Hot Mess (6 page)

“Look, Takeru, we’re going to close this deal with or without your involvement. Get it, sensei? I mean, I wanna pop open a Sapporo with you, too, but we gotta work out the details of this before anyone’s bustin’ out the
spricy
crunchy tuna rolls and
flied lice
.”

Was he serious? I fiddled with my folder and decided that he was probably just kidding around with an old friend. Or maybe talking to no one and trying to joke with me?

“Hey, you must be Emma, c’mon in, have a seat,” he said loudly, snapping off his headset, ignoring the continued squawking on the other end. “I’m Derek Dorfman, the head honcho around these parts.” I smiled politely. “Some people call me the boss, the bossinator, bossman, bossmanerino. But
you
can call me Derek.”

This was the Welcome Wagon for corporate America.

“So!” he clapped his hands loudly, making me jump. “Tell me about yourself.”

I took a deep breath and tried to get comfortable, sliding myself back in the chair. My sweaty acrylic pants made a small fartlike squeak, and I blushed and rattled off my interests, hobbies, typing skills, and superhuman work ethic. I might have even included the words “move the needle”—something I’d once heard my dad’s coworker say—to which Derek gave an appreciative nod.

“Let me tell you something, Em. Can I call you Em?” No pause for my response. “I’m pretty confident that you can type a letter and organize my filing system. I mean, I wouldn’t be the boss here if I couldn’t read people, you know what I’m sayin’?” He smiled self-importantly and paused, apparently so I could ooh and aah at his lofty status, which I dutifully did. “But I want to know more about Emma Freeman
the individual.
Are you compatible with MediaInc on a
mano y mano
level?”

I had
no
idea what he was talking about but I smiled sycophantically and enthused that I was.

“Like, Em baby,” he pointed toward the “Personal Interests” section of my resume. “Tell me about this musical comedy troupe you’re in.” Crap. I may have exaggerated my fifth-grade starring role in
Stars, Stripes, ’n’ Sharp Notes
into a full-blown extracurricular. “What skills have you learned from singing and performing that could be applied to a work environment?”

“Um…well, like now. The acting is helping.”

Derek gave me an encouraging “Uh-huh.”

“And, well, just watch this.” I spread my fingers into jazz hands, shimmied them around, and sang,
“Ya dah dah dah dah, hire me!”
Then I struck a very Fosse finale pose. “You see, performing can apply to any situation.”

What the flip was I doing? Bombing this interview, that’s what. Did I
seriously
just do jazz hands? Good God. I started a mental list of the restaurants around Union Square where I could waitress this summer.

“That’s great, Em.” To my complete surprise, his tone wasn’t sarcastic at all. “I used to do a little acting myself.” He contorted his face into an exaggerated frown and then slowly moved his hand upward, over his face. When his hand crossed his mouth, he was grinning. “Pretty good, right? So, Em, what’s your weakness?”

Before I could answer he shouted,
“Men! Okay, then, chillin’, chillin’, mindin’ my business….”

He stopped mid-rap, leaning over his desk to hold an invisible mic in my face, and waited for me to take over. I shrugged my shoulders in complete confusion. Was he singing Salt-N-Pepa? For real? I think I was still a fetus when this song came out.

When I came up lyrically empty-handed, and more than a little horrified, he continued himself, proceeding to rap all four verses of “Shoop.” I finally stopped him after
“I love you in your big jeans, you give me nice dreams, you make me wanna scream, ‘Oooo, oooo, oooo!’”
and sputtered out a question regarding hours and lunch breaks.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. All that can be sorted out tomorrow.”

“To—tomorrow?” I stammered. Did this mean I was hired? I hadn’t expected to start so soon.

“Yeah, I’m going to need you to come back tomorrow around the same time for a second interview. Company policy, two interviews. But brush up on your hip-hop and rap, girlfriend. Tomorrow is Tupac Tuesday! Ha!” He laughed at his own joke for a good fifteen seconds before I awkwardly got up to leave.

Did all of that really happen or could I be hallucinating?

That night at home, Rach grilled me on the new/ possible job.

“I don’t know,” I said, stirring the powdered sauce into my mac and cheese. “He’s really funny and quirky but in a good way I think. I mean, who wants to work with someone who’s uptight? Okay, so his jokes aren’t really
that
funny, but he’s old. Grown-ups are never funny, except for Jon Stewart.”

I was trying to put a positive spin on things. Like it or not, this was my only option for a summer internship, and if I wanted the college resume builder and the guaranteed afternoon AC, I had to take it. Plus, there was no way Ma ’n’ Pa Freeman were going to keep pumping the allowance money into my bank account if they knew I was just hanging out watching
Project Runway
marathons.

Through bites of mac, I told Rachel about my victimization via the white man cover of “Shoop.” Even though it had been slightly unnerving when it happened, it was a pretty good story. She almost snarfed her Diet Dr Pepper, she was laughing so hard.

“Okay, what happened at your interview? Did you have to dance to TLC or something?” I asked.

She told me about her interview. It had gone wonderfully—she was offered the internship, the
paid
internship, and was going to start next Monday.

“But it’s, like, barely enough to support my Claire’s Accessories habit,” she said in response to my jaw dropping at the word “paid.” I didn’t even know that interns could get paid. She could tell I was superjealous and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. With a swift subject change, she asked what were the plans for my birthday the next day. “How about a fancy celebration dinner or something?” Then she turned and screamed toward Jayla’s room, “Jay, is there an Outback in the city?”

A mud-masked Jayla popped her head out of the doorway. “What’s an outback? Like a place with garden seating?”

“No, like the steakhouse. You know, where you go for Mother’s Day and stuff,” Rachel explained.

Ignoring how so not New York we were, Jayla asked, “Why don’t we go to Gramercy Tavern? The maître d’ loves me.” She popped herself back into her room.

I had no idea what or where Gramercy Tavern was, but it sounded way better than any Bloomin’ Onion. And I was amped that Jayla would want to come to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. She was twenty-one and glamorous and was by far going to be the most fabulous person I’d ever had at my birthday party.

In the kitchen, I turned to Rachel and mouthed a silent “Oh my God!” and she gave me a thumbs-up.

“Thanks, Jay. Really cool!” Then I realized that I might have a deal-breaker. I frowned a little. “Uhhh…but I kind of have to invite my cousin Jake. Is that cool?” I was yelling, hoping that she’d hear me over the running water she’d just turned on in her bathroom.

“The one who looks like a starfish?” she hollered back.

Rachel and I wrinkled our noses. “A
starfish
?”

With her mask only half washed off, she ducked her head back out. “Yeah, you know, like a starfish that’s turned over—little tiny eyes and his round puckery mouth. And that mop of hair he’s got is, like, the tentacles and stuff.”

I hadn’t taken bio since freshman year, but I was pretty sure that starfish didn’t have tentacles. Though she was kind of right about the comparison. That was a pretty good description of him. Even so, I still felt the need to defend my cousin. “Oh, I think he’s cute!”

“Cute for a crustacean,” she murmured, and went back to her beauty routine.

The next day—my eighteenth birthday!—I trekked back over to MediaInc again to meet with Derek. And this time when I got out of the subway, I walked the right way. I’d like to say that was a sign of good things to come at the interview, but that would be a lie.

He was reclining back in his massive chair with his legs crossed on his desk when I entered his office. “Emmmmmmmmmmmahhhhh!” he yelled like a soccer commentator announcing a goal.

“Hi, Mr. Dorfman.”

“Uh-oh! I didn’t know my father was here,” he said, laughing loudly at yet another unfunny joke. “Hey, let me ask you something, kid. Do you know anything about this MySpace craze that’s just starting?”

MySpace was way beyond just starting, but like so many adults, he’d found one morsel of pop culture that his friends didn’t know about and my guess was he tried to bring it up whenever he could. It was like when my mom first learned the word “blog.” She used it to describe anything that ran on electricity. “This blender is broken. Em, why don’t you go blog about it and see if you can get it fixed?”

Even though he didn’t ask me to, I took a seat in the same chair I was in yesterday. I just felt too weird lurking in the doorway. “Uh, yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s really cool.”

He informed me that he’d asked MediaInc’s design engineers to spend a few days making a page for him.

“Well, you can make a page yourself in about ten minutes if you want to. You can just upload pictures and a song and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Upload? Okay, now you’ve lost me.”

I suppressed a heavy sigh and said that I’d be happy to explain it all to him sometime.

“Can you just show me your page so I can get an idea of what it looks like?”

I broke into a cold sweat. It had been weeks since I’d updated my profile and I was almost positive that Kyle’s most recent comment on my page said something about me being a slut for leaving him in the burbs all summer. I also really didn’t need him to see my “You’re Just Jealous, BITCH” avatar that sparkled pink. Rachel and I had put them on as a joke, but to a stranger I’d just look like a psychotic brat.

I squirmed in my chair, trying to think of an excuse to get out of this that didn’t sound too shady. “Ooh yeah,” I stalled. “My page is, um, broken. Yep, see that happens once in a while. You can only look at a page once a day, and I already did this morning, so we’d have to wait until tomorrow.”

Talking to adults about technology was like discussing Santa Claus with younger cousins—you just make it up as you go along.

I leaned back in my chair—eliciting another fart-y sound from the leather—relieved that I’d managed to avoid showing him my page.

He grunted with disappointment and asked about “Facialbook.”

“You mean
Facebook
?” I bit my lip, trying not to giggle. “It’s mostly just students on that site.”

“Well, I took a wine-tasting class at the Learning Tree last year, does that count?”

I dug my fingernails into my leg to keep from laughing out loud…or crying, I couldn’t tell which. “Gee, Derek, I don’t know. I’m going to say probably not.”

He finally let it go and briefed me on the history of MediaInc, most of which I tuned out, thinking about what other avatars I needed to replace. Finally he stood up and extended his hand.

“Emma, I think you’ll do really well here. But hopefully not better than me!” He paused, signaling this was the time for me to laugh, which I did. “Welcome aboard! You can start next Monday.” He put his hand out for what I thought was going to be a congratulations shake, but turned out to be more of a congratulations phalanges crunch.

I was still shaking the pain out of my fingers when I pushed my way through the revolving doors. Out onto the street, I did a little skip and called my mom so she could gush about how proud of me she was.

“Well, I think it’s going to be really cool,” I said. “Derek is a little weird, but totally nice and I think he sees a lot of potential in me.”

Yeah, he was lame and kind of unbalanced, but that’s fun, right? Maybe he’d write me all these rad college letters and hire me on once I graduated from college. God, I was
totally
on the career path! I’d probably be CEO of the Empire State Building by the time I was twenty-one.

I was so excited that my trip home went by in a total blur. It was actually surprising that I managed to snap out of my desk-job daze in time to get out at Union Square. I rushed up to the apartment, slammed the door behind me, and jumped up and down squealing to my roommates.

“You can tell us everything over your birthday dinner,” Rachel said as she and Jayla scooted me into the shower to get ready.

Jayla did my hair and makeup—I looked like Victoria Beckham, but I sort of liked it—and even let me borrow a Marc Jacobs purse. “You can’t walk into Gramercy Tavern looking like you just bought out the Ellen DeGeneres garage sale.”

As I was deciding whether to tuck my newly straightened hair behind my ears or let it hang, I heard the buzzer, then Rachel letting Jake in. I grabbed my borrowed MJ and joined everyone in the living room, where Jake was in the process of making halfhearted small talk with Rachel while watching Jayla out of the corner of his eye. To my reluctant amusement, Jayla kept mouthing “Starfish” whenever he wasn’t looking. I nearly peed my black H&Ms laughing.

Dinner was a lavish affair, with incredible plates of lobster and steaks, and even a bottle of red wine!

When we first sat down, Jayla asked, “Hey, how do you all feel about a cab?”

We had just sat down about five seconds before, so I was bummed that Jayla was already ready to leave my big one-eight celebration. “Oh, I just kind of assumed that we were going to walk back home. It’s not that far.” I glanced down at the menu, trying not to show how hurt I was.

Jayla and Jake looked at each other, confused, then started cracking up. “Cab, like
cabernet,
” Jake explained, “it’s a kind of wine. And you, my young cousin, are only allowed to have half a glass, okay?”

Was I on
Dork Factor
right now? Seriously, it was like Jake was trying to see just how geeky he could make me feel before I cracked.

Jayla insisted on paying because she said she wasn’t creative enough to think of a proper birthday present. Which was a big Thank God! It would have taken Rachel and my entire summer allowance to pay for the meal.