Diary of a Working Girl (22 page)

“You are so fucking hot,” and “I want you so fucking badly.”

And there are other things, too. He never wears underwear outside of the office.

“It’s utterly excessive,” he says.

He does have a point. Why take the trouble to put them on, wash them (they are the bulk of laundry loads anyway), when they’ll only wind up on the floor for the better portion of the evening? He believes smoking is one of the most enjoyable pastimes.

“All of the greats die young,” he says in the face of cancer and emphysema.

I

Seth, I’m sure,displays equally meritorious qualities.

My plan starts off smoothly enough and we meet at the copy room at 6 P.M. Seth is sarcastic and dry in the humor department, which I rather like. But when we get to the little bistro he’s selected 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 170

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for dinner, I do compare it to the posh eateries I’ve dined in with Liam (now Bemelman’s Bar and Butter and Industry Food have been added to the mix), and even though I don’t normally like that type of suave guy, my entire opinion of this genre of men has now changed, and I realize that, prior to this Liam experience, I had built my opinion about an entire portion of the population around a stereotype and have now mended my ways.

And when we order salads for appetizers, I remember the decadent oysters that Liam and I have shared and can barely bring myself to move my fork to my mouth. When he orders his steak well done, I nearly hide under the table in embarrassment. When the dessert menus are handed to us, Seth says, “I couldn’t eat another thing.” Here I ache for a warm chocolate cake in my bed.

The conversation floats by somehow, but I can’t remember anything that either of us has said, because only my body is here. My spirit is facedown on my coffee table, Liam on top, doing things I’ve only before seen on the Spice Channel. Therefore, it is probably no shock to you, that when the taxi pulls up to my apartment, and Seth goes to kiss me, I turn to offer my cheek, give a quick thank you, and scooch out of the cab without so much as glancing back in his direction.

I know I’ll be sorry for taking this opportunity to forge ahead so lightly. I should feel worse right now. But right in the middle of my first real “love affair,” the conflict, the forbidden nature, only fuels my fire for Liam. I’m throwing the world away for Liam. I love the sound of that. It is a novel in itself—a true love story, where, on the path to passion, a trail of devastation is left behind.

It’s us against the world. In the end, I’ll be broke, jobless, without a chance of success. At my all-time low. Liam will save me.

He’ll pooh-pooh such frivolities as a career and say, “All that matters is that you and I are together.”

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When I’m down, he’ll pick me up, showing me that what we have is more important than any stupid article. We’ll jet off to Provence and enjoy the simple things in life: the crisp taste of the first wine of the season, appreciating its “legs” and “tannins,”

swirling glasses and rolling our tongues like experts; a walk in the meadow; a car ride to the coast. The sweet smell of grass and fruit will waft in through our open windows at night, where we’ll lie, naked and spent after a full day of making love.

It is quite obvious that the only reason my career was so important to me in the past is because without it, my life would have been empty. But now I see there is no article, no book deal that could make me feel the way I do now. The choice is that there is no choice to make. Everything’s coming up Liam.

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E l e v e n

Sexy Scents, Sangria,

and Samantha Smells

Something Rotten

During that weekend, my third as a nine-to-fiver, I don’t fret over the fact that I am not seeing Liam at all, as I have so much magazine article writing to catch up on, especially after the way we squandered the entire last weekend on my bed, in my tub, on my couch, on the kitchen floor, and I know that he is very busy setting things up for
Beautiful
. The nobody’s-ever-heard-of-them publications I still have regular assignments with have been leaving me messages about missed deadlines for the first time ever, and it has been hard for me to take these seriously, since they are part of a life I no longer lead.

My article in the
Post
came out yesterday and my mother has phoned each and every Long Island resident to make sure they know about it. And that felt really nice, since the pieces I write for magazines and papers she’s not familiar with have all been “so cute for you, honey.” A name like the
Post
is big my-daughter’s-better-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 173

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than-yours currency. But what felt even better was when I walked into my cubey, hung up my coat, and saw my article hung right there in a delicate white driftwood frame.

I called Tom directly.

“Did you do this?” I asked, looking over at him through the glass and pointing to the frame.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Did you get my article framed?”

“Must have been one of those number crunchers with a crush on you,” he said, trying to sound aloof. “I hear them talking about you all the time in the men’s room. It is quite good, though. Congratulations. I’m impressed.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, so glad to have made a friend like Tom.

I am simultaneously filled with joy at the fact that I’ve had an article published in the
Post
, and angst-ridden at the fact that I cannot share this triumph with Liam, as he will doubtless wonder what I have been doing signing on with employment agencies.

I calm myself with the idea that I don’t need to share details about other parts of my life with Liam, because the only part of my life that matters is the part I share with him. I never talk about my friends. He doesn’t need to listen to details about conversations with my mother, the banalities of the day-to-day. Everything is trivial compared to our love.

Did I mention that this week he told me he loves me? We were walking by the West Side Promenade. The sun was setting. A street vendor walked by hawking roses.

“I’ll take them all,” he said.

That dreamy Liam hunkered me down with forty-five roses, counting each individual one as he pulled them from the white plastic tub and placed them into my hands. When the man walked 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 174

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away, and thorns were sticking me all over (a detail I would never ruin the mood with), he ran his hand through my hair, resting it finally on my neck, stared into my eyes for a good minute or two, and said, “I am falling in love with you, Lane. I never thought I could love again, but you’ve broken me down. You’ve taken me from the shell I’ve built up.”

I wept. I did. It was a surprise. Not an expected, boring natural progression. No. It was a wonderful, spontaneous surprise.

With a finger, he secured one of my salty tears and brought it to his lips. After savoring part of me becoming part of him, he said the words I could swear I’d heard before in a dream: “You complete me.”

It is truly amazing how Liam is
always
coming out with the exact words I’d wished a man would say to me. When he said that—

so perfectly put—it was like a déjà vu.

Today, without Liam, I have to write a fragrance story. I actually enjoy smelling all of the different samples that have been mailed to me over the last week, imagining what Liam will say when I wear each one. He loves perfume.

“You smell like sex,” he had once said to me when I was wearing Frederic Malle’s Musc Ravageur. He’s never afraid to be raw like that.

Since my mood is pure desire, I decide to name the piece, “The Ten Sexiest Scents” and come up with cute phrases like “Eau de Ecstasy” and “Liquid Lingerie.”

It is amazing how simply enjoyable these tasks are when you can incorporate the emotions of love you are experiencing into them.

Liam is my muse. I am an inspired
auteur
.

I also have put off writing the article about Lisa, and so going through all of those notes now, I piece together a witty narrative 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 175

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about her life as connected to the beautiful clothing, shoes, and accessories in her fabulous closet. This is not exactly what the assignment originally was, but with these small publications, you can really do whatever you want, as long as the final product is good. I wish I could say the same about the
Cosmo
piece, because I would now be done with it, and could go on to concentrate on enjoying bliss with Liam if that were the case. That would be one utterly sexy article, to say the least.

But when I think of my now cutely decorated cubey and Tom and John (who is blossoming nicely in actual communication, in addition to the virtual sort), I think I would miss the chance to be with them, even if it’s only going to be for a short time more. It is strange how things turn out, isn’t it? I decide to pop an e-mail over to Lisa to thank her and let her know how things are coming along with me.

Lisa,

I want to thank you again for the wonderful morning I spent in your home. It was a pleasure to go through your life in such a personal manner and to celebrate your sartorial history as well. I am very proud of the article I have written about you. I think you will be delighted. I also thought you would be happy to know that your advice was very helpful, and I have since gotten a fantastic assignment from
Cosmopolitan
for which I have combined my love of men and my love of talking about myself J. More to the point, I have been assigned to take a corporate position in the world of finance with the goal of meeting a man I will ultimately fall in love with.The only hitch is that I have two months to achieve this.

Although the pressure is almost insurmountable, I am delighted at the challenge and really hope this will bring my career to a new 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 176

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level. I would love to catch up with you again once I am done with this piece and tell you all about my experiences.Your piece in
For
Her
will be printed in the June issue.

Thanks again for everything.

Best,

Lane

Putting it down in words like that, I realize two things. 1) I am lying through my teeth. I feel no pressure at all. I can barely bring myself to think about my assignment. Failure at achieving the goal at this point seems to be the only possibility, and I couldn’t care less. I have something far more important—I have love. 2) Explaining my assignment to someone else, who I deem a worldly and respectable woman, I realize it is the most ridiculous thing I could have gotten myself into.

I am a complete maniac. What the hell was I thinking? Was I so far gone that I really took a want ad, a breakup and a pile of bills to be signs of my destiny?

I crash my head into my keyboard making all manner of jibber-ish appear on-screen when I remember the half-heart formation of paper clips, the horoscope, all of the “signs” I used to ruin my life.

This is it. This is what they mean by temporary insanity. Where, God, did you hide the rewind button?

I could pop an e-mail over to Karen right now and have the whole thing done with. I’ll still get the finder’s fee and maybe just keep my Smith Barney job until the
Beautiful
position starts. And now I know Liam so well, he would never dream of asking to see my clips, so it won’t even matter whether I’ve actually written for
Cosmo
or not.

I go so far as to open a new e-mail and type in Karen’s address—

one very slow keystroke at a time—but at the “.com” something 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 177

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holds me back. My fingers freeze and, as of their own will, hit the backspace key until I’m staring into a blank field.

I’ll do it tomorrow.

I suddenly need a cocktail. Getting Chris’s answering machine annoys me to no end. What is the point of having friends when they are not there when you need them? I cannot try his cell because he is strictly anti-cell and refuses to even allow me to keep mine on when I am with him, much less purchase one of his own.

I have a momentary lack of all common sense and decide to call my mother.

When we are through, I need something more along the lines of ten cocktails.

“I told you this would happen!” My mother says when I reveal I am not going to be able to complete the assignment. She really thinks the sole reason you give birth to children is so that you can always have someone you can say I told you so to. I know this because she actually informed me of that very thing once. She was trying to be cute when she said it, smiling and playfully hitting my arm, because we were having one of those days of acting like schoolgirls—shopping and eating chocolate and drinking wine.

But I knew she wasn’t kidding.

She only said she was kidding after my face turned sour and I began reciting a list of times that could actually prove this was my sole purpose in her life. “You said ‘I told you so’ when I broke up with Andy, Evan, Patrick, John, Rick, Timothy, Raoul, Jasons One through Three—”

“I never even
knew
there was a third Jason!”

Rather than return her joking smile, I continued, “When I fell off my bicycle; when I wanted to be Wonder Woman and jumped off the roof and twisted my ankle; when I wanted to be Mary Lou Retton and I cut all of my hair off and cried.”

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This time, I am in no mood for reminiscing. Besides, I can only blame myself for calling her. I already know she wants me to chuck this whole “article thingy” because she is a strong proponent of Liam. Her voice takes on a distinctive shrill every time his name comes up, and I can virtually see her Cheshire cat grin through the receiver.