The Opposite of Me

by Sarah Pekkanen

  Cheryl accepted the microphone from Mason and stood there beaming while applause rained down like confetti all around her. The disco lights shot tiny rainbows of color on her bare, golden shoulders and upturned face. She’d never looked more beautiful.

  “Mason’s heading this way,” Matt said. He spoke slowly and gently, like you do to someone who’s been in a car accident: Do you know your name? Do you know who you are?

  “Do you want me to get you a drink?” Matt asked.

  “Thank you so much,” Cheryl began.

  “Don’t leave me,” I begged Matt.

  “I’m right here,” he said.

  “Cheryl’s the vice president?” Pammy said, wrinkling her nose. Her voice was too loud, and it reverberated inside my head. “Are you both vice presidents?”

  My mind slowed down like a mechanical toy whose battery was running out. I could barely understand what everyone was saying. Their mouths were moving, but their words made no sense.

  “Lindsey.”

  It was Mason. He stood in front of me, still running his hand over his head.

  “God, I’m so sorry. Can we just move over here and talk for a second?” he said. I nodded mutely. It took every ounce of my concentration to lift up my feet one at a time and follow him to a corner. It was the same corner where he’d told me I’d won the vice presidency. The same beanbag chairs. The same Lava lamps. How could it all be the same, as if the world hadn’t folded in on itself and flipped everything upside down?

  “Fenstermaker called fifteen minutes ago,” Mason said. He was looking at my left shoulder instead of into my eyes. “He offered us all his business. Cheryl must’ve really done a number on him. Then Cheryl threatened to jump to another agency and take his accounts with her if she didn’t get the vice presidency. She forced our hand, so we had to have an emergency vote. She beat you out by one vote.”

  I nodded again, like it all made sense.

  “You deserved this,” Mason said. “You still had my vote.”

  He was trying to make me feel better. He was throwing me a few extra fries.

  “You still have a good future with us,” Mason said. “A great future. A few years down the line, who knows?”

  I tried to croak out a word, and couldn’t. My throat had closed up.

  “I need to get back up there,” Mason said. “Will you be okay? Can I get you anything?”

  I shook my head. I was fine; I was just so cold.

  “We’ll talk more later,” Mason said. “Let’s go out for lunch tomorrow. We’ll figure something out.”

  He stepped away, and that’s when I saw it: The faces of my colleagues were turning toward me, just a few at first, then more and more joining in, like fans at a stadium doing the wave. Cheryl had finished talking, and Mason was still walking toward the stage. His motion had attracted everyone’s attention. I was as exposed as if I’d been standing there stark naked. Everyone was staring at me, curiosity and pity on their faces. Everyone knew I’d failed, that I wasn’t good enough.

  I looked around wildly and saw a red exit sign. I’m not even sure how I got there, but I must’ve run, because suddenly I was bursting through the door, out onto the sidewalk, where a panhandler sat on an overturned milk crate rattling coins in a plastic cup, and people lined up in the doorway of a restaurant, and a car skidded through an intersection just as the light turned red. Where life went on as usual, even though mine had just exploded into a million jagged shards.

  Four

  MY NEW SHOES RUBBED raw patches into my heels and the cold night air cut through the thin material of my dress, but I kept walking. I’d left my purse and coat at the bar—I vaguely remembered my purse slipping off my shoulder and scattering its contents across the floor as I ran toward the exit—but that didn’t matter. How could things like my wallet and cell phone and my business cards, the ones I’d carried in a silver monogrammed case my parents had given me for Christmas, matter anymore? The only thing that mattered, the single most important thing in the world, was that I focus every ounce of my concentration on walking. If my body kept moving, maybe my mind wouldn’t.

  I no longer felt nauseated or scared or devastated, but I knew those emotions were lurking close by, like animals in a cage, coiling their strength until the lock turned and they could unleash themselves. I had to keep walking; I had to keep the animals at bay. Besides, I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t bear to go back to the bar and face everyone. I couldn’t go home without my keys. I couldn’t go to a hotel without a credit card. The only thing left for me to do was to keep turning aimlessly down streets and up boulevards, crisscrossing the city as evening commuters with their overcoats and briefcases were replaced by couples heading out on dates and rowdy groups of people going to bars and tourists on their way to the theater.

  “Hey, baby!”

  I’d been walking for what felt like hours when a thin, blond guy lurched toward me, holding up his hand like it was a stop sign.

  I stared at him as if he was speaking Sanskrit. He was wearing a suit, but its collar was badly frayed and his right dress shoe was missing its laces.

  “Want to get a drink?” he asked. His yellow teeth seemed like they belonged to a different man, a much older one. When he smiled, I noticed his incisors were pointed like tiny little fangs.

  “Or do you want something else?” He sneered, his expression flipping from friendliness to anger like a coin. I looked around. I didn’t know this neighborhood. A thin dog sniffed at a Dumpster, and the storefronts were shielded by black accordion gates that were covered with graffiti. I didn’t feel fear or anger; I didn’t feel anything except the bone-numbing cold. I didn’t know if I ever would again.

  I stepped around the drunk like he was no more substantial than air. He shouted insults in my wake as I kept walking. I wanted to walk forever. I wanted to be like Forrest Gump, reaching one end of the country and turning around and heading for the other coast. I passed by a twenty-four-hour liquor store and a deli with red flowers clustered in buckets out front. I stepped over the chalk outline of a child’s hopscotch game and the broken amber glass of beer bottles. I keep walking, my shoes tapping a steady rhythm against the sidewalk of the city I’d loved so much.

  Some time later—maybe an hour, maybe three—I passed a street I recognized. I stood on the corner, staring up at the street sign. Somehow, I’d looped around and now I was only ten blocks away from my office. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees, and the wind was picking up. A storm was coming. My teeth chattered, and I could no longer feel my feet.

  A thought wormed its way through the numbness of my brain. I had an extra set of keys to my apartment and twenty dollars in my desk drawer for emergencies.

  No one would be at the office now; they’d all still be partying. I could slip into the building, then I could go home and swallow a sleeping pill and escape into oblivion.

  I turned right, toward my office, and kept walking.

  “Want me to turn on a light for you?” the security guard asked. I’d knocked on the glass window outside his station, and he’d put down his fork and Tupperware container of spaghetti and let me into the building. He used his passkey to open the door to my office after I mumbled a story about leaving my purse in a cab.

  “I’ll get the lights,” I said, my voice coming out all husky, as if I’d been screaming for hours. “Thank you, John.”

  “Don’t work too late now.” He tipped his head at me and headed for the elevator, whistling a song I didn’t recognize.

  I sat down in the leather chair behind my desk and reached for the drawer with my money and keys, but before I could open it, I noticed something amiss on my desk. My pencils and Clio Award and stapler had been moved to one side, to make room for the magnum of champagne someone had put in the center. There was a silver card attached to the bottle. I reached for the card and laughed a mirthless laugh when I read it.

  “Congratulations to our newest—and youngest ever—VP creative director!” the card
said. It was from the board of directors of our agency.

  I picked up the heavy bottle and turned it around and around in my hands. Dom. Nice to know that even though they’d stabbed me in the back, they hadn’t skimped on me.

  Suddenly I was desperately thirsty. I must’ve walked for miles, inhaling black exhaust fumes from buses and cabs, and my throat felt so sore I could barely swallow. I pulled off the foil and wire twisted around the neck of the bottle and used my thumbs to pop the cork. I ignored the foam that cascaded over my hands and took a greedy gulp from the bottle.

  When the phone on my desk shrilled, I nearly dropped the heavy bottle on my toe.

  Who could be calling me at the office at—I squinted at the clock on the wall—nine-thirty on a Friday night? It was probably Matt, or maybe Mason. They could leave a message; there wasn’t anyone in the world I wanted to talk to right now.

  I finally glanced at the caller ID on the third ring. It was Bradley Church.

  Bradley, who always made me feel good. Bradley, who’d had a not-so-secret crush on me since the second grade. Bradley, whose red felt heart printed with the words “Be My Valentine” had been tucked in the secret compartment of my old jewelry box since the third grade. He was the one guy in the world who’d always made me feel like I was pretty. Like I was special. His deep voice would be a balm to my soul.

  “Hey, you!” Bradley shouted. His voice was happy, excited. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night, but you didn’t answer your cell or at home. I can’t believe you’re still at the office!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Got tied up in a meeting. How are you?”

  “Great,” he said. “Really great.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured Bradley. His brown hair was always rumpled, he was on the skinny side, and his hands and feet seemed too big for his body, like a puppy’s. His eyes were earnest behind his big wire-rimmed glasses, and he always carried a pen and notebook in his back pocket like a wallet, and at least two cameras slung around his neck. Bradley was the kind of guy people considered a geek in high school, at least the people who weren’t able to see how kind and good and honorable he was. Suddenly I missed him terribly.

  “You won’t believe what happened to me tonight,” Bradley said.

  Bet it can’t top my night, I thought, grimly swigging another gulp.

  “I got stuck in an elevator for three hours,” he said. “You know that parking garage in downtown Bethesda? I was going to pick up a book at Barnes & Noble, and on the way back to my car, I got stuck between the third and fourth floors. It took forever for the firemen to get us out.”

  “What a pain,” I said, covering a yawn.

  It had been a mistake to answer the phone. I couldn’t do

  casual chitchat tonight, even with Bradley. Exhaustion was starting to crash over me in thick, heavy waves, and I desperately wanted to succumb to it. I ached to collapse into my bed under my fluffy down comforter, to put my pillow over my head and curl up in the darkness.

  “Well, at least you had something to read,” I said, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder and opening my drawer with my free hand, the one that wasn’t clutching the champagne in a death grip. I found my keys exactly where I’d left them, a twenty-dollar bill pinned to the key chain with a paper clip. And they say anal-retentiveness is a character flaw.

  “So there I was, stuck in the elevator,” Bradley said. I heard a woman giggling nearby. God, I hoped he’d wrap this up quickly. I needed to get off the phone.

  “And guess who I ran into in the elevator?” he said.

  I so didn’t want to play this game.

  “No idea,” I said briskly. I didn’t want to be rude, but Bradley was too happy and chatty and I really needed to go home.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” he said. “She’s a redhead.”

  “A natural one!” a familiar voice shouted. “You’ve seen the proof, Bradley Church!”

  This time I did drop the champagne bottle: “Shit!”

  “Lindsey? Are you okay?” Bradley asked.

  I snatched up the bottle before too much spilled.

  “Alex?” I asked tentatively.

  “None other.” She giggled. She must have been perched by Bradley’s side. Their faces must have been close together with the cell phone in between so they could both hear. Their cheeks were probably in that electric space just before skin touches skin.

  “What a coincidence,” I said. The numbness was draining from my body; anxiety was evicting it and staking a claim.

  “We’re starving to death after our ordeal,” Bradley said.

  “Our heroic ordeal,” Alex added.

  “Heroic,” Bradley agreed.

  “Well, you were heroic,” Alex said. “Bradley gave me his bottle of water.”

  “But you insisted I drink half,” Bradley said. “So you were noble.”

  What the—what the—what the fuck? Why were they finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple?

  “Anyway,” Bradley said, “we’re about to grab dinner at that Thai place. Remember? It’s where you and I went the last time you were in town.”

  We’d shared chicken satay with peanut sauce and crispy spring rolls and talked for hours. The restaurant was on the dark side, I suddenly remembered. With soft background music. And votive candles at every table.

  “So this is really funny,” I said. I took another long gulp of champagne. “And natural redhead? What are you talking about, Alex?”

  “I showed him the proof,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. Alex was using her husky, there’s-an-attractive-man-in-the-house voice. Something close to hatred gripped my stomach like a fist.

  “She showed me her forearm hair,” Bradley said quickly. “Trust me, we had a lot to talk about during those three hours.”

  “Great!” I said too heartily.

  “Why didn’t you tell me how handsome Bradley has gotten?” Alex said, laughing.

  I could see her now, putting a hand on Bradley’s thin shoulder, brushing a crumb off his chest, leaning in to take a bite of his food off his fork. Alex could no sooner stop flirting than breathing.

  My insides clenched up like a giant hand was grabbing them and mercilessly squeezing.

  “Where’s Gary tonight?” I asked casually. Gary was Alex’s fiancé.

  “Working,” Alex said, stretching out the word and making it sound like bo-ring. “As usual. Just like you. What are you doing at the office now?”

  “I think our spring rolls are coming,” Bradley said.

  “I’d love another glass of wine,” I heard Alex tell the waitress. “Bradley?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We deserve it.”

  Alex laughed, an intimate, knowing laugh that reverberated in my mind like a villain’s cackle. “Are you sure? You told me you get tipsy after one glass. I might have to drive you home.”

  I leapt up from my chair, feeling a scream rise in my throat. That was my private joke with Bradley, the fact that the two of us couldn’t have more than a single drink without feeling giddy. That was our restaurant. Were they sitting at our table, too? Was Bradley going to send her a freaking valentine?

  “Call me later, Sis,” Alex said, and the phone went dead.

  I gulped champagne so quickly it burned as it slid down my throat. My mind was raging. Damn it, Alex had a fiancé, a rich, gorgeous guy. So why did she need to prove how irresistible she was? Why did she always need to have a pack of guys panting in her wake? It didn’t matter that she hadn’t known about Bradley’s crush on me. I’d never told her about it, but she knew Bradley and I were friends. She knew how close we were. Couldn’t she have left alone the only guy in the world who actually thought I was the special sister?

  I paced my office, hot tears flooding my eyes.

  I’d killed myself for a promotion that Cheryl won because she was sexier.

  The guy who’d had a crush on me for twenty years spent a couple of hours with Alex and forgot all abo
ut me.

  The moral was obvious: The pretty girls always won. No matter how smart I was, no matter hard I worked, it didn’t matter. I’d never be good enough. And what did I have to show for all my hard work? A one-bedroom apartment that I’d have to demolish my savings account to afford to buy, the account I’d spent seven years building up. A golden award on my desk. The beginnings of carpal tunnel and a body that was falling apart and a headache that never seemed to quit. I was twenty-nine years old, and the only thing in this world I had was a job that had betrayed me after I’d given it absolutely everything.

  I wanted to leap out of my own skin. I wanted to run screaming down the streets of New York. I wanted to curl up under my desk and cry.

  I wanted to be anyone but me.

  Without being fully aware of what I was doing, I yanked open the door to my office and stalked down the shadowy halls to the conference room. Cheryl’s storyboard was still up on the easel. I pulled off the drape cloth and stared at her campaign.

  I took a step backward. Unbelievable. I’d spent a lot of time imagining her campaign, but I’d never expected anything like this.

  She’d gone for a slice-of-life commercial. It was grade-schoolish in its lack of sophistication: Two pretty twenty-something women stood side by side in front of a bathroom mirror talking about their lipstick. One girl couldn’t believe Gloss could make her thin lips look plump and pretty, but she was won over when her friend made her try some.

  This had won Cheryl $50 million in new business? The tired, trite, naysayer-turned-true-believer slice-of-life ad?

  But of course it hadn’t won Cheryl the account, I remembered, narrowing my eyes. Her face and body and sultry voice had won it. Cheryl had done her research, too, I had no doubt. But a different kind of research. Instead of figuring out Fenstermaker’s favorite drink or which type of bagel he preferred, she’d analyzed his ego for a weak spot and zeroed in. What middle-aged man wouldn’t be flattered by the gentle scrape of long nails against his knee, by the gaze that told him he was irresistible, by the deliberate flash of cleavage, especially when his marriage had dried up and his wife was sleeping with a thirty-year-old pilot? I had no doubt that Cheryl would follow up her flirtation with action. She’d probably already spent the afternoon in a hotel room with Fenstermaker; she’d probably known he was about to call so she could hold Mason’s feet to the fire.