Slightly Settled (4 page)

“That’s okay.” I’m not desperate enough to consider a blind date…yet.

“It stinks being alone around the holidays, though,” Dianne comments. “You get cheated out of boyfriend presents, jewelry, baubles…”

Baubles?

“I never thought of it that way.” I find myself thinking, wistfully, All those years with Will, and nary a bauble to show for it.

“Then there’s New Year’s Eve….”

“Right.” I hadn’t thought of that either.
Gee, thanks, Dianne, for enlightening me.

She sighs. “Oh, well.”

Yeah. Easy for
her
to say.

“So…is Mike there?”

“He’s around somewhere.” If he’s not out shopping for diamond earrings or on the other line booking the presidential suite at the Sherry Netherland for December 31st. “I’ll go get him.”

I find Mike by the copier, trying to help my friend Brenda clear a jam. He bolts the second I tell him I’ve got Dianne on hold.

Brenda shakes her head. “Look at him drop everything and run. I hope she knows how lucky she is.”

“Look at you. You’ve got Paulie.” It’s all I can do not to pronounce her husband’s name the way she does—“Po-aw-lie.” Sometimes her accent is contagious.

“The honeymoon is over, Trace. I’ve been married four months, and already Paulie is telling me I’ve got to stop calling his cell during the day while he’s at work.”

“Well, Brenda, he’s a cop. It’s probably distracting when he’s chasing some crack fiend down an alley and his phone rings, and it’s you asking him to pick up some fresh
mozzarell’
on the way home.”

We laugh, and I help her clear the jam—not without cursing the damned machine and whoever invented four freaking places for paper to get wedged. As we work on clearing it, we chat about the bachelorette party we’re going to plan for Yvonne, and then about the upcoming Christmas party.

“Paulie’s having a bunch of guys over to watch the fight that night,” Brenda says, gingerly running one of her raspberry-colored talons along the paper output slot. “So I’ve got to clear out of there before six-thirty.”

“You want to come over to my place before we go to the party? It doesn’t start till eight.”

“By the time I take the PATH in and get a cab over to the club, it’ll be past seven-thirty anyway, so let’s just meet there.”

I tug on a piece of paper that’s stuck between the rollers. “I don’t know, Brenda. We probably shouldn’t get to the party right when it’s starting.”

“Why not?”

The paper tears. I curse under my breath, then tell Brenda about the article in
She
magazine while I pick out bits of torn paper.

“So getting to the company Christmas party on time is a major Don’t?” she asks, incredulous. She removes her hand from the copy machine and inspects one of her nails for damage. “You’d think being punctual would be a good thing.”

“Not in this case. ‘Don’t—’ and I quote ‘—be the first one to arrive. Don’t be the last to leave.’ End quote. Hey, hold this compartment open for me, will you, Bren?”

She reluctantly obliges, and I continue to pull scraps of paper from the roller. Brenda’s a fanatic about preserving her weekly manicure; my nails are always a mess. I think I’m the only woman in New York with unpolished, unfiled fingertips. But I can think of better ways to spend the weekly fifteen bucks my friends dole out in nail salons.

Then again, glossy scarlet nails would be dazzling with my red trollop dress.

Mental Note: See if manicurist has available slot after lip-wax appointment at salon tomorrow.

“So what other Don’ts are there?” Brenda wants to know.

“Let’s see…I told you about the ‘Don’t dress provocatively’ one, right? Then there was ‘Don’t drink too much.’ You’re supposed to nurse white-wine spritzers and alternate them with plain seltzer throughout the evening.”

“Oh,
Madonna,
” Brenda says with a Carmella Soprano eye-roll and my grandmother’s old-country accent.

The Jersey Italian in Brenda’s blood always comes out when she’s peeved. One minute, she’s a lady, the next, she’s flipping someone off with an
Ah, fongool.

“Spritzers? That’s bullshit, Tracey. We should do shots. It’s girls’ night out. What else did the article say?”

“Don’t smoke. Don’t gossip. Don’t flirt. Don’t dance. Don’t—”

“Geez, who the hell wrote this article? The president of Bob Jones University?”

I shrug, peering into the copy machine to make sure all the paper has been removed. “Okay, all clear. Press Start.”

She does.

The machine whirs.

Lights flash.

Nothing.

We lean over to look at the little screen on top.

Paper Jam.

“Forget it,” Brenda says, picking up the stack of originals from the tray. “I’m going down to seven to make my copies. And Tracey, forget about that stupid article. Let’s just go have a great time.”

I head back to my cubicle, still thinking about the arti
cle. It’s easy for someone like Brenda to blow off the advice. She’s content to stay a secretary, and, anyway, she plans to quit to stay home when she has a baby—which is planned for next year. So for her, this isn’t a career; it’s a job.

But if I’m going to work my way into a copywriting position, I’ll have to watch my step. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression of me at this party. I don’t want them to lump me together with the other secretaries.

Okay, I know that sounds snobby. And it’s not that I don’t adore my friends. But sometimes, it kind of bothers me that I’m—I don’t know…one of them.

Back when I had Will—and supposedly a future with him, even if it was all in my deluded head—it didn’t seem to matter as much.

Now that I’m on my own, I can’t help feeling that I’d feel much better about myself if I had a “real” career.

Yeah, and you’d probably feel much better about yourself if you hadn’t had that one-night stand with a full-grown
Star Wars
fanatic, too.

Let’s face it: I might be skinny, and I might be bringing in a regular paycheck with benefits…but things could definitely be better. Much better.

I find Mike leaning over my chair to check out the proposal I’m typing for him on the computer screen.

He’s a smallish, wiry guy, and I don’t like to stand next to him because he’s a few inches shorter than I am and we probably weigh about the same. I’m not secure enough, despite the weight loss, to feel comfortable around guys who make me feel large and gawky even now.

“How’s it coming, Chief?” he asks cheerfully. Mike has this cute thing where he calls everyone “Chief.”

“Pretty good. I caught a couple of typos for you.”

“Thanks. You’re the best.”

I smile. They weren’t typos, really. He’s a crummy speller, but I never want to embarrass him. He’s such a sweetie.

“Hey, I like your tie,” I tell him. For somebody who seems clueless about some things—like getting his hair cut when it needs it—he’s got great taste in ties.

“Thanks. You want some caramel popcorn? I just got a huge barrel of it from some magazine,” he says. “It’s in my office.”

At this time of year, the agency people get loads of corporate Christmas gifts from magazines and television networks. You wouldn’t believe the caliber of some of the gifts. Last week Mike got a crystal Tiffany ice bucket and a hundred-dollar bottle of champagne from one place.

Too bad he didn’t offer to share that.

I pass on the popcorn. It sounds good, but I’ve got to be careful. At this time of year, it would be easy to slip up and gain a few—or twenty—pounds back.

“Listen, Chief,” Mike asks, “would you mind going down to accounts payable before the end of the day to get me that cash advance for my trip to Philly tomorrow?”

“Not at all.”

That’s another great thing about Mike. He doesn’t give orders. He asks me to do things. Getting his cash from AP is part of my job, but he makes it seem as though I’m going out of my way for him. He really makes being a secretary bearable for somebody who has bigger aspirations.

Someday, I hope, I’ll be a copywriter like Buckley. But until I am, working as a secretary at Blaire Barnett is pleas
antly painless. I even get to sit in a cubicle instead of in the secretaries’ bay, where I was when I worked for Jake.

I head toward the elevator bank. I reach it just as a junior account executive does. Her real name is Susan, but Yvonne calls her Miss Prim, and I have to admit, the shoe fits. She’s always buttoned up in a tailored suit with pearls and pumps, her hair pulled severely back in a clip, and I’ve never seen her smile at anybody who isn’t an executive.

“Hi,” I say, since we’re both going to stand here waiting for the down elevator, which is bound to take a few minutes. The elevators in this building are notoriously slow.

“Hi.” She studies her sensible pumps.

You just wouldn’t catch
her
picking up a total stranger and having sex with him in some godforsaken borough.

“These elevators take forever, don’t they?” I feel compelled to say.

She merely presses the lit Down button again, as though she can’t stand another moment trapped here with lowly me.

It irks me that she won’t make eye contact, much less conversation, with a mere secretary. I want to tell her that I have an English degree and a future in copywriting. I want to tell her to let her hair down and live a little; or at the very least, unfasten her top button, for God’s sake.

I wonder what she’s going to wear to the Christmas party. Somehow, I can’t quite picture her in anything remotely festive.

Again, my mind flits to that article chock-full of Don’ts.

The hell with the article, and with Miss Prim, too, I think, as I step into the elevator with her.

I’m going to wear my red dress, and I’m going to get there when it starts, and I’m going to have a helluva good time.

Just watch me.

“Hold the elevator!” a voice calls.

I half expect Susan to reach for the Door Close button, but she doesn’t. Nor does she hit Door Open as they begin to slide closed, even though the button is like, two inches from her claw.

I wedge my shoulder between the doors to hold them for whoever is rushing toward the elevator, heels tapping hurriedly along the floor, accompanied by an odd jingling sound.

When I see who it is, I almost wish I’d let the doors close.

“Hi, Mary,” I say, as she steps on board with a huge, panting sigh of relief.

“Hi, Tracey,” she trills. “Hi, Sue.”

I get the impression Susan doesn’t appreciate being called Sue.

Mary Kohl doesn’t seem to get this impression, or any impressions at all. She’s too busy plucking an oversized round jingle bell from the crevice between her oversized round boobs. The bell is suspended around her jowly neck on a red cord and festooned with sprigs of plastic holly.

If I were sharing this elevator with anybody but wenchy Susan, I might be inclined to turn and share an eye-roll with them. Mary, who is an administrative assistant in our department, is easily the most annoying human being of all time. In fact, if this elevator happens to get stuck between floors, as elevators in this building have been known to do, I’m going to find myself wishing I carried cyanide capsules in my pockets like the astronauts do.

Mary presses her floor with a chubby forefinger, and the
doors slide closed with the finality of clanking steel bars on death row.

“Did we all sign up for Secret Snowflake?” Mary wants to know.

She wants to know this in the chirpiest voice ever. Think Baby Bop on helium.

I sort of smile and shake my head.

Susan plays deaf and dumb.

“Uh-oh.” Mary shakes her head sadly, her jingle bell jangling noisily from boob to boob. “Didn’t everyone hear that Secret Snowflake is mandatory this year?”

I murmur something about it being news to me, although I knew damn well. Who could miss the bright red memo Mary sent out on December first? She signed it with her name spelled Merry, and requested that we all use this spelling for the duration of the season.

“You’re kidding! Didn’t you get the memo?”

“I guess not,” I tell Mary, as Helen Keller pointedly ignores both of us.

“Not only is Secret Snowflake mandatory, but I’m matching up the names on Monday,” Mary informs us. “So you’ll both need to sign up by the end of today. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agree, because mandatory is mandatory.

“Great! Sue?”

“What the fuck is a Secret Snowflake?” Susan barks, just before the elevator bumps to a stop.

“Oh, it’s really fun. It’s where the whole department picks names and we all—”

Too late.

Susan has fled. This wasn’t even her floor. A bike messenger steps on board.

“Happy holidays!” Mary chirps at him.