Diary of a Working Girl Page 3

  “Just keep your eyes open for the signs,” Lisa reminds me as Sevilla begins her pedicure with a hot soak right there on the veranda. She picks up the Times by way of ending the meeting—again, this isn’t rude, this is just Lisa—and after a second, lifts her face to the sun and says as I turn to go, “That is what takes time, my dear, knowing what to look for.”

  Back at my apartment I unlock the door, and scoop up the Times with my two spare fingers. It seems amazing that both Lisa McLellon and myself have possession of even the same newspaper. My balancing act with the paper works fine until it is not working fine, which is to say until the Times falls to the floor, sections spilling out all over. “Shit,” I say, resuming my solo hallway act of curses and exclamations. Again this does nothing to rouse cute neighbors or even not-so-cute neighbors.

  Inside my apartment, I turn my negativity toward the printed pages. But, still whirling from Lisa’s wardrobe, I’m operating in a heightened state of discovery and taking note of each and every detail with the sort of wonder an infant would bring to a torn scrap of gift wrap. I glance through the topics in the Sunday Styles section, clucking my tongue at my stupidity for the various stories I’d missed dreaming up, and the paper’s stupidity for having chosen other articles so close to mine without offering me a chance. After ten minutes of this, I pile the rest of the useless sections on top. The last is the Business section. I have never opened this section in my life. I can’t imagine the mind-numbing articles inside of it.

  Glancing at the cover, however, a picture of Oscar de la Renta jumps out at me. In the business section? I can’t believe it. Style in the business pages? I am drawn into a long story about how Oscar’s company is faring these days, and when I get to the end of the first page, I turn to page sixteen, as instructed. At the end of the story I glance at the next page, which is filled with boxed job listings. I suddenly feel bad for people who have to look for jobs like this. The little ads seem so boring. Assist head of accounts department in collecting debt, Word and Excel a plus. Managing Director Mergers and Acquisitions seeks diligent assistant to organize, type correspondence, and maintain schedule. How mundane. How could anyone wake up, day after day to type correspondence and maintain schedules? Fifty thousand dollars starting? Maybe it’s not that bad. You could get a whole new wardrobe of cute pants suits and ruffly blouses with cuffs that stick out from the sleeves. Brooches. Heels. Sophisticated strands of beads, twisted twice about your neck. A camel-colored overcoat tied at a nipped waist, an unused-but-integral-to-the-look-buckle dangling from a perfect knot. I have always wanted one of those. I picture myself in a smart getup, beneath my camel-colored overcoat, an oversize Gucci tote I could never afford swinging light as air at my shoulder, walking into a glittering skyscraper with one of those clip-on badges that everyone wears these days, amongst throngs of suited men. Wait. Suited men. What I’m saying here is: men. In suits. Hundreds of them.

  Why has this never occurred to me before? Of course! I never meet those sorts of motivated businessmen, because I’ve never worked with them. In my industry the only sort of men I socialize with have an acute awareness of the percentage of cashmere used in a cashmere-cotton blend. What I mean to say is they are all gay. And while that may do wonders for my wardrobe, and would give me a fantastic sounding board if I actually had a love life, it does nothing to help me to get a love life.

  Between the realization that I’m so far out of Lisa McLellon’s league that the fact we share even the same planet resonates oddly, and the sort of shoulda-been obvious all-along discovery that I never meet men because I don’t work on Wall Street, I’m almost in tears. “Where are the signs Sevilla?” I ask aloud in Lisa-speak just because, well, just because. I wonder where I can go from here as I scrutinize the contents of my desk for inspiration.

  Sevilla may actually have been channeled in a sort of cross-town momentary opening in the universe because just then the new e-mail jingle sounds.

  It’s Page Six. Yay! I love Page Six. Some famous person who looks too perfect, apparently is too perfect, which is to say, partially plastic, and her boyfriend, upon finding out, is suing her for misrepresentation, as he fell in love with her on the sole principle that her boobs were, in fact, real. I wonder if, like me, the dumped star indulged in a feast of fried foods and chocolate. While she may be skinnier, I get a shallow rise out of the knowledge that my boobs are real. When that rise begins to dip, I click on the fashion link so I can kick myself over more overlooked story ideas that were staring me in the face.

  Big belts are back. I knew that! Basket bags are in for spring. I just visited the accessories show at the Javitz Center! I saw all of those. I’d even inquired about purchasing one. Oh, well. As Joanne would say, you can’t cry over spilled milk. I go for my horoscope—the Post has the best horoscopes.

  With Saturn in your house, you are on the verge of a new opportunity. You have to think very carefully about the opportunity, as things will be happening rather quickly and a mistake can be detrimental at this time. But, if you don’t take the offer right away, you won’t get a second chance. Finally, remember that the silence will be broken.

  Why are horoscopes always so nonspecific? How will I know which opportunities are the right ones if I have to figure it out so impulsively? They should really give you a little more of a hint, like those starting with the letter B are safe; but whatever you do, stay away from anything beginning with the letter T.

  Shifting back to idea mode I feel I must be on to something with such a celestial reading, and I get a tingle at being the lucky one whose horoscope outlines something fantastic to come. For that moment everything feels pregnant with possibility. But then that second is over and all I see is a somewhat unhygienic desk, littered with countless coffee cups, crumbs forming quite a collection between computer keys and God knows where else, and enough unsorted paper to make me feel some personal responsibility for destroying our planet’s forests.

  Messy desks, how to keep them in order? Cigarette smoking, why is it so addictive? Computers, why is it so difficult to keep up with the payments? “Dumb. Dumb. Dumber.” I say to the pencil balancing between my upper lip and nose. And then I pick up the job market section of the paper, now sitting on my desk. Jobs. Hmmm. Jobs. What’s new and cool with jobs? Er, no. With both hands, I tear the section open to the job listings and clear my throat with the abruptness of an important business sort. Changing careers? No hook. Making ends meet in a bad economy? Obviously I don’t know the first thing about that. I put the paper down. It drapes the entire width of my desk, covering my computer, mugs, the sacrificed trees, as if they never even existed—a living metaphor of the fact that I have gotten nowhere. The phone rings.

  “Hello?” I say, happy for the distraction. Even if it were a telephone salesman, I would have found the time to be friendly today.

  “What’s up?”

  It’s Joanne. My best friend! I’m back to loving her.

  “Hi!” I squeak into the receiver.

  “What the hell are you so excited about?” she asks.

  I must sound like I haven’t had human contact for months. This feels like an accurate description, even though I have just gotten home and had that somewhat magical contact with Sevilla since.

  “Oh, I just missed you.” It’s amazing how much you take your friends for granted when you are one half of a couple. Weeks, even months can go by, and you barely see them at all. And, both of you say things like, “It’s so great that we are such close friends that we don’t even need to see each other.” Then as soon as you are boyfriendless you begin grilling them for not spending time with you and you try to deny it, but you resent them for being happy when you’re not. It is convenient though, because since she’s done it to you when the tables were turned, you can take your frustration out on your best friend, as if the sole reason you’re sitting home on a Saturday night is because she’s too wrapped up in her life. And since she’s been in your shoes before, she won’t give you a hard time.
And if she does, you’ll be sure to remind her.

  So, after she tells me all about her romantic Saturday dinner, I berate her out of jealousy; explaining that I am not interested in the way Pete “did this thing with his tongue where he curled it up and …” She apologizes for over sharing. I begin to feel a bit better again. With that out of the way, I begin complaining about a lack of cash flow. And a lack of boyfriends. And human interaction. I’m on complain control. A car has cruise control, and I have complain control. The switch is flipped and the stuff just comes out; I’m merely a conductor. I can’t stand the sound of my own voice and hope for her sake Joanne has moved the receiver from her ear. I glance at the job listings again. I bounce the idea of getting a corporate job off of Joanne.

  “I think it’s a great idea. You can get out of the house and stop calling me every eight seconds. Maybe you can meet some other people. Maybe even some men, so you could stop complaining about how there are no men in your industry.”

  I think about what she says. Perhaps it’s a bit self-motivated, but she definitely shares the same view I do, if I’m honest with myself for half a second and realize I’m not making ends meet as a writer. She says something else about “writing an article about that,” but I’m too distracted by visions of corporate life to listen. You see, I’d thought about supplementing my income with jobs before, but it always seemed like a bad investment if I think about the time I’m not going to be able to spend trying to get writing jobs that will pay a lot more than Duane Reade could. That and the little humungous feeling that having a plastic strip punched with my name on a Duane Reade tag would have the distinct odor of failure. But this corporate thing, this is a different thing altogether.

  In this industry, talent does not necessarily equal success. What equals success is talent plus connections. You can pitch stories until the cows come home, but the person on the receiving end has five girlfriends who are freelance writers calling and asking for assignments. And they are the ones getting the assignments. I don’t need to explain this to Joanne, because I have, probably about five million times before on complain control. I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I could shimmy a pencil around on paper. My mother still tells people the story about when my third grade teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said, “Judy Blume.”

  All of a sudden, I’m not listening to Joanne anymore. She’s actually been listening to me, instead of her normal “mmm-hmmms,” offering me all manner of friendly advice and tender caring for a change (I’m not sure where the words “Soundfactory” and “Webster Hall” fit in but I’m new to this Joanne talking, me ignoring thing), and I’m barely listening. The world is on its head. Lisa’s words come back to me: “The ideas are all around you.” And it hits me, like one of those stunning rays of sunlight through the clouds. I suddenly know exactly how Benjamin Franklin felt when he discovered electricity. Clear as day, I see a printout of my name, taped to a front-row seat at fashion week and my driver, who will be named Smithers (what else?). My breakup, the Times falling open to reveal the job listings, Joanne “breaking the silence,” and even the pile of bills on my desk—they are suddenly revealing themselves as signs.

  I now have the groundbreaking idea that will make my career.

  The story is (drum roll, please)… switching careers to find love.

  I’ll do the research by getting a job in a big corporation, where I’ll meet a wonderful, suited M&M, make some money, get insurance (maybe even dental!), and everything will be sublime. It’s perfect. It’s so Never Been Kissed meets Working Girl. I can do anything! Thank you Lisa. Thank you New York Times. Thank you God!

  “Hello? Are you there?” she asks, after I’ve been quiet for a while.

  I fill Joanne in on my revelation, and when I’m through I take a deep breath, waiting for her to tell me how Einstein-like I have become in the past twenty-four hours.

  “Uh, Lane, why does that sound so familiar?”

  I’m not sure what she’s talking about, but really I can’t shake the feeling I have about this article idea. I feel positive, driven, in a way I haven’t in a long, long time.

  Joanne breaks the silence again. “But you do realize there’s a chance you won’t meet anyone?”

  Why shouldn’t I meet someone with all of those men around? It doesn’t even make sense. Joanne is not in this industry, so she doesn’t really understand how if you work hard enough, stories always have a way of working out, so I don’t put too much stock in this response.

  “Honey, all I’m saying is don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

  Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Joanne is a vast source of wisdom, if you could ever decipher what it is she’s trying to say.

  “Listen, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” I say.

  “Well, people in glass houses want to know if you’re free for a drink tonight. I’d say you’re in need of one. Morgan Bar, around seven?”

  We always go to the Morgan Bar, located m the Morgan Hotel, on the notion (my notion, really) that we’ll meet some romantic European businessmen staying there. I spend hours dressing just so, worrying over the brown eye shadow or the nude shade. It never really matters what I wear or how I look, since we just wind up talking to each other; observing the New York City don’t-ever-show-your-interested rule, nobody speaks to us except for the waiter—but, of course, he has to. Joanne’s being practically married doesn’t help matters; from that vantage point she gets to look at the whole dating thing as an amusing joke instead of a terribly real one, and takes this as an opportunity to say unattractive things very loudly, things that could turn away even the most aggressive pickup artist. “Did I tell you about that awful yeast infection I had last week?” This is her idea of humor.

  We agree to meet at seven, and I get started calling around with my story idea. Normally you write in. As a pitching journalist, you are on the bottom of the list of people editors want to speak with—right above the publicists, but not the ones offering free samples. But since I am desperate to start on this project, I steel myself to start calling editors directly. They already have me on file from all of the stories they have rejected in the past. I start with Mark Clam. “Sorry, we’re actually concentrating more on writers who will do anything anyone asks them to, like ride a horse naked down Fifth Avenue or marry and divorce three men in a month—and even for that we’re booked with stories until … until (paper rifling) February 2010. Why don’t you try back then?” Vogue. “Love is so last season, daahling. It’s all about bittersweet right now. But, of course, your name would have to be instantly recognizable to our readers in order to be considered anyway. You’re not the one from that movie with Corey Feldman are you?” Women’s Day. “We’ll get back to you in a few months and if you could somehow work that into a cookie recipe and get a really good celebrity to come and bake it with you … No, you know what? We already did that one.” Us Weekly. “I have just one question for you. Do pictures of J. Lo or Ben fit into this story anywhere?”

  It’s all feeling pretty hopeless until I get the Cosmo features editor on the phone. In an uncomfortable split-second decision, I decide to use Lisa’s name to get in the door and hopefully prevent another railroading rejection. It doesn’t sit right with me, but I know she wouldn’t mind. She’s such a smart businesswoman, she’d probably be shocked I haven’t used it before.

  “Oh, a friend of Lisa’s, eh?” The Cosmo editor sighs. “Okay, you’ve got fifteen seconds to describe your idea, start-inggggg—now!” I barrel my way through the pitch, feeling with every word that maybe the idea wasn’t as great as I thought and that I must be the stupidest person on earth and why, oh why, does anybody let me speak, ever, and when I’m through I’m already apologizing when Karen says, “Maybe. Hmmm, maybe. We’ll have to think about it.”

  Although no maybe responses have, as yet, morphed into assignments for me, I have also never as of yet been known as
a friend of Lisa McLellon’s. It’s just this sort of positive thinking that keeps me from stapling my fingers to the desk after a number of definite and abrasive “no’s” minus any thank-you’s, excuses, or similar pleasantries—and, in one case, the addition of a “how did you get this number?”—from Bazaar, Shape, Glamour, and Mademoiselle. I decide to take a break and start calling after some of those jobs in the paper.

  The first place asks that I fax over a resume. This means I have to get my resume in order. Shit. I forgot about this; writers don’t have to worry about resumes, just what they’ve written, which I’ve always considered rather lucky, because composing a resume is possibly the most irritating task one can perform. Since you merely alter everything to reflect what the perspective employer is after anyway, I don’t see the point. It’s basically a page of lies and everyone knows it. They should just do away with the resume altogether. I begin thinking about things I’d rather be doing. Shopping. Getting ready for a date. With a good-looking exec in a pinstripe suit. Kissing me in the taxi en route to Daniel, his fingers dancing along my camel-colored coat lapel. Placing his hand on my back as he leads me to our table. Revealing a tiny turquoise box over a warm chocolate torte with creme fraiche.

  Suddenly, I’m inspired to get a jump-start on the article. These romantic imaginings should not be wasted. I minimize the window with my resume on it. So far, I’ve changed the font, played with several type sizes for my name and address, and decided to write out the word “apartment” rather than use the abbreviation.

  I’m so sure I will be able to use this dreamy stuff in my Working-Girl-Finds-Love article that I type in the bits I’ve thought up rather than worry over my resume. I read it over, remarking that I like the use of “thoughtful kisser” and “elegant inappropriateness.” I am more “excited” about this project than ever, so much so that I am actually a bit embarrassed when my bell rings.