Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single (14 page)

I call Christopher and tell him Brad left before I woke up. “I'm pretty sure we did it,” I say, checking for wet spots on the bed. “Oh yeah. We did it. Twice.”

“Did he say he was leaving?” Christopher asks. “Did he tell you he couldn't sleep over?”

“I don't know.” I struggle to remember. “It's fuzzy. He might have said something about working. I don't know. I might be making it up in my head. That elf nearly killed me.”

“What do you remember?”

“Great date,” I say, “lots of talking. Chilidogs, polka, sex twice in missionary position.”

“God,” Christopher says, disgusted. “If that was a gay date, you could charge him with cruel and unusual punishment.”

I roll over and look out the window at the empty street.

“What about the unit?” he asks. “How big?”

“Um, good.”

“One image,” he says, “the first one that pops into your head.”

“Okay. Crabapple baby fist.”

“Nice. The shaft?”

“Two Snickers bars.”

“Two Snickers bars long or thick?”

“Thick.”

“Very good. Approve of the manscaping?”

“He's a little bushy. Needs a trim.”

“Well, no deal breakers there. Did you at least get his phone number?”

“Yes, and he has mine. I should wait for him to call me, right?”

Silence. “Tell me you already know the answer to that.”

“Is that a no?”

“Please, for the love of almighty God. It's like watching a car accident in slow motion. Do not call him. He has a forty-eight-hour window to call you. After that, you don't pick up.”

He's right, of course; the next forty-eight hours will be crucial. If Brad calls within this window of time, then this could be the start of a budding relationship. If he calls after forty-eight hours, then he's not sure, but doesn't want to give up quite yet. If he doesn't call, well, then it was a one-night stand. Something I can't even bear to think about. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a one-night stand. I mean, we had such a good conversation at dinner, that's got to mean something, right?

Still, I did have to go and tell him my stupid boy-saves-me-
at-the-amusement-park story, and I drank enough liquor to fill a kiddie pool, and I think I possibly threw up in a towel in my bathroom, but haven't had the nerve to check yet. So I have no idea if I should be expecting a call or not. Probably not. But what if he did call? Is that so impossible?

I have Green Mill deliver a cheeseburger with fries. Grease and lots of it is my one and only hangover solution. I drink lots of water and watch a snowstorm blow across my living room windows. I sit in my pink chenille robe and watch
Sleepless in Seattle
on the Lifetime Channel and cry. I'm not crying about Brad, that movie always makes me cry.

Every time.

 

Twenty-four hours pass and no call from Brad.

 

Forty-eight hours pass and no call from Brad.

 

Due to my inability to connect with the human race, I am moving to Iceland to become a sheep herder. It's for the best.

 

Monday morning it seems like everyone in the office is staring at me, like I grew a grotesque second head or something. It's incredibly quiet all around my desk, and I worry people can hear my thoughts, which are basically:
I had sex with Brad Keller! I had sex with Brad Keller!
I sit down at my desk and decide to be professional. We have a big week ahead of us and I should stay on task.

But before that I sneak onto TrueLove.com and take a relationship quiz that will tell me if Brad and I are going to “make it,” or have to “fake it.” I enter our names and click on our signs. (Him: Scorpio. Me: Gemini.) The questions are stupid and obvious, like
Does he make eye contact with you?
and
Is sex boring or bull's-eye?
and
Does he know your last name?
But I answer each
of the twenty-five questions dutifully and hit Enter. Up pops the result.
Jen
, it says,
it looks like you and Brad are going to make it!
That puts a big, dopey, hopeful smile on my face and I send the test results to Christopher.

Ted bombs into my cubicle and skitters a radio spot across my desk. “Whoa,” he says, “looks like your Friday night date was awesome. Is that cake batter in your hair?”

“Quit stomping around,” I say. “You clomp like a moose.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says, “does Brad walk perfectly?” He makes little precious kissing noises and prances about. “Does Brad walk like a Japanese gymnast?”

“Shut up,” I tell him. “How did you even know we went out?”

“Kathy in accounting saw you at O'Hooligans. She told Barb in men's casual wear and Barb told the cleaning lady.”

“So the cleaning lady told you?”

He nods.

“You talk to the cleaning lady?”

“We have a thing. Don't get all possessive. I just need to know if Brad has a big penis.”

“At least find me some aspirins,” I say, retrieving my empty bottle. “Five hundred aspirins and it's empty. How did I use five hundred aspirins?”

“I don't know,” he says. “Five hundred dates with Brad.”

“Oh, go away.”

“You're right,” he says, shaking his head. “It's none of my business.”

“Thank you!”

“I'm bigger than him though. In the pants. I'm sure I'm bigger.”

“Go away.”

“Okay, I'll go, but you just missed out on getting some pretty
amazing information about me. Like that I happen to be a millionaire with a solid gold jet ski and I just do department store copywriting because it's my art.”

“I'm not telling you anything, not that there's anything to tell.”

“Why not?” he says. “Is he deformed or something? Is it like a sensitive subject?”

I throw a catalogue at him. Then Ashley rounds the corner and stops at my desk.

“What is this?” She holds up a piece of paper.

“I was just getting some dating advice off Jen,” Ted says.

Ashley hands me the paper. It looks vaguely familiar.

“Is there a reason you're e-mailing the entire company your TrueLove.com test results?” she asks.

I stare at the paper. It's the test I sent Christopher.

“You sent it to the entire art department,” Ashley says.

Ted takes the paper. “Wow! Look at this! You scored an eighty out of a hundred with Brad Keller! Maybe it is true love!”

Oh God. This isn't happening.

Ashley's eyes go wide. “You were taking a love test for you and
Brad Keller
?” she says, and she says it in such a low, vicious way, “Yes. We went out on a date.” Then I excuse myself and go discreetly to the emergency stairwell, where I can't seem to breathe. I'm not hyperventilating so much as my chest seems to have some crushing weight on it, like a cobra of panic has wound its way around my torso, and I wobble, as though I might pass out.

The heavy metal door opens and Ted sits down next to me on the stairs.

“You okay?” he asks gently. “Sorry I outed you and Brad.”

“It's not your fault,” I say and my eyes fill up with tears. “You know how there's always one kid in your class who wets his pants
in front of everyone? And everyone tells him not to worry, no one will remember this in ten years?”

“Everyone remembers,” Ted sighs.

“Everyone!” I say. “And everyone will remember this too!”

Ted nods. “There's only one way to fix a disaster,” he says. “Make a bigger disaster.” Then he reaches up and pulls the lever on an emergency fire alarm.

A high, piercing wail starts up and instantly we hear the big metal doors banging open on every floor and a multitude of voices filling the stairwell.

I really have to stop getting the fire department involved in my love life.

Without so much as a flinch Ted links his arm in mine and we join the stream of concerned, chatting Keller's employees on their way down to the parking lot.

We spend about an hour outside in the cold, all hopping from one foot to the other. Ted says it's great because for every minute we're out here, more and more junk mail is cluttering up everyone's inboxes, pushing my test-score e-mail farther and farther down the line.

“Also, at least half these people will now come down with the flu,” he says cheerfully. “Headaches, chills, using up vacation days. They're not likely to remember your e-mail with a low-grade fever, are they?”

Sometimes I just want to kiss Ted.

 

That night I'm reorganizing the dollhouse and assembling a new male harem for Little Wife. I line up dozens of green plastic army men and different-size action figures, who are all going to move in and become Little Wife's personal slaves. They will do her bidding, no matter how perverse. Hans Solo lies down in bed, waiting to service her; the Incredible Hulk is in the kitchen
wearing an apron and doing dishes, and Chewbacca is giving Little Husband a death-blow karate chop because his affair with Barbie has been discovered.

Then I hear the chipper
new e-mail!
sound on my computer and I knock my knee against the table as I sprint across the room to my desk.

Brad has sent a new message.

He says, “I had a really good time and would love to hang out again.”

Oh, really.

How cruel and insensitive.

Why wait for three days to contact me? If he's going to respond, why not respond right away? I consult with Christopher before e-mailing back.

“I don't know,” Christopher says. “It's technically ouside the window. I don't like it.”

“But he practically made it inside the window,” I argue. “Maybe he was just playing it cool.”

“And he e-mailed. He didn't call.”

“A call counts for an e-mail.”

“No, a call counts for a call.”

“No, a text message doesn't count for a call,” I reason, “but an e-mail does.”

“Okay, you deserve whatever happens.”

So fine. I wait twenty-four hours before e-mailing Brad back. I write several test e-mails first and I come up with two or three pretty good variations and I practically have to sit on my hands to not send it.

Instead, I focus on the penis-basket debacle.

The penis baskets were supposed to be bath-gift baskets prepackaged for Valentine's Day, but when we got them, the ripe plum-scented bath balls were on either side of the blue organic
mini-loofah, which made it look like a big penis with blue balls wrapped in plastic. “But how are we supposed to fix this?” I ask Ashley.

“I don't know,” she says. “That's your job, not mine.”

She's had a nasty temper lately.

“What I mean is,” I try to explain, “how can
copywriters
fix this? Call it our Valentine's Day penis promotion? The new Keller's Blue Ball Basket?”

“I don't know,” she says, “just spin it.”

“But how?”

“How should I know?” she shouts like a silverback gorilla. “Just fix it!”

There's no fixing it. She knows it and I know it, but now it's my responsibility, so when we're left with three hundred unsold units, I can do the explaining.

I check my cell phone and e-mail just in case Brad sent another message. He hasn't and I'm still waiting to send mine. So what? No big deal. They aren't supposed to call or e-mail twice, not before you respond. I shouldn't even be expecting that and I'm not, only those rules are for people who don't work in the same building. If you work in the same building, you would normally run into each other. Why don't I know what Brad does? How can you spend an entire night with someone and find out so little?

I'm dying.

I try to meditate at my desk, but when I close my eyes, the slow tide of ceaseless co-worker chatter and Xerox machines and elevator bells and high heels clicking and people eating and gossiping and bitching and moaning expands to fill every molecule of space in my brain, like someone stuck one of those air-compressed cans of Fix-a-Flat foam in my ear, and shot my head full of sticky, gross goo. I can't get away from it. I want to stand
up and scream at everyone that now I understand what going postal really means.

After lunch I decide to mill around the executive suites upstairs and come up with a reason for running into Brad. After all, I work here, right? I could have a very legitimate reason for being on the top floor, only my mind is blank and I can't think of one single reason, so I grab a clipboard and go upstairs, where I spend a painful forty minutes roaming the halls examining a blank piece of paper. I don't see Brad, or Ed, or any Keller executives. Only their executive secretaries. They're apparently all running the company.

 

I go home and send the e-mail to Brad. Then I turn my computer off, because I have better things to do than drink wine and stare at my computer screen waiting for him to respond.

Please.

How totally lame.

No, I'm going to drink wine and impose some law and order in the Tinkertoy home. I clear out Little Wife's harem and install a new God. Two new Gods, in fact. I found two plastic smoking monkeys in my drawer, the kind that smoke little paper cigarettes, which you light with a match. I'm going to name them Depression Monkey and Apathy Monkey.

Depression Monkey will threaten the Tinkertoys with an unholy downpour of plagues and pestilence if they don't offer the new Monkey Gods complete devotion and a steady supply of Wellbutrin, but Apathy Monkey will tell them he doesn't care.

 

The next day at work Brad has still not responded to my e-mail and I'm in a ferocious mood. I accidentally knock someone's coat off the hanger when I'm hanging my parka up in the employee
closet and I don't even pick it up. Instead I stare coldly at it on the floor and think, that's right, life's a bitch. You get knocked down and nobody picks you up, you just lie there in the dark, damp and alone.