BreakupBabe

by Rebecca Agiewich

  I need to step back, take my time, and not grasp at pointless relationships with hot but inappropriate boys (HBIBs) just because

  I’m afraid of dying alone and childless. I also need to listen to my instincts more. Had I been doing that these last six months, of course,

  I would have gotten no action whatsoever. But I’ve had enough action for now. The right guy will come along if I’m not busy making out with Mr. Wrong.

  My other resolution is to get that nascent book of mine into publishable shape. Thanks to you all, I have confidence in this project despite it being cruelly rejected once already!

  So I hereby resolve to get a first draft of my book done. I don’t know how I will do that exactly. I have never done such a thing before. To help me along with this task I’ve signed up for a writing class that will require me to get my first chapter written, because, at this point, I have no f*cking idea how to structure the thing.

  So there you have it. New Year’s past and future. Happy New

  Year to you, Breakup Babies. I hope you made more intelligent decisions about who to kiss than I did!

  E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 5

  Phew. That was a long entry, but it felt good to get everything out. As I shouldered my backpack, I thought about how, in the old days, something like this would have gone into my diary. Now a diary seemed so damn boring and old-fashioned. There was no Greek chorus to comment on every single little thing!

  I knew a day would come when my dating exploits would stop and Breakup Babe would die a natural death. Maybe she would morph into another form, a blog about gardening or cooking or my adorable little children. Or my life as a best-selling author. Ha. But it was hard to imagine that day right now. Breakup Babe, in all her heartbroken glory, had become such an important part of my life.

  Caffeine coursed through my system as I made my way out of Victrola. Despite my gloom-and-doom mood earlier, I felt almost chipper now. Out of habit, I glanced at the counter, even though the cute barista wasn’t working today. Instead there were two female baristas, both wearing skimpy tank tops that revealed upper bodies awash in tattoos. Somehow the cute barista had managed to get a job here despite the job requirement that you be inked over at least 50 percent of your body.

  I stepped out into the cold, clammy January day. The sun shone weakly through a high layer of clouds. Maybe work wouldn’t be so bad today. Maybe I’d be productive instead of bored, losing myself in my work instead of mooning about Sexy Boy. Lord knows I needed to take my job a little more seriously. This writing class had set me back five hundred dollars, but thanks to my job, I could afford it. The whole reason I’d taken this job, after all, was so that I could have a stable life from which to attempt the perilous task of writing a book.

  It sucked, of course, to have to deal with the Loser twins. A person shouldn’t have to deal with such a thing at work. But, I thought, hurrying toward my car, fortified by my morning writing and coffee-drinking session, they weren’t going to get the best of me. This was going to be my year! I would succeed—in my job, with my book, and even in romance—despite them.

  POST A COMMENT

  How do you know SB doesn’t want a relationship? Maybe he’s ready to have a girlfriend. Don’t give up on him so fast. He sounds hot! Little Princess | 1/02/03–3:19 P.M.

  No, B.B. is right. Guys like SB don’t change. The guy I’m dating is just like him. He acts seventeen even though he’s thirty, and whenever I want to talk about serious stuff, he says he just wants to have “fun.” But I made the mistake of getting hooked early on. Kissing Geek | Homepage | 1/02/03–5:33 P.M.

  Has anyone told you you’re trying too hard? Men can sense that, you know. If you stop looking, that’s when you’ll meet someone. George | 1/02/03–8:01 P.M.

  HBIBs—what a great name. I always wondered what to call them! Delilah | Homepage | 1/02/03–10:51 P.M.

  There’s got to be a few Hot but Appropriate Boys (HBABs) out there, don’t there?

  Jake | 1/03/03–12:09 A.M.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  God. I was so bored. And it was only 1:30 P.M. My morning caffeine and blogging therapy had worn off, and I could sense that I was about to plunge into the deep, dark waters of self-pity. I slumped listlessly in front of my computer.

  I’d run out of interesting things to do. I’d already checked the comments on my blog several times. I was annoyed by that “you’re trying too hard” comment, but gratified that someone had stepped up to my defense. I loved it when my readers got into their own little discussions, or, even better, arguments. The occasional negative comments bothered me, but so far not badly enough to make me dismantle the comments. Most of my readers were enthusiastic and—dare I say it—adoring. And I adored to be adored!

  I’d checked my hit counter, which was holding steady at a respectable seventy-five people a day. (I was still jealous of the A-list bloggers and their thousands of hits per day, but at least my hits increased a little every month.) I’d looked at some new referring blogs with the usual mixture of hope and disappointment. I loved my readers (because, after all, they loved me), but none of them could write. I’d e-mailed all my friends, then checked my monthly horoscope for January, which promised “a great deal of excitement and drama around the new moon on January 2.” That was today, but what the hell exciting was going to happen today?

  Now the only thing left to do was don the editing straitjacket and attempt actual work. But the thought caused me physical pain. It would have helped on a day like today if people in my group actually talked to one another instead of hiding behind closed office doors and sending e-mail! They were such an antisocial bunch. There were never any impromptu lunches. No chatty coffee breaks.

  In the pre-tech-bubble days of the mid-1990s, work at Empire Corp. had been one big party. Back then, I’d been a temp working in a group full of other young temps to write “cool” multimedia content (which became extinct at Empire when it failed to produce a profit). I’d been surrounded by hot twentysomething guys who were always stopping by my office for a chat. Of course, that created its own set of problems, including one spectacularly failed office romance (you’d think by the time Loser rolled around I would have learned my lesson!), but still I had had plenty of social time. Now that I’d graduated to being a full-time employee in a group of middle-aged, married technical editors, I felt so old. There were, however, plenty of other groups at Empire where teammates socialized together. You could see them sitting in the cafeteria in big, chatty groups. But in my group, introversion was the unspoken rule. Arthur, of course, was an exception, but he was still on vacation.

  Leaning heavily on one elbow, I clicked over to the University of Washington Web site and read for the zillionth time the description of the evening writing class I would be taking. I really would get to work after this.

  The class was called “Crafting a Narrative Arc,” and it guaranteed that by the end of the quarter, you would have written an article, short story, or book chapter. The description also said, “We will spend part of the class working on nailing an outline for your story, one of the most important but overlooked aspects of writing a successful piece of nonfiction (or fiction).”

  The outlining aspect of the class appealed to me. When I’d tried to write Temporary Insanity, I thought I had the story line nailed, but the book constantly meandered off. Scenes started off promisingly, but then went on too long. Or didn’t go on long enough. I could quickly spot problems in my own work, but I still didn’t have the techniques to fix them. Some people, maybe, could learn those techniques by osmosis. God knows I’d read enough books that if I could simply absorb the tricks of good writing, I would be an expert by now. I could certainly crank out five-hundred-word blog entries that people liked, but a book was a whole different deal.

  Suddenly my phone rang. Oh! Maybe it was one of the GalPals or a family member calling to distract me! I looked at my caller ID. Crap. It was my boss, Lyle. The sight of his name on my caller ID caused imme
diate guilt. Could he sense telepathically that I hadn’t been working all day? Why was he calling? Usually if he had something to say, he did it in person. He’d learned that in a management class somewhere.

  “Rachel,” he said, sounding very official and distant, and very unlike Lyle, “I’m wondering if you have time to meet with me this afternoon about some changes in your editing projects.”

  “Okay,” I said. My paranoia increased. Maybe someone had complained about me. One of the technical writers I worked with? What if it was Melanie? She’d been reassigned to me recently after she stormed out of her last editor’s office screaming that he was a “technically incompetent idiot who was trying to sabotage” her. Obviously she was crazy, but I still couldn’t believe they had then paired her up to work with me, the ultimate in technically incompetent. So far I’d avoided meeting with her, so it was hard to imagine she had anything to complain about.

  “Does three work for you?” said Lyle.

  “Sure.” I tried to sound casual and breezy.

  “Okay, then. We’ll see you at three.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone. It was now 1:45. What did he mean by “we” anyway? A frightening thought crossed my mind: the Red Mill incident. But how could I get in trouble for that? I couldn’t. There was no way. All I’d done was wave at my coworkers. Okay, I’d waved a bit aggressively perhaps, but what could Loser and Loserette possibly say about that incident to indict me? Nothing!

  Crap. Okay. Maybe, as Lyle had said, it was actually to talk about my editing assignments. Deep breath. If Melanie had complained about me, so what? She’d clashed with more than one editor before. She was a known troublemaker. A “difficult” writer. The other writers I worked with liked me just fine.

  For the next hour, I would concentrate. I really would. Another deep breath.

  I opened up one of my editing projects and told myself I would edit ten pages of it before 3 P.M. I would make the prose sing! I would make the methods and properties dance waltzes around the enumerations and return values. I stared at the document in front of me. There was not a single part of me that felt up to singing and dancing. Then I looked back at the clock.

  1:47 P.M.

  Concentrate.

  When I walked into Lyle’s office, my worst fears were confirmed. Because there was Wendii, the plastic HR person who’d welcomed me into the company eight months ago.

  I froze just inside the doorway. Back in May, Wendii’s white blond hair had been cut into a bouncy bob. Now it was longer and pulled back into a severe bun. She looked at me with a grim expression through black-framed glasses. I didn’t remember the glasses. Immediately my heart started to pound. Was I fired?

  “Rachel,” said Lyle, also clearly quite nervous. His eyes darted between Wendii and me. “Please take a seat. Wendii has a few things she’d like to discuss with you.”

  I flashed back to my first job out of college. I’d been a receptionist in the basement of Sproul Hall, U.C. Berkeley’s main administrative building. The other receptionist there called it “Hell’s Butthole.” My bosses, evil people to begin with, despised me, though in retrospect I couldn’t blame them. I usually wore a pink sweatshirt to work that fell off the shoulder Flashdance style and called in sick constantly because I’d developed a near ulcer from the stress of realizing I actually had to work for a living.

  After a month in the basement, my boss, Joyce, the middle-aged office manager whose complexion and wardrobe looked as if a giant hypodermic needle had sucked all life from them, called me into a conference room with her assistant, Marie. Marie was an obese thirtyish woman with heavy-lidded aqua eyes who looked as if she were perpetually trying to digest a large rat. Joyce told me, smirking, “We’re going to give you a review now.” At that point in my young life, I had no idea what a review was, but I knew that this one, at least, wasn’t going to be good. And it wasn’t. They fired me. The reason: “incompetence and a poor attitude.”

  I had the same ominous feeling now. My throat became extremely dry. I sat down on the empty chair and tried not to shake. I looked at Wendii. Her face was caked with foundation, the skin tinted a perfect peach.

  Lyle was looking down at his feet. Wendii cleared her throat. “Rachel, I need to tell you that there has been a complaint lodged against you by two other members of this department.”

  I didn’t say anything. My mind went blank.

  “Apparently,” she continued, “you have been writing about your coworkers on a website of sorts.”

  Her words hit me like a slap. At first I sat in stunned silence. Then surprise gave way to humiliation. My face grew hot. My palms began to sweat. Phrases flew back to haunt me: “abominable adulterers,” “slutty little VP,” “putrid little relationship.” Then there were the excruciating details of my own sex life! The Li’l Rockclimbing Spy and his “magnificent crotch.” The doctor’s “degree in Kissology.” Oh my God. What must these people think of me?

  I hung my head. Denial was useless. In a barely audible voice that sounded like dry gravel, I said, “Just two of them.”

  “Just two of them what?” said Wendii sharply. I looked up at her. Cleared my throat. A little bit of defiance crept into me. I wondered what this Borglike bitch would do if her perfectly built blond husband dumped her for the HR bimbo in the next office? Certainly not anything as creative as what I was doing! She would probably just cry until all her foundation came off and mascara ran down her face in rivulets, then throw herself off a bridge.

  “I just wrote about two of my coworkers.” Though I mumbled it, I looked her in the eye. She averted hers, and looked down at a folder in her hand.

  “Well, that’s not strictly true, Rachel, but in any case, it’s beside the point. I want you to know that right now we are conducting an investigation into your website.” She flipped open the folder. “Breakup Babe.” She glanced over at Lyle and I did too. Everything about him drooped. He looked mortified. My humiliation deepened. My God, he’d always been so nice to me and I’d let him down. He’d praised me numerous times for what a “good job” I was doing!

  But, Jesus, there was not just him to be ashamed for. There was my whole family, all my friends! If I got fired from this job, would it go on my permanent record? Was it like being a felon? I felt claustrophobic and wanted to run. Anywhere. Perhaps I could hop a plane to Ecuador. Or Mexico. During my carefree pre-Loser days of travel, I’d met many a Latin American man who’d offered to marry me. What a fool I’d been to turn them down. Any one of them: Hector the waiter or Jorge the dive master or Alex the bar owner!

  “We’ll need you to be available for meetings when we call you. I also want to make it clear to you that this investigation could result in your termination, though we hope it won’t go that way.” Wendii looked at me, and her eyes were empty, cold. The welcoming persona of eight months ago was gone. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me?”

  Yes! I wanted to say. How the hell did they find out about my blog? Instead, I said so meekly I could hardly believe it was me, “No.”

  “Well.” Wendii snapped her leather briefcase shut. It was dark, high-quality leather. She looked at Lyle, who was staring at the ground. “Lyle will be in the loop, as will my manager, but except for them and the parties who have placed the complaint, this will be strictly confidential. Do you need me to tell you who filed this claim?”

  “No.” Again, I was the meek, cringing person I didn’t recognize. Maybe this was all a bad dream. Could it be that I was still only five years old and my whole life lay ahead of me, virgin and pure? No broken hearts, no mistakes, only possibilities? If I blinked hard enough, maybe the dream would end and I’d find myself in my old bed, the one with bars to keep me from falling to the floor.

  I blinked. Hard.

  Fuck.

  “We’ll be in touch, then.” Wendii rose from her chair. So did Lyle. So did I. My legs were rubbery.

  I walked out of the office first and wobbled down the hallway as quickly as I could.
Because movement was the only thing that felt like it could keep my head from exploding, I kept walking. Out the door and into the parking lot.

  I’d been here just this morning, but it looked alien to me now—the gleaming BMWs and Audis; the trees that had flamed with color in the fall but that were now naked and sad. These once-familiar objects looked like relics from another, safer world. Was it possible that just an hour and a half ago, I had been bored? Boredom seemed, suddenly, like the most desirable feeling in the world.

  I walked in circles around the parking lot, clutching myself against the cold. The circles I walked with my feet matched the loop in my brain. How had this happened? Why had I been so stupid? What was going to happen to me? Round and round. At 3:45, the day was already starting to darken around the edges. The sky was a cold, cruel gray. I wouldn’t be able to stay outside much longer without a coat, but still I kept walking, trying to think my way out of this trap I’d set for myself. Round and round.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was 7 A.M. Too fucking early to be awake and on my second cup of coffee. But I hadn’t slept well the night before, so when I woke at 6 A.M., I decided it was better to be at Victrola, attempting to write, than lying in bed contemplating my bleak future. As I sat there, bleary-eyed, I remembered a little too clearly the first weeks after the breakup with Loser. I’d briefly, blissfully, forget my grief when I slept, but inevitably wake up much earlier than I wanted to, only to have remembrance slam into me and break my heart all over again.

  It had been like that this morning. When my eyes flew open at six, I suddenly remembered everything that had happened the night before. I’d clutched Mr. Pickle to my chest and tried to go back to sleep. But the images that flashed behind my eyelids were too disturbing. Wendii staring at me over her black-framed glasses. Loser and Loserette exulting in each other’s arms at the news of my termination.