The Pink Ghetto (21 page)

When I went back to New York I would probably still be shunned, shamed, and unemployed. But now I had Dan, at least for a while. A fling to get me through the rough patch.

Briefly, I even luxuriated in the vision of us becoming a serious item, inseparables, a publishing power couple. (Once I found another job.) My friends and family would embrace Dan in a way that they had never embraced Fleishman, because…well, mostly because Dan wasn’t Fleishman. In the estimation of practically everyone I knew, Fleishman was an easy act to follow.

I got so carried away in this fantasy that I allowed myself to gush, “I want to show you off to my friends.”

I should have known better. “I want to show you off to my friends” is the man’s line. I should have realized—before Dan’s face fell like an undercooked soufflé—that I was taking way too much for granted.

Before responding, he spent an agonizing moment considering. A bad sign. Then he cleared his throat. “Maybe I should have said something last night…”

In the ensuing awkward silence, I tittered nervously. “You’re not married,” I joked. “I checked.”

He grimaced. “No, but maybe I should have said what we both know, obviously. Which was that this was a mistake.”

It was as if someone had given me an ice water injection. “A mistake,” I repeated.

“A
wonderful
mistake,” he added quickly. As if that amendment would make being dumped easier. His tone was so earnest I suddenly felt nauseated. The scone I had so blithely scarfed down a moment before now felt like a boulder squatting in my stomach.

Apparently, this was not going to be a fling. Or it had already flung itself out.

“Because of—well, because of a lot of things, obviously,” he said.

I wracked my brains, but I honestly couldn’t think of any of these obvious reasons. Unless he obviously didn’t like me. Or he had seen some of my obvious imperfections and changed his mind about me.

“Workwise, this kind of thing isn’t kosher,” he explained. “There might be complications in the future.”

Oh brother. Whatever these complications were—or were going to be—I wasn’t much interested in hearing about them. It wasn’t as if Andrea hadn’t told me about Clea. I knew Dan was a lothario—I just hadn’t expected him to be such a jerk, too. It was as if the slightest hint of something lasting longer than six hours made him jump out of his skin.

“I get it. It was just one of those things.” I started searching for the garments I had discarded so carelessly, so happily, on his floor the night before.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting out of here,” I said.

He let out a huff. “Don’t be that way about it.”

“What way?”

“Clingy.”

I gaped at him. “What are you talking about? I’m
leaving.
Which, in case you don’t know, is the exact opposite of cling.”

“Yes, but you’re upset. I can tell.”

What was I supposed to do? Stay, but not stay so long that it made him uncomfortable? Did he expect an alarm to sound at the optimum moment for the one-night stand to end?

The whole situation pissed me off. He arrogantly assumed, just because I hung around long enough to drink a cup of coffee, that I was a psycho-girl who never wanted to give him up. But I wasn’t. No bunny boiler, me. Just the opposite! Wasn’t I the woman who had watched my ex-boyfriend and roommate squire a string of women around Manhattan? (I might pine, but I didn’t cling.) I wasn’t unrealistic. I knew once a guy started stammering like Dan was doing, it was game over.

And good riddance,
I thought.

“Rebecca…”

I tossed my shirt over my head and wriggled into my wrinkled skirt. “Never mind, Dan. No explanations necessary.”

He let out a sigh, as if he were the wounded party here. “I should have guessed you’d react this way.”

What was he talking about? He barely knew me!

I finally managed to escape that hotel room, but just as I was stepping foot into the hallway, who would I run into? Andrea. She stopped mid-stride on her way to the elevator and looked from me to the door I had just closed. When her gaze alit back on me, she was gaping in something like awe.

“No way!” she yelled.

I put a finger to my lips.

Her hands balled at her sides. “I have been coming to these stupid conferences for years now, and
nothing
ever happens to me. And here you are, two for two!”

“It’s not how it looks.”

“Well even if it’s not, it’s better than my night, which consisted of tagging along with a group from Boise for Tex-Mex then coming back at nine, popping heartburn pills, and falling asleep in front of
Batman Begins
on television.”

I thought for a moment. “Right now I would do anything to have spent the night watching pay-per-view.”

In fact, it was one of those moments when I would have switched places with just about anyone. All things considered, being me wasn’t working out so hot.

B
y the time I dribbled through my apartment and collapsed in a heap, Wendy and Fleishman were out for the night. Max was my welcome wagon. He struggled his way up on the futon and successfully swiped that stinky little pink tongue across my chin. I was too worn out to do anything more than mop up the puppy saliva with my sleeve.

I was glad to be alone, actually. I rattled around the apartment for an hour or so, dreading going back to work even more than usual. How could I possibly live through the day without murdering Cassie? I’m pretty sure killing a coworker would get me fired. On the other hand, I was probably going to be fired anyway. Mercedes had very coolly accepted my assurances that I’d had nothing to do with the whole business card fiasco. But had she believed me?

No doubt about it, Monday was going to be a very bad day.

Finally I sought some over-the-counter oblivion in a wine cooler and two Benadryl. I was sound asleep after that.

The next morning I tumbled out of bed, fully expecting that this would be the last day there would be a necessity to do so, perhaps for a long time. I put on my favorite dress from Fleishman’s mother’s wardrobe. I wanted to look my best as I was escorted from the building.

I had to pick my way around the apartment, trying not to make any noise. Sometime during the night, the prodigal roommates had come home. They were still in full snooze when I left.

On the subway ride to work, I concentrated on Cassie. I still couldn’t decide if I should just scream at her or go for the kill. I am not a violent person (I was subjected to the cinematic teachings of Ben Kingsley at a tender age), but these felt like extenuating circumstances, at least to me. The jury of my peers residing in my mind had already acquitted me by the time I reached the elevator.

I stepped on and there he was. Suave Guy, smiling at me. Cassie evaporated from my thoughts. I smiled back and did that awkward face forward.

I wish someone would put something in elevators for people to stare at. Television, for instance. A person stuck in an airport can always find CNN somewhere. Why not people stuck in elevators?

No sooner had that phrase—stuck in an elevator—flitted through my mind than the very floor seemed to dip underneath me and I lurched forward, smacking my forehead against the wall just above the button panel.

Suave Guy reached over to steady me. “Are you all right?” he asked, his hands bracing both my arms.

This gave me two reasons to swoon. One, because I was scared witless, and two, because I had inadvertently landed myself in the arms of the elevator hottie.

“I-I’m fine,” I stuttered, though for a moment I wondered if he let go of me, would my knees buckle under me like one of those wooden pedestal toys with elastic for joints.

But he did let me go, and with the help of a wall, I managed to stay upright. The situation was pregnant with sensual possibilities, but the only sense that really took hold of me in that moment was clammy fear. Had the electricity gone out? Why? What was going on out there?
(Terrorist attack!)
Did anyone know we were here?

“What do we do?” The tremor in my voice was unmistakable. In a crisis, I am a pillar of Jell-O.

He pressed the red emergency button. From where we were, it produced absolutely no result. I could only hope that somewhere else in the building a brawny rescuer was hearing an alarm bell. “Unfortunately, that’s all I can think of.”

“That’s more than I had the presence of mind to try,” I admitted.

He smiled. And I have to admit, panicked as I was, that smile went a long way in soothing my nerves. He was so calm, so blue-suited. He was like Paxil for the eyes. I stopped hyperventilating, though I feared I was drooling. I couldn’t wait to tell Andrea about this. If I lived. Strains of “To Dream the Impossible Dream” thundered through my head with Robert Goulet-like insistence.

My companion tilted his head. “Did you hear something?”

Could he hear it, too?
For a moment I worried that I had unconsciously burst into song.

“A knocking,” he explained.

“Oh!” I concentrated. “No.”

He pushed the red button again. “Probably just wishful thinking on my part.”

Now that I wasn’t feeling as if I were about to throw up, I tried to be philosophical. “I’m not so sure I want off the elevator, anyway.” The man’s eyes widened, and I realized at once how that sounded. Like I wanted to stay suspended in this cube with him forever. Which, of course, was true. But it wasn’t what I meant.

“I basically came into work this morning to allow them to fire me.”

His brows raised in alarm. “But you just started. What happened?”

“You don’t really want to know,” I said.

He laughed. “As it happens, I have some time to fill.” He reached into the little white sack he was carrying and brought out a bagel. “You can explain it to me over breakfast, which I hope you’ll share with me.”

I hesitated. The last thing I really wanted to do with the elevator hottie was whine about my problems while I shoveled down carbs. Then again, what I really wanted to do with the elevator hottie really wasn’t an option, outside of a Hollywood movie or a beer commercial.

“Cinnamon raisin,” he said, offering me the top of his bagel, which everyone knows is the best half. What a gentleman.

I accepted the bagel and took what I hoped was a delicate bite.

“Now what’s this about being fired?” he asked.

Even the nutshell version of my life at Candlelight thus far still managed to take up several minutes. By the time I was done we had finished breakfast and he had a puzzled look on his face.

“Which one is Cassie?”

“She’s blond.”

His eyes widened. “The one that looks like Jessica Simpson?”

“No…” He meant Madeline. For a moment I wondered if Suave Guy had his own dream elevator girl. At any rate, he seemed fairly certain of his knowledge of the Candlelight staff.

“Jan Brady,” he guessed.

I was astonished. “Andrea’s right! You are a spy.”

He laughed. “Nothing so interesting. Just a humble attorney.”

Judging by the cut of those suits, not so humble. “Corporate?”

“Wills and estates. McAlpin and Etting, twelfth floor.”

“Are you McAlpin or Etting?”

He conscientiously wiped the last of the butter off his fingers with a paper napkin and held out his hand. “Luke Rayburn, junior partner.”

I introduced myself, even though it felt strange doing so to someone who had been an object of so many Candlelight ruminations.

“I’ve always been curious about your business.” He leaned casually against the wall. “It’s always seemed odd to be up in my office, toiling away on old ladies’ wills, when all that romance was going on down below.”

“Now you know. There’s no romance going on there at all.” Outside of my foolish phone flirtation with Dan and Troy’s cover model interviews, this was true. “Just the usual office intrigue.”

He looked doubtful. “Nothing in my office matches the Cassie shenanigans you just described.”

A juicy idea occurred to me. “You think I could sue her?”

“More likely you’ll have to settle for her getting her comeuppance someday.”

“That sounds depressingly philosophical. And unlikely to happen.”

“I don’t see you having much success in pinning this on her in the near term, short of getting a taped confession,” he said.

Now why hadn’t I thought of that? “What a great idea!”

At that moment, the elevator dipped, and I was pretty sure that I would have no opportunity to put this plan into action. “Oh my God!”

“Don’t panic,” he said. “I think this is it.”

If by “it” he meant our imminent deaths, I was in complete agreement. But there was no way I was not panicking. I was already envisioning the freefall drop, the crash, my parents weeping that their youngest daughter had ended her life as a splatter.

But even as those events were playing through my mind, it began to dawn on me that we weren’t in freefall. In fact, the elevator was gliding upwards. It was over.

Luke sent me a reassuring smile, and then the doors opened on my floor. “Made it!” he said, holding the door.

I was a little stunned. Five minutes ago, I had been spilling all my woes out to him. It had seemed not out of the realm of possibility that we might die together. Now it was back to business as usual.

“Thanks for breakfast.”

“No problem,” he said. “Good luck.”

I stumbled out of the elevator and smiled as the doors closed between us.

Then I turned. I had somehow expected to be greeted like little Jessica coming out of the well. You would have thought a crowd would gather for something like this, ready to peer down the elevator shaft at the crushed and mangled car that had dropped to the basement.
Hadn’t anyone heard the alarm?

Instead, the place was deserted. My life-and-death struggle had gone completely unnoticed.

Even Muriel wasn’t there. In her place was a stranger with dark teased hair and lots of makeup. She was chewing gum, something Muriel would have disapproved of vociferously.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What happened with what?” the woman asked nonchalantly.

“The elevator!” I practically shrieked. Oddly, now that I was off the thing, I felt more shaky than ever. “We were stuck in there for a quarter hour!”

Eyes thick with mascara blinked in unconcern. “I don’t know anything about it. It worked fine when I was on it twenty minutes ago.”

“Where’s Muriel?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The receptionist.”

“I don’t know. I’m a temp.”

Sensing that I was going to get no more information from Miss Max Factor, I wobbled back to the Pulse Pod, making the compulsory stop at Andrea’s office.

“You won’t believe what happened!” she exclaimed.

This threw me. Wasn’t that my line? “Wait, I’ve got to tell you. Guess who I was just trapped in the elevator with!”

“I don’t know.” She seemed oddly uninterested. “George Clooney.”

“Close! Suave Guy.”

She didn’t react.

“We were trapped for fifteen minutes, and I told him all about the office. He gave me his bagel.” I realized two things at once: That I was babbling, and that Andrea seemed to have no interest at all in what I was saying. And for her to have no interest in Suave Guy, her Mr. Incredible, something had to be very, very wrong.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“
Cassie!
” she yelled.

“That’s what I was going to tell you,” I said, hoping to tell her about Suave Guy’s idea. If Andrea couldn’t torture a confession out of Cassie, no one could. “Luke—the elevator hottie, that’s his name—told me I need audio evidence. A taped confession.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you’re thinking of getting a confession out of Cassie, forget about it. You’re too late.”

For a moment I held my breath. Too late for Cassie torture?

“She’s gone. She pulled a fast one!”

“Faster than switching my business cards to get me fired?”

“She stole my job!” Andrea exploded.

This was incomprehensible. “
You
got fired?”

Andrea rolled her eyes. “Pay attention, Rebecca. Not
this
job. That little she-skunk was welcome to this job, if it had suited her devious fancy. But no! She got my job at Gazelle! Snatched it right out from under me!”

My jaw dropped. Gazelle? “She’s leaving?”

“She’s
left.
She cleared out her office on Friday while we were all away and skedaddled off to what should have been
my
job.”

I again experienced the sensation I’d had when the elevator dipped, like the floor was being pulled out from under me. I had to sit down. “Unbelievable!”

“Well, believe it.” Andrea crossed her arms. “Mercedes is seriously pissed. You don’t have to worry about getting fired, at least. She will now believe every evil thing about Cassie you care to tell her.”

“Took her long enough,” I muttered.

Andrea snorted, which sort of turned into a sob. “It’s so unfair! That little rat! Why should she get to escape and not me? I’ve sent out so many applications.”

Poor Andrea. “Maybe there’s some reason fate has brought you here,” I said.

She surveyed her cluttered desk, the piles of manuscripts, the as-yet-unopened Sunday
Times.
“I’m just doomed to rot here. When I die I’ll just be a frustrated old spinster living in a studio in Queens, and I’ll have two hundred items on the late list.” She slid down lower in her chair. “I mean, look at you! Four months in, and you get trapped in an elevator with
my
dreamboat. Don’t talk to me about fate. Life is not fair.”

I shut up.

She brooded for a few moments, then angled one of her brows my way. “He gave you his bagel?”

“Half of it.”

“Top half or bottom?”

“Top.”

She sighed. “A gallant hottie.”

“His name is Luke Rayburn. He’s an attorney. Wills and estates.”

She frowned. “That sounds very dull.”

“But lucrative,” I pointed out.

She slapped a hand on her desk in frustration. “Yes, damn it! He’s good looking, rich, chivalrous, and now he’s yours. Even my pathetic little fantasy life at this place has been shattered.”

“He’s not mine,” I assured her.

“Well it’s no fun dreaming about some guy someone else has been stuck in an elevator with. Besides, I don’t like the name Luke. It reminds me of Luke Skywalker, and that soap opera guy from the eighties with the fuzzy hair.” She moaned sadly. “I’m just screwed. I’ll be here forever.”

“Is it really so bad here?”

Her lips twisted. “Asked the lab bunny in the next cage.”

I was wracking my brains for something positive to say, but all at once Andrea’s door opened and shut and Troy appeared, grinning ear-to-ear.

“Is everybody happy?” he shouted, complete with jazz hand gestures.

We gaped at him.