Diary of a Working Girl (4 page)

Taking a glance at the cover, a picture of Oscar de la Renta jumps out at me. In the business section? I can’t believe it. Style in the business pages? I am drawn into a long story about how Oscar’s company is faring these days, and when I get to the end of the first page, I turn to page sixteen, as instructed. At the end of the story I glance at the next page, which is filled with boxed job listings. I suddenly feel bad for people who have to look for jobs. The little ads seem so boring.
Assist head of accounts department in collecting
debt.Word and Excel a plus. Managing Director, Mergers and Acquisitions,
seeks diligent assistant to organize, type correspondence, and maintain
schedule
. How mundane. How tiresome. How could anyone wake up, day after day to type correspondence and maintain schedules?

Fifty thousand dollars starting?
Oh. My. God. Maybe it’s not that bad.

You could get a whole new wardrobe of cute pants suits and ruffly blouses with cuffs that stick out from the sleeves. Brooches.

Heels. Sophisticated strands of beads, twisted twice about your neck. A camel-colored overcoat tied at a nipped waist, an unused-but-integral-to-the-look-buckle dangling from a perfect knot. I have always wanted one of those. I picture myself in a smart getup, 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 24

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beneath my camel-colored overcoat, an oversize Gucci tote, swing-ing light as air at my shoulder, walking into a glittering skyscraper with one of those clip-on badges that everyone wears these days, amongst throngs of suited men.
Wait
. Suited men. What I’m saying here is,
men
. In suits. Hundreds of them.

Why has this never occurred to me before? Of course! I never meet those sorts of motivated businessmen, because I have never worked with them. In my industry the only sort of men I socialize with have an acute awareness of the percentage of cashmere used in a cashmere-cotton blend sweater. What I mean to say is, they are all gay. And while that may do wonders for my wardrobe, and would give me a fantastic sounding board if I actually had a love life, it does nothing to help me to get a love life.

Between the realization that I am so far out of Lisa McLellon’s league that the fact we share the same planet even resonates oddly and the sort of obvious all-along discovery that I never meet men because I don’t work on Wall Street, I am almost in tears. “Where are the
signs
Sevilla?” I ask aloud in Lisa-speak just because, well, just because. I wonder where I can go from here as I scrutinize the contents of my desk for potential inspiration.

Sevilla may actually have been channeled in a sort of crosstown momentary opening in the universe because just then the new e-mail jingle sounds.

It’s Page Six. Yay! I love Page Six. Some famous person who looks too perfect, apparently is too perfect, which is to say, partially plastic, and her boyfriend, upon finding out, is suing her for misrepresentation, as he fell in love with her on the sole principle that her boobs were, in fact, real. I wonder if, like me, the dumped star indulged in a feast of fried foods and chocolate. While she may be skinnier, I momentarily get a shallow rise out of the knowledge that my boobs are real. When that rise begins to dip, I click on the 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 25

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fashion link so I can kick myself over more story ideas that were staring me in the face.

Big belts are back. I knew that! Basket bags are in for spring. I just visited the accessories show at the Javitz Center! I saw all of those. I’d even inquired about purchasing one. Oh, well. As Joanne would say, you can’t cry over spilled milk. I go for my horoscope—

the
Post
has the best horoscopes: With Saturn in your house, you are on the verge of a new opportunity. You have to think very carefully about the opportunity, as things will be happening rather quickly, and a mistake can be detrimental at this time. But, if you don’t take the offer right away, you will not get a second chance. Finally, remember that the silence will be broken.

Wow. How will I know which opportunities are the right ones if I have to figure it out immediately? Why are horoscopes always so nonspecific? They should really give you a little more of a hint, like those starting with the letter
B
are safe; but whatever you do, stay away from anything beginning with the letter
T.

Shifting back to idea mode I feel I must be on to something with such a celestial reading, and I get that tingle of happiness at being the lucky one whose horoscope outlines something fantastic that is sure to come. For that moment everything feels pregnant with possibility. But then that second is over and all I see is a somewhat unhygienic desk, with countless coffee cups, crumbs forming quite a collection underneath computer keys and God knows where else, and enough unsorted paper to make me feel some personal responsibility for destroying our planet’s forests.

Messy desks, how to keep them in order? Cigarette smoking, why is it so addictive? Computers, why is it so difficult to keep up 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 26

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with the payments? “Dumb. Dumb. Dumber,” I say to the pencil balancing between my upper lip and nose. And then I pick up the job market section of the paper, now sitting on my desk. Jobs.

Hmmm. Jobs. What’s new and cool with jobs? Er, no. With both hands, I tear the section open to the job listings and clear my throat with the abruptness of an important business sort. Changing careers? No hook. Making ends meet in a bad economy? Obviously I don’t know the first thing about that. I put the paper down. It drapes the entire width of my desk, covering my computer, papers, the sacrificed trees, as if they never even existed—a living metaphor of the fact that I have gotten nowhere.

“Hello?” I say into the phone when it rings, happy for the distraction. Even if it were a telephone salesman, I would have found the time to be friendly today.

“What’s up?”

It’s Joanne. Yay! My best friend! I am back to loving her.

“Hi!” I squeak into the receiver.

“What the hell are you so excited about?” she asks.

I must sound like I haven’t had human contact for months. This feels like an accurate description, even though I have just gotten home and had that somewhat magical contact with Sevilla since.

“Oh, I just missed you!” It’s amazing how much you take your friends for granted when you are one half of a couple. Weeks, even months can go by, and you barely see them at all. And, both of you say things like, “It’s so great that we are such close friends that we don’t even need to see each other.” But, then as soon as you are boyfriendless you begin grilling them for not spending time with you and you hate them for being happy when you’re not. It is quite convenient, though, because you can take out all of your frustration on your best friend, as if the sole reason you are sitting home on a Saturday night is because she is wrapped up in her life.

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So, after she tells me all about her romantic Saturday dinner, I berate her out of jealousy, explaining that I am not interested in the way Pete “did this thing with his tongue where he curled it up and . . .” She apologizes when I start crying. This is a horrible stunt, but it’s the only way with her and I need to find an outlet for this unique talent to cry on demand. I begin to feel a bit better again. With that out of the way, the conversation turns more helpful. I begin complaining about a lack of cash flow. And a lack of boyfriends. And a lack of human interaction. I am on “complain control.” A car has “cruise control,” and I have “complain control.” The switch is flipped and the stuff just comes out; I am merely a conductor for the negativity. I glance at the job listings again. I bounce the idea of getting a corporate job off of Joanne.

“I think it’s a great idea. You can get out of the house and stop calling me every eight seconds. Maybe you can meet some
other-people, too. Maybe even some men, so you could stop complaining about the fact that there are no men in your industry!”

I think about what she says. Perhaps it’s a bit self-motivated, but she definitely shares the same view I do, if I am honest with myself for about half a second and realize that I am not making ends meet as a writer. She says something else about “writing an article about that,” but I am too distracted by the visions of corporate life to listen. You see, I’d thought about supplementing my income with jobs before, but it always seemed like a bad investment if you think about the time you’re not going to be able to spend trying to get writing jobs that will pay a lot more than Duane Reade could.

That and the little humungous feeling that having a plastic strip punched with my name stuck onto a Duane Reade tag would have the distinct smell of failure. But this corporate thing. This is a different thing altogether.

You have to understand that in this industry, talent does not nec-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 28

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essarily equal success. What equals success is talent plus connections. You can pitch stories until the cows come home, but the person on the receiving end has five girlfriends who are freelance writers calling and asking for assignments. And they are the ones getting the assignments. Without a face, you are just a number. I don’t need to explain this to Joanne, because I have, probably about five million times before on complain control. I have wanted to be a writer ever since I could shimmy a pencil around on paper. My mother still tells people (and by people I mean the supermarket checkout girl and the mailman) the story about when I was in the third grade and my teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grow up and I said, “Judy Blume.”

And then all of a sudden, I am not listening to Joanne at all anymore. Her silence is broken for the first time in, well, ever, with presumably all manner of friendly advice and tender caring (not sure where the words “Soundfactory” and “Webster Hall” fit in there but I’m new to this Joanne talking, me ignoring thing) and I’m not listening. The world is on its head. I’ve zoned out in a flurry of instant genius. Lisa’s words come back to me: “The ideas are all around you.” And it hits me, like a ray of sunlight through the clouds. I suddenly know exactly how Benjamin Franklin felt when he discovered electricity. I see a printout of my name, taped to a front-row seat at fashion week. My driver, who will be named Smithers (what else?) My breakup, the
Times
falling open to reveal the job listings, Joanne “breaking the silence,” and even the pile of bills on my desk—they are suddenly revealing themselves as signs.

I now have the groundbreaking journalistic idea that will make my career.

The story is (drumroll, please) . . . switching careers to find love.

I will do the research by getting a job in a big corporation, 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 29

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where I will meet a wonderful, suited hottie, make some money, get insurance (maybe even dental!), and everything will be just sub-lime. It’s perfect. I love it! It’s so
Never Been Kissed
meets
Working
Girl.
I can do anything! Thank you Lisa. Thank you
New York
Times
. Thank you God!

“Hello? Are you there?” she asks, after I’ve been quiet for a while.

I fill Joanne in on my revelation, and when I’m through I take a deep breath, waiting for her to tell me how Einstein-like I have become in the past twenty-four hours.

“Uh, Lane, why does that sound so familiar?”

I’m not sure what she’s talking about, but really I can’t shake the feeling I have about this article idea. I feel positive, driven, in a way I haven’t in a long, long time.

Joanne breaks the silence again. “But you do realize there’s a chance you won’t meet anyone?”

Why shouldn’t I meet someone with all of those men around? It doesn’t even make sense. Joanne is not in this industry, so she doesn’t really understand, so I don’t put too much stock in this response.

She must realize this, because she goes on to say, “Honey, all I’m saying is don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Joanne is a vast source of wisdom, if you could ever decipher what it is she’s trying to say.

“Listen, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” I say.

“Well, people in glass houses want to know if you are free for a drink tonight. I’d say you’re in need of one. Morgan Bar, around seven?”

We always go to the Morgan Bar, located in the Morgan Hotel, on the notion (well, my notion, really) that we will meet some rich European businessmen staying there. I spend hours dressing just so, 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 30

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worrying over the brown eye shadow or the nude shade. It never really matters what I wear or how I look, since we just wind up talking to each other, and nobody speaks to us, except for the waiter—but, of course, he has to. Since Joanne already has a boyfriend, it doesn’t make it very easy, as she is never concerned with meeting anyone and so says very nonsexy things very loud that could turn away even the most aggressive pickup artist. (“So, did I tell you about that awful yeast infection I had last week?”) We agree to meet at seven, and I get started calling around with my story idea. Normally you write in, but since I am so impatient, and ready to start on this project immediately, I just start calling editors directly. They already have me on file from all of the stories they have rejected in the past. I start with
Marie Claire
. Sorry, we’re actually concentrating more on women who will do anything anyone asks them to, like ride a horse naked down Fifth Avenue or marry and divorce three men in a month—and even for that we’re booked with stories until . . . until (paper rifling) February 2010.