The Blonde Theory Read Online Free Page A

happiness somehow, deceived myself into believing that for the first time, I was with someone who was
proud
of my accomplishments rather than terrified by them. My mistake.
    And so I came home from work each day and, horror of all horrors, told him about my day, which I now recognized as tactical error number one. I told him about all my hopes and dreams—tactical error number two. And then I had the nerve, the gall, the indecency, to go after what I wanted and to make partner at my firm, which came with a lot more prestige and a nice pay hike. Clearly that had been the biggest tactical error of all. Perhaps Peter had been clinging to the hope that I would one day see the light, decide to leave my legal career, and become a stay-at-home mom, like all the good little girls his buddies were dating.
    It would have been nice if he had consulted me about that plan.
    Now I knew better. The more successful I was at work, the less successful I was at dating. It was a simple causal relationship, and somehow I had only recently managed to wrap my mind around its logic. Perhaps I wasn’t as smart as the senior partners at my firm thought I was, or I surely would have figured this all out sooner.
    The irony of it all was that none of the men at work—who were my professional peers—would ever understand how I felt. That’s because they were the victors in the world’s most unfair double standard. All of my male co-workers—even Mort Mortenson, with his enormous belly, ubiquitous suspenders, and ridiculous comb-over—had pretty little pixies of wives ten, twenty, or even thirty years their junior. Many of the secretaries at the firm (all female, of course) considered themselves the dating pool for the firm’s young, overworked
male
attorneys, and more than one conference room secretary-on-associate scandal had inexplicably blossomed into marriage.
    But wonder of all wonders, there were no men in the I-want-to-date-an-attorney secretary pool. Or at the bar in the building next door to our Wall Street high-rise, where women waited to pick up the attorneys and bankers who filtered out of our building each evening. Or in any bar, bookstore, coffee shop, or apartment party I’d ever been to in New York so far.
    I was beginning to run out of options. Or maybe I already had.
    O F COURSE I didn’t realize then, in my hungover, brownie-stuffed state, hunched over a plate of too-runny eggs, soggy hash browns, and a mug of coffee as big as my throbbing head, that this would be the brunch that would change my life. Or at least my
dating
life. But I guess I had underestimated Meg, fresh out of any Advil or Neosporin to heal the sting of repeated rejection, who of course couldn’t stand for any of the people she loved to be unhappy. I thought, sometimes, that she should run for president. We’d achieve world peace in no time, because Meg wouldn’t sleep until every last person on the planet had a smile on his or her face. She would sit down personally with Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein and Tran Duc Luong, bake them cookies, talk to them in that soothing tone of hers, and get them to see the light. They’d be having tea and biscuits in her living room and signing peace treaties in no time. That’s just the way she was.
    Clearly, in retrospect, I should have been wary of the pleased expression on her face as Emmie and Jill discussed my singledom and I cracked self-effacing jokes at my own expense.
    “Maybe you shouldn’t tell them what you do for a living,” Emmie was suggesting helpfully as I tried steadfastly to ignore her unsolicited help. “I mean, that seems to be what scares them away, you know.”
    “What, so I’m supposed to lie?” I asked petulantly, pushing my eggs around on my plate with considerably more violence than they deserved.
    “I don’t know,” Emmie said. She shook her head. “Not necessarily
lie
. Maybe just not bring it up.”
    “But I
don’t
bring it up,” I protested. “You know that, Em. In fact,