The Overlap (11 page)

Anyway, before he hung up that first time he gave me a brief rundown of the rest of his Saturday night after we had talked... which consisted of a couple more beers and watching highlights on ESPN of the baseball pennant race games he had just finished watching at that sports bar. I tried to whip up feelings of frustration with him. You know: boyfriend out of town on business, spending a Saturday night at a sports bar with the boys swilling beer until after midnight; all of that. But given how I had spent
my
Saturday night, the outright hypocrisy of trying to be angry with Dustin shut down that idea right away.

So I spent Sunday afternoon talking to my parents for a while after I had showered, and then trying to call my sister Lauren to basically repeat everything I had just talked to Kensington about. Lauren didn’t answer so I left a voicemail message for her, and then decided to take a nap since I hadn’t slept well. Ordinarily I’m not much of a napper, but the combination of lack of sleep (or at least quality sleep) plus walking for probably eight miles this morning, plus my cheese blintzes all combined to make me pretty sleepy around 1:00.

I was dead to the world (as my Dad liked to say when I was younger and he was having trouble waking either Lauren or me); so out of it that I don’t remember dreaming at all. Suddenly I woke up with my cell phone in my hand and I was talking! I mean, actually in the middle of a conversation! And – “best” of all (not), I was in the middle of a conversation with Dustin!

OMG, what in the world had I said? I shut my mouth immediately, waiting for some sort of reaction from Dustin to indicate what exactly I had said when I was sleep-talking, or whatever they call it. Had I mentioned Zack? Had I said something about going out last night for dinner on a date, but not mentioned Zack’s name? What in the world had I said???

“Hey Lindsey, you still there?” came Dustin’s voice; somewhat detached but definitely not showing any signs of concern or anger or anything like that.

“Um, yeah,” I replied.

“You okay?” he asked. “I mean, you’re not really making any sense.”

Okay Lindsey; stay calm, I told myself.

“Sorry, you woke me up when you called and I actually answered the phone in my sleep. I must have been dreaming so I’m not sure... I mean, what did I say?”

Pay close attention Lindsey, I told myself. If I
did
say something I shouldn’t have, maybe I can get away with it by saying it was part of whatever I was dreaming when he called.

“Nothing really,” came Dustin’s reply. “I asked what you had done today and you immediately mumbled you had blintzes; that was about it.”

Saved!

“Yeah, didn’t I mention that earlier?” I said, totally alert now. “I met Kensington for brunch at that one deli, and I had blintzes. You know, they’re pretty good.”

“Yeah,” he replied, and I could sense the detachment in his voice. He then went on to tell me at length about his afternoon with (as I recalled from earlier) his boss’s boss’s bosses, and how much “fun” he and everyone on his team had as those bosses ripped through pretty much every one of the slides Dustin and his team had spent days putting together. When it was all said and done, all of the changes were more cosmetic than of substance; apparently these guys weren’t actually the real bosses or whatever, and they were a bunch of nervous types who wanted to make sure that when Dustin and his team presented to the Great and Powerful Wizard or whoever the final person was, all of the colors were just right and all the boxes lined up on the slides just the way the Wizard liked to see them. Or something like that. I honestly felt sorry for Dustin; not only having to waste his time on such nonsense but to have to do so on a Sunday afternoon way out in Chicago in the middle of a weeks-long trip of endless hours. Of course our firm loved this; they were billing the client for each and every hour that Dustin and our guys out there with him wound up putting in, which meant that their horrendous schedule turned into just about pure profit to the firm. Consultants like us don’t get overtime or anything; about the best we can hope for, I had come to learn in my first year here, was a couple extra dollars in an end-of-year bonus and a few “atta-boys” (or in my case, “atta-girls”) to encourage us to stick around long enough to try to make partner.

But of course, leaving aside the disconnect between what was good for our firm and what was good for us individually, the fact that Dustin was enduring this hazing ritual 2,000 miles away meant that I had been able to meet Zack Buchanan and had been on a fantastic first date with him the night before. So while I definitely felt sorry for Dustin, I couldn’t help but selfishly feel glad that he was exactly where he was, enduring exactly what he was enduring, because his doing so had opened up new opportunities for me.

*     *     *

The rest of Sunday night was passed by watching a bit of television, though I couldn’t concentrate on anything I was watching. My mind was half a day ahead, onsite at MetroGen Monday morning, encountering Zack for the first time and the intimate smiles we would give to each other. A stolen moment here and there throughout the day, and then maybe tomorrow night would be our “early next week” setting for the dinner we had agreed upon! Twenty-four hours from now, Zack and I could be at dinner again... and then who knows where things might go and what might happen.

One year ago in Miami, during training, our instructors warned us that there would be days when we would question with our very being why in the world we had accepted our job offers to join this firm. No matter how much we overall enjoyed what we were doing or how ambitious we were, they told us, we would face days that would – to quote Thomas Paine, the guy from the American Revolution – try men’s (and women’s) souls.

Monday was one of those days.

I was just about to walk out of my apartment at 7:45 that morning when my cell phone rang and the caller ID indicated it was this guy Dave Evers, the senior manager (basically, partner-to-be if he could make it through the gauntlet of the partnership selection committee) in charge of our project.

This probably isn’t good, I was already telling myself as I pressed the “talk” button on my phone’s screen.

And it wasn’t.

“How’d you like to go to New York for a couple of days?” was his immediate question following my “hello.”

“When?” I asked, dreading the answer that I was pretty sure was coming.

“This morning, in a couple of hours.”

Well, I had pretty much figured he wasn’t going to say “next week” or “for Columbus Day” or something like that; otherwise why call me on my cell phone this early rather than wait until we were onsite at our client?

I fought the panic that was approaching me like an onrushing tsunami.

“What’s going on?”

“Ah, nothing really,” came his weasely reply. “But I was researching on the Internet over the weekend and found out about this boutique graphics firm in New York, in SoHo, that’s piloting some state-of-the-art animation technology. So I e-mailed Margie last night and suggested we should head out there to meet with them and try to bring them into the fold, and she concurred.”

Margie was one of the MetroGen directors (not a movie director; you know, director-level types in the corporate world, a little bit below a vice president) and one of our primary clients. That wasn’t the important part to what I had just heard. What I did hear was that Dave Evers made this off-the-cuff suggestion to MetroGen that didn’t sound so critical it had to be done
today
. And not only that, he was wallowing in consulting-and-techno-speak like “boutique graphics firm” and “piloting” and “bring them into the fold” and “concurred” instead of talking like a normal person. Not to mention that he admitted spending his weekend “researching on the Internet” with, most likely, the express objective of trying to find some little nugget that he could use as an excuse to contact our client on a Sunday night.

“Only for two days,” Dave sounded disappointed as he shared this news. He seemed to be the type that would love to get on a project like Dustin was on right now; the “we own your life and you live on the road” type of assignment. The word around the L.A. office of our firm was that Dave was a long shot to make partner, so apparently he was pulling out all the stops to get himself back in contention when the partner selection committee met at the end of October. And one of the tried-and-true tactics in the consulting world for that sort of thing was that if things were going smoothly, see if you can quietly manufacture a low-level crisis at one of your clients so you can be a hero and solve it! So there was half a chance that no matter what a couple of guys (that’s usually what “boutique firm” means) in New York were doing and how good their stuff was or wasn’t, Dave would come back with some change in direction for MetroGen to try and look like he was personally coming in to save the day for them.

“Well technically three days,” Dave corrected himself before I could ask if I really needed to go. He just kept on blabbering:

“I was thinking 48 hours or so from the time we leave until we get back, but it will actually be most of today then all tomorrow and then we’ll be back sometime Wednesday afternoon. So yeah, more like three days.”

That asshole!

*     *     *

I texted Zack with this terrible news as soon as I hung up with Dickhead Dave, as he would forever be known to me. I actually thought about changing his entry in my phone’s contacts to exactly that, but then figured if I left my phone on a desk at our client site and he called me and then someone saw it, I would be in some serious trouble. So I would keep his new name of Dickhead Dave to myself... but of course would share it with Kensington and Courtney, neither of whom would be coming with me. At the very least Dickhead Dave could have brought them along also, but no way! It would just be him, me, and two of the geekier guys on the project who most of us wondered why they were even working for our firm. But they were both pretty good computer guys and part of our project was related to technology. So the firm needed guys like them for projects like the one I was working on now. I just hoped they had the sense to realize that they had about a zero chance of ever making partner here with the firm’s BMOC culture, and got out after a couple years to someplace where they would be more at home... and not laughed at behind their back, as a couple of the frat boy types did on a regular basis.

So there would be no Monday night dinner with Zack; nor Tuesday, either. We were supposed to get back sometime around 2:30 P.M. on Wednesday; we would leave New York around noon but pick up the three hours of time zone change in our favor, so the day wouldn’t be totally lost. Of course I fully anticipated that Dickhead Dave would expect us to do an extra-long day onsite to make up for any flying time today as well as Wednesday we couldn’t bill to MetroGen, but he could go... well, you know.

I sent Zack another text when I hadn’t heard back from him within a couple of minutes:

SO SORRY about this how about Wednesday for dinner?

I was pulling out all the stops in my second text to Zack after the first one in which I dropped the bombshell of me having to go to New York. I wasn’t waiting for him to ask me for a specific night. Even as I was typing the message, though, I prepared myself to receive a disappointing reply back from Zack; something like “sorry have 2 go back 2 Seattle again Wed” or something like that. So I was already prepared to immediately send back “Ok Thurs?” if I needed to but just then Zack’s text reply came through:

Bummer about tonight but sounds good for Wed even if you get back late NP

Then, seconds later, he sent me another text:

Can’t wait Z

Yes! As pissed as I was about this whole New York trip and what it meant about me not seeing Zack today – or tomorrow – his messages back were just what I wanted to see. I had been nervous almost all Sunday, with me not being in contact with him, that for Zack with a new day came a different perspective about me, about my relationship with Dustin, and all that. But from his text, the magic of Saturday night was still there on his side as well as mine.

I texted him back to confirm that I had received his messages and would keep him posted on my travel. I fought the urge to end my text with a heart or lips or some other emoticon other than a smiley face; those are pretty much always safe, right?

*     *     *

I got to LAX around 9:45 and our flight was scheduled for 11:00. Fortunately most of the heavy travel for the morning had already passed so going through security took only about ten minutes. I met Dickhead Dave and the nerds (okay, Steve and Jack; I guess it isn’t really fair for me to label them like that) at the gate, where Dave had told me we would all rendezvous. Our flight to JFK would take five and half excruciatingly long hours, meaning that after losing three hours because of the time zone change we would be arriving around 7:30 P.M. New York time. Then figure an hour to get out of the airport and to our hotel, which meant – get ready – after checking into our hotel, somewhere around 8:45 or 9:00 I would then have the tremendous pleasure of spending the next hour and a half eating dinner with the three guys traveling with me... when I could have and should have been at dinner with Zack! This was
not
fair, and I was
not
a happy girl!

I had hoped that with the last-minute travel plans our seats would be scattered throughout the plane and I wouldn’t have to sit next to, or even in the same row, as any of the other three; but no such luck. I wound up in a row on the right side of the plane with Dave and Steve (who was actually okay, even if he was – sorry – nerdy). I wound up with the window seat which ordinarily I prefer but I had a hunch I would have to get up to go to the rest room at least a couple times during the long flight. I secretly hoped that Dave, who of course was in the middle seat right next to me, would be a plane sleeper so each time I had to go I would wake him up. That would pay him back at least a little bit, right?

We had Wi-Fi on the flight so the first thing I did was log on from my cell phone. I also put in my ear buds to listen to my music. I think Dave expected me to work during the flight and then when I wasn’t working to talk with him, but I had no intention of doing either. Besides, with Wi-Fi I could text from my phone while I was listening to music... which meant that conceivably I could at least share a few messages with Zack.