Pink Slip Party (11 page)

“Does this mean I’m your date?” I ask him.

He laughs. “If you’d like,” he says.

“Don’t steal anything while I’m gone,” I tell Missy before I walk out the door. “My dad’s a cop.”

This is a lie, but Missy doesn’t know that.

“Fucking great,” Missy says.

To my surprise, despite all my attempts at baiting him, Kyle doesn’t insult me, or belittle me, or make jokes at my expense. He behaves like, well, a
great guy.
He is being so nice and considerate that I fail to detect a single trace of sarcasm anywhere. In fact, he is acting suspiciously like Mr. Dream Date.

I expect Kyle to abandon me once we step foot at the party, which is located in the foyer between the Monet and Van Gogh exhibits, but he stays close to me.

The room is full of lawyers prowling around in sharp-cornered tuxedos and severe black evening gowns. Even the women have shoulder pads that could cut glass.

I try focusing on the art, but I am the only one who appears interested in what’s on the walls. Everyone else is more concerned about drinking and exchanging business cards.

To entertain myself, I pretend I am narrating a National Geographic documentary.

“Observing the rare Legalese tribe in its natural habitat is something only a select few scientists have the opportunity to do,” I whisper into my glass of champagne, which I use as a makeshift microphone. “Notice how bottom feeders tend to rely on networking for survival. See the tribe’s gravitation toward black outerwear, making them harder to be singled out by predators.”

Kyle, who is probably the only lawyer in the room with a sense of humor, laughs.

“Kyle!” cries a stout, barrel-chested, blond man in his mid-forties who lumbers straight into my commentary without a pause. He thrusts out a hand and begins shaking Kyle’s vigorously. “I wanted to congratulate you on the Kinsella case. Excellent work. Excellent!”

“Thanks, Gary,” Kyle says. “Jane, I’d like you to meet Gary Godheim, one of the senior partners in the firm.”

“Nice to meet you,” he says, taking my hand and shaking it delicately, as if it is the tiny paw of a trained poodle. “What do you do?”

“Recreational skydiving,” I lie.

“Really?” Gary says, momentarily interested. Kyle is delicately squeezing my arm.

“Actually, that’s just a hobby,” I say, smiling my most charming, best-behavior smile. “I’m in between jobs at the moment.”

Gary becomes instantly disinterested.

I read somewhere that when Americans meet someone, their first question is always “What do you do?” In Europe, where they take six weeks vacation, they don’t ask this question first, or second, or even third. Because in Europe, what you
do
isn’t who you
are.
These are two very separate things, unlike here, where your worth, your identity, can be boiled down to the job title on your business card.

“What field?” he asks me.

“State correctional facilities,” I say. Gary looks stricken. I pause just long enough for Kyle to cut off the circulation in my arm.

“Just kidding,” I tell Gary.

“Looks like you’ve got quite the live wire here, Burton,” Gary says, a gleam in his eye. At the mention of “live wire,” I immediately think of Mike. Gary sends me an approving smile. I’m sure he is imagining me in a women’s prison getting frisky with blond, buxom inmates in the group shower.

“No doubt about that,” Kyle says, taking a measured sip of red wine.

“Have you met my wife, Michelle?” Gary asks, looking for his wife in the crowd.

The partners’ wives are standing together in the corner. They are all wearing expensive jewelry, low-cut dresses, and are an equal mix of women in their fifties (the first wives) and women in their twenties (second or third wives). Together, they have more carat weight on their fingers than the Hope Diamond.

Kyle and Gary have drifted off to have their own conversation, leaving me alone with Michelle.

“Pleased to meet you,” Michelle says, but doesn’t shake my hand. I am just young enough and skinny enough to be mildly threatening. I find this funny. She wouldn’t think I was threatening if she could’ve seen me this morning, wearing my Lisa Loeb glasses and my unwashed, stained flannel pajamas.

“Have we met before?” she asks me.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Do you ride?”

“Ride?” I echo.

“Horses.”

“Not if I can help it,” I say.

“Oh. I thought maybe I’d met you at the stable.”

“Will you excuse me?” I say.

I pluck off a glass of champagne from a roving waiter, swallow it in three gulps, and set it down on a table beside a swan-shaped ice statue.

I make my way to the American Gothic painting. The farmer with the pitchfork and his wife look like they’ve just been laid off. I feel their pain.

I see Kyle across the room talking to a leggy brunette who’s smiling brightly at him and lightly touching his forearm, clearly flirting. This happens with Kyle a lot. It’s why he can go through more girlfriends in a year than I go through jars of peanut butter.

Kyle catches my eye, and I make a smoochy, make-out face to him, because I am not above juvenile behavior. To my surprise, Kyle excuses himself from the leggy brunette and makes his way to me.

“Very funny,” he says.

“I try,” I say.

We both look at the painting.

“They look like they just got the news that they have to abandon their farm and come work in a cube,” Kyle says.

I grunt a laugh.

“Did I ever tell you I was laid off once?” he asks me.

“You?” I say, surprised. I can’t imagine Burberry Tie Kyle ever in the unemployment line.

“It was my first job out of college. In New York.”

“Really?”

“It took me six months to find another job.”

“What did you do for all that time?”

“I watched reruns of
Green Acres
and
Days of Our Lives.”

I laugh, because I think he’s kidding.

“That Stephano is one bad-ass dude,” he says, straight-faced.

This makes me laugh.

“You have a good laugh,” he tells me.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean you have a good laugh.”

I study him. Wondering if he’s trying anything funny.

“Relax, Jane. Have a bit of fun, will you?” he tells me. “Remember when you used to have fun?”

“I’m trying,” I say.

I don’t know if it’s the champagne at work, or if I’m actually enjoying myself. It’s hard to say exactly when I stop wondering why Kyle is being nice to me. At the end of the evening, he insists on parking, which in my neighborhood is anything but easy.

At my door, there’s an electrical charge in the air, and I can’t decide if it’s the champagne I ingested, or the fact that Kyle is flashing me one of his deliberately charming smiles. I’ve seen him use The Smile countless times on unsuspecting women. He reels them in with a smile, and then when he gives them the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech six weeks later, they never know what hit them.

“Aren’t you going to invite me up for coffee?” Kyle asks me, still smiling.

It occurs to me that Kyle actually is quite good-looking, if you go for cookie-cutter types. He looks like he’d be right at home in a Ralph Lauren ad.

“That’s pathetic,” I tell him. “You’re so used to girls fawning all over you that you aren’t even trying to come up with good lines anymore.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, pretending innocence.

“You know very well that most women, God knows why, find you attractive,” I say.

“Hmmmm,” he says, pretending to contemplate this concept. “Perhaps it’s my boyish good looks,” he jokes. He pauses. “So why is it that…you know.”

I smile, amused. “No, I don’t know.”

“That you never…”

“Yes?”

“Well…” He’s squirming. “…wanted to date me?”

I laugh.

“Your ego is entirely out of control,” I tell him. “You really think every woman should fall at your feet?”

“Only the really, really hot ones,” he says, flashing me his smile again.

I laugh harder, and give him a playful shove, which causes him to flail his arms in an exaggerated windmill and pretend he’s going to fall over.

“Good night,” I say, slipping through my door.

Illinois Department of Health and Human Services Office
Springfield, IL 62781

Jane McGregor
3335 Kenmore Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657

March 12, 2002

Dear Ms. McGregor,

We received your request for food stamps and are afraid that you do not qualify for them, despite, as you wrote, “being a single mother to your two-bedroom apartment’s appliances.” We appreciate the fact that should you receive food stamps you would not use them to buy “booze or drugs.”

However, with your unemployment benefits being what they are, and your lack of (human) dependents (we’re afraid roommates, no matter how annoying, don’t count), we have no choice but to reject your application for food stamps. Should you have further questions on this matter, or would like more information, please feel free to contact us.

Best,
Jane Miller
Associate Social Worker
Illinois Department of Health and Human Services

7

I
am flat-out broke.

I have less than $10 in my bank account, which means that I can’t effectively get it out of any ATM, and because my bank charges me $5 to see a teller, I’d be essentially halving my meager savings if I go in person to collect it.

These are desperate times. I have two minimum credit card payments due and the electric company just sent me a bill in a pink envelope.

“Do you have any money I can borrow?” I ask Missy.

She snorts at me.

“Do I look like Bank of America to you?” she hisses at me, not looking up from my television set. My couch has a permanent imprint of her butt in it, which is only one of the many drawbacks of living with Missy.

Another happens to be that Missy claims to have severe allergies to dishwashing liquid. This is her reasoning for not touching the dirty dishes in the sink. Or her laundry piling up in the hallway. Detergents of any kind, she claims, cause her to break out in life-threatening hives.

Oddly, this does not prevent her from using my BedHead shampoo.

“I’m going out,” I say.

“Whatever,” Missy calls back.

I pack up thirty of my CDs and take them around the corner to the used CD shop, where I get $10. Apparently, Oingo Boingo and Duran Duran aren’t the hot items they used to be.

It is a sad day when ten bucks doubles my total net worth. On the bright side, I can now deposit this $10 into an ATM and retrieve a full $20 out.

My next stop is the blood bank around the corner, where I have to answer a list of a hundred questions, including “Have you ever sold sex for money or drugs?” and “Have you ever taken intravenous drugs or had sex with a person who’s taken intravenous drugs?” I pause on the question: “Have you had sex with an ape/monkey/or any species of primate since 1980?” I almost check yes to this, thinking Mike might count, but decide that he’s less of a monkey and more of a pig.

I sit in a chair while a young nurse pokes me eighteen times with a needle before she finds the vein she calls “slippery.” When the bag fills up in a matter of seconds, the nurse tells me I’ve got big veins, which makes me a fast bleeder.

At least I’m good at something. It’s nice to know if I’m ever in a major car accident, I’ll bleed to death in eight point two seconds.

It’s only after they take enough blood from me for a major transplant operation that I discover they no longer pay people for blood donation. For my trouble, I get a juice box and a small pouch of Oreo cookies.

When I get back to my apartment, Missy is nowhere to be seen. I check my valuables — a pearl necklace from Grandma and my television and DVD player, but nothing seems to be missing. Plus, Missy’s boxes are still here, as well as her boyfriend’s cash-stuffed wallet. I assume she’s coming back.

I take advantage of the silence to get started on Ron’s CD project, which is the first fun thing I get to do all day. For me, there’s nothing better than concept art, and having no constraints except what you can draw. In a half hour, I have a rough sketch of a giant sink stopper, which I fill in with some deliberately oversized brush strokes. If I had a job that just allowed me to do this all day, I think I could be happy. I just want a job that requires more creativity than designing office supply catalogs.

I decide it’s time to try looking at job listings. Looking through online classifieds is boring and self-defeating, and by the time I’ve scrolled through hundreds of job result screens, my eyes feel red and strained, and I am filled with self-loathing. I resent my parents, who did not have the ingenuity to invent something really marketable, like the beer hat or Liquid Paper. I resent the people who stumble into fortunes by inheriting the buildings around Wrigley Field, where you can rent out your roof to a Budweiser ad and happily sustain a lifetime of excess by simply allowing a beer company to paint the top of your building. And where’s my benefactor? Where’s my check from the National Endowment for the Arts? Where’s my corporate welfare?

It all seems so hopeless.

In desperation, I start firing off resumes to things I’m overqualified for, including: Gap sales representative, theater usher, and dog walker.

I apply for those as well as thirty other jobs that I’m under-qualified for (including CFO of Chrysler). Like Todd says, how do you know you won’t get the job unless you throw your hat into the ring?

The benefit of having lots of time is you have the rare luxury of being able to waste other people’s.

My front door opens with a bang and Missy walks in, wearing a wool suit, complete with heels.