The View From Penthouse B (23 page)

“Maybe,” said Anthony, clearly meaning
No way.
“But what about Miss Margot? Remind me what you did in your working life.”

This was more than a sore subject. “What did I
do?
” she asked. “You know the answer. I was a deaf and blind part-time receptionist, filling in for my husband’s office staff on their sick days. So what should my résumé say? ‘Hostess? Homemaker? Clueless Frau Doktor’?”

I winced. Anthony, however, said, “Okay. I get it. But isn’t there something to mine there? Office skills? You probably had to deal with Medicare and insurance and all that, right? And answer the phones and—what else?—call people to remind them they had upcoming appointments.”

“So?”

“I’m saying this: I think you’d be a dynamite receptionist in the right kind of office.”

“And for sure Charles would give you a glowing reference,” I said.

Anthony said, “I’m getting my laptop. Don’t go away.”

For the ninety seconds Anthony was out of the room, Margot tossed questions at me, all in the same vein.
How many receptionists have a degree in art history? How many are my age and haven’t held a full-time job since
The Mitch and Mike Show
?

Anthony was back with his laptop, already open and almost humming. “Okay! I’m on Craigslist and I’m clicking on, here we go—admin slash office jobs.” He slid onto the empty stool, skimming, evaluating, mumbling. “Nope, nope, nope, lame, intern, intern, audition—ha, good luck with that . . . Here’s one.”

“For whom?” Margot asked.

“
You
tell
me.
The headline says
PLASTIC SURGERY RECEPTIONIST, MIDTOWN EAST
. And the description reads ‘A prominent plastic surgeon has an opening for a well-spoken and poised front-office person. This is a high-profile position. The successful candidate should be well-presented with good phone skills and excellent interpersonal skills.’”

“Not interested,” Margot said.

“Why?” I asked.

“The patients.”

“Because they’d all be women?” I asked.

“Vain women! They’ll be impossible—matrons wanting their faces peeled and their wrinkles Botoxed. Women with enough money to have their breasts enlarged and their belly fat sucked out. You think they’re going to be nice to the woman answering the phone? And what kind of horse’s ass calls himself a prominent plastic surgeon?”

I said some of those procedures were done in a dermatologist’s office, and besides, didn’t she care about her appearance? Didn’t she give herself facials—?

“With tomatoes! And rotten papayas! That’s hardly the same thing. If it sounds so great, you go work there.”

Anthony said, “Ladies, please. I once got very good advice from my dad, which was ‘Never turn down a job before you’ve been offered it.’”

I said, “And how do you know this isn’t a practice where the partners are reconstructing faces of disfigured children in Africa and Latin America?”

“East Side of New York,” she said. “That’s how.”

Anthony said, “We are sending them a CV and an unbelievably convincing if not charming cover letter, are we not?”

“Gotta start somewhere,” I said.

Margot poured the rest of the inferior wine into her glass, along with a crumb of cork she didn’t seem to notice. And then, quietly from behind her glass: “Besides, things are happening. Charles can practice again in three months.”

“Practice
medicine?
” I asked. “I thought they took his license away.”

“It was only a suspension. And he can’t do infertility work, or
fertility,
as the case may be. He’ll find a clinic. Or set one up. Only for OB and gynecology. If a patient can’t get pregnant, she’ll get sent to another doctor.”

“Wow,” said Anthony. “I had no idea.”

I said, “I’m surprised they’re letting him practice down there at all—”

“And by ‘down there’ she doesn’t mean Tribeca,” said Anthony.

“Of course, there’s a ton of work to do—office space, furnishing, staffing, permits. It could be months before he hangs out the proverbial shingle.”

I could tell that there was another layer of news, another admission we hadn’t dislodged. “Has Charles asked you to help him in some way? Has he promised you a job?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking. But I’ve turned him down.”

The oven timer buzzed. Anthony, as usual, didn’t have to test for doneness, but brought forth two dozen beautiful red cupcakes, distracting Margot but not me. “He better not think you’re going to be his receptionist! That’ll be the day. Imagine having to tell Betsy that you were going to help Charles in his new office, filling in for his ‘girl’ on her sick days and vacations . . .”

Anthony said, “I bet that’s not the position he’s offering. I’d put money on it.”

Margot said, “I haven’t accepted. And I probably never will.”

“Should I leave a few unfrosted?” he asked.

“No,” said Margot.

“What position did he offer?” I asked.

“I think we can both guess,” said Anthony.

Was I deaf or blind or addle-brained or all three? “I don’t care what he’s offering,” I railed. “I don’t care about salary or benefits or hours—”

Anthony was opening a new package of cream cheese as he informed me that I was on the wrong track. “Think romantic, not professional. Take a stab at it. What would be the offer on the table?”

Was I in denial? Was the idea of romantic forward motion for my partner in singlehood so alien that I couldn’t summon the obvious?

Margot said, “You know he never wanted the divorce. Is it so unthinkable that Charles would propose?”

I tried to look as if such a thing were extremely thinkable and on the tip of my tongue.

“You don’t have to look so glum. I turned him down. I mean, why would I say yes?”

Anthony said, “Not so fast. Frau Doktors can have very nice lifestyles. And it could trickle down. We could afford protein at every meal. We might even get rib eye and sushi-grade tuna on occasion.”

“No, we wouldn’t!” I cried. “If she married him, he’d move in and we’d have to move out.”

There. I’d said it. Margot was protesting that she’d never be happy without her posse, but I couldn’t hear a word. It wasn’t Charles per se. It was our nuclear family. It was Margot and Anthony and I in penthouse B, with Olivia occasionally on the couch. As of that day, it was the only portrait I could paint of the widow Gwen-Laura Schmidt where she was neither lonely nor alone.

From StanByMe to MiddleSister: I’m a high educated. My friends say Im sincere, cheerful with good sense of humor & friendly. Women consider myself handsome. I like to do things such as sport, specially swim, listen good music, give & get affection, eat out, read tech journals. I look younger then u think.

30

SWWF Seeking No One

I
REUPPED WITH MATCH.COM
by accident, an automatic renewal I forgot to nip in the bud. When invited out, I tended to accept. Thus there was the date with the man who said he was a cultural anthropologist, but whose actual job was driving a double-decker sightseeing bus. There was the ex-academic who, after being denied tenure, spent his days pounding out op-ed rants, unpublished, on a manual typewriter. Civilization, he advised me, was going to end sooner than I realized.

There was the date who proudly counted Weight Watchers points—not just on his plate but on mine. There was one who said he didn’t eat salad because it gave him gas. There was the first and last date with the handsome ex–baseball player who stuck his Nicorette gum under his chair when the appetizers arrived. There was the dentist who excused himself after pecan-toffee pie to floss in the men’s room.

And finally, a fix-up arranged by Olivia’s boss. He was her next-door neighbor, and his name was Geoffrey, the spelling of which suggested good breeding and a whiff of the British Isles. The scouting report by Olivia:
I’ve seen him in the elevator. We’ve never talked. I think the baby makes him nervous. Nice-enough looking. I can’t tell his age. I’m not good at that. Fifty? Midfifties? No bums live in this building, that’s for sure. What have you got to lose?

His overture came in the form of a voice-mail message. He’d chosen the restaurant, one of his favorites. Seven-thirty on Monday. He’d swing by and get me at seven-fifteen.

“No ‘Looking forward to meeting you,’” I noted to Margot.

“He’s a guy, probably a businessman. They’re all like that. He’s making an appointment.”

When I expressed something less than optimism, Margot said what she always said. “But this could be the one. Call him back and accept. Sound enthusiastic. He may not be your cup of tea, but maybe he has friends.”

Monday was six days away. And I confess that by the time that evening arrived, Olivia’s bland description of the stranger/neighbor had upgraded itself to “attractive, child-friendly, and kind.” Margot agreed on my wardrobe choice: the cute black cocktail dress I chose for those occasions I faced without foreboding or a sinking heart.

As ever, I timed my ablutions so I’d be at my freshest and best arranged, made up and blown dry very close to the departure time. So when the phone rang at approximately six p.m., I had just stepped out of the shower. It was Geoffrey, and he was neither confirming nor canceling. He was waiting downstairs.

I stammered something close to an apology. Had I misunderstood that our reservation was at seven-thirty and that he’d be picking me up at seven-fifteen?

No, I had not misunderstood. But he’d called to change the time and unfortunately I hadn’t picked up.

“When?”

“I don’t know! Fifteen minutes ago? Ten? I left a message. I have a car and a driver. My daughter wants it later. I had to move us up.”

Did I say “Too fucking bad?” I should have. I should have barked back “Does no one in your family take taxis? Or “What are you? A man or a mouse?”

But it was I who was mouselike. I said, “I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

“It’s a black Town Car with Jersey plates, double-parked. We might have to circle the block.”

I rushed in a way I would later chastise myself for. I zipped myself into my dress, wobbled into my heels, cut minutes off the time I would have spent with hair dryer, blusher, and mascara, and grabbed my everyday pocketbook instead of transferring the essentials to a chic little evening purse I’d found on eBay. I even thought about running down eleven flights of stairs when the elevator dawdled.

The black Town Car was double-parked and my date was sitting in the back seat, frowning into his phone. What might have been dark good looks in another situation was, behind tinted glass, now suggesting villainy. I rapped on the window, waved a pathetic little wiggle of five fingers; smiled. Did he open the door? No. He said something to the driver, who scurried out of the front seat to open the very door that was at my date’s elbow. I said, before stepping in, “Hi, I’m Gwen. Stephanie’s friend.”

How would a blind date answer in such a situation if this were, let’s say, a romantic comedy and not a nightmare? “Nice to meet you”? “Sorry for the confusion”? Or “That was quick, I appreciate it”?

What he said was “Get in.”

I hesitated. Did “Get in” sound gruff no matter the context or the tone? “Okay,” I said. “But move over.”

His next words were not to me but to the driver. “Twenty-first between Lex and Third.” And then to me: “Another two minutes and I wouldn’t have been here.”

Did I see a little twitch from the front seat, a concerned, backward half glance as if the driver were sharing my shock?

I managed an offended “Excuse me?”

“I was here at six! It’s twenty past! It’s gonna take half an hour to get there in this traffic.”

I said, “Our date was for seven-fifteen! You came more than an hour early.”

“I called! You didn’t answer.”

“I was in the shower—”

“I left a message!”

I didn’t reply. And it was a silence best described as incredulity mixed with white-hot anger of a sort I hardly recognized. We were only two or three blocks from the Batavia, inching east in traffic. The traffic light ahead obligingly turned yellow.

When we came to a full stop, I opened my door, jumped out, and slammed it behind me, but not before I heard “What the fuck?”

I had expected no pursuit, but Geoffrey was beside me, a hand on my arm. I said, loud enough for passersby to hear, “Let go or I’ll scream.”

“Are you okay?” a tattooed woman with a half-shaved head asked me. “Do you need help?”

“He’s a blind date. The worst! Would you believe he came an hour early and it’s my fault! But thank you, I live right up the street.”

“If I upset you—” Geoffrey began.

“Scram,” my new friend growled. “I have mace and don’t think I won’t use it.”

The phone was ringing when I got back to the apartment. It was Geoffrey, sweet-talking my answering machine. “C’mon. Let’s get a bite. I was agitated because my daughter needs the car. She and her friends are seeing—”

Anthony picked up, midsentence. “Don’t call here again,” he said. “And by the way, you’re an asshole, and your daughter’s a spoiled brat.”

“You need anger management!” I yelled.

Even though Anthony was going out, he boiled some pasta for me, poured us glasses of wine, and kept me company while I ate.

That was the night I took stock of my life and recognized that it was very full. Or full enough. I had companions and champions. I had memories, a roof over my head, and a journal that was getting daily devotions in a dear-diary kind of way.

Who needs complications in an otherwise simple, happy life? Not me. Clearly, my white-hot anger had forged an ironclad new rule: no more looking and no more disappointments. Farewell, rude men, blind dates, and Match.com!

What a smart decision—and what a relief.

I avoided my e-mail, quite sure that Geoffrey would send a message of some sort, either an apology, a critique, or another overture. As I ran a bath, I did glance at my in-box. Something caught my eye, the subject line “RE: your ad,” forwarded by the
New York Review of Books.
It read: