Slightly Settled (6 page)

I take two sips, then ask, “Are you a buyer?”

“I’m a planner.”

“Oh.” I nod, fascinated. Well, not really. But I hope I look it.

Actually, Media Planning is a fun job. Relatively low-paying, but I’m not a gold digger like Kate, so what do I care?

“I’ve never seen you around the agency before,” Jack tells
me while I check out his clothes. I’m no Raphael, but his suit looks good on him and it’s basic black; he’s wearing a white starched spread-collar dress shirt and a black tie with a white pattern.

“I’ve never seen you around either,” I tell him, hoping he didn’t catch me looking him up and down.

Maybe he did, because I suddenly feel like he’s looking me up and down, too.

Now I feel awkward. And drunk. Not to mention confused. Why is this Jack over here talking to me?

Cut it out, Tracey.
I can almost hear Buckley’s voice.
Why wouldn’t this guy want to talk to you? What’s wrong with you?

Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me. I just have to remember that.

Lately, Buckley has been trying to point out that Will really did a number on my self-esteem. The whole time I was with him, I felt unworthy. I’m trying, but it’s hard to get past that. I might have lost all that extra poundage, but I’m still carrying around a tremendous amount of baggage.

And now, here’s this guy coming up to talk to me; the kind of guy I’d normally be wistfully checking out from afar. It seems too good to be true.

Especially since he just appeared out of nowhere. If this were a movie, he’d have stepped into a dazzling pool of light, and a choir would have sung one big loud Hallelujah. But it’s not and he didn’t and they didn’t.

He’s just here, and I have no idea why. I mean, even setting all the usual Tracey insecurity aside, I’m still the lone Don’t at the party, and he’s…

Well, he’s so normal. Good-looking normal, with dimples and a real job.

Unlike Will, the actor. Will was good-looking, too, but he didn’t have dimples and he wasn’t
normal
. Ask Kate. Ask Raphael. Their hobby, when I was dating Will, was pointing out just how abnormal Will is. That he’s narcissistic and untrustworthy and selfish.

And closeted—or so they both suspected.

Kate, because she assumes every man who wears black turtlenecks and cologne and dabbles in theater must be secretly gay.

Raphael, because he and his constantly blipping gaydar think every man is secretly gay.

I try to think of something to say to Cute Normal Jack of the warm brown eyes and stable job.

“So…um, Jack…you just saw me standing here alone and decided to come over and talk to me?”

Okay, I agree, awkward silence was better. But I can’t seem to help myself. Three martinis and I start to blurt things. Anyway, it could have been worse.

He shifts his weight, doesn’t answer right away.

Uh-oh.

Maybe it couldn’t have been worse. Maybe he really wasn’t talking to me all this time. I look over my shoulders again, half expecting to see some supermodel standing there.

“Yeah, I wanted to meet you,” he says, obviously uncomfortable. “Oh.”

Something tells me there’s more to it, but who am I to pry? If Cute Normal Jack wants to meet the Queen of the Don’ts, so be it.

From there, the night unfolds in a series of highlights: Jack asking me to dance to an old song by the Cure; Jack meet
ing my friends; Latisha snapping pictures with my camera; more drinks; more cigarettes in the bitter cold.

Until now, I’ve felt that there are two breeds of men in New York: men who smoke, and men who think nobody should smoke.

Jack breaks the whole
If you’re not with us, you’re against us
mold. He’s not a smoker, but not only does he not seem to mind that I am, he comes outside with me, gives me his suit jacket to keep me warm, takes my lighter from me and lights my cigarettes.

He makes me laugh harder than I’ve laughed in a long time, especially when he sings along to a Billy Joel song that’s playing, acting like he’s doing a nightclub act and using a beer bottle as a microphone. I can’t tell if he really can’t sing or if he’s just pretending for the sake of the act—not that it matters. After all, Will had the voice of a choirboy but the disposition of an asshole.

Unlike Will, who never shared my sense of humor, Jack also laughs at all my jokes, proving that even in my bibulous blur, I’m not just amusing to myself.

He’s a good dancer, too. Not many guys are—not at fast dancing, anyway. Some are embarrassingly unable to get the beat; some don’t even try. Some try to hold on to you when you’re fast dancing with them, like they want you to jitterbug or something. But Jack just dances—not too close to me, and not too far away. He doesn’t try to spin me and he doesn’t have that goofy, intense, I’m-so-into-the-music look on his face.

Merry has that look, especially when the DJ plays Madonna’s “Santa Baby.” She pretty much does a spotlight solo for that song, which nobody else considers danceable.

Mental Note: Never, under any circumstances, dance alone, no matter how much you love the song.

“Man, I’d hate to be Merry on January second,” Brenda comments as my friends and I and Jack stand around watching her from the bar.

“Yeah,” I say. “She’s probably curled in a fetal position with pine needles in her hair.”

“Nah, by then she’s booking her flight to Punxsatawney and airing out the groundhog suit,” Jack says unexpectedly, and we all laugh.

“He’s a keeper,” Yvonne rasps as he flags down the bartender to order another round for all of us.

“Yeah, Tracey, how’d you hook up with him?” Brenda asks.

I shrug. “We just started talking.”

Another big plus: My friends approve. And he seems to like them, too. He’s even a good sport about Latisha, aspiring photographer, who insists on taking a picture of me and Jack together. He puts his arm around my shoulder and smiles, like we’re old pals. Or a couple.

He seems to know a lot of people who work at the agency, and he introduces me to them as Tracey from account management.

He’s too good to be true.

What’s the catch?

There has to be a catch, dammit. There’s always a catch. Men like this don’t just drop into your lap when you least expect it. Well, they certainly don’t drop into mine.

The crowd is starting to thin out. Brenda keeps looking at her watch, saying Paulie is going to kill her.

I don’t want to leave yet.

Or ever.

I’m boozy and blissful, leaning against the bar talking to Jack while the DJ plays one of my favorite U2 songs, “With or Without You.”

As the song heats up, Jack leans over and kisses me.

I kiss him back.

Everything falls away. Brenda and her watch, the music, the bar. There’s just me and Jack, floating in space. At Space. In front of a few hundred co-workers and, for all I know, my boss.

When we come up for air, my friends are gone.

Oops.

In fact, almost everybody’s gone, and the DJ is announcing last call.

“Where do you live?” Jack asks, taking my hand and strolling me toward the coat check.

“East Village. How about you?”

“Brooklyn. Let’s get a cab.”

To where? The East Village? Brooklyn? (Yeah, I know, a borough, but Jack’s the exception to the bridge-and-tunnel-people-aren’t-cool rule.) His intent isn’t clear, but what the hell?

I’ve got other things to worry about right now. It’s all I can do to concentrate on finding my coat-check tag. Jack helps me look. We both crack jokes and laugh hysterically the entire time.

I guess you had to be there. And drunk.

Ultimately, we arrive at the hilarious—at least, to us—conclusion that I’ve misplaced the tag. I then have to focus on not slurring when I describe my outdated wool coat to the utterly unamused and fashionable coat-check girl.

Outside, the arctic air hits me, along with a big dose of reality. Suddenly nothing seems funny.

I just made out with some guy at the office party. Now I’m leaving with him.

Does he think he’s coming to my place? Does he think I’m going to his place?

I should insist on separate cabs to our respective places, just to make sure this doesn’t go any further.

For some reason, Buckley’s face pops into my head. I hear Buckley’s voice warning me to stay away from strange guys.

I promised him. At least, I think I did.

But Buckley doesn’t have to know…

No. Stop it, Tracey.

Sleeping with some guy you just met and will never see again is one thing. A
bad
thing.

Sleeping with a co-worker you just met is…

Well, it’s just out of the question.

It’s the ultimate Don’t.

I stand on the sidewalk by a garbage can and smoke a cigarette, trying to sober up while Jack stands in the street and tries to hail a cab. They’re few and far between, and when he finally gets one, I’m not about to tell him to let me take it alone. I mean, that would make me a Don’t
and
a Bitch. A Bitchy Don’t.

I giggle. I can’t help it.

Jack looks at me. “What’s funny?”

I wipe the goofy grin off my face. “What?”

“Didn’t you just laugh?”

“Me? Nope. Not me.”

Jack looks confused.

I smile pleasantly. At least, I hope I do. For all I know,
another burst of maniacal laughter can escape me at any moment.

Oh, Lord, am I ever trashed. I try to send myself Sober Up vibes as we climb into the back seat, which smells of mildew unsuccessfully masked by fruity air freshener. I immediately tell the driver my address.

“And after that, I need to go to Brooklyn,” Jack says through the plastic window.

Instant relief. He’s not planning on coming home with me.

Bitter disappointment. He’s not planning on coming home with me.

As the cab barrels down Ninth Avenue, I focus on the driver’s name on his license fastened to the dashboard. To inebriated
moi
it looks like Ishmael Ishtar, and I vaguely wonder which is his first name and which is his last.

Then Jack puts his arm around me and pulls me closer. Kisses me. I feel weak.

In the front seat, the driver speaks in a foreign language into his two-way radio.

In the back seat, Jack makes me forget everything I promised myself five minutes ago.

All too soon, we’re at my building. Jack opens the door, and we both step out onto the sidewalk.

“Can I come up?” he asks, low, in my ear.

“You already told Ishmael you’re going to Brooklyn.”

“Huh?”

I gesture at the driver.

“Oh.” He shrugs. “I’ll give him a big tip.”

He kisses me, an intensely sweeping kiss.

Life comes down to a few Moments of Truth. This is one of them.

What will happen if I say yes?

What will happen if I say no?

There’s no way of knowing.

Nothing to do but take a deep breath—and make a decision.

M
onday morning, I wear a frumpy navy rayon dress that’s two sizes too big for me, no makeup and sunglasses.

The sky hangs low and gray over Manhattan, but I don’t give a damn. I’m in disguise. At least, in the lobby and in the elevator, where I stand in the back silently facing straight ahead while the crowd chatters about the office party.

Is it my imagination, or are people nudge-nudge, wink-winking about me?

It has to be my imagination. I’m no stranger to paranoia. Just because I flirted—

Oh, all right,
made out with—

—some guy at the office party, well, that doesn’t mean anybody noticed. Or that if they noticed, they care.

Insert Kinks’ guitar riff here.
Duh…duh-duh…duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. Paranoia, Self-Destroya…

I find myself wishing I had called in sick today. Or, um, you know…
quit
.

On my floor, Lydia greets me as usual from beneath a green-and-silver garland of tinsel. She doesn’t even do a double take before chirping, “Morning, Tracey” and going back to her
Newsday
.

Mental Note: Disguise not 100 percent foolproof.

I have to take off the glasses anyway when I get to my desk. Luckily, it’s barely nine o’clock and the place is deserted. It’s also got that Monday-morning chill after a weekend with the heat turned down.

I’m shivering as I head for the kitchenette—also deserted—and grab coffee from the community pot. Normally I drink it with skim milk and an Equal, but I hear somebody coming and duck out the opposite door sloshing black coffee all over my hand. Ouch, dammit!

This is ridiculous. I can’t go sneaking around all day like I’m starring in
The Mole.

Why, oh why, was I such an all-out Don’t on Saturday night? Why didn’t I stop and consider the consequences?

Back at my cubicle, I set my coffee on my desk and take several deep breaths. I can’t stop shaking, and it’s not just because it’s cold in here. I feel a panic attack coming on.

Needing a distraction, I turn on my computer and sip some coffee while it whirs into action, and then I log on to the Internet and see that I’ve got a bunch of e-mails. One is from Buckley, asking if I want to have lunch today; one is from Kate, asking how the Christmas party was; three are from my sister-in-law Sara, all of them forwarded jokes as old as my screen name. But she and Joey are new to e-mail, so lame forwards are still a novelty to them.

“Hey, what happened to you on Saturday night, girlfriend?” Latisha calls from somewhere behind me, in her loudest yoo-hoo voice.

“Shh!” I wave my arms at her, almost knocking over my coffee.

“Here,” she says, handing over my camera. “I figured you were going to lose this at the club, the way you were—”

“Carrying on?” I supply when she hesitates.

“That’s one way to put it.” She smirks. “Anyway, I brought it home safely for you.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t even realize until now that I didn’t have it. “But why didn’t you bring
me
home safely? You guys abandoned me.”

“We didn’t abandon you. We told you we were leaving,” Brenda pipes up, materializing behind Latisha. “Three times. You didn’t hear us. You were too busy kissing that guy.”

I cringe.

The two of them park themselves on my desk, wearing expectant expressions.

“Well?” Latisha asks. “Did you go home with him?”

“No!” I act totally outraged, as though the thought never would have entered my chaste mind. “Do you guys really think I’m that sleazy?”

They look at each other. Obviously, they do.

“You were kind of all over each other,” Brenda says with a shrug. “I was a little surprised.”

I rub my eyes with my hand, utterly humiliated. “Oh, Lord, do you think anyone else saw?”

Yvonne pops her bubblegum-colored bouffant over a filing cabinet. “It was hard to miss, honey.”

Not
honey
as in You Poor Misunderstood Thing. Yvonne
might be my grandmother’s age, but there isn’t a maternal bone in her weedy former Rockette body; her
honey
is brash and laced with sarcasm.

I bury my face in my hands, fighting off panic, doing my best not to hyperventilate.

Brenda pats my back. “Look on the bright side, Tracey. You met a nice guy. Did you give him your number?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?” Latisha demands.

“He didn’t ask.” Talk about humiliating. I add hastily, “And anyway, I don’t want him to call me. I just want to forget the whole thing.”

“Why?” Brenda asks. “I thought he was a good guy.”

“Hot, too,” Latisha says approvingly.

“He had tight buns,” Yvonne puts in.

Eeewww. Tight buns?

Like I said, she’s my grandmother’s age. That’s hip slang for her. But the phrase has me picturing some unappealing loser in snug-fitting beige polyester slacks—which, if nothing else, is enough to take the edge off the panic.

“Morning, Chief.” Mike pokes his head around the edge of my cube. “Ladies.”

They greet him and disperse, leaving me alone with my boss standing over me. My thoughts whirl back to the party.

“So I heard you met my roommate.”

“Hmm?” I reply absently, trying to remember whether Mike left early. I wring my icy hands in my lap. God, I hope so. Or could he have still been around while I was sucking face with Jack at the bar?

“The funny thing is, he didn’t realize you worked for me.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Wait a minute.

What?

I gape at Mike’s big grin, searching for words, coming up with only, “Wait a minute. What?”

“My roommate,” he says. “Jack.”

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

“Jack’s your roommate?”

You have got to be kidding me.

“Yup.”

Clearly, nobody is kidding here.

This development sinks my Office Party Don’t-dom to a whole new level.

“Jack? Jack, uh—” Okay, I don’t even know his last name. “Jack the guy I, um, met—” that’s one way to put it “—is your roommate?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But…I didn’t even know you had a roommate,” I say weakly. (Yes, I know, Dianne did mention it on the phone, but I do not remember that conversation at the moment. It will, however, come back to me eventually.)

Here’s where Mike says, “Just kidding. I don’t.”

But he doesn’t. Say it, that is.

He does, apparently, have a roommate and his roommate’s name is Jack.

Mental Note: Update résumé during lunch hour.

“So what’d you think of him?”

“Jack?”

“Jack,” he says with an anticipatory quirk of his eyebrows.

Christ, I feel like he’s shoving a microphone in my face.

Well, Mike, to be honest, I thought Jack had nice, tight buns.

“Jack was a good guy.”

There. A nice, G-rated reply.

Thank God, thank God, thank
God
I didn’t sleep with Jack.

I wanted to. I really did. Standing there on the street in front of my building, with everything hanging in the balance and his big warm arms around me, I desperately wanted to give in and let him come upstairs with me.

But I mustered every ounce of willpower I possessed, and I didn’t. I just kissed him one last time and ran inside.

How the hell did I, in my Stoli-soaked, turned-on state, manage to find and embrace my inner Catholic schoolgirl?

It can only have been divine intervention.

Like I said, Thank God, thank God, thank God.

My inner Catholic schoolgirl zaps me with stinging Catholic guilt.

Mental Note: Unearth rosary beads from bottom of underwear drawer and check Sunday mass schedule.

“Yeah, Jack’s a great guy,” Mike is agreeing. “He’s the best.”

I smile. Nod pleasantly.
Yup. That Jack’s the best.

Mercifully, the phone on my desk rings before the painful conversation drags out any longer.

“That might be Dianne,” Mike says hopefully.

No, it might not. Because it isn’t his extension that’s ringing; it’s mine.

Probably Buckley, wanting to know about lunch. Plus, I screened his calls yesterday.

Or it could be Kate. Or Raphael. I screened them, too.

I had a massive hangover and spent the entire day lying on my bed in sweats eating carbs, rehydrating and watching made-for-TV movies on Lifetime. And shivering, because my apartment is so drafty. Oh, and cringing every time I thought about what I’d done the night before.

All in all, I’ve had better days.

“Tracey Spadolini,” I announce into my phone in a brisk, efficient voice—only because Mike is standing here. Calls that come in on my own extension are almost never business-related, but he doesn’t have to know that.

“Hi,” says a voice.

A male voice.

Not Buckley’s. Not Raphael’s.

I make it’s-for-me motions at Mike, who nods and disappears.

“Hi,” I say cautiously into the phone.

“It’s Jack. From Saturday night.”

Jack. Boss’s roommate Jack.

“Hi,” I say again. My heart is beating a little faster. Despite my ambivalence, he’s got a great voice. It was hard to tell when we were screaming over the music at the party. He sounds low and manly, unlike Will, the tenor, who was sometimes mistaken for a woman back when he did telemarketing.

“Tracey, you work for my roommate.”

No shit.

“I just found out,” I tell him. “I, um, didn’t even know Mike had a roommate.”

“Yeah. I was telling him about you yesterday, and we figured it out.”

Cringing, I imagine that conversation.

Say, Mike, I met a liquored-up strumpet in a skimpy red frock last night.

Why, Jack, that sounds like my assistant, Tracey.

“So anyway…I looked you up in the company directory….”

Excellent detective work, Watson.

Part of me—the eagerly expectant, shamelessly aroused part—is flattered that he wanted to find me again. Part of me—the utterly disgraced part—would have been content to slink on into oblivion.

“…and I thought we should go out.”

“You did?”

He laughs. “I mean, I do.”

“You do?”

With a Don’t?

He wants to go out with me after the spectacle we made of ourselves in front of the entire agency? Isn’t he the least bit mortified?

Apparently not. He asks cheerfully, “Are you busy Friday night?”

“I’m, uh, not sure. Can I let you know this afternoon?”

He hesitates. “Okay.”

“It’s just that I was supposed to have these plans with my friends….”

Did I ever mention I’m a terrible liar?

“That’s all right.”

“I just—”

“I understand. If you’re busy—”

Suddenly, I’m Kate Winslet awash in the North Atlantic, clinging to his icy hand as he begins to drift away.

Noooooooo! Don’t leave me, Jack!

“Actually I think we switched the plans to Saturday,” I say quickly. “I’m not sure. I’ll just check and let you know this afternoon. I’m probably free.”

“That’s fine.”

I hear ringing in the background.

“That’s my other line,” he says.

“Okay.”

“So I’ll talk to you later?”

“Okay,” I repeat, quite the sparkling conversationalist.

“Bye.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Sure. Bye.”

I’m elated.

He asked me out!

I’m suspicious.

Why the hell would he ask me out?

I’m—

Dialing. That’s what I’m doing. I’m calling Kate. I need advice.

She’s home, of course. She’s not working these days—or, probably, ever again. When I met her, she was temping, just like me. But her parents back in Mobile pay her bills, and the only reason she worked at all was to meet rich businessman types. Now that she has Billy, she’s basically a housewife without the house. Or the husband. Yet.

“You’ll never believe who’s on Regis and Kelly this morning,” she says by way of a greeting. I can hear the television in the background; sounds of applause and Regis shouting something.

“Kate, listen—”

“Remember the short blond guy who was in that lame movie we saw last summer at the—”