The Gift Bag Chronicles (7 page)

“Well, girls, don’t you look a pair.”

We look up. Mrs. Schmidt heading our way. “Is Helen in the kitchen? I thought I’d see if she needed any help.”

Amy and I both nod. “Yes, I’m sure she’d love that,” I say, shooting her a smile. “Tell her I’m coming right in.”

She floats off in a cloud of perfume, and I turn back to Amy. “Thanks for the advice.”

“It’s not just me,” she says, nodding at the living room, where Charles is still holding court. “Look at the evidence. He’s cute, got a great job, everyone loves him, and he doesn’t even like sports, and I say that as the wife of a man who would die perfectly happy as long as some game was on.”

I look at her. It’s like she’s toting up a scorecard. “You think
that’s why I’m with Charles? Because he’s good-looking, has great people skills, and hates baseball?”

She studies me like I’m crazy. “Well, it doesn’t hurt that he’s a partner in your agency.”

“I’m
a partner in the agency.”

“Okay,” she says, her voice rising. “So you’re both partners. It’s what I’m saying. You’re perfect for each other. I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

“Who’s perfect for who and why are you two still standing here?”

We turn. Helen shouldering her way past the kitchen door, her arms filled with the brown bags of apples. I have to say, tied up with their red-and-white-checked ribbons, they look totally adorable.

I reach for the bags. “Here, let me help you.”

Amy shakes her head impatiently. “I was just saying I thought Alex and Charles were really good together. And that I didn’t understand —”

“Well, only if Mrs. McIlleney doesn’t get him first,” Helen says, eyeing me over the bags.

“Mom!”

“Alex, I’m kidding. Although there was the one summer when Mary … Well, never mind. The point is, Charles is lovely,” she says, piling the rest of the bags into my arms. “Now, let’s put these on the dining room table, because we don’t want anyone to leave without their party favor. Something to remember this night.”

I look at the bags and back at her. Helen’s face is unreadable. I can’t tell if she’s kidding, or teasing me, or siding with me over Amy—and that would be a first. Or maybe it’s like with Charles a minute ago. It’s the first time I’ve seen Helen in a long time when she wasn’t annoyed, or tired, or disappointed. “You’re right, Mom,” I say, turning for the dining room with the bags. “We don’t want anyone to forget their gift bag.”

Somewhere over Palm Springs, the pilot clicks on the way
they do, sounding like Robert Mitchum or Dan Rather, with their all-American drawls—right out of Tulsa or Dallas, football games and barbecues and Purple Hearts won in the war. Like they’ve just flown through hell and back, but damn if they aren’t bringin’ us down for a sweet landing and maybe a nice steak dinner after. It makes you happy just to be alive. Wedged in seat 5B, I pull the blanket around me, craving only more sleep, more of the pilot’s lullaby: “Folks, we sure do thank you for flying with us today.”

No, thank
you
. I burrow deeper into my business-class seat, upgrades being one of the only consolations for the freneticism of my life. Thank
you
, for my cocoon in the sky, this hammock between here and there, between then and next. Like the bubble in a level, I’m perfectly balanced in the air.

“Ma’am, you’ll have to bring your seat back up. We’re about to land.”

So much for my cocoon. I pull the blanket from my head and gaze sleepily around the cabin. Light is pouring in, and everyone is moving in that restless, get-me-out-of-here way, snapping closed briefcases and laptops, jamming magazines and newspapers into the seat back pockets. Like they can’t wait to spring free of this steel canister. Get back to their real lives.

Fools.

I lean into the aisle and check the line to the bathroom. At least three people. Shit. I check my watch. Almost 5:00
P.M.
Or it was. I pull out the stem and rewind it, unspooling the hours, hurtling backward. 2:00
P.M.
A whole day in front of me. Again. I run my hands through my hair and attempt my first executive decision of the day: do I join the potty line or wait to pull myself together after we land? I reach between my feet for my bag, pull it into my lap, fishing around for my lip gloss and BlackBerry. With one hand I smooth the Sahara of my lips, and with the other I click on for my e-mails.

“Ma’am, please turn off all PDA devices; we’re about to land.”

“I’m not turning it
on
on,” I say futilely as she hustles up the aisle, collecting glasses, napkins, trash as if her life depended on it. Oh, screw it. I toss the blanket aside and scramble to my feet. I can never think clearly when I have to pee.

“Hey, Alex, how was your weekend?” Tracy the receptionist says when I finally call the office. I’m standing on the lower level of the United terminal at LAX waiting for the car. Technically, I’m outside, but given the concrete overpass above me and all the traffic and exhaust down here, I might as well be in another of Dante’s circles of hell. The one he happened to miss by about seven hundred years.

“My weekend? Fabulous,” I shout over the roar of traffic, because honestly, given how much I had been dreading the whole
Meet the Parents
weekend, it had turned out great. Better than great. Not only was it fine being home again and Jack and Helen had totally hit it off with Charles — even the cocktail party was fun, and my gift bags of Heritage apples were as much a hit with the suburban crowd as my boyfriend — but Charles and I were back to normal. After weeks, months, of feeling like we had been drifting apart, pulled away by our jobs and living in two different cities, it finally seemed like we were back to where we were when we first started going out.

Still, I’m hardly going to share all that with our receptionist. Not that my relationship with Charles is a secret. But I’m just not crazy about having the nuances of it broadcast all over the office. That’s the downside of a workplace romance. Everybody knows way too much about your life. Your sex life. And it’s even worse if, despite your best efforts, it all goes horribly wrong, and then what are you left with? Sympathetic glances and whispers from co-workers, and worse, their assistants, who still have to work with both of you. Alex Davidson: Chief Spinster in Charge. Or something to that effect.

Never mind that Suzanne was one of those brave eternally single women who plowed into their fifties with their unmarried heads held high. Symphony subscriptions. Book clubs. Pilates. A
full
life. Compared to her, I’m pathetic. Still, God knows, given the right job,
my
job, for instance, work could — would — eat you alive. Before you know it, you’re in your forties, still single, still exhausted, and wondering how you missed the turnoff back there in your thirties:
MARRIAGE, NEXT EXIT
. It had taken me years since my divorce to find a guy normal enough,
willing
enough, to go the boyfriend-girlfriend route. Besides, after this past weekend, I’m even more convinced that the only thing wrong with us is the fact that we don’t spend enough time together. Still, the lower level of LAX at rush hour is hardly the spot to ponder one’s place in the cosmos.

“So is Caitlin there?” I yell over the traffic, trying to move things along.

“She’s not back from lunch yet. Do you want me to put you through to her voice mail?”

“No, just tell her to call me on my cell when she gets back.” I’m tempted to add “unless, of course, I beat her back to the office,” which is always a possibility, given Caitlin’s deeply appreciative attitude toward lunch and time away from the office in general. What is with that generation? Even worse than the baby boomers and their sense of entitlement. At least they were willing to work for the BMW and the Sub-Zero. “Is Steven there?” I add.

“I think he’s still at the walk-through with the magazine,” Tracy says. “Do you want his assistant?”

Not really. “Sure, put Aaron on.”

I get up to speed, or as much as I can take in, given the jet-lagged-dehydrated-carbon-dioxide-fume fog that is my brain at the moment.

“You can also try him on his cell,” Aaron says.

“That’s okay,” I holler. “I can barely hear you. I’ll just see him when I get to the office.”

I click off and scan the line of traffic for the car. All the exhaust is giving me a headache. What was the car number again? BLS1049. 1059? Well, they usually have your name on a card in the window. I pull out my BlackBerry and start to scroll down the list of e-mails. Jennifer. Oscar. Steven.
E.T
. Two publicists from another agency. A million from Caitlin. Jennifer again. Mom. The Absolut vodka rep. One of Oscar’s minions. The Evian account guy. Charles. Finally. Charles. I click open his.

Bad news? I’ve been out of commission for only what, five hours? How much bad could have happened? Aaron and Tracy didn’t say anything. Either it’s so bad, Charles is keeping it from the rest of the staff or, more likely, nothing’s actually wrong but
there’s a chance it could be, so he’s doing a preventative worst-case scenario.

That is another thing I’ve learned about him during the past three years. Back when I was a publicist in L.A. and he was a rank above me in the New York office, he just seemed in control and like he had a plan. Okay, so his plan had a million different contingencies, but it was a plan. Now that we’re together, and more important, both agency partners, I see how differently we actually work. How I just plow ahead, putting the big picture in motion, dealing with stuff as it comes up — because, let’s face it, women who are any good at their jobs, I mean, really good — not those needy, angry, bossy women who manage up the food chain while creating endless chaos for everyone below them—no, the good women are closers, maniacs for organization, for finishing things and
moving on
.

Men, I don’t know, must be genetic or testosterone or whatever, but they just can’t close anything. Something is always unfinished, some unresolved problem somewhere, and if there’s not, God knows they will
make
one. And if they’re total shits and in a position to do so, they will make someone else deal with it. Ideally, a woman.

Charles isn’t that bad. He just likes to sweat every detail. And sweat it several times over. And then, after everyone is exhausted running the different options, he swoops in and resolves everything. Judging by what I’ve heard from some of the junior publicists in the New York office, it can be annoying, but really, if you think about it, he’s just being conscientious and looking out for everyone’s well-being. Still, I’m happy that as DWP-ED’s grown larger, we’ve also grown more balkanized. That I have my own little event planning division to run the way I want to run it without interference.

I stand there for a minute rereading his e-mail, debating whether to call him, get the so-called bad news over with. Given
the roar of traffic and my mushrooming headache, I think better of it and drop the BlackBerry into my bag. Time enough for that when I’m in the car. Smoked windows. Air-conditioning. Maybe get the driver to tune in to 88.1. A little jazz to soften the inevitable reentry.

“Think of it this way,” Steven says. “Time out of the office, even if spent with your parents, is better than no time out of the office.”

“You know, it actually turned out fine. Better than fine. I mean, Charles was brilliant,” I say, downing the iced latte Steven has brought me. Actually, it was his latte, but I’m so desperate for caffeine to make it through Afternoon Take Two, I co-opted it.

“Sorry, I was obviously going on old intelligence.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t call you again. We just got really busy with the party and everything, and then Jack and Charles and I shot a quick nine holes. And Charles wound up taking us all out for dinner before we left.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” he says, looking at me like I’m raving. “Chuck was brilliant.
Brilliant
, I say,” he adds, launching into some imitation of somebody. Usually I’m on his wavelength, but the jet lag must really be getting to me.

“Okay, are we done talking about our weekends now?” I say, draining the latte and tossing the cup in the trash. “How was the walk-through with the magazine?”

“Fine. It always is with Oscar there to hold their hands, and in the case of the publisher, literally.”

“Wait, who is their publisher now?”

“Some woman. She’s new. Think she came from
Parents
magazine or one of those million health magazines. Who can keep track of publishers these days? They’re all on suicide missions. Like terrorists or Miramax employees.”

“Well, barring any more personnel changes, are we good on
TV Guide’s
Emmy party then?” I say, heading for my desk, and the stack of mail, messages, and trades that piles up whenever I leave the office for two minutes.

“Well, if you don’t count the gift bag, we are,” he says. “And the fact that we still have to round up a decent list, and given their dismal history of events and all the competing parties, not the least of which are
Entertainment Tonight’s
and HBO’s, that ain’t going to be easy.”