Spur of the Moment

by Theresa Alan

  “Oh, that’s adorable. That’s so cute.” Ana realized that in only a matter of minutes, she felt infinitely better. Far less stressed out. Almost happy even. “What else do you see?” she asked. “Oh, oh, I see one, I see Tigger hopping on his tail, see?”

  “No, that’s The Weasel, pulling a bunch of bullshit lies out of his ass.”

  “Yes! Yes! That’s exactly what it is.”

  Scott did his squirrel doing the Hannibal Lecter fava bean thing while saying, “I’m good at marketing, pht-pht-pht-pht-pht.”

  Ana rolled with laughter, so Scott kept dishing it out.

  Ana’s good mood lasted until it was quarter to six and she was just about to shut off her computer, when Deb Myers came up behind her and said, “I need you to finish this up tonight for the meeting tomorrow morning. I’m afraid I can’t stay because I have to pick Reagan up from daycare. If you get there even one minute late, they start charging you a ton of money for each minute after six! All you have to do is grab the information from other presentations and proposals we’ve done. Just edit it and get it into shape. It won’t take any time at all. I emailed you the electronic document. If you could just print out seven copies and put it in the box outside my office before eight tomorrow morning, that’d be great.”

  Ana took the stack of papers Deb was holding. It didn’t look like that thick a proposal. She could probably review it in fifteen minutes or so. She’d still have plenty of time to get to her seven o’clock practice for the sketch comedy show.

  “Ta!” Deb called, and, before Ana could even glance at the first page of the proposal, Deb was out the front door.

  It was only nine pages. Not bad at all. Then she looked through and found out why it was so short—Deb hadn’t done anything except to put instructions for what Ana should add. Okay, well, most of the information had been written before, somewhere. She just had to find it.

  She decided to start with the easy stuff. Quickly adding bulk to the proposal would give her a sense of accomplishment.

  Executive bios. No problem. They were all handily available on the company website.

  Except two of the execs had left the company and had been replaced by two different people. Nuts. It had been on her to-do list to update these on the site. Wait, hadn’t she already done this? Maybe the webmaster just hadn’t done it yet. She knew she’d written something up about Don Hines and Dick Polish when they’d joined the company. Where, where, where . . .

  News releases! She’d written news releases on them.

  Now, where on the network had she filed them? She didn’t write that many news releases; they usually came from the corporate office in California, so it wasn’t like there were a ton of them for her to keep track of. Did she file them under their respective names?

  She searched. Nope.

  Maybe something from the headline. She searched for “new execs,” “welcomes,” “management.” Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  She finally did a search on the entire network for their names within all text documents. Of which there were a lot. So it took forever.

  She finally found them under the dates she’d sent the releases out: 082202.doc and 091502.doc. Like that was a handy way to store files. Like she’d magically remember when she’d sent them out.

  She created a folder under “Ana” called “releases” and retitled the releases “hines.doc” and “polish.doc.”

  She culled information from each release and added it to the proposal, reformatting as she went. She looked at the clock. 6:05. It had taken her twenty minutes to do the easiest part of the proposal. She had at least fifteen more sections to do.

  At seven o’clock, she was only about halfway done. She was going as fast as she possibly could, but it just took time to track down the information from all the zillions of different reports they put together. This was exactly why she never got all the various Word files in order—because by the time her superiors handed the project to her, it was a mere few hours away from the deadline, and she didn’t have time.

  The nerve of Deb! This was not the first time she’d pulled the “I have to get my kid at daycare” excuse for leaving the office at a reasonable hour. It wasn’t that Ana thought parents should leave their kids in daycare 24/7 so they could work around the clock, it was that NO ONE should be expected to work twelve-hour days. What did Deb think, that just because Ana was single and didn’t have kids, she had no life outside of work and thus of course should stay late to finish a project that, Hello! they could have started on three weeks ago when they booked the meeting rather than this afterfuckingnoon? Ga!

  Ana flew through the rest of the proposal. She knew she was doing crappy work. Her plan was to come in at six tomorrow morning and pretty it up when she had a fresh eye instead of eyes that were tearing up with anger and frustration. Then she’d print out seven copies of what would likely be a thirty- or forty-page proposal and hope like hell the copier didn’t break before the meeting at eight A.M.

  This was such bullshit. She was always having to stay late at work. She wouldn’t mind if she were an ER doctor who saved people’s lives or a NASA research scientist or a biologist researching the cure for AIDS, but she marketed software. All she spent her days doing was making a few executives and stockholders rich while working herself into an early grave from depression and anxiety.

  19

  Inside Jokes

  Scott watched Ana come into the room and apologize for being late. As always, he thought she looked beautiful.

  “Where are you at? What have you done so far?” Ana asked the group.

  “Well, we were waiting for you, so we started talking and we sort of didn’t stop,” Chelsey said.

  Scott watched Ana’s eyes light up in horror and he couldn’t help but chuckle. Ana got stressed out over the stupidest stuff. But he loved her anyway.

  “Well, I mean, I guess I was late, we’re even. Okay, so Ram, did you bring the sketches you’ve been working on so we can start practicing?” Ana said.

  “I, I tried to work on them . . . but I don’t know. They’re not really any good. I don’t think there’s anything worth salvaging.”

  “We need to get the scripts done! We have to start memorizing our parts!” Ana yelped.

  “It’s okay,” Jason said, “we’ll help him work on the sections he’s having trouble with. Together, we’ll get it done in no time.”

  The six of them gathered around the table and read through the first script. It was good. It was really good. There were a few places where Ram had written in notes like “fill this out” or “not funny enough.” He was far too hard on himself. His scripts were much further along then he thought. For the next three hours, the six of them tossed around ideas and made suggestions for changes and edits to his first script. Ramiro was the hardest one to please. He didn’t think anything was good enough. He would have kept rewriting and rewriting his work if it hadn’t been for a universal vote from the other five that said his script was finished and he wasn’t allowed to make any more changes. Naturally, all the stuff they were working on would evolve regardless of declared moratoriums on changes—everything was a work in progress right up until the moment they hit the stage in front of a live audience.

  “Okay, how about my script,” Scott said. He got up and began his dance moves. Jason bellowed, “Chuck tried the bar scene. He took out a personal ad. Nothing worked. He was still just a lonely slob. Then he tried three-minute dating!”

  Scott let out one more Roger Rabbit move, and that’s when he farted spectacularly. He looked sheepish as his friends started coughing and laughing and covering their faces. To his chagrin, his perpetual flatulence was legendary among his friends.

  As he frequently said in times of olfactory crises, Ramiro joked, “Dude, your ass could win an Oscar for best supporting actor it’s got so much personality.”

  Jason rushed to open a window.

  “Okay, we have to get back to work,” Ana said, her face contorted in agony. “No,
forget it, I can’t concentrate amid this stench.”

  “I think we need more alcohol,” Scott said. “We can drink our misery away.”

  All night, they’d been pilfering shots of tequila or a beer here and there from the Spur of the Moment bar. At first, Jason wouldn’t have any on moral grounds.

  “Jason, why do you always have to be such a stick in the mud?” Ana said.

  “What kind of world do we live in that having morals is seen as a character flaw?” he said.

  Ana considered this. Maybe he had a point.

  Then Scott said, “Come on Jason, have some. We’re going to have to buy them another bottle of Cuervo anyway. I’ll buy the bottle tomorrow after work and bring it over.”

  Jason accepted that plan. Now that they didn’t have to worry about skimming a small enough amount of liquor that it would go unnoticed, they lost any hesitation to consume Spur of the Moment Theater’s alcohol. In less than an hour, they were sprawled in their chairs.

  “So,” Chelsey slurred—she’d had a beer and two shots, more alcohol than she usually drank in one sitting, “I want to know all of your guys’ dirty secrets. Who’s going to start?”

  “We have no dirty secrets,” Scott said. “We’re all pristine. Clean slates and all that.”

  “I’m gay. I figure that covers me on dirty secrets for the rest of my life,” Ramiro said.

  “Except for the part about how it’s not secret,” Ana pointed out. “Of course Chelsey, we all know your darkest secret, being a Diet Red Stallion addict who refuses help.”

  Chelsey ignored this. “Ram, so . . . I’m sure you’re sick of telling the story about how your parents reacted when you came out?”

  “We haven’t heard the story,” Ana said. “At least I haven’t.”

  “I’ll tell you about my dad and you can guess how he took it. He’s super macho and super Catholic. So there you go. Mom was okay with it, just worried about Dad,” Ramiro said.

  “When did you come out?” Chelsey said.

  “My senior year in high school. Dad freaked. He barely spoke to me that whole year and is still pissed at me. He only let me start coming to family dinners again because Mom and Yo made him.”

  “Who’s Yo?” Chelsey asked.

  “Short for Yolanda, my twin sister.”

  “You’re kidding, you have a twin sister?” Chelsey said.

  “You haven’t met her?” Ana said.

  “She comes to our shows all the time,” Ramiro said.

  “During this year that I’ve worked with you?”

  “Probably. Or actually, maybe not. She and her husband live in Littleton, and they just had a kid a year ago, so they don’t go out as much as they used to.”

  “You guys keep forgetting that I don’t have the history you all do.”

  Marin: “Sorry, hon. Can we win you back over with bootlegged alcohol?”

  Ramiro: “Come on, a delicious shot of tequila. We’ll bring it to you on our hands and knees because you know how much we love you and worship you and couldn’t live life without you.”

  Jason: “It’s true.”

  “Absolutely,” Scott chorused.

  Chelsey pretended to continue to seem pouty. “O-kay,” she finally conceded, doing her best not to smile.

  20

  Daddy’s Girl

  Marin hated to do it, but she was short of money again and needed to cover her rent. She inhaled deeply and dialed her father’s number at work.

  She got Gloria, his secretary, as usual. And was told, as usual, that he was on the other line. “It’s very important,” Marin said. “I’ll hold.”

  Gloria put her on hold, then a few minutes later picked up the line. “He wants to know how much you want.”

  “Can’t I talk to him?” The comment stung. When Marin called her father, it usually was to borrow money. But that was only because she dreaded speaking to him so much she only did it when it was truly necessary.

  “Hold on.”

  A few minutes later, her father’s booming voice came on the line. “How much do you want?” he barked.

  “Dad, hi. How are you?”

  “I’d be great once you grow up and get a real job.” He said it like an order. It was really the only way he knew how to talk. He was a man who knew what he wanted and got it. She was the only thing he couldn’t control and manipulate entirely. “I’m a busy man, Marin. Tell me how much you need and I’ll have Gloria get you a check. One of these days you’re going to have to grow up, but I don’t have time to figure out what the solution for you is now.”

  She wanted to tell him that she and her friends were putting on a show, she wanted to tell him about the bad date she’d gone on with the guy she’d met at the club the other night, she wanted to tell him about her life. But what was the point? The only thing he cared about was money, and it was the one thing she just couldn’t figure out. She wasn’t stupid, but she didn’t have a head for numbers or details. She didn’t always remember to write down how much she’d written a check for, and she never could get her checkbook balanced. And when she tried to figure out how much she was making from her temp jobs, she didn’t always remember to account for taxes being taken out and didn’t always calculate her hours worked correctly. She had no head for mundane things like budgets. She’d just gotten another statement from her bank saying she was overdrawn on her account and she owed them $25 in fees for writing a bad check. She was always receiving these things. She hated herself for racking up so much in stupid bank fees, but she couldn’t seem to stop writing bad checks. She didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of happened. “Seven hundred would do it,” she said quietly.

  He snorted in disgust. “I’ll have Gloria send it out.” Then he hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

  Marin hated that everyone in her family thought she was a flake. What she hated even more was acknowledging they were right.

  21

  Dreams

  It was just after midnight, and Ana couldn’t fall asleep. Yet another hazard of working crazy late hours Thursday through Saturday—it messed up her sleep cycle. When Sunday night came, and she told her body that it must go to sleep now because it had to get up at six in the morning, it paid her no mind. No matter how lethargic she was during the day, yawning dramatically every few minutes or so, staggering through the hours only by virtue of sheer will, when she went to bed, she was suddenly as alert as a tightrope walker on a high wire. If she tried to read or do anything remotely productive, the weary stupor promptly overtook her again, so she’d close her book, shut her eyes, and be zapped by a lighting bolt of nervous energy, in a vicious circle that kept her exhausted.

  So, the only thing left to do was to fantasize. Ana hoped her fantasies would eventually morph into dreams, and she wouldn’t have to negotiate with her body and mind to get the hell to sleep already.

  After she met Jason, her fantasies about her father waltzing into her life bearing riches, villas in Italy, condos in Hawaii, expensive cars, and a life of leisure were replaced with fantasies of Jason finally realizing that she was the woman of his dreams and not Marin. Other times, she didn’t care if he fell in love with her and promptly demanded that they got married—sometimes, she would be happy to settle for a simple romp in the hay.

  The fantasies came in a variety of self-esteem flavors. On the high end of the spectrum, there was the one in which Ana was noticed by a talent scout and immediately flown to New York or L.A. to (a) be in a movie, or (b) perform live as a stand-up comedian. (Though she’d never done stand-up in her life, in her fantasy, she’d already created a side-splitting hour-long routine and had miraculously avoided having to do open mike nights or bombing in front of a crowd, and had emerged, like a baby from a stork delivered whole and without any of the messy and painful birthing rigmarole, as an astonishingly talented comedian.) Jason would (a) see her movie, or (b) see her performance, and bam! just like that, his Marin-clouded vision would clear and he’d finally see that he and Ana were mean
t to be together.

  On the low end of the spectrum were fantasies that she got Jason drunk and he accidentally slept with her or that he just gave up on Marin and settled for her.

  What was wrong with him that he didn’t see how perfect he and Ana were for each other?

  Her feelings for Jason weren’t always overwhelmingly intense. Her lust and love for him seemed to come in waves. She always, always cared for him and admired him, but to sustain that level of passion all the time would have killed her. Sometimes she thought it might be possible for her to find a new guy to occupy her last thoughts before she fell asleep, another guy to fantasize and lust after. But then he would say something or smile just so and she believed him falling in love with her wasn’t so impossible after all, she would be filled with fresh hope.

  She didn’t believe there was only one man on the entire planet who could make her happy. But so far, she hadn’t found another guy who fit the bill as well as Jason did.

  But even if her unrequited love kept on being unrequited, at least her professional dreams were going to take off. She could feel it. This show would change everything. All these nights of performing for peanuts and getting no recognition were going to change. Granted, preparing for it was exhausting, but it was a good learning experience. And working on it made her so happy. If only she could quit her day job and get paid for what she loved, she was sure she wouldn’t be so stressed all the time. She’d sleep well and have a life that was at last fulfilling. She just needed a break . . .

  At last, Ana fell asleep, her daydreams blending into her sleeping dreams.

  22

  Bruising Pinky Fingers on the DELETE Key

  Chelsey didn’t have to work at the club on Monday, so she spent the day at Spur of the Moment, using the computer in the office to work on a skit. Well, that had been her plan, but for the last three hours, all she’d done was type sentences and then delete them. The screen remained obstinately, unimaginatively blank for the better part of the time she’d attempted to labor. She had hit the delete key so many times, she was worried she’d bruised her pinky finger.