Diary of a Working Girl (28 page)

He continues, “When I’m sleeping all alone in my lonely bed in London, I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll have only your love to keep me warm.”

It’s not really that cold now, since it’s spring and all, but it is a wonderful thought. And he probably has central air-conditioning, which can get extremely chilly.

I

Thinking over the last month,I sigh at the dreamy haze over the whole thing. The memories weave together in the most beautiful patina of images. We fit together perfectly. The candlelit dinners, the exquisite lovemaking, the randy late-night telephone calls from his office, imploring he come over immediately. And then there was that hint about going to Provence (which was never brought up again, but still, the summer is very far off), and other future-oriented allusions, like restaurants we must try and movies we must see. Then there are the gifts and the compliments: “You are so beautiful,” “My god I love the way you kiss!” and most of all, the feeling—there is no way in the world I can feel this much without him feeling the same way. It’s just not possible.

Before he leaves, he takes a full hour to gush over how much he will miss me. He takes another half hour to kiss me good-bye, and before he finally leaves the door, he grabs both sides of my neck, looks me in the face, and says, “Splendid.”

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F i f t e e n

The True Meaning of
Splendid

Is there nothing more moving than the feeling of woe resulting from two lovers who cannot be together? I take to wearing black, like a Sicilian widow and speaking in low, hushed tones.

Tonight, after I inform Samantha, “And the last word he said was, ‘Splendid,’ ” I sigh and look to the ceiling, as if heaven is up there in the air ventilation duct.

“What’s splendid?” Samantha is saying. She takes a sip of wine, leans her elbow on the bar, rests her chin on it, and with a deep breath, continues, “The fact that he is separated from his
loooooooovvvvvvve
? That he is woebegone and devastated? How
will
you be able to live without each other for a whole month? Oh the horror! The horror!” She throws the back of her hand to her forehead here, all Scarlet O’Hara–like.

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these days. I note that when Liam returns, I’ll have to set up a meeting between the two of them so that she can see how great he is once and for all. I bring the conversation round to a topic I’m more comfortable with. “So where is Mr. Seth taking you tonight?”

This is their third date. I am so thrilled for her. I mean, Seth is a good, down-to-earth kind of guy. He’s not my type at all, but everyone’s got their own checklist.

“He did the sweetest thing the other day!” she says, smacking my arm—rather roughly.

“What’s that?” I ask, wondering whether there’s another side to Seth that I may have missed.

“Well, I told him that I had to start reading the
Wall Street Journal
every day now that I’m working for that financial advertising agency, and so, he ordered me a subscription. He instructed them to put a little card with the first delivery, and it said, “To the financial wizard-to-be!”

I can’t help it, my eyebrows raise and the corners of my mouth descend into a frown.

“What?” she asks. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“Sure!” I say, trying to act like I’ve never heard anything more romantic. It is
thoughtful.
But really. A newspaper? And a
financial
newspaper at that? Even the way he phrased it. Surely something passionate could never be paired with the word ‘wizard’? What could be more
un
romantic?

“Lane? Are you in there? Don’t you understand that the most romantic thing someone can do is to think of something unique that would be important to only you? Flowers take no effort, honey.”

Right, and that’s why florists can’t even order enough flowers on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, right? I’m starting to wonder if Samantha and I are really meant to be friends at all. She’s just 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 222

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so—weird. I mean Joanne is obsessed with the whole practicality thing, but at least she’s good for a romantic Pete story every once and again.

“Name one thing that Liam has done for you that showed he really knew
you.
Not that he knew women, but that he knew Lane—

what makes her tick. Did you ever mention something and then he remembered it and commemorated it with a unique token?”

Well, Liam and I don’t really talk about me all that much. We don’t really talk that much at all. But that’s because we don’t
need
words. We speak the language of love. And that involves fingers and toes and stomachs and thighs. . . .

But, you know, I do know quite a lot about him. I know about his family, his business, his multiple global dwellings, his money, his favorite restaurants, and that he is allergic to broccoli. I guess it would be accurate to say that he doesn’t know much about me.

But that is so easy to fix!

I’ll just bring up the subject of me and I’m sure he’ll be delighted to spend an entire evening poring over my photo albums—

the mall hair from high school, the snaps of me crawling out of my diapers. It will be a hoot!

Here we both look around at the crowd, because it’s getting a bit tense between us. Samantha is very hostile. I spot a man who I’m sure is British across the bar. He’s got that tallish air and a great, pointy nose. But it turns out that the distinguishing factors of British men are not very distinguishing, as he turns out to be from Staten Island, and uses the phrase “fouggetaboudit.” I guess sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be.

Samantha is actually meeting Seth here in a few minutes anyway, and while you’d think that could be awkward, it really turns out to be just fine. It’s funny, though. Seeing them together really is quite romantic. They do seem to fit nicely. And if I didn’t know 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 223

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any better, I’d think that that odd tugging in my heart when he whispered a little joke in her ear and she laughed was . . . jealousy.

Me and Liam have lots of secrets. Lots. Or we
will have
when he comes back anyway.

I

By the time Wednesday rolls around, and I haven’t heard from Liam yet, I am so impatient, I can’t help but take out the scrap of paper he wrote his phone number on and stare at it. I know I said that I would wait for him to call—since this is the way things are supposed to go, but, really, the pressure is too much to bear. And I really want to get started telling him something about me. I’ve rehearsed a whole narrative of the time I was in the play of
The Wizard of Oz
in the fifth grade and I came in with all of these rewrites of the script, whereby Dorothy and the scarecrow fall in love and get to live in Oz.

I stare and stare and stare until the numbers form one blurry mass.

I shouldn’t be worried. He’s just very busy. He only has one more month to tie up all of the loose ends before he moves to New York for good and then we can be together forever and we’ll have plenty of time to learn more things about each other.

But all of the negative vibes coming from my so-called friends have started to get the best of me. I mean, I’ve managed to keep myself busy at work most of the time, what with the big meeting coming up soon, but every time I write something in the
Diary of
a Working Girl
—it’s just doubtful, stupid stuff. My mind is getting me into an hysterical, paranoid state. I keep hearing that phrase in my head, “Too good to be true.” I can allay my fears for a few minutes at a time by replaying some of our wonderful moments in my head. I can still feel him—heavy and lovely—and I remember that 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 224

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smell, and I know this has always been my dream. And I have it right now at this very moment. And so I try to remind myself to enjoy it. But in the end this hollow feeling creeps in. It’s just love, I’m sure. Of course, I am not yet familiar with all of its symptoms.

But just to feel better, I’d love to just speak with him—even if it’s only for a second.

And then I’m sure that he will be the wonderful, sweet, romantic Liam that I know and everything will be perfect. I’m sure. I probably shouldn’t even call. He’s probably going to call me any minute. He probably just doesn’t want to bother me at work, and by the time it’s five here, he’s so tired he just falls asleep by the phone waiting to call me.

So I’ll just work and not think about it at all.

This works for about ten seconds until all of the words I am proofing on my page say, “Liam.”

Without any effort on my part, my hand picks up the telephone, dials the number and I sit, waiting, shaking. And finally, after nothing—no ringing, busy signal or anything else, a recording picks up and says, “The number you have dialed is incorrect, please hang up and dial again.” All the ones and zeros you have to dial on international calls are so confusing that I have no idea where I’ve gone wrong. Or how to fix it.

I try again, altering the configuration a bit—the zero first, the two ones second. I’m in tears at this point. It’s horrible. Something as simple as a phone call seems to be the sole thing keeping me from him. After each failed attempt, I am slamming the phone down on the receiver now.

“You okay, Lane?” John asks over the wall. He can stand up and look right over, since he’s so tall, and he does this now. It’s too late to say yes, because he sees me crying and shaking.

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“What’s wrong?” he asks, coming around to my cubey and, after hesitating for a couple of seconds, puts his hand on my back.

“Nothing, nothing.” I stare through the line of buttons on his shirt. And without shifting my gaze, I do my best to undesperately explain my desperate needs. “It’s just, do you know how to make an international call? I thought I did, but I can’t seem to make this number go through.”

John takes a look at me; I feel him take my energy in with the sort of expression that shows someone knows there’s something more going on here than an incorrectly dialed phone number. But being the shy type, John would never come out to suggest something as bold as that.

“Sure. Let’s see,” he says, holding the paper close to his face.

And like an angel from heaven, he dials the number for me, puts the receiver to my face, and I wait intently, so happy to hear the double-ring sound. But when a woman’s cockney voice answers,

“Tate’s carpet cleaning services,” I am completely thrown off course and not sure what to say.

Of course! This is just one of his family’s other businesses. He hasn’t mentioned it before, but maybe he just doesn’t like to talk about it. After all, carpet cleaning isn’t very glamorous. Although, I’m not sure how carpet cleaning fits under the media umbrella.

But don’t smart investors dabble in
all
sectors of the marketplace, just to balance things out? I’ve definitely read that before. Yes, a

“balanced portfolio” is what it’s called. It’s all making sense now.

Doesn’t Phillip Morris own Kraft? There’s no obvious relation there. See, silly! You’re just getting crazy now. I instruct myself to take a deep breath. And then I take a deep breath before venturing,

“Is Liam Kampo in?”

“Liam? You mean Liam O’Neill?”

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Is it possible he uses another last name at this company? Why would he do that? Maybe they keep the carpet cleaning all hush-hush because again, it is so unchic, and so he uses his mother’s maiden name for this end of the business. I am so desperate I will tell myself anything in order for this to be true, for this to be the right number.

“Yes. Can I speak with him?”

“Hold please,” says the woman on the other end. The seconds I am waiting feel like hours, days even, and the Muzak version of

“Oops! I Did It Again,” is not doing anything to soothe my mind, or my stomach, which is doing this crazy flip-flop thing because I feel as if the fate of my entire existence depends on whether or not Liam picks up the line. An innocent Post-it note is suffering a slow death as I tear it apart piece by piece.

“Hello, Liam here,” says a voice.

But it is not the voice I know. Not the voice that said, “Splendid,” to me on that last evening. This is a distinctly Irish voice.

“Hello? Anyone there?” the voice asks, but I can’t bring myself to speak. I just sit with the receiver to my face, thinking that maybe, if I just stay on the line and don’t hang up, then there is still a chance. I feel like a prank caller, breathing heavily into the receiver, until . . . finally, he hangs up.
“Wanker.”

And the busy signal comes, and there are no tears in my eyes.

There is no expression on my face. I fear I will have to get this telephone surgically removed, because I cannot command my hand to hang it up. Questions are running through my mind. Why would he give me the wrong number? Why hasn’t he called me?

And although I play with the possibility that perhaps he just wrote it incorrectly, I’m not buying into this theory. I feel deceived.

I try to ground myself with the memory of his hand tracing 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 227

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around my eye. For one second I can close my eyes and know the feeling.

But, embarrassingly enough, it is only a matter of seconds until I start down a road of self-doubt that can only lead to bad things.

My stomach feels unusually large. I am chiding myself for my fast-food binges, the gym sessions I never got to. I am suddenly an over-anxious, calling too much, fucking too poorly, badly dressed, conversationally challenged moron, with a big nose and a horrible personality. I feel as if I’ve eaten bad fish—sick to my stomach, and suddenly I could fall asleep right in my chair, sitting up straight, with the phone to my ear. The pile of papers in my inbox seems impossible to look at, much less sort, type, fax, format. I have to go home. I can’t be here now. It’s the only thing to do.