On the Other Side

by Michelle Janine Robinson

  “Under the circumstances, I need to do all I can to make sure I have a job when all of this is over. Somehow, I don’t think Neal and I are going to live happily ever after. The last thing I need is to be divorced and unemployed.”

  “I know that’s right. I’m going to take a quick shower and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  As Carmella turned and walked away, Damita realized she wasn’t alone and was glad she had been honest with Carmella.

  “Carmella?”

  Carmella turned around.

  “Thank you,” Damita said.

  “No problem. You know I got your back.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  • • •

  About an hour after Carmella had left, the messenger showed up with Damita’s files. She opened up the box and inside was a get-well card, signed by everyone in the office. She wondered what they would all think if they knew what had really happened to her.

  She was still in pain from the broken rib and instead of sitting at her desk, decided to work from her bed with the aid of her laptop. Unfortunately, even that was uncomfortable.

  One of the things Damita enjoyed most about her position as an investment banker was interacting with her clients. She had a reputation for being at the top of the game when it came to pitching to clients and winning the deal. Her ability to come up with the best strategies was what built her career. Unfortunately, because she was home nursing her injuries, Underhill had suggested she use the time to run research and screens on a list of companies to help identify where there might be opportunities for new deals and transactions. It was a necessary component of their business, but it was the least favorite part of what Damita did. As far as she was concerned, it was grunt work. More than anything she wanted to be back at one hundred percent, so she could interact with her clients. Instead she was doing research and compiling pitch books. After putting together what she thought would be an impressive list of potential companies to do business with, she turned her attention to her S.W.O.T. analysis, which analyzed strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Next she would tackle the Comparable Company Analysis.

  The other downside to working from home was that her assistant, Carol, wasn’t there to help her put together the PowerPoint presentation she was working on. Just when she thought the pain from her broken rib couldn’t get much worse and her eyes were about to cross from compiling data, she got a reprieve when the doorbell rang.

  “Open up, miss. It’s your mother.”

  “Mom!”

  “I want you to know that the only reason I didn’t come by here yesterday, right after the funeral, is because I knew Carmella was going to beat me to it.”

  “And, here I thought you talked her into coming,” Damita said.

  “I was going to, but I knew I didn’t have to.” She glanced around as she walked in. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. Neal’s going to be away for a few weeks.”

  “Is he now? Let me guess. Rehab?”

  “Wow, how do you do that?”

  “I’m going to tell you the same thing I used to tell you when you were a little girl; it’s because I’m old that I know so much, not in spite of it. Everything you kids are doing, I’ve experienced, in one way or another, throughout my lifetime.”

  “You don’t have to tell me how wise you are. I already know.”

  “And, don’t try to butter me up either. I came over here to talk some damn sense into you. I can’t believe that my intelligent, resourceful daughter is letting some man put his hands on her. Your father and I raised you to have more strength and courage than that. You’re going to pack your bags right now and come home with me.”

  “Mom, I will, but not yet. You have to trust that I know what I’m doing, okay?”

  “All I know is that one of your best friends died and instead of all of us being together to comfort each other you were here hiding out. I knew as soon as you walked in the funeral home what was going on. Let me see.”

  No makeup to hide her bruises, Karen took her daughter’s face in her hands and touched all the places where Neal had left his mark. “This makes me so mad. I want to knock the shit out of that crazy motherfucker.”

  “Mom!”

  Damita hadn’t heard her mother use profanity often. When she was a kid she knew if her mother was using four-letter words it was time to step back.

  “Don’t you Mom me. I’m glad your father is not here to see this. He would have been over here with Betsy ready to open a can of whoop-ass.”

  As much as she wanted to keep her mother’s knowledge of her beating confined to the bruises on her face, she couldn’t help but laugh at what her mother had said and that’s when she grabbed her torso.

  She immediately lifted her daughter’s shirt, to which Damita jumped.

  “Baby, what did he do to you? Oh my God! Have you been to the hospital? Your ribs could be broken.”

  “I’ve been to the hospital,” she lied.

  It was the first time, as an adult, that she had ever lied to her mother. She hoped it would be the last.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After weeks of recuperation and boredom, Damita finally returned to work. When she walked through the doors of the World Trade Center, she had the most overwhelming feeling of an imposter in her own life. Something as simple as coming to work seemed so foreign. She felt it immediately upon her return. She was little more than a shell of her old self. One of her colleagues, Wendy, noticed it immediately.

  “Hey, Superstar!” Wendy greeted Damita, on her first day back.

  “Hey!”

  She gazed at Damita quizzically. “You okay?” Wendy asked.

  “Me? Sure, I’m fine.”

  “Okay.”

  Wendy decided to leave it alone. She wasn’t sure if it was the car accident, getting married, her return to work or a combination of all three, but she had worked with her long enough to know she wasn’t okay.

  “I’m so glad to see you. If you had taken another week I would have gone completely insane. This old boy network is even more intolerable without you here.”

  “Does that mean you missed me?” Damita responded.

  “Hell, yes, I missed you.”

  “We girls have to stick together.” She paused. “You know, Wendy, I’ve been thinking about that. We should reach out to Tina more often and welcome her into the fold, so to speak.”

  “Okay, that must have been some good nookie you got while you were on your honeymoon. Or, maybe it’s some kind of head injury you got in that car accident? Aren’t you the same women that not even two months ago, said Tina was sleeping her way to the top?”

  “I know, but that was wrong and catty of me and I don’t want to continue that kind of behavior. It’s hard enough breaking through that glass ceiling. The last thing we girls should be doing is helping to hold each other back. We’re stronger if we support one another. We shouldn’t be tearing each other down.”

  “Wow! Look who went and got married and came back a grownup. I’m officially ashamed of myself. However, I do agree with you. I’ll try if you try.”

  “Great!”

  Wendy and Damita seldom spoke to Tina, unless it pertained to work.

  While in the staff break room, Tina walked in.

  “Good morning, Tina,” Damita said.

  “Good morning, Damita.”

  “Hey, Tina! Damita and I are going to hit Fitzpatrick’s tonight. Wanna come with?” Wendy asked.

  “Sure, I would love to!”

  For a moment Damita considered saying no. She was concerned about whether or not it would be okay with Neal. That’s when she remembered he was still in rehab.

  Damita smiled at the thought of freedom and an opportunity to unwind. She walked back to her office with an uncustomary spring in her step. She was slowly returning to normal. Before she married Neal, she would go on and on, with anyone who would listen, about her stuffy office with the rotten view and how much she wanted one of the corner of
fices one day. Now, after all that happened her stuffy office felt more like an oasis.

  Once she got into the swing of things, Damita was surprised at how good it felt to be back. At first she was concerned that people would badger her about the accident, the wedding and the trip to Jamaica that she had never actually taken. Surprisingly, the questions were kept to a minimum. That was the nice thing about her industry. Her colleagues were equally as driven as she was. Typically, they didn’t spend a great deal of time on idle chitchat. Instead, office talk was mostly about who scored the biggest client or who put together the best pitch. And, of course, the occasional office gossip.

  Damita heard a knock on her office door, just before Mr. Underhill opened the door and walked in.

  “Whitmore, I mean Westman, you got a minute?”

  “Sure, Mr. Underhill. Please come in. Have a seat. Also, feel free to continue to call me Whitmore. I won’t be using my married name when it involves my work and I don’t believe in that hyphen nonsense.”

  He took a seat at one of the two red wine, tufted leather guest chairs directly across from Damita’s glass desk.

  Mr. Underhill looked at Damita intently. “When you didn’t come back to work after a week, as you had planned, I was concerned. I thought maybe you had opted for the life of a housewife. It’s nice to see you’re the same old Damita Whitmore; driven as ever.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I have no intention of changing. The life of a housewife is definitely not for me. So, no worries; I’m as driven as ever.”

  “If only I had ten more like you, I’d be set for life.”

  “I’m so glad you don’t have ten more like me. You might be set for life but I wouldn’t. I would no longer be a unique commodity if there were ten more exactly like me. Besides, you may not have ten more, like me, but you do have at least two.”

  Mr. Underhill raised his eyebrows and looked at Damita doubtfully. “Oh, do I now?”

  “Yes, you do,” she responded confidently.

  “Who exactly did you have in mind?” Mr. Underhill asked.

  “Tina and Wendy. They’re badasses in their own right.”

  Mr. Underhill stared at Damita with a look of surprise. “Tina? Now, Wendy I agree with slightly, but Tina? I don’t know what my old man was thinking when he hired her. Well, actually, I do know what he was thinking,” he said, smiling.

  “Have I ever steered you wrong? I’m telling you, you’re underestimating Tina. She knows this business and, best of all, she knows people. If I were in the middle of trying to close a huge deal I’d rather have a Tina than a Kevin any day.”

  Mr. Underhill moved his chair closer to Damita’s paper-filled glass desk and placed his folded hands on top, looking Damita directly in her eyes.

  “You tell me. What’s wrong with Kevin?” Mr. Underhill asked.

  “Kevin is great at research, crunching numbers and running down the best companies, but when it comes to making the pitch he falls short. His social skills are sorely lacking.”

  Just when Damita thought Mr. Underhill would dispute her observations, he suddenly stood up.

  “Welcome back, Whitmore. I’ll take it all under advisement. And Whitmore, you’ve been missed.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Underhill.”

  “Now get back to work.”

  “Slave driver,” she joked.

  “Yes, I am, especially since you need to make up for lost time.”

  Mr. Underhill left Damita’s office, leaving her to do exactly what he said; make up for lost time. She looked at her desk with exasperation and prepared for long hours ahead.

  After working for a couple of hours, she realized she was able to get back on track quicker than she thought. She got up from the desk, shut the door and said the words she wanted to say the moment she spoke to Underhill.

  “Yes! I’m back!”

  Just when Damita thought the day was going great, the office chatterbox, Dotty, cornered her in the break room with all sorts of questions about Jamaica.

  Dotty was a passive-aggressive junior broker, with mediocre skill. She had been with the company for fifteen years and watched as others with less time were promoted or took better offers at other companies. Her matronly clothing and sensible shoes had many convinced that she was the living personification of the kindly grandma figure. Damita was not so convinced. On more than one occasion Dotty had made it a point to inform Mr. Underhill of the comings and goings of those working at the firm, including the hours they arrived at work, their drinking habits at lunch, as well as their sexual trysts. Damita thought she was intrusive and unkind and resembled no kindly grandmother she ever saw. Dotty was wearing a gray wool skirt, that appeared to be two sizes too large, in the middle of the summer. She had paired the skirt with a Hawaiian-style, short-sleeved shirt and gray and purple knee socks. Her hair’s red dye job looked more like orange than red and her attempt at a perm was nothing more than a frizzy mess. She had completely removed her eyebrows and had drawn arched replacements in a reddish-brown shade that made her look constantly surprised. One look at her face and it was obvious what her salary was spent on. She clearly had Botox injections regularly and at least one facelift. The leathery texture of her skin revealed her love for sun worship. As if all of that wasn’t enough, Damita was sure the woman must have had a hearing problem, since she always spoke very loudly.

  “Did you make it to Ocho Rios?” Dotty asked loudly.

  “No, we didn’t.”

  Dotty giggled. “You guys probably didn’t have time, being on your honeymoon and all. I’m sure you spent most of your time in the honeymoon suite. The next time you go to Jamaica, you simply must visit Dunn’s River Falls in Ocho Rios. It’s the best!”

  “I’ll be sure to check it out the next time I’m in Jamaica,” Damita responded.

  “You have to,” Dotty agreed.

  “I hate to be rude, Dotty, but I’ve got a mountain of work waiting for me.”

  “Isn’t that the way when you go on vacation? You come back and everything has snowballed,” said Dotty.

  “It sure does.”

  Damita turned, looked at Wendy and squinted her eyes.

  Once Damita was back in her office, she called Wendy on the phone.

  “What happened to the escape clause?” Damita asked.

  “It serves you right. You left me here alone for weeks while you honeymooned and convalesced. Who do you think answered all her questions about you while you were gone? I owed you.”

  “Oh so that’s how it goes. I can’t believe you betrayed the clause. Whenever one of us is trapped by one of the chatterboxes, we execute the escape clause. You were supposed to save me from having to listen to her drone on and on about Dunn’s River Falls and Ocho Rios. This means war!”

  Wendy and Damita laughed hysterically.

  “God, how I missed this,” Damita said.

  “Are you serious? I would have thought you were considering extending that vacation to a lifetime gig. I was sure you weren’t coming back when I found out you had supposedly been in a car accident.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “Yeah, with you marrying that rich husband of yours, a lot of people around here didn’t expect you to come back, even before you called and said you had been in an accident.”

  “I don’t simply work for the money. I’d go crazy if I stopped doing this. I love it. Even if I weren’t doing this, specifically, I definitely wouldn’t become a housewife. That ain’t me.”

  “I would kill to be in your shoes. I would give this up in a heartbeat,” Wendy said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  • • •

  After work, Tina, Wendy and Damita stopped for a drink at Fitzpatrick’s. Damita was fascinated with Tina and the number of men she attracted without half trying.

  “How do you do that?” Damita asked.

  “Do what?” Tina responded.

  “Every man that comes in here hones in on you immediately. Even the g
ay ones can’t help but stare at you. Is it a pheromones thing or what?”

  Tina laughed. “No, it’s not a pheromones thing. As a female there are two approaches most women take when interacting with men; the direct or the indirect approach. I prefer the direct approach. I don’t lower my head or flutter my eyes. I don’t shy away. That doesn’t mean that I chase men. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. In my experience, most men don’t like to be chased. What I do is dare them to approach me, with a look or with body language. I’ve been doing it so long, it’s now a part of me. I attract men this way without even trying. It’s like fishing. Within minutes I’ve got a fish on my hook and he doesn’t even know how he was caught.”

  Wendy came back from the bathroom in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. “So why haven’t you used this valuable tool to net you a rich husband?”

  “Despite what everyone believes, I’m not on the hunt for a sugar daddy. I’m actually good at what I do and I’ve worked very hard to cultivate my career. Just because I look the way that I do, everyone assumes I’m some brainless twit. It used to bother me a great deal, but it doesn’t anymore. I finally realize that everyone else’s misconception could actually be my secret weapon.”

  “So, in other words, you’re crazy like a fox?” Damita added.

  “Precisely.”

  After spending a couple of hours at Fitzpatrick’s, Tina suggested they go someplace else.

  “Where are we going?” Damita asked.

  “As much fun as I’ve had downing drinks with you ladies tonight at Underhill, Simpson and Whitehall’s home away from home, Fitzpatrick’s Pub, I’m anxious to see something a bit more stimulating than bowls of peanuts and buffalo wings, and a television screen with sports playing.”

  “So, where to?” Wendy asked.

  “The West Side Highway! Wendy, can you drive or should we get a cab?”

  “I haven’t had that much to drink. I’ll drive.”

  “Then, let’s pay the tab and go have some real fun.”

  “I’ve got the bill,” Wendy said.

  “No, Wendy, we can split it,” said Damita.

  “I never got a chance to give you a wedding shower.”