Spur of the Moment

by Theresa Alan

  Despite hating her job, Ana always worked hard and had been rewarded for it, something the vacuous Paula held against her. Ana always said that you could tell who your friends were not just by whether they were there for you when your life was crumbling down, but whether they could genuinely be happy for you when you succeeded. As much as Ana disliked Paula, she was a twenty-four-year-old female and likely to be carrying, so Ana waddled over to her.

  “Do you have a stick up your ass?” Paula asked.

  “An entire tree. Could I please borrow a tampon, a pad, anything?”

  “I keep two tampons in cases of emergency. If I give one to you, I’ll only have one left.”

  “I’ll buy an entire box and pay you back three fold over my break. Today. A few short hours from now.”

  Paula scowled at Ana like a schoolteacher looking at a student who hadn’t prepared for the test and didn’t have anyone to blame but herself. But at last, grudgingly, Paula handed over the tampon.

  Ana toddled as fast as she could down the long hallway to the bathroom.

  For about four seconds after inserting the tampon, Ana felt relief. Then she felt a familiar rumbling in her bowels.

  “Oh shit.” Which, of course, was the problem.

  Or maybe not such a problem after all. She could take a dump without the precious tampon shooting out of her body like a bullet from an AK-47, right? She hadn’t done Kegel exercises for all these years for nothing, had she?

  So she tried to void her bowels while keeping the tampon in place. And she failed.

  She slumped down on the toilet seat, her pants around her ankles, and declared, with deeply felt emotion, “I hate my life.”

  2

  Psycho Murderers, Mold, and Other Lurking Menaces

  Chelsey McGuiness’ day had not started well. She got home at six in the morning after spending a luscious evening with a gorgeous man she’d met at the club the night before, only to discover that her window had been broken.

  “Shit.”

  She warily unlocked the door to her townhouse, looking around for signs of theft. The TV and the VCR were still there. She didn’t have any jewelry that was worth more than ten bucks or so, except the thirty-dollar watch she was wearing, so she didn’t have anything to worry about there.

  It had been so depressing when she’d gone to get homeowner’s insurance on her new home. The insurance agent went through a series of questions that made Chelsey feel progressively worse about herself.

  How much are your paintings worth?

  Well, let’s see, if you count the Scotch tape I use to hang my unframed posters, I don’t know, maybe fifty cents?

  How much is your jewelry worth?

  A hundred bucks, she said, overestimating significantly. She figured if her house burned down, she’d at least get a little extra cash to buy a new watch.

  Furs?

  Nope.

  Firearms?

  Good God no.

  Computer equipment?

  She had a 286 PC she’d bought with student loan money in 1990 that she used as a paperweight. If she needed a computer to write a scene, she used the one at Spur of the Moment. Ten bucks, she’d estimated.

  When all was said and done, Chelsey had absolutely nothing of value. What did the insurance agent want from her? She was a single, twenty-seven-year-old female who’d used every last shred of her savings to buy this place.

  Usually she didn’t mind being single. Just now, though, she’d really like to be married. If she were married, she could force her husband to seek out the armed assailants lurking in the closets or under the bed instead of having to do it herself. Really, what else was a man good for but to seek out the burglars and take the bullet wounds while the woman stealthily sneaked out the window and called the police?

  But who knew, maybe the Native American she’d spent the night with would actually call. He’d said he would. And maybe things would work out, and one day he would be the one defending her from organ-eating psychos.

  She hadn’t meant to sleep with Rob, but he’d been so cute and such a good kisser and he’d told her how hilarious and beautiful she was so many times she’d become delirious with compliments. Also, she had a tendency to go through a slutty phase each time she broke up from a serious relationship. Maybe it was a reaction to enforced monogamy, maybe it was simply research she could draw on when she at last became a staff writer for a show like Sex and the City, the greatest show ever with the coolest lead actress ever. Sarah Jessica Parker was Chelsey’s absolute idol. Chelsey even looked a little like SJP. She was a size two, with well-defined biceps and a perfectly flat stomach. She had long, curly, highlighted brown/blond hair circa SJP seasons one through four. Where she went horribly wrong, though, was that instead of having a nose with character, a memorable nose, a nose with a little kink, a little curve, a little jut, she had a cute, small button nose that was the bane of her existence. It was a nose that made it impossible for her to be the seductive sexpot she aspired to be. She had forever been and would forever be described with heinous words like adorable and cute. It made her want to gag.

  Chelsey went first to inspect the bathroom for would-be attackers, where the shower curtain was pulled closed as always. She always pulled it closed because it looked nicer, and also, if she left it open, all scrunched together at one side, it couldn’t dry out and had a tendency to mold. Chelsey had very strong feelings about mold.

  Chelsey steeled her nerves, threw the curtain open, and screamed herself hoarse at the sight of the creature lurking there.

  “Meow,” her long-haired black-and-white cat, Mo, said, looking curious, as if to say, “What’s all the fuss, Mom?” Mo liked to sleep sprawled in the cool tub when it was hot out.

  Chelsey gripped her chest and tried to catch her breath as her heart rate returned to something like normal.

  When she was passably composed, she went to the front hall closet where, assuming there weren’t drug-addled attackers ready to leap out and assault her, she would be able to get a tennis racket and patrol the rest of the house. Granted, sports equipment wasn’t the weaponry of choice to protect oneself from blood-thirsty psychopaths, but it was better than nothing.

  The closet was clear. She grabbed the racket and went to investigate the rest of the house.

  Her heart pounded like bongos in a movie set in a remote African village, all scary and ferocious so you just know somebody is about to get sacrificed to the gods or otherwise about to bite it in a particularly vicious way.

  Chelsey loved her new home, every bit of it, even her dark, unfinished basement. Being a first-time home buyer had been quite an experience. The racists had come out of the woodwork when she’d been looking to buy a place.

  “You don’t want to live in that neighborhood, black people live there,” they’d said.

  “I’m not afraid of black people,” she’d protested.

  “You have to think about resale value,” they’d insisted.

  “I’m really not worried.” But her arguments had fallen on deaf ears. So, too, had theirs.

  She’d ended up buying a small house in Baker, a historically Italian and later Hispanic part of Denver. The ad for the place had said, “Be an urban pioneer!” She’d seen that phrase often during her house hunt and had deduced that it meant, “Young white urban professionals, move into this historically black/ Hispanic neighborhood and jack up the housing prices!” She couldn’t decide if she felt bad about becoming an urban pioneer. On the one hand, she believed diverse neighborhoods were a good thing, but on the other hand, she felt like she was part of the reason housing prices were skyrocketing in Denver. The truth was, this was what she could afford and she liked the house and the neighborhood, so she tried not to worry too much about it.

  She flicked on the basement lights and jumped from side to side, from backhand to forehand stance, as if waiting for a serve, looking from corner to corner. She saw nothing. The coast was clear, at least down here.

  Next she we
nt back upstairs to check the two bedrooms. She took every step slowly, painfully, fully expecting her life to be cut short at any moment. She checked out the closet in each room, she checked under the bed. Nothing. No panting, salivating lunatic carrying various sharp implements of torture.

  She went back into the living room again, and that’s when she saw it. In a very Soylent-Green-is-people moment of horrified discovery, she saw the baseball on the floor in the corner of the living room. There was no psycho murderer lurking in the shadows, waiting to gut and flay her, just an errant baseball of some neighborhood kids. She looked at the window critically. What had she been thinking? No human being could have crawled through a hole that size. Maybe a creature from The X-Files could have stretched his arm eight feet like Silly Putty to unlock the door, but otherwise, the only creature she had to fear coming in through that window was a squirrel.

  Now that her life wasn’t in danger, her emotions turned from fear to annoyance. She was going to be late for her job as a personal trainer, and she didn’t even have the excuse that she’d been fighting off murderous perverts. Also, she did not have the money to replace the window, nor did she have any idea how to go about installing one. Maybe Rob would call her and after another sweaty romp session, she could put him to work. Yes, Chelsey decided, it was a brilliant plan.

  3

  The Cluster Fuck, Part One

  “Where have you been?” Scott asked when Ana finally returned to her desk. “I’ve been here since forever.”

  “I had to make an emergency run to the store. So much for my plans to get my work done early so I can head over to the theater early. Hang on, I’ve got to call Marin so she doesn’t miss work and I have to cover her rent again.”

  She called Marin. Ana had to call and hang up four times to avoid getting voicemail before Marin finally answered, sounding groggy.

  “What?” was how she answered.

  “Get your ass out of bed. You have fifteen minutes to get to work. Where are you going today?”

  “Met Life I think. Today and all next week at an insurance company. I could do cartwheels of joy.”

  Ana would have hated Marin if she didn’t love her so much. Marin’s problem, in Ana’s opinion, was that she had rich parents. Who else but a rich kid would major in something as impractical as theater? A person’s chances of getting a job after college with such a degree were the same as their odds of going on Survivor and making it out with a shred of dignity intact. Rich kids also knew that when they messed up, as Marin frequently did, Mom and Dad would swoop in just in the nick of time, checkbook in hand, pen at the ready.

  “It’s called being a grown-up. It’s called being responsible,” Ana continued.

  “I hate being a grown-up. I hate being responsible.”

  “Yes dear, we all do, but them’s the breaks.”

  “Well I’m up. Mission accomplished.”

  “No way. Not until you’re actually up and have consumed at least one cup of coffee.”

  “I do not have the energy to make coffee.”

  “Of course you don’t. That’s why I made extra and there will still be some waiting for you. You can nuke it for thirty seconds to warm it up.”

  “I hate nuked coffee.”

  “Right, but it’s either that or make a fresh batch. What’s it going to be?”

  “Nuked.” There was something reassuring to Ana about her friend’s consistently lazy behavior. Ana knew she could always count on Marin to take the path of least resistance, and she appreciated her friend’s unerring predictability.

  Marin got up and shuffled to the kitchen. She got a cup down, poured the coffee, and drank it, cold.

  “I drank my coffee. I’m officially up. I’ll get to my stupid temp job. Thanks for your help, Mom.”

  “Did you really drink the coffee? I didn’t hear the beeping of the microwave.”

  “I drank it cold, all right? Geesh. I just didn’t have the energy to mess with the microwave.”

  “Okay. Have a good day at work. See you tonight.”

  “Smooch smooch, babe. See you later.”

  The second Ana hung up the phone, she heard her boss say, “Scott, Ana? Can I see you in my office?”

  Scott and Ana followed him to his office, a short little trek from their microscopic cubes down the mottled-gray carpeted corridor, which had been designed to look stained and trampled so that by the time it actually was stained and trampled, it wasn’t noticeable, to The Weasel’s palatial corner office with actual windows and a view of the world outside. Well, a view of the parking lot anyway. At least he knew what the weather was doing and didn’t come to work on a bright sunny morning only to emerge nine hours later into a strange blizzardy world like a mole blindly making its way through life. As soon as they sat down, Scott said, “So what’s up?”

  “I wanted to know where we stand on the collateral for the tradeshow,” said The Weasel.

  “I’m very glad you asked,” Ana said. “I just need you to review the copy for the brochure and approve the graphics for the tradeshow murals, and I actually need you to approve it today, because otherwise we won’t be able to get it back from the printer in time for the tradeshow.” Ana’s least favorite part of her job was having to project manage her boss.

  “Not getting it done on time is not an option.”

  “Of course not, but I can’t go to the printer until you approve the copy.”

  “I haven’t seen the copy yet.”

  “Actually, I gave it to you three weeks ago, both electronically and in hard copy.” And I’ve asked you about it four times since then, remember, you Big Stupid Weasel?

  “Why don’t you make some copies of the brochure and graphics and bring them to me.”

  “I actually have copies right here.” She’d been carrying the copies around with her for the last week, most of which she’d spent stalking her boss, hoping to trap him in a hallway somewhere and get him to approve the damn copy already.

  Ana handed it to him. “Doesn’t the artwork Scott did look great? It’s so eye-catching and colorful!” It was true she thought Scott was a talented artist, but she was gushing to sell The Weasel on it, not to bolster Scott’s self-esteem. Ana often called upon her years as a cheerleader and her training as an actress at the office. Cheerleading had been great practice for Ana’s future as a performer. She hated sports and didn’t give a hoot about who won, who made a basket, or if Danny did in fact sink it after she encouraged him to “Sink it, Danny/Sink it!” Ana just liked tumbling and leaping around. The whole pesky business of encouragement and whipping crowds into a froth of excitement she could have done without.

  The Weasel’s phone rang.

  “Wayne, Wayne! Good to hear from you. Missed you on the golf course this week. Is that right?”

  Ana looked at her watch. She hadn’t gotten a single thing done and it was already after nine. She glanced at Scott, who made a facial expression that probably nobody else would have even noticed—raising his left eyebrow ever so slightly, his lips pursed in an old-lady smile—that made Ana bite her lip to keep from laughing. Scott was the king of facial expressions, but it wasn’t just his elastic ability to contort his face, it was also that Ana knew exactly what he was thinking, exactly how he would mock The Big Weasel’s car salesman-fake conversation voice at lunch later that day.

  After The Weasel had been on the phone for another three or four minutes, Ana stood up and pantomimed that he should call her when he was free. He shook his head and put his hand out, palm facing her, indicating that she should stay. So she sat down again and studied her watch, careful not to look at Scott lest he crack her up and get them both fired, as the longest five minutes of her life passed. Of course her time wasn’t valuable. It wasn’t like what she had to do was important.

  At last he hung up the phone. “Where were we?”

  “You were reviewing the brochure and tradeshow graphics so I could get them to the printer today,” Ana said.

  “Right, ri
ght.”

  He skimmed over what she’d handed him.

  “You know what this needs? We need to offer them a gift. Have a whole theme. Really grab their attention.”

  “Huh, that’s interesting, because when we first talked about this project, I suggested we say on the postcard that if they bring the postcard to the booth, we’ll give them some kind of gift, and you said you were concerned that would make us look desperate.”

  “The thing is, every marketing campaign needs to have a measurable ROI (return on investment). If we have a card that they can turn in, we can gauge the success of the campaign, and make sure we’re getting our money’s worth.”

  “Okay then. What sort of gift are you thinking of? What sort of price range?”

  “Something classy, but not that expensive. Ten dollars each, say.”

  What kind of miracle worker did he think she was? You couldn’t get anything classy and logoed for ten dollars each. Twenty maybe, but ten dollars meant a very mediocre grade of pen or desk clock. “So we’re sending out a thousand cards. At the high end we can expect a ten percent return, which means we’ll have to get at least a thousand dollars of premium items. We have that in the budget?”

  He waved his hand as if to say, sure, of course. But Ana knew that when The Big Weasel actually calculated how much he was spending on this tradeshow, he’d be way over budget and looking for scapegoats, and he would never remember this conversation with her.

  “Anything else? Is the brochure copy good to go other than adding the bit about the gift?” Ana asked.

  “The copy needs more pizzazz. And the artwork needs to be more vibrant. We really need to grab their attention. These are busy executives. They get so many pieces of mail, so many phone calls, so many emails, that we really need to wow them.”