Diary of a Working Girl

by Daniella Brodsky

  But it turns out I don’t have to. He fondles the bow atop my hat and says, “Another new look from Vogue, Sherlock?”

  And before I have a chance to answer, he returns to the table where my slender, sexy shoe is scintillating in the early morning haze.

  He scoops it up, muttering, “How the hell do you walk in these?”

  I smile, because I actually love the fact that Tom doesn’t appreciate the beauty of a good heel. I’d just noted that a moment ago when I read over a time I’d tripped leaving his office and he’d said the same thing. It just wouldn’t befit a man who prefers a sunflower to a rose to understand the dictums of fashion. And I’m so enamored of the allure of a sunflower-type now that I’ll have to add this to the checklist. Anyway, didn’t I read somewhere that roses are out? Maybe we’ll start a whole new botanical trend!

  And then, (thank you, fairy godmother/fate/wacko from my dream!) he does the most adorable thing. He kneels down before me, and reaches under my pants hem to remove my shoe. Only, when he sees what I’m wearing over my feet he stops and looks up at me with his eyebrows bunched, shaking his head.

  “Can I ask why on earth you’re wearing slippers?”

  “Well, I didn’t have any brown leather shoes other than the ones you just brought here, and so I thought these brown leather slippers would do just fine. Don’t you think they look cute?”

  “Ab Fab, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost understand your logic. And yes, they look absolutely adorable.”

  As he slips the right one off, he takes my foot in his hand and kisses it! His lips are so tickly on my instep that my leg jerks and I kick him in the face.

  “Okay, so I’d better remember you have ticklish feet,” he says, rubbing at his jawline, “and one hell of a swift kick.”

  Maybe that wasn’t a traditionally romantic moment, but in a weird way it was much better than anything normal. And there’s no arguing the romance of what he does next. He slides the shoe on my foot, slowly turns up to meet my eye with a heart-stopping gaze, and says, “Ahh, the perfect fit.”

  That look once again says something to me—it says it isn’t the shoe he’s talking about—it’s me! Case solved! I am the best detective in history!

  Our first kiss, which one would imagine to be a passionate, beautiful display, ending with cafe patrons in a standing ovation, whistling and clapping, turns out to be absolutely nothing like that at all.

  First of all, we both close our eyes before our faces are close enough, so we wind up doing one of those awful teeth-bangers, at which point Tom winces and says, “You know, Ab Fab, for a romantic, you’re a seriously crap kisser.”

  I smile—enjoying him so!—and say, “Well, you’re a pretty crap kisser yourself.” At that point, he says, “Maybe, just for this first time we should keep our eyes open, as a safety precaution.”

  And you know, keeping your eyes open is actually a wonderful way to kiss. As we move closer and look at each other, our lips taking each other’s in, I can see the extraordinary way his eyes dance, turning up a bit at the corners, tiny lines forming. I can see his eyes so clearly that I notice they are actually made up of millions of tiny specks of green and brown and even gray that together make up the most spectacular hue. They’re breathtaking.

  And his lips! They’re so soft and plump—such a wonderful change! I’ll have to add this to the checklist! I mean, now I actually have my M&M, I don’t really need the list, but old habits die hard.

  With no teeth-banging this time, it’s just moment upon moment of soft touching, deep kissing, a bit of lip-tugging—overall a perfect mixture of movements.

  Just before we part, someone screams from across the street, “Get a room!” Tom pulls away, not saying “to hell with PDA-naysayers! This is my Lane and I want all the world to see how much I love her!” Instead he says, “See that? I’m with you for nearly a minute and I’m already causing scenes. The Ab Fab lifestyle—I wonder if I can take it.”

  But already I know he can and wants to.

  He goes on. “There’s just one thing I have to clear up. You really think I have a great ass?”

  And right here, I venture something very un-Tomlike—I grab it.

  “Not bad,” I tease.

  “I’m glad you approve because I know what a high priority your checklist gives to looking good in boxer briefs,” he says.

  And I’m just about to correct that it’s gray boxer briefs, when I think. What? How the hell does he know about the checklist, and for that matter, what the hell did I write for him on this item?

  And then it hits me. I just read the very passage that praises his ass in my Diary of a Working Girl notes. I know he’s seen it all.

  “So you know?” I venture.

  “Oh. I know.”

  “Whoops,” I say

  “Whoops is right. Looks like I’ll have to find a new assistant. One who isn’t in it to score with her boss.”

  “So you don’t have any problems with all of this?” I ask, knowing the whole thing probably appears a bit complicated to an outside party.

  “I do have one problem, Ab Fab. If you’re going to continue to stand here with your hand on my ass, it’s only proper that I be allowed to do the same.”

  And so we walk, hands on asses to grab a taxi to the Traveler’s Building. In a dreamed-up version, Tom would probably forsake his responsibilities to be with me for the day. But in the real world, whose merits I’m becoming increasingly keen to, today is the day Tom seals the deal on the telecommunications merger. I’m the only assistant he has at the moment, and he needs my help.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re crouched on your couch or at a table in a deli eating an overpriced custom-built salad, or attempting to pick up sushi with chopsticks and read a book at the same time, without dripping soy sauce God knows where, and you’re thinking—I knew it! Tom actually does say the perfect things and do the perfect things. Lane gets to go back to her old ways and they live happily ever after. You’re probably smiling enormously, because that’s the romantic pay-off, isn’t it?

  Most of all, you’re hungry for more. Don’t I get to see them together in some montage of all that wonderful romantic stuff? Don’t I get to see how Lane’s romantic sensibilities play into the picture? Whether she can really hack it with her feet planted on terra firma? Or whether her fanciful ways will be her undoing? And does she get to see that ass without the confines of clothing? How the hell did Tom find out about her feelings on said ass anyhow? And what about that article?

  Well, sister, set down those chopsticks and turn the page. After we’ve come so far, you don’t think I’d leave you hanging like that, do you? You know how I am about happy endings….

  Twenty

  Happily Ever After

  Well, I do wind up with one standard-issue fairytale-ism in the end. We do live extremely happily ever after. But I’ll tell you, Tom is Tom and there’s no leading man quite like him. I’ve searched and searched, and can’t find one male hero to compare him to. But that’s the best part of all. I could never have dreamed him up, and those little quirks are precisely what make me love him more every day. My checklist is officially seven pages and growing.

  For instance, I’d always thought a couple should sleep in each other’s arms all night, my leg slung about his thigh, his arm resting under my neck and the other about my back. And, yes, we start off like that most nights. But right before I fall asleep, when he thinks I already have, he’ll do this thing where he’ll whisper my name to check.

  “Lane? Lane?” he’ll say.

  And when I don’t answer he’ll slide his hand out from behind my neck, peels my leg off of him and spends about five minutes shaking his arm out, whispering, “I have no feeling in my arm.”

  It’s with all of my might I pretend not to hear and maintain my guise. When he has finally got feeling back in his arm, he’ll turn over the other way and go to sleep with his butt directly in my face. It’s a very cute butt, as I’ve
said before, so I don’t mind.

  He knows I like to fall asleep cuddling, so he does his best to maintain this convention for me. I don’t have the heart to tell him I know the truth. And you know what? I prefer it this way because he makes up for it in the early mornings, when I catch him turning back over, sneaking his arm back under my neck, dragging my leg back around him and kissing me on the cheek, or stroking my hair.

  And while Tom so clearly has the most genuine and admirable intentions at heart with every gesture, every word, they don’t always turn out perfectly. There was the time he planned a vacation for us. For weeks, I asked about what he referred to as “the big surprise.” All he said was that I should have my passport ready and pack lots of skimpy swimsuits, especially the one with “all of those stringy things.” Of course, I had to pack a lot more than just skimpy swimsuits.

  When you have no idea where you may be off to, and your mind is taking you to all the majestic destinations you have always dreamed of dashing off to, it’s difficult to pack. So, basically, I packed everything for a Caribbean fantasy vacation. I had years of InStyle magazine celebrity vacations to fuel the fire.

  The full-length evening gown for our black-tie eight-course dinner, after which we’d dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (although neither of us knows how to ballroom dance) on a dance floor jutting out over the Caribbean sea, lit with elegant torches, the air redolent of bougainvillea.

  And then there were the practicalities—hiking shoes for exploring deserted islands the concierge would arrange for us to be dropped off at, the woven hat for a lazy day of fishing, a driving outfit with gloves and Tod’s moccasins. I needed a sunset-watching sweater for crisp night breezes, which I imagined pulling around me while Tom would say, “Come here, let me keep you warm, my darling.”

  There’s the pareo I would wrap about my waist emerging from our private infinity pool to sip champagne with strawberries sunk in the flutes. I couldn’t forget the array of white clothes to accent the teakwood and bamboo furnishings, lush greenery, and Italian floors tiles when we return from a midnight stroll, to create the perfect seduction scene—stepping into our open-air tub, glancing up at the twinkling stars while I scrub his back, drinking wine and munching on caviar.

  From the daydreams I’d indulged in before I finished packing my suitcase, you might be throwing around the idea that I have fully reverted to my fantastical ways. And in many respects, you would be correct. As it turns out, some of us are just woven from a romantic cloth. And when we attempt to bury that part of ourselves, we are really burying the part of ourselves that makes us who we are.

  That’s what Joanne tells me, anyway. And with that outlook I get to stay the way I am, so it works nicely.

  The trick is, for us Over-the-Rainbow sorts, to remember that fantasies are wonderful in and of themselves. They weave together this whole other world where all sorts of fantastical things happen all the time. There, frogs turn into princes, sunny days never run out, and whims are always satiated exactly as you would have them be. And this world is one I am not willing to let go of—ever.

  It was only a matter of days until I dragged those boxes back out of my basement, tore off all the tape I thought would hinder me and reunited myself with my beloved books and movies. Now I have my own love, I don’t get sad at the endings. But after we watched Pretty Woman and I got all quiet at the end, Tom said, “Ab Fab, don’t tell me you want me to charter a private plane just to go to the opera, which I’m sure you’ve never attended before in your life.”

  Boy, what kind of a spoiled girl does he think I am?

  “It doesn’t have to be a private plane,” I said.

  He smiled curiously and held me in his arms, whispering in my ear, “Don’t ever change, Lane. Please don’t ever change.”

  I hope he doesn’t think I’ve forgotten about the opera.

  So you might think that when we got to the “big surprise” and found ourselves smack in the middle of a Caribbean hurricane, which stopped us enjoying outdoor dinner and dancing escapades, driving trips, or open-sky bathtub evenings, that I would have been devastated, having built it up so much in my mind.

  But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The reality of our trip, as awful as my hair looked, as wet as our clothing remained, was a wonder in itself.

  We spent the whole time in the room, which I guess we could have done anywhere in the world, even at home. But Tom was so sweet, making up all sorts of games and declaring holidays like “Crazy Saturday,” which involved margarita-drinking contests wearing snorkels in the bathtub. He even brought in some sand, wet as it was, and a couple of lounge chairs to create our own beach in our room. It’s amazing how much fun you can have when you live life as it comes.

  Still, the pre-trip fantasies did not go to waste. After he read my Diary of a Working Girl, Tom took the liberty of calling a publisher friend to take a look at it. It turns out that while I had a world of trouble in the past generating ideas for articles, I have no trouble at all coming up with ideas for novels without even trying. Did I not say this before?

  The novel version of Diary of a Working Girl is due out in a few months time and I have a three-book contract to keep the romantic books coming. So now, every wonderful scenario I play out as I do such simple things as pack a filmy pink dress has a definite, fulfilling use. I instructed Tom that he would have to do some romantic research himself, as it helps when you have a strong leading man to draw from. But after he came to bed in a Fabio wig with a shaved chest, I could see he wasn’t taking his research seriously. Still, the shaved chest was rather nice.

  I guess, if you fill your time with enough fantasies, one of them is bound to come true. Remember Swen, the voicemail guy? Well, soon after all of the amazing things began to happen, I once again reached his number in error.

  “I couldn’t be happier for you, my little sugar plum. I insist you come up to my brownstone for a decadent meal—caviar, oysters, and all. Bring your dashing Tom, too.”

  Dashing—only Swen could use that word and get away with it.

  When Swen’s butler, Harris, brought us into the sitting room to meet Monsieur Swen, he was in a smoking jacket, running his fingers through his shoulder-length blond hair, sitting by a crackling fire.

  After the kisses and the “Oh my God!” exclamations of our premier meeting were through, he said, “You’ll have to excuse my appearance, I’ve just come in from a rather long day on the slopes.”

  Tom still can’t get over that one.

  Despite the fact that this one musing did turn out to be true, the important thing to remember, should you read any of my books in the future (remember that is Silverman, S-I-L-V-E-R-M-A-N) is that the stories I conjure up are just fantasies—they have a place only in your mind and heart. Of course, I would never be able to follow that line of thinking myself, but since you are my people, I feel a certain duty to say that, even if you choose not to listen.

  And while some of you might prefer the magical stuff of fluffy, frilly love, others, like the real gritty stuff—where people struggle and endure pain. And under that category would fall Cosmopolitan. When Lisa called Karen a to plead my case and renegotiate my assignment, Karen almost fell off of her seat laughing.

  She said to Lisa, “Hold on, I have to unbutton the top button of my Paul & Joe pants. I’m laughing so hard I’m about to burst.”

  Lisa, even kinder than I’d thought, was more than ready to defend me to the death, since she assumed Karen was laughing because she knew I couldn’t finish the article after all.

  But when she finally caught her breath she said, “Lisa, how many years have you known me? I’m one of the toughest editors in the business. Now do you really think I didn’t know this assignment would cause Lane to have a meltdown and reconsider her notions of how to find love? That setup she came up with was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Two months to find The One! God, I’ve been trying to do that for thirty-five years!”

&nbs
p; “So you wanted her to have a breakdown just so she could write the article about what she learned?”

  “Of course! I could tell from those articles she sent me—you know the ones from the magazines nobody’s heard of—she was great, but a little green on instinct,” Karen exclaimed.

  “But what about when she asked to switch the topic and you denied her? And what about asking for Liam’s number? That was pretty low, even for you.”

  “That was all part of the game, darling. I couldn’t let her give up that early, she would have never gotten a story out of giving up so quickly. And as for Liam, that was pretty funny, huh? We hung that e-mail up by the water cooler. It’s a classic!”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this, you did get yourself one damn good article, but Lane wins in the end, since after she finished her article denouncing every single thing she’d ever held to be true, she found the most fantastic man ever.”

  Lisa says Karen went silent and after a moment, said, in a considered tone, “Tell her to e-mail me the manuscript right away. I’ve got an idea.”

  Obviously, I was completely overcome with rage when Lisa recounted this exchange to me.

  All of that time! All of that stress! It’s no wonder I could never get anywhere with those editors before—they are totally insane, not to mention mean. What if I really had gone nuts and spent the rest of my life in a drug-induced haze? Would she want me to write the article about that? Once again, I had to wonder why I continue doing this for a living. The sandwich idea resurfaced—innocent, meditative cucumber flowers …

  But you know what? When Karen called me, after reading the piece, which she “absolutely adored,” she had the audacity to ask me to thank her!

  “Oh come on! Look what you’ve learned. Look at the great piece you’ve given me. You should be proud. Lane.”

  “Hmmph,” was all I said, and believe me, I never thought I’d speak to a Cosmo editor like that.