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twenty bucks—black, of course.
When I finally arrive at work (amazingly, I am only twenty minutes late) Bud, the security guard, opens the door for me and tells me “not to worry,” that “these things happen.” And Angie, the bulldog receptionist from the Deepest Pit of Hell, is not nasty to me. She isn’t actually nice, either, but she doesn’t say a word about my lateness. Not a snide remark about how some of us manage to get out of bed with the alarm. She just raises an evil eyebrow (her resemblance to Cruella De Vil is uncanny—funny I’d never noticed that before) and gives me a pitiful smile.
This in itself is usually enough to set all my internal alarm bells ringing. But when everyone else in my departmentgives me the same pitiful smile, accompanied by gentle inquiries about how I feel, and telling me not to worry, that “these things happen,” I just assume that it’s because I’m thirty.
I smugly imagine that they all fear I am about to have some sort of midlife crisis, on account of the fact that they are all in their twenties and haven’t yet had the liberating experience of looking the big Three-O squarely in the face. Bloody cowards. Their time will come.
But the oddest thing about today is Adam, conspicuous by his absence. Apart from a couple of meetings in his office diary, there’s nothing to suggest that he’ll be out all day, and by three in the afternoon I am starting to panic. My fertile imagination takes full control of my brain, as I conjure up all kinds of horrific scenarios, each one more bloody than the last.
Maybe he was mugged (oh, no! My ring). Maybe he choked on his coddled egg during his early breakfast meeting, and because I wasn’t there, no one knew how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, no! Suffocated by a coddled egg, how awful! Or he could have been the innocent victim of a gangland-style drive-by shooting. I imagine his crumpled body, broken and bleeding on the sidewalk as he gasps my name. Or maybe he was hit by a cab, because the driver was distracted by my morning goddess impression on Fifth Avenue…
Oh God, I can just see it now. Me, pale and wan (but obviously in a beautiful kind of way) in the ER, being comforted by a George Clooney lookalike as he tells me that Adam, despite grievous horrible wounds to his poor body, confessed his love for me shortly before wheezing his last breath…
And it would all be my fault for distracting the cabdrivers in such a shameful way!
But I don’t guess the most obvious reason for his inexplicable absence.
He is avoiding me.
When he finally saunters into the office (the picture of good health, not a hair out of place or bandage to be seen), he barely looks at me as he passes my cubicle and asks me to step into his office. So I do. Butterfly wings flapping madly in my stomach.
This is what happens next.
“Please sit down, Emmeline,” he says from his leather swivel chair, placing clasped hands on his huge, mahogany desk. And then he smiles, and his perfectly white teeth (regularly touched up with his bleaching kit) contrast healthily with his tan (hours on the tanning bed at his gym). He is truly one of the most handsome men I’ve ever set eyes on. And while I am inwardly rejoicing that all his body parts are intact and imagining what beautiful children we will have, he clears his throat several times and fiddles with a paper clip.
He doesn’t say, “Happy birthday.” He doesn’t say, “Congratulations, you got the job.” No Tiffany’s box magically appears on his desk, either. I know we’re at work and have to maintain a professional distance, but he’s even more “me boss you secretary” than usual.
And then I’m scared, really scared, that the feeling of impending doom that I’ve had since I got out of bed this morning is for real, and not just me obsessing.
“I didn’t get it, did I?” I ask in a small voice, willing him to contradict me. But he doesn’t. After long, agonizing seconds, he
When I finally arrive at work (amazingly, I am only twenty minutes late) Bud, the security guard, opens the door for me and tells me “not to worry,” that “these things happen.” And Angie, the bulldog receptionist from the Deepest Pit of Hell, is not nasty to me. She isn’t actually nice, either, but she doesn’t say a word about my lateness. Not a snide remark about how some of us manage to get out of bed with the alarm. She just raises an evil eyebrow (her resemblance to Cruella De Vil is uncanny—funny I’d never noticed that before) and gives me a pitiful smile.
This in itself is usually enough to set all my internal alarm bells ringing. But when everyone else in my departmentgives me the same pitiful smile, accompanied by gentle inquiries about how I feel, and telling me not to worry, that “these things happen,” I just assume that it’s because I’m thirty.
I smugly imagine that they all fear I am about to have some sort of midlife crisis, on account of the fact that they are all in their twenties and haven’t yet had the liberating experience of looking the big Three-O squarely in the face. Bloody cowards. Their time will come.
But the oddest thing about today is Adam, conspicuous by his absence. Apart from a couple of meetings in his office diary, there’s nothing to suggest that he’ll be out all day, and by three in the afternoon I am starting to panic. My fertile imagination takes full control of my brain, as I conjure up all kinds of horrific scenarios, each one more bloody than the last.
Maybe he was mugged (oh, no! My ring). Maybe he choked on his coddled egg during his early breakfast meeting, and because I wasn’t there, no one knew how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, no! Suffocated by a coddled egg, how awful! Or he could have been the innocent victim of a gangland-style drive-by shooting. I imagine his crumpled body, broken and bleeding on the sidewalk as he gasps my name. Or maybe he was hit by a cab, because the driver was distracted by my morning goddess impression on Fifth Avenue…
Oh God, I can just see it now. Me, pale and wan (but obviously in a beautiful kind of way) in the ER, being comforted by a George Clooney lookalike as he tells me that Adam, despite grievous horrible wounds to his poor body, confessed his love for me shortly before wheezing his last breath…
And it would all be my fault for distracting the cabdrivers in such a shameful way!
But I don’t guess the most obvious reason for his inexplicable absence.
He is avoiding me.
When he finally saunters into the office (the picture of good health, not a hair out of place or bandage to be seen), he barely looks at me as he passes my cubicle and asks me to step into his office. So I do. Butterfly wings flapping madly in my stomach.
This is what happens next.
“Please sit down, Emmeline,” he says from his leather swivel chair, placing clasped hands on his huge, mahogany desk. And then he smiles, and his perfectly white teeth (regularly touched up with his bleaching kit) contrast healthily with his tan (hours on the tanning bed at his gym). He is truly one of the most handsome men I’ve ever set eyes on. And while I am inwardly rejoicing that all his body parts are intact and imagining what beautiful children we will have, he clears his throat several times and fiddles with a paper clip.
He doesn’t say, “Happy birthday.” He doesn’t say, “Congratulations, you got the job.” No Tiffany’s box magically appears on his desk, either. I know we’re at work and have to maintain a professional distance, but he’s even more “me boss you secretary” than usual.
And then I’m scared, really scared, that the feeling of impending doom that I’ve had since I got out of bed this morning is for real, and not just me obsessing.
“I didn’t get it, did I?” I ask in a small voice, willing him to contradict me. But he doesn’t. After long, agonizing seconds, he
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