Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single (4 page)

I must plan carefully and leave nothing to chance…. I creep down the hallway and when I round the corner of the wall of mailbox cubbyholes there's Christopher furtively removing something from my mailbox.

I ask him what he's doing and he thrusts whatever he's holding behind his back.

“Oh, come on,” I say, “What is it? Did everyone get a free Lancôme makeover coupon and you're stealing mine again?”

He shakes his head no and steps backward. “It's just junk,” he says, and so I shrug nonchalantly, like I couldn't care less, and turn to walk away. Then I pounce. When his back is to me, I ninja-leap toward him and pluck the thick envelope he's holding from over his shoulder.

“No!” he says, and scrambles after me as I dash to my cubicle.

“What's your problem?” I smile and plunk down in my chair as I tear open the envelope. “I could call store security and have
you arrested for tampering with the mail, you know. Besides, what's the big…what is this?” My eyes are scanning over the heavy-weight card inside, all swirly script and raised letters. It's an invitation. A wedding invitation.

Christopher shakes his head. “I tried,” he says, looking at the floor.

“Who's getting married?” I ask and my voice seems loud.

“
Him.
”

I sense impending disaster.

Christopher nods. “His.”

My stomach twists. I try to decipher the elegant script on the cream-colored card I'm holding but it's like my eyes can't focus, can't latch on to any sentence, just words, like stray bullets scattered across the page.
Mr. and Mrs…. request the honor of your…to celebrate the marriage of…and David Reynolds…First Baptist Church of…February the fourteenth in the year of our…

“David? David's getting married? My David?”

Christopher covers his face with his hand. “I tried to spare you, sweetie. I really did. There was no reason for you to ever know. Why the bastard would invite you to his wedding defies explanation.”

I turn the card over in my hand, as though it was a precious, valuable object.

“I got one, too,” he says. “They're getting married on Valentine's Day.”

My gerbil-size brain tries to process this. The wheel spins but I still don't understand. “But, who's he marrying?” I ask. Around me is the clang and chaos of the office. The Xerox machine running, co-workers talking, a radio somewhere broadcasting the news. It's hot in here. Incredibly hot.

“I don't know her,” Christopher says. “She's some rich girl from Minnetonka. She bought David a vintage Mercedes. Her
father just gave them this big bundle of cash for the wedding and they're having the reception at some country club.”

My eyes lock with his.

“We won't go,” he says quickly. “I think he was strapped to come up with as many friends and family members as she had. I bet he invited everybody who he didn't owe money to.”

My pulse is racing and there are these little white pinpricks of light at the edges of my eyes. I'm possibly having a migraine or a grand mal seizure. Maybe both. I try to center on my inner-nothingness, my core of equanimity, where it is always calm.

Screw calm. I don't even want calm.

I want angry.

I want
Slaughterhouse-Five
angry, Xena the Warrior Princess angry. I want to crash through David's living room window on a black horse and decapitate him. Then I want the black horse to pummel him into the consistency of rhubarb pie filling.

I can't do this.

Frantic mental slideshows start of David and our rocky on-again, off-again relationship, which technically, if you think about it, has been going on since the second grade. That's when his family moved in down the street from my parents' house. We went to different high schools and we never really hung out, but I always knew who he was. Years later I ran into him at a friend's Christmas party and it seemed like we'd known each other our entire lives. It seemed obvious, funny even, that we hadn't dated before because, after all, he was literally the boy next door. I felt this hysterical thrill after we made love the first time, because I really thought he was the one.

God. All the fights we had, all the jealousy, all the money I lent him. He was in a horrible indie rock band named Obscure Cold, which he said was influenced by both Soul Asylum and Prince, which I told him was sort of an incongruous concept, but
he said I just didn't get it. Plus he'd had a little success at the start when a small label signed the band and they recorded an album that did okay, but not great. Then David got into a fight with his bass player, who quit, and then his drummer, who also quit, and so he rebuilt the band with new musicians, whom he got along with, and who also sucked.

I had to sit through every single Obscure Cold show, spend countless hours smiling vacantly in half-empty bars while sipping a warming Leinenkugel beer and listening to the hard-to-totally-track beat. Afterward, when the bar managers invariably told him they didn't take in enough money to pay the band, I'd have to prop him up emotionally and financially, tell him it rocked and eventually people would get it. I told him I believed in him, which I didn't.

We fought. We made up. We fought again. The relationship wouldn't work but wouldn't end. We were both stuck in a crappy relationship, but we were both too insecure/lazy/bored/unsure to call it off. We actually dated for two years, and even with all the trouble, or maybe because of it, toward the end, I actually believed he was going to propose to me. He broke up with me in a cheap Mexican restaurant instead. This, the man I thought I would marry. Now he's marrying someone else, and I'm invited to watch him pledge his undying love and eternal soul to some gold-plated bitch from the suburbs.

“It's a gorgeous invitation!” I chirp. I can hear the manic quality in my voice. “It looks so expensive!” I say. “Rich and creamy!”

Then I bite the card. Just tear the corner off and start chewing on it.

“What are you doing?” Christopher shrieks and grabs at it. “Stop it! You're ruining stationery!” He wrenches the invitation away from me and I sit there panting. I spit out a little paper bit.
I feel like my left eyeball is going to shoot out and hit my fabric cubicle wall.

“I have a meeting,” I say. “I have to get ready.”

“Okay,” Christopher says, “but no freak-outs, anger-dialing, or unfortunate e-mails, right?”

“Right.”

“And no texting him!”

“Okay,” I say. “Fine.”

After he leaves I want to scream and cry and weep or at least knock over Big Trish's fern, but instead I sneak downstairs to the third floor, my hands cold on the big glass doors that lead to the skyway. I storm out through the maze of people bustling about, wishing I could give each one of them a good hard shove. I finally get to the familiar red Cinnabon counter and my favorite red-hatted Cinnabon girl. “Hello, Satan,” I say.

“Hey.” she snaps her gum. “The usual?”

I nod. All self-control collapsed under the heavy weight of the sugar-sweet air. Screw the Minibon. Minibons are for losers anyway, for people who aren't totally sure they've given up. Not me. I know where I stand, and that's directly on a quickly moving conveyor belt to a cow pasture. Plus, I made it all the way here, out of the office, across the skyway, and into the greasy heart of the food court. To wimp out now and get a miniature Cinnabon wouldn't make any sense. The Cinnabon girl asks me if I want extra icing and I shoot her a look. She slathers on more icing and hands me the box.

“Thanks for coming to hell,” she says, all cheery. “Come again!”

I whisk away my hot, lard-based contraband, guarding it carefully, as though feral dogs might bound out of the storefronts and attack me. I hear someone call my name. “Jen! Jennifer Johnson! Come here!”

It's the lady in Frontier Travel, the little travel agency three stores down from Cinnabon.

“Hey, Susan,” I say, frowning at the slender woman behind the desk. “Any cruises to the other side of the earth today?”

She smiles. “How about Australia! You get free salsa lessons and dry-cleaning plus unlimited shrimp bar.”

“No thanks.” I glower out the window at the snow storming by. “Why go to Australia when we're already in paradise?”

My cell phone rings and I wave good-bye as I step outside to answer it.

“Hello, Miss Johnson,” says a familiar voice.

“Mr. Jennings!” I say. “I see you have a new phone number.”

“Well, you stopped answering the other number,” he says. I start to walk briskly back to the office, where I know the bad reception will cut us off.

“I thought we had decided you were going to send us a payment, Miss Johnson.”

I laugh lightly. “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you calling me ‘Miss'?” I ask. “Really, for most of my life I was a ‘Miss' and then I don't know what happened, but it was like by group consensus people just started calling me ‘Ms.' Not you, though. You always say ‘Miss.'”

“Glad you like it, Miss Johnson. Let's talk about that payment.”

“Well, Mr. Jennings, it's a funny thing, I did mean to send the payment, but I got a little behind in my—oh, Mr. Jennings? Are you there?” The phone crackles and goes dead. Ha! Mr. Jennings, my credit-card-debt collector, foiled again.

He's actually a nice man.

I smuggle my precious, precious Cinnabon back into the office and am tiptoeing down the quiet row of cubicles on kitty-
cat feet, almost at my office, when I hear, “Monkey-bun? Is that you?”

I freeze.
No
,
no
,
no.

I forgot it was today. Ashley's back.

I should have stapled a Post-it note to my forehead last night that said:

CRAZY BACK MONDAY. ENJOY FREEDOMS NOW.

Ashley is my boss, and she makes me nervous. She's a year younger than me and she looks like a TV anchor or one of those women on a pharmaceutical commercial or a young televangelist's wife. She has perfect Aqua Net hair and wears tight brocade vests and sugary pastel shirts. She's alternately sweet as pie and then viper-sting vengeful. You never know which Ashley you're going to get. Every morning I want to ask her, “And who are we today?”

She smiles when I step into her office. And why shouldn't she? Everything about her life seems easy and lucky. Her husband is a successful commercial real estate agent and she has a naturally high metabolism, making her an unbelievable size zero; she's always giving me weight-loss tips. She calls me “cupcake” and “sugar” and “dumplin',” among other choice endearments, to prove what a fun boss she is, and how nice she is to her underlings, especially the fat ones.

She sits skinny as a stir stick behind her faux wood desk and smoothes a lapel of her tapestry suit coat. I think my grandmother had quilted curtains like that. “There you are!” she says. “How's my little plum pudding been? Oh, don't make that face at me, sweetie. They can't Botox your whole face. I told you, plum pudding is a term of
endearment.
I only call my favorite people plum puddings.”

Ashley likes to answer questions no one has asked. In this case, I guess she's answering the question, “Why are you calling
me a demeaning nickname?” but we'll never know for sure. My co-workers and I have actually just started to study up on the early warning signs of schizophrenia, just in case we can convince HR she's crazy.

“So, Brad Keller?” I ask, struggling for the right words. “He works here now?”

Those were not the right words. Ashley shoots me a look. “Got a crush? Well, get in line, sweetie. He's a very eligible bachelor.”

“Right.” I study the ceiling as though it were incredibly interesting. “So, how was Cabo?”

“It was inspiring.”

“Well, you got color.”

She picks up a brochure from her desk. “You have to go. Maybe you could go to one of those Club Med singles resorts. Or a singles cruise! I wonder if they have them for people your age, though. Usually I think it's a younger thing.”

“Sounds inspiring,” I say.

She eyes the white box I'm holding. “Another cinnamon roll? Do they have a frequent-eater card or something?”

“I wish.” I fake-chuckle, which makes her fake-chuckle, and there we are, fake-chuckling at ten in the morning.

“You're wearing all black today,” she says. “I think that's a good choice for you. A lot of the magazines, well, all of them really, say all black is a big no-no, but I think for you it's fine.”

She takes out a small bottle of lavender hand lotion, removes her rings one by one, and sets them on the desk in front of her. “I wanted to ask you about the women's accessories launch campaign. ‘Arm candy'? I'm not sure what that is.”

She dollops a bit of lotion on the back of her hand and starts rhythmically massaging her hands. I stare at her desk. “Ted
and I thought it was a cute alternative name for the women's accessories department. Arm candy is like saying, Here's something pretty for your arm. Like eye candy, but arm candy. You know?”

“I see,” she says. “The thing is, pork chop, I know you're all very creative and sometimes I actually think that's the challenge. Maybe you should refamiliarize yourself with our demographic. Our customers are hardworking folks. Sensible, practical, economical, brand-aware, and bargain-conscious. Women whose core values are commitment and endurance. Things I know are hard for you to understand.”

“Got it.” I just want to smash a stapler into her eye.

“Okay, pumpkin, go back and give me something I can actually use. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Super. I don't think the store can hold up the entire women's accessories launch because one little writer can't come up with a name for the purse department.” Then she stares at the door. I turn around and it's none other than Mr. Ed Keller. Ashley stands up quickly, knocking a sample book onto the floor. “Hello, Mr. Keller!” she says. “How nice to see you!”