Remember Our Song (10 page)

Not that I was a super hero, of course, or even
truly famous.  Even back in L.A the lack of paparazzi interference when I wasn’t with Jeremy kind of drove that point home.  Even so, I avoided eye-contact as much as possible, just concentrating on doing a quick and efficient job so I could collect my hard-earned pay and keep the electricity on.

I spent Christmas Day with my dad, sitting in the snow all bundled up in my jacket and a blanket for hours, sometimes talking, sometimes just being quiet.  I told him all the hassles I was going through, but that I was figuring it all out by myself, being tough and keeping my feet on the ground.  I was nearly frozen solid by the time I left, my formerly broken leg throbbed with a stiff ache for the rest of the day.

New Year’s Eve came and went.  I watched fireworks from my window and treated myself to a cheap bottle of wine, the colors lighting up the drab interior of my apartment and temporarily turning it into a kaleidoscopic disco of dancing flashes and shadows.  I especially liked the blues, greens and oranges, for some reason those colors reminded me of peacocks in a sunset, though I couldn’t remember when I had actually last seen a peacock.

Eventually I started getting scheduled for job interviews, but faced some of the same problems I had when looking for an apartment.  A few of the women interviewers
recognized me, and although I tried as best I could to prepare myself for that inevitability, it really threw me off my game and I ended up feeling like a half-wit, stammering my way through their various questions with a tomato-red blush.

Even in the interviews where people didn’t
recognize me I had to explain the four year gap in my employment history where I had been a housewife, and tell them that I was seeking a job now due to separation.  As if that wasn’t bad enough I also had to try to tell them, in the most optimistic way possible, that although I
technically
had worked at Bloxhamtech, I couldn’t remember a single day of it, so I didn’t actually have any useful experience from it.

It wasn’t until the end of January that I actually landed a job, an entry level position in the mailroom of a company called Brenton Bach Industries, which occupied several floors of a high-rise just down the street from
Bloxhamtech.  My role was to basically sort out the mail that arrived each day and deliver it to the appropriate people, then during the day I would collect all the outgoing mail from everybody’s ‘out’ box, frank it and haul it to the post office, which was mercifully close.

The mailroom was a world away from sipping orange juice and lemonade while floating on an inflatable sun-lounger in the swimming pool of a multi-million dollar mansion, but it was good honest work and I was told I’d have the opportunity for career progression.  Most importantl
y I was doing it all for myself, I didn’t have to rely on anyone.

Chapter 10

The only part of my new job that proved difficult was that the floor plans they gave me, which showed where everybody was supposed to sit, were woefully outdated.  In some cases the desks were not even in the configuration drawn on my pieces of paper, in other cases the people listed on the floor plans were no longer even employed with Brenton Bach Industries.

I spent the last half of my first week creating new floor plans as I went, falling hopelessly behind the schedule my supervisor wanted me to keep.  She begrudgingly saw the benefit of what I was doing and didn’t admonish me about how long it took to hand out the post and everything started going according to plan from my second week onwards.

Inevitably some people around the office recognized me, which made for some awkward lunchroom conversations.  I was making myself a cup of coffee when a woman I recognized from my mail run approached me nervously.

“Excuse me… aren’t you Beatrice Holt?” she said.

“Uh… yeah.  Sort of.”

“I knew it!  What are you doing here?  Is this some kind of reality TV thing you’re doing?  Where’s the camera crew?  I’m Debbie, by the way.”

“Oh… um… no.  No, it’s nothing like that.  Jeremy and I are kind of… separated.”

“Oh God!  I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to… shit.  I’m so embarrassed.  I didn’t think the magazines were telling the truth, they contradict themselves so much.”

“Magazines?”

“Oh, you know, the celebrity news magazines.”

“What about them?”

“I guess… look I’m sorry I brought it up, I’m sure you’re going through a lot at the moment.”

“I’m tougher than I look,” I said.  “Humor me.”

“He’s just… he’s been photographed with other women.  Is that why you split up?  Did that rat bastard cheat on you?”

I couldn’t think of any way to succinctly fill her in on the helicopter crash, amnesia, my efforts to remember and my final realization that the life I’d woken up to couldn’t possibly have been mine. “Uh… no.  We’d… just grown apart.”

“Oh… that’s a shame, you always looked such a nice couple.”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot,” I said glumly.

After an awkward pause Debbie began making a coffee of her own.

“So you’re living in Seattle now, obviously.  Why here?” she asked.

“I’m from here, originally, so it’s kinda my hometown.”

“Lots of family and friends then?”

“Uh… not really, these days.  It’s a fresh start on that front.”

“Oh.  Would you like to come out for drinks after work on Friday?  A bunch of us always go out and paint the town whatever color we can manage.”

“You know what… that would actually be really nice.  That’s exactly what I need, thanks.  Where do you go?  Or do you all head there together from here?”

“We usually start at a place called Millers, it’s reasonably close, but we just meet there cause not everybody finishes at exactly the same time.”

“Fantastic.  What’s the dress code like?  Will I need to bring a change of clothes or something?”

“Not for Miller’s, it’s just full of generic office people like us who like to unwind over some wine and beer at the end of another god awful week.  If you’re a party animal then there’s always some that head out to the clubs afterwards.  In that case you’d probably need something else.”

“OK.  I think I’ll take it reasonably easy, so I won’t go clubbing.  I haven’t actually had any alcohol since… well I’m not sure.  Before the accident anyway,” I said.

“Accident?  Oh, the helicopter thing?  Why not?”

“I got hit on the head pretty hard in the crash, so it was part of the doctor’s orders to stay away from alcohol for a while.  I’m pretty much healed though, just this limp still.”

“Limp?  I hadn’t even noticed, I guess it must be a
really
small limp.”

“Yeah, I think it’s partially about regaining confidence in it.  Like, I got so used to treating this leg with kid-gloves that it’s a habit now.  I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

“Yeah, my sister broke her leg snowboarding and said something along the same lines,” Debbie finished making her coffee and brought the steaming cup up to her nose, inhaling deeply.  “Ahhhh, that’s the stuff.  Well, I’d best get back to my desk and start shuffling some papers around or Mr. Herman will think I’m not pulling my weight or something.  Nice to meet you, anyway.”

“You too,” I said with a smile.

Debbie headed back out to the sales floor and I picked up my own cup and went back to the mail room with a slightly limpy spring in my step.  It was great to have something to look forward to for once instead of simply waking up each day to sort mail, satisfying as it was to be making my own way in the world.

*****

I had an absolute blast going out with the people from my office, and found myself making friends fast with each passing week.  Everybody was very respectful of how I didn’t really want to talk about my relationship with Jeremy, which was a huge relief.  Sure, there was the odd question, a few jokes about how every round was on me, followed by some incredulity about how I wasn’t absolutely sucking him dry, financially, but all in all it was light-hearted and fun.

As Debbie had mentioned, most of the talk was griping about work, but after a few rounds the topics started to wander and conversations got louder and punctuated by laughter more often.  My daily rounds throughout the office were met with more and more friendly faces and I loved taking part in the banter about the various things that had happened on our nights out.

One slightly drizzly Sunday in early spring I received a text message from Debbie asking if I’d like to meet for brunch, which I agreed to and suggested we meet somewhere around halfway between our homes and then find a nice place together.  That’s how I found myself in a nice little café called Sebastian’s as we watched the misty rain turn into a serious downpour in the blink of an eye.

“Maybe we should have stayed in,” I said.

“Did you get a decent parking space?  Close?” Debbie asked.

“No, my car’s in for repairs at the moment.  So much for savings.  I caught a couple buses.”

“Why didn’t you say so?  We could have met closer to yours!”

“It’s OK, hopefully we can leave between the heaviest showers.  So, spill, what happened on Friday after I left?  You were looking pretty…
cozy with that guy.”

“Haha!  Oh boy… yeah.  We caught a taxi back to his place and… well, one thing led to another, you know how it goes,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Sounds like a good night, then.  Going to be seeing any more of him?”

“Somehow I don’t think he’s the one.  I woke up in the morning after having a dream about orange juice.  Like in the dream I could not get enough of it, I was drinking entire cartons of the stuff, I was
so
thirsty, it was ridiculous.  When I woke up, I desperately needed something to drink for real, but he was still fast asleep, snoring.”

“What was his name?” I asked.

Debbie gave me a blank look, then her eyes glanced up and to the right as if searching her mind for the answer.  Her brow furrowed and she turned her head to the side for a moment before looking back to me.

“I have no idea,” she laughed.  “But, anyway, I looked over at him and thought to myself that he was like Seattle, a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

“Come on, Seattle’s not so bad,” I said.

“Well,” she continued, “then he farted and I got the hell out of bed, got dressed and went to his fridge.  If he had any orange juice I was going to have some.  Do you think he had any?”

“I’d bet my car he did!”

“Hand over the keys, honey.  Condiments are what he had in his fridge.  Not even anything to put the condiments on, just like a bottle of ketchup and some mustard.  A jar of something that I hope was mayonnaise, hard to say because the label had fallen off.”

I dangled the keys over the table, “The car comes with repair bills approximately equal to its total value, do you still want it?”

“Oh, you keep it then.  So, no orange juice.  I had a glass of water and then got out of there.  It took me like fifteen minutes of wandering around before I figured out I was nowhere near home so called another taxi.  I spent the rest of the day watching romance movies in bed.  What did you get up to yesterday?”

“Weeping over my budget, mostly.  I’m thinking of applying for a sales rep job or something, think you can put in a good word for me?”

“Sure, your funeral though.  Hey, I think we have to actually go to the counter here, let’s see what smells so good.”

Debbie and I went up and chose a sandwich each and a sizable wedge of chocolate cake to share as well as some coffee, which would be brought out to us when it was ready.  After making our way back to our table, we talked about the movies she’d watched the previous day as we ate and I realized that I had a lot of films to catch up on.  I hadn’t even heard of most of them, much to Debbie’s astonishment.

The coffee arrived and Debbie raised it to her nose for a sniff before taking a sip.

“Mmmm.  You know, I think I like the smell just as much as the taste,” she said.

“Me too, but it’s growing on me more with every cup.  It’s sneaky like that.”

“I’m a bit sneaky like that too, actually.”

“How so?”

“I have an ulterior motive for asking you to brunch today.”

“Oh God, if you’re going to throw me in a pit and tell me to rub lotion on my skin, I already have somebody taking care of that, so no thanks.”

“I don’t have time for that anymore, I’m jealous.  Anyway, no, it’s nothing quite as sinister as that.  I feel kind of stupid doing this though, like I’m back in the schoolyard.”

“What are you going on about?”

“Well… you know Leyton?”

“Leyton from the office who comes out on the occasional Friday?”

“Yeah, Leyton Slater.  He’s been… asking about you.”

“Oh,” I said, suspiciously.  “What kind of things?”

“Grrr!  I wish he had just given me a note to pass on or something, this is crazy.  He likes you and just wanted to know your situation, if you’d said anything about him.  Then he asked me to talk to you, and I could have sworn I declined but here I am.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither.  I think I’ll just stare at you and drink this coffee until you come up with something.”

“Ahhh!  The stare of death.  My situation?  It’s complicated, technically I’m still married.”

“I don’t see a ring on that finger.”

“No.  True.  I wasn’t really… uh… looking at the moment though.  Life’s been pretty crazy and I just kind of wanted to lay low for a while.”

“Fair enough.  If the time’s not right then it’s not right.  However, if I may, take it from me, you don’t want to spend too much time pining for something that’s gone.  You can let a lot of really good opportunities slip by that way.”

“What’s he like?”

“Leyton?  Ugh, not you too… can’t you just give me a note or go pull his hair or something?  You people.  Look, he’s cute, he’s nice, whether you two would click is anybody’s guess, but there’s no reason why not that I can see.  Want his number?”

I shook my head, “No.  I better not, it’s just not the right time.”

“Can I give him yours?

“No!”

“OK.  I get the bigger part of this cake for services rendered.”

If I was honest with myself, the food at Sebastian’s was not as good as the food at Holt’s down in California, and the enthusiasm from the high school kids that seemed to be in charge of customer service this weekend fell miles short of the Danish man himself, but it was all passable.  We delayed as long as we could but the rain outside only seemed to get heavier, my heart sank at the thought of waiting at the uncovered bus stop.

“Any chance I could get a ride back to my place?”

“Sure, not a problem.  You ready to make the dash now?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.  I can’t run very fast though, are you close?”

“Yeah, reasonably.”

Motivated by the rain, I surprised even myself with how fast I was able to go, staying within a few paces of Debbie the whole time so she could lead the way to her car.  I crouched down with my hand on the door waiting for the lock to pop up as she fumbled with the keys on the other side.  At last I wrenched open the door to what I thought was cover, but was met with one of the most cluttered vehicle interiors imaginable.

“Sorry!  Sorry!”

Debbie furiously collected papers and trash of all kinds and flung them towards the back seat until I could at least see the material of the front one beginning to peek through.  I jumped in when it was clear that the last remaining items were nothing that she would care about being sat on.

“Debbie!  This is unbelievable!  You always look so well presented at work… but you never told me you were really a slob!”

“You disrespectful little Seattle-lover!  What’s the date?  Have we been friends long enough that you can call me a slob and me be OK with it?  My how time flies.  Look, I’m cleaning it up, but it’s a work in progress.  If you’ve got a problem I believe your apartment is that direction, and I’ll bid you a good day.”