeting will now take place at 1 p.m. Please note: This is an hour earlier.
J
Just typing the whole “hour-earlier clarification” that Mr. Billingsly had so kindly explained to me made me feel giddy. So giddy that I copied Billingsly on it as well.
* * * * *
Stu Elliot waltzed into the pit and sat on the edge of my desk.
“Hey, daredevil,” he said. This was a reference to my riding without a helmet. “Didn’t I tell you to wear protective gear?”
I wanted to say, “Yeah, Stu. You did. And if you wanna call me out on that, when I know for a fact that yo
u took Lexi Kaye home from last year’s Christmas party and spent the next afternoon in a pharmacy—we can talk about wearing protective gear. You sure you wanna have this conversation?” But I couldn’t. Because I hadn’t seen Stu since the accident and I wasn’t supposed to recognize him.
“Did you?” I asked uncertainly.
“I’m sorry. I’m Stu,” he said, and then put out his hand to shake. I took it and introduced myself back.
“I’m Jordan . . . but I guess you already know that.”
“Yeah, we go way back.” Stu cleared his throat and looked at my mock-ups, trying to move away from the awkwardness. “What are those?”
“They’re for VibraLens. Colored contact lenses. I’m just playing,” I said.
“They’re good,” he said as he looked through my ideas. They were good. I was looking at the colored contacts like my own fakery—and coming up with some slam-dunk ideas. He read a couple out loud “‘Change the way the world sees you.’ ‘A colorful new you’ . . . they’re really good, Jordan.”
“Thanks.”
“Colored contacts,” he scoffed. “How about ‘Pretend to be something you’re not.’” Normally we would have shared a laugh over this. But I just stared at him, wide-eyed, for probably too long. I wondered if he was subtly trying to tell me something. That low-level panic I’d felt when I saw Lydia and Kurt came back tenfold. This time with good reason. I froze. I guess Stu felt bad that I didn’t seem to get the joke, so he tried to change the subject. “So we have our company Christmas party next week. You coming?”
Funny he should mention it. “I don’t know,” I said. “Should I?”
“It’s a good ti-ime,” he said in a singsongy cadence. “People get pretty trashed.”
“Well, maybe . . .” I said, and we’d covered about all we could cover, so he got up and walked away.
The way Stu talked about the party made me think about the last good time I’d had. Thanksgiving. Not with my parents but with Travis. He’d given me his number and asked me to call him, but I didn’t know if he’d meant it or was just being polite. And he hadn’t yet called me, despite the business card I’d given him. I prayed it didn’t have some impromptu shopping list scrawled on the back of it consisting of Dirk favorites. I don’t care how down-to-earth you want to seem, it’s never good for a girl to send the message that she’s reminding herself to grab a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
I pulled out his card and looked at it. He was an analyst in risk management at Goldman Sachs. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded very corporate—not at all what I pictured him doing with his time. I wondered what risk management was. I knew that without risk there was supposedly little reward, but I also knew that I’d once risked everything to sneak out of my house junior year to go to Monique Anderson’s party, and that hadn’t provided any rewards at all. In fact, I’d gotten busted and lost driving privileges for three months. So which side of this thing was he on: Was it his job to create more risk and more reward or the opposite? And was that type of job rewarding? Since I was on the fence about whether to call or not, and the word risk was right there on his business card, staring me in the face, I decided that I shouldn’t call. No matter what the potential reward. Another thing a girl should almost never do: appear interested.
“Hello?” said the voice I remembered from Thanksgiving when I called thirty seconds later.
“Hi . . . this is Jordan?” I said. Silence. “The girl from the accident?” I added and then winced and held my breath until he spoke again. I was sounding like one of those people who raised her pitch at the end of every sentence like she’s asking a question even when she wasn’t.
“Jordan! I’m sorry, this speakerphone. I’m so glad you called.”
“Good.” Brilliant!
“Your business card turned out to be a frequent visitor card from a deli. Eight more punches and you’ve got yourself a free sandwich.”
Brilliant!
“How are— Do you feel any better?” he asked.
“Oh, God, well, all the time, I mean my wound is improving,” I managed to put together. “I’m still nervous about the memory thing.”
“Absolutely, that would be— Yes, that’s a difficult part.”
“Of the accident. Yes.”
With conversation this scintillating, we really should have just hung up immediately. But I was determined to right the ship, right then and there.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just got out of a really tedious meeting. It’s one thing to get tired after a marathon meeting about mitigation strategies and probabilistic risk models, but it’s a whole new level of excitement when you actually start to fall asleep during the meeting.”
“Yikes.”
“In front of your managing director.”
“Double yikes.”
“And I thought sociology class was bad. That was like Vegas compared to the last three hours of my life—which I want back, by the way.”
“So you like your job,” I said.
“Actually it’s not that bad, but it’s certainly not the grand plan.”
“I look forward to hearing what that is.”
“And I look forward to telling you,” he said. “What are you doing later? I know this great shabu-shabu place.”
“Shabu-shabu?” I repeated, while I googled shabu-shabu to find out exactly what it was. I found that it’s a fondue party of sorts . . . but there’s no cheese involved—which didn’t sound like a party to me at all—but before I could search the Internet further, he clarified.
“You cook the food yourself on a hot skillet in the middle of your table.”
“Aha!” I exclaimed. “Sounds fun.”
“You’ve never done shabu-shabu?” he asked, making me feel totally unhip.
“Oh, I’ve done shabu-shabu,” I said cockily.
“Really?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. It’s hard to know for sure.”
“Then we’re on it. It’s a plan, Stan,” he said, and I used all of my willpower not to say “You don’t need to be coy, Roy!” thinking it was too early to start being my usual goofy self. Plus, if he didn’t recognize it as a “50 Ways” lyric, I’d have the awkward explanation to deal with and I didn’t want to risk it. And was I supposed to remember lyrics? But there was that whole risk thing again, staring me in the face. And because I thought it, I felt like now I had to say it. Because the new Jordan took risks. And this entire thought process took only about four seconds.
“You don’t need to be coy, Roy,” I said.
“Just get yourself free,” he answered, and the smile that spread across my face felt like sunshine warming me from the inside out.
* * * * *
The restaurant was in the East Village, and when I got there Travis was standing outside, talking to another guy. We’d made plans to meet immediately following work, which was good because it didn’t allow me any time to stress out over what I was going to wear, but it was bad for the same reason. The guy he was standing with was a couple inches shorter than Travis and was wearing a suit. He had tight curly hair and wore glasses. As I approached them, Travis stepped toward me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Hi,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”
“You too,” I said and looked at his friend.
“Sorry, this is Ben, a friend of mine,” Travis said.
“Hi, Ben. Nice to meet you,” I said.
“And you as well,” Ben said. “Did you get any of your memory back yet?”
“Ah . . . you know the whole saga,” I said, feeling guilty about the lie I was about to tell. “Little things, but so much is still not there. Some familiarity with the neighborhood, the coffeemaker, and the computer doesn’t mystify nearly as much as it did—but people, things that happened . . .” I reached out tentatively, then smiled sadly. Guilt shmilt.
“I feel terrible!” Travis said, throwing his head back, looking up at the sky.
�
�Stop it—it’s okay,” I reassured.
“Did you forget everything or just a few things?” inquired Ben.
“It’s sort of complicated,” I said. “Some things are totally there—like song lyrics, and like how to brush my teeth, but names and faces . . .” I trailed off.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get your memory back real soon,” Ben said.
“I’m sure I will too,” I said to Ben. I felt like I was meeting the friends, so I needed to make a good impression. So it was a really good thing that I was lying through my teeth. Excellent first impression. I turned to Travis. “Please, don’t feel bad about it. It’s kind of weird, but kind of . . . incredible too. I get to start over.” Ben looked at Travis like he was trying to tell him something.
“Are you joining us?” I asked Ben, hoping that he wasn’t. I mean, it was supposed to be a date, I thought. I knew it felt like a date. What a cute meeting story we’d have. “How’d you two meet?” “Oh, he ran me over on my bike, which sent me to the hospital where he sent me flowers and candy while I faked a major head trauma and amnesia.”
“Oh, that’s nice of you,” Ben said. “But I have dinner plans already. I just bumped into Travis here, and . . . I guess I’ll let you two get to it. Nice meeting you.”
“You too,” I said, and Ben left us to shabu-shabu as a duet.
The restaurant was one of those places where they make you take off your shoes. I thanked God and everything that was holy that I was wearing cute socks (which weren’t holey) when I stepped out of my boots.
Our communal table was recessed along with the plush cushion seats we sat on and our feet dangled below us. I was giddy with excitement—but I couldn’t help noticing a smell permeating the restaurant. Hard to describe. I looked around and noticed the setup. There was a skillet built into each table, hot pots to cook some sort of stew . . . and it seemed that each table was given raw meat, vegetables, and some spices. I wondered if it was the raw meat that I was smelling, but it didn’t smell like meat—it smelled like . . . feet.
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