Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase (25 page)

“Yes?”

“I have a quick question.”

“Shoot.” I make a finger gun at him. Okay, now I’m really pushing it.

“Why aren’t you negotiating for us?”

I think about it for a moment. “Dunno, Bob. You tell me.” Then I spin on the heel of my sensible loafer and I run to the elevator as soon as I’m out of his line of sight because I’ll probably never get the chance to give such a perfect exit line again.

I’m jumping up and down by the time the doors slide open and I can barely punch the button to return to my little cubicle on the non-executive-level floor. Don’t know how, exactly, but I’ll wager the cost of his suit that I just changed my career trajectory.

I can’t wait to tell everyone about my meeting! Fletch is going to be so proud. My mom will want to celebrate with a drink, after which she’ll tell me the story of my conception.

Maybe I’ll hold off on calling her.

By the way, the Christmas party is a smash hit. More important, Bob doesn’t forget me, and when a contract negotiator’s position opens up a few weeks later, he personally gives HR the recommendation. I won’t make any more base salary, but I’ll earn small quarterly bonuses and I’ll be far away from data entry.

I get the job.

And then I live happily ever after and never have to consider being a waitress again . . . right?

Worst Movie Ever

(Canvas Book Bag)

T
he screaming isn’t even what bothers me most.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one voice raised in anguish, but there are so many. I could deal with it if it only happened on occasion. But it’s every day.

The voices, my God, the voices are so shrill.

So sharp.

An aural attack.

The howling resonates and echoes. The shrieking curdles my blood. Screams pierce my eardrums, assaulting all my senses. The keening is so loud I taste it on my tongue. I feel the collective grief in my chest. I smell the fear. This is the noise rabbits make when they realize too late they’ve stumbled into a coyote’s den. It’s the noise that results from the losing battle between flesh and metal and velocity.

And it’s coming from the exam rooms in this particular pediatrician’s office.

I grit my teeth when I hear the latest round of Dip/Tet-related wailing and shift in my tiny throne. There’s a whole array of half-sized, primary-colored seats here in the waiting room, conceivably meant to match the giant Crayolas painted inexpertly on the physician’s walls. Walls that also boast some creepy Bambi, Barney, and Sleeping Beauty murals that make me wonder if anyone cares about this doctor’s blatant disregard for copyright and intellectual property.
¹⁵⁰

I’m sitting in a wee blue chair and the pharmaceutical sales rep across from me is wedged into a bite-sized yellow one. Yes. This makes perfect sense. Since no adult-sized people would ever accompany their children to checkups, why should the good doctor worry about providing a reasonable place for them to sit?

At least I’m empty-handed, save for the battered old canvas book bag I use as a purse. The poor Merck rep is anchored to her chair under an enormous satchel of samples. Plus, she has three pizzas rapidly congealing and leaking grease on her lap and a whole tray full of drippy sodas. She’s trapped. I see her stiffen during the next bout of screaming and I watch as she catches herself, swapping out pursed lips for a toothy but insincere grin.

The office is especially chaotic because it’s the last Friday before Christmas. I guess all the suburban soccer moms in this wealthy North Shore suburb want to be sure their kids are healthy for their upcoming holiday cruises.

I should have known better than to come here today, but it’s the end of the quarter and I’m ambitious.
¹⁵¹
Even though I already met my goal, I’m eligible for bonuses. After reaching my minimum recruitment number, I get a hundred dollars for each new physician I bring into the HMO. And I get two hundred bucks if the doctor is a pediatrician, so I’ve been hitting these loud, teeny-chaired places every day. I figure if I can get a couple more peds in-network this quarter, my bonus will be sweet and I’ll
finally
start a new year not being flat broke.

While I wait—trying not to cringe at every yelp and holler—I root through my bag to find my bottle of hand sanitizer.
¹⁵²
The Merck rep wistfully gazes at my antibacterial gel. I’d share, but her hands are buried.

A towheaded kid in expensive ski pants toddles over to the chair next to the Merck girl. He smells like spilled milk and bubble-gum shampoo. Clutching a little toy hammer as he approaches, the kid has a vicious green crust going under his nose. If experience serves me right, he’s too young to have discovered a proper regard for cold-and-flu etiquette.

Technically, this child isn’t unsupervised. However, his mom has been on her mobile the entire time, too deep in conversation about how St. Bart’s is
“so last year”
to notice her child contaminating everyone within a twenty-foot radius. This mom is so emaciated I’d swear she was from one of the war-torn, drought-suffering countries NPR’s always droning on about. I mean, if she weren’t wearing a diamond the size of a donut hole. Her donut-diamond (in a platinum and pave setting, naturally) spins around her bony finger like the Showcase Showdown wheel every time she gestures, as does her twenty-carat tennis bracelet. Her phone is wedged up against her ear and the more she talks, the looser her enormous ruby earring becomes.

The second one of those jewels hits the floor, I’m diving for it.

I see women like this all the time up here. They flounce into the doctors’ offices and throw their fur coats across most of the available seats. After briefly stopping to tell the receptionist they do
not
expect to be kept waiting long, they whip a phone out of their Dior bag the second they sit, ignoring the sick kids who are the reason they’re here in the first place. I loathe them almost as much as I do the screaming.

Shouldn’t this mom be snuggling the towhead toddler or, like, patting him on the head or using Kleenex and mom juice to clear away some of the crud under his nose? Instead, she keeps talking while the child lurches toward us, who, despite his stuffy nose, is drawn to the aroma of the pizza.

Merck girl and I lock eyes. We both know what’s next.

A second later, the child drops his sticky hammer on the rep’s pizza boxes and sneezes directly into her hair. The word “juicy” comes to mind, but it doesn’t aptly describe the tsunami of
awful
now clinging to the rep’s neatly arranged Rachel-from-
Friends
cut. I silently empathize as she does her best to only exhale and then I divert my attention. Sorry, honey. It’s every germaphobe for herself in here.

To avoid meeting her gaze, and thus laughing myself out of the waiting room, I pick up the first non-
Highlights
magazine I can find. My appointment with Dr. Bronner was supposed to be half an hour ago. Most likely I won’t see him until he’s done enjoying his Merck-provided (hot zone) pizza luncheon, so I’ve got plenty of time to read.

I tab past all the advertisements for sexy, strappy shoes. Wish I could get away with
those
at work. My sartorial choices at this time of year are limited to whatever kind of pantsuit best covers up the utilitarian waterproof boots I’m forced to wear while trudging through a million snowy parking lots every day.
¹⁵³
If the sidewalk salt didn’t destroy them, surely I’d lose a toe to frostbite.

Yet I can’t complain because I’ve got a ton of freedom as a recruiter, as opposed to my early days here at Great Plaines HMO when I was shackled to my desk. The only time I left my cube was for lunch, but I was even more financially tapped out then and had to brown-bag it every day, so I never got to explore the city. I had no idea where to find a decent restaurant, but I could absolutely tell you which lunchroom microwave was the best.
¹⁵⁴

I’m on my third position here at the HMO. Technically, this job isn’t much different from being a negotiator, but my new bonus structure is a
lot
more motivating. That’s why I’m here, enduring an hour of screaming—and possibly catching tuberculosis—for an extra two hundred bones.

When I was a negotiator, I didn’t go off-site nearly as much as I do now. Sure, I attended the occasional hospital meeting, but they were hardly every day. Since I became a recruiter, I’m practically a vapor trail. We recruiters are out in the field so much we don’t even have our own desks. We have to share them,
¹⁵⁵
which is only a problem during our staff meetings on Wednesdays when everyone’s in-house. Lately it’s become a contest to see who can get there the earliest to stake out the prime real estate next to the copy machine. Last week my two work best friends (David and Tim) and I all arrived before six fifteen a.m. After Christmas vacation, you can bet your ass I’ll be there by six a.m.

The receptionist calls Merck girl to the back and she bolts away from Towhead and his Ski Pants of Death. His mom remains completely unaware of anyone else’s presence because, damn it, Maria Elena is just
not
scouring the grout like she used to and this
will
affect
¹⁵⁶
her holiday bonus. I continue to peruse my magazine because it’s going to be a few more minutes. Also, the doctor’s a lot less likely to join my network if I start administering diamond suppositories to his patients’ parents.

Towhead’s mom gives her phone companion an icy laugh before murmuring, “Maria Elena isn’t smart enough to know she’s making less than minimum wage.”

Flipping pages keeps me from balling my hands into fists.

Flip, flip, flip.

I like the pocketbook ads because they inspire me to work harder. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about what kind of purse I’ll buy once I get my first big bonus. The canvas bag I’m carrying has seen better days, plus it makes me look like a college student. I need something more professional to be taken more seriously.

All the seasoned recruiters have Coach bags, so they figure prominently into my fantasies. Coach is good because their bags aren’t
so
fancy that the doctors notice them and resent the “big money” we make at the insurance company.

Swear to God, if one more physician bitches about how “rich” I’m getting, I’ll probably start swinging. Last week I had an obgyn crying to me about how our reimbursement rates were bankrupting him. Then I watched him drive away in his brand-new S-class Mercedes with personalized plates while I climbed into my old Toyota Tercel with the dent I can’t afford to repair.

I always want to tell these doctors,
Listen up, I make $26,000 a year, and 80 percent of that goes to rent and transportation. Every month I do the reverse-bill lottery, figuring out which payment I can get away with skipping. For heaven’s sake, I’m carrying a bag I got free at a trade show! If anyone at the insurance company is making big money, it ain’t me.

Shoot, half the furniture in my apartment came from the alley in my neighborhood. And earlier this spring, I specifically scheduled an appointment to coincide with the town’s heavy trash day. My friend David and I Dumpster-dove in front of the homes of the very doctors with whom we’d just met. Bet they’d change their tune if they spotted us snapping up their old cross-country skis and worn luggage.

I continue to idly browse until I see an automobile advertisement. The car doesn’t interest me—the Tercel
¹⁵⁷
is okay—but there’s something about the copy that intrigues me. If I remember my college Italian, one phrase means “To live life like you’re in the movies.”

Huh. What would
that
be like?

The movie version of my life definitely doesn’t include inhaling lunch from the dollar menu while trying to navigate a stick shift through rush-hour traffic to get to my next appointment. Or sitting around a shouty, disease-ridden office in unventilated boots and damp polyester pants, hoping to score enough cash to bring the gas bill current.

Do they make movies about people who work ’til nine every night?
¹⁵⁸
And who have so much paperwork in their tiny dining room-home office that they have to put all their beloved books in storage so the stacks can be housed on the shelves instead? Who’s camping out in line to see
that
?

I
want
to live my life like it’s a movie, but I have no idea how. The closest I’ve come so far is the time last spring when Fletch and I ditched work and went to a ballgame at Wrigley Field. I remember I got a really cute army green Cubs bucket hat that day when I applied for a credit card. Too bad I didn’t catch a pop fly like in
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
. That’d be movielike, right? I didn’t cruise up Lake Shore Drive in a convertible, chiffon scarf floating in the breeze like in
My Best Friend’s Wedding
, nor did I plow through Daley Plaza all Jake and Elwood-style like in
The Blues Brothers
. Actually, I didn’t do anything else exciting that day and as soon as the game was over, I went home and did more work because I felt so guilty.

Come to think of it, I didn’t even get approved for the credit card.

Damn.

I bet the skinny soccer mom lives
her
life like a movie, only she’s not the heroine. She’d be the one making coats out of puppy fur or causing Sandra Bullock to cry over her lack of grout-scrubbing prowess.

I shrug and close the magazine. Wouldn’t matter if I knew how to live my life like a movie because I couldn’t even afford a ticket for admission.