City Mouse

by Lender, Stacey;

  I told myself to shake it off and stop beating myself up. Maybe Sybil was just feeling a little nervous about the presentation, worried that the hot young producer might catch her off her game. But I knew Marco, and I knew with the right finesse, I had a shot at convincing him to give our agency a bigger share of his producer pie. Maybe today was the perfect opportunity to wow him in front Sybil and Larry and prove that I was VP material.

  Twenty minutes was all I needed to review the deck, thirty tops. Plenty of time to prep, and then I could focus my energy on the hundred other things I needed to get done before the meeting at four.

  Chapter eleven

  The auction invitation said semiformal, but as we stepped down the stairs into the Sacred Heart Church basement, I knew immediately I had overdressed. The men were in their usual suburban uniforms—untucked button-down shirts and jeans. And most of the women were in jeans too. High heels and jeans. Like any other party, any other day.

  “I told you I didn’t need to wear a sport jacket,” Aaron said, giving me a look.

  Just because your company’s new personalized e-mail product got a bad review on CNET a few days ago doesn’t mean you still have to be in such a foul mood, I thought. “It’s not such a big deal, you can just take it off,” I said.

  It wasn’t like I could take off my little black cocktail dress, unless I wanted to parade around all night in my boob-to-thigh ultra-support Spanx like a hermetically sealed sausage. Although I did like the way the material smoothed out my stomach and my hips—so far, it was worth the loss of circulation. I was just thankful for the built-in pee flap.

  I found Alyson and another mom I faintly recognized from Phoebe’s class at the entry table with a Hello My Name Is sticker on her chest: Robyn.

  “Hey, Jessica. Hi, Aaron,” she said, checking us off on her list and handing us our name tags. “Nice dress.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, feeling a little better. “You don’t think it’s too dressy?”

  “No, you look great.”

  “Okay, volunteer assignments,” Alyson cut in. She flipped through her spreadsheet. “Aaron—meet Jeff and Chris over at the bar in the back. You’re all under strict orders to get everyone good and wasted so they’ll bid their asses off.” She grinned and I couldn’t help but notice her teeth were gleaming like luminescent Chiclets. Was it the lighting or had she just come from a seriously high-octane teeth whitening? “And Jessica—you’ll be selling glow necklaces for the heads-and-tails raffle—go ask for Wendy in the office and she’ll set you up.”

  Glow necklaces? I had signed Aaron and me up to bartend together and had been looking forward to it all week. “Are you sure that’s right?” I asked her. “I’m almost positive I—”

  “Do you have any idea how long it took me to put together this schedule?” Alyson snarled.

  You don’t have to be so nasty, I thought, but I wasn’t going to stand there and fight with her about it, especially not with the line of people forming behind us. I summoned my dutiful auction-committee smile and said, “Whatever you need me to do.”

  “Before you run off,” she smiled sweetly at Aaron, “what credit card will you be using for your purchases tonight?”

  Aaron handed over our Visa for a preauthorizing swipe and she gave us our paddle, number 64, telling us to be sure to write it on the bid sheets at the silent auction tables and remember to raise it often during the live auction, which started at 8:30.

  “Bid wildly!” Robyn said. “It’s all for the kids!”

  I whispered to Aaron, “How much do you want to spend tonight?”

  “I don’t know, a couple hundred? If it’s stuff we need, we might as well buy it here as a donation.”

  Aaron gave me a peck and went off to find the bar and I headed to the office to find Wendy. She explained my job was to sell twenty-five-dollar glow necklace raffle entries to win a dinner for two at Marcello’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in town. “You need to sell forty—and that’ll be a thousand dollars for the school!” She placed a huge sandwich board over my head that read, BE A WINNER! and filled my wrists with the glow necklaces. I felt like one of those vendors at the circus. A vendor wearing four-inch pumps.

  I bit my lip as I stepped out onto the floor. I hated direct sales. Develop a social media strategy, edit a radio spot, even e-mail an auction donation request, fine. But face to face, asking people for money—I hated the possibility of flat-out rejection. A leftover scar from my Girl Scout cookie days, no doubt—Good try, Jess, here’s your patch for participating, while my friends went home with arms full of stuffed animals and clock radios and other top-seller prizes.

  I scanned the room in search of a familiar face and realized I didn’t recognize most of the people milling about. I took a deep breath, at least as deep as I could breathe in my full-body corset. It couldn’t be that hard to sell parents raffle tickets to raise money for their own kids’ school.

  I approached a couple standing near the silent auction tables, studying the bid sheets. Music blared from the speakers a few feet away so I had to shout, “Want to buy a glow necklace?” They stared at me blankly. “It’s only twenty-five dollars for a chance to win a dinner at Marcello’s.” I held out my sheet for them to sign.

  “No thanks,” the woman responded politely, and walked away.

  Shit, I thought to myself, how am I ever going to sell forty of these things? I desperately wished I could Jeannie-blink myself to a spot behind the bar pouring martinis next to Aaron.

  Across the room I spied Tami with her arms glowing like mine and several people lined up, signing her clipboard. Maybe she’d have a few tips for me—or better yet, take my whole sheet.

  “The room looks amazing!” I complimented her. She had completely transformed the church basement into a bona fide retro dance club with colorful uplighting and high cocktail tables with fiber-optic centerpieces and even a disco ball suspended from the ceiling.

  “Thanks,” she said. “We’d better rack up a ton of freaking cash tonight to make all this goddamned work worth it.”

  “Speaking of . . .” I pointed to my blank sheet. “So far I got one big fat no from that couple over there and I feel like crawling under a rock.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed to the couple, now in line for a drink.

  “Oh, the Brenners. Screw them, cheap bastards. The trick is to hit up the dads standing near the bar, like that group over there who’s already on their third round. And then don’t ask—give them a little flirty smile and say you need their autograph. They’re so lit they’ll sign anything you put in front of them and you’ll be done in, like, fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” I said.

  I spotted Drew standing alone near the bar and put my hand on his arm. “Hey, handsome, how’s about helping a girl fill up her bid sheet?”

  “I’d be happy to fill you up,” he played along. He snatched the pen and filled in ten of the slots, just like that.

  “Oh my god, I love you. That is such a huge help!” I said, and gave him a big bear hug. I felt his hand grab my ass and squeeze it toward his hard groin.

  “Now when do I really get to fill you up?” he breathed heavily into my neck. He reeked of Scotch and Tic Tacs and expensive cologne. “You’re so hot in this dress I can’t stand it.”

  I broke myself away. “Ha, not funny, Drew.”

  He stepped in closer and whispered, “There’s an alcove behind the rectory, no one will even notice we’re gone.” And then I felt his tongue flick in my ear.

  Ew, oh my god, he wasn’t kidding. I stammered, “You . . . you are definitely drunk and I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea, but . . .”

  The hungry look on his face abruptly switched to raw anger. “You bitch, always coming on to me.” And then he turned and slipped into the crowd.

  My mind raced. All of his flirty jokes and touches I had thought were just his way—I never responded with anything that would have made him think I was interested.
Had I? The lewd whisper, his hardness against me . . . He’d better be wasted, so wasted that tomorrow he wouldn’t even remember. But I’d remember. And I had no idea how I’d ever be able to look at him across the table at another couples’ dinner again, let alone face Ivy.

  I hurried to the other side of the room and found enough people to sign the rest of the raffle sheet. Aaron still had ten minutes to go on his bartending shift so I perused the silent auction tables, trying to focus on the packages in front of me while keeping an eye out to avoid running into Drew.

  Wine basket with ten bottles of Italian red—minimum bid $150. Casino Night at the Parkers, Friday, June 30—$100 per person. I didn’t know the Parkers and had minimal interest in a basketful of wine.

  At the adjacent table, Silent auction 2: On Fire! I was surprised how high Carolann has priced some of the packages. Yankees box seats 6 rows behind home plate—opening bid $500. There were three bids already for those. 18k gold Tiffany diamond anniversary band—$700. Two bids there. I found my donation of the tickets and backstage tour to Marco’s new show and was disappointed to see no one had bid yet. Opening bid $200. Huh. It was worth a lot more than that. I wrote our name in on the first line to help start things off.

  Then a package caught my eye: Saturday-night stay in a suite at the Mayflower Inn, Washington, CT. I’d been reading about the Mayflower for years on the “best of” lists in all the travel magazines. No kids were allowed at the Mayflower—an ideal spot for the romantic getaway Aaron had promised and still hadn’t planned. I picked up the pen and wrote, Almasi #64, next to the $200 opening bid and hoped it wouldn’t go much higher.

  “Nice place,” Carolann’s husband Peter commented, looking over my shoulder.

  “Hey, Pete, how’s it going?”

  “Carolann basically abandoned me so I’m just cruisin’ around.”

  She’s probably pretty damn busy running the party, I thought, but said, “She did some job pulling all of this together, don’t you think?”

  “Hey, babe,” Ivy interrupted. She was wearing a skintight skirt so short it barely covered her ass. Only she could pull off a dress like that and look fabulous. Drew was such an asshole to need anything besides her. I looked for him over her shoulder as she hugged me hello and didn’t see him, thank god. “Where’s Aaron?”

  “Still bartending.”

  “That was so nice of him to volunteer . . . I told you to sign up for bartending,” she turned and said pointedly to Drew. There he was. He looked right past me and mumbled something about needing to be out of there by 10:30 at the latest.

  “Come get something to eat with us, Jess, I’m starving!”

  I don’t want to get something to eat with you, your slimeball husband just hit on me. But I didn’t want her to suspect anything was wrong. “I really should go find Aaron, he’ll be done any minute.”

  “He’ll catch up with us. Peter—you too. Come,” Ivy insisted, and then she grabbed our hands and led us toward the food.

  Local restaurants were positioned around the room, offering “A Taste of Suffern” specialties donated for the event. Linguine puttanesca from Marcello’s. Chicken fingers from Sutter’s. A mountain of sushi from Koto. I piled my plate with spicy tuna and veggie rolls and was about to add some rice and beans from the chafing dish at the next restaurant’s station when I noticed that the apron-clad chefs manning the Mexican food table were Lupita and her brother. We had texted a few times over the past few weeks but hadn’t yet nailed down a second meet-up.

  “I can’t believe you’re here, it’s such a small world!” I greeted, leaning over the trays of food to kiss Lupita hello.

  “It is good to see you! I had no idea this event was for Phoebe’s school.”

  “Ivy—this is my friend Lupita and her brother Felipe. Felipe owns Solé. Have you been there? The food is fabulous. They have the most delicious quesadillas. Here, you should try some.”

  Our stop to say hello was backing up the food line, so after promising to bring Aaron by to meet them later, I followed Ivy, Drew, and Peter to a nearby cocktail table to scarf down a few bites and then quickly extract myself. “That’s such a coincidence they’re here,” I said.

  “How do you know those people?” Ivy asked.

  “I met Lupita at the playground. You would really like her. She has a son the same age as Phoebe and she’s taking classes at RCC for her teaching degree, which she actually already had from Mexico. You’d think there’d be some kind of transfer program, but I guess not.”

  “And make it easier for some illegal immigrant to take our jobs?” Peter snapped. “Have you seen the lineup of day laborers down by the bus stop in the morning? Suffern’s been overrun. They should all be sent back to where they came from, damn wetbacks.”

  My eyes widened in disbelief. I had never heard anyone talk this way. On TV maybe, or flipping past those right-wing radio talk shows. I was so stunned I couldn’t speak.

  “That’s what Jeff should focus his campaign on,” Drew added. “Clearing those spics the hell out of here.”

  “Shut up, Drew,” Ivy hissed.

  Maybe Peter was still having trouble finding a job, but that was no excuse. And Drew agreeing with him! What a dick. I couldn’t just stand there without letting them know what they said was unacceptable. I wanted to scream that Lupita and her brother were a hell of a lot more interesting and intelligent than they were or ever would be. That I had a more thought-provoking afternoon that one Friday with Lupita and her four-year-old son than at all the tedious nights out with them I’d had to endure. I wanted to say all that and tell them right to their faces what hateful imbeciles they were, yet all that came out was a shaky, “They donated their food and their time tonight to help our school.”

  They donated their food?! How about, Go fuck yourself? Or at least something to make sure they knew I didn’t agree with their awful diatribe. Why was I was always so weak, so afraid of a confrontation? Smoothing it over and sweeping it under to appease a bunch of people I don’t even like? I hated that feeling of wanting to fit in, of needing to fit in—worrying if I said the wrong thing I’d once again find myself outside with my nose pressed against the glass. I had a trove of comebacks rotting on a shelf in my consciousness, of no good to anyone except to remind me of how many times I’d failed to say what I should have.

  Peter looked unfazed, staring out toward the bar, and Drew had a smug expression on his face, as if he couldn’t care less about my opinion and felt not the slightest discomfort.

  “Where have you been?” Carolann walked up to us and demanded, clutching her auction chair clipboard in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. The angry look on her face reminded me of that day she stormed out of the diner; I hoped I hadn’t somehow messed up the raffle ticket sales.

  But her ire was directed toward her husband: “I asked you to do one thing tonight, Peter, to handle the sound guy. And now you’re standing here eating? No one can hear the announcements—please go fix it. Now.”

  Peter left the table with a Neanderthalean grunt.

  Ivy asked Carolann, “How are sales going so far? It looks totally jamming in here.”

  “So far, so good, Ivy.” Carolann turned down the dial on her walkie-talkie and smoothed her pants several times as if to regain her composure. “We hit an all-time record attendance of over two hundred guests. And a last-minute donation just came in from one of the teachers: two months of summer camp at Ramaquois. I better see that paddle raised sky high tonight, Drew.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Ivy answered for him.

  A voice over the loudspeaker announced, “Silent auction 2 will close in ten minutes.”

  “Pete got that fixed pretty quick,” Drew said dryly.

  “I have to run and check on the bid sheets. Save me a seat for the live auction,” Carolann said and dashed off, leaving me alone with Drew and Ivy.

  “I have to check on our bid sheets too,” I said, and turned to follow Carolann, hating myself even more for
walking away without the guts to stand up for what I knew was right.

  Two other couples had bid on the Mayflower Inn package and the bid was up to $300. I really wanted that weekend away on our calendar. I paused and then scribbled, #64—$350, and went to find Aaron.

  Parents were congregating like moths in front of the bar. I tried to squeeze my way toward the front and waved to catch Aaron’s attention.

  “Hey, Jess,” he said, “glass of wine? Gin and tonic?” Jeff handed Aaron two shots and he passed one to a guest and then tilted his head back to down the other. He certainly seemed to be enjoying his little volunteer assignment.

  “I’m bidding on a night at an inn for us,” I told him. “We’re at $350 right now. How high do you think we should go?”

  “Jesus Christ, $350 for one night?”

  “It’s a fancy inn, up in Connecticut. Five-star. And like you said, it’s a donation for the school. Tax deductible, remember?”

  He scooped some ice into a cocktail shaker. “Well, I wouldn’t bid much more than four. Does it include breakfast at least?”

  I grabbed a glass of wine and ran back to the table. #26—$400. Ugh. I grabbed the pen and wrote in $450 and stood hovering a few steps away to protect the sheet from any last-minute spoilers. A couple strolled by casually, glancing down at the bid sheets near mine. I willed them to pass—Keep walking, keep walking—but at the last second the husband picked up the pen and my heart sank. I looked down at the sheet: #26 had drawn an arrow skipping their bid all the way up to $600. I wanted so badly to scribble in $650 but knew Aaron would be mad if we paid over six for something he barely wanted to pay four hundred for. And I didn’t have time to run back to try to convince him.