Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single (2 page)

Who am I to be critical of him? At least Hailey got someone to propose to her, even if he does read
Hot Rod Magazine
while he's on the toilet. Everyone thought I'd be married by now. My family used to ask me things like,
How's your love life, Champ?
and
Why don't you bring your fella around?
But then as time passed and I kept showing up alone for Christmas dinner, they started to ask things like,
You hanging in there, Champ?
and
You feeling all right?
like I had an incurable disease or a meat cleaver stuck in my eye. Something no one really wanted to look at closely.

My aunt even gave me a book titled
Single but Not Bitter!
“We just want to support your lifestyle,” she said with a little pat on the knee and added, “Whatever that is.” I didn't want to be the one to tell her this, but being thirty-one, I didn't choose being single, it chose me. Again and again and again.

I stand in front of my closet and think
Whose clothes are these?
I settle on wearing a black pencil skirt, a black twin sweater set, and a string of pearls. This has been my basic uniform for most of my adult life. I grab my purse, keys, and coffee cup as I head out the door. I blow a good-bye kiss to Mrs. Biggles—at least we'll stay together forever, like people did in the old days, because back then, you stayed together no matter what. If your wife tried to poison you or your husband threw you down a flight of stairs, that didn't mean you were getting a divorce. You just silently hated each other for decades. Then you'd occasionally erupt into torrents of abusive swearing when the other person deliberately changed the channel during
Wheel of Fortune
. That's what my grandparents did.

It's freezing outside. I parked alongside a snow bank on the
street and overnight it's become like a solid ice bank. I nearly slide under my truck while trying to unlock the door. (I love this car; it's a 1985 safety-orange Scout, and it looks like Steve McQueen would drive it if he was in a 1980s surfer movie.) I end up having to set my coffee cup on the roof in order to force the door open bit by bit, repeatedly
crunch-crunch-crunching
it into the ice bank until I can wedge myself sideways into my seat. My breath blooms into pale clouds.
Please-oh-please-o-please-start
, I pray, and finally the engine rumbles and the radio blares on and ice-cold air blasts from the vent, freeze-gluing my earrings into my ears. I love this truck, I only wish it had heat.

I pop Dr. Abhijat Gupta's
You Are Somebody
in and take a deep breath as he walks us through visualization techniques. He says to imagine a large field covered with flowers. “Any kind you like,” he says and so I picture a big field of yellow daisies even though it somewhat reminds me of a douche commercial. “Can you hear the crickets?” Dr. Gupta asks and I can, partly because the sound of crickets is on the recording.

 

I pull into the Keller's employee parking lot and I'm digging in my purse, reciting my self-created inner-truth mantras when…
Thump thump thump!
Someone's banging on my window and my heart jumps up into my throat. “Stop!” I shout. “What are you doing?”

I wipe a little frost away from the glass and peer out at this absolutely enormous man in a red parka and black ski mask.

“What are you doing?”

He says something muffled.

“I can't hear you!”

“Offee up?” he shouts, pointing to the top of my car.

I dig out my cell phone and dial 9-1-1, keeping my thumb
poised over the Send button as I roll the window down a crack. “I'm sorry?” I say in my best I'm-so-sorry-you're-so-stupid-and-even-sorrier-I-have-to-deal-with-you voice.

“Offee up?” he repeats and grabs at something on the top of my car. Next he's holding my snow-encrusted smiley face coffee cup, which has apparently ridden all the way to work on the roof. He mumbles something incomprehensible. Who wears a ski mask downtown?

“Just put it on the ground,” I say, “just put it there.”

“Mmmph?” he holds out the cup.

“I'm not opening the door,” I put my lips up against the crack. “Put the cup down and go kidnap and rape someone else.”

I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. I heard about this girl that got kidnapped by some kid and he kept her in his soundproof tree house. She eventually fell in love with him and they got married when he turned sixteen. She was thirty-five. They had the whole story and a wedding photo spread in
People
magazine.

The doofy parking lot guy blinks once and then sets the coffee cup down on the ground. He turns around and starts walking for the building. “Hey!” I call after him, “can you move it back a little? It's too close to the door!”

He ignores me and keeps walking, his big, red sausage arms pumping back and forth as he marches for the Keller's employee doors.

The nerve of some people.

I re-do my makeup in the rearview mirror even though I'm already late. Keller's has an employee pep rally every Monday in the lobby. Everybody stands around in their heavy winter coats holding complimentary Styrofoam cups of coffee while Ed, the store president, tells us what a great job we're doing and how we could maybe do it a bit better. Then he leads us in prayer because Keller's isn't just a struggling midrange midwestern department
store, it's a struggling midrange midwestern department store that loves Jesus.

This doesn't amount to much, except our paychecks have an
IN HIS NAME
!
watermark in the background. We have to listen to the occasional pep-rally prayer, and if you have a problem at work, your department leader will sometimes just tell you to pray about it. Oh, and there's a Jesus fish glued to the Xerox machine.

I run for the building, the cold air like quick slaps on my face. Inside I hop from one foot to the other trying to warm up while repeatedly pushing the elevator button, trying to make it hurry. It's okay if I'm a little late for the pep rally. I can usually sneak in without anyone noticing, but when the elevator doors finally open, who's standing inside but the doofy-looking parking lot guy? I catch the door with my elbow and glare at him. “What's wrong with you?”

“Meef?” he says. He still has the damn ski mask on. He looks around bewildered, as though I may be talking to some other idiot in the elevator.

“Don't you know anything?” I ask. “Do you watch the news?”

He shrugs.

“You're a big guy lurking around the parking lot and now you're waiting alone in the elevator with a rapist bank robber ski mask on?”

He just stands there like a big, dumb confused Baby Huey.

The elevator door starts to bang against my elbow. “You should never speak to women in parking lots unless you know them and you should already know that. Why don't you know that?”

He shrugs.

“Women are very nervous in parking lots
and
in elevators. It's hard enough to avoid actual creeps without regular guys acting
like creeps. And I'm not saying you're not a creep, because I have no idea, maybe you are.”

He pauses. “Welf, I'm not,” he says.

“Well, that's not really for you to decide. Is it.”

What a moron.

He looks at his watch, which is buried between his glove and sleeve. “I'm vate,” he says.

“You're what?”

He taps his watch. “I'm vate.”

“You're late? Well, I'd
hate
to make you late.” I get on the elevator. “Besides, I have pepper spray.” I put my hand menacingly in my purse, grabbing a firm hold of what I think is a small yellow tube of Burt's Bees shimmer lip gloss. I have no idea where my pepper spray is. I think it's at home under the sink.

“Soffy,” he says.

“Great. You're sorry. Take the
ski mask
off then. You look like some pervert who likes to watch women buying pantyhose. Now I said ‘pantyhose'. My day is ruined. Happy?”

He blinks and then, with great effort, lifts his giant, red sausage arms and pulls his ski mask off. His hair stands on end and he smoothes it down with an open palm. “Already off on the wrong foot,” he smiles, looking down.

My eyes fly wide open and I quickly look at the toes of my boots. My cheeks burn with embarrassment.

He's
gorgeous.

I clear my throat and take another quick peek. He's North Woods, chiseled-jaw, George Clooney–playing–Paul Bunyan stunning.

I swallow hard.

Time becomes animated. Open to suggestion. I have so many mercury-fast feelings, thoughts, memories, and new future plans packed into the next few moments that if I had to guess,
even though the standard morning elevator ride is about thirty seconds, I would say that day the three-floor ride took about half an hour.

I remember the sensation of velocity and something shifts inside me, almost uncomfortably, like when you're standing in the middle of a frozen lake and you hear a crack deep below the surface. Your heart jumps because you know you may fall through.

“Yes,” I say loudly.

He looks at me. “What?”

“No, sorry,” I say. “Nothing. I'm being silly!”

He looks at me.

The doors finally open onto the wide white marble lobby and the smell of roses and perfume pours over us. A prerecorded voice says: “You are now on the main floor.”

We both get off the elevator. I want to say something to him, but I feel weird. Faint or feverish or like I just had a shot of Tabasco sauce. My throat is scratchy. He marches forward and I drift alongside him toward the other end of the lobby where the pep rally has already begun. Employees are gathered around the grand marble staircase, listening to our store president, Ed Keller, who stands halfway up the staircase in his smart black suit. Next to him is his wife, the dreaded Mrs. Keller, who is dry and gray as a dead tooth. She hardly ever comes to the store and I vaguely wonder why she's here.

Ed squints over the crowd in my general direction. “I think that's him!” he says and the group all turns around. “He's always late, but never for dinner!”

I have no idea who everybody's looking at.

I stop at the edge of the gathering and am suddenly thwapped in the face by a big, red parka arm because the parking lot guy is taking his coat off.

“Hold this?” the parking lot guy asks and shoves his hot red parka into my arms.

Ed is extending his hand as the parking lot guy makes his way through the crowd. “May I introduce Mr. Bradford Keller!” Ed says, his voice booming across the floor. “My son and future president of Keller's Department Store Incorporated!”

The parking lot guy dashes up the stairs.

Bradford Keller? The parking lot guy is…Bradford Keller?

“Hey, guys,” he says, waving at all my Keller's co-workers. Ed tells him he has to speak louder. “Hey, guys!” Brad shouts and everyone says “Hey” back. My heart hiccups and sputters, like some ancient rusty machine.

Brad starts awkwardly giving a prepared speech. He says something about being glad he's back in Minnesota and how he's looking forward to blah blah blah…. I'm not listening. I'd love to, but I think I'm having an aneurism. There's a buzzing sound in my ears and my arms are cold.

Christopher sidles up to me. He works in visual display, dressing the mannequins and floofing the store windows. He's excellent at what he does and I live in fear that a bigger department store will hire him away. We've known each other since high school and he's probably the only reason they didn't find me hanging from the aluminum bleachers on the football field. The secret to surviving a religious high school, or any war zone for that matter, is to find your people. Even if it's only one people. One is enough. If you can find one person in the crowd who's like you, then you can survive almost anything. I met Christopher in art class when he made a Pop candy-colored painting of Shaun Cassidy, encrusted on the edges with mirror chips. Right then I knew I had found my people.

“What's going on?” he whispers hotly. “Why did you walk in with Brad Keller?”

I stare vacantly.

When I snap out of my fog, Ed is patting Brad on the back and there is a smattering of clapping from the weary audience. Ed reminds us there are free employee flu shots today on the mezzanine level, and then he leads us in a short group prayer. I lower my head and close my eyes.

“A-men!” Ed says.

“A-men!” we all say back, except Christopher who says, “Gay men!”

I look up and Brad is gone, lost in the crowd. Everyone starts shuffling toward the elevators and Christopher sprints off to some meeting.

Mrs. Keller breezes up to me with a saccharine smile and says, “Is that my son's jacket? He always gets some poor girl to take care of his things.”

I nod but forget to let go of the coat. She has such a mean face.

Her eyes sharpen as she tugs. “Can I please have it?”

“What? Sorry!” I release my death-grip on Brad's jacket.

“No problem!” she chirps and gives me a painful little grin as she whisks the red parka away. Something in me panics—I may never see it again.

Upstairs I sit at my chair and stare at my blank computer screen. I can't believe I didn't know that was Ed Keller's son. Why would a guy like that want me anyway? He's handsome, rich, and well-connected. What am I? I'm a low-ranking copywriter in the marketing department of his dad's department store and my skills include writing in-store signage like
CHECK OUT OUR NEW LOOK
! And coming up with fairly compelling reasons to buy cardigans and sofas.

I do have strong points. I, and I alone, am responsible for last year's runaway best-selling boot sale:
RE-BOOT
! Also, I suggested we change the
KIDS
department to be the
K!DS
department, which won me a xeroxed copy of the employee-of-the-month thank-you letter from our store president, Brad's dad, and two Cinnabon coupons.