What Nora Knew (3 page)

Along the way I sold ballet shoes, house-sat, cat-sat, and worked behind a Hertz rent-a-car counter, a job I left the nanosecond I got hired as an advertising writer for kids’ cereals. That job lasted until the client meeting where I made an unfortunate comment involving the word crap, followed by a job as a technical writer for a mountain-biking company, until it was discovered I knew everything about lying my way through an interview, and nothing about technical writing or mountain biking. Next came a few years writing for a Weight
Watchers–type website, and one Christmas season selling Mixmasters and can openers in the appliance department at Bloomingdale’s. I stumbled onto my job at
Hipp
because of someone I slept with whom I had no business sleeping with right after my divorce, but my self-esteem at the time wasn’t exactly helping me make sound decisions.

Other people might have read a résumé like mine and thought,
No focus.

Not Deirdre. She got it in her head that I was some sort of fearless daredevil who’d do anything. For my interview we met in her office “before hours,” which for her meant before her 8:00 a.m. meeting, and for me meant before I was actually awake. When she offered me a cup of coffee, I didn’t tell her I’d already had two.

Deirdre’s office at the time was all-white laminate and chrome and glass with a white carpet. Now it’s all-white laminate and chrome and glass with a gray carpet. She sat on one side of her glass-top desk; I sat on the other on a white Mies van der Rohe pavilion chair. A side benefit of a family in the upholstery business—you know your furniture styles.

“So tell me about this nude-modeling job,” she said, running her gel-tipped fingernails through her spiked, blond hair. Deirdre dresses young for her age—her age at the time being forty-eight, but her wardrobe more like eighteen, with her low-cut dresses and ankle-high boots and enough bracelets to open a jewelry stand. “What did you get from the experience?”

“Fourteen dollars an hour plus tip jar,” I said. “It helped pay expenses.”

“Were you self-conscious?”

“It’s not a good job for self-conscious people.”

“It must have required a certain amount of bravado.” Deirdre held out a bowl and offered me a cashew. I shook my head no; I didn’t want nuts in my teeth. “I admire that,” she said. “The piece about your ex demonstrated bravado.”

I tried to look full of bravado while she told me she needed a writer who’d be willing to take on the more creative challenges. She emphasized the word
challenges
with an odd smirk.

“Will it involve removing my clothes?” I asked.

“No. It requires a good attitude and a sense of humor.”

A good attitude and sense of humor? How tough could that be?

Deirdre told me the job specifics and benefits and gave an example of a typical assignment, something about a pit crew at a racetrack and changing tires under duress, but I was too busy getting inwardly thrilled from hearing the salary and how I could come and go as I pleased and that she didn’t believe in chaining her writers to their desks. By then I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth fast enough when I said, “I’ll take it!”

So while Emily sits on her sweet ass reviewing books for her column, Emily Literati, I get assigned all the whack job pieces, or what used to be called human interest, but in my case is more like human sacrifice.

I reviewed my last several assignments in my head looking for ways I might have screwed up, reasons why Deirdre might have requested our 2:00 meeting.

Let’s see, the aerial-yoga class where I had to swing upside
down on fabric trapezes? No. Deirdre liked that piece. The shooting-range-in-New-Jersey article also went well, and I really think the gentleman from Passaic got over that little incident with the clay pigeons. And Deirdre wrote me a purple-inked memo congratulating me on my undercover bra-fitter piece. We received all sorts of comments online, most of them positive, except from that one woman who swore she’d never shop at the Brassiere Firm again. (Honest, Ms. 42D, I swear
it wasn’t my fault.
)

I couldn’t come up with anything, at least not anything that would get me fired. Of course, I’d been fired enough times in the past to know you never know.

*  *  *

“I want you to write a piece about romance,” Deirdre was saying to me, the two of us sitting on opposite sides of her big-kahuna desk.

“Me? Really?” I’m the last person on the planet Earth I’d assign to write about romance. Maybe a nice dissertation about loser romance, but any other expertise on my part was highly questionable.

“Did you see that video of the guy proposing at a basketball game?” Deirdre said. “The couple on a Kiss Cam?”

“The viral one, where the girlfriend walked out and left the guy on one knee?”

We cringed in unison.

“How can anyone so totally misread his relationship?” Deirdre said.

Been there, done that,
I thought.

“He’s buying diamonds while she’s signing on to Match. What made him think she was the one?” Deirdre paused, looked at me, and waited.

I finally said, “That was a rhetorical question, right?”

She leaned forward, all earnest and excited. “What with texting, skyping, online dating, how’s anyone to know what’s real? How does romance cut through the digital bullshit?” Deirdre’s energy went into overdrive. “We’ll make this a big article, have you question people on how they recognized their soul mates.” I didn’t mention that I thought soul mates were bullshit. “Did their eyes meet across a crowded bar? Did a brick land on their head? Or did they get humiliated on a Kiss Cam?”

I said I believed any circumstances leading to a Kiss Cam were humiliating.

Deirdre swept her hands in the air, her bracelets jangling. “ ‘Cyberdate? Or Soul Mate?’ ” She was writing headlines in the air. “ ‘Love at First Sight? Or First Gigabyte?’ ” She zoomed her attention back to me. “I’m giving you three weeks.”

Boondoggle! Turnaround time on assignments is usually never more than a few days. Then Deirdre explained she wanted an extensive, well-researched piece with lots of interviews; and I’d be writing it in addition to my other assignments. A certain personality type might have thought,
What an opportunity!
I was thinking,
Dammit, extra work.

“Sound good?” she said.

“What an opportunity!” I said.

“I want this to be sharp, witty, candid. Poignant and intimate. Written like Nora Ephron.”

I gulped. An audible, embarrassing gulp. “But I’m not Nora Ephron.”

“You aren’t Abe Lincoln, but you can study the Civil War.”

Before I could respond, Deirdre told me she was simply unable to emphasize the importance of the assignment. Then spent the next five minutes emphasizing it.

I sat there wondering what was the downside of bungling the job. Failure? Embarrassment? The disdain of my peers? Versus pissing off Deirdre if I said thanks, but no thanks. My Visa bill flashed before my eyes. “Tell me more,” I said.

“Make it fun and romantic. Like Nora’s movies,” Deirdre said.

“Fun and romantic. Like her movies. Fine. Got that.”
Holy shit
. “Do you mind me asking why you chose me for this assignment?”

Deirdre laughed. “You’re not afraid to ask people personal questions.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Deirdre frowned. Sat back.

“If I do a good job on this, can we talk about me writing a column? I’d call it MyEye. Mainly the same sort of things I’m writing already, but with, you know, my picture and name on top.”

“See,” Deirdre said. “You’ve got nerve. That’s why I value you.” She hit her buzzer and barked into the little black intercom, “Gavin! Coffee!” She smiled at me, nodding
at the same time. The smile meant
You can go now.
The nod meant
Right now.

But on my way out of her office, she added, “Let’s see how you do on your Nora piece. Then we’ll talk.”

*  *  *

As soon as I returned to my cubicle, Emily’s head floated over our divider. “Hi!” she said, as if she were surprised to see me, instead of what she really was—going crazy waiting to hear what had transpired between Deirdre and me.

A crueler, unkinder Molly Hallberg might have taken serious advantage of the situation, told Emily that I was getting promoted, that I was Emily’s new editor, and that my first official act was to slash her salary by 50 percent.

“Hi back,” I said, not particularly enthusiastic.

“How’d things go for your meeting?”

“Great! I’m getting promoted, I’m your new editor, and for my first official act I’m slashing your salary by fifty percent.”

“Hardee-har-har,” Emily said. “What did Deirdre want to talk about?”

“Oh, the usual. Financial advice. Love-life advice.”

“Well, I hope she didn’t stick you with that soul-mate assignment. Even I dodged that land mine.”

I met my boyfriend, Dr. Russell Edley, through a Groupon deal. You might be surprised to hear I even have a boyfriend. After all my bad-judgment romances and pathetic marriage, it’s easy to assume I just hung it up, swore off men, joined a nunnery, and renounced anything with an XY chromosome. For a while there, that was the game plan. But
stay away from anything with a penis
soon turned into
one little drink can’t hurt.
I like going out for drinks and I like penises. I also like back rubs.

Russell is a chiropractor with big strong hands and big strong shoulders and a flat stomach from doing forty-five push-ups every morning. His salt-and-pepper hair makes him look more like a distinguished professor than a man who knows his way around a vertebral subluxation. He has a thriving practice; he keeps two rooms going at once, running between neck cracking and massage therapy and hooking patients up to a
stim machine, which is a way to zap a back and beef up the bill. I landed in his office after landing on my butt while attempting to play ice hockey. (Another Deirdre idea.) If I hadn’t worn a helmet, I might be dating a brain surgeon.

On my first appointment, Russell made me walk across the room, then told me my hips needed realignment, a sexy thing for a man to say when you take it the wrong way. We chatted about my knees and shoulders and how my right leg is half an inch shorter than my left leg.

“Really?” I said, staring down at my feet. “They seem to match.”

“It’s not uncommon,” he said. “How often do you get backaches?”

“A grand total of once. During ice hockey. But it hasn’t gone away yet.”

Russell said I needed at least three months’ worth of treatments, starting with three times a week for the first six weeks. My Groupon deal was only good for two treatments, so by the third visit I said, yes, I’d go to a movie with him. After that I stopped going to his office, my hips were realigned, and before you knew it, he was my boyfriend.

We’ve been dating for eight months now, having never had the six-month discussion. I skipped right over that time bomb. Russell’s steady, normal; we have an extremely pleasant relationship. I keep waiting for him to reveal he wears women’s underwear or have him request a threesome with his sixty-four-year-old receptionist, Vanessa. But other than his recent addiction to Words With Friends and his confounding man-passion
for Nicolas Cage, about as crazy as Russell gets is his devotion to those forty-five push-ups every morning. He can have a 105-degree fever with his head exploding and he’ll still slug his way through his push-up routine. He is also an avid proponent of gargling salt water. He maintains that all Edleys are born with a weak constitution, resulting in most of his ancestors’ kicking the bucket early in life and inspiring him to exercise, eat a healthy diet, and pursue a career in medicine.

And if you’re one of those people who don’t consider chiropractors real doctors, keep it to yourself; Russell’s extremely sensitive on that point.

Is Russell my soul mate or the one? Or whatever it is Deirdre wants to call it. Beats me how to tell! I can’t wait to read my article and find out. But for now I could practice on him to help me write about romance. I rolodexed through my brain for something romantic I could do that wouldn’t require poetry or wearing a thong. (Thongs are ridiculous. Don’t get me started.) The fact that I was dumbstruck said in big neon letters just how terrible a choice I was for Deirdre’s assignment. Finally, I called Russell at his office and invited him to dinner that night.

“Great,” he said. “We can watch a movie.”

I didn’t tell him I was planning a romantic dinner. I’d keep that a surprise. More than a surprise. Probably closer to a shock.

*  *  *

After work, standing in the produce section of Gristedes, I was speaking to my mother on my cell phone: “Got any fast, easy, no-sweat romantic recipes?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Pull out your take-out menus.” My mother hates cooking. She used to love cooking, but one morning she woke up and said twenty years of chopping, slicing, broiling, and roasting for a husband and three unappreciative daughters was twenty years enough. “Why the sudden interest in recipes?” she asked.

Across the aisle from me, a woman was sniffing grapefruits. “I want to cook Russell dinner.”

“Why?” she said.

“A romantic dinner.”

“Cooking’s not romantic.”

“I’m supposed to write about people finding their soul mates and make it sound fun and romantic like a Nora Ephron movie.”

“Really? Why’d they assign you?”

“Because Cupid’s not available.”

“Do you have to
cook
like Nora Ephron?”

“No. I don’t believe so.” The grapefruit lady dropped a grapefruit, picked it off the floor, stuck it back in the pile, and selected a different grapefruit. “What are you and Dad having for dinner?” I asked.

“Burgers,” my mother said. “My soul mate’s been lighting the coals for the past forty-five minutes.”

“Burgers sound good,” I said. “But not romantic.”

“Order in ziti, light some candles, and toss on some Kenny G.”

After thanking my mom for the maternal advice, I picked up brownies in the bakery aisle and candles in the
miscellaneous-household-goods aisle and stopped for a bottle of wine on my way home.