“Yes.”
“And?”
“He’s set on starting his department with a new team.”
“Wait a minute, Isaac—are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I didn’t want to do it like this, Stella. I mean you and I go way back. . . .”
“So are you saying I’m out of a job?”
“Well, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Javitz feels that he really can’t justify your salary.”
“Oh, really! As much revenue as I bring into the firm, he can’t justify my salary?”
“Stella, you’ve had the same accounts now for some time and we’re trying to grow. New clients are just as valuable as long-standing ones.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“You know how things can get at this level.”
“And what level is that, Isaac? What level is that?”
“We’re offering you a great severance package. A year’s salary plus a bonus and most of your benefits. You can even keep your profit sharing.”
“So are you saying I have to accept this?”
“Well, it’s what we’re offering.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. “And Isaac, thanks for sharing.” I hang up and stand there looking out the window for so long that the tears I didn’t want to fall finally condense. I do not have a job. I am unemployed. I have no income. After all these years of making what I thought was an investment, it turns out there is no return. Poof. Just like that. The ride is over. Do not pass Go. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. How I’m supposed to feel. And who can I ask? And even if I did, what difference would it make? I am going to have to start over. Somewhere else. Start over. Start all over. Again.
I drop the portable phone right there on my office floor and wander out of the house without realizing that I don’t know where I’m going but the mailbox is waiting there so I open it and it’s obvious that Vanessa hasn’t been here in a few days because it’s packed tight with white and brown envelopes magazines and as I begin to tug and yank to get all this stuff out and some of it lands by the curb I gradually begin to move slower and slower because for some reason I do not cannot even begin to understand or explain, right this minute I feel lighter and my head is clearing up like clouds that evaporate on those special-effect commercials and I realize that what I am feeling is relief and as I pile up all the mail and head back toward the house I am weightless and my legs are light and I can hardly feel the concrete steps under my feet and after I close the door I am on the verge of giggling because somehow and for some reason it feels like a gigantic burden has been lifted from my shoulders. In fact as I go through the mail most of which is junk and then dash upstairs to the laundry room and begin to throw all my running outfits into the washer I cannot wipe the smirk off my face because I am now rather ecstatic that I no longer have a job because all I know is that shit happens for a reason and maybe I’m being given another chance maybe this is really an opportunity to venture out in a different direction which is why I am going to pay attention this time out because what I am certain of is that for the first time in like seventeen years I am totally and unequivocally free!
• • • •
“Come home,” I say to Quincy.
“Mom! Where are you?” he asks.
“I’m home.”
“You are? How was it?”
“Beautiful. And how about your vacation? Are you still having fun? Did you catch any fish?”
“Well, first of all I’ve been sorta having fun but Dad goes to bed kind of early and he took me to the arcade a few times so I could play Mortal Kombat Three and it was pretty cool and I caught six fish but they were too little so we had to throw them back.”
“Oh, that was nice. So your plane gets in next Saturday at noon, right?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll be standing at the gate with open arms.”
“Please don’t, Mom. It’s not necessary to have your arms open.”
“Goodbye, Quincy, and tell your daddy I said hello and I’ll call him after you get home.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“Mom, did you bring me anything from Jamaica?”
“Yes, I brought you lots of things.”
“Like what?”
“Surprise surprise surprise,” I say and hang up.
• • • •
I am really home. I have just been fired from my job. And Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care! If it wouldn’t make me look so stupid I would call Winston right now. But I’m not going to. What would I say anyway? I just got home and I’m still thinking about you? I dreamed about you all the way home on the plane? I am already trying to figure out how I’m going to teach myself to forget about you? Because what this really was—according to an article I read on the plane—is called a “fling.” A fling is when you go on vacation and get wild and crazy with someone you don’t know and have the best sex and everything is so euphoric that you wish you could feel this way forever but because there are usually geographical problems and maybe language barriers and major cultural differences and say a vast disparity in age do not—repeat: do not—take this shit seriously because when you get home it’s like over goodbye hastalavista baby no I probably won’t see you next year but it was like steaming hot and I had a fabulous time and I hope I get as lucky when I go to Brazil next year, you know? However, on some rare occasions when you get home and days go by and you can’t seem to get this person out of your mind and then you actually like find yourself calling him or her on the phone and writing little notes weeks later, then maybe just maybe this could like turn into a real relationship. For the most part, however, play it safe and forget about him.
Which is what I basically decide to do.
• • • •
I go to Home Depot specifically to buy some long-bed boxes of zinnias and petunias and chrysanthemums and some bigger pots for my ficus and schefflera and some huge bags of potting soil vermiculite and peat moss, a few pairs of those gardening gloves and then I’m like out of there with my cart, which I push out to and get everything easily into the back of my truck.
I am in the backyard on my knees digging holes in the ground and poking little flowers inside each one and the soil is soft and cool even through these gloves and deciding which flowers to put where and how to group them becomes important to me and I get up from time to time to stand back and look at the pattern or lack of pattern these tiny bouquets are beginning to make and I enjoy how much livelier the yard is looking already. I don’t even realize that I have been out here now for more than two hours until I hear what sounds like the engine of my car pulling into the driveway and the phone ringing at the same time. I walk over to the outdoor table and pick up the portable.
“Yes yes yes,” I say.
“Your lovely sister and favorite niece are in your driveway and we are here to collect our gifts and I hope a check too and I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news so come out to the garage and tell me which you want to hear first.”
I hang up and walk through the garage and the two of them are in the front of my black BMW which is an M-5 racing car which I did not need but I bought anyway because I could afford it and liked it and it goes fast.
Vanessa is standing next to the car. She walks over and gives me a hug. She could be Pepa’s sister of Salt-N-Pepa, at least that’s what Quincy’s friend Dexter thought the first time he was over and Vanessa walked in the door and his eyes got big and he said, “Pepa?” and she said, “Who, sweetheart?” and that’s how he knew it wasn’t her. “What up, cradle-robber?” she yells.
“Don’t even start, Vanessa.”
Chantel finally gets out of the car because apparently she was listening to something on the radio, probably some nasty sex-oriented gangsta rap song because she likes just about all of them. She and Quincy are the same age and often when I take him somewhere I
take her too. She’s sort of like the daughter I wish I could have had but never had and never will have.
“What are you doing?” Vanessa asks, putting her hands on her big hips.
“I’m planting flowers.”
“Since when did you start planting flowers?”
“I’ve been meaning to do this for the past couple of years, so I’m doing it like now. Got a problem with that?”
“You look cute,” she says. “Different. Like you kind of got like this little . . . I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Well, I am four or five shades darker, Vanessa.”
“Hi, Auntie Stel,” Chantel says. She is my blossoming little cookie dough niece. Last year she was as thin as paper and this year she’s actually got curves.
“Hi, honeybunny,” I say and she runs inside the house, as if she’s trying to get away from something. “Okay, cut the bullshit. Your bad news can’t be any worse than what I’ve just gotten.”
“What?”
“I am no longer employed.”
“Get the hell out of here?” she says, looking around the truck to make sure Chantel is inside the house.
“Yep. They pulled this shit on me while I was gone.”
“Can you sue ’em?”
“Everybody always wants to sue somebody. I don’t have the time or the energy but I’ll be getting what’s mine. I’m not even worried about it.”
“Wow, this is like totally fucked up, Stella. What a way to come home from vacation.”
“I’m not really all that upset about it if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m checking you out. You seem too calm, at least that’s what I think I’m hearing in your voice. Are you on something?”
“No, I’m not on anything. Spare me. Now tell me what your bad news is.”
“Promise you won’t be too mad at me?”
“What is it, Vanessa?”
“Wait up. Did you write the check already?”
“I said I’d lend it to you. Now what is it?”
“I had a little accident.”
I look over at the car. “Where?”
“The rear end. Left side. Taillight.”
I walk back and look at it and sure enough it’s cracked and there is a little dent on the side. “What happened?”
“This stupid son-of-a-bitch wasn’t even looking where he was going when I was trying to back out of this parking space and like pow! I tapped him.”
“No problem.”
“You mean you’re not pissed?”
“It’s just a stupid little accident. Did anybody get hurt?”
She looks as if she doesn’t quite believe this because I do have a reputation for being high-strung, for “going off,” but only if I’m provoked, and occasionally for not being the most understanding when it comes to sensitive emotional issues. Or at least that’s the word out on the street.
“No. Nobody got hurt,” she says very slowly. “Girl, what has gotten into you? You ain’t tripping and I know you’re crazy about this car.”
“It’s just a stupid car. It can be fixed. What’s the big deal?”
Then she starts laughing. “That young boy musta really done something to you. Look at me, Stella.”
After she says this I can’t because I feel myself blushing and I can’t hide it with these dirty gloves on so I drop my face and then Vanessa runs over to me and lifts my chin up and says, “What has happened to you?”
I try my damnedest to wipe the smirk off my face and I say, “Nothing. And your check’s on the kitchen counter. Go get it.”
“You didn’t go down there and fall in love with a twenty-one-year-old, did you, Stella?”
“Are you crazy?”
“No. I’m not crazy. Are you?” And she is staring at me like she hasn’t seen me in twenty years or like I’ve just cut off all my hair or dyed it some outrageous color and she is giving me a serious once-over. “Something is different about you, Stella, and I’ma tell you something. You look better now than I’ve seen you look in a long time. I’m not kidding, you actually have like a twinkle or something in your damn eyes.”
“I do not have any twinkle in my eyes. I’m just darker. I went on vacation and apparently it worked.”
“That’s not even what I’m talking about and you know it, Stella. You did fall in love with him, didn’t you? Tell the truth.”
“Would you stop it, Vanessa. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, answer me this. How do you feel?”
“I feel good, as James Brown would say,” and I start laughing.
“Cut the bullshit, Stella. Tell me.”
“Okay, I feel something. I don’t know what it is, but all I know is that I feel good inside, lighter, better than I have in years. I feel like, like I could plant every flower in the world in my backyard today.”
She is smiling at me. “Whew.” She sighs. “Well, just keep this to yourself. Let it be your business.”
“I am,” I say. “Now what’s the good news?”
“Oh. The good news is that when I had the accident you know I was on my way to Reno with my girl Cassandra who I work with and to be totally honest I had my mind on my money and my money on my mind but I won three hundred and sixty bucks playing the slots!”
“That’s your good news. Where’s mine?”
“What’s mine is yours, isn’t it, Sis?”
“No. And we’re not even going that far,” and I turn to head toward the backyard.
“Wait a minute, girl! Take those stupid gloves off. We came over here to collect,” she says and pushes me in the other direction. “And you better not hadda bought us no cheap shit and I hope you’ve got some champagne in here cause it’s hot as hell out here and not only that but it’s summertime and the living is easy and I want you to tell me all about Jamaica and this young man of yours. I’m serious. I want to know what a twenty-one-year-old boy can do for a forty-two-year-old woman that would make her look five years younger in a single week and she comes home and not be pissed after hearing that her sister has wrecked her sixty-thousand-dollar car and she still lends her a thousand big ones and she finds out that she is fired from her megabucks job that I certainly wish I had and yet she is still as cool as a cucumber. I want to hear it all,” she says and puts her hands on her hips. “Blow—by—blow.”
So I tell her.
“IT AIN’T NOTHING but a meatballL,” I say to myself as I begin to pack up three of those stupid computers that have taken up so much room in my home office which while I’m at it I decide to redecorate repaint in fact I should like move altogether and just build a-whole-nother house! This notion flies right out the window of course because now I have no job and thank the Lord my mother taught me how to save my allowance for a rainy day which has been reincarnated and come back as tax-free municipal bonds and it was one of the few things Mama told me to do that I actually did and I am also grateful that years ago I made some solid investments in a now-famous coffee company and a very popular consumer shopping establishment that I frequent myself but do not get any special discounts at and thanks to Leroy who despite whatever shortcomings he may have physically emotionally and spiritually does have mucho business savvy and didn’t mind sharing some of it with me. In fact he urged me implored me to become partners with him which against my better judgment I went ahead and did but only after he promised me that even if I stopped sleeping with him that shouldn’t stop us from making money together which made perfect sense to me and he kept his word so I am like a major shareholder and part owner of a number of thriving fast-food soft-drink enterprises which I prefer not to name.
Plus I’m also not stupid. One of the primary and most important lessons you learn in securities is how to cover your own ass first. Why would I spend all my time and energy showing other folks how to make money if I didn’t myself? My mentors always stressed the fact that as soon as you make more than enough to earn a living, start making a living. Pu
t a small percentage of your income somewhere it’ll grow faster than the speed of light and just like playing in Vegas take a risk but never risk more than you can afford to lose and then take some of that hard-won money and put it in a safer sure but slower-paced place so you don’t have to stress over how it’s performing but the goal is to have all of your investments spread out over into everything from umbrella insurance policies to stocks so that if you ever lose your job or even die your bills are covered your ass is covered your children are taken care of and so I took their advice and if I were to say die today or something my portfolio is set up so that after everything is paid off whoever inherits my property and possessions won’t even have to pay any inheritance tax. So unlike some of these hotsy-totsy movie stars athletes rappers and rock and roll stars who spend all their money on expensive cars clothes mansions and go bankrupt from excessing, I will not. Over the past five years or so I followed my own tips which basically means that I can afford not to work for the next two and a half to three years without freaking out. I will however verify and confirm this with my accountant my broker and by reviewing my own portfolio.
I don’t know why this never occurred to me before, that I have actually been in a position not to work, but I guess it’s because I’ve just always worked and besides I always thought what I was doing meant something to somebody, that I provided a valuable and unique service of some kind, but apparently what they say is true: you can always be replaced. But you know what? Fuck ’em.
I am also very much aware that I don’t have a clue as to what I’m going to do to take the place of my job. What I do know for certain is that I am not walking through any more revolving doors with a suit on, gripping an attaché case. To hell with corporate America where people don’t count but revenue has a pulse and all they do is watch it on an EKG. I give. So the search is on to find a place where I can be me and still make a living even though the truth is I don’t have very many if any “marketable” skills except for designing and since I no longer have a job to distract me perhaps I’ll pay closer attention to what used to give me pleasure in a major way.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back Page 18
