“Do you think we could meet him one day?” Jade asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Um, I don’t know. Maybe?” I replied. I glanced around looking for the stairs. I didn’t want to be in an elevator with them. They were making me feel terribly nervous.
“Well, if you need anything, just ask. We’re more than happy to help. Want to join us for lunch today?” Were they genuine? Were they setting me up?
The elevators dinged and the pair pushed past me and tucked themselves in the elevator. My cell phone rang, thankfully giving me an out for being trapped in the car with them.
I glanced at the screen and saw it was my mother calling. “Oh, I have to take this call. I’ll catch the next one.”
The two waved with the doors closing as I answered my mother’s call.
“Hi, Mom. What’s up?” I asked, grateful for the excuse to not take that ride.
“Oh, I was just calling to wish you good luck on your first day. How’s it going? Have you met the other interns yet?”
“Yeah, there are eight of us, Ben, and Jenny and some others I haven’t gotten to know yet. Jenny seems the best of the bunch. We’re going out for dinner tonight to talk about our day. How are you?”
“I’m great, hon. Just great. Is everything at the apartment okay?”
“Yeah, no problems. It’s great. I met Mrs. Hanlon on Saturday. She’s sweet. I borrowed some baking powder from her to make those A to Z Muffins.”
“You and your baking,” she laughed. “And Kevin?”
“Yes. He checks in every day. But, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. He’s texted me a couple of times.”
I checked my watch. It was almost ten in the morning, which would be almost seven in California. My mom is usually making breakfast for my dad before he left for work. “Well, thanks for calling, Mom. I should let you go so you can get Daddy’s breakfast ready.”
“Oh, um…. yeah. Well, be sure to call me later today and tell me how your day went, okay?”
“Sure, Mom. Bye,” I assured her and ended the call, then stuck my phone back into my pocket.
I found my way to Valerie’s office, and we spent a half an hour talking and getting to know one each other, outside of the emails and files. Valerie was one of six key players in the News and Public Relations, a liaison between the two departments. She was chic, she was professional and she was a hard worker. She was frank about her age, twenty-eight. It didn’t take much effort to figure out how she’d gotten to the status so quickly. Everywhere she walked as she showed me around the offices, people were very respectful of her, almost fearing her. Jade and Erin’s words came back to me ‘Valerie is…um…sweet.’ No matter. I could hold my own. Right? I was determined. After all, it seemed I was learning from the best.
For the rest of the day, Valerie exhausted me as she plowed through the day with meetings, phone calls and showing me the files I’d be handling for her. The job she laid out was all fairly straightforward kind of stuff. I couldn’t tell if she was happy to have me working for her, or if I was a nuisance, but we did seem to work well together. Lunch was a non-event. Even though we were eating, she was connected to her Android phone and her tablet going over all the things we had to take care of every day. By the day’s end my head was spinning with contacts and policies and schedules.
CHAPTER 5
Jenny and I met up in the lobby at the end of the day just as we’d planned.
“A food kind of dinner? Or a happy hour kind of dinner?” she said in her beautiful accent, a mix of East Indian and British English.
“Oh, I’m only nineteen,” I said, surprised at her offer.
“Food kind of dinner, it is,” she said. “I thought you were twenty-one? You seem older, anyway.”
“Not yet. Two years to go. You’re twenty-one?”
“Actually, I’m twenty-four.”
My eyes bugged out of my head. “You don’t look it all.”
“Which would be why I’m carded for everything,” she said rolling her eyes. “What kind of food would you like?”
“How about Greek?” I suggested. The last time I was here in the city and went out to dinner with Jack and my mom, we’d had amazing Indian food. I loved it, but I felt it would be odd to ask for Indian to an Indian person.
“Yum! I know a place that has incredible baklava!”
Jenny navigated us, expertly, through the subway system to the upper west side, giving me tips on figuring out the subway, suggesting apps for my phone that would help me navigate the whole complicated mess. It was good to be with someone who knew the system. I was sure if my dad knew I was taking the subway he’d be upset, but it wasn’t like I was on my own. The subway wasn’t the cleanest way to travel, but it was cheap and much faster than taking a cab.
As much as I wanted to talk to Jenny about how her day went, the subway car was full of business people and everyone was incredibly quiet, keeping to themselves in the fantastically crammed car. It just seemed out of place to chat, so I held my questions and hoped I would remember them when we sat down to eat.
The restaurant was tiny. There were only seven tables, and they were all along one wall. I think my apartment was bigger than this place. In fact, many of the eateries I’d seen here were tiny. We settled into a table and waited for a server in the quiet place. The only sound was what I guessed was a Greek version of MTV from a TV mounted high on the wall behind the glass counter that was full of gorgeous Greek pastries.
While we waited, we swapped stories about our day. She was feeling pretty comfortable with everything going on and generally happy with her assignment. I shared that I was feeling very overwhelmed, probably a symptom of my lack of knowledge in the area of communications since I’d not really taken communications classes, just sat in on them. I decided to not delve in and talk about why I’d chosen to leave that school. At least not yet, although, I felt like Jenny and I would be the best of friends in no time at all. She just had that way about her.
After a good ten minutes, a server finally came and asked what we wanted to order. I quickly grabbed my menu/placemat and scanned the choices while Jenny rattled off what she wanted. I settled on something I knew, spanakopita, and a Diet Coke.
“So, how long have you been in the city?” Jenny asked.
“Today is my fifth day. I got here late on Thursday, and slept half of Friday and just did a little running around. So, maybe those days don’t even count,” I laughed. Thankfully, Jenny laughed too. “How about you?”
“I’ve lived here since two thousand and eight. I was nineteen. I moved here with my parents.”
“What brought you here?”
“My younger brother. He has autism. My mother read about the organizations and advancements in the field going on over here, and connected with a doctor in New York. My father would do anything my mother wanted, and she wanted to come here. He’s a very respected research doctor in India, in oncology, and he was able to find a position at Mount Sinai Hospital, in Manhattan.” She went on to talk about what she missed from India, and as she talked, images of snake charmers and the movie Slumdog Millionaire filled my head, not that Jenny gave any impression that she was from the slums of India. Quite the contrary, she looked like every other American girl I knew.
“And how is your brother doing?”
“Very well, thank you. He’s made a lot of progress.”
“You speak English very well,” I said, hoping I wasn’t insulting her. “I love your accent. But it doesn’t sound completely Indian.”
“Thank you, I went to British private schools in India. And how about you? What is Phoebe’s story?” Jenny asked.
“Not much to tell,” I shrugged. “I grew up in Napa Valley California. I have two brothers, Bradley and Carter. Bradley is the boring one getting a business degree. And there’s Carter. He’s the adventurous one. Right now he’s in Pompeii excavating the Ruins. Originally, I had hoped to travel to Italy and visit him this summer, but then—wel
l, plans do have a way of changing. Anyway, I was at an offbeat private university in Ohio. I don’t think it was a good match for me, for several reasons. So, I hustled and have my transfer to NYU mostly settled, with the help of my mother’s friend, some big wig here in New York, apparently.”
“So, why did you decide to leave Ohio?”
“Have you ever been to Ohio?” I asked, avoiding the topic of the drama that instigated the transfer.
“Well, you’re not missing much, especially compared to New York. I mean…I’m sure that Ohio has some nice parts, but where my school is… was… Snoozeville. Surrounded by farms. I grew up surrounded by farms in Napa Valley.”
“And that’s it? Because it was boring?” she prodded.
“Are you sure you’re not planning on becoming a reporter?” I joked. We laughed again, and I continued. As predicted, Jenny already felt like an old friend, so I decided to fill her in.
“My roommate, Lucy, introduced me to this guy, Danny Fitzsimmons, at the beginning of the fall semester. We hit it off really well, or so I thought. Well, he turned out to be not all he presented himself to be. I was humiliated, and angry and just couldn’t stay at that university anymore.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, the fucking dickwad, Danny,” realizing I’d just swore in front of my new friend slash co-worker, quickly apologized. “Ohmigosh, sorry!”
“No fucking problem. I was beginning to think you were a goodie-two-shoes like Sandra Dee from Grease.”
I burst out laughing at the thought. I wasn’t a goodie-two-shoes was I? When I had my ears pierced, I didn’t get sick, I swore like a sailor when the situation called for it, and I was no virgin.
When we had both quieted from laughing, I continued. “Okay, so yes, he was… is a major dick, so I nicknamed him Dickwad Danny, and—”
Our food was delivered interrupting my story and suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so great and excused myself to go to the bathroom. Kevin’s warnings about eating food from street vendors came to mind, but the other day, that chicken on a stick smelled so good! I noted that I’d been feeling sick since then. Maybe I had contracted a touch of food poisoning. That’ll teach me! I scolded myself, as I puked up next to nothing in my stomach. Or maybe it was the stress of the past week. I have never handled stress well. But I was an adult now. I had better learn to get my shit together.
I cleaned up and returned to the table.
“Okay, so Dickwad Danny. Continue,” she said, picking up our conversation right where we had left off.
So I launched into the screwed up events of my freshman year with Danny. I would have shown her pictures of how freakin’ gorgeous he is on my phone, if I hadn’t deleted all of them when he broke my heart in early April. I told her how sweet he was in the beginning, how all the girls were always after him, and I even told her how amazing he was in the sack without going into detail. Finally I told her how I’d learned of his whorish ways. Against my wishes, I nearly started to cry when I told Jenny about what an ass he’d been.
“In your dorm room? In your bed? With two girls?” she asked, her perfect eyebrows raised high on her forehead.
“Well, you know, his room was already being used by his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend, so where else was he to go?” I replied with mock sincerity, hoping that I could laugh away the tears. It worked, mostly.
“What did you do?”
“The wimpy part of me wanted to back out of the room and not say a word, but I snapped. I started screaming. I don’t even really remember what I said. But when he asked if I wanted to join in and that one of the girls had always found me attractive—I went batshit crazy. I grabbed their piles of clothes, and left. I sat in the commons area surrounded by friends until Dickwad and his bimbos came looking for me, all three of them wrapped in pink flowery sheets from my bed. They became quite the laughing stocks for many, but some of my so-called friends stayed friends with him because he’s from a wealthy family and they had all planned to go to Daytona Beach for spring break to stay at his parent’s house there. I was supposed to go with them, but changed plans and came to visit my mother who was in New York at the time.”
“That’s too bad that he spoiled your Spring Break like that.”
“Yeah, well, I had way more fun than any of them. Apparently it rained for most of the time, and Danny had picked up a certain ‘pest’ from the bimbos.”
“Pest?” Jenny asked.
“Crabs,” I said, trying to contain my laughter. I was unsuccessful and, again, Jenny and I were howling like a couple of hyenas.
“Are you not hungry?” Jenny asked, pointing at my poked around plate.
“Not very. I thought I was, but I’m having some tummy troubles. A lot going on lately, I guess. And on top of that, I ate a couple of sticks of grilled chicken from a food cart I passed the other day.”
“Not all the food trucks are bad. In fact, some are fantastic! I’ll teach you what to look for with the good ones.”
“Yeah, my neighbor also warned me. Lesson learned,” I smiled back.
I made it back to my apartment around seven that night completely exhausted, but I felt that my first day was more or less a success. I put my leftovers in the fridge, popped off my shoes and fell asleep on the sofa watching Mario Lopez on Access Hollywood at only seven-forty or so in the evening.
CHAPTER 6
Tuesday started out great, despite my sleeping on the sofa. I guess almost ten hours of sleep can negate anything. The alarm on my phone had been set and did its thing, waking me at 5:30am. I showered, dressed, and arranged my long blonde hair a bit more stylishly than I had the day before, still feeling a bit self-conscious from Erin and Jade’s comments yesterday, twisting, knotting and pinning my hair into a bun low on my head. I also took a bit more time with my makeup, accentuating my favorite feature, my eyes.
Jenny had shown me which subways to take to work so I could save time and money on cab fare. Feeling like a rebel by disregarding my dad’s directive to not take the subways, I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, I made one small error getting on the subway. I got on an ‘uptown train’ instead of a ‘downtown train.’ To get to work, Jenny showed me, I would simply get on at the Six train at Seventy-seventh Street to head down to Fifty-first street station and walk over two blocks. The conductor said something on the speakers, which was nearly laughable because seriously, no one could make out what he was muttering. When we stopped at the next station, I saw the intricate tile work on the wall clearly displaying that we were now at the Eighty-sixth street station. Shit! The numbers had gone up, so I was on an uptown. So, I got off and had to wait for a downtown bound train. Lesson learned. The downtown bound train was far more crowded. Good clue. Made sense that more people worked downtown from the ‘Seventies’ than worked uptown.
When all was said and done, I actually made it to work with time to stop at a coffee shop. I picked up a large coffee and a breakfast sandwich that I hoped would stay down. Never eat from a food cart again! I reminded myself.
Valerie and I worked through the morning with ease. I focused on my duties and was proud that I only had to ask a couple questions here or there for the forms and filings that were my responsibility. Valerie was very helpful and sincere in her assistance, even though I felt like she didn’t really need me around. We had a nice but quick lunch hour, and it was back to the grind.
The rest of the week went along in much the same way. The ‘office’ was like clockwork. Being in the Public Relations department, things were always hopping, but became almost a mundane rhythm. I imagined that the production department, especially for the news, was more exciting, and I made a mental note to try and go check out that department one day. But I did enjoy the energy and pace of the PR department, so it wasn’t all-bad.
At night, I would re-visit some of my worksheets and notes that I’d collected from sitting in on those seminars and classes with Danny. If I couldn’t find the answer I was looking for, I’d research
it online. I did get a little sad when friends from high school would call, now home for summer break, asking me to join them at whatever party they were going to. When I explained my recent turn of events, they were thrilled for me, trying to make plans to fly over and visit with me. I missed my regular group of friends from home, but thought I was doing pretty well for myself in New York after only a week. I had Jenny and Kevin, and there were a couple of other people in the PR department I had gotten to know a bit over the past couple of days. And I would be starting NYU in just eight weeks, and I’d meet more people then.
I spoke to my mom every day like she’d asked me to do. When I’d called on Wednesday, it was eleven at night, which would have been eight at night for her, thinking she and dad would just be finishing up dinner, and I could talk to the both of them. Apparently, I caught her and dad out at some symphony thing. I found that odd because my dad wasn’t much of a music enthusiast, especially classical music. I asked Mom for Mr. Stevens’ email or phone number so I could get in touch with him and thank him for his assistance with the internship, and maybe dig around a little to find out if I had gotten the position from that connection or on my own. Mom said she’d message me his contact info, but I was still waiting. She said she’d pass along my concerns to him, but I shouldn’t worry. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the distinct feeling that my mom was being very secretive.
Jenny and I met a couple times for dinner and I really liked her. We got along famously and I really enjoyed spending time with her. She had a wicked sense of humor and we easily matched wits.
I was surprised to learn that Jenny was actually betrothed to be married at the end of the summer. I couldn’t imagine such a situation. Her parents had arranged her marriage when she was just sixteen, a year before they left India. I thought about who I was dating when I was sixteen, and couldn’t imagine marrying him. Currently, her fiancé was a med student, studying to be a cardio thoracic surgeon. Jenny had a right of refusal to the arrangement, but she explained that she and Ankur had grown up together and she liked him very much. If her parents were happy with the traditionally arranged marriage, then so was she. Her parents’ marriage had been arranged, and they were an amazing couple. Ankur was graduating in the next couple of days and had been matched for a residency at the hospital his soon to be father-in-law worked at, with a little help from said future father-in-law. The wedding would be a three day affair, originally supposed to have been in southern India, but over the past year, had been relocated to Manhattan, because of Ankur’s residency, which made Jenny very happy.
Chasing the Dream: Dream Series, Book 3 Page 4
