[2013] Note to Self- Change the Locks

by Heather Balog

  So sorry! Too busy being a miserable wretch to answer. Do leave a message! Maybe I’ll get back to you. Or maybe you can go screw yourself because you probably have a job and a husband and didn’t completely muck up your life. I remember thinking, Oh God, that was such a Simon thing to say. And then, I continued to sob for the next fifteen minutes at the thought of Simon. I missed Simon. I missed him so much my chest hurt at the mere mention of his name.

  A few months after we split and I had a chance to cool down from “the incident”, I wanted to forgive him. I even had my cell phone in my hand, poised to call. Nora screamed at me when I told her I was going to call him. She reminded me of what an asshole he was and how he didn’t deserve my forgiveness. I fought the urge and haven’t contacted him since.

  But after I got fired, I wanted to call him again. Cry to him about losing my job. Tell him I was an idiot for leaving him. Most of all, I wanted to tell him to come home and make me feel better. Make it all right again. I reached for the phone and at that very moment, it rang in my hand. I accidentally hit the button to answer it.

  “Elizabeth, God damn it! Why don’t you answer your fucking phone?” Sonny was screaming at me on the other end. “I called you at least ten times and your office phone goes right to voice mail.”

  “What do you want, Sonny?” I cut him off, ready to hang up. It was imperative to call Simon before I lost my nerve.

  “You need to get to Overlook Hospital, now, Elizabeth. Dad’s had a heart attack.”

  The phone fell from my hand and clattered to the floor, creating a hallow echo.

  Not even noticing that I was wearing pajama bottoms and an old tee shirt so threadbare that it had holes in it, I dashed out of the apartment and hailed the first cab I encountered.

  “Get me to Overlook Hospital,” I ordered the cabbie.

  He wrinkled his brow at me and retorted in a deep New York accent, “Lady there ain’t no Overlook in this city.”

  “Not in the city. In New Jersey. Summit. Step on it,” I growled.

  “I don’t go Jersey. Get out.” He pointed to the door.

  Without warning, the tears started rolling down my face.

  “Oh Jesus Christ, lady. Don’t start crying in my cab.”

  “I’m sorry,” I sniffled, aware that snot was now running down my face. I scooted close to the partition and leaned my head on the bullet proof plastic as I tried to explain my sudden emotional upheaval.

  “I can’t help it. It’s my father. He’s in the hospital and my brother called and said he had a heart attack and he might die and I never told him that I loved him and I’ve been such a disappointment and I really screwed up. I want to tell him I’m sorry I screwed up. He was a good dad, he really was. We were never super close but I just wanted to please him. I thought that maybe I could be this great journalist or writer and then maybe he would be proud of me, you know? But I never got to do that and then I married a guy that he didn’t like and then we got divorced and I lost my job…”

  The cabbie suddenly lurched away from the curb, sending me sailing into the back of the seat. “Okay, lady. We’re going to Jersey. Just please shut up.”

  As I gazed out the window, I spent the entire cab ride outlining what I was going to say to my father in my head. I would tell him that I loved him and that even though I hadn’t made it as a writer yet, I would make him proud. And he would get to see me make him proud. He would make it. He had to make. He was my Dad.

  I arrived at the hospital too late. Dad died ten minutes before I got there. I could never stop thinking, if I had only answered my phone the first time it rang, maybe I would have gotten to tell him all those things that I spouted out to the cabbie, those thoughts that I had only had in my head. I never even knew where those words came from. It wasn’t like I had ever mulled them over before. That speech just popped into my mouth.

  Needless to say, my mother was a wreck. Scratch that, she was out of her mind insane with grief and confusion. My parents had been together since they were seventeen and once she left her parents’ house, my Dad had always taken care of her every need. While my mother had cooked and cleaned and provided for us emotionally and physically, my Dad had really been the one in charge of running the household.

  Mom was clueless as to what to do next. She didn’t know if Dad had a will, she had no idea about insurance policies, nor did she even know where my father kept the checkbook. It wasn’t like he was sick or anything and able to prepare her for what to do when he died. One minute he was teeing off on the seventeenth hole and in a few short hours he was dead. I was pretty sure my father would have been ticked off by the irony of not finishing his golf game.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for your interview?” Jim jogged me out of my depressing contemplations.

  “Oh, shit, yeah.” I hastily hugged Jim again, trying not to spend any more time lingering on his rippling biceps. I was, after all, getting married soon.

  “Hey listen, Elizabeth. Call me and we can get a cup of coffee sometime, huh?” Jim offered me a business card which I happily accepted.

  “It was great seeing you, Jim.”

  I dashed onto the elevator as he called out, “You too, kid!”

  On the ride up, I checked the time at least three times, willing it to stop. I was now fifteen minutes late. My hope for this final interview had flown out the window. When the doors opened to the thirty-sixth floor, I dashed to Mr. Granger’s reception desk. After announcing that I had a four-thirty appointment, the secretary give me an icy stare, tapped her watch and declared her boss was “done” interviewing.

  Dejected, I headed back to the elevator. Well, now you really will have plenty of time to work on your writing. You’re pretty much out of other options. As the elevator doors slammed in my face and started descending back to the lobby, I happened to glance at Jim’s card. I didn’t know they made cards for security guards in office lobbies. I nearly dropped the damn thing like it was on fire.

  It read: “For a hot time, call Jim O’Baby, Escort.”

  Holy crap, he’s a male prostitute! And he asked me out for coffee! Oh man, he probably thinks that I’m pathetic and I need a date! How mortifying! I don’t need a date. I have a fiancé at home!

  Just then, the elevator doors opened and I stood back in the lobby. And Jim was still at the desk. After hastily shoving the business card in the front pocket of my blazer, I attempted to shield my face with my portfolio as I dashed toward the exit. My stiletto heels made a deafening click-clack noise on the marble floor. Darn me for having to be fashionable!

  “Elizabeth!” Damn it, he heard me. To be fair, I think people in the next office building could hear the clacking of my shoes on that floor.

  I dropped the portfolio to my side and smiled broadly. “Hi, Jim. Just leaving. Great seeing you. I’ll be sure to give you a shout!” I tried to continue on my way, but Jim grabbed my arm.

  “How did your interview go?” He glanced at his watch. “That was really quick.”

  I shrugged. “Well, there really wasn’t any interview. I was late.”

  Frowning, Jim replied, “That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Once again I shrugged and tossed my hands up in the air. “Hey, what can I do? It’s not like I would have gotten the job anyway.”

  “No, don’t say that! I remember you were a really amazing writer as a kid.”

  Blushing, I didn’t feel the need to point out that I had actually been interviewing for an editorial position. I wasn’t a writer. “Really? You think so?” Much to my dismay, I was twirling my hair like a love sick teenager. Stop flirting with the male whore, Elizabeth.

  Jim looked shocked. “Uh, yeah! You didn’t know that?”

  “No, I always just thought other people wouldn’t understand my stuff. I never really shared it with anyone. Just my teachers.” Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever shared it with Jim. I eyed Jim suspiciously. “How do you know I used to write?”

  Jim held up
his hands in a mock stick-up. “The secret’s out. Your brothers and I used to read your writing.”

  “What?” I nearly knocked Jim—the bulky man that he was—to the floor. “Are you kidding me?” I punched him in the arm. My hand nearly reverberated on his flexed muscle. “Those were my private thoughts! You guys absolutely suck!”

  Jim laughed. “Hey, it was a million years ago. That’s all water under the bridge, kid.” He checked his watch again. “Say, I’m getting out of work in about ten minutes. What do you say we get that cup of coffee now?”

  For a second, I considered the card that I had shoved into my pocket. Did it really matter what Jim did on the side? I wasn’t looking for an escort, and quite frankly, I didn’t think Jim was looking for “date”. I had known the guy practically my whole life. Well, ever since I could remember. He just called me “kid”. Meeting him for a cup of coffee would be harmless.

  Unless you don’t want it to be harmless, my subconscious pointed out. “Shut up,” I growled out loud.

  “What?” Jim wore a perplexed expression.

  “Oh, nothing.” I nodded affirmatively. “Yes, I’d love to go get a cup of coffee.” I consulted the time on my cell phone before I added, “Well, actually, a cup of tea. It’s a little too late for caffeine for me.”

  “You do know that some teas have more caffeine than coffee, right?”

  “What?” You could have knocked me over with a feather. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep after Simon and I broke up! I had developed a ridiculously addictive tea habit after our divorce. Nora accused me off pining after his “tea drinking, English arse”, but I simply insisted that I enjoyed tea.

  “Decaf green tea should be okay,” Jim told me as he reached under the counter for his lunch bag.

  “Oh, I’ll get that, then.” I smiled as he joined me on the other side of the counter.

  “After you, m’ lady.” Jim swept his arm in front of himself dramatically.

  I couldn’t help thinking, No, after you. I wanted to check out his ass. Cut it out! I smiled weakly and pushed against the revolving door until I found myself out on the street with Jim trailing behind me.

  “There’s a coffee shop right over there.” Jim pointed to the corner.

  We wove in between the crowds on the busy city street. It was shortly after five o’clock and the masses were exiting from their office buildings. Like zombies, they mindlessly rushed to taxis or toward the train station.

  Jim caught up to me and grabbed my arm, linking it through his. Wow, this feels weird. Sort of like Nora. Except with a tingly sensation running up and down my inner thighs.

  “Look at these poor souls with their nine to five grind.” Jim swept his free hand over the crowd before us. “You should be elated that you didn’t get that job today, Elizabeth. You’d be stuck right there with them.”

  I tried to look at him while we were walking, but it was difficult. He was a least a foot taller than I was. “Isn’t your job a nine to fiver, too?”

  Jim laughed. “Oh that’s just to kill time. It’s not my real job.”

  I blushed, realizing he meant the escort business. I tittered nervously. “Real job?”

  Jim held the door to the coffee shop open for me. “Come in and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  I stepped inside the bustling shop and Jim told me to get a table. “I’ll grab you a green tea. No sense in us both standing at the counter like cattle waiting to be served.”

  I tried to offer him money, but he waved it away. “Please, I make plenty of money.” He winked as he spoke, rendering me speechless for a moment.

  “Ok. Milk and two sugars,” I finally stammered as he walked away.

  I scooped up a plush couch for us by the window. As much as New York was busy and dirty, I always chose a seat by a window if I could—people watching was a guilty pleasure of mine. Perhaps it was that way for all writers. I could stare at a person or group of people for a mere few seconds and create an instant back story for them. Often, I got so wrapped up in the fake lives of the people I was watching that I ignored the people right next to me. Maybe that’s why it had always been so difficult for me to make real friends.

  There was a girl in high school who sat in front of me in freshman English and on the first day of school, I became fascinated with her. I knew her name was Annie, but I didn’t know much else. Her hair was always disheveled, she wore no make-up, and sweats seemed to be her daily uniform. I saw her in the halls over the course of the first month and she was always alone, bearing a vacant expression. Her shoulders slumped and her face seemed drawn.

  I imagined that Annie was an abused child of crack dealers and became a prostitute at an early age, because her father forced her to turn tricks and then he pocketed the money. When she turned thirteen, she ran away and slept in a car with her older sister, trying to escape their life of poverty and crime. She had to steal money from little kids for food and was constantly evading the police.

  I became so intrigued with Annie’s made-up life that I never even noticed that she was becoming less unkempt as the weeks passed. Her hair was combed, she started wearing make-up, and she was definitely clean. If I had stopped living in my fantasy world, I would have noticed that I could smell her apple shampoo from where I sat. One day in English, Annie turned around to pass back papers and smiled at me with her perfectly straight, white teeth. I was floored. Who was this girl? This was no longer a slovenly child subjected to a life of destitution. This was a normal teenager, like all the others around me.

  After one conversation with the mystery Annie, I discovered that on the day before school started, she had broken up with her boyfriend of two years. She was so distraught by the break-up, she didn’t want to even get out of bed. Her mother, an art teacher, and her father, a vet, forced her to go to school despite her pain. She was reluctant at first, but soon found new friends and another boyfriend. Typical broken hearted teenaged saga. I was so upset that her story was so much less interesting than the one I had invented that I found myself avoiding her for the rest of the school year.

  Most of the time now, I only created stories for people passing by on the street. And I haven’t even done that in ages. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t have any inspiration to start writing again.

  I considered this as I settled into the spongy seat and gazed out the window at the rush hour crowd. There was a heavyset woman who was dressed rather fancily for a weekday, standing on the corner. I decided rather impulsively that her name was Wanda. She glanced around nervously as if she was waiting for something. I immediately began to imagine that she was on the first date that she agreed to since her magnificent weight loss of a hundred and fifty pounds. She drank vodka in a flask at work that day because she was so nervous about the date.

  The guy, we’ll call him Joe, was a coworker. She had fantasized about him since the day she started her job as a lawyer at his firm. He claimed he was so amazed at her weight loss, he could not resist asking her on a date. A date which he now stood her up on. In actuality, he only asked Wanda out because he lost a bet with another co-worker. His punishment was to ask out the fat girl and leave her hanging.

  Wanda would become so upset by being stood up that she would eat herself back up to her previous weight in less than three months. Seeing that Joe’s callous deceit had been the cause for her weight gain, she would start to slowly poison Joe’s food at work until one day, he dropped dead.

  The story unfolded in my brain and my fingers began to twitch. I unzipped my portfolio case and retrieved my stack of sticky notes. Glancing at them briefly and noticing nothing but scrawls about the ASPCA and power outages, I crumpled them up in a ball.

  Write, Elizabeth. Write a story. Write your story. And if you’re not brave enough, write that girl’s story.

  Once my pen hit the paper, it began flying. I didn’t even feel like I was in control of it anymore. I went through an entire stack of post-its, penning the story of this pathetic woman on the corner before J
im set a cup in front of me.

  “Whatcha’ writing?” He settled onto the couch, right next to me, craning his neck to read my notes.

  Pulling them possessively toward my body, I turned red with embarrassment. “Nothing,” I mumbled as I shoved the notes back into the portfolio.

  “Seriously, I would love to see what you’re writing.” Jim smiled encouragingly as he took a sip from his cup.

  I shook my head. “I’m too embarrassed to show it to you.”

  Confused, Jim asked, “Well, how do you think you’re going to get a job writing if you won’t show anyone what you’re writing?”

  Picking at the lid of the cup, I answered, “Probably because I’ll never get a writing job. I’ve been interviewing for editor jobs.”

  Jim sipped his latte or coffee or whatever it was before asking, “Editor is not cool?”

  I waved my hand. “No, no, editor is totally cool. I learned a lot as editor.” My shoulders slumped. “But it’s not where I thought I would be at this point in my life.”

  “You always wanted to write, huh?”

  Nodding, I found myself telling Jim, “Yeah, ever since I could remember. I used to sit at my Grandma’s old fashioned typewriter and just bang away at the keys all day. I don’t even know if my stories made sense, but I loved writing them. When I graduated and I got my job editing, I was so happy. I mean, it was a paycheck and I thought it was a surefire way to get into writing.” I glumly stared down at my tea.

  “Not what you wanted, was it?”

  “Well, it was a great job. Tremendous learning experience. But it sucked fixing everyone else’s work when I had no time to create my own.”

  Jim’s head bobbed up and down. “I hear ya. My job was stifling me, too. Letting people in the building, checking to see if they have appointments, good day ma’am, can I get you a cab, sir? Blah, blah, blah. If I hadn’t started my escort service, I think I’d be suicidal.” He attempted a laugh, but I wasn’t sure how much of a joke that comment actually was.