“Got it.” I just want to smash a stapler into her eye.
“Okay, pumpkin, go back and give me something I can actually use. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Super. I don’t think the store can hold up the entire women’s accessories launch because one little writer can’t come up with a name for the purse department.” Then she stares at the door. I turn around and it’s none other than Mr. Ed Keller. Ashley stands up quickly, knocking a sample book onto the floor. “Hello, Mr. Keller!” she says. “How nice to see you!”
“Oh, don’t get up,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure you were coming to Bradford’s welcoming party.”
“Oh, of course, Mr. Keller!” she says, her voice all high and feminine. “I’m planning on being there, naturally!”
“Fine, fine,” he says, and then to me, “And how are you, Miss Johnson?”
“Oh, I’m very well, Mr. Keller,” I say. “Thank you.”
“You look so much like my cousin Ada when she was a girl,” he says.
“Yes sir.”
“She was a smart tennis player!”
“Yes sir. You’ve told me about Ada.”
“Do you play tennis?” he asks.
Ashley clears her throat. Ed not paying attention to her is torture.
“Yes, I do, Mr. Keller. Would you like to play a match sometime? I have a mean forehand, though; it’s only fair to warn you.”
“Ha-ha!” he laughs and winks as he points at me. “You’re a spirited girl! Just like Ada!”
“Mr. Keller?” Ashley says. “I wanted to know if you needed—”
“All right then, ladies!” he says and knocks on the door frame twice. “Back to work!” And he leaves without Ashley getting to finish her sentence.
She makes a face after he’s gone. “What is it with him and his cousin Ada?”
“Is that it?” I ask. “I’ve got to pull stuff for the roundup meeting.”
She nods. “That’s it,” she says. “Oh, and I meant to tell you that you really look nice today. Your earrings are killer and the pencil skirt really slims you down. Really.”
“Thanks, Ashley.”
“Gets harder to keep it off the older you get,” she says and slips each ring back on her fingers. “Okay! Thank you, pumpkin!” She gives me a little wave.
That’s Ashley.
She always sweetens any reprimand with paper-thin compliments because she thinks it builds morale, but basically what she just said was, “The layouts are wrong, your fashion choices are consistently hideous, you’re fat, and now get out of my office.”
Goddamned Ashley. She ate up all the time I was going to use to eat my Cinnabon at my desk. Ted is probably back by now and I just told him last week I was going on a diet and never eating another Cinnabon again.
I duck out into the rarely used stairwell and stand under the buzzing fluorescent lights, where I cram the Cinnabon in my mouth, just wolf-choke the cake down. I can feel the white cream icing glob up at the corners of my mouth and bits of cinnamon bun crumble onto my sweater and into my hair. It’s disgusting and anyone looking at me would be repulsed.
Then I turn around, face full of frosting, Brad Keller is huffing up the stairs with two other executives in tow. I freeze. The three of them see me, pause talking for just the most horrible of split-seconds, and then continue their conversation. If I had one wish it would be that a sniper would shoot me right now, right here.
Really. One wish. That would be it.
The men walk right past me without saying a word. Then they’re through the door. That’s it. Bang. Door shuts, he’s gone. I’m alone on the stairwell with a Cinnabon crammed in my mouth, my heart hammering in my rib cage.
I forgot my keycard and I’m locked out on the stairwell. I have to walk down five flights of stairs to the lobby in order to get back in the building again. This day is super.
I’m sitting at my desk and Ted pops his head in my cubicle.
“Is that icing on your forehead?” he asks. I wipe my forehead and little dry crumbly bits of icing come tumbling off.
“Just great. Brad Keller got to see me with Cinnabon smeared across my face.”
Ted shrugs. “I heard he’s like the black sheep of the family. His parents made him come back because he drinks.”
“Who told you that? That sounds made up.”
“Well it isn’t,” he says. “And what’s with his eyebrows? One is higher than the other. You’d think with their money he could get that fixed.”
“I think he’s handsome.”
“Handsome? Oh, are you in love now?” Ted says. “Are you going to marry Brad Keller and have little baby Kellers we can sell at a discount in the gourmet meats section?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, you love him!” Ted says. He leans over, eyes closed and makes obnoxious kissing noises. I hit him on the arm.
“Ouch! Quit it! You’re so violent. Hitting people is wrong.”
“You’re stupid,” I say, “and it makes me hit you.”
“You really are the love of my life,” he says.
“Let’s go. It’s roundup time.”
The roundup meeting is a lovely little weekly event where we all sit in a hot, stuffy conference room and pitch our great ideas to Carl, the executive director of marketing. The worst part of the meeting is that it’s become a broken-down version of show-and-tell where everyone showboats and pretends they’re exhausted from work, because we all know Keller’s is downsizing and nobody wants to lose their job, especially me.
I take my seat and Carl starts the meeting. He’s Ashley’s boss and he has a thinning wispy reddish mustache and wears pants with pleats in them. There’s not much more to say, except in my opinion, a man with a thinning mustache probably shouldn’t be in charge of marketing to the teen demographic. It was actually Carl who got me started on the “Gross Sex Game.” That’s where I sit and silently horrify myself with mental snapshots of what it would be like to have sex with any number of really gross men.
It started one afternoon two summers ago, when Carl was presenting something while wearing really tight pants. I don’t know why Carl would wear tight pants except maybe he didn’t know they were tight or maybe his wife was off counseling Christian Bible campers for the summer and Carl did his own laundry. Who knows.
Anyway, Carl was standing up facing the room and he was yammering on about something or other, when I saw it. It. A little bulge in his crotchal region. It was like a frightened opossum peeking around the corner and I looked away, ashamed and grossed out, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What if, for some reason, I had to sleep with Carl?
What if a meteor hit the planet and killed almost everyone, except for a group of crazy people, like Mormons or something, and they began a military society where women were forced into marriage and had to produce as many offspring as possible? I would have to let the opossum nudge my nether region. I would have to open my legs and let that hairless, sightless mole creature…
“Jen?” Carl is looking at me now. Everyone there is looking at me.
“Yes?” I say and cough, which sounds super fake.
“Are you with us?”
“A hundred percent, Carl,” I say, keeping my eyes locked above his beltline. He goes on to announce this year’s Valentine’s Day slogan, which is: FRESH AS A DAISY!
Carl tells us the marketing team wanted to put a “rejuvenation” spin on the most romantic day of the year. He says people have become so conditioned to all the typical Valentine’s Day imagery, they don’t even see it anymore. Red hearts and red roses just don’t “grab” the customer the way they used to. So to be really “fresh and new,” we’re going to do something “extraordinary,” and incorporate yellow daisies into our Valentine’s Day marketing campaign.
Extraordinary.
Of course we’re also keeping red roses and red hearts, because we want people to know what holiday we’re talking about, after all. “I
want everybody to brainstorm about ways to advertise without advertising,” Carl says. “Got it?”
The room stares at him.
“We’re looking for some genuine creativity here, people, some new ideas that really work.” Nobody says anything. Carl crosses his arms. “I don’t think I have to remind anybody that recent sales numbers haven’t been what they could be and we’re really counting on Valentine’s Day to help us through the spring slump, which, as we know, can be expensive.”
By “expensive,” Carl means, “make me fire people.”
The meeting disbands and we all shuffle off to our little cubicles so we can get going on turning the stickiest, syrupy, saccharine, lie-filled holiday of the year, Valentine’s Day, into a douche commercial. Ashley rounds the corner as I return to my desk and I smile brightly at her. Fresh as a daisy, kill kill kill.
After work, I’m driving to Scampers Bar and Grill to meet BigKev007—I met him online. My cell phone rings.
It’s my mother.
There’s no point in avoiding her because she has a strict two-call policy. If you don’t answer the phone twice, she will call every one of your friends in alphabetical order until she finds you.
“Hello, Mother,” I say. “I’m not in a ditch.”
“It’s your mother,” she says.
“Yes. I know.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to annoy you, Miss Snooty, but your sister is all upset and I got your Aunt Joan coming over here in five minutes and I can’t be on the phone all day. I don’t know why you girls have to be silly.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Did you forget the bridesmaid fitting tomorrow?” she asks. “Aren’t you using that leather FranklinCovey day planner I bought you?”
“FranklinCovey is a cult, Mom. They sell day planners to fund their sex compounds.”
“Well,” she sniffs, “they’re very good organizers.”
“You’re right, Mom. You got me there. Say what you will, they do seem organized.”
“Don’t sass. Do you want this lamp?”
“I can’t see what you’re holding, Mom. We’re on the phone. What lamp?”
“There’s a ballerina on it.”
“Are you talking about the lamp I had in my room when I was six?”
“Yes. Do you want it?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a perfectly good lamp.”
“Mother, I don’t need a ballerina lamp.”
“Don’t get snooty. I’m trying to clean out the attic for Hailey’s wedding presents. They’re going straight from the church to the airport, so your aunt and I are putting all their gifts up here. I don’t think they need waffle toasters in Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?” I say, trying to soup-strain the bitterness out of my voice. “I didn’t know they decided on Hawaii.”
“So do you want the lamp?” she asks.
“No. You can have it.”
“Well, I don’t want it, the shade is torn and the skirt is chipped. Why don’t you come over later and look at it?”
“I can’t. I have a date.”
“Dear Lord, it’s not one of those online date setup things, is it? You’re going to get yourself chopped up and floated down the river. That’s how they found that poor girl in Dubuque. She met a man online. They couldn’t even find her teeth.”
“Mom, she met that guy on some sadomasochism site. Some dungeons-and-slavemaster thing.”
“They’re all sadomasochism sites,” my mother says.
Again, she’s got me there.
“Mom?” I say, and hold the phone away from my ear. “Can you hear me?”
“Jennifer?”
“Mom! I can’t hear you, Mom! You’re breaking up!”
“Jennifer?”
“I’m losing you. I can’t hear you!” I hang up. I’ve been ending more and more conversations this way lately. My mother thinks I have big problems with my cell phone service, but really, I just have big problems.
I’ve never been to Scampers Bar and Grill, and when I walk in I know why. It’s one of those horrible rock-music-themed places with a simulated copy of Led Zeppelin’s guitar and half a Corvette anchored to the walls. I look around for a minute, trying to get my bearings and see if I recognize Kevin from his photo. Sometimes I’ve heard you just recognize your soul mate. You see him and you just know. Right now all I see are fat people.
Paranoia starts up. Maybe he’s stood me up, maybe that’s the universe protecting me, maybe he’s an axe murderer or owns an iguana, etc. …
Think positive. Assume the two of you will be dating steadily in a month. Visualize it. Oh, who am I kidding? This is just going to be another runaway float in my great dating shame parade. In fact I’ll be lucky if it’s just shame and not something more damaging, like getting kidnapped and sold into the slave trade, although I don’t know how much different that would be than my current life. Plus, I probably wouldn’t have to cover the cost of gas for transportation.
I text-message Christopher.
Me: Mtg BigKev007 at Scampers. Nice guy or serial killer?
Christopher: Put spoon in purse. Good 4 digging if he buries U alive.
I look around the restaurant. Where is this guy? Maybe he had to work late. Lawyers work late. My two main reservations about dating a lawyer are that they’re impossible to argue with, and that I’ve broken a few laws in my day. Nothing major, but I wonder if I’ll have to disclose that stuff to him. That could get awkward. I wonder if he could represent me in court, or would that be a conflict of interest? It would certainly be handy to know a lawyer, since eating a rum ball can get you a DUI these days.
This place hurts my eyes. Flashing neon signs crowd the walls, along with the random rock-and-roll paraphernalia. Tatty album covers, old drumsticks, and chipped vinyl records are nailed next to yellowing black and white photographs, framed cocktail napkins with signatures on them, and the occasional piece of sequined clothing. There are televisions everywhere and the hostess stand is made out of two sparkly yellow electric guitars welded together.
“Are you Jill?” the hostess yells. She has to yell so I can hear her over the music.
“I’m Jennifer!” I shout back.
She nods and says, “Follow me!”
She leads me through the crowded bar into the noisy dining room, which is filled with big tables and loud groups. Everyone is shouting and laughing, having a good time. I’m about to become one of these people. There’s no reason I can’t join the thronging masses of hysterically happy people, who get together in big groups and hoot at television sets. I can do that. I, too, am about to have a good time.
We arrive at a table where a squat, ugly, pudgy man is waiting. He looks at me and sniffs. There must be a mistake—this man is wearing a navy snowflake sweater, which is rounded, because of his potbelly. His little potbelly. He looks like he’s going to have a little baby.
“Jill?” he asks, looking skeptical.
“Kevin?” I respond, equally skeptical.
He nods doubtfully. “Have a seat?” he asks like it’s a question, like it’s up for grabs whether I should sit down or not.
I sit down.
He has a nasty deep-set wrinkle on his forehead, which creases when he talks. “Didn’t recognize you,” he says and I’m not sure what to say to that, but I’m vaguely aware it isn’t friendly. The Scampers waitress shows up, a blonde about twenty-two years old wearing a Scampers half T-shirt that exposes her perfectly flat, tan stomach.
“You want something?” he says while staring at her belly. “I mean, I’m not hungry. I just want a beer. I want a Michelob. You don’t want to eat, do you? I don’t want to eat. Let’s not eat.”
I tell the waitress I’ll have a chardonnay.
She leaves and he watches her butt. Then he remembers I’m sitting at the table. “Jill, Jill, Jill,” he says, and does a little drum-roll with his fingers. He squints at me again. “How old did you say you were?”
I don’t immediately answer
. Despite the constant buzz of the background rock, the particular acoustics of the sheltered booths are such that I can hear the conversation at the table behind us. “She asked where her daddy was, and I didn’t know what to tell her,” a woman is saying. “I just told her he went on a long trip.”
BigKev007 clears his throat. “I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s just, you looked a little, I mean maybe that picture on your profile was from like…a while ago?”
“My name is Jennifer and it’s from this summer,” I say. “Last June.”
“Right,” he says, nodding, “eight months ago.”
“Seven,” I say.
The waitress comes with our drinks and sets them down on lime green coasters. BigKev007 stares at her midriff again as she leaves. He sighs and raises his beer. “Here’s to being younger,” he says, and we clink glasses even though I don’t know what it is exactly we’re toasting. After he swallows and smacks his lips, he says, “So you’re like what, thirty?”
I take a sip of my drink and pray the earth will swallow me whole.
“Over thirty?” he asks and then waves his pudgy hand in the air as if to erase the question. “No,” he says, “sorry, you’re right, who cares, right? No biggie.” He looks at his watch. “My ex-wife used to lie about her age all the time. I don’t know why anyone even asks women how old they are. It’s not like they’re going to tell you the truth.”
We stare at the table.
Eventually I say, “I had a bad breakup, too.” I have no idea why I’d say that. You’re not supposed to mention past relationships on first dates. Not even first dates that are tanking faster than deck chairs on the Titanic.
“What?” he asks.
“I said I sort of went through a breakup recently.” Why would I tell him that? Why would I pony up that little nibble of information? Why am I so stupid?
He thinks about this for a minute. “I got the dog in the divorce,” he says. “Fucking awesome dog. Piper.” Then he asks, “You like dogs?”
Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single Page 4
