Christmas in Wine Country (4 page)

She sat frozen in her cubicle pretending to type as she watched as two and then three of her co-workers get called into VP Brian’s office. They emerged either in tears or swearing or both.

Trying not to vomit from nerves, Lila focused on the silver lining: at least layoffs provided everyone with a great distraction from her YouTube performance. “Hungry Like the Cat” it had been titled, due to all the meowing and prowling around trying to be a wolf. It hadn’t exactly “gone viral”, but it had garnered a couple thousand views. 2,033 to be exact the last time she checked. Clearly, people had been sharing it.

No one put a video up on YouTube of a girl looking elegant and poised making witty, sophisticated conversation over cocktails. They put up videos of drunk girls with
their hair falling out of a lopsided bun lurching around on stage yelling “It’s Raining Men!” One of the partners had come up on stage and tried to take the mic from Lila’s hand, attempting to make light of it all with a, “Thank you so much Lila! Wow!” Lila had responded with her best Jack Nicholson military style bark “You can’t handle the truth!” It didn’t make sense, then or now. But it had felt good to say it, that much she remembered.

Around eleven o’clock her boss had called her to give her the news. Lila felt her knees wobbling as she walked into the office, the ankle she’d twisted up on stage adding a throbbing drumbeat.

“Please have a seat.” Her boss’s face was unusually grim, his lips pulled tight, his eyes even more tired than usual. His words washed over Lila as she nestled into a soft, calm shock. Here she was, losing her job. She found herself focusing, instead, on a framed photo on his desk. A loving wife. Three kids. They all looked happy and classic in what was clearly a professional family photograph. Even in black and white, Lila could tell his wife was wearing Lily Pullizer. She looked like she’d never even heard of karaoke.

“You have until Friday to pack up your things.” That snapped her out of it. “Of course, if you would like to clear out even earlier…” He looked at her as if hoping for a yes.

“Is this about the party on Saturday?” Lila found herself blurting out. “But the CEO guy didn’t need stitches, did he?”

“No.” Her boss paused, perhaps reflecting on how low a bar Lila set for herself.

“I know there was some Cinco de Mayo stuff, but I’ve been thinking and the Mexican flag is red and white and green which are all holiday colors.” Her boss simply looked at her. Lila continued to fill the silence. “Or was it because I got a little…tipsy? It probably wasn’t the best way to… I didn’t mean to do karaoke…”

“Your behavior at the party.” Her boss sighed, tapping his fingers together and looking at her over the tops of his eyeglasses. Exactly like being in the high school principal’s office, Lila realized, even though she’d never had the experience. She’d pretty much always been a goody-two-shoes, but all those teen comedies couldn’t be wrong and they always depicted the principal with glasses looking disapproving and grim. She felt the desire to run and looked down at her shoes, pretending to wipe a smudge from one of the toes to quiet herself.

“It didn’t help,” he finally confirmed. Seeming to remember his lay-off script, he returned to a pat, “but these layoffs are a result of a steady decline in profit. We have no choice but to downsize 10%. We regret having to let you go.”

“But I’ve tried so hard.” Her voice took on a pathetic whine even she found annoying.

“It’s not the right fit for you, Lila.” He shook his head. “We’re sorry to see you go, but I don’t think you’ve been happy here.”

Starting to protest, Lila was flooded with memories of interminable meetings about capturing the youth market and trend analyses of soft drink sales. Just last week she’d had to sit through “Segmentation: Your Key to Success.” The speaker was famed in the industry for making people want what they in no way needed. With the teeth and
hair of a TV reporter, he’d opened with the shocking news that he’d just flown in from LA. He was going to help them Get In Customers’ Heads. Lila had wanted him Out Of Her Head.

“You’re a hard worker,” her boss acknowledged, “But it’s as if you kept sabotaging yourself, switching around departments just when you were about to get promoted. It’s not the right fit.”

Still in a heavy daze, Lila found herself woodenly exiting his office. She made it past the furtive stares and whispers from remaining staff and back to her cubicle to sit in front of her computer screen. Her inbox icon flashed: a new email. Clicking on it, she discovered it was from Endicott Vineyards. The subject read: “We enjoyed your time with us!” It was a customer satisfaction survey. “Here at Endicott Vineyards, we hope we gave you a night to remember! Please take a moment to let us know how we did!”

Pushing her chair back, she grabbed her purse and headed out for a walk. Zombies could stumble along unnoticed with the surging lunchtime business crowd swirling amidst concrete, glass and steel.  

That afternoon she left Phillip note in his office on a yellow stickie. “Call me.” She signed it with a heart.

Over the course of the evening, largely spent staring at the TV and wondering how long it would take before her student loan officer hunted her down once she defaulted on her payments, she sent Phillip an email. And left a voicemail.

Yes, she wished he would come to her. And, true, the last she’d seen him he’d been leaving the holiday party with his hand on the small of
Axelle
’s
back. But maybe he hadn’t heard yet that she’d been laid off. And at the party he was supposed to be networking with other powerful and influential VIPs. Up for partner this year, he couldn’t have been expected to spend the whole night with Lila.

Instead, what Lila clung to in the midst of her freefall were the happier moments. She kept remembering one Saturday morning a couple of months ago. He’d turned to her in bed, gently brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead, gazed lovingly into her eyes and said, “You’re amazing.” That would be nice to hear again right about now.

It was Wednesday before he surfaced. Never a relaxed man, that day Phillip looked as laid back as a cat in a bath. Lila joined him, slipping into his office as she had so many times before. Instead of any kind of welcome, however, he continued to pace the room like a cage, unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeves of his narrow, fitted pale yellow dress shirt only to immediately roll them down again. Darting looks out his office window, he seemed to fear they’d be caught.

Lila drew near and tried to give him a hug. Stiff as a board, he gave her a pat on the head that somehow managed to push her away.

“Phillip, what’s wrong? You haven’t been laid off, too, have you?”

“Me?” he asked, incredulous. “No, no.” His laugh was dry and without humor. “Of course not. Listen, I’m sorry about this whole thing. You’ll be fine, though.” Lila stood, arms hanging limp at her sides as she looked at him without understanding.

“Then what’s wrong?” Lila’s voice came out little and scared. 

“Nothing, I’m just busy right now. Very busy.” He gestured to his desk but, immaculate as always, it failed to produce a demonstrable pile of work.

“Not so busy you can’t do our getaway, I hope?” Lila ventured, scared to bring it up but feeling the need nevertheless. They were supposed to leave in 11 days.

“About that…” He ran his hand through his sandy hair and the tone of his voice said it all. The typical Lila would have rushed in giving him his own excuses: they could reschedule, it was her fault for not checking first when she’d booked months ago, maybe he even wanted to go somewhere else? But that day, for some reason—probably still in shock from losing her job—she simply stood there and asked, “What?”

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea, the getaway,” he continued. “Actually, you and I, this thing we have.” He made a hand gesture as if he swatting away flies between the two of them. “It’s not a good idea anymore.”

Carved of stone, Lila asked again with disbelief, “What?”

“Do you have to make this so difficult?” Phillip sighed and sat down behind his desk, putting the piece of furniture between them. Lila had the distinct impression that she’d once again found her way to the principal’s office. “Listen, Axelle and I are ready to take things to the next level. We’re going to move in together. So it’s just not—”

“Axelle?” Lila repeated, in a voice a notch louder than before.

“It’s ‘Axe-cell’,” Phillip corrected her pronunciation.

“What did you just say about…her?” Lila avoided the unpronounceable name.

“Things have been going really well—”

“You’re dating?”

“Yes, I thought you knew that.”

“But you’re seeing me!” Even louder. Loud enough that Phillip rose from his chair and came closer with his finger to his lips.

“I know you’re upset, but don’t start causing a scene, Lila. If there’s one thing I’ve always loved about you it’s your discretion. You really can keep a secret.” He started to give her one of his heart-melting smiles but the tears that had started in Lila’s eyes seemed to stop him. “We weren’t really seeing each other, Lila,” he corrected her. “It was more…it was just a thing.”

Oh the retorts she’d think of later. The witty come-backs. The scathing send-offs. Or even, “You jerk.” At the moment, however, she needed to devote all of her energy to not bleating, “Why don’t you love me!?!”

Shoulders slumped, chin wobbling, she suffered in shocked silence as he offered a few platitudes. Then she slunk, dejected, out of his office. Thankfully, she did manage to make it into the elevator and down onto the street before the giant, racking sobs hit. Once again she found herself in downtown San Francisco in the early afternoon with crisply dressed businessmen and women rushing around her carrying their to-go lunches. Leaning against the shoulder of a dark gray office building she gave herself up to an all-consuming cry.

*
             
*
             
*

Lila rubbed her forehead with the hope of erasing all memory of the past two weeks. It had to be a quick forehead rub, though, as she was driving a car. In the pouring rain in the pitch dark winding down hairpin curves. She peered out the windshield wondering how much further she had to go before reaching the town of Redwood Cove for her three-day romantic couples getaway…by herself.

How often did you lose your job and your boyfriend within days of each other? Probably not that often. Especially not with the humiliating twist of your boyfriend breaking up with you by telling you he’s moving in with the other woman he’s been seeing of whom you were completely unaware. Upside: his assurance that she shouldn’t be so upset because it wasn’t like he’d been her boyfriend, anyway. They’d just been fooling around. For the past two years.

Given all the excitement, it was understandable that Lila hadn’t exactly had the presence of mind to cancel the reservations at the inn in a timely fashion. By the day Lila had called she’d been informed that she’d missed the window of their one-week cancellation policy. Beat-down and humiliated by recent events, she’d simply accepted this as the new course of her pathetic life and hung up the phone.

The feeling of abject defeat—it reminded of the week she’d spent as a teenager babysitting for a family vacationing on the Cape. The parents had been child psychologists who wanted to raise children of limitless potential. This translated into a strict policy of caregivers never saying no. Consequently, the children, too poorly behaved to do things like eat indoors, had required not just constant supervision but
constant intervention from at best disruptive and at worst life-threatening behavior. By the end of the week, fourteen-year-old Lila had found herself exhausted and wading around a lake pushing not only the two little boys around in an inflatable boat but the fat father, belly out in the late July sunshine. So beat down had she been that when a seagull had pooped its trademark trail of greenish-white slime down her white t-shirt, all she’d done was remove it without a word, resigned to wearing just her swimsuit. Balling the soiled shirt up and stuffing it into her backpack, it was almost as if she’d been expecting it.

That was about how she felt right now, driving down the dark and winding road. In fact, bird poop might be a welcome distraction from her current slew of worries.

“Treat yourself,” her Gram had insisted, encouraging her to still go on the vacation. “You need a break. Curl up with a good book. Take a walk through that pretty little town. Visit Annie. It’s been far too long since you two have seen each other.”

Lila almost hadn’t done it. Until abruptly tearing herself out of a deep funk in her apartment to throw a toothbrush, hairbrush and sweater into a bag, jam an old Red Sox cap down over her unwashed hair and hit the road at 9pm. And so here she was, shipwrecked and in shock, driving alone in the rain down a winding coastal road in the pitch dark. She felt close to a news headline: Lonely Spinster Crashes Car in Desperate Plea for Attention. Readers would probably skip to the next story: Fancy Feline Fashion Show!

A sign announced Redwood Cove: 15 miles. She was getting close to the romantic seaside bed-and-breakfast where she’d booked a room. For her and Phillip. She felt tears welling up in her eyes.

Not now, she told herself, now she needed to focus on the road. Turning on the radio, she hoped for a distraction. Of course every station was playing sad-sap songs about lost love. Or worse, being in love. Angrily punching the radio’s scan button she dismissed all of it as pathetic. Until she hit a station playing Air Supply and decided she might as well give in. “I’m all out of love! I’m so lost without you!” she belted along, feeling the true meaning of the song as never before.