On the Verge (25 page)

Sherman, whom I am convinced is on to us, comes in looking cold and red. He places my wrap in my hands and leaves. I can’t believe Rob made him go get it. It’s the middle of January, he must be frozen. Rob thinks that we should pick up right where we left off, but I’m hungry. Besides, it just isn’t right that Sherman had to walk out in the cold so we could be unprofessional in the office. I try to explain this and he doesn’t get it.

Rob asks me out for a late dinner, but I suspect it’s just because he’s all worked up about the thwarted lunchtime efforts. I decline, for a lot of reasons. I figure it’s a good idea to keep Roseanne company and I’ve been out so late with him this past week, I need some sleep. Besides, if I deny him, I’m still the one in control.

Roseanne and I rent a movie and I fall asleep half an hour into it.

When the weekend rolls around, I break my “control,” and spend it with Rob. I am getting a little sick of myself and how cheesily happy I am. I tried to go out drinking with the girls on Friday night, but Tabitha dissed to hang out with Joao. I have to admit that I really wanted to hang out with Rob, but I was glad
Tabitha was the one to diss so I wouldn’t get the blame. I suspect Roseanne didn’t see it that way.

Roseanne and I never let another guy in between us in college. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a girl who doesn’t realize the importance of a friend over a guy. I’m afraid I’m turning into the kind of girl who is putting her boyfriend first. I hate that. What’s worse despite all the nasty fun we’ve been having and the habit he has of arching his eyebrow or curling his lip at the perfect moment, I’m not sure Rob King would consider me his girlfriend.

By Monday, Isabelle Chambers, the Human Resources Recruiter, has set up an interview with me to discuss the
Food and Fun
position. Tabitha is convinced that I got such speedy service because of Rob, but I assure her that I haven’t even told him I was interested in the job. She says he has ways of finding out.

Tabitha helps me pick my outfit. She tells me right away I should wear the Jackie-O suit and insists through each of my twelve outfit changes that Jackie is the way to go. Roseanne puts tea bags on my eyes to bring down the swelling and tells me that I haven’t been getting enough sleep. That’s the thing about Roseanne that can be infuriating. You wish she’d get bitter sometimes, when you feel bad about something, but she doesn’t. She tells me I need to get more sleep because I do, not because she’s getting her digs in. I wish I were a better friend because I know, even though she’s been getting lots of sleep, her eyes are looking as puffy as mine. She won’t talk about her job.

Roseanne shoots a zillion practice questions at me. After going on all these interviews, she is an expert on the questions they ask. She asks me to tell her what my best and worst qualities are. I have trouble thinking of my worst quality (can you believe?). For my best quality, Tabitha says I can’t use “excellent hand job” at all in the interview. Then, she leaves to go to some Brazilian music concert with Joao.

“Now, the biggie, the one they all ask, and the one that’s the most ridiculous bull doo is, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?”’

“Sitting on the couch watching Springer with my thumb up my ass.”

“You don’t want to come off too ambitious, Eve. C’mon think about it. Just say something that applies to the magazine position.”

“I want to be the best coordinator for
Food and Fun
ever.
And
I want to travel and have fun, of course, and fight world hunger.”

“Hey, Eve, I’m going to watch
Dateline
if you aren’t going to take this seriously.”

“Okay, in five years, I guess I really would like to do a lot of traveling. I don’t want to be a big stress case, I want to enjoy my job, which, I think I would if I worked for this magazine, because it’s something I like. Ideally, I want to have my own magazine, which might metamorphose from this one and most importantly, I would like to have the respect of those around me, because that is how I will gauge the job I’ve done.”

“Not bad, but you might want to curb the part about your own magazine. They want you to be theirs. F—your own ambition.”

I suppose I got sidetracked by
Dateline,
because I never figure out how I am going to answer the question.

The interview goes fabulously. I describe my current position in a glowing way. I make myself out to be much more important and a lot less bitter than I actually am. I identify my weakness as being the inability to say “no” to people (not in the dirty sense) and my strengths as the way I can focus on a project and still manage all my other duties. I can see that Isabelle Chambers is eating this all up. I can virtually read her mind and I know she thinks she’s found the one. Isabelle Chambers is getting ready to type “Prospect Identified” in the listing to deter all the other hacks who think they’ve got a chance. Sorry! It’s my game now.

“So, Eve, where do you see yourself in five years?” Shit! What was I not supposed to say? Isabelle leans in a little, waiting for my next perfect answer. Was I supposed to mention my own magazine or not? Fuck! Then it occurs to me, five years is a long time and what if—oh fuck—what if I’m still sitting in the same desk, surfing the Net and watching the world move around me? What if I run into someone I used to work with on the school paper and they ask me what I do? What will I say as they smirk when they discover all I do is order lunch and talk on the phone. Who am I kidding? My own magazine at twenty-eight? My sister is almost twenty-eight, she doesn’t even know what she wants to be when she grows up. It’s not my fault, it’s my genes, of course, my parents are both very motivated. But it was a different time. No one asked my parents where they wanted to be in five years, because they knew it was a stupid question. Nobody gets where they want to be. They just get somewhere. Is
Food and Fun
where I want to be? Oh, God, who knows?

“I realize it’s a tough question, it’s hard to see the future, but I’m asking for your ideal.”

“Well—” I clear my throat and try (unsuccessfully) not to sound like a ditz. “I really just want to travel and have a lot of fun.” Isabelle Chambers sits back in her chair. I can tell all her hopes for me as the perfect candidate have just crashed, but she is the pro. She smiles at me—she definitely had braces—and thanks me for interviewing. She holds her hand out to shake.

“I really want this job,” I say with a hint of desperation, “that’s where I see myself, at
Food and Fun.
”

“Okay, Eve, thank you. I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks. Thanks.” She gets up and leads me out. When I get into the elevator lobby, I am slightly in shock. Tabitha is only two floors up. I let about six elevators pass before deciding if I want to go up and talk to her or down and mope at my desk. I go up. Luckily, the Big C is in a meeting. As soon as Tabitha looks up at me, I know I must look like shit.

“Great suit, Eve, but you’ve got to start getting some sleep. What time is the interview?”

“It’s done.” I plop into a chair next to her desk. She must be busy because she keeps looking back to her computer screen. “I don’t want to bother you.”

“No, Eve, you look icky. Are you all right?”

“No, I don’t know.” The very last thing I want to do is have a breakdown at Tabitha’s desk. I feel like I’m about to cry so I get up to go. “I’ll call you later.” I notice as I walk past her desk that she was on the Net. It’s a fine feeling when one of your best friends would sooner surf the Net than be your shoulder to cry on.

“Eve, this is just—” she calls to me as I’m going out into the elevator bank.

When I get back to my desk, there’s a message from Roseanne. I nip Intern Brian’s incessant annoying chatter in the bud by making him alphabetize the freelance files. I listen politely to Lorraine telling me about her dog’s pregnancy. I want to crawl into a cave and die. I am feeling so low that I stare at the delivery guy in disbelief when he brings a huge bouquet of flowers over to my desk. I rip off the card.

I beg Sherman to tell Rob thank you. I wish more than anything I could tell him myself, but he’s in a meeting. I can’t believe the timing. Maybe I will spend the next five years wrapped up in Rob’s loving wonderfully muscled arms. I think I might be in love.

I decide to tell Rob the next time we are intimate that I’m in love with him. In the past this has usually signaled the end of my relationships. I have actually said in the past “I love you, but you’re a loser. I think we should end it.” You see, the guys I’ve gone out with in the past have been scared of commitment or just drunk most of the time, so it was no big deal. Rob is different. He’s a man, and this could be it. I wouldn’t be such a loser and need to hang out with him nonstop if it wasn’t. Besides, he has this uncanny ability to do the right thing. Those flowers came at the perfect time. Lucky me, so young and I found the one. What a catch. My e-mail dings, new message. It’s from Sherman and titled “Rob King Out of the Office.” What?

I have to say that Sherman lacks the e-mail writing panache that I pride myself on. Of course, he may not want to be so casual with this distribution list, which includes people like Joe Sullivan and (gasp!) Prescott Nelson himself. In many ways it’s a personal victory to be on a distribution list with those big guys. Almost like they might check their e-mails and say to themselves “Well, I know Joe Sullivan, but who is Eve Vitali? What a cool name.”

Of course I’m sure that their secretaries (assistants) will be checking the e-mail and probably not give a shit. So my victory is marred by the fact that my significant someone (or whatever the hell I’m supposed to call him at this point) is letting me know via group e-mail and his assistant that he isn’t going to be around to fuck me this weekend. I should Reply All:

The e-mail patrol would certainly be at my desk in a nanosecond, and I would never be heard from again. My ID would immediately stop working, and I could kiss those cool Prescott T-shirts goodbye. Also, after all I put Sherman through, he would
probably take it as some kind of embarrassment and disgrace to him. He might commit hara-kiri.

I should look on the bright side of all this. I’ll have a weekend to spend with the girls. Yes, some hard-core quality time. Although I feel kind of guilty that it takes Rob going away to get me to have some much-needed girl bonding. But no, I’ve only been out of commission for two weekends. Don’t I deserve some fun, too?

On Sunday afternoon, we are drunk. We went out too late Friday night and wound up getting a heavy post-clubbing breakfast at Florent at like five in the morning. Of course, we couldn’t find it at first, so we traipsed around the meatpacking district in heels and sexy skirts. We didn’t get in until 7:30, because, still drunk, we decided to walk back. Tabitha spent most of Saturday puking, as Roseanne and I slept through our hangovers. We woke up just in time for
COPS
and decided it was too cold to leave the apartment, so we ordered Indian delivery and watched a lot of Saturday night TV.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early. We woke up bored. I brought margarita stuff and movies back to the apartment when I dropped off my laundry. We had a Richard Gere film fest with
Pretty Woman, Internal Affairs
and of course, my personal fave,
An Officer and a Gentleman.
(I’m a product of the eighties, what can I say?) By 4:30 we were toasted and having a heated discussions over various urban myths. Of course the natural progression was to discuss blow jobs. Roseanne told the story of the time she gave a blow job to that guy in the bathroom (like I haven’t heard that one a million times). What he said afterward is always dependent on the mood Roseanne is in when she tells the story and how drunk she is. This time she claims he said, “That was beautiful.”

Tabitha claims to hate blow jobs (big surprise) but to love getting oral sex. She wishes men were born with penises on their forehead so they could just “do it all in one exciting shot.”

“Do you guys ever wish you could get flavored cum?” Roseanne asks. Tabitha is disgusted by the idea that Roseanne actually swallows.

“Even that guy in the bathroom, the one you barely knew?”

“Especially him. Mmm.” Roseanne licks margarita off her lips. She is dirty today. “Anyway, sometimes when I’m giving a blow job all I want for is a nice shot of chocolate sauce. As a chaser
you know?” Roseanne does a little shot-taking motion and I almost pee my pants laughing.

“Alcohol definitely helps,” says Tabitha, “I mean if I am going to do that, I might as well be drunk.”

“Yeah there are two things I like to do when I’m drunk. I like to fight and I like to fuck.”

“Eve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get into a fight.” Roseanne seems very concerned that she might have missed something crucial all these years.

“Eve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fuck,” Tabitha chimes in. They both find this hysterical, as if I never get laid.

“I’ll have you both note that I—yes, yours truly—am the one getting the most regular sex right now. Thank you very much.”

“So how is it? Is it fun to sleep with all that power?” Tabitha is on the edge of the couch. She almost spills her margarita as she leans forward.

“Yeah, is he that good? You definitely seem more…chipper lately.” I can tell just by the way Tabitha cracks up that they’ve been having discussions about my sex life.

“It’s great,” I say, reveling in it. “I can honestly say that I have never been more attracted to anyone in my life.” They are impressed, I can tell. Then of course, as I expected, Roseanne holds up her two hands about four inches apart. I jack my thumb up, her palms get wider, I jack my thumb again, and her palms get a lot wider. I shrug and make a circle with both my hands.