Up & Out (10 page)

“Who is?” she says in jest.

“But are you okay?” I ask.

“I think the change of weather really messed with me.”

“It has been very warm.” I wonder how sick she is or if Hackett has given her some kind of warning about more changes. “Will you be in on Monday?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine now. I feel much better. I’ll be in tomorrow.” That’s right, tomorrow is Monday. It just kind of
snuck up on me—like the sake. “What are you doing around here? I thought you lived in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“I did.” That was where I had lived with Tommy. “Actually I probably will again, but now I live in Flatiron. I’m just kind of visiting someone. I think he lives on your street. You’re on Barrow, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’ll wait for you.” I hope that she doesn’t feel like I’ve caught her doing something wrong. It’s just a coincidence.

She eyes my outfit. I had thrown on my tight silk black shirt from last night and a pair of Seamus’s sweats that are too big.

“Actually, I had a date with the guy I was telling you about.”

“Seems like it went well.”

“Um, yeah.” She gives me a look and I feel like she is Lauryn, trying to gauge whether or not I had success in the sack. You just can’t reveal those things to your co-workers. Instead, I tell her about how I confronted Janice about her relationship with John.

“I’m sorry I missed that. This is me.” She stops in front of Seamus’s building.

“What a coincidence, this is my friend Seamus’s building, too. What floor are you on?”

“The second.”

“Small world. He’s on the fourth. You’re lucky you don’t have to walk up more. There are what, ten apartments?”

“Yeah.” We go inside and say goodbye. I walk up to Seamus’s apartment and knock. He answers the door. He’s on his cell phone. He’s washed up. His curly light brown hair is still a mess. He looks really sexy. He smiles at me and doesn’t stop watching me.

“Yeah, I’ll call you later, okay. Bye.” He hangs up the phone and puts it on the fireplace mantel. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

“You look good in my sweats.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll help you take them off.”

“Thank you…”

By the time I remember to mention that Jen lives in the same building, I am otherwise occupied.

On Monday morning, I am tired, but I have a much better perspective on things. I did not spend Sunday with
The X-Files
or with Mr. Wizard. Instead, on Sunday night, Seamus and I went to Brite Food Shop, in my neighborhood, because he hadn’t been there. He really enjoyed their Asian Latin Fusion and was way into his white-bean-and-wild-mushroom quesadilla.

I am thinking of considering him my boyfriend. It was still a bit strange to have sex with someone new, but there was a point where I just relaxed and it all happened the right way. Once. That’s a start.

If we are going to be in a relationship, I think the best thing to do is to keep my living situation a secret. I hint over dinner that I might be moving soon. He has work to do tonight, so he doesn’t come over.

Lauryn doesn’t say a word when I get in. She just raises an eyebrow. I give her a thumbs-up and she slaps my hand with more fervor.

“What should I do with the TV?”

“Storage?” I suggest.

“Okay, but if you and Tommy aren’t living together anymore, you should take it. Have you made your decision yet?”

I have, but I haven’t told Tommy. I don’t want to think about him today. I just want to enjoy the good day I had with Seamus. I’ll call Tommy tomorrow after my meeting with Delores. Then I will surely appreciate the sound of his voice.

Delores is wearing a very long skirt that flared out like a mermaid’s tail at the bottom and an oversize dull gray shirt. If I were four-nine, I would have dressed a bit better, but I’m not going to be catty; I have gotten laid.

“How was your weekend?” she asks brightly.

“Oh, it was great.” I decide to try a new approach. Maybe we could be friendly. “I had a date. How was yours?”

“What weekend? I worked all weekend. I thought my junior year thesis at Harvard was difficult, but it was nothing compared to this.” Perhaps she’s bitter because I’m glowing with post-date happiness.

I will not be tricked into friendliness again. If I went to an Ivy League school would I reference it in every conversation? No, I would like to think I would be confident enough to let my capabilities speak for themselves. I try to smile like I understand how tough it is for her.

I listen politely as she starts to go over budgets. I want to tell her that Explore! has more money than any division. It isn’t her money, yet for some reason she is explaining to me how she wants us to fill out forms in triplicate and how it’s my job to tell Janice and John about it.

“Also, I am curious as to why you signed this expense report for Janice from last week. What was this two hundred dollars used for?”

“It was a business meeting,” I say. I knew it was a mistake to listen to Don Beckford. He is able to squirm out of anything. I, on the other hand, agree to anything once I get a few drinks in me. I have a quick flash of Tommy’s Facts of Life fantasies. “Anyway, Hackett signed off on it.”

“Also, I wanted to talk to you about Kim’s attendance.”

“Whose?” She is confused and looks down on her desk at some papers. She’s vacillating between confusion, giddiness and downright condescension.

“I think you mean Jen.” I decide not to tell her that she’s Hackett’s niece. “She was ill, but I think she’s okay.”

“Wonderful. I think we’re going to have to have a meeting about punctuality with John and Janice.”

“They’re here until eleven at night sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she parrots. “Please set that up. Also, I look forward to getting your calendar today.”

“Right,” I say. “I’ll send it ASAP.”

Perhaps I can avoid her. Maybe I can keep her at bay with constant e-mails and forms filled out in triplicate. Triplicate?
We have deadlines! Instead of meetings and excess forms, we should be working.

I call Tommy when I get back to my desk. I wake him up.
Take that
for calling me before eleven o’clock on a Saturday. I tell him that I will begin moving my stuff in next weekend. He sort of grunts when I say it.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” I say, hoping for some word to indicate that I am.

“Me, too,” he says. Very reassuring.

I spend the rest of the day making notes on three episodes. We are going to do all the voice-over next week. I get three e-mails from Delores, each detailing intricately some new policy that she’s putting into effect for the sole purpose of wasting my time or creating more piles of paper on her desk. I wonder how the other executive producers feel about all of this. My work keeps me separate from everyone. This makes it nearly impossible to plan a coup.

Seamus calls when I’m in the middle of laughing at the thought of it.

“Rebecca Cole.”

“You sound pissed off. I thought this weekend would have put you in a real good mood.”

“Hi,” I say, and try to put a smile in my voice. “Things are insane at work, but it’s nice to hear from you.”

“I just wanted to tell you how much fun I had yesterday and Saturday.” He laughs. He is acting a bit sure of himself, but it has been a long time since I was in the beginning stages of a relationship. Maybe I don’t know what is supposed to happen at this point. I’ll have to roll with it.

“Me, too. What are you up to tonight?”

“Oh, I have to meet with a couple of clients tonight and do a bunch of paperwork tomorrow,” he says. “I’d really love to take you out for some Moroccan on Wednesday.”

“I have a lot of work to do, too.” I try to downplay how desperate I am to get away from all this. “Wednesday sounds terrific. I love Middle Eastern.”

“I knew you would. I’ll call you Wednesday to set things up.” Does that mean we aren’t going to talk until then? If only I knew the right protocol. We have had sex (while sober)…wasn’t I at least entitled to a daily phone call?

“Okay, I’ll talk to you, then.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Thanks, bye.” The problem with working in an office is that you have a tendency to be inappropriately polite. I find myself answering my cell phone as “Rebecca Cole” and thanking my friends when I get off the phone with them. I hope Seamus wasn’t really listening. Maybe when I see him on Wednesday I can try to get us onto a daily e-mail schedule.

I get an e-mail from Human Resources. It’s for everyone. They are taking the soda fountains out of the kitchen, as well as fresh milk. They cheerfully mention that we would now have nondairy creamer, both regular and flavored, and a pay soda machine. This is big.

“I can’t believe this!” I hear Janice yelling from her cube through my closed door. She and John subsist on soda; having to pay for it is going to strain their budget.

I also get an e-mail from Delores. It’s shorter than usual, but no less annoying.

Immediately after I read that message, my computer dings again. It’s another e-mail from her. I can’t believe that she can type another one so fast. Maybe she works on the drafts simultaneously so she can send them rapid fire. Could there be a method to her madness?

Okay, at least I don’t actually have to look at her. I take a deep breath and open the next one. Just as short, equally annoying.

Whoa! A whole hour with her? I don’t think I can take it. And how the fuck am I supposed to come up with this document when I didn’t have any “issues”? I approved those episodes—so did Hackett. They got solid ratings and terrific press. Shit! I’m going to have to start quoting focus groups. Plus, it’s nine o’clock at night. What if I had another date? Of course, I don’t, but what if I had a life? She is a sadist. My new boss is a sadist.

And I was beginning to realize that I was something else. I was something much, much worse. I am no longer the It Girl, no longer a creative voice—or even someone with any real say into a character she has created. My office door is closed, but I know I’m going to scream loud, louder than Janice had. I have to. It is either that or call Tommy and have a breakdown.

I look around the office. The only thing that could help was the two-and-a-half-foot plush sample of Esme with the red fucking whimsical shoelaces. I grab her and bury my face in her soft belly.

I scream my new identity into Esme, for she has done this to me. I scream at the top of my lungs, but I’m pretty sure no one hears me.

“I AM A MIDDLE MANAGER!!!!!”

I
did not leave work before 11:00 p.m. for the entire week, except for Wednesday when I went to Chez Es Saada with Seamus. The food was pretty good—I had chicken with almonds and couscous and he ordered a spicy lamb kabob—but the ambience was incredible. There were rose petals on a spiral staircase. Seamus launched into a whole spiel about ambience versus food versus service.

Seamus is always making a case for something. I am getting used to it. His arguments are compelling and organized; in other words I am certain that other people have heard this stuff before he tells me. I wish that he could be a bit more spontaneous…but his good qualities outweigh my minor pet peeves. Although, sometimes I think my attraction to him might blind me a little.

We are constantly drinking wine together, good smooth wine. The only times he doesn’t talk is when he is studying the wine list. When he looks up from it this time, he presents me with three possibilities, which means I have to struggle over making the right decision. I’m not sure if he is testing me or if I am paranoid.

I hesitate and then he eliminates one bottle and decides that we should have our starters with the first bottle and our meal with the second.

Every meal with him is a two-bottle ordeal. (We both vowed not to do the sake anymore.)

“Do you ever drink anything other than wine?”

“If I could I’d drink Kool-Aid,” he says.

“
If you could?
Why can’t you? At home, at least?”

“I’m not going to make it.”

“All you do is add water.” I can’t believe he’s serious.

“Yeah, but then you have to buy a pitcher. There are people who do those things. I’m not one of them.”

“You mean you don’t have a pitcher in your apartment with all those wineglasses?”

“Wine is premade.”

“Kool-Aid takes two seconds.” This is the first time I’ve argued with him—about Kool-Aid, no less.

“I have enough disposable income to have other people make the things I consume.”

Was I being too picky in wanting a man who could add water to a pitcher?
People who do those things?
I had just seen another side of him I wasn’t sure I liked.

On Friday I spent the working day in a voice-over session and returned to my desk to find a boatload of e-mail from Delores. I had to cancel my dinner plans with Seamus when Delores decided she wanted to review the sound design at eight-thirty. We were supposed to go to Vong. It hurt to cancel.

Delores was wearing a T-shirt with Esme on it—it was like a dress on her four-foot-eight body. (No one had told me that we had new T-shirts made.)

At nine-thirty I longed for lemongrass coconut soup as she talked in circles about her views on the noise grass should be making in a scene where Esme was teaching her brother Eric to fly a kite.

I realized then that she just didn’t get it; she was under-
qualified for this job and scared shitless about it. Instead of working
with
me, she had decided to pretend that her way was the only way. The minutiae mattered to her, because if she could nitpick the tiniest detail, it would seem like she knew her stuff.

Oprah would call this an “aha moment,” but in spite of my revelation I still worked until 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night.

“Were you out with Seamus?” Lauryn asks when I come home. She is wearing overalls, which swim on her, and a bandanna in her hair. Boxes and papers are strewn everywhere. I have to be out in a week and the sight of this mess traumatizes me.

“No, I had to cancel. I was working with an elf.”

“Jesus. You want a mudslide?”

“How very eleventh grade of you.”

“They’re still good. And I need a little break.”

“Why not?”

We sit on the couch with our mudslides. On Sunday movers are coming to move all the big furniture to Lauryn’s aunt’s house in Framingham. It will stay there until Lauryn finds an apartment in Boston at the end of the summer.

I have been instructed that Jordan will come by sometime next week to pick up the love seat. I wonder how the conversation between the two of them was, but I know from the last eight months of their marriage that if Lauryn wants me to know something she will tell me.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around to help you pack,” I say.

“That’s okay. I know you’ve been working late.”

“I’m going to have to work from home tomorrow, unless that’s going to get in your way. I could go to the library—I just won’t go to the office. I have sworn not to do that after the UpFront. Remember how I lived at work scrambling to get the pilot together so the affiliates would approve it?”

“Sounds like Delores might be worse than the UpFront deadline,” Lauryn says. “No, stick around tomorrow. It’ll be good to have someone else here. Maybe I’ll make dinner—one last trip to Whole Foods.” She licks her lips in mock seduction.

“Don’t go getting sentimental on me.” We sip our drinks and look around the cluttered living room floor. “Did you talk to the guys?”

“Kathy came over Wednesday night to help pack. We ordered Indian.”

“That’s sweet. What’s new with her?”

“Same old. She’s having a quasicoronary about the wedding. She is worried her diet isn’t helping her biceps. You should give her a call. I think she’s feeling a little out of touch with the whole Beth thing.”

“Is it a ‘thing’ now?” Lauryn shrugs. “Did she call?”

“Did you think she would?”

“Yes, I still do. What?”

“You’re so busy. You don’t have the time to realize what little effort she puts in.” She has a point. And what’s worse, I am almost relieved about Beth’s lack of effort because that lets me off the hook.

“She’ll call,” I say, though not as certain as I was before.

I spend Saturday on my company-issued laptop, listening to the occasional crash sounds coming from Lauryn’s room, followed by her yelling, “I’m fine!”

I break only to go get eggplant falafel sandwiches for more energy. I make sure to send Delores several e-mails. I want her to see that, I, too, am working on a weekend. I will never be ambushed into admitting having fun again.

For every e-mail I send her I get two back. She keeps confusing Esme details with those of the other shows. I politely point this out to her. I recognize a commiserating self-important tone in her e-mails. Perhaps I have finally expressed my dedication to the job to her.

But in the next e-mail, she elaborates on how difficult it is to be managing so many shows, and I know she is back on the condescending kick. It doesn’t matter that I am working like a dog. I could never justify my job as much as she could or be as busy as she was.

Thank God the gnome didn’t have my home number.

When I look at the clock it is close to seven. A fucking Saturday down the drain. I go into Lauryn’s bedroom. She is sitting on her windowsill, smoking. Her room is incredibly tidy, but also empty.

I feel like a shit. I should have been spending more time with her, but my stupid job is ruining my life. When had I become the person who let that happen? It was time I would never get back.

“Do birders smoke?” I ask.

“Why do you think I’m doing it so much now?”

“Are you excited?”

“Sort of,” she says, and rubs her eyes.

“Scared?”

“Sort of.”

I flop onto her bed and she flops the other way. We stare up at the ceiling. I turn and lean my cheek on her leg.

“I never realized you had those stars up there.”

“Jordan put them up.” I don’t say anything. “He cried on the phone yesterday. That’s his new thing.”

I peek up at her. She has her eyes closed. I rest my head again, look back up at the stars, and try to imagine them happy.

“Did he mention his job? Is it going okay?” I tread carefully.

“Yeah, he is scared shitless—you can hear it. That’s why he feels like he needs me again.”

“Well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “You know you’re lucky that Tommy and you are okay, you’re like adults about your breakup.”

“Whatever,” I say, lying on my back. “Who knows?”

Lauryn lets out a long sigh. “Let’s go to Whole Foods.”

I don’t want to leave this moment with her. I feel like we should talk more about everything. But my stomach growls and Lauryn laughs and gets off the bed. Once again, I have avoided finding out how she is feeling.

On Sunday, I couldn’t get in touch with Seamus. He wasn’t home or answering his cell. I didn’t expect him to be at my beck and call, but there was no way I was doing any work today.

Lauryn was mostly done with packing. The movers were supposed to arrive at noon. I decided to get out of the house, so I took a book down to the dog run in Madison Square Park. I had started this trashy novel a couple of months ago, but I couldn’t find my place.

I decide to start reading my book over again.

When I get home, the house is empty except for my easy chair and coffee table. Lauryn is sitting in it. Her eyes are red; she is staring at the corner where the TV used to be.

“What’s up?” I ask, plopping on the floor next to her. I kept looking in the corner where the TV used to be, too.

“I’m all done. I’m exhausted.”

“So you don’t want to have one last drink in NYC?”

“No, I’m gonna hit the old sack.” She punches the air with her fist. “Hey, did you talk to your friend Seamus?”

“No. Did he call?”

“Yeah, he said he hoped you had a good weekend. I told him to try your cell.”

“I had it on, but he didn’t call. What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Early. The train, then the ferry, then who knows.” Lauryn stands up and opens her arms. “No big scenes, okay? I can’t. I’ll call you when I get there.”

I start humming “Memories” and she swats me and then meows.

She goes into the bathroom. She’s sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag.

“You can have my bed if you want.”

“No thanks,” she yells. “I’m fine.”

A minute later she peeks her head out of the bathroom. Her toothbrush is stuck inside her foamy mouth.

“Byth the way. Betsh nevah called.” She goes back into the bathroom and I hear her spit into the sink.

When I get to work on Monday there is a three-page memo about using music in episodes from Delores. She slipped it under everyone’s door. The memo doesn’t just say you can use
Library A for music and Library B for effects, but never ever Library C. No, it details the entire process that Delores had gone through to arrive at the four-page form that we have to fill out in triplicate whenever we use our CDs from the stock music library.

There is also a message from Seamus, left on Sunday night. He hopes I had a good weekend and that we can hang out Tuesday night.

If I didn’t know better (and I wasn’t sure I did), I would think he was trying to avoid actually talking to me.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid. He had mentioned Zarela on the message. A guy who didn’t want to see me wouldn’t be taking me for upscale Mexican. Would he?

I am distracted by the double ding warning of another “urgent” e-mail from Delores to all of the executive producers.

Is she giving us a spelling lesson or trying to be cute? Past episodes? The dwarf is crazy. The word of my day is Dwarf with a capital
D
for fucking Dwarf Dramatic Delores.

And yet another Monday spent with the door closed….

When I get home, Lauryn is gone. The apartment feels
lonely and empty. I feel unsure of everything. The people I care about I can’t seem to connect with and the people I’m not sure of or just plain don’t like are taking up most of my time.

I remember my dream from last night. I was looking for Esme in her schoolyard. There were kids everywhere, but I couldn’t find her. I knew she was around, the way you know things in dreams, but I never found her.

I am so unsettled, nothing feels like it should. I check the messages. There is a message for Lauryn from Beth. It is 10:45 and I haven’t eaten dinner. I never called Seamus.

It seemed too late for everything.