Who You Know

by Theresa Alan

  “I believe it,” Avery said. She went over to the oven and pulled the scones out. They smelled divine. “Sure you don’t want one?” she asked, transferring the scones to a plate.

  “Well, they have fruit and oats. That’s very similar to being healthy.”

  “Exactly.”

  As Avery finished up in the kitchen, I glanced across the room and noticed a black and white photo of her on a bookshelf. She was standing in a dance studio next to several other dancers. The other dancers looked stuck up and pissed off. They were smiling rigid, toothless smiles, and their hair was pulled back into such severely tight buns it looked painful. Avery, on the other hand, had a friendly, genuine smile. Her curly hair had been much longer then, and it was pulled back into a loose ponytail, framing her face with tendrils of blond curls.

  Avery set a scone in front of me and sat down.

  “Avery, yum, you’ve outdone yourself.” I savored another bite before changing the subject. “So how is Art?”

  Avery looked down at the scone on her plate and smiled. “Good.”

  “Are you two ever going to meet?”

  “I think so, but I’m not in any rush.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess I’m scared. I kind of don’t trust myself to get into another relationship.” She paused, stared out at nothing in particular, as if she were carefully weighing each word. “When I was in New York I dated a guy I later found out was a drug runner; my first love cheated on me left and right; and Gideon was a total disaster.” She spoke slowly, cautiously, nothing like the verbal diarrhea I, Mom, and Jen used, always saying the first thing that came into our heads and regretting it later. “I’ll probably end up dating a convict or rapist next. E-mailing Art is really fun; I just don’t want to ruin anything.”

  “The whole thing is so romantic. I’m sort of jealous.”

  “Why?”

  “Anything could happen. It’s so exciting.”

  “Or nothing could happen.”

  Avery and I finished our scones and talked for another twenty minutes or so before Avery said she needed to get back to work. I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to face my quiet apartment all alone.

  “Is everything okay?” Avery asked.

  “I’m fine. It’s just . . . Greg is going to be gone tonight, and I’m just so sick of being all alone in my stupid apartment.”

  “Come over for dinner tonight.”

  “Avery, that’s sweet, but you don’t have to.”

  “I love to cook. It’ll be fun. I’ll see if Jen can come.”

  “Yeah? Are you sure? I love your cooking. It’s a date.”

  The first thing I did when I got home was check my voicemail for messages. Nothing. Nada. I was clearly unemployable. I would have to go to trucking school or one of the technical colleges they advertised endlessly in commercials on daytime TV.

  AVERY

  The Hug Club

  I had Jen and Rette over for dinner. I made grilled vegetables, polenta, and Gorgonzola cheese, building a vegetable pyramid of Portobello mushrooms and zucchini on top of the polenta and topping it with the cheese, and arranging the asparagus, grilled tomatoes, and peppers around it in a circle. I drizzled a rich cream sauce over it all.

  “Avery, you are such a domestic goddess. It looks gorgeous,” Rette said.

  I opened a bottle of red wine and poured each of us a glass. “Thanks.”

  “So not like I’m going to get the job, but just in case, tell me everything about this great company of yours. Ave, you’ve been there the longest. What’s the scoop?”

  “The scoop. Well, the company is six years old now; I’ve been there for five years. It was founded by Morgan McKenna. He’s a small, wiry man with a sort of . . . I think some people think of him as being kind of abrasive. He’s super smart, and you know how sometimes really intelligent people don’t always have the best people skills? He has a Ph.D. in psychology, which is kind of strange because he seems much more interested in statistics than people. Morgan is kind of . . . he’s very particular. Everything has to be cleared through him.”

  “Avery, sometimes you’re so nice it’s too annoying for words,” Jen said. “He’s a micromanaging control freak. He still acts like it’s a company of ten instead of a company of more than a hundred. Everything still has to go through him; it’s ridiculous. It’s a total bottleneck. You can’t get anything done; it’s impossible to get anything done by our deadlines, and Morgan never seems to notice that he’s the one holding the project up for three weeks.”

  “Even so, never, never send something out without his approval. A long time ago, more than four years ago, Sharon sent something to the printer without his approval. He’d seen the next-to-last draft—Sharon incorporated his changes and assumed it was good to go. But after it went to print, it turned out there was something Morgan didn’t like, and he just went nuts, screaming and yelling. He was so furious; I thought Sharon might get fired. He kept ranting about how he’d already said that nothing could go out without his approval, didn’t we respect him at all?”

  “Any other characters I should watch out for?”

  “There are eight VPs at McKenna, and they are all men, but you probably won’t ever see any of them because we’re not important enough,” Jen said. “On the McKenna Marketing food chain, we’re like, swamp algae.”

  “There are fourteen managers, three of whom are women: Eleanore, Sharon, and Pam,” I added. “They all report to Glenn, the VP of marketing. Pam is the one manager I really like. She’s incredibly hard working and always puts in insane hours and she’s just really nice and very competent.”

  “The corporate mafia there,” Jen said, “are three close friends known as the M&M gang because their names are Marc with a c, Mark with a k, and Mary. Marc and Mark both worked in the IT department and are something managerial. Mary works in marketing and is about as genuine as a silicone implant. Mark with a k is also known as Killer Mark because he’ll start screaming at you for like, no reason at all. The M&M gang are all really good-looking, but they basically have the IQs of rotted logs. God forbid you ever need to get the IT department to run stats for a report. Marc and Mark are all arrogant, like their department is the most important, and therefore they can’t be bothered to help anyone else get their jobs done. And when they finally do do what you ask them to, they always get it wrong, and when you point out that what they gave you wasn’t what you needed, Marc goes blank and Mark goes ballistic.”

  “Sounds great,” Rette said.

  “I know sometimes I think . . .” I started. “You want some more wine?”

  “Please,” Jen said.

  I poured her another glass. “Sometimes I think about my life and I just wonder, how did I get here? This was never how I expected my life would turn out. I went to a performing arts high school in New York, right? And then majored in dance in college, and I was never taught how to write a résumé or fix a toilet or balance a budget. I never worried about that stuff. I just thought about dancing and writing and pottery. I never even considered a future after dance. After I quit my job on the cruise ship, I came home, got the job at McKenna, and spent a year sort of picking up the pieces of my life after breaking up with Marcos, this guy I’d dated on the ship. McKenna was just this job I was going to have until I figured out what I was really going to do with my life. Then I met Gideon and put all my energy into that relationship, and I’ve been licking my wounds since the divorce. And now here I am, five years later, doing an eight-to-five job working in marketing, and I have no idea how I got here.”

  “So if you could be anything, what would it be?” Rette asked.

  “Really, I don’t know, that’s part of the problem. Something creative. I was thinking I could see if I could work for Pam doing some writing.”

  “Have you ever thought about getting a job somewhere else?”

  “I’ve thought about it fleetingly sometimes, but never very seriously,” I said. “I’m just too loyal. My
mom’s like that too. That’s why we stay with guys who cheat on us. We just keep thinking things will get better if we work hard enough. Anyway, I’m not really sure what other kind of job I’d want. It’s a little bit pathetic when you think about it—I’m thirty years old and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “I majored in marketing, and this is not what I signed up for,” Jen said.

  “Well, you guys have cheered me right up. Ave, could you pass me the wine and maybe some arsenic while you’re at it?”

  It was only about nine in the morning when I heard Jen’s machine shutting down. “Not again, Jen,” I said. She stuck her tongue out at me and called down to IT.

  A few minutes later, another guy from IT, Les, knocked on our office door. Jen was obviously disappointed. Les was a little overweight and had oversized eyeglasses and a shaggy, recklessly unfashionable haircut, but Les was, after all, a man, and Jen never let an opportunity to flirt pass her by, so she recovered quickly, smiling brightly.

  “Hi, Les. Are you coming to Rios with us tonight?”

  Les beamed and looked at Jen adoringly. “I’d love to come.”

  “All you guys in IT are invited. I think Tom said he was going. You might just want to remind him he’s invited. We’ll be there right after work, around 5:30.”

  She explained what had happened and he told her some possible problems. “So what do you think is wrong with my computer?” He told her a few possibilities. She oohed and aahed at his techy language. He practically glowed from the attention.

  I shook my head, envying Jen’s talent to make every man think he was irresistible, and I returned to the chore of going through my e-mail.

  I’d spent half my morning hitting CONTROL D to delete e-mails from Lydia. They were supposed to contain funny e-mails to brighten our day. One out of every twenty of Lydia’s e-mails might elicit a huh—not a full-blown ha and certainly not a full-fledged laugh—but an occasional huh was not worth struggling through the e-mail jokes that dragged on for an eternity and had a punchline that wasn’t worth the time it took to focus my eyes on the screen, let alone wade through a Russian novel-length epistle.

  Lydia never stopped smiling. She clearly spent years and years as a cheerleader. But beneath her dumb exterior lurked a killer closer, someone who could get companies to buy ten times the service they wanted or needed from us and got them to pay ten times more than what they wanted to pay. And after they signed on the dotted line, they would thank her for her help.

  She was the one who had sold the Expert account and promised this outrageous deadline, so even though we’d maintained a superficial friendship for these past few years, when I saw her in the halls, I wanted to lash out in violent, entirely unprofessional ways to express just how much she’d ruined my life.

  At last I finished going through my office e-mail and went to my personal e-mail account to check on Art.

  To: Dancinfool@yahoo.com

  From: ArtLover@yahoo.com

  I’m afraid today’s note will have to be a short one. It’s 1:30 in the morning as I’m writing and I’m ready to collapse. My brother had a really bad night tonight. He went to pick up the kids, and I’m not sure what happened, but he was just a wreck afterward. I’ve never been through a divorce, so I can only imagine what it’s’s like to have your wife leave you, especially when you have two little kids together. They’ve been divorced for six months and separated for much longer, and it’s just not getting any easier for him. It’s especially hard for him because she lives so close and he sees her so often when he goes to pick up the kids. So I spent most of the night just listening to him. I think the hardest thing for him is getting used to living alone. He got married right after college, so he’s never had to live by himself. My brother is the reason I moved out here nine years ago. He went to school and I was his roommate for a short time before they got married. I wish I could think of things to say to him that would make him feel better. I feel so powerless to help.

  To: ArtLover@yahoo.com

  From: Dancinfool@yahoo.com

  Just listening, being there for him, that means everything.

  In case it helps any, you can tell your brother the good things about living alone. In fact, sometimes I worry I like living alone too much. It’s nice never having anyone eat the leftovers I was planning on eating, never cleaning up after anyone but myself, never having to watch stupid action/adventure movies I hate in the spirit of compromise, even though I almost never did get to watch the art films I liked. I know I sound like a bitter divorcée, but I’m not angry with my ex, I’m angry with myself for not being true to myself.

  I felt it was rather brave of me to admit these things, particularly that I wasn’t a fan of action/adventure movies. But I wasn’t going to lie to myself or anyone ever again. If he didn’t love me for who I was, forget it. Being alone just wasn’t that bad.

  Sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine why I stayed with my ex as long as I did. The other day, though, something happened that made me ache to be in a relationship again.

  What happened was this: I burst out of my office, late for a meeting and not paying attention to where I was going, and I nearly ran into one of the guys who works in our IT department. His hand briefly, gently touched my arm to keep me from barreling into him—he sort of steered himself around me. Now, this guy is not good-looking, but the feeling of his hand briefly grazing my arm electrified me. I don’t mean sexually. I’m not sure if I can explain it, but I guess his touch made me realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a hug or a back rub. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held somebody’s hand. I suddenly ached for human contact. I’d forgotten how amazing it is, the warmth of another person’s touch.

  Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll type to you Monday.

  I hope I didn’t sound desperate, but running into Les had been such a jarring experience, and I wanted to share my feelings about it with someone. It was nice to have a someone I could tell these random thoughts to.

  We usually restrained ourselves to writing each other once a day, but he must have been online because he wrote back within minutes.

  To: Dancinfool@yahoo.com

  From: ArtLover@yahoo.com

  Human touch is truly powerful. You made me think of something from my childhood. When I was growing up, my mother jumped on every fad. She did the macrobiotic diet, Jazzercized, did yoga, tried every diet made, and nowadays, Prozac is her trend of choice. Anyway, the point of my story was to tell you about this one fad of my mother’s when I was about eleven. She had this hug group, and they would actually have these meetings where they got together and discussed the importance of hugging. The leader of the group handed out this flyer that Mom stuck to the fridge that said you needed to be hugged at least 12 times a day just for survival, 15 times for peace, and 20 for true happiness—something like that. I remember thinking that a lot of things in the world managed to survive without 12 hugs a day, but you’d need at least a hug or two to be happy. That did make sense to me, even then.

  I hated when we had those meetings at our house. Those people would hug anything, and the women would wear the most god-awful perfume. After the first time my Dad and I got mauled with a barrage of hugs, we made sure we were well hidden during the meetings. Happily, this phase of my mother’s didn’t last long. How much can you discuss hugging anyway?

  You know, I know we’ve never met, but writing you is very therapeutic. You have a good head on your shoulders. I have no idea what you look like physically, but it’s hard for me to imagine not being attracted to you. I’m already hot for your brain.

  Smiling, I printed off his e-mail and put the print out in my purse to take home and save with the others. He’d echoed my thoughts exactly. Maybe meeting online first was actually better than meeting in person. We were free from the prejudice of outward appearance and could focus on each other’s personality. I definitely liked his personality. I loved how he was there for his brother, helping
him through this difficult time. He was so sweet, so sensitive, so articulate, so funny.

  Sharon appeared at the door of our office, rubbing her swelling belly. “Thank God it’s Friday! So are you going to join us for drinks after work? Well, of course I’ll be drinking ginger ale,” she said with her I’m-a-pregnant-woman-and-don’t-you-forget-it smirk.

  Sharon had asked us earlier in the week to join her and her husband for some drinks after work tonight. Jen and I had held off letting her know if we’d go, always hoping something better would come up, which it hadn’t. I didn’t feel like going out, but I knew I should. Now that I was no longer safely coupled off, I got invited out less and less, and when I did go out, I felt freakishly, alarmingly single. But how was I going to meet anyone if I spent every weekend with takeout and a romance novel?

  “Yeah, I’ll probably go,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, me too,” Jen cooed.

  Back when I was with Gideon and still had a semblance of a social life, there were five of us couples who would regularly go out after work for drinks, barbecues, and dinner parties. Sharon and her husband, Mitch; Lydia from sales and her husband, Dan; Pam from marketing and her husband, Joe; me and Gideon; and Jen and whoever her beau du jour was. If she and Dave were separated, she would date one of the vast stores of guys she kept in reserve, all of whom were madly in love with her. Her seamless transition from one boyfriend to the next assured her continued invitability at all outside-the-office functions, whereas I had been mired in an abyss of solitude for nearly two years. No one liked adding a single person to the mix—I was like a neutron threatening to rage out of control without a balancing proton to keep me in check. Now, with both Lydia and Sharon pregnant, I could see that I was drifting farther and farther from normalcy. I wouldn’t have anything intelligent to add about diaper rash remedies or the breast milk/formula debate, and soon, no doubt, Lydia and Sharon would tire of me and my only friends would be Oprah Winfrey and Danielle Steel.