Diary of a Working Girl (2 page)

This story holds me in a trance. I read it once. Twice. Three times. It strikes me as the most beautiful story I’ve ever come upon. I search to find something about bronzing powder that could inspire so much passion in readers. Although the right shade could drastically revitalize a winter-worn complexion, or for that matter, give a girl the beauty boost that just might help her survive a lethal bout of PMS, it still doesn’t provide the same high the princess love story offers. I should just skip right past this story and back into safer territory—how to wear hats, new fragrances for yoga—but I can’t draw myself from the idea of romance. It pulls me in, beckons me to follow.

I’d always dedicated a large portion of my personal time to thoughts of romance, and at an increasing rate, since my youthful ideals seem to be weathering and decaying and daring me to abandon them. Especially lately as I have spent the better part of the month mourning the one-day, one-week, two-week, and one-month anniversaries of the day I broke up with James. My mourning ritual has consisted mainly of drinking cheap red wine, and, well, whin
ing
—to anyone who’d listen—about my hopeless, lonely, boyfriend-less existence.

Unfortunately for her, my friend Joanne just happens to be

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being, and henceforth, a bona fide point of comparison to my own predicament: “I can’t believe she (wine slurp) wound up with a rich lawyer with a great personality (wine slurp)
and
an English accent and he truly was her Magic Man (failed attempt at wine slurp as no more wine to slurp).”

“Her what?” Joanne had asked.

“You know, her Magic Man. There was something there and, of course, it was there all along, but it took them a while to figure it out and so she almost lost him, but then they realized it and he was perfectly magical.”

Well, over time (and wine slurps) Magic Man became MM and eventually, the similarities between the perfect man and the perfect candy of the same initials (you only need a couple every day to get your fill; melts in your mouth, not in your hand) were discovered and MM became M&M and now I see that the name is perfect as it represents comfort and home and happiness and simplicity and sweetness. And if you eat enough of them—the candies, that is—

and chant “I want my M&M, I want my M&M,” while crunching, it eventually starts to sound like “mmmmm” which is exactly the cry of the satisfied and of the (ahem) “satisfied,” which is why that tiny ancient woman next door has probably been looking at me strangely.

James is one of a long line of men who turned out not to be my M&M. And hence, turned out to be another ideal-weathering beckon towards reality. Needless to say, I have been eating more than my fair share of M&M’s—the candy—to make up for my lack of The M&M—the man.

So, now, in addition to receiving blubbering I’ll-never-find-my-M&M telephone calls that can only be classified as pathetic attempts to get her to spend some time with me (ironically they were 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 9

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more than likely the actual reason she “couldn’t” come over), Joanne now receives blubbering you’re-my-only-friend-in-the-world phone calls from me, too.

I need to get back to the more practical matters of Mediterranean-inspired lipsticks and the benefits/hindrances of high waistlines on variously flawed figures (and, of course, that most tragic of all categories, “thin”), and so I turn to a British magazine,
Beautiful
, which is famous for never addressing anything of a serious nature (and would in fact encourage Badgley-Mischka-induced heart attack chronicles). Here I am inspired to pitch “Beauty on the Go: What to Take, How to Pack; Hairstyling and Makeup How-to from the Jet Set.” After exhausting the host of related themes: “Beauty in a Flash,” “The Spring Face,” and

“Facial Index,” I once again find myself searching out that princess love story.

Was there something in the eye of the princess that could teach me to find true love? Her face had a superhuman strength (in a strictly Katharine Hepburn not Hulk Hogan way) in just about all of the accompanying photos. If you looked at her with your head cocked to the right, turned her portrait ninety degrees to a hori-zontal position, and squinted your left eye, she
definitely
appeared in possession of a secret. Why had the secret evaded me?

Outside my window it appears everyone but me is qualified to write a story about love. I count thirty-five happy couples who happen to be qualified on account of menacing actions such as hand-holding, talking, and laughing even—all of which are quite obviously efforts exerted for my benefit.

“People can see you!” I scream because, well, I can’t exactly say why.

And that’s when I hear the cry, “What?”

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Taken off guard, I quickly withdraw my head from the window and begin to feel an intense blush at the sort of mortification one can only suffer when one has just been called on asocial, unstable behavior. But when my doorbell rings and my upstairs neighbor Chris screams through the door, “Are you sitting by the window counting couples again?” I rip myself from my embarrassment coma with the comforting knowledge that Chris is already well versed in my weakness in the rational arena.

“No, absolutely not! I am working!” Was there not a notebook lying open on my table? Had I not come up with lots of great ideas?

“Well, then let me come in and see what you’ve done.” I scan the room. The bed is unmade. There are junk food and candy wrappers where there used to be the top of a coffee table. Blankets I had piled around me all morning are still strewn about the couch. I panic, lest Chris think I have somehow sacrificed another day to
The Young and the Restless
. I have to act like I’ve been working hard all day. Otherwise, I’ll never hear the end of how

“resilient” I am. Chris can be rather sarcastic, especially when it comes to my breakups and the idea of M&M’s. (“They will will just make you fat.”) So, to keep up appearances and prevent him from drawing any connection between the princess love story and my current mind-set, I close the notebook, shove the magazines under a sofa cushion, scramble some papers on my desk, jiggle the mouse to get my laptop off sleep mode, open a document I’d written ages ago, and jam a pen behind my ear. Now, that looks like a busy workingwoman who
never
draws parallels between her own life and those of
The Young and the Restless
characters, I think, glancing in the mirror. That is, except for the greasy hair propped up in a wild bun and the snowman-printed pajama pants, and, of course, the bit of ketchup on my cheek.

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When I finally let him in, after he’d spent a moment clearing his throat in the hallway, he says, “So you really are working on some real, saleable story ideas, huh? You haven’t just opened some old document, shimmied some papers around your desk, and stuck a pen behind your ear, right?” Although Chris is a photographer, he would really be better suited to manning a psychic hotline. If he’d seen the magazines, he’d be able to flip right to the princess story and repeat back, word for word, what I’d been thinking. I walk over to the cushion currently concealing them to sit on top just in case.

He looks stunning, as always. His dark hair is perfectly combed back so it’s just beginning to fall by his ears—in the sort of way that, on a straight man, would make you want to run your hands through it to push it back. But, as often as I’ve wished he were, Chris is not a straight man. Once I learned (the hard way) that he would not show any romantic interest in me, even if I rang his bell wearing only the cutest Agent Provocateur teddy beneath my coat, and holding a bottle of champagne and two flutes, I began to take him for what he is—a fantastic friend with fabulous insight into the male psyche, and someone who lets me run my hands through his hair when I am feeling especially deficient in the area of male tresses for such a purpose. He also functions as mother, father, brother, sister, therapist, superintendent, personal chef, and date. He glances at my coffee-cum-buffet table and shakes his head despairingly.

“My darling, what are we going to do with you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. This?” I ask, waving my hand
The Price Is Right
–style, at what would be a very unfabulous prize.

He doesn’t answer, only lowers his lids to half-mast as a way of saying he isn’t buying what I am sloppily attempting to unload in lieu of the truth.

I continue anyway, “This is—er, the research for an article I’m working on. Yes. It’s
research
.”

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“So what exactly are you researching? The fastest way to put on twenty pounds? Or is it a home-brewed recipe for a creamy pity soup with artichoke and . . . Oh, Lanie, barbecue chicken wings? Yuckk. C’mon. Pull yourself together and get your head out of this . . . this bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. What is this, kettle style? Any good? (Crunch.) Not bad, actually. Still, when was the last time you actually had an article published?

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but you know the rent is due soon.”

I can’t prove he actually has telepathic powers or that his taste test wasn’t some sort of sleight of hand just to set this whole thing up, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence that the bag of potato chips just happens to come crashing down into a carbohydrate avalanche at exactly the same moment he finishes this sentence.

For some reason, I hate when Chris knows how awful I feel.

He’s just so practical. Like, I’ll go on and on about spending Christmas or New Year’s or even Valentine’s Day alone and he’ll be so sweet—making me dinner or wrapping thoughtful gifts in gorgeous wallpaper remnants with regal ribbon-work and strands of antique glass beads—and all the while never say anything about his being alone, too. He’ll make me feel pathetic, like I should be thankful for the life I have. But it doesn’t matter what I say, he always knows the truth anyhow, so either way I walk away feeling bad about having felt bad, which makes me feel even worse because I hate that I can’t be as strong as Chris.

“For your information, I am actually working on an article right now—about the favorite clothes of this famous writer-woman—

in addition to this food research thingy I’m doing,” I say, defending my existence.

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“Well, I was about to see if you wanted to go out and get a breath of fresh air, but I see you’re busy, so I’ll just leave you to it.”

“Thank you. Yes, I am
extremely
busy today.” And with that, I nudge him through the door. “But don’t forget to call me later,” I scream down the hall.

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T w o

A Sign of the Times

When I wake Monday morning, still on my couch, it takes a second to figure out where I am. In my dream, I had been shacked up in the most beautiful St. Lucian cliffside villa with a faceless, but definitely Latin, Enrique Iglesias–type.

Unimaginatively typecast or not (I can’t be blamed for my un-conscious mind) he turned out to be a fantastic lover—the sort that knows exactly what to say, and how to tug at your hair and linger at the insides of your thighs until you are positive that you are the sexiest woman in America (needless to say my thighs were of spectacular Victoria’s Secret caliber in this dream) and therefore you toss aside all inhibitions in pursuit of a single goal: having a raging orgasm.

When finally my eyes flicker open to full capacity, I look around myself in disgust. The remains of my million-calorie weekend feast, now smelling pretty bad, are strewn around the television 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 15

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unit, an altar to my depression. My blanket and I have long since parted, the blanket preferring a more southerly climate—the floor.

Yet I am somehow rivaling a hormonally charged adolescent boy in the sweat department. I am not sure how the glittery poster reading “Anti-fairy-tale-ism” got on my bed.

Slowly, I attempt to rise and make my way to the bathroom. The mirror lets me know, quite harshly, that I have looked better. My hair, normally ironed out to perfection has attained such volume it would give Fran Drescher a run for her
Nanny
residuals. My face is so pasty I fear people will start singing bad Ray Parker Junior movie scores when they see me. The arches of my brows have unmistakably disappeared and been replaced by two fluffy caterpillar-type formations above my bloodshot eyes, which are accompanied by two cases of dark luggage that sag and puff beneath them.

If I told some random person on the street that I am the one instructing them on skincare and hairstyling in magazines (okay, most people you run into haven’t read
Celebrity Hairstyles
, but still, I’m trying to make a point here) they would swear off glossies for good. Hah! That is actually kind of funny, I muse, trying to drag a comb through my hair and failing miserably (and painfully).

You know what would be really funny? If I started writing about relationships. Now that would be absolutely hysterical, I think as I brush my teeth, quickly smooth some soap around my face and neck, and prepare to shower off the effects of a lonely, un-productive stint that has run entirely too long a course. Peach Blossom seems to be a perfect shower gel choice, although I can’t exactly explain why.

I have to begin an article I am writing for a woman’s magazine that nobody has ever heard of. It is my only assignment for the week. The job is to interview one famous woman about her favorite articles of clothing. This sort of article normally makes me 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 16