Love and Miss Communication (7 page)

Per firm protocol, a uniformed security guard came upstairs to escort her out of the building at five o’clock.

“Ready, miss?” he asked, hulking in the doorway to her office.

“As I’ll ever be,” Evie said, and rose from her chair. She gathered the few personal effects she had on her desk (an immortal orchid; a framed picture of her, Fran, and Bette taken at Thanksgiving a few years ago; a picture of her clad in a bridesmaid dress with her girlfriends at Tracy’s wedding; and an Ansel
Adams black-and-white print hanging on the wall). She debated leaving the picture of her and Jack in the file cabinet, where it would languish eternally in Records. That was probably where it belonged, but she snatched it up at the last minute and threw it in her tote bag.

The office she left looked more bare than usual, but then again she had never taken the time to properly decorate it since, like all associates, she was bounced among the firm’s smaller offices every time the new hires started. She had been expecting to move into a partner suite, where she would have had the benefit of the firm’s generous decorating stipend. She had so many ideas for the larger space. A buttery-leather couch in a rich shade of camel would go along one wall, opposite two wooden armchairs fabricated in a deep pink silk. Three oatmeal-colored cashmere pillows with cable braids would sit equally spaced and perfectly upright on the sofa, and she’d place a matching cashmere throw over the back of her desk chair. Her desk would be curvy and modern, unlike the heavy mahogany models that the male partners favored. And she would hang draperies. Nobody ever remembered that detail. But she would have. Gauzy taupe curtains trimmed in suede, with gray satin tiebacks. What a waste of good ideas.

She flipped the light switch. It was symbolic really. Someone from maintenance would be by shortly to sterilize the place, scrubbing her keyboard with disinfectant so that not even a trace of her essence remained.

She was about to leave the BlackBerry on her mouse pad, per the departure instructions, but instead she wrapped the outdated relic in a few paper towels and dropped it in the trash can. Striding beside the guard down the hallway, she felt like she was doing a perp walk. Her ears popped as the elevator shuttled between the twenty-second and twenty-first floors, but when she stepped onto the busy sidewalk at 5:00
P.M.
she couldn’t hear a thing.

# # #

Stasia called Evie two times on the day of Evie’s date with Mike Jones to make sure she didn’t bail. It was an exceptionally humid and rainy day in July, the kind that no amount of hair-styling product or waterproof makeup could combat.

“Maybe this is what you need to distract you from what happened at work,” Stasia said. “Mike sounds like he could be promising.”

In the background Evie heard Rick say, “If she doesn’t want to go, then she shouldn’t go.”

“I’ll go, because I trust Annie,” Evie said. After a more aggressive search online, including using LexisNexis with her not-yet-terminated Baker Smith passcode, she had finally turned up some information on her date. A black-and-white photo revealed he was a handsome graduate of the University of Pennsylvania undergraduate and dental school. None of that would she admit to Stasia.

“I’m proud of you for putting yourself out there,” Stasia said. “It’s so important.”

Evie wondered what life experience Stasia was drawing from. In college, she dated the hunky quarterback of the football team for two straight years and then broke his heart when she traded him in for the equally hot lacrosse team captain, who also happened to be the son of a famous actress and the grandson of the Post-it note inventor. Her love life was a seamless flow of enviable relationships. She didn’t understand how difficult it was to be “out there.” Nevertheless, Evie knew Stasia was just trying to be helpful, so she didn’t challenge her with a snarky comment.

Later that night, Evie met Mike at Café Lalo, a coffee bar near her apartment famous for its appearance in the movie
You’ve Got Mail,
a rainy day favorite of hers. The place was half-full and
Evie surmised by the nervous postures and din of throaty laughs that many of the patrons were on first dates.

“Evie?” the man lurking next to the hostess asked.

“You must be Mike,” she said. He looked younger in person than in the picture she found online, with faded freckles across his nose. His hair was the unlikely, but pleasing, combination of white and red. What did that make him—salt and paprika? Dressed in a stylish checked button-down and slim trousers, he was a far cry from Dr. Hamburger, the aptly named orthodontist who forced a dreaded palate expander on her when she was eight and slapped on braces a few years later.

“It’s so nice to meet you in person,” Mike said, and gave her a light peck on the cheek. He smelled like musky aftershave and powdered latex gloves. “You look great.” She thought she saw relief in his eyes. He probably saw it in hers too. The first interaction was over. No hairy moles. No extra fingers. No need for either of them to feign a heart attack.

“Thanks. I’m glad we could meet too,” Evie said, and actually meant it. Stasia had been right to make her go.

The hostess seated them at a corner table, but it only had one bench and they were forced to sit side by side. It reminded Evie of the way her parents would sit when they went for dinner at Hunan Garden every Sunday night, but it seemed so much more awkward to sit shoulder to shoulder with a stranger.

“So I had a crazy day today,” Mike started, and Evie was grateful that he wasn’t the quiet sort. “My practice is on the Upper East Side and my patients, well actually their parents, are a little high-strung. I had to beg a mother today to let me put braces on her son, but she refused because she thinks
Avenue
magazine is going to do a spread on her family.”

“You’re kidding?” she asked, with a casual hair flip.
Avenue
was one of those magazines given out for free in higher-end co-ops
and condos—like the building that housed the one-bedroom apartment she’d wanted to scope after making partner. So much for that.

“Not at all,” Mike said, taking a sip of his Irish coffee. “But that wasn’t even the worst of it. I did oral surgery on a sixteen-year-old girl today and when I gave her a prescription for Percocet she just laughed and said she had plenty at home.”

Evie relaxed as she swigged her drink. Mike was growing more entertaining by the minute as the alcohol slipped into her bloodstream. His face blurred when she looked at it through the bottom of her glass. She started to fill in his thinning hair in her mind and plucked a few strays between his eyebrows. She thought he had the sort of face that could be on a label for expensive toothpaste: “Dr. Jones’s All-Natural Gingivitis-Fighting Whitening Toothpaste.”

“What about you, Evie? Do you like your job at Baker Smith?” Mike asked at just the right moment, when he was teetering on the edge of talking too much about himself. Not that she was eager to have the spotlight shifted to her.

“Well,” Evie said, with a deliberate head scratch, “I recently left. So I guess I’m not a lawyer anymore. Or at least not an employed one. But I am starting to think I didn’t really like it that much anyway. It was just something I did. Does that make any sense?” It did to her, but it was probably the first time she’d ever articulated her feelings about her job so clearly out loud, or even to herself.

“It makes a ton of sense,” Mike said, and she remembered that she was speaking to an orthodontist. Chances are he wasn’t that passionate about molding retainers either. She knew from Google that both of his parents were dentists, so he probably fell into his career rather than sought it out.

Over drinks and a shared slice of key lime pie (which Evie
awkwardly split and jiggled onto separate plates), they chatted for almost two hours until the waitress started to hover.

“Well, I hope we can do this again,” Mike said as he was paying the check. “I’ll be away next weekend for an alumni council meeting at my college, but maybe the weekend after?” He looked up at Evie hopefully.

“Sounds great,” she said, genuinely pleased. “That’s so nice you’re still involved with school. I guess you liked Penn?”

“I didn’t go to Penn. Why did you think that?” he asked, seeming confused, maybe even put out.

Evie racked her brain. Why did she think he had gone there? Hadn’t he mentioned it over the course of the evening? Obviously not. It dawned on her that she gathered that tidbit from the Internet. She flailed trying to cover.

“Um, I don’t know, I think maybe Annie told me that,” she hedged.

“I doubt it,” he said. “I went to Arizona State with Annie’s brother, Jordan.”

Evie flushed even more.

“There’s another orthodontist in Manhattan named Michael Jones. He went to Penn,” Mike said. “We always get calls at my office from patients looking for him. Evie, did you Google me?” He didn’t sign the credit card statement that was placed in front of him. Evie wondered if he was backing out of paying for the date.

Her only viable option was denial.

“No, no. I must just be getting confused. You know what? My friend was talking about Penn today. I’m just all mixed up from the rum in this drink. So we’ll get together in two weeks?” Evie asked without making eye contact.

“I’ll be in touch,” Mike said in a tone that could best be described as noncommittal. He signed the bill and stood up abruptly.

“Nice to meet you,” he said and did the unthinkable—put out his hand. When they first met, he kissed her on the cheek. Now all he wanted was a handshake. Evie had never been on a date that capsized so quickly.

Back home in her apartment, sprawled out in bed with a
Seinfeld
rerun in the background, Evie replayed the night. She was embarrassed about what happened, even though in her heart she believed Googling a date was routine and necessary due diligence for dating in the digital age. It wasn’t lost on her that generations of people prior had met and lived happily ever after without giving each other web colonoscopies before the first date. But things were different now. So much information was available online that it was irresponsible
not
to use it. Still, being outed as a Googler was another story. And that was how Evie knew she would not be hearing from Mike Jones again.

At least it was no great loss.

Evie stacked up everyone she met against Jack, creating Venn diagrams in her mind to assess areas of overlap. It wasn’t that she never met men that matched, even surpassed, Jack in attractiveness, humor, and intelligence. But that je ne sais quoi factor, that “something extra,” that part of the diagram was tougher for other men to fill.

During their time together Jack opened two more restaurants—Paris Spice, a formal French-Asian fusion restaurant on the Upper East Side, and a high-end dessert lounge in Tribeca called Eye Candy. Before Jack, she knew little to nothing about restaurants beyond where
Time Out New York
said she should eat and what new cuisines the
New York Times
announced had merged in the fusion craze. But soon she was talking “front-of-house” and “table turns” with restaurateurs and critics at culinary events and openings.

When she was on dates with guys who worked in finance, ubiquitous
in Manhattan, she wasn’t impressed by talk of currency hedging and derivative patents. Evie worked on those same deals, and they didn’t interest her on a date any more than they did at work. Her mother once intimated that Evie liked Jack because he was a known entity—a desirable plus-one at dinner parties. But he wasn’t even really famous. He was only a household name among the rarefied circle in New York with enough disposable income to justify a twenty-three-dollar slice of cheesecake (the menu did claim the crust had actual gold flecks in it). For Evie, of course Jack was much more than a name to drop, though she never tired of the way diners looked at him in awe when he would emerge from the kitchen in his uniform. Besides being handsome and successful, Jack was self-made, ambitious, and passionate about his profession. He was the whole package. What Evie couldn’t readily say to her friends, and what she was even too embarrassed to say to Fran, was that she was also the complete package. They matched.

Begrudgingly, she reached for her computer to send Annie an e-mail thanking her for the setup. She assumed Mike would tell Annie about the Google snafu, but there was nothing she could do about that. She simply said that she really appreciated the introduction to Mike but didn’t think they had much of a “spark.” Her grandmother always admonished her to be grateful for setups lest people get the wrong idea that she wasn’t interested in meeting someone. Bette would be proud that she was remembering the bigger picture in her despair.

“Finally, my Evie is getting her priorities in order,” she would say, while sipping lukewarm herbal tea with the gang of widows she played mah-jongg with in Florida.

July in New York City was like purgatory. Every year when it arrived, Evie wondered if some noxious bus fume would sweep her into the fiery hell of the August heat or whether one of the infrequent breezes from the trees lining Broadway would mercifully carry her directly into fall. This year especially, it seemed wiser just to stay home. The city was abandoned anyway. Most New Yorkers fled the concrete jungle in summer, seeking refuge in the country. Even virtually, life seemed to have slowed to a halt. Nobody new was popping up on JDate. The Facebook news feed had slowed to a crawl.

Evie’s building had strong air-conditioning, the kind that could make you forget the season. She could order in food delivery at any time of day, though that was an expensive habit she’d need to drop. Without a BlackBerry, her home laptop was her bridge to life outside. Her personal cell phone—practically an antique by today’s standards (it literally had a flip top)—didn’t have Internet access, and her iPad screen was cracked beyond recognition after she dropped it three days earlier while attempting to check Instagram and brush her teeth simultaneously. She should really go out and buy an iPhone but just couldn’t bear the judgmental glances of the Upper West Side mothers juggling strollers and lattes, wondering as they gaped at her: where’s your baby and overpriced caffeine? Nor could she stomach the working crowd—hurriedly trekking to the subway or competing for cabs in their suits and sensible pumps. She imagined them recognizing her from the
BigLawSux
article and thinking one thing:
pathetic
.

Four weeks had passed since her dismissal from Baker Smith, but the sting of what occurred felt like yesterday’s wound. She would never again see the green-on-green checked carpeting that covered every inch of her firm’s office, nor would she hear Marianne’s chatter about her “scumbag” of a husband. She wouldn’t lean into her ergonomic desk chair for a lower back stretch while a junior associate sat opposite her, nervously asking if she was satisfied with their assignment. She wouldn’t play a part in deals that made
Wall Street Journal
headlines. She wouldn’t watch CNBC in the mornings and think to herself, I helped make that happen.

The worst part of reflecting on all these never-agains was her ambivalence. She missed the camaraderie of the all-nighters—fighting about who knocked over the pyramid of Chinese takeout containers on the conference table, munching on Julia’s triple-threat chocolate cookies in the coffee room, and playing twenty
questions with colleagues at midnight while the printer churned out three-hundred-page prospectuses. She longed for the symphony of machinery: the hum of the copier, the rumble of her computer starting up, and the click-clack of the mail cart had become the de facto soundtrack of her life.

What she didn’t miss were the mind-numbing continuing legal education classes offered at Baker Smith, or the endless hours spent overseeing junior associates sentenced to document review in a windowless cellar crowded with file boxes. A pat on the back for a job well done—that just wasn’t enough to sustain her in the long term.

Leaving her apartment post–Baker Smith, seeing the masses with newspapers tucked in the crook of their arms rushing to the subway, would make deciding her next steps unavoidable.

Evie’s campout in her apartment prompted concerned e-mails and calls from her friends, including Annie, who had indeed proven to be more than a casual office acquaintance.

“Sorry the date didn’t work out,” she started off, playing dumb to the whole Google episode.

“It’s all right. What’s going on at the office?”

“This thing that happened to you is a cruel joke,” Annie said. “I mean, I’m on Facebook the entire day and so are most of the associates. I think the trick is to keep it open all day instead of closing and reopening. At least that’s what I read on
BigLawSux
. No doubt, you got a raw deal. They just targeted you since you were about to make partner. I hear they are planning to let a whole bunch of juniors go for the same reason.”

“Whatever. With the goddamn blog post and those nasty comments, I’m doomed.”

“Not true. The article hasn’t been on their most e-mailed list for a while already. It’s old news. You’ll be able to get another job in no time.”

“If I even want one. Sleeping past seven
A.M.
does have its charms.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Annie said. “Maybe I’ll join you in early retirement.”

Evie eyeballed her ratty sweat suit in the mirror.

“Trust me, it’s not as glamorous as it seems. Keep your day job.”

Evie’s mother had taken to calling her more frequently, often from the regional playhouse where she practically lived. While she tried to spin Evie’s dismissal from the firm into the best thing that ever happened to her, Evie could hear a soprano rehearsing “I Feel Pretty” in the background. Of course Fran had no idea why Evie was actually terminated, which meant she also had to listen to her mother rant on about the crash-and-burn economy and the bleak futures of American college graduates. She was relieved that she didn’t have to delve into the particulars with her father. Henry Rosen had worked at the same Maryland firm since graduating from law school until the day he died.

“Who needs that miserable place?” Fran said. “Want me to call some Ogilvy contacts for you?”

Evie declined.

“All right. I’m sure you’ll find a job you love.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Evie said.

The prospect of a blank slate excited and terrified her at the same time. Her career at Baker Smith had been motivated primarily by the goal of making partner. The idea of starting over at another firm, assuming that was even a possibility, was daunting. More Mitchell Rhodeses to impress. More Mariannes to avoid.

“At least now we can see each other more often,” Fran said.

At that comment, Evie felt a pang of guilt, followed by a flight of panic. She had definitely used the excuse of work on more than one occasion to get out of family get-togethers—just recently to get out of brunch with the TWASPs. It pained her to think that her
mother never saw through her excuses. But at the same time that she was experiencing this guilt, she realized that she no longer had a ready excuse to duck out of anything she didn’t feel like doing.

Why did she put off visits to see her mother? The TWASPs were rarely around—they had been off at boarding school and worked ridiculous jobs over the summer (barista-ing in Aspen last year, giving tours of Martha’s Vineyard the summer before). It wasn’t the ever-amiable Winston, who never meddled in her life. He always gave her a hearty hello and an avuncular hug, and knew enough to retreat to his man cave in the basement to play with his bank-breaking golf simulator while Fran and Evie caught up over fruit from the Greenwich farmer’s market.

After Evie’s father first passed, she worried about bearing sole responsibility for her mother. What would Fran do for companionship? Evie was an only child. She started picturing Fran arriving at Yale on the weekends, shacking up on the couch in Evie’s common room, waiting up for her with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. It made her feel callous the way she dreaded that scenario. But maybe that was just the way it was between parents and children. Parents live selflessly for their children, and kids are just selfish.

But Fran’s solemnity lasted until the unveiling, which took place a year after Henry’s death. After the gravestone was laid, while Evie was still entrenched in doing “cemetery math”—calculating life spans by computing the years carved into the neighboring headstones—Fran’s psyche flipped like a light switch. She enrolled in a pottery class at the local Y, signed up for Krav Maga at her gym and returned to her beloved community theater. In fact it was in full Eliza Doolittle costume that Fran first met Winston, in line at Starbucks. He was in Baltimore on business when half of his latte landed on her lace-and-silk ball gown. He insisted on paying for dry cleaning. She handed him
complimentary tickets to the show. A year later, Evie found herself with a new stepfather and two stepsisters. She hated to think she resented her mother for moving on, for leaving her daughter to wallow solo in the grief. But Evie did, even knowing that it was unjustified. And it was probably what made Bette and Evie even closer—the two of them were still flailing while Fran had managed to propel her life forward.

Evie’s mother shifted happily into her new life in Connecticut, embracing the unexpected role she took on as a stepmom in her forties, her only lament being that the Pikesville Players were far superior to the Greenwich Town Thespians. It was Evie who felt alone. But how much could she discuss dating, loneliness, and sex in the twenty-first century with Fran anyway? Heaven forbid her mother knew Evie was accepting dates requested via text message in the form of “U free 2nite? Want 2 hang?” The mention of Tinder would have her picturing fireplaces.

Evie wondered if she wouldn’t be able to truly come to peace with losing her father until she had a nuclear family of her own. She didn’t have any more urge to put herself out there on the romantic front than she did on the job front. An unemployed lawyer who idled away her time searching for gray hairs to snip and watching
Golden Girls
could very well be the definition of unsexy. It was one thing to step away from a busy day at the office for an hour to meet someone for coffee or a drink. It was quite another to spend an entire day at home preparing, letting her hopes creep up, and then coming home from the date disappointed without even work to distract her. This would just have to be a season of hibernation for Evie. Luckily with her computer and her TV to keep her occupied, she had enough “acorns” stored up to last her a while.

# # #

“I saw on Facebook that you’ve still listed Baker Smith as your employer,” Tracy said when she and Evie reached the lobby of Evie’s building.

They were back from a power walk. Evie knew things were bad when a pregnant lady was the one coaxing her to exercise. Tracy phoned her early Saturday morning, saying she was itching to get out of the house and away from Jake, who had been strumming on his guitar without any consideration for his pregnant wife, or their downstairs neighbor, who had taken to his broom.

Evie was already up when Tracy called, busy in bed Googling “numbness in arms and legs” because she could swear her limbs were falling asleep more than usual. According to WebMD, her best-case scenario was nerve damage. Her worst-case scenarios were a brain tumor or stroke. With thoughts of fatal diseases permeating her consciousness so readily, Evie was happy to receive Tracy’s invitation for an old-fashioned constitutional.

While they lapped the Central Park Reservoir, Tracy agreed to go with Evie to the International Fine Arts & Antiques Show at the Armory, which would be taking place soon. Evie normally went with her grandmother during her annual pilgrimage to New York in early fall, but Bette still hadn’t bought her ticket and was vague when Evie last brought it up. She and Bette hadn’t spoken all that much since Evie left her job. Bette was sympathetic when Evie told her about getting fired but reacted more like Evie had lost a favorite bangle than like her entire career had capsized. She lied and said she was busy interviewing, worried that if Bette knew she was home all day she’d call Evie to watch
The Price Is Right
and discuss “ze situation” during commercials.

The Antiques Show, forty thousand square feet of highly curated furniture and decorative items, mostly from France, was just so much better to see with someone. Maybe it was finally getting too hard for Bette to make the trip and uproot herself
from her familiar surroundings—a possibility that Evie did not want to face.

“You’re right about Facebook,” Evie said. “I guess I’ve sort of put off removing it. Like at least online I could pretend to be employed. But I really should take it off. The firm probably would be upset if anyone realized.”

“It’s better to shed the past,” Tracy said. “People use Facebook these days to find jobs—maybe some other firms will reach out to you if you take down Baker Smith from your profile.”

“That’s not really how it works,” Evie said, it occurring to her how little even her best friends knew about her profession.

“You never know. Anyway, I gotta run to a birthing class. Shoot me. Aren’t you glad you got out of the house?” she asked, and then headed in the other direction without waiting for an answer.

Settled back in her apartment, Evie went about deleting Baker Smith from her online profiles. There were a number of pictures from Paul’s wedding she’d been meaning to upload anyway—one of which she thought would make a good profile image for a new website Annie had joined called DateSmarter.com, which was supposed to cater to professionals with a no-fail algorithm for matchmaking.

Without any plans for the rest of the day, waiting around for “hearts,” “likes,” and flattering comments on Facebook and Instagram seemed as good a way as any to spend the afternoon. She logged on to Facebook and began reviewing her personal information page. It listed her favorite movies (
Father of the Bride, Old School, Casablanca, Citizen Kane
), music (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Sarah McLachlan), and books (
The Grapes of Wrath, The Namesake, The Picture of Dorian Gray
). It included carefully selected pictures of her with all of her girlfriends, listed her hometown, her current residence, her age, relationship status, and the results of
random Facebook polls and quizzes she had taken over the years. It was an amalgamation of truths and half-truths, things she truly loved and things she wanted people to think she loved.

Her profile picture was similarly ambiguous. It was a flattering side shot of her face, showing off her shiny locks and one sparkly green eye, but it didn’t reveal enough of her appearance to make her recognizable if she was encountered head-on. The whole profile made her feel like a chameleon when she studied it.

She got sidetracked for a while looking up old boyfriends and guys she’d had casual dates with—trying to glean from their pictures what they were up to. She also looked up various girls she knew from New York and old friends from summer camp and school whom she hadn’t spoken to in years. Nothing of any significance seemed to have changed since she last checked. And Jack wasn’t on Facebook—she knew he considered social media far beneath him. He had his own website. He didn’t need to post photos of himself on vacation in South Beach for the world to see he was flourishing.