Who You Know (3 page)

I read over what I'd written. Why was I telling someone I didn't know about my failed dreams and my annoyance at my mother's lack of faith in me? For all I knew, he could be lying about everything. He could be a twelve-year-old boy or an eighty-year-old woman. Somehow though, I trusted him. We hadn't talked about meeting in person yet, but I sensed we would meet one day. Part of me didn't want to meet him because I didn't want reality to interfere with my fantasy, but then again, it would be nice to have someone to go out to dinner with, to snuggle and laugh with. I already knew I liked Art's personality; after that, everything else would fall naturally into place.

Just before I could hit
SEND
, I heard Jen say, “Good morning, Sharon!” I quickly minimized my browser, feeling guilty, like I'd been caught surfing porn sites. I turned to face my manager, the other pregnant woman in the office. It was a fertility epidemic around here.

Her smile was fake as usual, so perhaps she hadn't seen the bold Yahoo! Personals banner at the top of my screen.

“How is the Expert project coming?” Sharon asked, rubbing her belly ostentatiously. She'd begun wearing maternity clothes in her second month. Jen and I made it a point to never bring up the baby because it amused us to see how she always managed to work it into every conversation. Also, knowing she was dying to talk about it made us even less interested. I realized pregnancy was a big deal, but let's be honest here, she was not the first woman to do it.

I feared, irrationally, that she would want to use my computer to show us something, and my secret would be discovered. I'd only told two people about being reduced to surfing the personals: Jen and my neighbor, Rette.

“Right on schedule,” Jen said brightly. Jen was always extra bubbly around people she didn't like.

I'd read in studies that good-looking people succeeded faster than average-looking and ugly people, a fact that rather wounded my ego since Sharon and I had started at McKenna Marketing at the same time, and she was making her way up the ranks far faster than I was, yet she wasn't what you'd call good-looking. She had a round face, limp hair parted down the middle, a long nose, and a chin that had no discernible end but just sort of faded into her amorphous neck. She was bottom heavy, with thick legs like Doric columns. She was wearing a dress with large yellow sunflowers that ended midthigh.

Though she wasn't beautiful, Sharon knew how to play the game. How to kiss up and brown nose and schmooze. For some reason, I kept believing that if I worked hard, somebody would eventually notice and reward me. But my chance to prove myself once and for all was finally coming. When Sharon went on maternity leave, I was a shoo-in to fill in for her.

I had to look to the future, because if I kept thinking about the past, all I'd get was bitter. I'd start thinking that it wouldn't be so bad if Sharon had a degree in marketing or there was some understandable reason she'd gotten promoted above me, but her degree in elementary education was as irrelevant to this job as my degree in dance. All of our experience came on the job, with the occasional training seminar thrown in once or twice a year. She wasn't particularly good at her job; I knew I could do better. Back when she was a grunt like me, she often pawned her reports off on me to do and then she'd take the credit for my work. Yet she'd gotten three promotions by the time I'd finally gotten one.

I had trouble paying attention to what Sharon said in the best of circumstances, but right now I was too painfully aware of the browser minimized in the corner of my screen to hear a word she said.

“So you'll have those reports ready by the meeting tomorrow?” Sharon asked.

“Of course!” Jen said.

This was an audacious lie. There was no way we'd have those reports done.

Expert Appliance had hired us to revamp their product line. To determine how to market the products most effectively, our department was doing the research to see what features consumers wanted in appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines. Our marketing department was producing marketing and sales collateral, and IT was designing Expert's new Web site.

This was the biggest project McKenna Marketing had ever done. We were staffing up to meet the demand, but even with the new hires, we couldn't meet our deadlines, and we were falling hopelessly behind.

“Great,” Sharon said.

As soon as Sharon was out of sight, Jen said, “God! I thought she would never leave. Let me just say now that women with cellulite-ridden elephant thighs have no right whatsoever wearing those kind of dresses, particularly ones covered in gigantic sunflowers.”

I stifled a smile. Jen said out loud all the bitchy things I felt guilty for even thinking, which was precisely why I loved her. I opened my Internet browser and finally sent my message to Art.

“So how is Art?” she asked.

“Wonderful, as usual. His dogs are named Holden and Phoebe.”

Jen looked confused.

“From
Catcher in the Rye
, one of my all-time favorite books. I just like him more every day.”

“Ooh, he's literary, too. And you're such a big reader,” Jen said.

That was true, though these days my tastes hardly ran toward the literary. I'd become more of a romance novel kind of girl.

“I need to find a man, too. I can't let Dave think I'm a spinster. But I don't think I'm ready to try the personals.”

Dave was Jen's on again/off again boyfriend. They broke up about every other month. He'd move out and stay with a friend for a month or two; Jen would go out with several new guys, find them wanting, and welcome Dave back into her life, suddenly managing to forget all his faults.

It would be a stretch for anyone to think of Jen as a spinster, to put it mildly. She had an amazing body and every item of her wardrobe was intended to emphasize this fact. Jen drove a twelve-year-old car, her five credit cards were practically transparent from overuse, and her apartment was microscopic, but her clothes were always stunning. She was the kind of woman whose T-shirts never wrinkled or frayed, the kind of woman who looked head-turningly good in a sweatshirt and jeans. She had brown eyes, and today she wore her striking red hair in a messy sort of ponytail bun that said clearly, “Look how I can just throw my hair up and still look gorgeous.”

“I wish Tom would ask me out already,” Jen said.

“Jen, for the record, you're asking for trouble if you date a coworker, but if you insist on dating Tom, why are you waiting for him to ask you out? Why don't you just ask him yourself?”

“In some ideal feminist world, women could ask men out and things would work out, but that's just not the way the world works.”

“Maybe he's not asking you out because he's smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to date a coworker.”

Jen rolled her eyes.

Tom worked in tech support, and Jen was constantly discovering software updates she absolutely
could not
live without. Jen's latest strategy was to purposely make her machine crash, so he'd have to come up and take a look at it. Despite her efforts, Tom had yet to ask her out.

“Do you know how long it's been since Kitty's gotten any? It's been . . . oh my God, it's been a month. Shoot me now. Take me to a nunnery! This is tragic!” Kitty was Jen's nickname for the area of her body her bikini bottoms barely covered. I found it more than a little disturbing that she referred to that region in the third person.

“I've read that after about three months of celibacy, you don't crave sex anymore. But the desire comes back right away when you start dating again,” I said.

“Celibacy? Don't use such cruel terms. I don't want my sex drive to go into neutral. I'm too young.”

“Think of all the work you could get done if you weren't trying to get laid all the time.”

“What work is it exactly that you think I need time to devote myself to?”

“Don't you have any hobbies you wish you had more time for?”

“Yes, sex. So you see just how dire the situation is.”

It was about 9:30 when Jen and I stopped talking and started pretending to work. I went back for three more cups of coffee in an attempt to caffeinate myself to the brink of functioning. Not that my new job wasn't infinitely better than harassing strangers over the phone into answering quantitative questions about their favorite shampoo brands, but it got pretty dull all the same.

JEN

A
ll was chaos and misery. How was I supposed to get any work done in such an environment? Jim from sales was buying a bride from overseas and my officemate Avery was trying to get herself some nookie by begging for it over the Internet. My own love life was in absolute shambles despite my heroic efforts. Where was gorgeous Tom from IT? Why hadn't he come to heed my call for help? Did he care at all how much effort it took to think of new ways to get my computer to crash or new programs I absolutely had to have installed just to lure him up to my office? The efforts I went to for love!

Of course I'd always thought Tom was magically delicious, but until four weeks ago I'd had to restrain my lust in the name of monogamy. No more!

Since Dave and I broke up for the fifth, and absolutely last, time, I'd lost six pounds. There was nothing like brutal rejection to get a girl to lose her appetite. But it was the best thing; it really was. I was so over his gambling, titty-bar-going, drunken bullshit. Yeah he was hot and had a great body and was so much fun. You don't realize how boring most guys are until you break up with your boyfriend. During the times Dave and I were separated, I went out with men who were so excruciatingly dull, Dave's DUI's and unpaid credit card bills and absolute avoidance of housework seemed like no big deal. Endless dinners talking about the real estate market and foot surgery would send me running back to Dave with open arms. But did Dave's exceptional talents in oral sex make up for the fact he ravaged my credit rating? (I know, it was so stupid for me to cosign his car loan, but I was in love and what was a girl with a properly cared for clitoris to do when Dave pointed out that we were, after all, going to get married someday and our finances would essentially be combined anyway, and in any case, his gorgeous brown eyes and sexy smile were asking so sweetly?) No. Did toe-curling neck-kissing abilities make up for the fact he almost never took me out to dinner and absolutely never made me dinner at any time during the three or so years we lived together despite all the gourmet meals I spent hours planning and preparing? No. Did the way he could always make me laugh, no matter how much he was acting like an asshole, make up for all the nights he blew me off to hang out with his friends? No. But god I missed the way he made me laugh.

Okay, of course I still loved Dave. We had our share of trouble, what couple doesn't? We were together for five years, with stretches of separations and time-outs here and there. After I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I moved out here with him and we moved in together. Even with all the fighting and the occasional broken window, I always knew we'd work it out. We were young, we both had some oats to sow. I wasn't worried.

But I had to face the truth, and the truth was Dave and I were toxic together. Now I was twenty-five and the pressure was on. I didn't want to be some old biddy when I had my kids. I needed to find a good man who would be a good father to our kids, and I needed to do it fast. Even if I met a guy soon, we'd need a year to date and a year to plan the wedding and then a year to be a young married couple without kids. Then I'd promptly get pregnant and nine months later I'd have our first kid with hardly any time to spare before I turned thirty.

I needed a guy who could support me while I raised our kids. I used to think I wanted to be some big career woman. Then I got a job, and let me tell you, work
sucks
. Maybe there were some people out there who had careers that challenged their creativity and helped them learn and grow in some fulfilling sort of way. Maybe there were people who'd managed to get jobs with managers who weren't complete idiots. I wasn't one of them. Screw my career. I just wanted to be a good wife and mom.

It really was the best thing that Dave and I had broken up. Dave was not the kind of guy who would be a good father to our children even though, god, they'd be soooo cute. A bartender and ski instructor who'd never finished college couldn't afford to let me stay home with the kids.

Speaking of men in upwardly mobile careers, where exactly was Tom? Didn't he care about the loss of productivity? How was I supposed to get any work done if my computer crashed every time I opened Photoshop? Did he need to know I didn't actually need to use Photoshop because Avery did all the graphics?

How was I supposed to concentrate on work when I was in the midst of a fertility and romantic crisis? And who could work in such a managerially dysfunctional environment anyway?

McKenna Marketing reminded me of the double-blind studies I learned about in psychology class in college. That's when doctors prescribe patients pills, and neither the doctor nor the patient knows who is getting the placebo. That's the way things worked around here. Absolutely no one knew what was going on. Orders were issued without the order-giver having any clue how things work in the real world. We order-takers nodded dumbly and tried to look busy, never really understanding what it was we were allegedly getting paid to do. The amount of work my manager Sharon assigned and the time we were given to get it done in was so wildly unrealistic, there seemed no point in even trying. Sharon was only another hapless cog in the McKenna Marketing machine. I understood that she took her orders from above and was not nearly as important as she thought she was, but it seemed to me that she should be the one to let the higher-ups know what could and couldn't be accomplished in an eight-hour workday instead of always saying, “Yessah, yessah, we'll get it all done, sah.”

“Tom!”

“Hi, I heard your computer crashed again.” He stood in the doorway, his thick arm muscles rippling Adonis-like from the sleeves of his T-shirt. “It may be time to get you a newer machine. You've been having a lot of troubles lately. What's the latest issue?”

“Every time I open Photoshop I crash.”

“What on earth do you need Photoshop for?” my evil officemate Avery asked.

I gave her a look, trying to telepathically communicate to her that just because her vagina was cobwebbed and decayed like a long-forgotten ancient artifact, she didn't need to foil my plans. Honestly. She could really be pretty if she tried, and then she wouldn't have to go to such extremes to find a guy. She never wore makeup for one thing, and she never did anything with her hair. She was totally skinny but hid her figure in these loose cotton pantsuits or flower-child long skirts and flowing blouses. She did have nice features—a gorgeous long neck and cheekbones to die for, to start with. And her eyes were a stunning shade of blue. If she would only wear some makeup to play them up! And right now I could count not one but
two
scraggily eyebrow hairs. I wanted to leap across the desk and pluck them out myself.

“I'm adding some visuals to the Expert reports.”

“Maybe you just need some more memory. Do you know how much memory your machine has?” Tom said.

I shook my head.

“I'll just take a look.” He leaned over me and typed in some things on my keyboard. I sat, immobilized, my heart racing with him so close. “Wow, that's a lot lower than I would have thought. I wonder if your memory may have been dislodged. Has anyone moved the case recently? I'll just check out the motherboard. Excuse me.” Tom crawled under my desk.

I rolled my chair out a little, but only a little, to give him room, but not too much. Like all the guys in the IT department, Tom always wore jeans. But nobody made jeans look as good as Tom. The denim was drawn tight over his muscular thighs, and I had the ideal vantage point from which to enjoy them fully.

He'd started working at McKenna Marketing five months ago. Of course I'd thought he was hot the moment I'd laid eyes on him, but I hadn't truly lusted after him until I had a chance to talk to him at a company picnic in August. That's when I found out that, before he'd gotten this boring office job, he'd worked as a firefighter, a white-water rafting guide, a blackjack dealer at a casino in Blackhawk, and a carpenter. And he was only twenty-eight! When he got sick of making crappy wages, he started going to night classes to get his associate's degree in computer science.

Plus, he and his girlfriend had broken up two months ago. Just enough time for him to be
so
over her.

We were perfect for each other.

“Avery,” I asked, “are you going to Rios tomorrow night after work?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

“You have to come so you can buy me a drink to celebrate my breakup from Dave.”

Avery shook her head and smiled. She kept right on working as she said, “We'll see.”

“How about you, Tom, are you going to come out with us tomorrow night? You can bring your girlfriend,” I said.

Tom came out from under the desk. “I don't have a girlfriend, thank god. I broke up with her a while ago. She was a sweet girl, but man, what a psycho.”

“Oh really, that's a shame. You two made such a cute couple.”

He shrugged.

“So what about tomorrow night?”

“I have some plans with some buddies of mine.”

“Oh,” I said. “Where are you going? You guys should stop by Rios if you can, it'll be fun.”

“We'll see. I'm going to see about getting you some more memory. I'll be back.”

“Thanks so much,” I said.

“No problem.”

I sighed. It was far more interesting to watch Tom's blue-jean-clad ass than it was to type up a report on features people wanted in an oven. Alas.