The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (7 page)

Fortunately we arrive at Angela’s before my resolve crumbles completely. He walks me to the entrance and plants what feels a lot more like a third date kiss than a first date one on me. Angela’s doorman, who has known me for three years, pretends to ignore the show and admits me without comment. I linger in her lobby until the black car disappears from view, then step back outside and hail myself a taxi. The doorman looks at me quizzically but shrugs, and within minutes I’m on my way home.

I am so hung over I want to die. I am mortified that my brain, which feels so swollen it could burst through my skull, cannot recall the entire conversation from last night. My memory gap starts around the time the second bottle of wine arrived. I have no idea what we talked about after dinner, but at least I know for sure there was no conversation in the car. It’s becoming more and more clear to me that I missed most of the decade wherein I was supposed to be learning the ropes of Manhattan dating protocol because I was with Brendan. Still, I’m pretty sure that drinking enough to lose parts of a first date can make the possibility of a second date somewhat remote. I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, my head hurts too much to obsess about how much I screwed up. I can kick myself later, after I guzzle a few liters of water and the Advil kicks in. I briefly fantasized about calling in sick when the alarm went off this morning, but I have three client meetings today. Besides, staying home wouldn’t buy me a day of rest. Carol has her assistant call sick employees at various intervals throughout the day, to make sure they’re home. She claims to have some “pressing work question,” but it’s always something that could wait. I make a mental note to cancel my landline, toss back as much water as I can stomach, and haul myself to the shower.

The subway ride is fifteen minutes of pure hell. My head feels like it’s in a vice and someone’s breakfast smells of onions. I make it to the office by ten after nine, and brace myself for the barrage of questions about my date with the mystery admirer from across the way.

I head straight for the kitchen, where I run into Marvin, who looks too traumatized to remember to ask about my love life. He’s frantic, red-eyed, and generally looks like he’s stuck his fingers into an electrical socket. “Someone stole our coffee maker!” he finally manages to splutter.

I don’t immediately register what he’s saying so he elaborates. “It was there last night, and now it’s gone. I’m going to Starbucks. Do you want anything?”

I ask him to bring me the biggest coffee he can carry.

Carol struts off the elevator before Marvin can make it out the door. “Good morning, people!” she trills.

She sounds happy. Friday mornings she does yoga. It normally tempers her mood swings for an hour or two. She steers Marvin back towards the bullpen. “People, I have an announcement. Effective immediately, this office is detoxifying. No more coffee! We’re all going to drink green tea, which will make us more alert, more productive, and therefore more wealthy.”

She plucks a Starbucks cup from New Girl’s desk with a gloved hand and deposits the almost-full beverage in the trash bin. New Girl stifles a whimper. Carol turns and retreats to her office, and her assistant starts distributing tea bags from a cardboard box. As soon as we hear Carol get on the phone, Marvin gives me a look and I get up and accompany him to the coffee shop.

Around ten, I receive an email from Oscar, which is odd, because I only gave him my phone number. He must have consulted our website.

“Zoë, I can’t stop thinking about what a great time I had last night. You’re amazing. Are you free on Saturday? I’d like to cook you dinner. Xoxo Oscar.”

Wow. Maybe I’m not so bad at dating after all. Or maybe he was too buzzed to notice that I passed buzzed and rounded the turn into drunkenness shortly after the second martini rolled into the first bottle of wine. I email him back, thank him again for dinner, and tell him my boss reads my email so he should use my Gmail account.

Saturday. I have something Saturday, but in my post-debauched state, I can’t remember what it might be. Besides, whatever it is, it can’t be as important as a second date with the hottest, most sophisticated man who’s ever taken an interest in me. And called me amazing.

Sadly, there’s no time to think about the weekend now. I have a junior litigator coming in for a practice interview. We don’t normally provide that service, but this poor kid gets loud hiccups whenever he’s nervous. Carol says it’s part of my job to de-sensitize him to the interview environment. Which is bullshit. We work for commissions. If any regular client kept striking out like this, Carol would say to write him off and tell him, gently, that there’s nothing more we can do. But this kid isn’t a regular client. A month ago, when Carol assigned me the file, she told me, “He’s a V.I.P.” When I asked her to please clarify, she got all giggly and told me, “Well, just between us girls, his father is a partner at Silverblum Gatz, and he thinks it’s time Junior accomplished something for himself. So he’s resolved not to get his son another job, unless he absolutely has to.”

I thought that explained it, because everyone, even New Girl, knows Carol would love to get a Silverblum account. The prominent investment bank is one of the few feathers still missing from her professional cap. But there was more.

“And I want to get that dreamy Walker Smythe into bed,” she confided. “So you had better do right by his son.”

Powerful, wealthy men make my normally frosty boss frisky. So that’s why I have blocked off two hours of time, for which I will not get paid, to grill Percival Rupert Lyman Smythe about his law school grades, his woefully limited work experience, and his 2nd Circuit clerkship.

Percival Rupert Lyman Smythe is late, because it’s not the receptionist on the phone. It’s Niles. His sperm was too cold to spin, or something like that, and they have to try again next month. But in happier news, he tells me that he thinks his meetings went well, and he’s ready to fly to Cutler & Boone’s LA office to try to seal the deal.

I take down the dates he can’t travel due to Susie’s ovulation calendar, and promise to set up the trip as soon as possible. If I can’t get him out there within a week or two, chances are good the deal will die.

While I’m busy on the phone, Carol’s assistant swoops down out of nowhere and confiscates my
venti
Americano-with-two-extra-shots with her manicured talons.

I dash out to buy a replacement and return in the same elevator as the Silverblum guy’s kid. Safe. Carol’s not quite crazy enough to seize my beverage in front of a client.

Unfortunately, she’s hovering over my empty desk when I emerge from the conference room almost two hours later. She’s reading my email. Not even surreptitiously. Marvin shoots me a sympathetic glance and mouths, “Lunch?” I mouth back, “Okay,” but Carol has other plans for me.

“Zoë,
darling
, are you free for lunch?” she practically sings. Not a good sign. When she calls any member of her staff darling, it’s because she wants something. Such as twelve hours of labor on a Saturday.

I can’t lie. She’s been in my Outlook and has no doubt seen I have nothing planned. Evidently she needs to buy a present for a friend and she wants to use me as a mannequin. Resistance is futile. If I tell her I can’t do it now, I’ll be out at Barney’s with her at eight o’clock tonight. At least it looks like she took her pills today. Her make-up is beautifully blended.

Moments later, we’re down on Madison, hailing a cab, which is ridiculous, because Carol has a driver. He parks a block away, because she thinks none of us know about him. Just like none of us are supposed to know she shops for herself during the work day. She has her chauffeur ferry her bags directly from Bergdorf‘s to her apartment so we won’t see.

My throbbing head and I spend the better part of an hour modeling Hermes scarves for my boss and a saleswoman who makes me feel small and unworthy by glaring at my pinstriped pantsuit as if its inferior fibers might somehow contaminate the merchandise.

Her obvious disapproval scandalizes Carol, who barks that I should go to Saks over the weekend to buy something presentable and more age-appropriate. “Ann Taylor is only for girls in their twenties,” she explains, in a tone that implies I’m an imbecile. I know better than to object that achieving the age of thirty-two does not automatically render me rich enough to buy couture.

After forty painful minutes, she loses interest in humiliating me and makes a decision. We leaves Hermes with her purchase carefully gift wrapped in their trademark orange, and she “treats” me to a lunch of a side order portion of seaweed salad, no dressing, served with a lengthy dissertation on her new detox diet. In addition to coffee, Carol has banned red meat, white carbs, blackened anything, and all “colored” booze. By this she means, champagne, okay, scotch, no good. She drones on for what feels like an eternity about how she’s having her nutritionist and lifestyle guru come in to review the holiday party menu. She’s sure she’d be millions richer if she’d only had the foresight to rid her body of poisonous elements years ago.
I’m
sure she’d be millions richer if she stopped hiring these quacks to micromanage her personal life through a series of fads, but she doesn’t solicit my opinion, and I’m smart enough not to volunteer it. When she excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, I decide it’s safe to whip out my phone and order a turkey club and fries to be delivered to me back at the office.

Kevin must hear me on the landing when I get in shortly before eight at night, because he appears at my door before I can even kick my shoes off. “You look like hell,” he says with a grin. “Must have been a successful date.”

“Almost too successful. He’s too good to be true.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “The guy’s in advertising. He makes good first impressions for a living, but I’m glad you had fun. It’s about time you emerged from your cave. I bet you shaved your legs for the first time in a month.”

“He’d have no reason to touch my legs on our first date,” I say, with mock incredulity, though I don’t share that my pulse quickens at the mere thought of Oscar’s hands on me again.

“Liar,” Kevin shrugs. He removes his suit jacket and heads for the couch, where he has to clear away a dozen old magazines to make room for himself. Kevin’s right about my apartment. The hibernation and wallowing need to end. Brendan humiliated me, but it’s time to get over it. People have suffered more dire embarrassments, although now that I think of it, I don’t know anyone personally who has. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s high time to clear him and his aftermath from my life. Tomorrow I will start by shoveling out this apartment.

I head to the bedroom to change and yell through the door, “So how was Lily?”

“Nothing between the ears, but her legs go up to them.”

“You slept with her, didn’t you?” I say, as I emerge in yoga pants and my favorite, threadbare sweatshirt.

“Uh, yeah. Obviously. Never know when I’ll get another chance with an international cover girl.”

“You dirty dog.” I settle on the other end of the couch and curl my legs underneath me. “Was it all you’d hoped for?”

“Nope. She was all bony and she just lay there, like a starfish,” he deadpans, and waits for my response. I can’t tell if he’s joking. My fourteen-hour hangover has compromised my powers of perception.

He gives me a second to try to work it out before he says, “Actually she was totally above average.”

I hit him with a sofa pillow as the door buzzes. Kevin goes to the intercom and admits Angela. She’s dressed for a rare night at home, in a bright pink warm up suit with the words “Juicy Bling” emblazoned across her butt.

She dumps her gold Prada purse on the counter and demands to know why Kevin hasn’t called Lily. “She called me seventeen times today, to ask why you hadn’t rung. She said you said you’d call.”

“She’s boring,” Kevin shrugs and reaches for the remote. He clicks straight over to CSPAN. I think he’s one of four devoted viewers outside the nation’s capital.

Angela tries a new tack. “Of course she’s boring. Most models are. Even the bright ones learn early on that nobody wants to hear a human clothes hanger’s opinion on anything. And Lily’s image is freakishly clean, so I can’t imagine it would hurt your career to be seen out on the town with her.”

“Nor would it harm your career to keep one of the magazine’s most frequently photographed faces happy.” He gets up and heads towards the door. “To be continued. I have to write the Councilman’s remarks for the municipal employees’ union dinner. If your lights are still on when I’m done, I’ll knock.”

“He’s pathetic,” Angela says as soon as he’s gone.

“How so?”

“He just is,” she says, as if she doesn’t feel like getting into it. She goes to the kitchen and opens a bottle of wine. Hangover or not, I feel like I’ve almost recovered sufficiently from last night’s debauchery to face alcohol again. We order Chinese food and she masterfully extracts every detail of my date with Oscar while we wait for it to arrive. Or rather, every detail I can recall.