Ira said he suspected that David was a bit of a mama’s boy, but he had heard good things and thought it was worth a shot. He continued: “Who knows? Maybe David will bring his mother on the date and you’ll get a boyfriend and a new job!”
Despite his being a fatherly figure, Ira’s displaced sense of boundaries made me squirm. Outwardly, I smiled.
For the next week, Keira, who had become much more friendly with me in the past weeks, and Ira were having a ball with the blind-date jokes.
“Call Jane Morgan and ask her about her son, unless she’ll be joining you for dinner” was a typical remark. Or my phone would ring and it would be Keira pretending to call me as David’s mother.
Just tell us where he’s taking you so we can show up. Come on—we can pretend not to know you. It will be so much fun, said Keira over Gchat.
Fun for whom? I typed back. No way I could keep a straight face with you and Ira at the next table.
We were all enjoying the banter, but the real issue was that David hadn’t contacted me yet.
Then, finally, the pigeon landed.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
Hello, Alison.
I have heard great things about you from my mother (through Ira Kahn) and in their attempt to play matchmaker, was given your email address. In an effort to get to know you in person versus email, can I take you out after work early next week? Let me know what days are best for you and we can make it happen.
Have a wonderful night.
David
After a few back-and-forth emails, David and I planned to meet the next week at the new Polo Bar, Ralph Lauren’s refined yet casual restaurant with both dinner and drink options. It was exciting to try a brand-new local gem on a first date. David told me multiple times that he had heard great things about me. If only he knew about his own popularity in my office! Maybe the third David would be the home run, after all.
I had never heard back from Keith, the biceps admirer, after responding to his initial email asking me out, but with David on the horizon, it didn’t seem to matter. In a way it was like auditioning—the more opportunities you had lined up, the less each one meant. I liked the fantasy of having to juggle men, but I wasn’t going to focus on the numbers of it all. Six months ago I would have checked my phone every three minutes, wondering . . . and wondering. Would he text? But somehow, after letting go and caring less, my phone kept buzzing with new activity. I had a feeling there was a lesson here, and it didn’t pertain only to my personal life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cruelty Free—Not Tested on Animals
Waiting for me on my desk bright and early the next day was a hot cup of coffee in a Starbucks to-go cup. Written on it: Beyoncé. Sally was nowhere to be found.
Beyoncé, I thought. Copy that.
“Can you believe that Sally requires her cups of coffee to be the color of Beyoncé?” I gossiped to Madison later that day.
“Considering the fact that you never make personal calls from your office, and you’re calling me from there, this is clearly a big deal,” she replied. “Wait, like her skin color?” she asked, digesting what I had said. “That’s nuts. Who would even think of that? You should keep a color swatch for her coffee. Not kidding, Alison—do it.”
“I should,” I said, both a little amused and slightly scared. “Better yet, I’m going to paint a swatch this exact color next to the coffee machine. For the good of the office, of course.”
I received a FedEx the next day at the office marked OVERNIGHT DELIVERY / PERSONAL. I opened it to find a color printout of Beyoncé with three Benjamin Moore paint swatches clipped to it. Madison’s note:
Three copies of Benjamin Moore Greenfield Pumpkin, HC-40—I mean, Beyoncé. A swatch for your desk. A swatch to tape to the coffee machine. And the last for Sally, for when she tells you that you’ve given her Eva Longoria.
I tucked the swatches into my desk and smiled at my best friend’s generosity, laughing more at the ever apropos Beyoncé lyrics now in my head: Smack that, clap, clap, clap, like you don’t care. (I know you care.)
Date night with David quickly approached and Carly offered to do my makeup for the big night out. I wore a blue cotton dress with thin gold pinstripes and a belt, and she had planned on doing something fun with my eyes.
“Can you please not do the same eyes as you do on your dead clients?” I asked as she waved her mascara wand. It still freaked me out that Carly practiced her skills on the dearly departed, but I understood her need to make more money, since the girls hadn’t received a raise or bonus in three years.
“My favorite corpse look is with Strawberry blush and Lipstick Sixty-Four. Such a great color,” she whispered so the clients in the studio wouldn’t hear.
“Does Sally know that you use her makeup at your other job? Actually, does Sally even know that you have another job?”
“Absolutely not,” Carly shot back with a concerned look in her eyes. “You won’t tell her, right?”
“Of course I won’t! I just think it’s hilarious.”
The thought of having multiple jobs again made me shudder.
But I did wonder what Sally’s reaction would be if she knew how many different types of people were wearing her makeup. Not tested on animals—just dead people.
Feeling sparkly eyed and taller than my five foot two with my shoulders effortlessly lifted, I knew I projected confidence when I left work and walked over to the Polo Bar to meet David. He was waiting outside when I arrived and was taller and better looking than in his photos. Way to go, Ira: lower the expectations so they can be exceeded.
He greeted me warmly but told me there was a glitch in his plan. The Polo Bar was so new, it hadn’t yet opened, which he hadn’t realized. I could hear Keira’s voice in my head:
“Did he really think you’d be able to walk in on a whim to the newest, hottest place in town?”
“Not a problem,” I assured him, ignoring my alter ego. “We can always find another place around here.”
After learning about each other’s food likes and dislikes—David not liking Indian or Thai and me being open to pretty much anything—David recommended that we head to one of his family’s favorite sushi joints, only a few blocks away.
“Hey, let me switch places with you so your shoes don’t get caught in the grate,” he offered as we reached Sixth Avenue.
“A gentleman,” I said.
“But of course. It’s how I was raised.”
I smiled.
“And do you know who should go first through a revolving door?” he asked.
I indulged him. “Who?”
“I should, so that you don’t have to do the pushing.”
The hostess walked us to our table when we arrived at the restaurant (not through a revolving door), and as I put my things down on the chair next to me, I noticed that David was no longer behind me. He was talking with an older couple at the front of the restaurant.
I wasn’t sure whether I should wait at our table or walk over to him, but he caught my eye and motioned for me to join him.
“Alison, meet Jane and John Morgan, my parents.”
Was this a joke Keira had set up?
Or did David know that his parents were at this restaurant when he suggested it? I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ira, Keira, and Patti jumped out from behind the sushi bar, throwing edamame in the air like confetti and yelling, “Surprise!”
“It’s so nice to meet you both,” I said politely. “Thank you for making this connection through Ira.”
“It’s our pleasure,” Jane said. “Ira has said such wonderful things about you, so we were excited to make the match.”
I hoped this conversation wasn’t going to last long. So awkward.
“I’m sure you kids ar
e looking forward to getting to know each other, but you’re welcome to join us. We’ve only had our appetizers, so you’re not too far behind.”
Please say no, David. Please decline their kind but very weird offer.
“Thanks, guys, but we’re going to get back to our table,” said David.
Point one for mama’s boy.
“Do you bring your parents on all of your first dates?” I teased him once we were seated.
“Only on the special ones,” he remarked with a smile. “Takes the pressure off down the road.”
He didn’t ask for my phone number, but I had a good feeling that he would at some point. I arrived at work the next morning to an in-box full of emails, with one from David, sent the night before at about 9:45 p.m. Sally hadn’t yet pushed for my work emails to be forwarded to my personal iPhone (which I embraced), so each day I arrived to a packed in-box. But at least I wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night and checking to see what would be waiting for me in the morning.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi
Hey, Alison.
So I just got home and see it’s only 9:45. I forgot just how quickly a sushi dinner can go! This is great because I will be rested for my presentation tomorrow morning. But it’s also quite bad because I think it would have been nice if we had spent more time together.
How about a movie sometime? Or maybe a joint golf lesson at Chelsea Piers? Have a great night.
Dave
Nice. Maybe David’s mom should add a matchmaking division to her recruiting company.
Whether it was the new responsibilities or the new setup, I now felt like I mattered more to the company than I had before, and like my coworkers—and Sally—saw that my work resulted in direct financial benefit to the business.
This fueled me in ways I wasn’t used to—a different kind of motivation bubbling in my stomach. I could contribute to a play, movie, or commercial—when I was in one—but now I was reveling in a production of my own making.
I had the liberty to play on Facebook as much as I wanted, and reaching out to Sally’s fan base was a lot more stimulating than managing Sally’s schedule, which had turned out to be far more difficult than I was told it would be.
“Jesus Christ, Alison,” Sally said to my voice mail a few weeks earlier. “How dare you do this to me!” Do what? I thought, bracing myself for the prerecorded answer. She paused with grave emphasis. “Pushing my lunch fifteen minutes robs my family of money. You’re worse than Obama. Change my lunch back to its original time.”
I pressed 9, saving her ridiculousness. Especially since I had no idea what lunch she was talking about. My voice mailbox was quickly filling up with saved voice mails.
“Let’s go over this again,” her next message began. “I need hard copies of my schedule printed and replaced every day with a four-month view—one for the car, one for each office, and one for my apartment. Got it?”
Click.
I called back and was immediately put through to voice mail.
“Sally, I’m happy to get your schedule to you however you prefer it, but FYI, I update it electronically and it’s linked to your iPhone. You can see it in real time, which may be easier for you and save some trees.”
Click.
An email arrived almost instantly:
Nah, just email it to me each night in addition to the printouts and I’ll chk it that way. Missed my hair appointment the other day because you didn’t enter it in the schedule, btw. It’s a good thing I’m not very gray this week.
Hair appointment? First time I’m hearing about it. And my fault?
I was getting used to being blamed when she canceled, missed, or made a commitment without letting me know.
Sally’s travel arrangements, whether personal or for business, weren’t a piece of cake, either. Like her long weekend to Florida, happening in three short weeks.
“Alison, I only sit in business class, and only on an aisle,” Sally said.
“I’m booking you on JetBlue, which you requested, and they don’t have business class. Would you like me to book you on another airline?”
“Which airline is the cheapest?”
“JetBlue,” I told her. A slight pause followed.
“Then bulkhead and an aisle. And write a letter to JetBlue telling them to consider making planes with a business class section for people like me.”
Um, seriously? Again? Yes, we went through this rigmarole every time a flight needed to be booked.
Viral marketing, electronic outreach, and communicating directly to people really felt right to me but only exaggerated the contrast between my new responsibilities and the mundane assistant tasks that remained on my plate. I was juggling two full-time jobs.
I boldly took some initiative and made the decision (probably inconsequential, but you never know) to have a travel agency book Sally’s next trip.
“I’m just going to do it,” I told Jill one night after work during a Real Housewives of New York commercial break. “It sounds like the smallest thing, using the travel agency, but it’s not.”
“Have you used them before?” she asked patiently.
“We’ve used them before, but not regularly. They charge a fee per ticket booked, but not for hotels. It just seems like a no-brainer. Honestly, with my new schedule, time equals money, and with the time that I would spend on the Internet researching inexpensive air travel and hotels, I could get some of my other work done.”
“I say go for it. Just take the risk. I support you.”
I had been waiting for Sally to decide when she wanted to leave for London for QVC UK—the same Quality, Value, and Convenience, just across the pond and with lovelier accents—but Sally was in “no decision” mode as to her upcoming travel preferences (other than only business class and only on an aisle). I had the travel agent come up with some scheduling options that might sway Sally one way or another. She’d decided that she wasn’t going to take her nine-year-old son, Elliott, with her. I had heard a lot about Elliott—small for his age, very verbally advanced for a boy, allergic to strawberries, phobic toward using public bathrooms—but we’d never met. I was eagerly waiting to form my own opinion. Elliott had been giving Sally trouble about traveling so often, and I knew that she was struggling to balance her business with her parental responsibilities.
My timing for planning the trip was coincidental, because Giuseppe arrived at the studio in the midst of a heated telephone conversation with his partner, Roberto. I only heard Giuseppe’s end of the discussion but immediately knew what they were talking about—the UK trip.
“It’s really unbelievable, Roberto, that I still have to argue with her about this. We’ve worked together for eighteen years here, not eighteen months. I said that I would use my miles to upgrade to business class, and she said that I could do whatever I wanted with my miles, as long as they weren’t miles accumulated while working for her.”
Long pause.
“Well, of course they’re miles from work travel! I’m like a puddle-jumper—I’m never home. You of all people know that.”
Another pause.
“And she’s going to sit in business class, stay in a suite, have me do her makeup and the makeup of all the models, and run to produce the show, and I’ll sit in coach?”
A longer pause.
“You’re right. I get it that it’s her money and she watches what she spends, but I’m fifty years old, have had two hip replacement surgeries, and work my ass off for her. I mean, I love her to death, but this is unacceptable.”
Short pause.
“Okay, love you. Bye.” He ended the call and turned to me. “You didn’t hear that conversation,” he said, his eyes laser beaming down into mine.
But I knew he wanted me to hear every word, or else he woul
d have stayed outside and finished the conversation before coming into my alcove desk area.
Things worked like that at SSC. If you wanted Sally to know something but didn’t want to tell her yourself, you only had to let a select few people (Giuseppe and Helen) know you wanted to discuss “something private and could you please not repeat it to anyone, especially Sally.” Spies.
Well, good thing for Giuseppe, I had planned to ask Sally if she wanted to use an expiring American Airlines companion ticket for her to fly with Giuseppe to Heathrow. I figured she would go for that option since it would end up saving her money by getting two business class seats for the price of one.
“Problem solved,” he chirped when I told him my plan. And then he bought me lunch.
Feeling empowered by making the smallest of executive decisions, I decided to meet Jill after work for a little retail damage. Based on the fact that the Bloomingdale’s restaurant, Forty Carrots, served frozen yogurt, we chose there to browse.
“Doesn’t Bloomies’ peanut butter with granola make the perfect end to any sort of day?” Jill commented as we waited in line with about ten other women who obviously felt the same way.
“Yes, it’s the best,” I said, looking around to see if we knew anyone at the café. You never knew whom you would run into in the fro-yo line.
“By the way, I think you should get that Karen Millen dress you’ve been talking about for, oh, a month now. We’re here; just do it. It’s on sale. Treat yourself. You’ve been seeing David casually for a few weeks—buy it and you can dress up a bit with him on your next date.”
Jill knew that I loved this black-and-white striped dress and had strict instructions to watch to see if it went on sale.
“Honestly, I was thinking the same thing. Thank you, newish job. I can buy a sale dress by a designer I love and not have to worry about eating peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the week to make up for the lack of funds.”
What Pretty Girls Are Made Of Page 5
