Pounding the Pavement (29 page)

“Hello?”

“Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“This is Catherine at WCA Human Resources. I’ve got good news. Marianne Langold expects you to report for work starting tomorrow at nine a.m.” She lowers her voice. “Just between you and me, we don’t usually hire people so quickly. But Marianne gave you a fantastic recommendation. We’ll do your background check and call your references while you’re at the office. It’s just a formality really.”

“Catherine, thank you! This makes my day!” I gush.

“It’s my pleasure to welcome you onboard. I’ll need you to drop
by the offices some time today to pick up your orientation manual and security key card. Is there any time you know you’ll be free?”

“I can be there in twenty minutes,” I say.

I’m actually there in fifteen.

“That was quick,” says Catherine, greeting me in the lobby. She is a short, fleshy bohemian wearing a flowing dress. She pumps my hand heartily and the two large fish earrings that dangle below her short, cropped hair swim giddily above her shoulders.

“Come into my office and we’ll fix you right up,” she says, leading me down the corridor.

I hardly have time to get a good look at Catherine’s office. Within only seconds, she’s loaded me up to my forehead with a stack of manuals: Orientation kit. Employee manual. Procedural policies. New York staff book. Los Angeles staff book. Confidentiality agreement. Operations and Usage manual.

“That comes with instructions and blank forms in the back,” she explains. “Messenger forms, fax templates, invoice sheets, time cards. They might seem overwhelming at first, but they’ll make sense soon. How are you with computers?”

“I’m very good with computers,” I pipe in from behind the volumes of reading material in my arms.

“Great. We might make you sit in during our afternoon training class tomorrow anyway. But definitely take our Computer Operations guide to look over just in case.” She tosses the book on top of the pile. “And then …” She pauses. “Hmm.”

I peer around my cargo and find her frowning at me, holding a security key card attached to the end of a rope.

“Ah! There you are.” She hangs the security card around my neck. “Welcome to WCA.”

I smile back my gratitude and teeter out of her office.

T
he manuals, when spread out on my bed, take up every square inch of space available. I myself have been relegated to the floor, a stack of Post-its beside me, a ballpoint pen in my hand, and a yellow highlighter between my teeth.

I’ve got a long, long night ahead of me.

I sign the confidentiality agreement and cast it aside, making room for the massive Procedural Policies manual. Sighing, I attach a Post-it to the top of page one, and write:
Telephone
. I begin reading the instructions and get my highlighter ready.

The word “agent” does not need to be highlighted. “Agent” always appears on the page in bold capital letters. When answering
THE AGENT
’s phone, WCA requires assistants to say, “This is
THE AGENT
’s office, who may I say is calling?” It is improper etiquette to immediately put a caller on hold. The assistant must always take the caller’s name and phone number before notifying
THE AGENT
of the call. (In case you were wondering, no, the word “assistant” is never capitalized. Why would it be?)

I flip the page and learn that, when entering
THE AGENT
’s office, the assistant must always have a pad of paper and pen in hand. No highlighter necessary for that bit of information either. That’s just common sense.

In between the chapters titled “Proper Dress Code” and “Vacation Request Policies,” my phone rings. This time, it is no longer music to my ears. It is alarm bells, shrieking sirens. I bite down hard on the end of the highlighter and debate whether to answer it. No, rather, I dread answering it. Because I’ve been burdened with such vast amounts of new information, I’ve been able to stave off thoughts of Jake for most of the afternoon. The ringing of my telephone is an
unexpected jolt of reality that I am not fully prepared to deal with. I chew thoughtfully on the cap of my pen. Reluctantly, I crawl toward the phone.

“Hi, it’s me.” Not Jake. Laurie. I breathe an enormous sigh of relief.

“Hi, you.”

“What happened with the job?”

“I got it.”

“Really? Why didn’t you tell me!”

“I’m sorry. There’s just so much I have to do to get ready.”

“That’s silly. We should go out and celebrate.”

“Laurie, I can’t.” Call me superstitious.

“Oh, come on. I got you on the list for our movie premiere at the Ziegfeld. I want you to come with me. You know you want to.”

“I really, really can’t. They gave me homework. Stacks and stacks of it. I’m going to have to spend all night sorting through this stuff.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am.” I bite my lip. Because I really do want to go to a big-time movie premiere. Maybe I could even snag a seat next to the supporting cast, which, I’ve heard, includes Andy Richter. And I could wear that Diane von Furstenberg dress I bought for the wedding and might never have the occasion to wear again. And there’d be champagne, and photographers, and goodie bags chock full of airline-sized vodka bottles and stuffed animals.

But what good will any of this do me in the long run? What is one bright, dazzling night when I’ve got a brilliant new career ahead of me?

“You’re definitely not coming?” Laurie taunts me. “You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yeah,” I mumble. “I’m sure.”

When Laurie and I hang up, I stick my pen back into my mouth and think.

I thought I would be relieved that it wasn’t Jake on the line. But, goddamnit, why
hasn’t
he called?

I pick up the Operations and Usage manual, open it to the first page and try to focus, try again to cast out unwanted thoughts of Jake. For so long, my priorities have been tossed aside, spun in a washer, hung to dry on a clothesline, flapping in heavy gusts of wind. But now I’m reeling them in, ready to fold and sort. I no longer have any time for nonsense. I have a job, a good job, a job I might enjoy. Thoughts of boys—and certainly thoughts of boys with charming, gracious, and beautiful ex-girlfriends—would just be a colossal waste of my time and energy.

In my manual, I highlight a sentence I haven’t even bothered to read and have no idea what it says. And by the end of the evening, three of the books on my bed are bleeding highlighter fluid. The yellow lines have leaked onto my hands and thighs, and there is even a streak across my forehead I can’t even begin to explain.

A
t 8 a.m., well before the doors to the WCA building will open, I am seated across the street at a café, smoking my third cigarette of the morning. The WCA New York staff book is splayed open on my lap, stained with yellow ink and fresh spots of coffee. When I’m through memorizing the name, title, and extension of every agent working out of the East Coast office, I order a refill and pull out my LA staff book. I place a hand over the first page and close my eyes, probing my memory for the name of every West Coast agent.

At 8:45, I slide my key card through the security doors and enter the silent offices. After a few minutes spent tiptoeing through the dark, softly humming corridors, I find the pantry. I pull out the can
of Colombian roast from top shelf of the cupboard, rinse out the coffeepot in the sink, and start looking for instructions.

Marianne Langold arrives promptly at 9 a.m.

“Good morning, Sarah,” she chirps at me.

“Good morning, Ms. Langold.” I rise from behind my cubicle.

“Sarah, please. Call me Marianne. Whenever I hear ‘Ms. Langold’ I feel like a grammar school teacher.”

She strides into her office and I hop up after her, holding a pad of paper in one hand, a pen in the other.

“I was wondering how you like your coffee,” I say from her doorway.

“Oh,” Marianne tosses her
New York Times
on her desk. “You don’t have to get me coffee.”

“I just made a fresh pot. I was going to get a cup for myself. You sure you don’t want any?”

“Hmmm.” She sits at her desk and crosses her legs. “Black with Splenda is fine.”

I scurry out of her office and jot down on my legal pad, “Black with Splenda.”

When I return, I am balancing two generously filled WCA coffee mugs. I carefully hand one over to her.

“Mmm, this is very good,” she says, licking her lips.

I realize I am holding my breath. I exhale deeply through my nostrils.

“Here,” Marianne nods at a stack of papers on the edge of her desk. “Can you run off two copies of that script for me?”

“Certainly.”

The halls of WCA have been filled with new life within the past ten minutes. The ubiquitous hum in the office has now swelled into a great big yawn. It is the sound a car makes in the middle of winter, when you pump the accelerator and wait for the engine to turn
over. It is a murmur about to become a roar. The quickening pace of high-heeled shoes clicking against the tile. The trill of a telephone growing more and more insistent.

There is nothing sinister about these cream-colored walls or white laminate desks. If anything, they are warmly inviting and, in their faintly lemon-scented freshness, terribly exciting. Yet, walking down this strange tunnel brings forth a torrent of so many conflicting and overpowering memories. I recall the terror of my first day of preschool, the curiosity of my introduction to high school, the thrill of my first taste of freedom at college. And if I were as young as I was then (as young, even, as I claim to be on my résumé), maybe I’d feel a little more spirited, a little more adventurous. I’d grab the reins, thrust my foot in the stirrup, swing my hat above my head, and yell, “Giddyup!” But I’ve been bucked off this steed before. And I still have the bruises to prove it. So, this time, I will proceed with caution.

I round the corner of the hallway. A mass of impeccably dressed and neatly coiffed assistants is hovering on the other side of the pantry. They are all waiting in line for the copy machine.

“Oh, no!” I groan.

A young, dark-haired woman in front of me turns and uses her index finger to push her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “The machine is broken,” she informs me. “Sam Larson just called down to Tech Support. They said it would take about thirty minutes to get up here.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

She shrugs and her glasses slide down her nose again. “Paper jam, I guess.”

I heave a sigh and push my way through the line.

“Excuse me,” I mutter to the line of pissy assistants.

“It’s broken!” shouts an anonymous male voice. I ignore him and put my script down on top of the printer so I can roll up my
sleeves. The sleeves, actually, of the Ralph Lauren suit I’ve borrowed from Amanda. A good reason to be particularly mindful of leaky ink cartridges.

I raise a few flaps of the copy machine, open a few trays, and eventually find the offending sheet of paper coiled around the “Warning: Hot!” cylinder. I use my fingertips to gingerly pry away the page.

I close the lid, and the machine sighs, flashing a ray of yellow light across the glass.

“I am just going to test it,” I say over my shoulder at the hoard of wide-eyed, gaping assistants. No one dares challenge me. I slide in my script and hit “Copy.” With cheerful compliance, the machine spits out the pristine copies.

“It works!” someone cries.

A chorus of hurrahs, shrieks of delight! I wouldn’t be surprised if the assistants hoisted me onto their shoulders and paraded me out to the lobby. I’m an all-around success, an instant victor, lauded by a dozen new friends.

So why do I still feel so sick to my stomach?

I remove my new copies, and the original, from the machine and walk past the sea of outstretched hands. I shake a few, forget every name, and perhaps even fail to give my own. For months, I’ve grown accustomed to being a nobody. I’ve learned to live with defeat, grown complacent with failure. It isn’t easy to step into this office, to wear these clothes, and pretend to be one of the Happily Employed. Maybe I’m skeptical, perhaps a bit wary, but it just doesn’t feel right.

For the rest of the morning, I hide behind my computer screen, tucked into the cavern of my cubicle. I pay no attention to anything that doesn’t appear directly on the computer screen in front of me and listen to nothing but the voices that come through the headset of my phone. And in such a deliberate fog of focus, I find myself performing superiorly.

The rapid succession of phone calls doesn’t fluster me in the least. I take an hour (two at the most) to create a Filemaker Pro database to serve as a log sheet for both incoming and outgoing calls. Most of the callers I recognize from either my New York or LA staff books. When I hear an unfamiliar name, I am meticulous about taking down the proper spelling and make sure to repeat the phone numbers back my callers.

I hang up line one, answer line two. “Hello, this is Marianne Langold’s office, who may I say is calling?”

“This is Peter Owens.” Bingo! LA Head of Literary Affairs.