Been There, Done That

Table of Contents

 

 

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 
Copyright © 2006 by Carol Snow

 
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2006

 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 
Snow, Carol, 1965-
Been there, done that / Carol Snow.—Berkley trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-425-21006-2

1. Women journalists—Fiction. 2. Investigative reporting—Fiction. 3. Prostitution—Fiction. 4.
College students—Fiction. I. Title.

 
PS3619.N66B44 2006
813’.6—dc22
2006042799

 

 

To Andrew, of course

acknowledgments

My agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan, signed me shortly after the birth of her first child; how anyone can be so smart and capable on so little sleep astounds me. She has been a tremendous advocate and sounding board.

Cindy Hwang, my editor at Berkley, did more than simply improve my finished manuscript; her insightful comments and direction have made me a better writer.

My parents instilled in me a love of language and laughter. As for my siblings, Tom Snow and Susy Snow Sullivan are two of the funniest people I know, while Kim Snow, my second set of eyes, started things rolling when she taught me my ABCs a long, long time ago.

Dan Goodman, Kim Rueben and Melissa Karl Lam read my manuscript in its infancy and provided valuable feedback and encouragement.

Finally, Andrew Todhunter inspired, cajoled and ultimately shamed me into finishing this book. He is my rock and my inspiration. Plus, he keeps the computer running.

To all of you: many, many thanks.

one

Getting carded would have been okay if I’d been out for a glass of wine with my friends. Funny, even. They’d throw around the Oil of Olay jokes. I’d give thanks for good genes and poor lighting. I’d hand over my license, wait for the waitress to marvel at my birthday, toast the fountain of youth.

But I wasn’t out with my friends. As
Salad
magazine’s new education editor, I was interviewing Donald Archer, Mercer College’s dean of admissions, for an upcoming profile, “Keeping Pace with Changing Times: One School’s Journey.” I was supposed to be a serious reporter. Serious reporters do not look nineteen, even if they are nineteen, which I am not. Serious reporters have frown lines and prematurely gray hair from time spent in war zones and inner-city emergency rooms. Dean Archer had just ordered a Manhattan. And as all good reporters know, when they drink, you drink, even if it’s barely past noon. Or you order a drink, at any rate—just to show camaraderie—then you let it sit there and wait for them to loosen up.

The waitress had a nose ring, which made things worse. I passed the legal drinking age long before facial hardware came into vogue. When I passed the legal drinking age, this chick was still playing with Barbies.

I pulled my leather bag off the shiny fake-wood floor, plopped it onto my lap and dug around for my wallet. If that bimbo knew anything, she’d know that no one under twenty-one can afford a Coach bag. I rooted around the extra tapes, pens, rumpled Kleenex: no wallet. I peered under my chair to see if it had fallen out. I stuck my hand in my blazer pocket (as if anyone under twenty-one wears a blazer), knowing full well it wasn’t there but feeling I had to do something, anything, because times were becoming desperate. I was about to dash to the phone to report my stolen credit cards when I remembered where my wallet was. It was in my pocketbook. In my apartment. Really, really far from here.

“I had a date last night,” I blurted to the dean. “And I put my wallet in my pocketbook and forgot to switch it back.” I looked at the waitress, lowered my voice. “I’m thirty-two.”

The nose ring quivered. “I’ll have to see some ID.”

“I am so much older than you.”

“ID.”

I smiled at the dean, tried to laugh. “I’ll have a seltzer water. With lime.”

I took a deep breath, looked around as if fascinated by my surroundings. We were in one of those nouveau pub chain places decorated with antique kitchen implements and rusted farm tools. On one wall, an enormous, homey sign proclaimed, without a hint of irony, LIKE NO PLACE ELSE. It had taken two weeks for my boss, Richard, to approve this expense account lunch, but he only allotted twenty-five dollars (which I suddenly, horribly, realized was at home in my wallet). It was this or Wendy’s.

The dean settled back into his heavy wood chair, laced his hands over his generous stomach, and smiled benevolently, as if to a freshman in for counseling. Somewhere on the far side of middle age, the dean had the look of a former football player: bulky shoulders straining against his suit, a neck as wide as his oddly square head. What had once been muscle had softened but not shrunk. Some women might find him attractive. I didn’t, but his face was kind, with crinkly light eyes and ruddy cheeks. A thatch of thinning strawberry blond hair topped it all off. From what I’d seen, Dean Archer was indeed warm and kindly. He was also boring as hell.

The article had seemed like such a good idea when I’d discussed it with Dr. Archer’s dog trainer wife, whom I’d interviewed for an earlier feature, “The Four-Legged Tutor: A Guide Dog Opens Educational Doors for a Boston-Area Teen.” Evelyn Archer had practically begged me to write about Mercer, whose applications dwindled each time their tuition went up, which is to say continuously. Evelyn gave such good quotes (“With a Seeing Eye dog, it’s not just about having an extra set of eyes. It’s about freedom. About acceptance. About love.”) that I’d foolishly assumed her husband would be likewise brimming with pithy comments. I had 180 minutes worth of tape with me, but I wasn’t sure that was enough to catch one quote-worthy statement from Dr. Archer.

“I had you pegged at twenty-two, twenty-three,” he said to me.

“Good genes,” I said reflexively. “Bad lighting.” It
was
rather murky in here. And loud from all those voices bouncing off the tin ceiling. “So you were saying about colleges today, student apathy, the root problem . . .”

“Thirty-two. Wow. And not married? How was your date last night? A nice boy?”

“Nice. Nothing special. So the real problem with kids? You said . . . let me check . . . more far-reaching than absent parents and drug experimentation . . .”

“I think I was going to say TV. Too much TV. But that doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe it will come to me later. Wow. You could pass for one of my students.”

Women sometimes ask what kind of skin care products I use, assuming my youthful appearance must be something I either work at or purchase. Really, though, my skin is nothing special, unless you consider the light spray of freckles across the bridge of my nose. My eyes are big and blue. I’m on the short side, which may explain why I got into movies on a child’s ticket until I was sixteen. I have tiny breasts and almost no hips. I keep my brown hair longish for fear of being mistaken for a thirteen-year-old boy.

For years, I wished I looked my age, if not older. A fifteen-year-old doesn’t want to look eleven. A twenty-one-year-old doesn’t want to look fifteen. Now that I’m getting older, I’m suddenly glad to look young. Except for today. Today I want to look forty.

The waitress brought our drinks. My seltzer had a lemon instead of a lime. Dr. Archer’s Manhattan came in a frosted beer mug. I hoped he wasn’t planning to drive back to western Massachusetts too soon after lunch.

Dr. Archer held up his mug. “To youth.”

“To youth,” I replied.

Two chicken Caesar salads and another super-sized Manhattan later, I’d learned that Mercer had a top-notch archery team and a junior year abroad program in an Eastern bloc country I couldn’t pronounce. I’d digested the rationales behind ever-increasing tuition costs—something about a commitment to low student-teacher ratios and a state-of-the-art computer center. My tape recorder had run out of tape. I had found nothing worthwhile to say about Mercer College and how it was adapting to changing times. Even worse, I had no idea how I was going to pay for lunch.

The waitress dropped the check on the table—in front of Dr. Archer, no less. It almost made me like her, even though it did no good. He let it sit there. I let it sit there. He smiled kindly and started talking about affirmative action and what a stupid idea it was. I couldn’t take it any more. “Dr. Archer?”

“Yes?”

“I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”

He beamed. “The pleasure was all mine.” (No argument on this end.)

“I’ll send you a draft of the article before we print it so you can be sure I’ve portrayed your views adequately.”

“I’d appreciate that,” he said. He smiled. I smiled.

Finally: “Dr. Archer.”

“Yes, dear?” (I’d turned into “dear” about a third of the way through the second Manhattan.)