Neurotica
Page 32
So there I was, in a nutshell.
If not perfect, my life was at least bearable and, on paper, even a little impressive. Okay, I cried on the stair-climber once in a while and ate whole pints of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk in one sitting and dreamed about chucking it all and having tantric sex with my Indian ob-gyn, but basically, life was tolerable.
Then I got the e-mail and everything changed in a heartbeat. Sure, it all worked out great in the end, but it took a lot to get there.
ex marks the spot
Six Months Earlier
THE E-MAIL ARRIVED IN MY IN BOX AS I WAS KILLING time adding books and CDs to my Amazon wish list that I would never buy. Starting a Dialogue with Your Inner Child's Child and The Best Latin Dance Party Hits of 1980–1990 ring any bells?
To: Carl Hanson
From: Nancy Teason
Subject: Department changes
C,
I've been giving the changes we talked about some thought, and the topline is, Jen's just not ready for this kind of responsibility. She has tons of talent, and with the right kind of mentoring, I think she could be a managing editor in a year or two. Irregardless [sic] of the current budget freeze, I think we need to look out of house on this one. We can talk about it more but this is really my gut call.
p.s. Steve and I have tickets to the Giants game on Sunday. Interested in making it a foursome?
Nance
Nancy Teason, Director of Product Development
Technology Standard / TechStandard.com
I read it through several more times, heart pounding. My college roommate, who is now a practicing personal coach with two homes (Laguna Beach, California, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut) and two ex-husbands (both in L.A.), says that the important thing in times of stress is to isolate the thought attack and put it away in your “negativity closet.” I have tried this method several times and have found that it is nowhere near as satisfying as imagining backing an SUV slowly over the backstabbing turncoat who has wronged you.
For about six weeks now, I've been going through the humiliating process of applying for my own job. Why do I think it's mine? Well, for one, my former boss, Jem Abbott Pierce (yes, that's really her name—Mayflower forebears) had the temerity to go have a baby and leave me stranded with her work. Not that I mind, since her job is infinitely more interesting than my own, what with the trips to L.A. in spring, New York in fall, and free shwag up the wazoo.
It just stands to reason that I, Jem's Fully Anointed Protégée, am supposed to take her place when she invariably decides that darning pashmina shawls, painting landscapes of rotting barns, and nurturing her blue-blooded progeny are more important than covering high-tech news in Silicon Valley.
One Internet hiccup, and a message I was never intended to see found its way to my in-box. This happens, what, once every five years or so? Twenty? As there was something omenlike about this, I grabbed my spongy carpal-tunnel wrist ball and squeezed obsessively while staring out at the parking lot, hoping for a divine or at least everyday revelation. I considered my options: Forward dreaded message to Carl and cc Nancy Teason (Treason?) with a kind fyi at the top, and pretend ongoing ignorance while conducting a quietly dignified job search, which would hopefully offer me 387,000 instantly vesting stock options and an all-straight-male staff? Delete dreaded message and sublimate my rage into therapeutic massage and book club? Reply to dreaded message using colorful expletives, stomp over to Carl's office, urinate on the copier, and fling my meager belongings in a box?
In the end, I did what I always do when I'm panicked—I called Robert.
He answered before the first ring.
“O'Hanlon.” Robert always sounds incredibly butch on the phone.
“It's me. You are not going to believe this.”
“Try me.” Keyboard clacking.
“Somehow an e-mail from Nancy to Carl was misrouted to me. They're not going to consider me for Jem's job.” Tears at the back of my throat threatened to choke me. This only happens with Robert and my mother.
“Holy shit.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Hang on.”
I can hear Robert ordering his minions around in a charming, drill sergeant-esque kind of way. Robert is creative director at a trendy advertising agency in The City, and that, in addition to his brilliant wit, ridiculously handsome black Irish looks, and ambiguous sexual orientation, has everyone from junior copywriters to VPs in a constant dither to get his attention.
“Okay, I'm back. What are you going to do, lovey?”
“I don't know. I've worked hard for this, and I deserve it! It sucks, it just sucks . . .” Then I ranted a little more.
“Okay, what time is it?” he asked when I was done. I held my tongue on this one because most of Robert's non sequitur remarks end up somewhere good.
“Three forty-five.”
“Leave. Leave right now and meet me at work.”
“I can't. I have to finish editing this week's bullpen and call some of the freelancers and—”
“No. Drop everything. It is absolutely essential that you leave immediately and take the special O'Hanlon job-fuck treatment.”
Treatment?
Which is how I ended up puking in a gutter at three a.m., the Meredith Gazette editor's business card crumpled in the back pocket of my favorite jeans.
The next few weeks passed in a holding pattern. I struggled with how to act around Nancy and Carl, who, presumably, weren't aware that their betrayal had been discovered. In the meantime, I hung out with Robert, went to the movies, and spent one wrenching nuclear familial afternoon with Jem and her husband Micah, watching their adorable baby Milo systematically destroy their living room. As always, Jem's view of my situation was illuminating.
“Why don't you just take that job in Montana with that friend of Robert's?”
“Montana? Jem, are you kidding? I live here, I have a life here. I can't just go off half-cocked to the boondocks for the first half-baked offer I get.” I stroked Jem's old red Lab, Bonnie.
Jem put her latte down and looked at me. “How do you think I ended up in San Francisco, Jennifer? Do you think the Abbotts and the Pierces grow up thinking of the West Coast as a civilized place with cities and culture and decent marital prospects? Hell, no,” she snorted. “I'm not saying Montana is the panacea for everything you feel is wrong with your life, but you need to look at what is really keeping you here. You came out because of Damon, and I wonder if you're still here because of him. If I were your age, I'd definitely consider it. You're like me. We like everything scripted and deliberate and guaranteed. And that's fine, but it would a shame for you to miss out on some really interesting opportunities just because you still hold out hope that Damon—who has his own baggage, mind you—will realize what he gave up and come back to you.”
I doodled happy faces on the corner of The New York Times crossword. I knew she was right. I had rationalized my solitude over the past two years as a kind of break between relationships, and a day didn't go by that I didn't bemoan my lack of a partner to experience life with. It was interfering with . . . oh, just living, and I knew it.
“I suppose it wouldn't hurt to send him my résumé,” I said slowly.
Jem gave me her serene, patrician smile.
“I've always wanted to see Glacier National Park.” My voice quickened. “I could sublet my apartment, maybe even take a leave of absence at the Tech Standard. It's not like it has to be a permanent thing—more like a vacation, really. A chance to do some beat reporting, see the country, get away from here for a while. If I don't like it, I can come home anytime.”
Now I was getting excited. I could reinvent myself in the great outdoors, the Wild West, home of the free and survivalistic. A vision of me slinging a battered four-wheel-drive truck into a snowy parking lot crystallized. I would live in a cabin à la the Unabomber and order all my clothes from L. L. Bean. I would get to know people who gutted fish, shot moose, and maintained ste
rn silences when confronted with the sissified behavior of city folk. I would eat steak for breakfast. I would be automagically skinny, a fortunate side effect of extreme cold and daily tussles with bears. If I didn't rope steer and barrel-race horses myself, I would at least drink beer with those who did.
I was going to Montana.
NEUROTICA
A Delta Book/published by arrangement with Headline Book Publishing, a division of Hodder Headline PLC.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Headline edition/1998
Bantam hardcover edition/July 1999
Bantam mass market edition/February 2000
Delta trade paperback edition/September 2003
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1998 by Sue Margolis
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-76978
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Published simultaneously in Canada
eISBN: 978-0-440-33461-3
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