Made With Love: I Love You Forever

by M. K. Shaddix

  It does indeed.

  I’ll never forget the way she’d leaned across the table, eyes hooded, voice low.

  ‘You didn’t show up last semester. I got onto housing, and they went all “that’s confidential”.’ She’d winked over her cup at me. ‘You get pregnant?’

  ‘No!’ I’d spurted.

  ‘No?’ She opened her mouth to rag on me but saw the shadow that had come into my eyes, blinked, and looked away.

  ‘My parents…’ I’d tried to spit it out, to tell her straight and strong that they’d both died in a car accident, but I couldn’t bear to say it out loud.

  ‘Sorry,’ Kate said. She’d jutted a hand out to touch mine but didn’t.

  ‘Hey, it’s fine. How could you have know?’ I’d said, shook my head and waved a hand at her in a clumsy attempt to mimic the easy nonchalance of her gesture. Part of me wanted to tell Kate everything so she might shrug at the terribleness of it, crack some joke and make me feel the way she did about ‘shit happening’--that it’s only a tragedy if you let yourself become what had happened to you. I thought of Mum and Dad and the secret pain they’d carried with them across the sea. Whatever it was, they’d never let it define who they were.

  ‘Listen, Julie,’ Kate’d said, her eyes glassed over with her own secret trouble. ‘One day you wake up and realize it takes WAY too much energy to be that sad.’

  I will? I remember thinking. It had been exhausting, keeping the accident shouldered like I had been. I wanted to set it down and walk away like Kate had, to move on or, at the very least, utter the words that had been on a loop in my brain for months: ‘My parents are dead. It’s not my fault. It’s not (completely) my fault.’

  But I was nowhere near ready to talk about what had happened to them. In a very real way, their deaths were still happening to me. There were things about that flat-lit August morning that I hadn’t even told myself. So I’d changed the subject.

  I’d wanted to ask Kate about her parents. Did she know where they were now? Did she care? But I didn’t. I’d gotten the feeling that, when Kate left something or someone behind, she left them for good.

  In the four years we were at Columbia together, me with my ‘fancy pants’ double major in IT and advertising and Kate the star of public relations, we became more than friends. We were what families are at Christmas--an all around mess but a very devoted one. If it wasn’t for Kate, God, I’d still be the uber serious salutatorian, completely terrified of failing, even more afraid not to. Kate had confessed, after one too many gin and tonics, that if it hadn’t been for me, she’d still be a runaway.

  For six gut wrenching months post graduation, we’d circled wanted ads and slung extra tall lattes and sat dead ended interviews, fairly sure that our degrees weren’t worth the paper they were written on and that we’d have to make the move across the river before our money ran out. We’d scoured the city in tandem, dead set on finding work at the same firm, Reed Corporate or Manhattan Marketing, or one of the boutique firms in Brooklyn, but our secret dream was to start our own company--Foster & Quinn.

  ‘The name in multi-media marketing,’ Kate liked to say in a gravelly, movie trailer voice. We both knew it’d have to wait. Our savings were disappearing down the rabbit hole that was the New York flat, both of us caught in that horrid in between that is too grown up to share a cut rate basement studio and subsist on peanut butter but too young and anonymous to do much else. Contracting wasn’t paying out the way we’d hoped, and the salary market was flooded with connected business types who had literally decades of experience on us.

  And then, out of nowhere, two jobs opened up at Markham & Associates. Honestly, Kate and I didn’t have any business applying. M&A was one of the savviest firms in the city. They held the record for the most nationally syndicated adverts in print and on television, and now they were angling for the international market. We’d sat in the lobby in cheap polyester blazers and pumps on the day of the interviews, surrounded on all sides by fast talking suits and poker faced women, all of whom were armed with attaché cases and two-hundred dollar haircuts. I’d turtled my head between my shoulder pads and picked at the little balls of lint on my linen skirt.

  Kate had leaned over and whispered out of the side of her mouth, ‘They’re gonna eat us alive!’

  ‘Come on! We’re not as green as we look!’ I’d said, trying to reassure myself as much as Kate.

  ‘This is advertising, Jules! Looks are everything!’

  The minute I’d walked into the boardroom, I’d felt the searing pressure of eyes, six sets of them, hard on me. Stuart and his panel of directors sat behind a wide mahogany table, hands clasped in front of them. They looked like a row of very clever penguins, all of them unblinking in dark, tailored suits. What was I doing here?! I had zero work experience, absolutely no connections, and--how was I only seeing this now?!--a massive tear in my stockings.

  In the time it took me to clack across the floor, the six of them had taken in my clearance rack shirt and shoes, my unfussed hair, my mother’s thin gold chain, tallied it all up, and met my outstretched hand with the same kind of sympathetic over-warmth people sometimes lavish upon very small children and the handicapped. What I didn’t know was that my unadorned, fresh-out-of-college look was exactly what Stuart and Co were after.

  ‘We want someone young, someone vital,’ Stuart had said. ‘Someone who isn’t hung up on an outmoded professional ethos.’

  Or a second mortgage, I could hear Mr. Kenny, Stuart’s second in command, thinking through his toupé.

  The very next week, Kate and I were piggy-backing our laptops and portfolios back up to the fortieth floor.

  ‘Can you believe this?!’ Kate had yowled once the elevator door had swhooshed shut. ‘Our first real gig--and it’s M and fricking A!’

  No, I couldn’t believe it. And when, after six months my desk nosed up to Kate’s, a hazy view of Midtown running the length of the glassed corridor, I still couldn’t believe it. Phase two of ‘the plan’--get foot firmly in door en route to dream job--had happened and way ahead of schedule. I was drafting my own campaigns (the last two, anyway), lunching downtown (falafel stands count, right?), and the man on my arm was none other than Bradley Scholer, the Lower East side’s sexist hipster.

  ‘Sooo, where’s he taking you for your birthday?’ Kate purrs as we stride up Madison toward Grand Central.

  ‘He’s playing it close to the chest,’ I smile.

  ‘Oh. A surprise?’

  I shrug at her. Brad’s idea of a grand gesture is ordering $80 worth of Dim Sum and throwing the little cardboard boxes away himself.

  We make our way through the revolving door at 408 Madison, the gray chopped door man tipping his hat to us as we breeze into the slate foyer.

  ‘Dia dhuit ar maidin,’ he says.

  ‘Good morning, Tadhg,’ I answer, but it’s Kate he’s honed in on. He gives her a broad nodding wink. ‘Miss Foster, tá tú chomh álainn is an ghrian ag soilsiú ar na mara.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Kate whispers as we slip into the elevator.

  ‘You’re as beautiful as the sun shining upon the sea.’

  Kate sighs dreamily. ‘Oh the Irish! Tell him if he was twenty years younger I’d--’

  ‘No!’

  My phone bleeps.

  ‘That’s totally Brad,’ Kate says.

  ‘Before the crack of noon? Don’t think so.’

  But it is Brad!

  ‘Morning, sweet cheeks,’ I read, wide-eyed. ‘Just booked us a table at Gold--Fri, 8.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Kate says.

  ‘Happy birthday to me!’ I beam and press the call button for the elevator.

  ‘I told you,’ Kate simpers, and we slip inside. As the door snaps shut, she spins on her heel and backs me into a corner. ‘So, what are you going to say?’

  ‘What?’ I try to push her aside.

  ‘Oh, come on. Birthday dinner at the hottest restaurant in town. And you’ve been living together for,
what, like a year!’

  ‘Eight months.’

  Kate gasps and stumbles backward. ‘And it’s your thirtieth. D Day!’

  I whack Kate with my dossier. ‘Will you stop! It’s just dinner!’ Isn’t it? The elevator shudders to a stop. All of the blood drains out of my face and settles in a sick swill in my gut. Kate hums the ‘Wedding March’ into her latte as the door swings open.

  The floor-wide office of Markham & Associates hums with the familiar rhythm of laser printers and fax machines and, here and there, the brisk steps of assistants. Kate tilts her head to mine as the two of us pick our way to the front line of low profile cubicles.

  ‘Promotion of a lifetime, hot-guy-turned-husband. I’m telling ya, you should be on the cover of Cosmo!’ she whispers a little too loudly.

  I force a smile and settle into my chair. What if Kate was right? What would I say? I’d been telling myself, since Brad had suavely deflected my bid to Define The Relationship, that what I wanted was something light and unabashedly juvenile. I didn’t need the labels or the ring. But if he offered me one, you better believe that baby is going straight on my finger.

  A subconscious reel of images--The Life I Could Live--whirs in soft focus at the back of my mind. Champagne breakfasts with Brad. Schmoozing up Broadway with Brad. New Year’s partying with Brad. I could definitely work that into my schedule, and I could take those man-friendly sheets I’d impulse-bought out of the closet.

  ‘But today’s about me,’ I say, pulling myself together and glancing up at the clock. Just enough time for a quick run through of my notes and it’s show time. I flop open my dossier and scan down the projected profits sheet. Ten percent rise for the quarter. Stock price up by a third. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

  I take a cautionary peek over my cubicle, then close my eyes and picture myself in the corner office, light pouring in from the south facing window, the inbox jammed full--I even have one of those over the top vibrating executive chairs. There’s a knock on the imaginary door, and in saunters Brad, blonde hair slicked back in a 007 do, pants showing off a glorious profile. He carries an austere fawn orchid in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Oh, Brad!’ I sigh. My favorite!

  ‘Have I ever told you,’ he nips at my ear, ‘that big offices turn me on?’

  ‘No. Let’s talk about that.’ I swoon into my chair, imaginary Brad’s hands on me, and say something smooth into the intercom like, ‘Hold my calls…’ Brad kneels down beside me, long, deft fingers creeping up my thighs…

  ‘Ms. Quinn?’

  I snap my eyes open and slip half off my actual chair. Keen as ever, Tina cocks her head at me.

  ‘Yes?’ I say in my best woman-in-charge voice.

  ‘The reports are in from the campaign. A huge success as usual,’ she warbles.

  ‘Good,’ I say flatly as if I hadn’t expected anything but a huge success. She unloads the files and disappears to the copy room, and I let out a long sigh of relief.

  My cell buzzes. Brad again? He never texts before lunch.

  ‘Forgot to say good luck (not that you need it). We’ll celebrate tonight. Downtown today--Calvin shoot. Jocks and socks.’

  I smile to myself like a kid with a secret.

  The elevator door whooshes open and out step Stuart and--oh God-- Roger. They have their heads together conspiratorially. At the very back of my mind I think, Well, that’s it decided, but they’re only talking football, and Stuart, as far as I knew, only just tolerated football.

  ‘You’re not serious!’ Roger booms. ‘That was a bad call!’

  ‘Last time I checked, face-masking was illegal,’ Stuart smiles good naturedly.

  ‘The receiver? He was trying to catch the ball!’

  Stuart stops short in front of my desk, and I hold my breath.

  ‘I read the report on the Down Home campaign, Julie. Good work,’ he says.

  Roger glares at me, his hip outthrust like a diva.

  ‘Thank you, Stuart,’ I say and raise my chin just a smidge.

  By imperceptible degrees, the office thrum had stilled to near silence. Stuart turns to face the bank of desks.

  ‘Morning everyone,’ he says, his palms upturned in a gesture of welcome. ‘Big day today. Briefing in ten. And Tina?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Bring in that champagne, will you?’

  Champagne?

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Stuart steps into the boardroom and immediately a tinny chorus of sound erupts across the office. Roger curls his lip at me.

  ‘Everything by the book, huh?’ he says.

  You haughty little bastard!

  I shrug at him. ‘Numbers don’t lie.’

  He gives a weird little snort and stomps off to the boardroom. Kate peeks her head over the top of the partition. ‘Can you believe that guy?!’

  ‘It’s gonna take way more than Closet Kline to psyche me out,’ I laugh, but there’s a quavery undertone in my voice. ‘C’mon,’ I say to myself and suck in a deep breath. ‘You’ve got this.’

  As soon as I step through the boardroom door, every head swivels to fix on me. Kate gives me a nudge. A couple of the more senior members of the firm whisper back and forth. Tina is standing by, gnawing her thumbnail to the quick. I take a seat, flip open my dossier, and look to Stuart. He signals for me to begin.

  ‘I trust that you’ve had a read through of the latest consumer data regarding our campaign for Down Home Limited,’ I say. The panel nods in unison and turns to the first page of the report. Except for Roger. He thumbs away at his smartphone, chair tilted back and collar up like a last pick frat boy.

  Could he be any more annoying?

  I make a very conscious effort to ignore him and press ‘play’ on a portable mp4 player. A chirping post-rock cover of Skynard’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ pulses through the speakers. Roger starts in his chair, and I have to chew at my lip to keep from laughing.

  Looks like I finally got your attention, Kline.

  I turn to face the board, smooth as you like, and launch into my presentation. ‘Approximately 1.2 million people live and work in a place they don’t identify as “home”. And what are the things they miss most? Family, local news and arts outlets, and regional or speciality food stuffs. Down Home specializes in fiber optic communications, virtual media, and perishable exports, bringing “home wherever you are”.’

  I click on the projector and bring up a map of the US. It’s subdivided into five color-coded zones. ‘We’ve established several region and sub-region based goods networks here in the US and are presently gauging foreign markets in Europe and Asia for immediate expansion.’

  ‘A cultural commodities hub,’ Mr.. Gianni, the art director, chimes in.

  ‘Yes,’ I nod at him. ‘Universal in its underlying principle and dynamic in its personalization of the global village. It’s this intersect of the personal and the universal that’s opened up innumerable possibilities for future markets--certainly for the ongoing development of this project.’

  ‘Excellent, Julie,’ Stuart says from the head of the table. I beam at him, chuffed with myself, and switch off the projector.

  ‘Does anyone have any questions they’d like to field? Comments?’

  Roger leans forward and plants his elbow on the table. ‘I’ve got a question.’

  Of course you do. I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Well, this isn’t exactly a new idea, is it?’ he says. ‘It’s Amazon and Skype in one interface. Which, I might add, most people would have access to anyway.’

  ‘What makes the DH platform unique is its intuitive clustering of localized products,’ I reply. ‘The target audience we’re pitching to is between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Both samples indicate--’

  ‘Samples?’ says Roger sarcastically. ‘This isn’t the nineties! We aren’t passive consumers anymore. We’re bloggers, open networkers, pirates for God’s sake! If you want to reach your targets, you’ve got to think like them. And I can g
uarantee they’re not going to pay a subscription fee to use software they can just as easily hijack.’

  Stuart frowns at me.

  ‘What makes this product unique,’ I say, fighting to keep my voice even, ‘is not the mechanics but the platform itself. It’s about connecting people through the marketplace of a specific locale.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what the college set listens to nowadays? What they read or eat? How often they call home?’ Roger asks. ‘And uh, you won’t find the answer there in your manual.’

  My face flushes. Yeah, like Roger Kline is down with the kids! The only generation nexters he knows are the ones he pervs on at Starbucks.

  ‘So, you’re saying hanging out with girls half your age makes you a better professional?’ I blurt. A twitter of laughter flares around the table.

  Stuart folds his arms across his chest. ‘That’s enough,’ he booms. ‘Good work, as usual, Ms. Quinn.’ He nods at Roger. ‘Good instincts, Kline. I’d like you two to work on this account together.’

  Oh that’ll be fun. Good thing I’ll be the one ‘in charge.’

  Stuart looks over his shoulder for Tina, gestures to her, and she ducks out.

  Here we go.

  I stride back to my chair, avoiding Roger’s pinched smirk.

  ‘Before we get back to work,’ Stuart says, ‘I have an announcement to make. As you all know, the office of Creative Director has become vacant as of last week.’ Kate and a few of the guys from the art department glance over at me, sly congratulatory smiles on their faces. My palms go instantly clammy. I train my eyes on Stuart and try to blot Roger out of my peripheral.