Starting from Square Two (15 page)

M
issy floated into work on Monday morning looking chipper as ever, in a navy blue suit and skirt. She was the queen of perfectly fitting suits.

“Morning,” she sang, putting her key in the door to her office. “How are you?”

Gert wondered about the change of mood. She thought that probably, when Missy had gone to lunch with her husband on Friday, they'd made up. Then they'd a weekend of makeup passion. That was why Missy was so happy. Guys probably had a lot of incentive to make up with Missy.

“I'm fine,” Gert replied.

“Great,” Missy said, throwing the door open. “Did you find my FedEx?”

“Yes,” Gert said. “Didn't you get the message I left?”

Missy stopped in the doorway.

“What message?”

“The one I left at your house,” Gert said.

“How could you have my new number?” Missy asked.

“I used the one that's listed.”

“Under…?”

“Dennis Hathaway.”

Missy gasped. “I'm never there anymore! You left Dennis a message? What did you say?”

“That the FedEx was in my top drawer….”

“Never call his home again!” Missy seethed, and she immediately went into her office and slammed the door. Gert looked at the phone on her desk and saw Missy's line light up.

Gert opened her top drawer, and her other drawers. The envelope wasn't there.

Had Dennis gotten her message, come in this morning and swiped the envelope?

Missy came back out. “Do you have it?”

“It's not here,” Gert admitted.

Wordlessly Missy returned to her office and slammed the door again. Gert wondered if she'd get fired.

There was no way she could look for another job now. She just had too much to deal with without looking for work.

She set her jaw and tried not to cry. She stared at the buildings across the street. They looked fuzzy, then straightened out. She was tired of misery. To hell with Missy and her stupid FedEx. Missy hadn't said a nice word to her in months.

Gert noticed the light on her phone still blinking. Missy must be on with security, telling them about the purloined envelope. Gert checked her drawer again. It was nowhere to be found. She steeled herself for the blowup.

She closed her eyes. She didn't know if she could hold her tongue this time.

“I'm going out to file a police complaint!” Missy said, storming out of her office. Then she stopped and turned to Gert. “You know what? You did me a favor. I am actually glad he had the nerve to do this.
So
glad!” She disappeared down the hall.

Gert breathed.

Missy's line rang the minute the elevator closed, and Gert picked it up.

It was a young, male voice. “Is…Melissa Hathaway there?” it said. It sounded faux-professional, like a young kid calling school pretending to be his parents. It sounded like the mailroom guy. Gert had met him once, when he'd delivered some documents to Missy, although she wasn't sure if the documents were just his excuse to see her.

Missy must have spent the weekend with him, Gert thought. No wonder she had come in happy.

“Would you like me to take a message?” Gert asked, trying to keep a straight face.

“No. I'll call back later. Thanks, ma'am.”

Gert put the phone down. She felt better. Missy must be living with Mailboy now. Her moods must be shifting based on how things were going with him. It was like in seventh grade, when Gert's crushes could make or break her day—but Missy wasn't thirteen.

Gert thought that this would make a funny story to tell Todd.

That had been her first thought.

She realized she was thinking about him when he wasn't around. That was a good sign, right?

Yes, very good.

But it was only three days until she was to tell him about Marc.

She got nervous again and had to stare at the buildings to relax.

 

Hallie was picking mushrooms off her pizza. They had decided to meet for lunch at the gourmet pizza place around the corner from Gert's office. Hallie had called her at work that morning to say she'd felt a little bad about their conversation the other day. Gert had agreed.

The pizza place was where Gert let herself indulge whenever work was going badly. A slice there was four dollars, but a slice, festooned with fresh veggies, was a meal.

“I did what you said,” Gert said, rescuing a dangling strand of saucy cheese. “You were right. I should have thought about helping you more, if you were lonely. I asked Todd about his single friends.”

“You did?” Hallie said, smiling. “Thanks!”

“Yeah,” Gert said. “You know, you really were right about some things. You and Erika were helping me meet people, but I didn't help you.”

“It's not your responsibility,” Hallie said, shrugging. “It's just hard out there. It's just…I'm scared about being the last one alone.”

“I know,” Gert said.

Gert thought that Hallie also looked like a girl who was scared, like she'd lost her mother in the mall. Like a girl who had been wanting things since she was little and was only just realizing she might not get them.

Maybe they'd both get through this stretch of loneliness somehow.

“Todd has one friend you might like,” Gert said. “But there's a caveat.”

She told her about Brett Stoddard.

Hallie was thrilled. Because, she said, if she knew Brett's tricks and seductions, she'd know what to do.

If he was going to play games with girls, Hallie could play, too. She wouldn't act overeager with Brett. If the two of them got to the fabled third date, she wouldn't sleep with him. When he recited the two poems, she'd look pleased but not fall into his lap. When he acted indignant about the way other men treated women, another move Todd had told Gert about, she'd smile, but not kiss his butt. For once, she had insight into a guy's mind. And Hallie would do everything she could to take advantage of it.

“I'll have the upper hand,” Hallie said. “For a change, I'll know what I'm getting into. I won't have to do the ridiculous guesswork, constantly worrying if I'm giving too much or too little. Do guys do that? I get tired of it.”

“Well,” Gert said, “I can set it up so we go on a double date. But you can't harass Todd or anything.”

Hallie laughed. “Give me a little credit,” she said. “I won't ask Todd if he secretly lives with a girl.”

“Stop!” Gert said, slightly nervous again.

Hallie said, “I won't. And I won't have to. Half the reason for us to
meet
Todd's friends is to tell for sure what kind of guy he is.”

“What do you mean ‘us'?”

“Well, Erika can come along, right?”

Gert sighed and rubbed her forehead. Suddenly she had a headache.

“She can bring Dr. Eden to this,” Hallie said. “If there are more people there, it'll give him less of a chance to ask her about religion. And then she can get him drunk and seduce him like she wanted. It'll be perfect.”

Gert wondered what it was that made Hallie always need to be accepted by Erika. Erika could turn cold in a second. Maybe that was it—the ones whose attention was harder to get were the ones you worked more to have. Erika had once seemed to be going places. There was the graphic design career—she was one of the few people Gert knew who was happy in her job—and she had once had the hunky, artistic boyfriend. No wonder Hallie looked up to her.

“Has Erika stopped writing the stuff to Challa?” Gert asked, hoping maybe Erika was getting a little better.

“Still is,” Hallie said. “She's trying to alternate it with e-mails to Eden, but it's not the same thing.” She leaned closer. “I know you don't believe this, but Erika and Ben
were
perfect together. I went up to Lehigh to see a basketball game with them once, and they had their eyes on each other the whole time. They weren't even watching the game. She just made a stupid mistake. I swear, Gert, they were a perfect couple. She did one dumb thing and now she's paying for it.”

Gert wasn't convinced. If Erika had loved Ben the way Gert had loved Marc, she wouldn't have dumped him.

“So when do you want to do this triple date?” Hallie asked.

Gert chewed a piece of pepperoni. “We can't do it Thursday,” Gert said. “Todd and I are cooking dinner together.”

“Wow,” Hallie said. “Sounds intimate.”

“It has to be,” Gert said. “Because that's when I'm going to tell Todd about Marc.”

Hallie dropped her soda straw. “You haven't told Todd about Marc yet?”

“There was never a good time,” Gert said.

“Gertie!” Hallie said. “You have to tell him!”

“I know,” Gert said. “But I'm scared.”

“Scared he might freak out?”

Gert nodded. “A lot of people our age aren't used to hearing something like that. Todd especially. I didn't tell you this, but Friday night, we almost had a fight.”

“About what?” Hallie said. She actually seemed concerned. Gert sensed that on some level, Hallie, despite her jealousy, wanted things to work out, if only to provide hope to her that a healthy relationship could be found in the city. Even if Hallie also didn't want to lose her friend again.

Gert told Hallie about the FedEx battle.

“You did let Todd off easy,” Hallie said.

“Well, he said he was sorry,” Gert said. “And he sort of resolved it.”

“How?”

“He tried to call Information for Missy's number.”

“I don't blame you for not thinking of that,” Hallie said. “Who in their right mind lists their number?”

“Exactly,” Gert said. “Anyway, I'm trying to be patient with him. Sometimes you have to let guys learn how to deal with you.”

“This time you're right,” Hallie said. “You did the right thing with Todd. And you've hit on one of my dating laws without knowing it: The Male Training Rule.”

“The what?” Gert asked.

“I have two friends who trained their last boyfriend how to behave, and both times, after they broke up, the guys married the very next girl they dated. So those girls got him in top form. When you train a guy, ten times out of ten, some other girl ends up being the beneficiary of your largesse. So the rule is, never train a guy. If you think he has potential to change, and if his
issues aren't that bad, deal with them quietly until you're engaged or married, and
then
set your foot down. That way, he won't be able to run to someone else.”

Gert smiled. “I was thinking the other day that you should write a book of these rules. Law of Maximum Exposure. Great Male Statistic….”

“The Great Male Statistic isn't a rule,” Hallie said. “It's a statistic.”

“The Male Training Rule,” Gert said. “Rule of Twenty-Seven.”

“Don't forget the Iowa Paradox.”

“What's that?” Gert said.

“You haven't heard it? Weren't you there— Oh, that was Cat. Well, it's like this. Have you ever heard people say, ‘It's hard to meet people in New York'?”

“Oh, yeah,” Gert said. “All the time.”

“But that's stupid, right? Because where are you supposed to go, someplace where no one lives, like Iowa? Then you won't meet anyone. You can like, stand in the middle of a cornfield in your overalls and pigtails, and you're not going to find a husband. I guess people say that about New York because New Yorkers are busy and aloof. But if there are nice single people in Iowa, you'll hardly meet any of them. Thus: The Iowa Paradox. You can live in New York and pass one thousand rude single people on the sidewalk every day, or you can move somewhere rural and have a choice of three polite ones at church.”

“Which side of the paradox is it best to stay on?” Gert asked.

“I'm here, aren't I?”

 

Heading back up to work, Gert watched the number change on the elevator. She hoped Missy wouldn't be there. It would be nice if Missy had taken off for the afternoon.

Gert sat down to input some numbers into the computer. She thought again about compiling her portfolio. She was in a better mood.

One time, she and Marc had had a good laugh about alter
native slogans for hemorrhoid creams. He'd contributed “Something new to wipe your ass with.” She told him not to give up his job on Wall Street. But she had, back in college, liked to think of new advertising and marketing ideas. It might be worth it to try again.

She could take an hour or two a day to work on her portfolio, maybe talk to the other account supervisors about what to do. She could always move to a different firm if Missy didn't want to let her out from under her thumb. That was a plan.

A school of fish swam across Gert's computer screen. She clicked it and faced a blank page. She would force herself to come up with ten hemorrhoid cream slogans or publicity ideas, right now. Since it might be the only way to get her out of being what was basically a glorified secretary.

Let's see. What could she come up with?

When your moody boss flares up, give her a kick in the rear.

 

Gert's phone rang a few hours later, while she was rereading her list, satisfied.

“I have to tell you this!” Hallie said, out of breath. “We canned that girl at work!”

“Your assistant?”

“I followed her,” Hallie said, lowering her voice. “My boss gave me permission. Guess where she goes every day at 3:00 p.m.?”

“To have sex?” Gert asked. She surprised herself. But it had just seemed like the most obvious answer. She'd been thinking of Missy and the elevators.

Hallie laughed. “Where's your mind? No. MTV Studios. She ran the three blocks every day to watch them tape
Total Request Live
through the windows.”

“With all the teeny-boppers who stand there?”