Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  I became a regular at Diva, trying to find that love that I thought Claire and I had but only continued a series of one-night stands. I didn’t plan on them being one-night stands but they just ended up that way.

  Life didn’t get any better when Claire showed up at group with Peter. I watched them holding hands, even as Peter constantly fidgeted. Though I felt certain that their lovely charade would end in an untimely and unseemly death, Claire’s serene look caused sharp pangs of pain and jealousy to streak across my chest.

  I started skipping group and Elaine started worrying about me. When I finally agreed to go again, Claire wasn’t there. In the Shamrock afterward, Elaine stirred her coffee and began her lecture. “You used to pick up men. Now you pick up women. What’s the difference?”

  “Well, I was never this intimate with men,” I said truthfully. “But now I don’t know if I’ve been gay all these years and didn’t know it.”

  Gregory smiled. “If you have to ask, Sherry, you’re not.”

  “You think you are going to find Ms. Right in a bar?” asked Elaine.

  “I’m just looking for the right person. I don’t care which gender. I really want love, not sex. That’s the insane irony of my life.”

  Gregory smiled again. “That’s the insane irony of all our lives.”

  Within five minutes of leaving the coffee shop, I was in Diva, knocking back a house special. The next morning, I woke up in Long Island and read a note from someone named Penny, who said that she was riding her horse and would be back in two hours and to make myself at home. It took me three hours to find my way back to my apartment, grateful that since it was Saturday, I wouldn’t be missing another day of work.

  My life became a blur as I acted out with both women and men and used booze to try to dull the intense pain I constantly felt. Occasionally, some affair would last a weekend but never longer and I would end up more alone than before.

  At work, I was exhausting Dede’s list of temp agencies in an ever increasing downward spiral. As I missed more and more days of work, I finally had to call Gregory and tell him that I couldn’t make the rent. He was understanding. Elaine wasn’t. She demanded to see me and I knew it was going to be another riot act. So, of course, that night I went to a bar but not until after I had set the alarm on my cell phone, which gratefully woke me in time to get semi-presentable for work.

  We had arranged for a takeout lunch in Bryant Park. The warm sunny day made me feel more depressed, not only because of my spinning-wheels life but also my hangover seemed more crushing than the previous daily dozen. I just wanted to get through work so I could rush to a bar for a “hair of the dog” stiff one. As I wrestled with my purse in a futile attempt to find my aspirin bottle I passed the public library’s main branch and the stone lions’ stares seem more malevolent than usual. The glaring sunlight pierced my temples like knives. How could a city filled with skyscrapers have so much sunlight? My shades in my purse had also disappeared but that would have been a red flag to Elaine anyway.

  Despite not having a hangover for years Elaine looked as weary as I felt. Having been so wrapped up in my own misery I hadn’t talked to her in a while but I suspected that her husband was still doing her best friend, or maybe he had finally left her.

  “Are things okay with you?” I asking, trying to stir the conversation away from me.

  Elaine didn’t look up from her takeout. “He’s moved his clothes into her apartment but he’s done that before.” Something was worrying her but it didn’t seem to be her husband.

  “Why couldn’t you pay your rent?” Elaine countered.

  “I’ve been ill and I’d missed some work. I’m better now.” My head began throbbing harder. Could I somehow manage a quick drink before going back to work? And where the hell were my aspirins?

  “Sherry. We both know your illness is getting drunk and acting out.”

  How did I think that I could con an addict? I suddenly hated Elaine. “I’m trying, damn it.” I flushed with anger. “Since I’ve been in group, I’m more in control.”

  She glared at me with piercing eyes. “Stop it! You can’t control this disease! It only gets worse. You just keep going down until you hit bottom.”

  Suddenly, I lost it. “Damn it I am trying! To hold a job! Pay the rent! Stay fucking sober! You’ve been sober for years, married for years! Okay. Maybe your husband fucks around but he still pays for that penthouse apartment! Compared to me, you’ve got it made!”

  Elaine grabbed me. “I’ve got it made? I’ve got it made? You don’t know a fucking thing, Sherry. On Monday, I’m an alcoholic, Tuesday, a drug addict, an overeater on Wednesday, a sex addict on Friday. There are days when I feel like I can’t go to one more meeting. And nights when I cry until sunrise because I miss my kids so much. But every second, I know that I am all those addicts and the only way I will ever see my kids again is if I just don’t act out.”

  Elaine started sobbing. I did, too. We held each other for a long time. Then Elaine whispered, “I am who you are going to be, if you don’t get your life together now.”

  I skipped having the drink on the way back to work. That night I stayed at home and with the help of Artie, stayed sober.

  It didn’t last long. Every night, stopping off at a bar for one drink always turned into suffering through eight hours at work the following day. When I made it to work, that was. I went through two more temp agencies.

  Something had to change, and it did. On a bright sunny Saturday morning I woke up in a strange apartment beside a lovely redhead. In the bathroom, I sat on the stool and clenched my teeth in pain. When the pain got worse I called Elaine and she referred me Dr. Derrick Harrison.

  Dr. Harrison was tall, strikingly handsome, very viral and yet very professional even though his cute young blonde receptionist obviously had a huge crush on him which gave the office a slight tinge of sexual tension. If that wasn’t weird enough, he also wasn’t even a gynecologist.

  “Are you Elaine’s doctor?” I asked, thoroughly confused as he examined my body’s most intimate parts.

  He glanced up and smiled warmly. “I’m Skip, Gregory’s lover.”

  When he was finished, he asked me to come into his office, which didn’t sound good. It wasn’t. “Sherry, you have contracted gonorrhea. Antibiotics will take care of it but I am obligated by law to report it to the state health board and you are required by law to call any sexual partners you’ve had in the last three months and notify them that they may be at risk.”

  Three months! That was half of New York City!

  “I also recommend that you get tested for the HIV virus.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I just won’t have sex with anyone. Then if I die, it will only be me.”

  “Sherry, is that realistic? AIDS is no longer a death sentence. It’s quite the opposite, if you know soon enough.”

  Although I had long wanted to kill myself, except for Ernie, I didn’t really want to kill anyone else. So I let him take my blood.

  That night I went through my purses, pockets, drawers and wastebaskets, retrieving a pile of business cards, napkins and notes from past sex partners. I was shocked to realize that I could put a face to only a few of the names. I began with Claire because she’d be at work and wouldn’t answer her cell.

  After that first humiliating call, it got worse, especially the ones purring sexily at me—how did they remember me?—only to then scream nasty names at me when I explained the reason for the call. The constantly slammed-down phones made my ears ring and my eyes water with tears. But I wanted to hear the insults. To remember every word, so I would never act out again. With each call, my voice got more weak and fragile. When all the names were crumpled in the wastebasket, I lay on the drawing room floor clutching Robie who slept upon my heaving chest as stinging tears flowed down my face onto the carpet.

  A week later Skip’s nurse called to tell me that I was not HIV positive. I had dodged that bullet but I wondered how many more there
would be before I took one in the chest.

  After my brush with deathly diseases, I managed to stay relatively sober for a while. So when Dede wanted to meet for a drink after work, it felt weird, and wonderful, not to have a head-banging hangover. “I’ve got this chorus-line gig on a cruise ship all winter,” she said as she sipped a Chardonnay. “I’m working on Wall Street for the best boss ever and I think you should take my place. It’s more money and an easier gig.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

  I had long tired of having a new assignment every few days but I could barely manage to show up for a few days in a row. How could I handle a big assignment without screwing it up the first week? And I would embarrass Dede.

  “Trust me. Adam is a dream.”

  Maybe this might give me the push to, finally, once and for all, get my life together. “Okay.”

  “Are you up to the top temp agency on my list?”

  “Second highest.” I replied, not mentioning that I had burned my way through all the lower ones.

  “You’ll have to register with Winslow-Barnard,” Dede said about the list’s top agency. “You’ll be working for Adam Turner. He’s the youngest partner at Whitney, White and Spencer and he is the top M and A guy in the city. A real player. Temps aren’t supposed to work for partners but no one is going to tell Adam what to do. I’ll set it up with the Winslow and Whitney’s secretarial supervisor. They all love me. Your paid training will start next Tuesday.”

  The next day, I registered with Winslow-Barnard and even managed to pass their test on the first try. Maybe there was hope for me yet.

  Monday evening, Dede called to say she’d meet me in Whitney’s cafeteria for lunch. I stayed sober that night and was downtown before eight. I walked around Battery Park, watched the Staten Island ferry gush out commuters and then at precisely nine-thirty a.m., I entered the majestic white-stone building that I hoped would be my workplace for at least more than three days.

  A dozen of us sat in the small training room as Mr. Olsen began teaching us the Whitney way of handling legal documents.

  I felt comfortable on the training floor, mostly lined with small offices of harried-looking paralegals but as soon as I ascended inside the wood-paneled elevator to the high floor that housed the cafeteria, I began to feel dizzy. I crept along on the carpet of the oak-paneled corridors lined with century-old paintings of long-gone partners to the unmarked double-doors which Mr. Olsen had assured us were the only double-doors in the building.

  Inside the cafeteria, one side was floor-to-ceiling windows with breathtaking views of lower Manhattan and the New York Harbor with the Statue of Liberty hoisting up her flame.

  Dede was sitting at a window table with three other secretaries. She immediately came over and informed me that I was about the experience the best culinary deal in New York. The food was cheap because it was at cost and delicious because we were served the same food as the lawyers who were secreted on the other side of an adjoining wall.

  Dede explained that she had already eaten because the secretaries have to stagger their lunch hours. “It’s the phone thing, which you’ll learn.”

  I had a burger while Dede toyed with a piece of blueberry cheesecake. “I should really lose a few pounds,” she informed me, “but the cheesecake here is to die for.” Dede moved on to my prospective boss, about how much she loved Adam and how I was going to adore him, too. Occasionally, other secretaries came up to congratulate her on getting the cruise job and a few asked if she’d do her routine on their floor. Dede just laughed and said that she had to get out of there before she got fired.

  “Last Friday, I performed my audition routine for the secretaries and associates on our floor—to a standing ovation I might add. Even Adam came out and watched but said that he couldn’t congratulate me since, officially, he hadn’t seen it. Apparently, the managing partner heard about it and was not amused. But no one is going to say anything to someone to works for Adam Turner except Adam Turner. He’s a god around here. And come Monday, Baby, that someone is you.”

  The corridors and the incredible view had already let me know that I didn’t belong there. Now working for some kind of god? That was too much. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this firm. Maybe I should wait a bit, get more experience.”

  “Come on, Sis,” countered Dede. “Trust me. When you are dealing with lawyers the odds of ending up with an asshole are enormous. But, I’m telling you, Adam is a doll. I’d introduce you but you can’t come up to the floor until you are official. But I already told him you were a bit of a newbie and he’s cool with it. I also told him you were a looker and I think he liked that.”

  I didn’t! The last thing I needed was some lawyer hitting on me. I already had enough problems. I started to say something but Dede mouthed another “trust me,” and smiled mischievously as she glanced at a table with six middle-aged women. “That’s the ‘bitter bitches clique.’ They all have twenty-year years here but still don’t work for partners. Four minutes after I leave, an ash-blonde with way too much makeup will join them. She’s probably pushing fifty but paints her face like she’s seventy. That’s Grace, their queen. She sits next to you and will hate you on sight but don’t worry. She can’t touch you.” I glanced at them. All wore expensive-looking black suits with white blouses. “Bargain racks,” Dede assured me. “They dress like the exec secs but they’re really a funeral procession.”

  I glanced around the room. The partners’ executive secretaries stood out. Like Dede and the Bitter Bitches, they all wore suits and four-inch stiletto heels. “I can’t even afford the clothes to work here,” I uttered.

  Dede pondered this. “Look, if all goes well I won’t need these clothes anymore. On Friday, we’ll go through my closet and see what I’ve got.” She jumped up. “Gotta go. If I’m one minute late, Grace will have a cat. Love you.”

  Dede then floated across the room to smiles and occasional applause by the other secretaries.

  Within a few minutes, Grace arrived, grabbed a salad and huddled with the other Bitches. Several furtive glances came my way. I was obviously a main topic of conversation. At one point, Grace turned and glowered at me. Dede was right. I was hated on sight.

  On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Olsen broached the important subject of Whitney etiquette. “You will always address a lawyer as Mr. or Ms., never by their first name. Also, every client’s call must be answered by a live voice, preferably the attorney’s secretary but never voicemail.” He held up a large phone with fifteen buttons on it. “Three secretaries cover five lawyers, a partner and four associates. You will each have two associates, as only full-time Whitney, White and Spencer executive secretaries worked for partners.” He looked straight at me and added, “But, apparently, there is an exception.” I felt a chill.

  Mr. Olsen continued, “Most associates answer their own phones but they can get busy. You will cover the other secretaries in your group. On the fourth ring, the floor switchboard will pick up. The fifth ring triggers voicemail. But as I said, voicemail is greatly frowned upon, especially for a partner’s phone, which always gets answered first.”

  The only rule seemingly more important than the no-voicemail rule was the refreshment rule. “The executive secretary will order refreshments for the partner’s meetings with clients. The catering staff would bring up the refreshments but the executive secretary would wheel them into the meeting and serve the refreshments. You may be called upon to assist. If you feel that serving coffee to clients is demeaning or offends your feminist sensibilities, then maybe Whitney, White and Spencer is not for you.”

  “Is this a law firm or a tea party,” quipped a young Hispanic woman with tattoos on both arms and two rings in her nose.

  Mr. Olsen stared icily at her and replied, “Tomorrow, you will take a test on what you have learned. If you fail it, you will be gone. If I determine that you are not right for this law firm, you will also be gone.”

  The next day, the girl showed up without the
nose rings and with a long-sleeve blouse covering her tattoos. During the morning break, another trainee kidded her about selling out.

  “Damn right,” she shot back. “My aunt is an executive secretary here and she is set for life. For the money she makes, I’d kiss any attorney’s ass. Literally.”

  At lunch, I asked Dede how she ended up working for a partner. She shrugged it off. “They were short exec sec floaters one day and bumped me up. But I’m telling you, Adam’s a piece of cake.”

  “I have trouble answering one line,” I let her know. “Let alone fifteen.”

  Dede laughed. “Look, Sherry, let’s end this right here. Adam gets a ton of calls but he’s the partner. That means Grace and Angie have to help you out, not you having to help them. Occasionally, yes, but you concentrate on Adam. Plus the four associates all work for him. If they think that the call is going be about their deal, they’ll pick it up. It’s nothing really.”

  Dede looked straight at me. “Want to know how cool Adam is? Unofficially, the third line is the secretary’s personal number. The three lines are rollovers, so if it is blinking alone, its means it’s for her. Only Adam answers his own phone and usually doesn’t bother to notice if it is the third line. So I came back from the restroom this morning to see a note on my desk saying that my agent called. Only I don’t have an agent and now I’ve got to figure out which of my friends is claiming to be one. But that is how great Adam is. He took my call!” Dede laughed again. “Trust me, Sis. You’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t feel fine. But I decided to let the universe decide. I’d try hard on the test and if I failed, I obviously wasn’t ready. I scored an eight-five, with half of the trainees above me and half below me. The universe hadn’t let me off the hook yet. I was going to have to get thrown out all on my own. Of that, I had the utmost confidence.

  Dede and Colin, her boyfriend, lived in a forth-floor walkup ‘railroad flat’ in Hell’s Kitchen, consisting of one long corridor lined with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen before flowing into a large living room overlooking the Hudson River. After this linear tour, Dede began tossing clothes out of her bedroom closet and onto the bed.