Romantically Challenged (3 page)

“Agreed,” Simone said. “But since you haven’t affirmatively decided
not
to have children, you’ll want to keep your options open. Therefore, you’ll need to get engaged by the time you’re thirty-four so you can plan a nice wedding, or, in your case, so your mother can plan a nice wedding. And you’ll want to know the guy for at least a year first, which means you’ll have to meet your future husband when you’re thirty-three.”

“I’m already thirty-two.”

“Plenty of time to find a husband,” she said.

“Easy for you to say. You’re engaged.”

She stretched out her long, shapely legs. “Yes, but that’s only because I did lots of dating first. It’s really just a numbers game. You just haven’t met enough men.”

“Meeting men,”—or at least ones I’m interested in—“isn’t as easy for me as it is for you. I don’t look like a model.” 

Greg, the other sixth-year associate in the firm and the only natural blond I know, leaned against the doorway to my office. “What is that I heard about models?” he asked.

“You were standing outside the door listening, weren’t you?” Simone said.  

“Of course not,” Greg replied. “I was just walking by when I thought I heard you say some models were coming in and I wanted to offer my services—in case they needed an escort or something.”

Simone stood up. “I don’t know how your wife puts up with you.”

“I’m sure she considers herself a very lucky woman,” Greg said to Simone’s back as she walked out. To which Simone responded by slamming her office door shut.

Some day I was going to figure out what made those two so combustible.

Greg sat down in the guest chair Simone had just vacated and put his feet up on the corner of my desk. It was a good thing I hadn’t planned on getting any work done this morning.

“What’s up, Greg?”

“Nothing much,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you not to sell yourself short. If I were single, I’d go out with you.”

“So you
were
listening.”

“Yes,” he said, “but you’re missing the point.”

“Which is?”

“That it’s actually easier for women who look like you than for women who look like Simone.”

This ought to be good. “How do you figure that?”

“Because you’re approachable. A lot of guys don’t ask out the beautiful women because they’re afraid they’ll get rejected.”

I knew I wasn’t a goddess, but I didn’t need Greg to confirm it for me. “So what are you saying? Men ask out ugly women because they think the ugly ones are so desperate there’s no way they’d turn them down?”

“No,” he said. “What I’m saying is that a guy is a lot more likely to ask out a cute girl, like you for instance, rather than one who’s knock-down gorgeous, because he thinks he actually has a chance with the cute one.”

I wasn’t sure which was worse, Greg’s theory or my desperately wanting to believe it was true. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I’m sure if you put yourself out there you will have no trouble getting dates. You just need to get out more.”

I was still skeptical.

“Trust me,” he said and flashed me his reptilian smile.

Before I could come up with a snappy response, the reminder window on my computer popped up. It was 11:50. Rosenthal’s fifty-minute hour with his shrink was up, which meant that it was time for the rest of us to go back to work.

The Scintillating Single Life

I felt guilty for wasting almost the whole morning, so I paid penance by spending the entire afternoon on the most boring task imaginable: reviewing documents. By six o’clock, I’d sifted through seven banker boxes, over ten thousand sheets of paper, and I still hadn’t found the smoking gun. Probably because there was none. There never was, except, of course, in the movies and on TV. But I was still required to look.

I was calculating the odds of getting caught if I snuck out early (less than 50% since Lucy wasn’t there to flub my excuse) when my computer dinged and my e-mail message indicator popped up on the screen. It was from Rosenthal. My and the rest of the litigation attorneys’ presence was required in the conference room at seven o’clock.

* * *

Simone and I groaned simultaneously. The long, narrow conference room table was covered with trays of sandwiches and bowls of salads. If Rosenthal was buying us all dinner, it meant he was planning on a late night.

Simone, Greg and the other three litigators in the firm all went back to their respective offices to call their significant others. They wanted to warn them not to worry if they didn’t arrive at their usual time.

I stayed in the conference room, alone. I didn’t miss Scumbag, he was a liar and a cheat, but I did miss having someone to call. That was the worst part about being single. No one worries about you if you don’t come home.

* * *

We ate all of the pastrami, and half of the turkey and roast beef sandwiches, and finished off most of the Caesar salad. Rosenthal showed up twenty minutes later with a specially prepared high protein, low-fat grilled salmon concoction, and we all had to breathe in the garlic fumes for ten minutes while he ate.

After picking his teeth at the table and checking his hair in the reflection from the empty foil container, Rosenthal was ready to begin. “I called this meeting to tell you all about the barnstorm I had on the way to work this morning.”

Simone, who was seated across from me, inconspicuously drew the number one in the air. Rosenthal’s first malapropism of the week. His record was five, but we were sure he could beat it.

“What we need,” he continued, “is a client party.”

That’s a brainstorm?

“We could invite the clients to the Christmas party,” Parker, the firm’s most senior associate and designated scapegoat, suggested.

“No,” Rosenthal said and pressed his lips together before the words “you idiot” escaped. “We need to have one now. Something big and glitzy. We need to remind them that we’re here, we’re talented, and we’re ready for their business.…”

Rosenthal droned on for at least another half an hour before Parker excused himself to go the restroom. Five minutes later a greenish Greg followed, then an extremely pale Simone, then me.

* * *

We all waited together in the Cedars Sinai Hospital Emergency Room. It didn’t take us long to figure out we’d gotten food poisoning. Everyone but Rosenthal. He was the only one that hadn’t eaten the tainted deli meat.

None of us wanted to go to the emergency room, but Rosenthal insisted. He wanted medical records for the lawsuit against the restaurant. He told us we could each keep whatever settlement he extracted for pain and suffering, but since he paid us for sick days, he was keeping the payment for lost wages himself. We weren’t in any condition to argue with him.

* * *

I’d been lying on the table in Exam Room Two for what seemed like hours when my knight in white lab coat walked in. “So how are you feeling this evening, Ms. Burns?”

I lifted my head off the table and stared into his dark brown eyes. He was medium build, had light brown hair, and adorable dimples in both cheeks. I really wished I didn’t smell like vomit.

“I’ve been better,” I said, trying not to breathe on him.

I read his name tag while he examined me. D. COHEN, M.D.

“What’s the
D
for?”

“David.”

David Cohen. He had to be Jewish. I was about to look for a ring when I started to feel the bile rise in my throat. He must’ve recognized the signs because he handed me a silver basin and told me the nurse would be right in.

* * *

I sucked on ice chips before I left, just in case I ran into Dr. David. But by the time I was released, he was gone. As were all of my coworkers. They’d all been picked up by their boyfriends, husbands and wives. If it wasn’t after eleven, I might’ve called Kaitlyn for a ride. Instead, I called myself a cab, picked up my car at the office, and drove myself home.

I walked into my dark apartment and turned on all the lights. I checked my answering machine—no messages. I flopped down on the couch and tried to tickle the Elmo doll that now lived with me instead of my niece Ashley. No response. His batteries were dead. I’d tickled him so much lately, I’d worn him out. I glanced over at the plant in the corner of my living room, the last remaining vestige of Scumbag. The once thriving palm was brown and withered. I was the only living being in the house.

That’s when I decided. Cosmic karma be damned.

A Whole New Me

The shot they’d given me at the hospital the night before had worked. I woke up the next morning feeling fine, but that was no reason not to take advantage of bona fide sick day. Besides, I needed some free time to buy Elmo fresh batteries, pick up a new plant, and find my soul mate.

I left a voicemail at the office, shut the alarm clock, and went back to sleep. My mother woke me an hour later.

“Are you okay?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

“Of course, Mom. What’s wrong?”

“Your assistant called us this morning and told us you had to go to the hospital last night.”

I was going to kill Lucy. I spent the next ten minutes reassuring my mother that I wasn’t going to die of food poisoning any time in the near future and promised to “doctor myself up,” whatever that meant. Then I called Lucy.

I didn’t even wait for her perky voice to finish saying “Julie Burns’ Office” before I interrupted with “Why did you call my mother and tell her I went to the hospital?”

“Because she’s your emergency contact.”

I imagined her innocent, freckled face and instantly felt guilty for wanting to strangle her, even though I still wanted to strangle her. “But there was no emergency. And how did you even know?”

“Greg told me this morning.”

“Greg’s in the office?”

“Of course.”

“How about Simone?”

“She’s here too. I think you and Parker are the only ones out.”

Not a good association. I liked Parker, but I wanted to be made partner next year, not the new firm scapegoat.

“I’ll be in at eleven.”

“I thought you were sick?”

“I’m feeling better,” I said and hung up. God knows what she’d tell Rosenthal. If she wasn’t his step-daughter, I would’ve replaced her ages ago, but I couldn’t even get her transferred to another attorney. I’d tried, but Rosenthal wouldn’t allow it. He told me she’s my “pendant to bear.”

* * *

I called Kaitlyn from the car on my way to work. I was hoping she’d meet me for dinner and a soul mate searching strategy session. Her assistant told me she was out sick. Since it was one of those rare, smog-free Los Angeles summer days, I tried her cell before finally reaching her at home. She greeted me by coughing in my ear.

“I guess that means you’re not faking,” I said.

“No,” she coughed again. “You know I’d never do that.”

That made one of us. “What’s wrong?”

“Summer flu. It’s been going around the office.”

“Do you need anything? Food? Drugs? Entertainment?”

“No. I’ll just lay here and pray for an early death.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

After a loud nose-blowing she said, “I don’t know. Last night maybe.”

“I’ll be there by eight.”

After work, I stopped at the grocery store for orange juice and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, then Jerry’s Deli for some chicken noodle soup, and finally Best Buy for a copy of
Out of Africa
, Kaitlyn’s favorite movie. It wasn’t the evening I’d envisioned, but Kaitlyn needed some TLC.

Kaitlyn answered the door in her short-sleeve cloud pajamas, her red hair flattened on one side of her head and puffed out three inches on the other. She laid on the living room couch while I set our plates on the coffee table. Kaitlyn had a kitchen table, but in the ten years I’d known her I’d never seen her use it for anything other than storage.

“Hallelujah,” she said and threw up her gangly arms when I’d told her my decision.

“Calm down, I haven’t found him yet.” I was trying to soak up the soup she’d spilled before it reached her Persian rug. “I’ve just decided to look. The problem is, I don’t know where.”

“Singles bar,” she suggested.

“Only someone who hasn’t been on a date in four years would think you could find your soul mate in a singles bar.” Kaitlyn had gone directly from her college-sweetheart, to her law school sweetheart, to Billy, her first and only blind-date. They’d been together ever since, although the last nine months had been long-distance.

“I know,” she said, practically throwing her spoon at me. “The guy from the plane.”

“Are you out of your mind!”

“I’m not saying he’s necessarily The One. But you should at least get to know him before you rule him out.”

“First, he never even called me and—“

“Yet,” she said. “Did you check your messages today?”

“No, but—“

“No buts, go check your machine. And get me the ice cream while you’re up.”

I did as I was told and found a message from Plane Guy asking me to call him back. I hate it when Kaitlyn’s right.

“Call him back and tell him you’ll go out with him Friday night.”

“But he can’t be The One,” I whined.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you Prince Charming might not come in the package you expect?”

“No, and even if she did, you know I never listen to my mother.”

“Then listen to mine.” Kaitlyn’s mother was a psychologist and had been married three times, the last one when she was sixty. I had to give the woman credit. She had a career when most women didn’t and she knew how to find a good man.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means keep an open mind.”

“I have an open mind.”

“No you don’t. Since Scumbag, you run every guy you meet through your mental checklist and if he fails in any category, no matter how minor, you immediately eliminate him.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then why haven’t you gone on a date in almost a year?”

“Because I find great parking spaces instead of great men. It’s my karma. I have to find a way to reverse it. Maybe I should start valeting everywhere I go.”