I looked at her warily. What could she possibly say to me…what further damage to my psyche could she be intent on perpetrating? “Thanks for the offer,” I said curtly, “but I need to get home to my sick granny.” I realized I sounded like Little Red Riding Hood.
Ramona reached out and touched my arm. It was so out of character for her that I felt compelled, against my better judgment, to give her at least a few moments of my time.
We found a quiet corner of Starbucks and sat down. I’m sure my demeanor, on looking across the table at Ramona, was none too cordial. I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest, waiting for her to speak first. The nerve of her for trying to be my friend, now!
“I need to apologize to you,” Ramona said. I sat up straight in my chair and grasped my grande cup of latte with both hands, needing the support. “I didn’t come clean with you about something…not that I needed to…but things got ugly and a bit out of hand, and I’ve given a lot of thought to it over the past couple of months.” Was she waiting for me to respond? To absolve her? To cue her to her next little prepared speech? Wordlessly, I waited for her to continue.
“Eric Witherspoon and I used to date,” she said.
Wow. Un-hunh. So she’d had a method to her madness.
“Before you came to work at Newter & Spade. About two years before then. From my perspective, anyway, things were pretty hot and heavy between us. I wanted to move in with him and get married, but he wasn’t interested in taking our relationship to that level. He told me ‘no way’ was he ready for marriage. So I suggested that we just live together and see how that worked out—to see if we wanted to possibly go to the logical next phase. Eric then said that even moving in with a woman was a huge step that he wasn’t prepared to take.”
“And where do you think I fit into all this?”
“Alice, he refused to take me to firm outings, like the baseball games and concerts and sunset cruises. And I swallowed all his reasons and then kept offering him a million compromises, twisting my emotions into a pretzel to accommodate his needs, even though he was shitting on my own.” Ramona took a sip of her coffee and looked away. “And then he starts inviting you—a temp—on the kinds of excursions he refused to bring me to.” Her voice began to tremble. “And he asks you to move in with him.”
I watched her struggling with the words. She looked like she was drowning, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw her a rope. I had learned not to trust her. Ramona was the sort of person who would expect you to abide by the rules of engagement, and then fight dirty. Besides, even in her attempt to extend herself, to act halfway human, she’d just spat out the word “temp” as though it were tainted with arsenic.
“I was jealous of you, Alice. And I was angry with Eric for being a shit.”
Maybe he didn’t love you all that much Ramona, I was thinking.
Maybe he didn’t love you all that much, Alice. After all, look how he behaved when push came to shove.
“So I took things out on you,” Ramona continued. “And it wasn’t very professional of me. And I know that Eric ended up acting like a bastard to you, too, so I wanted you to know everything.” She chuckled ruefully. “I guess that sort of makes us a sisterhood.”
Ugh. He slept with her. Isn’t that enough to make you sick?
I had to keep things in perspective. I couldn’t let her sucker me. Just because she’d confessed that I’d become more involved with an ex-boyfriend of hers than she’d ever been didn’t excuse her from making my existence during the time I’d known her into a living hell. “Ramona, your envy cost me my job and then my rightful ability to collect my unemployment insurance benefits. You made me miserable personally, emotionally, and financially. So an ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to cut it. My grandmother never stops reminding me that actions have consequences; and you’ll have to take more responsibility for yours than offering confessions from the lovelorn and commiserating about the fact that Eric Witherspoon is basically a shit across the board.” I finished my coffee and got up from my chair.
“I can’t make it up to you, Alice. I mean, there’s nothing I can do to get your benefits reinstated. The hearing officer rendered his decision and it’s final. And…I mean…I can’t offer you your temp job back.”
“I wouldn’t want it even if you could,” I said.
I’m being abused in greener pastures for more money now.
I looked at Ramona, wondering how it could be that I was disgusted by her and felt sorry for her at the same time. “You know, I sort of figured right from the start that you wanted Eric.”
“I wanted him back,” Ramona corrected.
“Yeah, I just didn’t guess the ‘back’ part. And you know something? It was a real learning experience for me…knowing you…professionally and personally. I learned that when all is said and done, you don’t have anything I want.” Ramona looked affronted. “I don’t want my former job, I don’t want your former boyfriend—or mine, which in this case is the same person—and there’s a part of me that feels like I should be cordial and say ‘it was nice knowing you,’ but you know what, Ramona? It wasn’t.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Alice, I was just trying to…” She couldn’t seem to figure out how to end the sentence.
Salve your conscience?
I looked at my watch. “I’m late. Thanks for the coffee.” I walked past her and descended the steps to the subway.
When I got home and related the Ramona incident to Gram, it was the first time in ages that her old feisty self reemerged. “What is it you young people say?”
“What is what, Gram?”
She scratched her head. “Oh, hell. I hear it all the time on the bus.” She thought for a few moments, then her face lit up like a chandelier, her eyes sparkling. “‘You go, girl!’ That’s it!” She gave me a hug and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. “I’m proud of you, Alice. Someone had to put that girl in her place one day. And I’m glad it was you and today was the day. People like Ramona, they just don’t get it. Reaching out to try to be nice and when you extend your hand to take the one she’s offering, she slaps yours and then insults you, to boot.”
“Well, Gram, to Ramona, ‘temp’ is another dirty four-letter word. And I hate that, because she made me feel dirty, personally. She made me feel ashamed to be temping—as though I were too inept or inadequate to have a full-time position somewhere—omitting the fact that not only isn’t it true, but I’m one of a zillion artists here in the city who want something more than what the Ramonas of the world have settled for.”
Gram stroked the top of my hand, then held mine in hers. She still had a pretty firm grip for an old bat. I say that affectionately. “You don’t have to charge into battle for all the temps in the universe. Or even the temps in Manhattan. Just stand up for yourself. Don’t let these bosses abuse you. You’re better than they are, Alice. Just remember that. You have a gift that they don’t; and they’ll never have it.”
I looked at her. “My acting talent?”
She smiled. “That’s gravy. You’re you, Alice. You’re special. And they’ll never be you.”
That’s what grandmothers are for.
Claire Hunt’s new habit of dictating her correspondence to me while she was en commode, was not, apparently, a one-shot deal. She took to the practice whenever her biology and the arrival of the mail coincided more or less simultaneously. Sure it was abusive, sure it was wacko, but I’d grown to live with it, accepting the trade-offs of the job as the time and opportunity to work on the Musketeers’ cookbook—which had been shaping up quite nicely during the past several weeks of my tenure at ARMPIT—and the occasional lunch with Tony DiCarlo.
We were on our way back to the office, Tony and I, entering the building via the side street delivery entrance, since it was closer to the Mexican restaurant where we’d lunched. I’d had a couple of margaritas and was feeling no pain. In my comfortably anesthetized condition, Claire Hunt could have been Torquemada and I would have enj
oyed working for her.
The heavy metal door closed behind us, sealing us inside the lower lobby. The clicks of my high heels reverberated with each step I took toward the elevator bank. Then, the unexpected—but so fervently hoped-for—happened.
Tony grasped me by the hand, leaned against the cool wall of gray-painted cinderblock, and pulled me toward him. It was the first time I’d ever felt his body…and…wow; my blue dreams weren’t nearly as fulfilling as the real deal. Tony was all toned muscle, lean and hard—everywhere—I learned, as our hips ground together. We kissed as though we were already lovers, with a raw, hungry, feral passion. The danger of our being discovered added to the thrill. We’d never had a conversation about “what if,” we’d exchanged no looks requesting and granting permission to explore each other. This was just one big “NOW!” that swept us both into the pipe of a tsunami.
Tony’s hands roamed across my chest, down to my waist and hips. He grabbed my ass, precipitously hiking up my minidress, and pulled me closer. Our friendship had reached not the “should” we rip off each other’s clothes and fuck like bunnies, but the “when” stage.
“You’re quite a kisser,” Tony remarked, when we came up for air.
His observation seemed a bit unnecessary. “It takes two,” I said, breathless. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I teased.
Tony kissed me again. “Do we?” His eyes, nearly black, shone, even in the unforgiving fluorescents, like polished onyx.
We heard the metal door to the street being pushed open. “Oh, shit,” I gasped, and pulled away from our embrace, yanking my skirt down to make sure I wasn’t going to give someone a real show.
Silently, although I could see Tony’s heart pounding through his red crew shirt, while mine was thudding away so energetically it might as well have echoed through the cement corridor, we waited for the elevator with the stranger who had just entered the building. My face felt so flushed it must have matched Tony’s shirt. Could the stranger tell, guess, surmise, what we’d just been doing? Having just passionately made out with the handsomest man I’d ever seen both in real life and on-screen, I was unable to suppress a smile and conceal my exhilaration.
We arrived at the third floor. Tony stopped at the reception desk to ask Terry if he had any phone messages, while I headed past him. He caught up with me and lightly touched my arm. “Thanks for…lunch,” I said, grinning like a lunatic. “And for lunch, too.”
Tony winked at me and retreated into his office—even I wanted a cigarette after our little amorous exertion—and I was just about to sit down at my desk when Claire Hunt approached me, looking very agitated.
“Alice, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I was on my lunch hour.” I looked at my watch. I hadn’t been gone more than sixty minutes, for which I wasn’t being paid by ARMPIT anyway.
She looked displeased. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor…”
Uh-oh.
“Yes?” I smiled pleasantly. Even Claire Hunt could not ruin my afterglow.
“Alice, my daughter Regina got engaged last weekend—”
“Oh, congratulations,” I said.
Ms. Hunt acknowledged my felicitations with a curt nod of her head. “—and since she’s living in Ohio at the moment, we agreed that I should take care of the wedding plans from this end, since she wants to be married in Manhattan. And she insists on a June wedding, so with less than a year to go, we’ll really have to scramble.” I waited for the other shoe to drop. “I would like you to go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a number of wedding planning guides, so I can review venues and vendors with Regina. Purchase a few of those bridal magazines, too, while you’re there. Two of everything. We’ll send one set to Regina and then she and I can better discuss things.”
“You’re going to pick out her dress for her?” I heard myself ask incredulously.
“Certainly,” my boss replied. “Regina freely admits that her mother is a far better judge of fashion than she is. Regina is a microbiologist,” she added, as if to imply that scientific and sartorial abilities didn’t mix. I decided that if Claire Hunt was my mother, I’d live in Ohio, too. Or anywhere far, far away.
Okay, I was set to take a field trip to the bookstore. This could be fun. I grabbed my purse, then…“Ummm, Ms. Hunt, I might be spending a lot of money on all these books and magazines, especially since you’d like me to get two sets of everything. What shall I use to pay for them?”
“You have a credit card, don’t you?”
Uh-oh again.
I nodded, not liking one bit where I thought she was going with this idea.
“Well, just use your card and bring me the receipt. I’ll give you a personal check to reimburse you when you return. It’ll save embarrassment for you in case the bookstore won’t accept my check. And you certainly wouldn’t be able to use my credit card there.” How she always managed to twist circumstances so that it would seem like she was doing me a favor was remarkable. God, I disliked her. I pictured her asking Rafe to plow through a bunch of bridal books.
So, off I toodled, returning with a venti latte for myself and two large shopping bags for her.
Ms. Hunt looked at them and frowned. “Alice, can you do me a favor? My manicure is fresh. Would you just take the publications out of the bags and put them on my credenza?”
I complied, then noticed that her nails weren’t so newly lacquered that she couldn’t flip through the books and magazines, while I stood by, awaiting further instruction. I reached into my wallet and retrieved the Visa bill for the books. “If you could please write me a check for this, I’d appreciate it,” I said, uncomfortable at even having to request the promised reimbursement.
“Oh, Alice, can it wait until later? My nails.” She finished perusing the publications and shook her head. “No, I’m afraid these won’t do. Would you return them to the store and bring back some others?” She motioned for me to put the books into the shopping bags. “Oh, I’m so glad I didn’t give you that check,” she said airily, “since the amount might not be the same.”
Back I went to Barnes & Noble. Got a credit to my Visa account, then spent another $82.43 and hightailed it back to ARMPIT.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry, Alice, these just don’t have what Regina and I are looking for. Would you do me a favor—”
I’d brought her all the major sources on the subject of wedding planning, Manhattan-based and otherwise. Twice. “Excuse me, Ms. Hunt,” I interrupted, “but perhaps you could explain to me exactly what it is you are looking for—perhaps the names of specific books or magazines—and that would better enable me to accomplish my task.” I was working at pretending I was a flight attendant, which was the only perennially cheery-in-the-face-of-abuse job description I could think of.
“I would, Alice, but I’m just too swamped right now,” Ms. Hunt replied apologetically, with a casual wave toward her pristine desk and empty “out” box.
Alice, the bitch had time to get her nails done, hasn’t given you a letter to type since ten a.m. and she’s too busy.
Still, she was my boss. I swallowed the remark I wanted to make and tried to shush my subconscious so it didn’t pop out of its own accord, attempting instead to talk myself into turning the drudgery into an adventure.
Fuck her, Alice, have fun at the bookstore and pretend you’re planning your own wedding.
That’s what I’ve been doing!
By the third round-trip, my arms ached, the store clerk was sick of issuing credits back to my charge account, I was sweating bullets, and my post-lunch glow had waned to the proportions of a single ember. But I stood my ground and refused to leave Ms. Hunt’s office until she reimbursed me.
Still, all things considered, it wasn’t such a bad job, even though my boss was a human succubus. Since she rarely taxed my time, I’d been able to “look busy,” and as a result had made huge headway with the Musketeers’ cookbook. Once that was finished, Izzy, Dorian, and I could begin some serio
us fundraising and proceed full speed ahead on our theatrical venture. Instead of bemoaning my situation—which was a temporary one anyway—it felt healthier for my psyche to regard working for C. Hunt as a way of biding my time in purgatory until such time as I could claim my independence and fly off to join the stars.
Chapter 11
Over the next couple of months I felt like my entire life, both personally and professionally, was devoted to planning: planning the Musketeers’ joint venture, which was really taking shape (we’d come up with a venue, a workable budget, and a show—No Exit—which might as well describe my life in day-job hell), and helping Claire Hunt plan her daughter Regina’s wedding, which was going to be a far more lavish production. I’d filled half a file drawer with brochures, catalogues, and magazines from every imaginable hotel, caterer, band, chamber ensemble, and florist within a taxi ride from Times Square.
There were several more lunches and make-out sessions with Tony, too, and he kept employing the phrase “when we’re lovers,” which seemed to connote some future projected date in his mind, although I sort of wondered what our present status was, since we’d done just about everything except get naked.
One afternoon, when Ms. Hunt was off at her hairdresser, I returned to Tony’s office with him following our post-lunch passion in the restaurant (as well as en route to the backstairs elevator bank), and we continued our perennial foreplay on his leather couch. I felt anxious, a sort of combustible combination of the fear of being caught and the desire to finally consummate the relationship. Tony was on top of me, one hand rather expertly caressing my breasts, the other hand traveling up my thigh, when Terry’s voice over the intercom made him jump up as though he’d just received a major electric shock.
“Tony? It’s Cindy Lou.” Terry announced the caller matter-of-factly.
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