Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single (7 page)

BOOK: Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single
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I come out of my daze and get out a five-dollar bill.

“We need a little more for tip,” he says.

I fish out another dollar.

 

I drive home carefully on the icy streets. I stand at the sink with my coat still on as I gulp down an entire glass of tap water. I call Christopher, but he's not picking up. It's moments like these
when I'm not sure if I should tell my friends what horrible thing just happened to me, or if I should just keep it to myself. If I tell Christopher, I'll get to vent and he'll tell me how beautiful I am and what a jackass BigKev is and that I shouldn't let anyone make me feel bad about myself. He'll pack aphorisms and platitudes around my bruised heart like ice chips until I feel better and we agree no one can know the mystery of the universe or fully understand the beauty of the broken world, and so on…which frankly sounds exhausting because, let's face it, we've recited this particular script a lot.

On the other hand, if I bury the events of this evening deep, I can pretend it never happened. I can rewind the tape, cut the scene out, and burn it. I can reassign the event to something I saw on TV. Something that happened to somebody else. A story I could even relate to others like, “This one time this one girl went on an online date with some bastard and you won't believe what he said to her.” Then I can hear all the
I don't believe it!
s and
what an asshole!
s without the humiliating story being attributed to me, already the keeper of so many humiliating stories.

I decide to bury it.

I pour myself a big glass of wine and go to the living room, where I sit cross-legged in front of my small white wooden dollhouse that has green shutters and loads of perfect tiny furniture. I've had it since I was little and I've always messed around with it when I'm stressed out. Miniature things soothe me. So does wreaking havoc on the small Tinkertoy family that lives inside. Right now the scenario is rather spicy. While the kids are asleep in their tiny respective rooms and the little wife is in the kitchen standing mutely at the refrigerator, the little husband is lying down stiffly on the living room couch with a big, nude splayed-leg Barbie on top of him.

I sip my wine and move the family around, giving them new
emergencies to handle. A plastic dinosaur peering in through an upstairs window, a miniature space alien walking through the front door with his laser gun drawn, a Christmas ornament Bambi grazing on the small AstroTurf lawn outside the window. It's a form of art therapy.

I finally get bored and retrieve my sacrosanct bottle of Lunesta. Thirty little blue pills in a prescription bottle to be used only in the case of emergency, because they cost about twenty dollars each. The bottle sternly advises that you take only one pill and you don't drink alcohol, because this intensifies the effect. If only they hadn't told me.

I get in my comfy blue flannel nightgown, the one I wear when there's absolutely no chance of a man being around, and I pop two Lunestas and drink wine while sitting in bed and staring out the deep blue window at the flurry of snow driving past, asking myself:

How the hell did I end up stuck here?

I eventually pass out on my pillow and the day dissolves under my eyelids. I slip into a comalike sleep sponsored by the lovely chemists at Lunesta, and it's all over. No emergency here. It's like the whole night never happened.

 

At work the next morning I sit in the parking lot and try to pull myself together before I go inside, while the painful echo of BigKev saying
lose a little weight
is playing on a continuous loop in my head. I have this piercing dehydration/humiliation headache and I look like I've been in a small fistfight. I used an antipuff serum and calming facial wash, along with three different kinds of cover-up, but what I really need is some spackle and a trowel.

I can't stop thinking about David. I know he was a bastard, but besides that, he was perfect for me. Tall, creative, musical.
He loved bad bars and strong drinks, but he wasn't anywhere close to being an alcoholic. He was funny. He had such a perfect sense of humor. The only problem with David was he didn't feel the same way about me. He said he did, but he was constantly standing me up and treating me like shit, but if I'm going to be honest, there was something about that that seemed right.

David was very forceful. Sex with him was like being bumped with a shopping cart. Then he was done and snoring next to you.

I linger in my car and re-do my makeup, hoping maybe Brad Keller might show up again. This time I could be charming and funny instead of paranoid and enraged. Maybe he likes angry, complaining women. Some men do, especially if their mothers were that way. Maybe Brad has had his share of women who are people pleasers and sycophants; maybe he's still single because he hasn't found that sassy firecracker he's been looking for. I wait in my car as long as I possibly can, my windows fogging over with my breath until I'm late for the plus-size prom dress shoot.

I get up to my cubicle and wrestle off my hundred-pound Eddie Bauer parka. The thing is double-insulated, double-quilted, and double-stuffed, and will keep you warm in an ice storm, but it makes me look huge and it's freaking heavy. When I wear it I feel like I'm giving a seventh-grader a piggyback ride. “Good God!” I say, dumping it onto the floor. “Why the hell do we live in Minnesota?”

“I don't know.” Ted shrugs. “Nice people and lots of parking.”

“More like nice apathy and lots of depression.”

“Ooh,” he says, “those would make good mascots. We could take two Minnesota loons and name them Depression Loon and Apathy Loon. Depression Loon would ask Apathy Loon to peck him to death but Apathy Loon wouldn't care.” He looks at his watch. “Aren't you late for the shoot?”

I'm even later than I thought. I try to pull everything together and Ted hands me his copy of the shot list when I can't find mine. I snap it up and scamper down the hall. God. I have to remember to never say “scamper” again.

By the time I get to the studio—a boxy, hot room located conveniently in the Keller's basement by the boilers—they've already set up the lights for the set, which is a series of large white pillars and a wooden gazebo with a barbecue grill in the background. Very midwestern belle epoque Southern plantation hot dish. My eyes adjust slowly, and I make my way over to the coffee table, which I'm hoping will also have aspirin or perhaps prescription-strength pain killers.

I hear someone shout, “The list? Is it here
now
?” and I hurry toward the brilliantly lit set, where Alan, the catalogue director says, “Oh,
thank you.
I hope it wasn't too much trouble to keep us all waiting.”

Then Brad blooms into view.

“Mr. Keller here is watching the shoot today,” Alan snaps. “He's the new boss. We do anything he says, got it? Ed Keller's direct orders. Straight from the top. The people who have been here for years are not the boss now, the new guy, who just got here, he's the boss.”

“Okay,” I say and Brad raises an eyebrow at me.

I smile.

“You're going to double-check the shot list, Jen,” Alan says. “Since the photo department got bitched at last time, someone from marketing is going to keep track this time. That way if there are any problems, you can all just bitch at yourselves.”

I smile and nod, as though he's just paid me a great compliment.

“Sit here,” Alan says and kicks an overturned bucket next to the camera. He expects me to sit on a bucket. Lovely. How el
egant. I want to slap him right across the face but instead I sit down. Alan storms off to the dressing rooms where he starts shouting at someone else and I try to look pretty, perky, and nonchalant as Brad talks to our new photographer, who's actually a nice guy.

Our staff photographers in the past have tended to be dickheads. We had one who looked like a fiddle-with-the-girls gym teacher, and another who used dental floss on set in between takes.
Flick! Flick! Flick!
The last staff photographer looked like a little boiled midget, a Napoleon-size red-faced guy who was always screaming. He actually dropped dead during last year's Easter shoot. He was yelling at the kids on set, who were all perched on top of Styrofoam Easter eggs and having trouble keeping their balance when all of a sudden he stopped shouting and dropped to the floor. Total renal failure. All the little kids freaked out and started screaming and a boy wearing a powder-blue tuxedo actually peed in his pants.

Alan leads the plus-size models out along with Nell, the chubby wardrobe assistant. God, she's really gotten chunky. She's got a very sweet, perky personality, and she's always good for a smile or a quick joke, but then again she has to be. She's chubby. David once said I was chubby, “in a lovable way,” and I cried for two days.

Sitting there, frozen in a pert expression, I smell something strange. Wait. I smell my armpits. How is this possible? How could I have forgotten
deodorant?
I managed to put a top coat of clear gloss on my toenails, but I forgot deodorant? I look around like maybe people are already talking about it and keep my arms firmly clamped to my sides. I text-message Christopher and tell him we have an odor emergency. I can do this. I can accept disgusting body odors are for some reason a natural part of the human condition. I just won't raise my arms. Ever.

The models get in position and Nell shuffles over to me. She squats down and I tighten my arms to my sides. Why does she have to sit so close? “I tried to put her in the Beverly Hills blue dress,” she sighs, “but it was too big for her. The plus-size girls get smaller every year.”

“Thanks,” I say and cross Blue Beverly off the shot list without moving my arms.

“Sometimes I wonder if the dressmakers are secretly trying to make fun of these girls,” Nell says. “I mean, why would you name a plus-size prom dress the Clara? That's just mean. That just makes me think of Clarabell the Clown, or Clarence the Cow.”

“Yep,” I say, wishing she'd pick up on my lack of eye contact or comment and go away.

“And the Queenie?” she snorts. “I mean, come on. Queen-size! Someone somewhere is laughing their ass off.”

“I bet they are,” I say. Brad walks past us and I hope Nell doesn't notice me stiffen.

“I heard Brad Keller took one of the cosmetics girls out on a date,” she whispers.

“What?”

“No, thank you!” she says. “That family is crazy. I would never go out with him.”

Well it's not like you're going to have to worry about that,
I think, and then by the look on her face, I realize I said it out loud.

She sniffs and leaves. Crap. Now I have another mortal enemy. It's so easy to collect them when you work with so many women.

I study the models as the camera sets up. It's true, these girls look like
maybe
they're size ten. The brunette looks like an eight. I sag. That would mean—no, wait, I try to push the thought out but it comes charging back.
I am bigger than a plus-size model
. I
was hanging onto size ten this summer, hanging on for dear life, but this fall I lost my grip and tumbled into a size twelve. And here I was considering the possibility of going on a date with Brad Keller?

Me? The jumbo loser girl?

I sit and think every vile thought I can about myself. I beat myself up. While the lights are flashing I am tearing through an inner dialogue that would make Mommie Dearest frightened. I am stupid, fat, lazy, ugly, unlucky, bad at card games, bad at math, a terrible driver, a worse tennis player, I snore, I get gas when I eat ice cream, I'm utterly tone deaf. I'm stuck in this job in this city in this life and nothing will ever be different because I will never be different. I will always be the same flaky, undependable, untalented, overlooked girl.

Brad turns around and smiles at me. A hard jolt of electricity flashes down my right arm and I almost fall off my bucket. I smile and blush without meaning or wanting to. I have my arms clamped so hard to my sides it hurts. I take out my phone and surreptitiously text-message Christopher, begging him to bring me deodorant.

The strobes keep flashing and the girls strike different poses. In a way, it's easier to shoot plus-size models; it goes more quickly because there are fewer pose options. There's no jumping in the air or squatting for these girls. There's no hugging each other or crossing their arms, nothing that squishes arm fat. There are no serious expressions. No staring in the distance or pursing their lips. Big girls are happy girls, period. They can smile, put one hand on their hip, or pivot. That's about it.

I shouldn't be so mean. I don't mean to be mean—after all, a lot of these girls are just like me. They'll go to prom with their girlfriends, telling each other it doesn't matter that they don't have dates, that they have each other, which is all a girl really
needs. And they'll all laugh and sneak a bottle of champagne into the rented limo and they'll all be very careful not to look too deeply into each other's eyes, because behind the fun and festivity, the smiles and the laughing, is a growing pool of panic. If they don't have dates now, will they ever? If they haven't found the man they're going to marry, will they ever?

And if I was there with them, so many years older and wiser, what could I tell them? If I told them the truth, I would say something I never dreamt of believing back then. I would tell them to grab a nice guy and make it work no matter what. I'd tell them to consider arranged marriages, that their parents will be able to pick a better mate than they will. I would tell them no one is perfect and no Prince Charming is coming. I would tell them there aren't any white horses or knights in shining armor to save them. They have to save themselves. I would tell them they have every reason to feel panic, and to hurry.

The shoot finally, mercifully ends and the lights are shut off one by one, cooling the room by degrees. Just as people start leaving, Christopher finally appears.

BOOK: Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single
6.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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