Slim Chance (8 page)

The Kendra White Christmas Party is mandatory. Some years, I guess when business is good, they do it at a nice big hotel. But this year, the third floor was being transformed into a nondenominational “Winter Holiday Wonderland” by Santa’s little do-gooders from Health and Fitness. What fun.

Bruce was looking forward to it more than I was, probably because he was excited to see his little fan club. After he proposed, word of his romanticism spread through the offices like the plague. Now, even girls I don’t know from the second and fourth floors ask me if it’s true. The lame story in the monthly
Kendra White Chronicle
didn’t help (“Third-Floor Marketing Assistant Evelyn Mays Says ‘I WILL,’” which ran right next to a bit about the offices’ thumbs-up from the asbestos inspector). So now I’m known as the Girl Whose Boyfriend Proposed. Needless to say, many people were quite pleased to hear that the famous Bruce would indeed be attending the party.

Although I haven’t got around to filling out the forms yet, I’ve always been of the opinion that going on welfare might be an acceptable alternative to having to attend those work-related social functions. Potlucks for baby showers, potlucks for retirements, potlucks for breast reductions, for God’s sake. The only
thing lucky about any one of them is if you manage to get through it without dying of food poisoning first. I mean, really—the thought of eating a mystery casserole prepared by someone who you know doesn’t wash her hands after she pees (or worse) is beyond frightening.

Although at first glance, the Christmas Party may seem preferable to the dreaded potluck (i.e. it’s catered), it’s not. Because the only thing worse than Vivian from Cosmetics’ Turkey Tetrazzini with last year’s mayo is watching your elderly co-workers get blitzed. When you throw alcohol into the mix, people you didn’t respect to begin with somehow manage to go down a notch. The first year, it was entertaining, the second year it was embarrassing, and now it’s just excruciating.

“They shouldn’t make these things on Friday nights,” I huffed as we climbed the stairs to the third floor (
Self,
January: “10 Little Things You Can Do To Burn Big Calories”). “It interferes with the employees’ personal lives.”

“Oh come on, it’s just once a year,” said Bruce.

“They should do it during the day, on company time. Is there lipstick on my teeth?”

“Yes.”

“How do I look?”

“Great. How do I look?”

“Good.” He was wearing a tie with bumblebees on it, but my mother gave it to him, so it was okay. Bruce always looks the same—skinny, cute, freckly.

“Do you like the new glasses?”

“I picked them, didn’t I?”

“You sure did, honey,” he smiled, and kissed me on the forehead. “I like you in high heels.”

Bruce is six-one, and I’m only five-four. He must get sick of looking at the top of my head. “You wouldn’t like them if you knew how much they hurt me,” I pouted.

“Then why did you buy them?”

“They’re Manolo Blahniks,” I explained. I got them three
years ago at Neiman Marcus Last Call in Las Vegas. They’re half a size too small, and they’re a dreadful shade of puce, but they were only $199. I even bought a dress to go with them. But I wasn’t wearing it tonight, since everyone already saw it at last year’s party. You can do the same shoes two years in a row—who would possibly remember?—but not a dress, and especially not a sleeveless puce gown. Tonight I was wearing a basic black DKNY shirtdress. Casual chic, but the shoes dress it up.

Not that you can be underdressed for a party which involves moving collapsible cubicles out of the way to make a dance floor. There was the requisite DJ dressed like Santa Claus, and mistletoe hanging from the fluorescent lights. Everything was covered in silver tinsel. Here and there, a Hanukkah menorah floated overhead.

“They better put my cubby back exactly where they found it,” I grumbled under my breath.

“Don’t worry,” said a girl I’d never seen before. “We copied down the floor plan before we moved everything. You’re Evie Mays, aren’t you? I’m Jessica, from Health and Fitness downstairs. Nice to meet you. Is
this
the famous Bruce? I told all my friends about what you did! It’s just like in
Pretty Woman!
You
singlehandedly
resurrected our faith in romance.”

Bruce grinned like an idiot. The Jessica person grinned like a slut.

“Well, not exactly like that,” he said. “There was no limo involved, and Evie works in marketing, not…well…you know.”

“And he’s even seen
Pretty Woman,
” she sighed, placing her hand over her heart, or whatever dark void lay underneath.

“I’d like a drink now,” I interrupted.

“Me, too. I’ll have an eggnog,” Bruce said.

“You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that if you want to be funny,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders and gave Jessica a dramatic “What’s with her?” look, and said, “Come on, Evie, I was just teasing. Let me get you ladies a drink. Jessica, what’s your poison?”

“Never mind,” I said, and went off to find the bar. If Bruce wants to make me jealous, he’d have to find someone a lot better-looking than that. Her teeth stuck out from her gums at right angles.

As I picked tinsel out of the bowl of eggnog with a plastic fork, Andrea sidled up beside me, clutching a gray-skinned man with no hair.

“Hi, Evie, this is Phil. Where’s Bruce?”

“He’s here somewhere,” I said.

“How are things with you guys? How are the plans coming?” she asked. It was obvious that she’d heard we were having an engagement party in January, and expected to be invited. Since it was also obvious that she was dying to tell me something about her own life, and didn’t really care about mine, I decided not to let her in on any of our plans.

“Couldn’t be better,” I said, trying to appear distracted by my own important personal thoughts.

“Guess what?” she asked, barely able to contain herself. She was hiding her left hand behind her back.

“Phil asked you to marry him?”

Her face contorted from an impossibly wide grin into a painful grimace. Phil closed his eyes and breathed out softly.

“No,” she said, and shot Phil a dark look. “I was going to tell you that Pruscilla had her stomach stapled.”

“I know!” I laughed. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“Well if anyone could use it, it’s her.” She was still hiding her hand behind her back.

My curiosity got the better of me. “What’s in your hand?”

“What?”

“Your left hand.”

“It’s a tampon, if you must know.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Not exactly an engagement ring. I guess I just had weddings on the brain. I’d have to stop assuming everyone else was getting married, too.

“Yes, well, whatever.” She turned to go, then stopped and said
loudly, “Nice shoes. I like them better with this dress than that gown from last year.” Everyone within earshot looked at my feet. What a hag.

By the time I found Bruce, he was deeply immersed in conversation with Pruscilla. She looked pretty good. There was no denying it—she was a lot slimmer. You could see the bones in her face now, and her breasts stuck out farther than her stomach. If that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what is. The day Pruscilla Cockburn looks better than I do…I can’t bear to think about it.

Bruce already had a drink in his hand, courtesy of Miss Health and Fitness, no doubt, so I finished mine quickly and started in on the one I’d brought for him.

“You look great, Pruscilla,” I said. “Doesn’t she, Bruce?”

Pruscilla flushed bright red.

“She sure does,” Bruce agreed. “I told her I barely recognized her.”

“I’ve lost almost fifty-five pounds!” she gushed.

“It really shows,” I said. She seemed very susceptible to flattery these days, at least about this one thing. It certainly hadn’t done me any good when I told her I thought her people skills made her the perfect candidate for the President of Marketing and Sales (West Coast) position I’d seen posted in the Newsletter.

“Everyone’s been so supportive,” she said. “Especially people who understand. Evie, you know how hard it is to struggle with your weight. But I finally feel like I’ve got it under control.” Great, now we were sharing the most intimate secrets of our personal lives.

Bruce nodded, and said, “Evie joined a gym.”

The rest of the soiree was equally bad, except for when a drunken Doris from Skin Care made a very public pass at Gregory from Fragrances, who is much, much younger than her, and was there with his boyfriend, besides. You can hardly blame her, though. The pickings are pretty slim at Kendra White.

While Bruce chatted with Pruscilla and made the rounds, I lurked in the corner and got tipsy with two girls from Skin Care. Ashley, one of the few people who I feel truly gets it at KW, called a play-by-play on Doris’s clumsy attempts at seduction.

“Do you think it’s possible she doesn’t know?” Wendy asked incredulously as Gregory’s boyfriend fondled his ear. But Doris just kept trying to pull him onto the dance floor.

“Oh, I know that she knows,” Ashley assured her. “She just thinks she can turn him.”

“If I were gay, it would take a lot more than the likes of Doris to convince me to switch sides,” I said.

Wendy shook her head. “That’s for sure. She looks like a thirteen-year-old Russian gymnast with all those barrettes in her hair.”

“What is she, fifty?” I asked. There was a definite dichotomy at KW between the older women and the younger ones. We each tended to keep to ourselves.

“Oh, at least,” said Ashley. “But I don’t think she’s ever even had a boyfriend.”

“No wonder she’s so desperate,” I said. “But isn’t she his boss?” We stared as Gregory reluctantly tangoed Doris across the floor.

Ashley nodded. “You’re thinking sexual harassment? It’s possible. I wouldn’t put it past her. When I was her assistant, she once tried to get me to pick up her dry cleaning.”

Wendy laughed. “Oh, yeah, that was something. She told Doris she’d be happy to—as soon as Human Resources added the term ‘Spineless Lackey’ to her job description.”

“You did not,” I said.

“I sure as hell did,” she said as she tugged at her waist, then mumbled, “Fucking control-tops. Why do I even bother? It’s not like there’s anyone here to impress.”

“And you got away with it?”

“Damn strait I did. All she did was laugh, like she’d been kidding about it or something. Some cover-up. But I wasn’t about to pick up her god damn dry cleaning.”

If only I had the guts, I thought wistfully. Somehow, though, what comes across as self-assuredness and confidence in Ashley would seem contrary and difficult in me if I tried to pull the same thing. “I wish I could tell Pruscilla off like that the next time she orders me to work through my lunch, but as you know I’m—”

“ON PROBATION!” They both yelled at the same time and gulped back their eggnogs.

At least that was the only Christmas party I’d have to deal with this year. The shindig at Bruce’s school is an employees-only thing, thank God, which means I would be spared small talk about this little prodigy’s knack for recombining DNA and that little virtuoso’s stellar turn at Carnegie Hall.

When he came home from that, the following evening, he told me they were promoting him to a scout, or Parker School Representative, as they call it. Yes, they have talent scouts at these schools. Essentially, Bruce explained, he’ll still be teaching, but starting in January, he’ll also be traveling around the country once in a while to convince the parents of gifted kids to send their precious little bundles to his school. I think they should give him a commission for each one he brings in, but he balked at the idea of suggesting it. With tuition alone at over ten thousand dollars a year, I think it was the least they could do to thank him.

If anyone deserves a raise at that school, Bruce does. He loves those kids, even though they’re irritating to most everyone but their parents. Plus, he has a Master’s degree. If I had a Master’s degree, I probably would have been promoted by now, too. Morgan has an MBA and she’s been promoted countless times. Maybe if Bruce makes enough money, I could quit Kendra White and go back to school full-time in the fall. It was definitely something to think about. A Master’s degree would make a marvelous Christmas present. If Bruce can’t think of anything to get me this year, I just might suggest it.

T
he holidays passed pleasantly enough, partly because for once I didn’t stuff myself to the gills with chocolate and pie. It’s not that Mom doesn’t cook well; she does (although the turkey was a little dry), it’s just that I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. A real Christmas miracle.

According to the most recent literature on the subject, the key to getting rid of those unwanted pounds forever is not what you put in your mouth, it’s about changing your perspective and using positive visualization (
Shape,
January: “See It, Be It: Get Fit in Your Mind First”). It was such a relief to hear that Mars bars have nothing to do with it. Instead of torturing myself over every delicious, forbidden morsel, all I have to do is actively imagine how fabulous I’ll be when I’ve dropped forty-five pounds, and then the weight will magically melt away. You see, when the end result is more appetizing than what you can eat today, you just won’t be as hungry. You will completely lose your desire to snack. Poor Pruscilla—if only she had known, she could have avoided unnecessary surgery.

Why hadn’t anyone told me about this sooner? The infor
mation has already completely revolutionized my relationship with food. To think, I’ve spent all these years cursing calories, instead of just embracing them as the fuel my body needs to sustain energy. It was all so simple, really. Armed with this healthy new approach, I felt certain I’d be able to circumvent any unnecessary diet-related craziness on my part. Bruce would be thrilled.

Before the big Christmas dinner, as an appetite suppressant, I went into Mom’s closet and peeked at The Dress. It was as stunning as ever. I imagined myself in it, walking down the aisle. “She’s thin as a rail,” guests would whisper to one another as I floated by. “How ever did she do it?” Even the minister would suck in his breath when he saw me. This visualization technique worked so well, in fact, that I didn’t even have dessert.

It was all part of the master plan, which I’d hammered out very carefully during a particularly bad wave of nausea the morning after the KW Christmas Party. And wouldn’t you know it? Pruscilla’s rapidly emerging collarbones were enough to spur me on to the gym, too. I’d been going religiously three days a week, for one week so far, and it was going fantastically. I wouldn’t want to counteract the effects of my new workout regime by forcing myself to eat dessert just because it happened to be Christmas.

Mom and Claire couldn’t help but notice my resolve.

“No fruitcake, Evie?” asked Claire.

“Not tonight. I’m stuffed.”

“But you love my fruitcake,” Mom said, her brow furrowed.

That may have been true at one time. I’ve always felt that fruitcake got a bad rap. If you like Sara Lee pound cake, I used to say, and you like maraschino cherries, then what’s the problem?

“I just don’t feel like it, Mom.”

“Leave her alone, Lillian. She doesn’t want any.” Claire, who has always been quite slim herself, understood these things.

“All right. Will you at least have some tea?”

“Yes, please. With milk.”

And so it went.

It was actually quite a nice evening. Bruce even stopped by later on, after his dinner at Bertie’s was finished. He showed up in a Santa beard and hat, which his school let him have a few years back after the kids proved to be more interested in sled aerodynamics and Amundsen’s trip to the North Pole than Bruce’s anorexic interpretation of Saint Nick.

“It was nice of you to come,” I said, feeling festive. “How was your dinner?”

“Why, Santa has no time to eat dinner on Christmas Eve, little girl! It’s my busiest night of the year!”

Claire rolled her eyes and Mom laughed. “Maybe I could make a nice plate for Santa?” she asked hopefully.

“Well,” Bruce said, rubbing his nonexistent belly, “maybe just a small one. But go easy on me—I don’t want to get stuck in a chimney!”

“Maybe Santa should take off his beard before he eats,” I offered.

“Maybe you should have a seat on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas,” he slurred. “More gravy, please Lilly.”

Mom beamed, and loaded it on. Disgusting—there’s enough fat in one spoonful of that stuff to put a girl over her limit for the day.

“No wonder the kids were afraid of you,” I said.

“Santa will deal with you later, little girl,” he said slyly, jiggling his belt buckle.

“Bruce!” Mom gasped.

“Don’t be such a prude, Lillian,” Claire laughed. “They’ve been living together since college. And I think Santa’s been into the eggnog.”

Defeated, Bruce pulled off his beard. “Can’t a guy be in a good mood without being drunk?”

“Oh my God, it’s Bruce,” I said flatly.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he said. “Where’s your holiday spirit?”

Claire sighed. “Speaking of holiday romance, Lillian—”

“We were speaking of no such thing,” Mom interrupted.

“Yes, well, anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask you something, and I thought since we’re all in a such good mood….” Claire hesitated.

Mom’s no fool. “Go on,” she said suspiciously.

Bruce helped himself to a huge slab of fruitcake.

“He must be starving after that goose,” I explained.

“I met a woman last week in my sculpture class. She’s a very nice lady. Name’s Francine. Well, we got to talking and it turns out she has a son. A widower. And he’s only fifty-two, if you can imagine that.”

“Oh, I can imagine that very well, Claire,” Mom snapped, getting up to clear the table.

“I told her all about you, and she seemed very interested. I thought maybe this fellow could give you a call sometime. He’s a contractor, and he’s very handsome. I saw his picture.”

“What does he look like?” I asked.

“He could look like Wayne Newton for all I care, but it makes no difference because I’m not interested,” Mom yelled from the kitchen. “And the discussion is closed.”

“Well, he seemed tall. He’s got that, oh, whaddyacallit? Salt-and-pepper hair, that’s it. And a very distinguished nose. Very Roman.” Claire said loudly. What the hell was a Roman nose? “Maybe I’ll just pass her number along anyway,” she whispered to me and winked.

Mom came back in with a glass of wine and sat down.

Bruce, fortified by rum and fruitcake, had dispensed with his normal inhibitions. “Come on, Lilly! It can’t hurt to talk to the guy, can it?”

“Yes, Bruce, it can,” she said curtly, and shot Claire a nasty look. “You see? You see this? You and your nosy little friend should stay out of my personal life. Try and find some men of your own, why don’t you.”

Claire hooted like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “That’s exactly what
I
said! I told her that if you didn’t want
him, I’d be happy to take him off her hands! He lives at home with her, so he sounds like a bit of a mama’s boy, if you ask me, but it’s not so easy for an old lady like me to get a date. I can’t afford to be picky!”

“Claire, really! You should be ashamed of yourself, carrying on like that. And, dare I ask, don’t you already have a boyfriend?” Mom was quite happy to change the subject.

“Oh, Eddie left me for an older woman. She’s seventy-six!” My crazy granny slapped the table so hard, some of Mom’s wine sloshed out of the glass. But we all laughed anyway—even Mom, who tried hard not to.

Despite everyone’s willingness to let her get away with being so difficult to talk to on this subject, I decided right then and there that one of my New Year’s resolutions would be to find Mom a date for the wedding. It didn’t seem fair. Here I was, marrying Bruce, on the verge of being thin, and deliriously happy at least once in a while, while Mom is all alone and miserable. The thought of going home to an empty house every night for, like, twenty-five years is the worst possible thing I could imagine.

I remember, vaguely, that she had a boyfriend at one time, when I was in middle school. I was probably only twelve or thirteen, and I don’t remember his name or anything like that, but I do recall him coming over to our house for dinner once. Mom got all dressed up, put on her pearls and perfume. She made me wear my white confirmation dress, since it was the only nice dress I had. I hated it—all white and frilly and babyish—and I remember being self-conscious about my boobs. The guy had very bad breath and brought me a Barbie doll, even though I was far too old for them, so I pulled her head off and flushed it down the toilet. Then I screamed and cried until I threw up, and locked myself in Mom’s bedroom. We never saw that jerk again. With losers like him on the circuit, no wonder she swore off dating.

Still, though, it’s about time she tried again. I’ll see if Claire has any ideas on how to trick her into a date. Maybe she has another friend with a son or an ex-boyfriend or something. But
hopefully not one who still lives with his mother. I can definitely appreciate Mom’s unwillingness to date a mama’s boy. She’s fifty-one years old, and the last thing she needs is some freak show who’s never done his own laundry.

By the time we got home after dinner, Bruce was so tired he fell asleep in his beard. I couldn’t help but be a little pissed off, because I had been seriously considering having sex with him. But he made up for it the next morning when we opened our presents. Although I never got around to telling him I wanted a Master’s degree for Christmas, he did pretty well shopping on his own.

“Do you like it?” he asked sheepishly. As if I wouldn’t like a diamond tennis bracelet.

“How could I not like it?” I held it up to the light. “Is it real?”

“Of course, Evie!” he laughed. “You think I’d slip you a fake?”

Sometimes I forget that Bruce comes from money. It really would never cross his mind that cubic zirconiums are actually an option. In fact, they can be quite pretty, as the entire contents of my jewelry box can attest (
Glamour,
May: “Diamonds Are Forever, But Paste Is Pretty, Too!”).

“It must have cost a
fortune.
Have you been saving for this forever? Here—do it up for me.”

Bruce beamed. “Since the summer. Granny Fulbright’s ring was free, so I thought this year, I could get you something really special.”

I jumped up and hugged him. “I really love it, Bruce. It’s perfect. And it looks so good on my wrist. I’ll wear it on our wedding day.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I really love my presents, too. Thanks, Evie.”

I’d given him a ludicrously complicated calculator I knew he wanted, and a book about Quidditch, some sort of Harry Potter thing.

“I feel terrible. They don’t even compare.” Truth is, I’d almost screwed up big-time yesterday morning when I realized
I’d been at the gym for two hours and that the stores closed at noon. Thank God Jade remembered to remind me.

“Are you kidding? I’ll have more fun with this stuff than you ever could with that useless bracelet. Believe me.” Bruce always knows the right thing to say. “Although it does look pretty sexy on your wrist….”

He was right. I held out my arm to admire the bracelet from afar. Why, it could have been the wrist of Elizabeth Taylor, Ivana Trump or any such lucky lady. It even made my arm look skinnier. Come to think of it, the bracelet made Bruce look a whole lot sexier, too. Although I had the distinct feeling I was somehow being manipulated, we then tore off each other’s flannel pj’s and had quite a passionate romp on the floor next to the Christmas tree.

The only real low point of the holidays was New Year’s Eve, which was lamer than normal. We usually do something fun with Morgan—last year we went to an S&M-themed dinner club in the meat-packing district—but this year we couldn’t. She wanted us to go with her and Billy to a huge party at some bar, only I was having a body crisis and didn’t feel up to achieving the required level of trendiness. As late as that afternoon, she was begging us to come.

“Don’t be an idiot, Evie. You’ll look fabulous, you know you will.”

“Seriously, Evie,
please
come. Drinks are on Billy—all night!”

“I don’t think so. But don’t worry about us, we’ll find something to do.”

“You’re going to miss a great party. And Bruce will miss looking at my tits. Peter bought me a leather bustier for Christmas.” Morgan rarely misses a chance to tease Bruce about his wanting to sleep with her, which he probably does. I know she’d never bother with him, although she’s turned making him blush into a sport.

“Won’t Billy mind?” I asked.

“Mind what—Bruce checking me out, or Peter’s leather fetish?”

“Um, both?”

“He doesn’t care. Billy knows Bruce is too much of a puss to actually make a move on me—”

“How would he know that? They’ve never even met!”

“Well, I must have told him, then. And he has no clue Peter exists. Safer that way, don’t you think? Back to what about you, though. Are you really not going to come to a great party just because of some lame body image crisis?”

“I don’t think it’s lame. In fact, out of respect for me, you probably shouldn’t go there, either. I would never buy a Volvo, you know, out of respect for you.” Morgan’s parents split up when we were sophomores in high school after her mother caught her dad cheating with a Volvo salesgirl. “Safe cars, my ass!” Mrs. Russell used to say.

“You could buy a thousand Volvos for all I care. If it hadn’t been for that little Swedish meatball, my mom wouldn’t be with Marco today.” After the divorce, which was quite ugly, her mom met Marco, a nice-guy carpenter who won slightly more than four million dollars in the New York State Lottery three days after they got married. “Luck of the Irish, my ass!” Mrs. Russell now says.

“I still wouldn’t do it,” I told her. “And I won’t go to the party!”

“You suck,” Morgan said, and hung up.

“And a happy New Year’s to you, too,” I said into the receiver, and slammed it down. “She can be such a bitch.”

“You knew that when you married her,” Bruce sighed.

“So what are we going to do?” I whined. Not having Morgan to automatically tag along with meant we were dangerously close to the dreaded New Year’s Couples’ Fight. It happens when you and your boyfriend can’t agree on what to do, so you end up having a huge fight, doing different things and resenting each other the whole night, or else having a huge fight,
doing nothing together and resenting each other the whole night.