Emmaline Waters, This Is Your Life

by Maggie Bloom

  He sighs. “The job is yours. Mark my words.”

  For a nanosecond, I believe him. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am,” he says. “Next subject?”

  Trent has a way of shutting down conversations, a personality trait I’m trying to think of as loveable and quirky. Even if it’s not so lovable, though, his wavy blond hair, cleft chin, and sparkling ice-blue eyes more than make up for it. “How’d the zoning meeting go?” I remember to ask. He’s trying to get a former fire station rezoned as a condo development.

  “Fuckin’ red tape,” he mutters, staring at the sludge in the bottom of the UFO bottle. “Never start a business.” He raps the bottle on the bar. “Can I get another?”

  I notice Jimmy eyeing me, his cell phone—which doubles as The Crowbar’s second line—clutched to his ear. “Yeah, sure,” I say, “That’ll be ten bucks.”

  Trent shoots me an incredulous squint before catching the my-boss-is-scrutinizing-us look plastered on my face. He goes into his pocket for the cash: ten dollars exactly; no tip. That’s okay, I think, my mind wandering to a potential future in which I’m lounging on the deck of my and Trent’s Martha’s Vineyard beach house, the Kennedy clan tossing around a football on the lawn next door.

  Drawing me out of my daydream, Trent asks, “So, how about zip-lining tomorrow?”

  Oh, no. Not again. Every “date” we’ve had since that first meet-up-for-coffee-to-make-sure-neither-of-us-is-a-wacko has involved some sort of adrenaline-pumping activity designed to liquefy my nervous system.

  “Where exactly does one zip-line in Boston?” I inquire, flashing on our most recent disaster-date: extreme mountain biking through the kind of inhospitable terrain that even the hardiest Canadian Mountie would think twice about traversing, with or without his trusty steed.

  He laughs. “Uh, no. We’ll have to leave the city for that. It’s about two”—he pauses, the math gears grinding—“two and a half hours, more or less, to . . .”

  “No man’s land?”

  “Come on, it’ll be a blast,” he says. His grin morphs into a lurid smirk that dissolves my willpower. “I promise.”

  A throat clears behind me. “Em, can I see you for a sec?”

  Dammit. There’s a line of customers five deep by the cash register. How did I miss that? “Gotta go,” I blurt. “Call you later?”

  “Right,” says Trent. “If I don’t answer, leave a message.”

  Why wouldn’t he answer? Am I so trivial that he’d screen my calls? “Okay,” I say, rushing to Jimmy’s rescue. Over my shoulder, I add, “Talk soon.”

  * * *

  “Why are you dating that loser?” Jimmy asks eight hours later, while we’re shutting down the bar for the night.

  The response that comes to mind is: What business is it of a barkeep who doesn’t always make payroll on time whether I’m involved with an up-and-coming real estate mogul with twice his charm and half his attitude? Then I remember that we’re talking about Jimmy, the king of unsolicited advice.

  The Crowbar is one of those odd booze joints that closes before the legally mandated time of 2 a.m. At half past one, we’ve finally coaxed the last few stragglers out the door. “You’re a jerk,” I say. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Jimmy has been buffing the same spot on the bar for so long that, if he’s not careful, he might just end up in Shanghai. “I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking,” he informs me, his gaze conveniently stuck on that imaginary imperfection. “He’s beneath you.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was jealous, an idea that pings my creep radar. I mean, he’s not only my boss and, in my eyes, the big brother I never had. He’s also married. With kids. And his wife works at the bar. I finish unloading a rack of clean glasses and move on to flipping the chairs. “Who’s everyone?”

  “People. They talk.”

  “Like customers, you mean?” I ask, figuring the loose-lipped Crowbar regulars are the likeliest suspects to be dishing about my love life—behind my back, no less.

  He shakes his head. “Yeah, some of them. And other people, too.”

  In Trent’s defense, I say, “He’s a nice guy. And unless you have evidence to the contrary, I’d appreciate it if you’d bug off.”

  He throws his hands in the air. “Okay, okay. Don’t shoot the messenger. Sheesh.” He kills the music, which has been chugging along at a murmur since last call. “How’d the interview go, anyway?”

  An involuntary groan seeps out of me. “Disastrous.”

  “Really? Because that guy—Luke or Lance, was it?—sounded sort of happy when he called.”

  EXCUSE ME?!?!

  “Who called? When?” I demand. AND WHY AM I JUST HEARING ABOUT THIS NOW?!?!

  He grits his teeth. “Before you got here, some guy from the paper called. I assumed he got you on your cell.”

  Oscar Wilde’s warning about assumptions springs to mind. I pat down my jeans for my phone and, holding my breath, power it on. There are six messages, three of them from the Boston Sunday Times. Holy fuck. I think I’m going to vomit. I must’ve been either 1) fleeing an army of orphaned spider spawn or 2) halfheartedly ejecting a naked man from my shower when the calls (plural!) came in.

  Dare I listen? I mean, what’s the point? It’s not like I can call back tonight anyway. “Yeah,” I mumble to myself, “I guess they did call.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Like I said, the interview sucked.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he claims, immediately adding, “but not really.” He rattles some bottles around under the bar. “Care to drown your sorrows?”

  He’s offering me liquor—and not just a twenty-dollar bottle of Jack Daniel’s, either—at work? “I thought you were saving that for a special occasion,” I say, motioning at the two-hundred-dollar bottle of cognac he picked up at a wine and spirits convention last spring and then flaunted around the bar for the next six weeks.

  “This is a special occasion,” he says with a wink. “I get to keep my Emmy. Sorry about the job, by the way. They’re fools for letting you get away.”

  Aw, shucks. I direct a withering glare at my phone and bury it in my pocket. “You’re quite persuasive, sir,” I say, waving him over. “Now let’s get to work.”

  Chapter 4

  Five things an employee should never do with her boss:

  Guzzle expensive cognac, ditching her inhibitions somewhere between a stripper pole and a reality-TV camera.

  Use an old heating pipe as a stripper pole, acting out a scene from a music video her college boyfriend used to watch on REPEAT claiming it was “artsy.”

  Actually strip.

  Encourage her boss to do the same.

  Forget everything that happened after #1-4.

  SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! I would yell, if my head could take the slightest uptick in decibels without rupturing like the San Andreas Fault. Whoever is blowing up my phone at 7 a.m. should be burned at the stake, or stretched on the rack, or subjected to whatever form of Medieval torture will get them to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!!!

  I crack an eye open and realize that, thank God, I am in my own apartment. In my own bed. Even in my own underwear.

  Okay, I’m wearing underwear. That’s a good sign, right?

  With the most delicate movements possible, I begin unwinding the rumpled sheet that has somehow—I’m picturing feverish thrashing here—become coiled around my neck like a polka-dotted boa constrictor.

  Tug.

  Breathe.

  Repress gag reflex.

  Tug.

  Breathe.

  Throw up a little in mouth.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Tug.

  Are there any scissors around here?

  Tug.

  Tug.

  Picture own funeral.

  Breathe.

  Tug.

  Tug.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Go back to sleep.

&nb
sp; When I wake up again, there’s a strange sight drifting by my bedroom window: SNOW!!! IN OCTOBER!!! Which—don’t quote me on this—I’m pretty sure is a sign of the apocalypse. Plus, the drop in barometric pressure is no doubt contributing to the hammer-and-chisel combo that is tap, tap, tapping away at my forehead. I mean, I’ve been hungover before, but this is ridiculous.

  “Em?” a familiar but fuzzy man’s voice—I can’t quite place him, but I’ve the distinct feeling he won’t murder me—says from the vicinity of my bedroom door.

  If I could roll a quarter turn to the right, I’d have a better idea what I’m dealing with, the worst-case scenario being that I’ve performed the mattress mambo with my forty-year-old boss, jeopardizing the crappy job I should consider myself lucky to have, not to mention pulverizing a rock of a marriage.

  Please don’t let me be a gutter-tramp home wrecker, I pray as I pitch left and then, harnessing my momentum, reverse course and throw my weight toward the door.

  Dex, a.k.a. Shower Hottie, is leaning seductively against the doorjamb with a coy look on his face. “What are you doing here?” I find myself asking him for the second time in as many days.

  He grins. “You drunk dialed me at four o’clock in the morning. I drove you home from the bar.”

  Nuh-uh.

  I try to sit up, but the room does a full-on Tilt-A-Whirl. “I doubt it,” I mutter, my head sinking back into the pillow. “I don’t even have your number.”

  “What’s this, then?” he asks, strutting toward me with a cell phone that is—I assume, since my eyes won’t focus—displaying the call in question.

  I squint and grimace.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he says. “I’m usually up by five, anyway. I like to get a run in before class.”

  Well, that explains why he’s wearing a shiny—and tiny—pair of athletic shorts, his quads mere inches from my drool-coated face. (To clarify, that’s drunken sleep spittle, not drop-your-shorts-right-here-so-I-can-ravage-you foaming at the mouth.) “You’re in med school, right?” I manage to ask, my conversational wherewithal on an egg timer. How I’ve culled this nugget of information from my mind is a mystery.

  “Yup.” A stealthy change of subject: “You know, your phone’s rung about ten times in the last hour. I would’ve answered it, but . . .”

  No kidding. “Probably telemarketers,” I say. Which reminds me: if I ever recover from this alcohol-fueled stupor, I must add my number to the National Do Not Call Registry. “Can you pass me that water?” I ask, eyeing a glass that has miraculously appeared (okay, Dex probably put it there) on my nightstand, bendy straw and all.

  “Not until you sit up.”

  “You’re asking a lot.” I sigh. “I hope you know that.”

  He lays a supportive hand on my back and I elbow my way upright, propping my head against the wall with a mess of blankets and pillows. He gives me a thorough once-over before deciding I’m capable of swallowing without ending my life. Still, he finds it necessary to hold the glass as I suckle from the straw like a helpless piglet.

  Oh, well. It could be worse. At least he’s good looking.

  I take in as much water as my fiery pit of a stomach will allow. Never again, I vow. From now on, even the suggestion of alcohol is forbidden. Chicken Marsala? Gone. Aunt GiGi’s famous Christmas—and Easter and 4th of July—rum balls? A fond childhood memory. Freshburst Listerine? Sorry, I can’t say I’m familiar with the product of which you speak.

  Now where were we? “You didn’t miss school on my account, did you?” I ask, my head starting to clear.

  “First time in seven years. They’ll get over it.”

  “You can go.” I smile reassuringly. “Thanks for everything, though. You’re quite the gentleman.”

  “It’s part of the Oath,” Dex tells me. (I’m not sure whether he’s referring to a code of chivalry or the pledge new doctors have to make.) No matter . . .

  I ease my legs over the side of the bed. “So if I needed you to, say, hang around for another two minutes while I pee, you’d have no choice?” I hate to exploit his good nature, but I’m not so sure I won’t face-plant on my way to/from the toilet.

  He extends his run of positive karma by steadying me on my feet and, ever so gently, guiding me to the bathroom. I leave the door unlocked, in case I should bounce off the vanity on my way to kissing the radiator. “All set,” I say as I rejoin him in the hall, my legs beginning to feel sea worthy again.

  He responds by thrusting a cell phone at my face. “Here.”

  “Huh?” I say, keeping my arms at my sides.

  He shakes the phone. “Trust me.”

  I relent. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? “Hello?”

  “Emmaline Waters?” a strange man’s voice asks.

  “Um, yeah. This is her—I mean, she. I’m Emmaline.” I listen for telemarketing sounds in the background but hear nothing but dead air.

  Dex stares at me expectantly.

  “We’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon,” the voice informs me, shifting from a grating but professional tone to blatant annoyance.

  I stumble along toward my bedroom. “Okay . . .” I say, collapsing in a bedside chair. “In regards to . . . ?”

  A sigh. “The food-critic position. We’d like to offer you the job.”

  It’s a good thing I’m already sitting down. “At the Boston Sunday Times?”

  “Yes. Do you accept?”

  What am I, an idiot? “Of course. Definitely. Thank you so much for—”

  “Good. Deadline’s tomorrow at noon. Five hundred words. Send the copy to”—he rattles off an e-mail address I couldn’t catch with a mitt the size of left field—“and think up a snappy new title for the column. We want to do some rebranding.”

  “Certainly. No problem at all.” I hate to ask this, but . . . “What should I be critiquing, though?”

  “Anything. Whatever.” He huffs. “Just make sure it has a human-interest angle. Veteran teacher quits job to become a Japanese culinary samurai. That’s half of the review. The rest is the food. And plenty of those zingers you pulled out of your hat the other day? Got it?”

  Not really.

  “I think so. Yes,” I say, shooting Dex what might go down as the most confused, elated, terror-stricken look in history. “It’ll be done. Tomorrow. Twelve sharp.” My mouth moves faster than my brain, in an absurd direction. “I love you.” There’s a vacant pause on the line; meanwhile, Dex’s face goes soft and gooey. “I mean, thank you for the opportunity.”

  The man, whose name I have yet to learn, clears his throat. “Turn in a good article. That’s how you thank me.” More dead air. “And, Miss Waters, answer your phone from now on. Every time.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Jesus Christ, call me Mitch—or Mr. Heywood, if you must. That ‘sir’ shit’s for pompous douchebags and four-star generals. I am neither.”

  I’ll take his word for the lack of military credentials, but his potential douchebaggery remains an open question. “Right, Mr. Heywood.”

  “Welcome aboard, Miss Waters. Now get a move on.”

  Click.

  Okay, my editor just hung up on me. My EDITOR just hung up on me! MY (ADMITTEDLY RUDE) EDITOR JUST HUNG UP ON ME!!!

  Hallelujah! I have arrived . . .

  . . . at the cusp of vomiting? “Quick!” I blurt, praying Dex will read my mind and race for the mop bucket, “I’m going to—” But it’s too late. Whatever I ate last night—not that I remember eating anything—is on its way back up. “Go!” I squeal, gesturing wildly at the door. “Get out of here!”

  Dex looks confused. And hurt. But he scurries off anyway, the neon green soles of his running shoes floating through the doorway as my innards unfurl on the floor. Son of a bitch, I think, dragging my arm across my face, it’ll take a month of scrubbing with an electric toothbrush to erase one night of bad decisions from this floor.

  But I got the job!

  I GOT THE JO
B!!!

  Now I just have to figure out how to do it.

  Chapter 5

  I have twenty-three hours and approximately eight minutes to accomplish the following:

  Recover from a hangover, defined as washing something (preferably my body, but my face will do), wearing something (in addition to the dingy underwear ensemble I’ve been sporting of late), and eating something (dry toast, possibly, but a banana could work in a pinch).

  Find my car, which is God only knows where, since Dex drove me home last night.

  Quit my job at The Crowbar without facing Jimmy, who will forevermore remember me as That Naked Girl.

  Google everything there is to know about writing restaurant reviews, with a focus on quick and dirty methods, just to get me over this teeny-tiny hump in the road. (I’ll buckle down soon, I swear!)

  Select a restaurant worthy of the spotlight I intend to shine on it (because my writing persona will be more Glinda the Good Witch than Wicked Witch of the West).

  Order (and taste) whatever on the menu is least likely to regurgle my guts.

  Pull an all-nighter, if necessary, bleeding genius onto the page—or at least into a word processing document.

  Relax and wait for the accolades to stream in.

  Oh, yeah—and Trent. Aren’t I supposed to contact him about some vaguely life-threatening adventure-date?

  Whew, I need to sit down. And call my mommy.

  “Hello?” Mom’s startlingly perky voice answers on the third ring.