Bond Girl (24 page)

Annie slowly pushed me onto the red velour couch lining the wall. “You're losing it,” she said as her eyes darted around the room.

Annie and I sat in silence while we got our nails done, and my blood pressure slowly returned to normal. We moved to the dryers and only then, when Annie felt certain that I had calmed down enough to talk rationally, did we speak.

“Look,” she said gently. “There's nothing I can say to make you feel better and I know that. The only thing that I
can
do is point out what an awful person he is. You don't deserve to be treated like this.”

I didn't say anything. I noticed a piece of fuzz stuck in the wet polish on my thumb.

Fantastic.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked hopefully. “Let's get some air. Come shopping with me. I don't want you to go home alone.”

“I won't be alone. I have my buddies in the wine rack to keep me company.”

I glanced at my phone sitting on the counter next to the dryer. I'm a masochist. I know.

“Alex, he's not going to call you. The sooner you accept it, the better off you'll be.”

“Maybe he's really sick,” I cried.

“He's not.”

“I know.”

I really hated crying in public. Even if “public” meant two manicurists and one friend. That was still three people too many.

Beep.
 My head snapped forward. I looked over at my phone, its flashing red light taunting me. I pounced on it. And then, I felt my chest tighten as the all-too-familiar feelings of hope and disappointment collided at the center of my rib cage.

SMS from Kieriakis, Rick:

I heard it was your birthday. I'd love to help you celebrate. Meet me for dinner this week.

Annie read the message and turned my phone off. “That's it. You're not going to stare at this thing for another minute. The only person on earth who is a bigger asshole than Will is Rick.”

I shrugged my shoulders in response. I refused to accept the fact that I was somehow complicit in the tragedy of my own life. My voice cracked as I whispered, “I can't go to work tomorrow.”

“Yes, you can. If you let him know how hurt you are, it will be one hundred times worse.”

“Look at me, Annie! All he has to do is lay eyes on me and he'll be able to tell how upset I am. I'm a mess! Do you have any painkillers?” I begged.

“Sorry, no narcotics.”

“Some friend you are. Can we go for cocktails?”

“Drinking is a bad idea. No booze.”

It didn't seem like I had much of a choice. “Yes, Mom.”

I
woke up feeling only one thing: anger. I was planning on telling Will exactly what I thought of him the first chance I had, and if anyone overheard me, so be it.

I pretended to be very busy reading the finance section of the paper as I stepped onto the floor, careful to avert my eyes from Will's desk. As I turned the corner and headed down the long aisle toward my desk, Patty jumped up from her seat and ran toward me. I'd forgotten I'd told Patty that Will and I were going out on Saturday. I tried to muster a smile and pretend I didn't feel like someone had thrown my insides into a Cuisinart and hit “puree.” Patty linked her arm in mine and spun me around. Without breaking stride she said cheerily, “Hi, we are walking the other way now.”

“Yes, I realize that. Why?”

“We need to talk.”

“Where are we going?” I asked. She didn't answer. “Patty, just leave me alone. Honestly, if you knew the weekend I had, you'd get why I simply can't handle any drama this morning. I'm telling you right now, I'll lose it. Whatever this is about, it can wait,” I said.

“I think I do have an idea about your weekend. Trust me here, Alex. We're going to the ladies' room on the sixth floor. There's never anyone in there.”

Panic overwhelmed me. If she thought we needed to leave the floor, she was about to tell me something very, very bad and didn't want anyone else to witness my impending meltdown.

She stated matter-of-factly, “You don't look good.”

“No shit.”

“Seriously, Alex.”

“Seriously, Patty. No shit.”

“I'm sorry this happened. I hate him!” she said through gritted teeth.

I immediately dug my heels into the carpet and pulled backward like a stubborn dog that didn't want to be dragged from the park by its leash. “Wait, how do you know what happened?”

“I don't think
you
know what happened. If you did, I doubt you'd be here.”

Whatever fear I had in anticipation of what Patty was going to tell me was immediately replaced by shock at what we witnessed when we entered the ladies' room. Standing in front of us, in all of her silicone glory, was Baby Gap. She had a small portable blow-dryer plugged into the socket above the sink and was drying her hair in the mirror. Since it was 7:00
A.M.
, and there were no showers in the building, it would've been weird enough to find her in the ladies' room with a wet head and a hair dryer. What was
really
shocking was that she was practically naked. Her red lace bra, which barely contained her surgically enhanced bust, and a matching red thong revealed more than I ever needed to see. She was barefoot (gross!) and had lotions, cosmetics, perfume, and a razor laid out on the counter in front of her. Apparently, we weren't the only ones escaping to the sixth floor for privacy. I didn't know where to focus my eyes, on her naked torso or her face. Despite my best efforts, there was nowhere to look except her cups, which runnethed over.

“Good morning, ladies!” Hannah said cheerfully.

Patty gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Oh God,” I said as I averted my eyes. “You didn't sleep in the conference room again, did you?”

“What?” Patty asked.

Hannah laughed. “Oh! No, I just had a really late night last night. I was at Cipriani with a bunch of the guys from emerging markets and then we went to Marquee and then to some diner. Those guys are so much fun! I had a blast!”

“I bet they were nice to you,” Patty said flatly, clearly annoyed that her plan was thrown off track by a half-naked bimbo. “So you didn't go home?”

“Well, not to
my
 home. You guys know how it is.”

We stared at her, and without saying a word left the room. I heard her call sweetly as the door closed behind us, “Do me a favor, don't tell anyone, okay?”

I guess I knew which one of the three groups of women on Wall Street Baby Gap fell into.

Patty covered her mouth but managed to mumble, “Did that really just happen? Alex, she's naked! With a full overnight kit! I think if you spend enough time in this building, you start to completely lose your marbles.”

Sounded about right.

Plan B, Patty informed me, was to try the bathroom on the fourth floor. I leaned against the sinks and finally noticed that she had the
Boston Globe
tucked under her arm. Weird.

She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, blowing a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes off her face. “I need to show you something. And you're not going to want to see it, but it's being passed around to everyone on the desk, and if I don't show it to you here, you're going to see it up there, and I think it's better this way.”

“What could possibly be in a Boston paper that would require we come all the way down here? Why do you even have a newspaper from Boston? You're scaring me.” My chest constricted as I was overcome with an impending sense of dread.

“One of the traders from the Boston office sent it to Chick via FedEx. It's bad, Alex.” She opened the paper and pointed to a picture with a small blurb written underneath. Once the receptors in my brain processed what I was looking at, I ran into a stall and threw up.

“Alex, I'm so sorry. I didn't want you to see it in front of everyone.”

I thought I felt sick before, but no.
That
wasn't sick.
This
was sick.
Ms. Vanessa Manerro of Wellesley, Massachusetts, to marry Mr. William Patrick of New York
. There was a picture. Saturday night, while I was sitting at home waiting for Will to pick me up for our date, he was with his fiancée. While I was sending him text messages and worrying if something had happened to him, he was probably drinking a bottle of champagne with this oddly familiar-looking girl. She was wearing a Burberry headband. The same one Will had given me. I dropped the newspaper on the floor.

“I'm sorry. I must have just had a stroke or something. That really looked like the engagement announcements from the
Boston Globe
.” I laughed out loud the way people do right before a big white van pulls up and someone throws a straitjacket on them. “I mean, could you imagine that? If he was engaged?” I was still laughing. When I looked at Patty, she wasn't. It was real. It was in the newspaper
.

“He's . . .
engaged
?” I sobbed, as self-hatred overwhelmed me. “How could he be engaged without me knowing? I must be the dumbest human being on earth!” I picked the paper up off the floor and scanned the article . . .
to be married in Boston . . . career in finance . . . secretary at Cromwell Pierce.

Cromwell Pierce? She works here. We both work at Cromwell. Well, technically I work; she files other people's work. How did he manage to date two girls at the same firm at the same time? How did I manage to be one of them?
I felt light-headed.

“Alex, say something.”

I drew my hands in tight little fists and felt my nails dig into my palms as the tears began to flow. “She works HERE?” I said, my voice barely recognizable as my own. I started to shake with anger; unrelenting, all-consuming, mind-blowing anger. “Patty!” My voice reverberated off the ceramic tiles. “How did I not
know
?”

“She works in the Boston office! How the hell
could
you have known?”

Boston. Will told me he was going to Boston. For business. The night he took me to see the skyline from his friend's roof. I'm too stupid to live.

I threw the paper in the garbage can as hard as I could. It landed with a giant
thud
on top of balled-up paper towels and tissues. I stared at Patty blankly . . . engaged . . . as in . . . to be married.

“What did he say to you on Saturday?” she asked. “He must have known this was going to run. Did he honestly think you wouldn't see it? It's in the
Boston Globe,
for God's sake! Fine, it's not the
New York Times
, but it's still a major newspaper!”

“He said he was sick,” I sobbed.

“Oh yeah, he's sick all right. He's fucking insane is what he is.”

“Patty,” I wailed. “How the hell am I supposed to go back up there and pretend like nothing is wrong?”

“You won't. I'm going to tell Chick I ran into you in the bathroom and you were getting sick and went home,” she said, banging her hand on the counter.

I wiped my mouth and my eyes and tried once again to compose myself. Patty gave me a hug, and when we separated, the entire shoulder of her light blue sweater was stained with my makeup and tears. Great.

“Thanks,” I whispered as I tried to pull myself together enough to make it out of the building without anyone noticing me. “If I had seen this in front of him . . .” I trailed off because the thought of it was so horrifying I couldn't even manage to finish my sentence.

“Go home,” she said. “It could be worse. You could be her. As bad as this is, at least you know the truth.”

“Yeah, I've got that going for me.”

Chick was right. Dating a colleague wasn't just a bad idea. It was the single worst decision I had ever made in my life.

Sixteen

The Sugar Sweetie

T
he ring of my phone woke me from my fitful, sedative-induced sleep later that afternoon. It was Liv, but I didn't answer. I couldn't bring myself to talk about it. I was never going to read a newspaper again. From now on I'd get my news the same way the majority of Americans do—by watching “Weekend Update” on
Saturday Night Live.

I listened to Liv's message. She told me that if it made me feel any better she thought the girl looked terrible in the picture that ran online. (It didn't.) And she reminded me that I was better off than the poor girl in the picture who had no idea her fiancé was carrying on another relationship in New York while she was picking out china patterns in Boston. (She may have had a point.)

I decided to go for a walk, thinking that maybe the fresh air would help combat my depression. I threw on jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt. I walked south on Sixth Avenue, but I had no idea where I was going. I wandered aimlessly, so self-absorbed with my own misery I wasn't paying attention to anything going on around me. How could I? My entire life had just been destroyed. It made it hard to focus on anything, I was running on autopilot. I made the mistake of taking my eyes off the traffic light in front of me. As I stepped into the street, looking up at the blue sky and diaphanous clouds, I was immediately knocked on my ass by a delivery man on a bicycle. He tried to ring his bell to warn me to get back on the sidewalk, but it was too late. He had two choices: take out the girl stepping off the curb or swerve into traffic and become roadkill himself.

He barely slowed down as he took me out, although he did make time to turn and scream at me what I can only imagine were really offensive and unoriginal obscenities in a foreign language. I grabbed my purse, which thankfully hadn't exploded all over the street, and examined myself for injuries. My jeans had ripped, my left knee was bloodied, and the palm of my left hand was scraped raw. I was so frazzled I did the only thing a self-respecting, bleeding, depressed New Yorker could do: I went into a restaurant and sat at the bar.

The bartender, a burly guy with bone structure that looked like it had been chiseled out of granite, greeted me. “Hey, wow, are you okay?” he asked, looking at my bloody knee.

“Oh yeah, I'm fine. I was just hoping I could get a glass of pinot grigio. A big one.”

He checked the clock on the wall. “Sure. We're in between services right now so the kitchen is closed. But the bar is open, and even if it wasn't, I don't think I'd have the heart to turn out a girl who so obviously needs a cocktail.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He filled a glass and placed it on a napkin in front of me. Then he turned away and tended to something at the sink. I took a sip of my wine. Just what the doctor ordered.

“Here,” he said, turning back toward me with an outstretched arm. He handed me a makeshift ice pack—cubes in a white bar rag—and I placed it on my knee.

“Thanks,” I said, touched at the unexpected kindness from a total stranger. “I'm Alex, nice to meet you.”

“Matt Matthews,” he said as he shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, too. Truth be told I'm happy you came in. This time of day is boring, and I'm happy to have the company. Daytime bartending is a lonely gig.” Matt was good-looking in the sort of way that your contractor or the guy who works in the corner hardware store is good-looking: he looked like he had lived a little. His arms—or every bit of them I could see—were covered in ornate tattoos. He looked like he had lots of stories to tell, and like he could fix things. And that was
never
unattractive.

“I can imagine,” I said. “So how long have you been bartending here?”

“Six months. I'm actually training to be a chef.”

“A chef? That's cool.”

“Thanks, I think so. So what happened to you? Not too many girls come wandering in here in the middle of the afternoon bleeding and looking for a drink. If they did, this job would be a lot more fun.”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” I said.

“I'm a bartender. You'd be surprised what I believe.”

“I got run over by a delivery guy on a bike. He didn't even stop. It was like I was his own personal speed bump.” I dabbed my scraped-up hand with a cocktail napkin.

“You know, I'm always surprised that doesn't happen more often. I've almost been mowed down on more than one occasion. I've never met anyone who actually got run over though.”

“Today's your lucky day.”

“Apparently so. Got time for another round? Or do you have to get back to work?”

I checked my watch. Four thirty. I was feeling pretty good for 4:30, but there was no harm in having just one more, right?

I nodded. “Another round, Matt Matthews, thanks.”

I considered clarifying why I wasn't at work, and for a second I thought telling him would fall under the category of Too Much Information. But, then I decided, why not? Or maybe the wine decided for me. Either way, I continued. “No, no job that I have to get back to. I'm actually taking the day off for mental health purposes. Hence, my being able to sit at a bar in the middle of the day.”

“Mental health day, huh? What happened?” he asked.

“This is going to be one of those questions you asked that you wished you hadn't.”

“I want to hear it,” he assured me. “Let's have it.”

“Well, I was pseudo-dating a guy I worked with, but no one else in the office knew about it. At least, I don't think they knew, or at least, I pray to God they didn't.”

“And what do you do exactly?”

“Finance.”

“Wall Street. Figures. There's not a lot of love for you guys out there these days.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, he said he didn't want a serious relationship, which I respected, so we kept it casual. He was supposed to take me to dinner on Saturday night for my birthday, but then he didn't call me or answer any of my messages and I didn't hear from him until almost eleven o'clock when he sent me a text message telling me he was sick. Then when I got to work this morning, ready to kill him, I discovered that his engagement announcement was in yesterday's
Boston Globe
. So, in an attempt to not go completely insane, I'm taking a day or two off.”

Matt crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked at me skeptically.

“Did that really happen?”

“Scout's honor.”

“Wow. Well, if it makes you feel better, it sounds like you're better off without him.” He waited a minute and when I didn't say anything he continued. “I was engaged once. When I was twenty-two, I proposed to my high school girlfriend.”

“Really? What happened?”

Matt opened a fresh bottle of pinot and poured one for himself. “Well, she was being all weird about a month before the wedding. She stopped returning calls and when I was with her she always seemed like she wasn't really paying attention to me, you know? So one day, I went to her house, and I sat her down and I asked her what was going on.”

“And?”

“Turns out, she'd decided she was too young to get married. She wanted to ‘experience life' before she was ‘tied down'; she wanted to go to Los Angeles and try to be an actress. And she wanted to go alone. I was heartbroken, but I let her go. Now she's doing soft-core porn to pay the bills and living with some guy named Blade. And I'm here, going to culinary school and talking to you. So see, things tend to work out for the best. Even if you don't think so now, eventually you'll see you're better off.” He pointed to my half-full wineglass. “This one's on the house. Happy birthday. The year can only get better from here.”

“I hope that's true.” I sighed. “So Matt Matthews, interesting name. Your parents weren't very original, were they?”

“Not particularly. One of the reasons I left Pittsburgh and came here was because everything there was so boring. I needed to be around some exciting people. You know, like people who are run over by delivery guys in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Tell me about cooking school. What made you want to be a chef?”

“After my ex went to L.A., I moved here and spent a few years busing tables and peeling potatoes at a bunch of different places to save money for tuition. Then I enrolled in the Manhattan Culinary Institute. One day I'd like to own my own restaurant, so I want to try and learn as much about the business as I can.”

“That sounds awesome. I like to cook. I watched someone on TV cook a chicken and make brownies yesterday, and she looked really happy. Is it hard to get in?”

“The application process is easy. You just go online and fill out a form, give them your uniform size, and a deposit. If you go full-time, in six months you're certified. If you go part-time like me, it takes nine months, but that's good because then you can keep working. Less money to have to take out in loans.”

“What happens if there's stuff you don't like to eat, never mind cook? I don't like mayonnaise. I don't think I could cook with that. Would that be a problem?”

Matt laughed. “Yes. But there's a pastry arts section, too. Do you have an aversion to sugar?”

“Never met a sweetener I didn't like.”

“Well, if you're looking for a fresh start . . .” Matt pulled one of the cocktail napkins off the top of the stack at the end of the bar and wrote a web address on it, “ . . . here you go. Check it out. You meet a ton of fun people and are taught by some of the most famous chefs around.”

I folded the napkin in half and stuck it in the pocket of my purse. It was 6:00 now, and I was definitely not sober. “I should probably go before I drink too much and get hit by a bus on my way home.” I wobbled as I stood, and my knee buckled from the alcohol and throbbing pain. “Thanks for the company today. This was fun. I hope your ex-fiancée comes back a wrinkled, bleached-blond prune when she's thirty, crying to you about how Blade left her for a twenty-one-year-old butt-double.”

“Ha! Thanks, Alex! I hope the jerk at your office goes prematurely bald and gets the clap. Look both ways when you cross the street from now on, okay?”

While I walked home, I thought about what Matt had said. Alex Garrett, Pastry Chef. That sounded much better than Alex Garrett, Bond Girl. Everyone says do what you love, and money and happiness will follow. Sure, I might have just downed a bottle of wine on an empty stomach, but I really thought this was something for me to consider. I could be a cake decorator. That would be a satisfying profession. I'd be a part of the happiest day in a person's life. For the first time since I found out Will was engaged, I felt optimistic. 
I have direction. I have found my calling; I have found my way out of this mess.
I will be the Cupcake Queen, the Pastry Princess, the Sugar Sweetie (Reese would like that one).

Half an hour later, I snuggled under a blanket on my couch and reluctantly turned on the news to see what had been going on in the markets. Things were not good. This was not the time to be out of the office. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to go in tomorrow, or I wouldn't have a job to go back to at all.

I
admit it. I have woken up on my couch on more than one occasion. Tuesday morning I eyed the empty bottle of wine on the coffee table next to my laptop, and immediately checked my sent items to make sure that I hadn't done something stupid like resign to Chick over e-mail. Fortunately, I hadn't. Unfortunately, I had done something equally stupid. I stared at the conspicuous message in my in-box and clicked on it.

MSG FROM MCI

Dear Ms. Garrett,

Thank you very much for your application to the Manhattan Culinary Institute Pastry Arts Program. We have received your deposit of $6,000 and will be expecting monthly installments of $6,000 for the next six months for a total of $42,000. You will receive a schedule of classes as well as the appropriate medical forms shortly. You will need to have this information returned to the Admissions Office before the first day of class on 4/30/08 to be eligible for the summer semester. Thank you again for your interest in the Pastry Arts Program and we look forward to meeting you.

Regards,

Betty Blum, Admissions Officer

Oh my God. I had spent $6,000 on pastry school. Starting in two weeks. I doubted they had a refund policy for drunk enrollers. If there was one thing my “mental health day” had proven, it was that I was certifiably insane. It was definitely time to reenter the real world.

A
s soon as I logged in when I got back to work Will sent me an e-mail that said, “I'm sorry, please let me explain.”

I replied with an equally succinct message: “Fuck you.” The only problem was that writing that particular four-letter expletive flagged the compliance department, and Chick received a very angry phone call from the e-mail police about the language his employees were using in interoffice communication.

“Stop writing ‘fuck' in your e-mails, Girlie. I have compliance on my ass now because of you.”

“I'm sorry, Chick. I didn't mean it,” I said with remorse.

“I don't really care one way or the other, but you can get fired for stuff like this. Are you feeling better?”

“A little.”

“Good. Get to work.”

MSG FROM PATRICK, WILLIAM:

Alex, please talk to me . . .

MSG FROM GARRETT, ALEX:

FU&K YOU!

Compliance couldn't complain about that.

My personal life wasn't the only thing falling apart. March 2008 had marked the beginning of the market implosion and things had only gotten worse since then. People had bought houses they couldn't afford and spent money they didn't have. Wall Street had sold their debt to investors, making a lot of people very wealthy along the way, but now it was causing a lot of problems. The bonds were defaulting. Investment banks, Wall Street powerhouses, were losing money on the trades. Some of them went bankrupt—overnight. People were being laid off. People were being evicted. The entire country blamed us. Our jobs, stressful and high pressured under the best of circumstances, had become intolerable. The funny thing is, no one asked us if we should be risking all our money on these trades. No one asked me if I was comfortable with leveraging America to the hilt. No one recognized the fact that the CEO didn't come down here and ask us what we thought before he committed our money and our stock and risked the firm that we loved. The way the public saw it, we were responsible for everything that was wrong with America. I was waiting to open the paper one day and read that Wall Street had killed Kennedy
and
framed Roger Rabbit.