Sometime Soon

by Doxer, Debra

“Where?”

  I’m in trouble now. Laura is another Café Blue diner wannabe. I can’t think fast enough to lie, and I don’t really want to anyway. “Café Blue,” I sigh.

  “Café Blue! I told you I wanted to try that place. Why didn’t you tell me you were going there tonight? I could have met you.”

  “I’m sorry. It came up last minute, and you’ve been so busy.”

  “Not too busy to eat dinner.”

  “Have Jonathan take you sometime,” I suggest.

  “He’s working so late these days. I don’t want to eat dinner at ten o’clock.”

  I glance up and see Katie entering the restaurant. “Look, I’m sorry. We can come here another time. I really have to run.”

  “Wait. Tell me how your date with Derek went?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Derek is done. But I don’t have time to explain right now. I’ll call you later, okay? What’s a good time?”

  “There are no good times anymore,” she says.

  “I’ll call you when I get home,” I tell her before ending the call.

  I put the phone away in my pocket. I am now roped into another overpriced dinner at Café Blue. I wave to Katie and turn back to Jason, who isn’t there. I swivel around, but I cannot spot the grey shirt and the perfect hair. I sigh in defeat. Once again, forces beyond my control are conspiring against me.

  “This place is so cute.” Katie beams as she grabs my arm and looks around. “Let’s get a table by the front window so we can people watch.”

  I scan the bar once more, wondering how he has completely disappeared, and then I follow Katie toward the maitre d’. Katie, as always, is perfectly put together. Her tall slender form is covered in a silky daisy print dress that flutters just above her knees. Her curtain of dark blonde hair neatly surrounds her face and shoulders.

  Katie was a psychology major in college where we met freshman year. She now uses her great insight into the human mind as a human resources manager for a large bank in town. That’s also where she met her fiancé. Because she was the one who hired him, she felt it would be a conflict of interest to date him and turned him down for over a year before he moved on to another big banking firm in town. They still talk about that tortured year of furtive glances and repressed feelings. I’m happy for Katie, although I have my doubts about Mike. Katie got married young and then suffered through a terrible divorce about three years ago, and now she seems ready to jump back into the pool again. I have to give her credit for that.

  “What are you drinking?” she asks.

  “Chardonnay,” I reply, taking a careful sip this time. “And I was talking to a cute guy at the bar until my sister called and he disappeared.”

  Her eyes widen and she glances back at the bar. “Really?”

  “Yeah, but he probably moved on to a girl who could drink and talk at the same time.”

  Katie turns back to me. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” I shake my head and open the menu.

  The company is enjoyable even if the dinner isn’t. Katie is a beautiful girl and she really has no idea. She is good-natured and optimistic to a fault. In fact, her only real fault is the way she is constantly trying to fix me up--with anyone. Finally a few months ago, I put my foot down. She’s been very good ever since, but I can feel her chomping at the bit. This is the same issue over which Katie and Bryn had their falling out. At least, that’s what Bryn claims.

  I’m a fairly picky eater, and I typically agonize over restaurant menus and drive waiters crazy by making special requests once I finally do decide. But tonight, without much thought, I simply order the same salad and roasted chicken I had last time. It is the cheapest and safest item on the menu. Katie eyes me with surprise at my definitive and speedy decision. She orders a pinot grigio and the salmon. I’m tempted to warn her off the salmon, but I can’t come up with a good excuse quickly enough. Fish can be iffy at good restaurants. At this one, it’s a definite risk.

  Our waiter this evening looks more like a gawky teenager than a grown-up trying to earn a living. His face is pocked with acne, and he seems far too young to be working, especially in the evening.

  Katie’s wine appears quickly enough, then the waiter either disappears or ignores us for nearly forty minutes. This place is all about the bar profits. We can’t even get his attention for a bread basket to hold us over or to inquire as to where our salads are. When the waiter finally approaches, tray in hand, we see that he has brought our salads and our meals together, but we’re too hungry to complain. My chicken is rubbery, and Katie makes a face when she bites into her salmon, but insists it’s fine. It’s another less-than-spectacular meal at Café Blue. Perhaps the place would go out of business before I had to come back with my sister.

  We are waiting and waiting for the check as Katie begins explaining how much trouble they’re having setting the wedding date. This works well for me because I’m hoping to get through my sister’s harried wedding plans before moving right into another frenzy of wedding to-do lists. “Laura and Jonathan are getting married in May. That seems like a nice time to do it.”

  “I know,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically defeated. “Mike says he doesn’t care, but every time we try to work out the date, he’s too busy or he has some excuse for why a date I suggest won’t work for him.”

  “Excuse me, miss?” the waiter says from above. He places the bill on the table and then hands me a business card. “A gentleman asked me to give this to you. He had to leave, and he says he’s sorry for not being able to wait for you earlier.”

  I take the card, and the waiter winks at me before walking away. I’m taken aback, not sure if I really saw the wink or not. Then I hear Katie stifling a giggle.

  The business card reads “Jason Randall, Financial Analyst, Prime Investments”.

  “There’s something written on the back,” Katie says.

  I flip the card over and see a neat blue scrawl with small block letters that read, “Sorry we couldn’t talk more. I would like to. If you would, too, call me.” He’s written down a telephone number that’s different from the business numbers on the front.

  “Let me see,” Katie says, reaching for the card. “You must have made an impression.”

  “I barely said two words to him.” I grab the card and reread the back.

  “That must have been enough.”

  You take your life in your hands when you drive in and around Boston. Bostonians drive offensively rather than defensively. The local joke is that using your turn signal is giving information to the enemy. In the past year I’ve been sideswiped by a car taking a right hand turn from the wrong lane, and I’ve been driven into, albeit slowly and therefore without much of a jolt, by a newly licensed teenage girl who was not supposed to be driving her parents’ BMW. I wasn’t at fault in either case, but I was hassled by the paperwork and the loss of my car while the repairs were made. But at this time of night, just after eleven on a weeknight, there are very few cars on the dimly lit roads. I cruise easily out of the city, and I am back at home in less than half an hour.

  I love my townhouse. I bought it last year with down-payment money I’d been saving since I started working. Thirty is simply too old to be paying an extravagant rent in Boston. I miss being in the city, but most of my friends have migrated west, so remaining there just didn’t make much sense anymore. I now live about twenty minutes west of Boston, but within walking distance to a small town center and the local commuter rail stop, preventing me from feeling completely isolated inside suburbia. When I first moved, I thought I might even walk to the train and commute into the office that way. But I’m still ruminating on it as I drive my car into the heated office garage each morning. I don’t want to rush a decision like that. My townhouse is also closer to my folks and to my sister, which has its pluses and minuses.

  Once I bought my own place, I donated to charity all the shabby coll
ege furniture I’d been dragging around with me. I bought a brand new couch and bed and decorated the place in warm shades of cream and mauve. I now have a dedicated home office and a separate kitchen that is not part of a kitchen/dining room/living room combination as all my apartments had been. I also have an upstairs. I really am a grownup now.

  Tiger, my four-year-old cat, loves the stairs. At first he didn’t know what to make of them. He stays indoors, and we’ve never had steps before. Now he regularly dashes up and down for no reason I can see other than--he can. Tiger is the first pet I’ve ever had. At first I felt terrible leaving him alone in the house all day while I was at work. I was tempted to get another cat to keep him company, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’s how it starts, right? Pretty soon two cats turn into four and four turn into eight, and then I’m one of those women. No way.

  I park in front of my townhouse and drag my laptop bag, purse, and lunch bag through the hallway and into the kitchen. I’m braced for the attack, knowing it will come as soon as I turn on the kitchen light. With my bags unloaded, I reach over and flip the light switch on. Once the room brightens, he comes at me. A beige blur flies toward me from under the dining room table. I feel his soft, furry paws grab me around my bare ankle, and then he jumps back and looks up at me. “Gotcha!” his expression says. Tiger plays sneak-attack every chance he gets. He never tires of it.

  I reach down and pat his little head, smiling at the immediate purr response. I refresh his water dish, yawn widely, and decide I don’t have the energy to call my sister back. I pull Jason Randall’s card out of my back pocket and place it on the counter. I’m debating whether or not to call him. Not tonight, of course, but at all. I’m flattered that he’s interested. But beyond that, I’m not sure I want to bother. Dating just isn’t fun anymore.

  I decide to worry about calling Jason Randall another time, and I head upstairs to bed with Tiger hot on my heels.

  two

  “You’re early,” Joan comments as I walk by the front desk at the entrance to our company offices. She comments on my arrival most every day. I’m generally on the early side, and Joan feels the need to verbalize this each morning. When walking by the front desk, I hear a variety of the following, “Leaving early”, “Going out to lunch”, “Dressed up today”, “Mailing something”, “Got a hair cut”, and it continues. I simply smile and nod at her. Her job has to be terribly boring--answering the telephone and checking in visitors all day. But maybe for a middle-aged, slightly plump woman with a variety of illnesses she’s always describing to anyone who stops in front of her desk--a job sitting all day in a hermetically-sealed, temperature-controlled office building with free coffee and snacks, isn’t so bad.

  When I get to my cubicle, I’m happy to see that no one has left yellow sticky notes or other papers on my chair. No one is looking for me yet today, but it’s still early. My goal for the day is to get started on creating several white papers that the sales department can use when trying to sell and promote a new software security solution that we’re releasing in a few months. White papers basically explain the technology, and why it’s superior to other technologies and competitors. This is really some tough stuff to slog through, so I need to buckle down and get to work.

  Outside, it’s a steamy August day, but inside, it feels more like a frigid winter morning with a blizzard on the way. Despite the climate-confused office atmosphere, I’m stubbornly dressed in shorts because it’s summer. But I’m forced to slip on the sweater I keep in my drawer. That’s when I see the top of Rob’s bald head over the row of cubicle walls as he bops down the hallway toward his office. Robert Reece is my boss and he’s a bit eccentric. Actually, he’s really kind of an oddball who often crosses the line into inappropriateness, but he’s nice enough to work for.

  Once my laptop is booted up, I prepare for the day by softly streaming my favorite radio station over the Internet. “The Pit” by Silversun Pickups slips quietly out of the laptop’s mini speakers.

  “What are you so happy about?” Rob asks. He’s standing outside my cubicle now. Rob is about average height, but he is seriously scrawny. His jeans are always belted such that large volumes of fabric are folded over and cinched together at the waist, like he couldn’t find jeans small enough to fit him. And he isn’t just bald. He’s really bald. He must have started losing his hair in high school. I picture Rob as an ostracized teenager.

  “Nothing much,” I say, gazing at him sympathetically now.

  “Those sales monkeys are filling my Inbox with requests for the marketing collateral. You’re going to have that by the end of the week, right?”

  I blink at him. I’ve actually encountered a bit of a snafu, and I haven’t updated him yet. “Well, the feature information you gave me to include doesn’t quite match up with the engineering specifications I saw.”

  Rob waves his hand at me. “Talk to Karthik,” he says dismissively. He can’t be bothered with the engineering specifics. He’s above details.

  “Did you see The Bachelor last night?” he asks before launching into a rehashed version of last night’s show. Apparently, one of the women took off her panties and handed them to the bachelor by way of an introduction. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have seen the show. I do watch my fair share of television, but I missed the panty episode. After relaying the details and receiving appropriately shocked responses from me, Rob moves on to discuss the merits of the panty handshake with other employees.

  I have already emailed Karthik Singh, the engineering lead Rob was referring to, but he hasn’t responded. I will likely have to hunt him down for an answer. Karthik is easy to work with, but a bit hard to pin down. He’s the brightest engineer at BTS Systems. As such, he is harried and overworked and always looking disheveled and exhausted. I send another email to Karthik attempting to politely schedule a time in advance to chat before I am forced to ambush him. Then I buckle down and spend the next few hours responding to emails before an item marked Urgent lands in my Inbox. Bryn always marks her emails as urgent. “Meet me at Starbucks. I need your level head for a few minutes.”

  Bryn works about four blocks away. There is a Starbucks halfway between our offices. I grab my wallet and mute my music.

  “Early lunch,” Joan comments.

  I smile, not bothering to correct her as I breeze by on my way to the elevators.

  It’s a beautiful summer day. The air is still and warm, smelling only slightly of car exhaust fumes. Working in Cambridge provides an endless number of restaurants, parks, and coffee spots to visit when you need a break during the day. Bryn and I usually meet at Starbucks a few times during the week. Soon the bright summer days will give way to heavy grey skies and the unwelcome fall chill. So, I’m happy for any excuse to be outside.

  Bryn is already there when I arrive. I get in line behind her. “What’s up?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “My boss hates me.”

  This is a common theme for our coffee meetings. Bryn is slightly shorter and a lot rounder than me, despite always claiming to be on a diet. She works in high-tech as well, as a database administrator for a biotech company. Standing there together in our shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers, you would never know that we’re in the middle of a workday. We order frappuccinos and take them to the metal tables on the outside patio.

  “I just saw my review,” Bryn says, brushing at her chair with a napkin before landing on it dejectedly.

  I suck up a cold jolt of caffeine, squint from the brain freeze shock, and peer at her--waiting for the rest.

  “She gave me an average rating. Again. Which means no salary increase. Again.” She plays with her straw dejectedly.

  Bryn has been at this job for about three years, the same time-frame for which I have been at mine, except I have received raises and promotions. I can’t understand why she stays. When first hired, she’d done very well. Then her manager left, and an “evil” new one was brought in, completely stalling her career.

 
“Was there any reason given for your rating?” I ask.

  “Not really. There is a section listing Areas to work on. It was blank.”

  “Average is better than poor? Right?”

  She glares at me.

  “Can you talk to her about it? Ask her what the story is? Aren’t managers supposed to meet with you about your review?”

  She shrugs. “What’s the point? She hates me. I’m doing the same quality of work I did when my other manager was there, and he loved me.”

  “Was anyone else complaining?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “Maybe everyone is getting rated average.” I raise my voice to be heard over a bus rumbling by. “Maybe you have to be extraordinary to pass muster with her.”

  “Maybe she’ll get hit by a bus,” Bryn says smirking, eyeing the passing MBTA vehicle, obviously picturing her boss being flattened by it.

  “Well, you have two choices,” I begin, about to give advice I’ve already given her many times. “You could look for another job--or you could talk to her. Those are your options. Well, besides wallowing.” I try to be sympathetic. Bryn is stagnant in nearly every part of her life, and I can’t imagine anything less than a crowbar changing that. She is constantly complaining about her job, or her weight, or her life in its entirety, but doing absolutely nothing to change things. “Update your resumé, at least,” I suggest. “It might make you feel better.”

  Bryn nods, sipping her frappuccino. “How was your dinner last night?” She asks changing the subject.

  “The food and the service were lousy--as you knew they would be, but Katie is good. You should call her. This is getting ridiculous.”

  “Did she say anything about me?” Bryn asks without quite meeting my eyes.

  “No.”

  “Have she and Mike set a date yet?”

  “No, they’re still discussing it.”

  “Is everything okay with them?”

  “I guess. Look, just call her and apologize already. She would never intentionally do anything mean to you. I’m sure she thought that guy was very nice. She thinks everyone is nice.”