Spur of the Moment (11 page)

So many times Marin had had to break it off with a guy. She'd left a trail of crying men in her wake. She hated making men cry, but she couldn't go on any more dates with guys who didn't make her laugh. More times than she could count, guys had killed themselves trying to impress her—almost literally. There was Chris, the guy she'd gone skiing with who tried so hard to dazzle her with his skiing abilities that, as he zoomed down the mountain, watching her to make sure she was watching him, he crashed into a tree and broke his leg. Then there was the guy driving her to a restaurant, nervously glancing at her off and on the whole trip there, staring a few seconds too long—long enough to rear end a Jeep and total his car.

Whether they nearly mangled themselves or not, she was sick of going out on dates where every word uttered took awkward effort. She was sick of the endless strain of not connecting with someone, not feeling the fire, that spark. She wanted love, passion, fever. She was ready. It was time.

16

Stop the Clock on Christina's Fifteen Minutes Already

J
ason sat at his desk working on lesson plans before his fourth-period class. So far, no mention of the cattle rancher or any sort of punishment had come up. Jason suspected that the rancher had thought he could put the fear of God into Jason and that alone would censor Jason's lesson plans henceforth. The rancher didn't know Jason well at all. If anything, Jason became more political than ever, while still being careful to avoid seeming militant by cracking jokes and keeping a smile on his face much of the time.

Sophomore Sarah Synnesvedt entered his office with a light knock.

“Come in,” he said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. She started to close the door behind her. “No, no!” he said in mild panic. “Keep the door open please.”

Sarah wore far too much make-up and too few clothes. Jason was only twenty-five years old, but he felt like some old fuddy-duddy who was horrified by teen fashion. Christina Aguilera was in cahoots with the devil as far as he was concerned. He wanted teenage girls to know that, in the case of fashion, less was not more, more was more.

He was also in a tricky position because, since he was just a few years older than the girls he taught, many of his female students thought they had a real chance of seducing him. He'd found countless notes that he was sure had been strategically planted talking about how hot Mr. Hess was and what sort of lascivious acts they'd like to engage in with him. He couldn't help but be shocked when he compared their behavior to his own at their age. He never would have behaved like that. He'd been shy with girls in high school and had dated the same girl from sophomore year to their freshman year in college. In his sophomore year they were still at the making-out-and-mild-waist-up-only groping stage. He'd thought about sex, certainly, but in the abstract way you dreamed about becoming a rock star or movie star, something distant and far off that you had no actual intentions of doing anything about to make the fantasy come true. He and his girlfriend waited until their senior year to have sex. Even though that was only two years older than the students he taught, he thought these sophomores seemed so much younger than he had ever been. He wanted them to stay innocent as long as they could. He tried to be a realist and remind himself he had been
exactly
that young when he was a sophomore, but his visceral instinct was to dress these kids in amorphous burlap-sacks and segregate them into gender-divided boarding schools where there was no access to the evils of MTV or teen movies.

“Mr. Hess?” Sarah fluttered her eyes, which were coated in glittery silver eye shadow. Jason knew nothing about make-up, but he knew for a fact that Ramiro would have pointed commentary to make about Sarah's over-the-top look. “I was a little confused about what you talked about the other day with the, um, mitochondria and organelles?”

He happily reviewed the concepts with her, delighted that he wouldn't have to deal with teaching about human reproduction until the spring. Every time she cooed about how smart he was, he deflected her compliments by quickly asking her to repeat back what he just said and how that applied to cells and energy or whatnot.

Sometimes Jason wondered if he could head off his students' flirtations by wearing a wedding ring, but he feared that this might make him even more appealingly unattainable.

When Sarah finally left, he had only ten minutes to get to class, so he closed the folder of papers he was grading, inadvertently knocking over the publicity photo of the members of Spur of the Moment that he kept on his desk. He righted it and paused a moment to look at it. It always made him feel good to have his best friends smiling at him. He focused his gaze to the left-hand corner of the picture where, if he'd had graphic software, he could have cropped everyone else out and it would have just been him and Marin.

They looked so good together—he'd always thought so.

He wished he could get over his crush. It was embarrassing and silly. But he was a guy who, when he fell, he fell hard. His first girlfriend had broken his heart when, a month after they started college together, she left him to date the fourth-floor resident advisor in her dorm. Jason hadn't dated anyone for the rest of his freshman year, hadn't even looked at anyone else, though there had been plenty of interested women. It wasn't until Marin that he'd been able to get over his high school sweetheart.

It didn't help that Jason and Marin slept together every now and then—usually in bursts of three, four, or five weeks at a time, although sometimes not for long stretches in between. Just when he thought he really should make a concerted effort to date someone else, they slept together again. In those giggly moments of making love, giving each other massages, and whispering things of no importance, he knew he couldn't date anyone else—it wouldn't be fair to the woman he tried to date. He loved Marin, wholly and passionately.

He figured that she was just young and didn't want to feel tied down. Frankly, he didn't think he was ready for marriage yet himself. Their lives were still too much in a state of flux. They worked crazy hours and drank too much and stayed up late more often than not. They weren't still in college, but this was also nothing like a life with a mortgage, two kids, steady hours, and a healthy balanced diet that wasn't heavily supplemented by beer and tequila. He liked it that way. For now.

17

The Restorative Powers of Pizza and Beer

A
fter the misery of her date with What's-his-face, Marin needed some serious girl talk. She went into Ana's room carrying a six-pack of beer behind her back. Ana was sprawled across her bed with a vacant coma-like look in her eye.

“Are you hungry?” Marin asked.

“I'm starving, but I don't have the energy to make anything.”

“I've ordered a pizza for us, and dun dun dun! Beer!” Marin revealed the beer.

“Mmm,” Ana grunted. “That's nice of you. I don't actually know if I have the energy to hold a slice of pizza to my mouth, but it's a sweet gesture.”

Marin took the caps off two beers, then lay down next to her friend.

“How did your date with the guy from the bar go?” Ana asked.

“Ugh.” Marin rolled her eyes.

“What went wrong? He seemed so cute Friday night.”

“I don't even remember what he looks like anymore. I've blocked the whole experience out in a post-traumatic-stress-disorder-induced amnesia. I mean, at first I was kind of attracted to him because he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't nudge his friend in the ribs with his elbow going, ‘dude, check her out.' He was really nervous, and I hoped maybe he'd calm down, but he never did. I was waiting for a spark to flame, but it was like the match was wet and it just wasn't going to work. He took me to the new Chinese place on Sixth Avenue, and the drink menus? Get this. For the description of the strawberry daiquiri, it said, ‘every sip will bring you closer and closer to successful rolling.'”

Ana tried to make sense of that. “What? Is the place like a casino or something? What does that mean?”

“No, it's not a casino, and I have absolutely no idea what it means. Yes I do, it means they were robbed blind by the translator. So then for the margarita, it said, ‘every sip will bring you closer and closer to heave.' ”

Ana burst out laughing. “It did not!” The more she thought about it, trying to figure out what it should have said, the more hilarious she found it. Ana's laughter was infectious, and Marin joined her. The women's giggles fed on each other.

“And then? And then? At the bottom it said, ‘we have different glasses!' With an exclamation point!”

Ana's laughter exploded in a renewed wave of giggles. “That's their big selling point? Where did they find their copywriter?” Ana thought a moment, then repeated, ‘Will bring you closer and closer to heave.' ” The two whooped with laughter.

Marin loved the sound of her friend's laugh. Hearing it brought back all the memories of all the great times they'd had together over the last six years. It reminded Marin how much she loved Ana. The sound of Ana's laughter made Marin feel happy and safe.

“I think they meant to say ‘heaven,' not ‘heave,' ” Marin said when she was finally able to talk again.

“Oh, that makes sense. But what about the other one? ‘It'll bring you closer and closer to successful rolling.' What were they going for?”

“I have no idea.”

“Hey girls, I have some pizza for you.” It was Scott. “You got enough for everybody, right?”

“I thought you boys already had McDonald's for dinner,” Marin said.

“McDonald's? Where is Jason?” Ana asked. He would never approve.

“He's at the peace vigil,” Scott said. “So do we get pizza or not? It's the perfect after-dinner treat.”

“You boys can scrounge through our crumbs when we're done. Now scoot, we have important girl business to discuss.”

The laughing, beer, and aroma of pizza had renewed Ana's energy, and she sat up and tore into the pizza with Marin.

“I'm really kind of bummed it didn't work out with What's-his-face today. I haven't had sex in about forty years.”

“Shut up, it's been a coupla weeks for you. I haven't had sex in a year.”

“A year! You're shitting me.”

“I shit you not. Not since Matt.”

“Damn girl, that is serious.”

“It's very serious. It's critical. It's code blue critical. You know how in cartoons, when the guy is hungry, he'll look at his friend and his friend will look like a turkey leg to him?”

“Yeah?”

“That's how I'm looking at every guy I see. They are all just meat for me to ravage. Just last night I was looking at Scott and I was like,
you know, he's actually pretty cute.
He just hides it so well with his goofiness.”

“You should go for it. He's always thought you're hot.”

“What
ever.
What makes you think that?”

“It's so obvious.”

“If he's so hot for me, why didn't he ever try anything?”

“Ana, if you'll recall a certain marathon smooch fest in the Spur of the Moment coat closet, he did try something once, but mostly he keeps his distance because he knows you're all crushed out on Jason. But you should give it a shot, see where it goes.”

“No, no, it was just a product of my desperation. I need to get a real boyfriend. What is wrong with us? We're all cute, and except for Ram, none of us have ever had a really serious relationship.”

“You were with Matt for seven months.”

“Oh whoopee, seven months. Anyway, it was never that serious. He was cute and funny—well, he was sort of funny, but just not as funny as you guys. I just had more fun with you guys and I was always annoyed when I had to go out with him. I kept trying to talk myself into liking him because it seemed like I should like him. Like if I were writing a personal ad, I'd say, ‘I want a guy who is cute and smart and kind and funny,' which he was, but, I don't know. Maybe I'm not capable of love.”

“You love us,” Marin said.

“That's true.”

“That's probably what the problem is—we're each other's families, so we're not motivated to go out and start families of our own. We do everything you do in a family. We support each other, have fun together, we love each other. We have everything you'd get from being married.”

“Except sex.”

“Oh yeah, except sex.” Marin sighed.

“Hey, I don't want to hear it from you. You can have Jason anytime.”

“No, I'm calling it quits this time.”

Ana rolled her eyes.

“No, I mean it this time. It's just too much trouble. He always starts thinking that we have a chance to become something more than fuck buddies. He follows me around all moony-eyed and telling me how much he loves me. It's exhausting.”

“Yeah, I can see how it'd be a real drag to have somebody telling you how wonderful you are and how much he loves you.”

Marin stuck her tongue out at Ana.

Ana sighed contentedly. “Marin, thank you so much for the beer and pizza. It gave me just enough energy to stagger downstairs to put my laundry in the dryer and then collapse into bed.”

“You're welcome. Smooch smooch, babe.” Marin and Ana exchanged air kisses and hugged.

It was exactly what they'd needed.

18

The Cluster Fuck, Part Three

W
hen Ana wasn't practicing or performing, she spent every free second publicizing and coordinating the show.

She was ready to drop dead from exhaustion.

Ordinarily, just working the forty-plus hours at Abbott Technology made her want to collapse in front of the TV and be nothing more than a remote-control-changing sloth until she was able to fall asleep. Now she wasn't just working forty-plus hours, as well as working nights at Spur of the Moment, and spending every free night practicing and writing scripts, she was using every moment she could find to coordinate getting the show together and properly promoted.

Tom agreed to work the lights and sound for a beer, the typical exchange rate between underpaid performers. Chelsey would work the ticket booth and Jason would walk people to their seats since neither of them was on until the third scene.

In addition to all the time outside of the office she spent on the show, Ana did her best to avoid work while at work in favor of doing stuff for the performance. She'd spent the morning pounding out a news release that she'd send to journalists in the area a week or so before the show.

Ana's phone rang. It was The Weasel. “Ana, I need to meet with you.”

“When?” Ana said, annoyed that he was bothering her when she had much more important personal things to work on.

“Right now.”

Ana hung up the phone and sighed a sigh that the entire floor could hear, such was her angst.

“The Weasel?” Scott guessed.

Ana nodded, aggrieved. Scott offered a parting impression of The Weasel.

The name The Weasel came out of an improv scene Ana and Scott had done when they were still in the Iron Pyrits together. At the time, Scott had already graduated and been working at Abbott for a year. Ana had been in her senior year of college.

In the scene, Ana played an office underling, Scott played her boss, and Jason was the president of the company. Ana kept coming up with great ideas for the new product launch, and Scott would take her ideas, run to the president, claim them as his own in a very Dilbert pointy-haired boss way. When Jason would say something like, “Yes, that's a great idea. But what should we call it?” Scott said, “Um, let me get my notes.” Then he'd scurry across the stage to Ana, making this “pht-pht-pht” noise reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter's fava bean speech, except in a higher-pitched squirrelly tone. After Scott had dashed back and forth from Ana and Jason a couple times, he paused mid-scurry and faced the audience to at last explain why he was making this strange noise. “Weasels are fast, ferocious, and able to
weasel
our way in or out of tight spaces. Weasels' pelts change color with the season, a camouflage that allows us to blend into changing environments. And, we are deft at stealing from other animals. I am The Weasel! I am invincible!”

Plus, Scott's comical, fast-paced mincing steps across the stage were much appreciated. Making the “pht-pht-pht” noise required him to pull his bottom lip under his teeth, scrunch up his nose, and generally make a face that, in and of itself, made people laugh. The audience loved it. Ana loved it.

After the show that night, sprawled across their couches, imbibing beer with gusto, Ramiro and Jason were discussing the finer points of the latest episode of
The Simpsons,
and Ana, recalling Scott's character, starting chuckling to herself.

“What are you laughing about?” Marin had asked.

“Pht-pht-pht . . .” was all Ana could manage before doubling over in laughter. Scott smiled, pleased that she was reinforcing his view of himself as a comic genius.

Ramiro stopped what he was saying about the inherent hilarity of Homer and Mel Gibson stealing the Mad Max car from the Hollywood Auto Museum and joined the new trajectory of the conversation without skipping a beat. “That
was
pretty funny.”

“It's my boss to a tee,” Scott said. “He's full of shit but he has this incredible gift for getting in and out of tight spots by lying. I almost admire him for it. He is really just this conniving weasel.”

From then on, whenever Scott referred to his boss, it was as The Big Weasel. When The Big Weasel became Ana's boss, too, Scott's impression took on even greater meaning, and it made her laugh even harder.

“Hey boss, what's up?” Ana said.

“I have the changes to the email.”

“The email?”

“Alerting clients to the changes in Consensys 6.0.”

Oh right, the spam email content with which they would harass their clients around the globe. This was Ana's contribution to society: Writing spam email copy.

The original deadline had been so long ago, Ana had forgotten about the project completely. The Weasel handed her back the draft of the email, barely visible beneath his myriad comments in red ink.

She read his remarks as she returned to her desk and felt her mood wither. He'd said that her intro was weak, she needed a better transition, and in general it needed to be shortened. He'd rewritten parts of it. Ana tried to decide if what he'd written was better. In a couple of cases, maybe it was.

She wasn't really a bad writer, was she? God, maybe she was really terrible at absolutely everything. Maybe she wasn't funny or talented and would never make it as a performer, and she wouldn't even have a marketing job to fall back on, because she apparently sucked at that too.

When Ana got back to her desk, she said to Scott, “I want to jump out of the window.”

“Please don't, at least not until after the show. Who will take over your parts?”

Despite herself, Ana smiled.

“Come on. We'll get some sandwiches from the cafeteria and enjoy one of the last pleasant days of the year before it snows and we're stuck at home hibernating under blankets for the next five months.”

Ana agreed. They went downstairs and got sandwiches, chips, and Diet Coke (Ana) and Coke (Scott).

Behind their office building there was a small area on a cement patio with picnic tables and, behind that, a small lawn and a sprinkling of trees that, with a little suspension of disbelief, could be considered secluded.

When Scott stopped on the patio, Ana said, “I don't want to eat here. Let's find a grassy knoll somewhere.”

Scott followed Ana agreeably as she walked past the picnic area and across the lawn.

“What is a knoll anyway?” he asked.

“It's a, um”—Ana rolled her free arm in sort of wave motion—“and then there are trees. It's kind of a hill . . . or maybe it's sort of concave?”

“Like a ditch?”

Ana laughed. “Not a ditch, I don't think.”

“Are there gravelly knolls? Rocky knolls? Pot-holey knolls?”

“I don't know, maybe, but who'd want to have a picnic on a gravelly knoll?”

Scott nodded sagely, as if this were a wise conclusion indeed. They sat under a willow tree on a spot of grass that wasn't particularly knolly, but the trees' long wispy branches gave them a nice feeling of privacy.

Ana scarfed down her sandwich in minutes and told Scott she'd better get back to work.

“Ana, you've been on break for”—he looked at his watch—“seven minutes. And you wonder why you're always stressed out?”

“But I have so much to do!”

“Girlfriend, you need to slow down. Hang with me a few minutes. Come here. Lie down next to me. Let's look at the clouds.”

“Look at the clouds?!” she yelped, as if he'd proposed they strip off all their clothes and streak through the streets of downtown Denver.

“When was the last time you just took a few minutes to stare at the clouds?”

Ana thought for a moment. “Does when I'm flying in an airplane and looking at the blanket of clouds under me count?”

“No, when was the last time you just stared at the clouds and tried to think of what things they resemble?”

“I haven't done that since I was a little kid, what with cloud staring being a quintessentially kid activity.”

“Bullshit.”

“I haven't played with Barbie dolls since I was a kid either. It's just a kid thing.”

“Ana, it's a good exercise for your imagination.”

That got her. She was always meaning to work on improving her imagination.

She lay back and looked at the clouds.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Particles of condensed vapor being pushed around the Earth's atmosphere by the wind.”

“Very creative, Ana. I bet they named you that in your yearbook, ‘Most Creative.' ”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “So what do you see, mister smarty pants?”

“I see a mama duck with three little baby ducks following her.”

“What? Where?”

He brought his face so close to hers their cheeks touched. When their eyes were at about the same level, he pointed up. “The clouds that are straight up from that brick building, the one with the Absolut vodka billboard right in front of it. See how in front it looks like a duck's beak and little webbed feet sort of waddling and these cute little guys following it?”

Ana looked really hard. She squinted, as if she were trying to see an image in one of those Magic Eye pictures that looked like gobbledygook until you were so bored you hallucinated that you saw a hidden image. “If I squint real hard I can sort of get an abstract-painting feel for a duck or two.” Once she saw it, abstract though it was, she imagined the little clouds of baby chicks waddling through the sky.

“Have you ever seen baby ducks following their mom?” he asked.

“I'm sure I've seen some on TV.”

“No, I mean live. It's so cute. They just kind of march along, stopping traffic, like they are the most important things ever, like they have this super urgent meeting to get to, and of course everyone stops and ‘ohhhhs' because baby ducks are these adorable little puffs of black and yellow fuzz that melt everyone's hearts. So one time, I forget where I was, the babies were following their mom, the whole town had come to a standstill to watch them, and one of the babies fell through a grate!”

“Oh no!”

“That's what we all said. The mama duck was squawking her head off, and the other baby ducks fell out of line like soldiers at ease except for like, totally confused and baffled soldiers at ease, and all the people watching, we were having a sort of communal heart attack. We were all just having a fit for like a minute, and then this fearless little girl ran up, squeezed her hand into the little, watchamacallit, sewer drain thingy, and pulled the duck out, wet and a little irritated by the delay, but otherwise unharmed, and the baby duck just joined her siblings and they started marching off again.”

“Oh, that's adorable. That's so cute.” Ana realized that in only a matter of minutes, she felt infinitely better. Far less stressed out. Almost happy even. “What else do you see?” she asked. “Oh, oh, I see one, I see Tigger hopping on his tail, see?”

“No, that's The Weasel, pulling a bunch of bullshit lies out of his ass.”

“Yes! Yes! That's exactly what it is.”

Scott did his squirrel doing the Hannibal Lecter fava bean thing while saying, “I'm good at marketing, pht-pht-pht-pht-pht.”

Ana rolled with laughter, so Scott kept dishing it out.

Ana's good mood lasted until it was quarter to six and she was just about to shut off her computer, when Deb Myers came up behind her and said, “I need you to finish this up tonight for the meeting tomorrow morning. I'm afraid I can't stay because I have to pick Reagan up from daycare. If you get there even one minute late, they start charging you a ton of money for each minute after six! All you have to do is grab the information from other presentations and proposals we've done. Just edit it and get it into shape. It won't take any time at all. I emailed you the electronic document. If you could just print out seven copies and put it in the box outside my office before eight tomorrow morning, that'd be great.”

Ana took the stack of papers Deb was holding. It didn't look like that thick a proposal. She could probably review it in fifteen minutes or so. She'd still have plenty of time to get to her seven o'clock practice for the sketch comedy show.

“Ta!” Deb called, and, before Ana could even glance at the first page of the proposal, Deb was out the front door.

It was only nine pages. Not bad at all. Then she looked through and found out why it was so short—Deb hadn't done anything except to put instructions for what Ana should add. Okay, well, most of the information had been written before, somewhere. She just had to find it.

She decided to start with the easy stuff. Quickly adding bulk to the proposal would give her a sense of accomplishment.

Executive bios. No problem. They were all handily available on the company website.

Except two of the execs had left the company and had been replaced by two different people. Nuts. It had been on her to-do list to update these on the site. Wait, hadn't she already done this? Maybe the webmaster just hadn't done it yet. She knew she'd written something up about Don Hines and Dick Polish when they'd joined the company. Where, where, where . . .

News releases! She'd written news releases on them.

Now, where on the network had she filed them? She didn't write that many news releases; they usually came from the corporate office in California, so it wasn't like there were a ton of them for her to keep track of. Did she file them under their respective names?

She searched. Nope.

Maybe something from the headline. She searched for “new execs,” “welcomes,” “management.” Nothing, nothing, nothing.