ACCLAIM FOR MILKRUN

“This entertaining debut [offers] both humor and substance…”

—Publishers Weekly

“If Bridget Jones ever found herself at a loose end in Boston, she’d find a great friend in Jackie Norris. A sexy, sassy story of singledom from the skilled pen of Sarah Mlynowski.”

—Bestselling author Carole Matthews

“This Sex and the City-style story is chick-lit for the modern age.”

—Heat

“Milkrun by Sarah Mlynowski is funny, touching, sassy, and bright.”

—Anthology magazine

ACCLAIM FOR FISHBOWL

“Mlynowski [creates] fully dimensional characters and a terrific story.”

—Booklist

“…Mlynowski is out for a rollicking good time from the start.”

—Arizona Republic

“Fishbowl is…an original and very funny celebration of friendship between women.”

—Waldenbooks, Best of 2002 Women’s Fiction

“Undemandingly perfect.”

—Jewish Chronicle

“A fresh and witty take on real-life exams in love, lust, trust and friendship.”

—Bestselling author Jessica Adams

Twentysomething Sarah Mlynowski was born in Montreal, Canada. After receiving an honors degree in English literature from McGill University, Sarah moved to Toronto to work for a romance publisher. Unfortunately, she never met Fabio. But she did write Milkrun, which has since been published in sixteen countries. Sarah is currently a full-time novelist, and As Seen on TV is her third novel.

If you’d like to say hello, visit her Web site at www.sarahmlynowski.com.

As Seen on TV
Sarah Mlynowski

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Loads and loads of thanks to:

The ever-reliable and always-encouraging publishing people: my editor, Sam Bell; my agent, Laura Dail; and the RDI team (Laura, Tara, Margie, Margaret, Pam and Tania).

My truly incredible mom, Elissa Ambrose, and friends Robin Glube, Bonnie Altro, Jessica Braun, Lynda Curnyn and Ronit Avni, who edited, plotted and listened to my whining.

My dad, for being wonderful and nothing like the dad in this book; my sister, Aviva, for making me laugh; and my soon-to-be in-laws, the Swidlers, for continuing to pretend that they’re not embarrassed by my subject matter.

Daniel Laikind and Jessica Davidman, for sharing their reality TV insights and experiences.

Corinne Gelman, for her please-tell-me-he-doesn’t-do-that Bilerman stories; Mark Boidman, for his “expert” legalese; and Jay Takefman, so he’ll stop bugging me to put his name in a book.

Pripstein’s Camp, for my sweetest summer memories, and for appointing me color captain, not once but twice.

For Todd

Contents

part 1

Job Listing

1Moonlighting

2Sex and the City

3Wonder Woman

4Six Feet Under

5The Wonder Years

part 2

Party Girls Application Form

6My So-Called Life

7Friends

8Transformers

9A Different World

part 3

Party Girls Reality Show

10Night Calls

11Leave It to Beaver

12Twilight Zone

13Growings Pains

14Who’s The Boss?

15V.I.P.

16Bewitched

part 4

Party Girls Reality Show

17The Yong and the Restless

18The Sopranos

part 5

Party Girls Reality Show

19Mad About You

20Mission: Impossible

21Jeopardy

22Spin City

23Just Shoot Me

part 6

Party Girls Reality Show

24In the Heat of the Night

25Cheers

Epilogue

part 1

Job Listing

NYC—Assistant Manager, New Business Development

Soda Star, America’s leading beverage company, seeks candidates for its growing New Business Development department.

Candidates should have bubbly personality, positive outlook on life (glass is always half-full!), free-flowing ideas, excellent contacts. Sparkling written, communication and organizational skills. A drop of administrative work required. An all-you-can-drink opportunity!

If you have Star potential, please e-mail your resume as a Word document ONLY to hr@workforcheap&beourbitch.com.

1
Moonlighting

“Why are you calling?” the HR woman asks me, panic-stricken, as if recess is over and she hasn’t finished her Fruit Roll-up. “Didn’t the ad say not to phone?”

“Yes, I understand that, thank you, but I’ll only be in New York for a few days. I would really like to set up an interview.” I need a new job. I attempt to shield myself behind the pay phone’s plastic divider, since this is the only nicotine-friendly cafeteria on the block and anyone from the office could easily sneak in for a smoke.

The smell of this stale smoke combined with the plates of shepherd’s pie lined up on the counter make me wish long-distance calls from my cell phone didn’t make me sound as though I’m calling from Zimbabwe. I also wish I knew how to make a calling-card call from my office without getting the IT department.

“Once the hundreds of resumes we’ve received for the Assistant Manager, New Business Development position are reviewed,” the HR woman says, “the managing director will choose the candidates to be interviewed. If you’re one of the fortunate ones selected, I assure you, you’ll be called.”

Obviously the first thing this woman does when she gets home is kick her dog. “Thank you very much for your time,” I say.

I redial Soda Star’s number.

“Florida Telephone Systems.” Brrring.

I dial my calling-card number.

“Soda Star, the shining light in beverages,” the receptionist sings. “How may I help you?”

“May I please speak to the managing director?”

“Which managing director is that, miss?”

Which managing director? Shouldn’t there only be one director who manages? Or maybe one manager who directs? “The new business managing director, please.” Please let that be right.

“Whom should I say is calling?”

A person he’s never heard of before? “Sunny Langstein.”

“One moment, please. I’ll transfer your call.”

Foiled again, HR.

I’m probably going to get his voice mail. Why would he be at his desk at 10:30 a.m.? He’s probably out managing. Or directing. Or managing directors when it gets really crazy. I hunt through my recently started job-search notebook where I wrote possible messages to leave on prospective employers’ machines.

Ring, ring. Heart beating erratically.

“Ronald Newman speaking.”

Good. Damn. He’s there. It’s a he. Concentrate on exuding confident, sexy, sweet voice. I flip back to the page of possible things to say to prospective employers. “Hi, Mr. Newman? This is Sunny Langstein calling. I’m presently the assistant manager of new business development for Panda in Fort Lauderdale, but I will be relocating to New York for personal reasons. I’m very impressed with your company’s work and would like to continue my professional growth in the beverage industry. I’ll be in New York next week, and I was wondering if you’d consider meeting with me to discuss any potential job openings in your department.”

“How did you get this number? Aren’t you supposed to go through HR?”

Sounds cranky. Must accent the sweet voice. “I’m so sorry to bother you, sir.” Now confident. “I just assumed calling you would be more efficient.”

He laughs. I picture him reclining in a brown leather reading chair, a pipe dangling from his lips. “Well, Sunny, you’re probably right. Do you think you could handle working in the big leagues?”

Oooh. The big leagues.

“I’m quite confident I can, sir. I have excellent—” this is where I exploit the many hackneyed and meaningless qualifications employers salivate over “—communication and organizational skills. I multitask, prioritize, problem-solve and self-start. I pay strong attention to detail and work effectively with both creative and production staff. I have a proactive approach toward current products and new business, and I have a personable, team-player personality. Will you be able to meet with me for an informational interview?”

Pause. “Are you aware that I’m looking for an assistant manager right now? To report directly to me?”

No kidding. “Really? I’d love to come and talk to you about it. I’ll be in NewYork next Monday. Do you have a free half hour?”

He laughs again. “You’re a go-getter. I like that. Hmm. Let me check.”

He’s clicking on his keyboard. Clicking…clicking…more clicking.

“Did I mention I’m proficient in most computer programs including Windows, Macintosh, Microsoft Office and Photoshop?” I ask.

He whistles his approval. “How about right before my golf game? Four o’clock?”

Liza, my boss, strolls through the doors. Damn. Now why am I using a pay phone in the cafeteria across the street from my office in the middle of the morning? She knows I don’t smoke. I ram my notepad and pen back into my bag. “Perfect. I’ll see you then. ’Bye.”

“Okay. Great…um…” Come on, Newman, spit it out. “Will you fax me your resume?”

Liza doesn’t see me yet. She’s ordering something. Is she sneaking a cup of coffee? Since she announced her pregnancy, she’s been strutting her water bottle all Mormon-like around the office, boasting how effortlessly she gave up caffeine, smokes and Chardonnay.

“No problem,” I say. “Thanks. ’Bye.”

“Do you know where our offices are?”

“On Forty-third Street, right? It’s on your Web site?”

“Yes and yes. I’m on the sixth floor. Just tell Heidi you’re here to see me.”

I assume Heidi is his receptionist. “Great. ’Bye.”

“Don’t you want my fax number?”

“Isn’t it the one on the Web site?”

“No, I have a personal fax number. Do you want it?”

Of course I want it! Just tell it to me already! I crouch against the wall and a ketchup-stained table eclipses my face. “Yes. Yes, I do. What is it?”

“Hmm. Good question. Let me check. Hold on, it should be on my business card, right?” Clunk. Did he just knock over his chair? Is he completely incompetent?

Liza pulls out her wallet.

“Okay, got it. Two-one-two-five-five-five-nine-four-three-six.” Uh-oh, nothing to write on or with. Two-one-two-five-five-five-nine-four-three-six. Two-one-two-five-five-five-nine-four-three-six. I’ll remember it. No problem. I can remember one stupid fax number. Especially this one. Nine times four equals thirty-six. How can I forget? Two-one-two-five-five-five-nine-four-three-six. Or is it four-nine-three-six? This is a terrible plan.

“It was a pleasure talking to you. I look forward to meeting you.” Two-one-two-five-five-five-four-nine-six-three? I should take out my pen and notebook. Who cares? I could be writing something besides a fax number for a future employer down. Like the lunch special.

“I’m looking forward to meeting you, too,” he says.

As quietly and quickly as possible—two-one-two-five-five-five-three-six-nine-four—I hang up the phone. One interview scheduled. A good start.

“Sunny?” Liza asks. Her hands leap to her rounded stomach. She does this often, as though she’s checking to ensure she’s still pregnant.

Maybe she thinks I’m getting coffee. Not a ridiculous assumption. Office coffee is like the hot dog of the java industry. They get the leftover beans that don’t quite make the cut at Starbucks. Two-one-two-five-five-five-six-three-nine-four.

Liza isn’t a horrible boss. Besides the fact that I do all her work and she takes all the credit. And that on staff birthdays she refuses to order “terribly fattening” chocolate cake and instead insists on serving celery sticks and low-fat tzatziki. And since she’s gotten pregnant, she’s become a walking bitch machine.

But the workload isn’t atrocious and she always writes me nice reviews and pays me fat bonuses.

She glares at my cupless hands. “Is there a reason you snuck out of the office to use the phone here?”

A first-rate question. “My grandmother is sick, Liza. I needed to talk to her in private.” It’s a good thing both my grandmothers are already dead.

She looks doubtful.

“What did you get, Liza?” I ask, motioning to her small plastic cup. There was an article in the Miami Herald that said that people respond more positively to you if you frequently use their names in conversation. It hasn’t worked for me yet.

Her face flushes a shit-you-caught-me red. “Hot chocolate.”

Funny, it doesn’t smell like hot chocolate. Smells like good old will-deform-your-baby caffeine. That’s terrible. Doesn’t she know that she’s risking her baby’s health?

She slides into a metal chair. “I’m going to stay here for a while and look over some notes.”

Should I insist on sitting with her to make sure she doesn’t try to sneak a smoke, too? Maybe I should get a better sniff of what’s in that water bottle. Or maybe I’ve got to get somewhere and write down this number. “See you later, Liza.”

Two-one-two-five-five-five-three…three times twelve…twelve? Damn.

During my leftover pineapple pizza lunch, I respond to the first of two of my friend Millie’s e-mails:

To: Millie

Subject: Re: Where The Hell Are You?

I just got back last night. He asked me to move in with him. I’m going. It’s insane.

Her second e-mail, tagged with Fw: Purity Tampons Cause Cancer, is one of those health forwards. Millie, one of my closest friends, knows that I love spreading these millions-of-women-die-needlessly warnings. You never know, one day one of these e-mails could save someone’s life.

I received this from a friend—please read and pass along. Have you heard that Purity includes asbestos in their tampons? Why? Because asbestos makes you bleed more, and if you bleed more, you are going to use more…

I tried a Purity tampon once, but it felt as if I was trying to shove a cement brick up my vagina. I forward the e-mail to Liza because she loves chain letters, especially those feel-good chain letters that promise you instant death if you don’t forward immediately. I forward the Purity Tampons Cause Cancer e-mail to my older sister Dana, too. This way she knows that the reason I didn’t call her when I got home late night was not because my plane crashed, or was hijacked by terrorists, but because I am an extremely busy career woman who is also very concerned with women’s health. And who knows? Maybe she’ll get a story idea out of it. Dana does the nine o’clock news for the radio station WCMG Miami. She’s desperately trying to move to TV. She also sells feature articles to newspapers all over the country in an attempt to build up her portfolio.

Six seconds after I hit Send, my extension rings.

As always, I contemplate answering the phone with, “What?” But I don’t. “Sunny Langstein speaking.”

“Why didn’t you call me when you got in? You know I worry about you.”

“Sorry, Dana. I got in late and I didn’t want to wake you.”

My sister snorts. “I told you to wake me. Did I not tell you to wake me? Did you have a good trip?”

“Very nice trip, thanks.” Do I tell her? I have to tell her. “Hold on one sec,” I say. I put the phone on the desk and close my office door. I sit down in my swivel chair and take a deep breath. Liza hates when her staff’s doors are closed, always asks us to please leave them open so that the other departments don’t get the impression we’re unfriendly.

Her door has been closed for about six months now.

“He asked me to move in with him.”

Silence.

“Hello? You still there?”

“I’m here,” she says. “He wants you to move to New York?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

“Do you care what I think?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just going to quit your job and leave everything behind? Isn’t that a bit irrational?”

And the guilt begins. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her. Maybe I should have moved and called her from New York. “What’s new?” I could have asked. She would have rambled on for hours, and when she finally stopped for breath, I could have interjected, “Call me at this new number, ’kay?” And that would have been it. I should have banked on Dana’s tunnel vision—her ability to only see and hear what she wants to see and hear. It would have taken her months, maybe even years, before she realized that 212 wasn’t Fort Lauderdale’s area code.

Case in point: after I graduated from college, she admitted she didn’t know that I had studied business at University of Florida.

“What did you think I was studying?”

She shrugged, straightening the neck of my gown. “Communications.”

I laughed. “Why? Because you studied communications?”

“No,” she answered, sounding insulted. “I thought that’s what you said. That you wanted to study communications.”

I did. When I was eleven. When Dana wanted to be a star reporter like Barbara Walters and decided to major in communications, I said I wanted to be Barbara Walters and study communications. What do they teach you in communications anyway? How to talk? But then I decided that business was a little more practical. That’s what my father told me.

And journalism isn’t the only way to make a difference in this world. I’m going to change the structure from within.

One day, armed with all types of theorems, my business degree and women’s studies minor, I would break through the corporate glass ceiling.

One day.

Coming up with the next Snapple wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. The problem is, I haven’t found a ceiling really worth breaking. Panda recruited on campus and I dropped off my resume, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then they called me in for an interview and then they offered me a job. I am quite talented at convincing people to do what I want, even when I’m not sure I want it.

But I’m only twenty-four, still building the resume. One day I’ll do something real. Change the world. And in the meantime, unlike Dana, since the day I started college, my father hasn’t had to lend me a dime.

A piece of pineapple is trapped behind my bottom teeth, in the wire that my orthodontist glued on after I got my braces off. “It’s not irrational,” I say, while digging for the stray piece of fruit.

“I can’t understand you. You’re mumbling. Are you going to quit your job?”

Spit or swallow? I spit the de-wedged pineapple into a tissue. “I thought of flying in every morning, but it’ll be difficult.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

Dana breathes heavily in my ear, waiting. I don’t breathe that loudly, do I? Now that Steve and I will be permanently sleeping in the same bed, I’ll have to train myself to inhale and exhale through my nose so that I don’t kill him with my morning breath.

I see Liza huff by through the two window panels by my door. They don’t let us lowly assistant managers have blinds for fear we’ll spend all day playing Tetris, downloading porn or write to the higher-ups that we’re secretly doing their jobs.

“I’ll find a new job.”

“Isn’t Panda considered one of the top five companies to work for in Florida? Aren’t you on the fast track over there?” Of course, that she remembers.

“I won’t be promoted for another year.”

“Why? Don’t you do all of your boss’s work?”

True. “But I’m not ready to be a manager. I still need to have someone look over my stuff. And I’m only twenty-four. They don’t let twenty-four-year-olds be managers.”

“You’re a mature twenty-four. You should have asked for a promotion by now. Don’t be such a pushover.”

I bite my tongue to keep from telling her to take her own advice. First she was a freelance journalist. And now she’s been a radio reporter for over a year. When is she going to go after the job she wants?

She takes a breath. “Have you even started looking for work?”

“I already have one interview,” I say. Not that I expect to get a job right away. I know it takes time. But hopefully not too much time. I don’t want to quit my job until I have a new one. But I have to give my landlord at least thirty days’ notice before I want to move out, and I can only move out on the last day of a month. Which means that if I want to move out by October thirty-first I have to tell her by the end of September, next Tuesday. Otherwise I have to wait an entire month and Steve will end up paying for his entire apartment for all of November, since his roommate is moving out at the end of October.

This is all way too complicated.

“Don’t you think you’re a little young to move in with your boyfriend?” She sighs for effect.

“I thought I was a mature twenty-four?”

“Not that mature.”

“Dana, by the time Mom was twenty-four, she had you.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to quit your job, give up your apartment, sell your car—you can’t bring a car, never mind a convertible to Manhattan, you know—to follow some guy across the country. Are you going to get married next? Take his name? Become a stay-at-home mom? Buy a bread-maker?”

I wish I’d been offered a fabulous job in New York first and then met Steve while buying a hot pretzel from a street vendor. “I’ve always wanted a bread-maker.”

“I worry about you.”

“Don’t.”

“What if you can’t find a job?”

“Then I won’t move.”

Dana snorts. “Don’t think you can bullshit me the way you do everyone else. I know you. Do what you want. But don’t come crying to me when you’re forty, have five kids, no life of your own and need help filling the two-car garage with carbon monoxide. You should live a little. Experience life.”

Instead of finding a job after college, Dana did a one-year women’s studies master’s (that’s why I did the women’s studies minor—she kept bugging me to do it). Then, she decided she needed a master’s degree in journalism. Dana never believed in settling down. Especially for a man. Last year she slept with twelve. A bona fide member of the Man-a-Month Club, she quantifies life experiences as men’s boxers over her bedpost. “You’re too inexperienced to make such an important decision,” she continues. “And you’ve been dating him less than a year. You don’t know him long enough to know he’s not a complete asshole. You haven’t done enough research. You’re making a mistake.”

I hang up the phone and turn back to my e-mails.

Millie has already written me back.

My phone rings. I’m not going to talk to her if she’s going to be annoying.

It rings again.

Still ringing.

I pick up. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry. I’m going to miss you, okay? I like having you an hour drive away. If you’re sure, I mean absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure it’s the right decision, I’ll stop protesting.”

I imagine an army of stoned, ponytailed picketers waving felt-tipped marker-written signs and chanting at the airport, “No, no, don’t let her go!” “She’s too young, have more fun!” “She’s delirious for getting serious!”

“It’s the right decision,” I say.

Of course it’s the right decision. I’m in love. He’s in love. If it’s going to work, we can’t live in different cities forever, and he can’t leave New York. Saturday night was the ten-month anniversary of our first date, and after an hour of wine and sweaty sex he placed a little blue box on top of his pillow and whispered, “Happy anniversary.” My heart stopped, as if its plug had been ripped out of the wall. Holy shit, I thought. Is it a ring? Is he proposing? Am I going to get married? Do I love this man? I’m too young to get married. How can I marry him when we’re never in the same city for more than forty-eight hours? He loves me. I’m going to get married. We’re going to have a home. And then I opened the box. And it was a silver key chain. Smooth and silver, the inscription said, Move in with me? I love you, S. My heart turned over again, and still not sure if I was relieved or disappointed I kissed him, kissed him again.

Yes, yes, yes.

It’ll work. It’ll be perfect. I’m in love. Aren’t you supposed to take risks when you’re in love?

But if—and it’s a big fat unlikely if—I’m wrong about this (and I really doubt that I’m wrong about this) and he turns out to be a complete asshole like Dana warned, it’s not like my life will be over. I can find somewhere to live in New York if I absolutely had to. The Village Voice lists tons of people looking for roommates in Manhattan. Or if I discover I hate New York, I can always move back to Florida. I can stay with Dana until I find a place. Maybe Liza will give me back my job. Or I can teach English in Japan. I know someone who did it and loved it. She claimed it was the most incredible learning experience and that all she needed was a bachelor’s degree and that she made a shitload of cash. I could use the money to travel through Asia and even to Australia or New Zealand and I love miso soup and at least five Japanese schools have positions available immediately.

I checked.

The message from Millie:

Oh my God! You are so lucky! NYC! Very jealous. When am I going to see you? Save Friday—we’re having a major girls night! Lucy, Laura and some of her friends from work. Cocktails here, dinner and clubbing on South Beach. You’d better come. You haven’t been out in years. You missed a crazy night on Saturday! We all ended up skinny-dipping with a bunch of Italians in Lucy’s pool! lol. Want to go for sushi tonight?

Ding! A message from Dana:

Love you. Worried about you that’s all. You don’t use Purity tampons, do you? Do you think I should write a story about this? Of course you do, you crazy hypochondriac. I just sold a feature about American teenage prostitutes. Prada purse here I come!

The dichotomy that is my sister: She refuses to write about fashion, but is secretly obsessed with it. Before she got her news radio gig, she was offered a fashion column and she turned it down. She believes that publicly writing about clothing will brand her a frivolous journalist, a lightweight. I tell her that obsessing about fashion, spending all her money on fashion makes her a frivolous person. But that doesn’t seem to bother her.

Ding! Message from my boss Liza:

In case you’ve forgotten, I’m pregnant. What do I need tampons for? I’d appreciate if you don’t send chain letters during company time. Thanks, L

If I weren’t planning to quit, her e-mail would have annoyed me. Maybe she didn’t have her morning nicotine fix, after all.

I respond to Millie’s many exclamations:

I’m going back to NY this weekend for interviews. I have to keep looking for jobs this week. When I get back?

As soon as the message goes out, I delete it from the Sent folder. Then I delete it from the Deleted folder. I’ve got this Big Brother technology down pat.

I set out down the block in search of a less visited pay phone.

“No pay phone here,” a bald man says. “There’s one up the street.”

Pay phones are like men. Never a decent one around (by decent I mean in good working order) when or where you’re looking.

Take my Europe trip for example. Who doesn’t want a summer fling? I wasn’t still a virgin—it wasn’t as if I had my heart set on losing it in a hostel bunk bed or anything like that—but I believed that having a wild affair was part of the backpack experience. Isn’t that why college students go to Europe? I called dibs on the Scots and Brits, and Millie reserved the Italians, so of course we mostly met frat boys from Miami. I met one overly freckled, broad-shouldered, seemingly interested Scot on the overnight ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, but by the time we got to Greece, he had dropped two tablets of E and found his way into a sleeping bag that boasted a brunette and a foot-long Canadian flag.

Now, as I continue my hike up Flamingo Road, in search of a pay phone, the sun follows me like the evil eyes of a mysterious painting in a Scooby-Doo episode. It’s a good thing I have my sneakers on today. As I do every day. Dana tried to convince me to buy two-inch heeled pumps for the office. “But I’m allowed to wear sneakers,” I said.

“It’s about image,” she said. “Your ten-year-old sneakers don’t scream sophisticated, now do they?”

“At least they don’t scream pain.” I don’t get why anyone would choose to be uncomfortable.

Dana and I have very different understandings of the purpose of clothes. I see it as something you wear so you’re not walking around naked. Dana sees it as something worth going into debt for. Or at least worth borrowing money from my father, the person she can’t stand the most.

The sweater and jeans I’m wearing (which Dana has already vocally disapproved of—“they’re too straight leg and too light. You’ve had those jeans since eighth grade. You’ve got to think darker, boot cut.”), were chosen with an air-conditioned office in mind, not the Florida marathon.

Did I put deodorant on this morning? Last time Steve came to visit me he forgot his deodorant and had to use mine. He smelled like summer tulips all weekend.

Sweet Stevie. How we met is an example of how great men appear when you’re not looking. It was one week after I moved into my new one-bedroom ocean-view Fort Lauderdale apartment, when Steve spilled his mocha latte down my shirt.

I was at Pam’s, one of my favorite coffee shops in Miami, a small, homey, southwestern decorated café on Washington Avenue. I was on my way to meet with a research firm for a new chocolate soda we were developing, when the spilling took place. I wanted to maim the idiot but he kept apologizing and throwing coffee holders at me, thinking they were napkins. I kept telling him to stop, that it was fine even though it was not fine.

“You look like a Gestalt test,” he said staring at my shirt, and I laughed. He wanted to buy me a coffee, but I said no. When he told me he was visiting from New York, and was on his way to spend the afternoon at the retirement community, Century Village, where his Bubbe lived, I almost relented. That was pretty sweet. His parents lived in Miami, too. And he was Jewish. Not that I cared, but I knew it would make my father happy.

“I understand. But if you’re ever in New York, come to my family’s restaurant. I run it now that my dad moved here. It’s kosher but still nice,” he said, and wrote down Manna and an address on a preferred customer card, right above a bunny-shaped hole punch, and told me if I ever came to the restaurant, to ask for him and he would make it up to me. He had a nice smile. I told him my father worked in Manhattan and that I just might.

A month later, I went to visit my dad in NewYork. I hadn’t seen him since the January before, he’d been really busy, but I decided that if he didn’t have time to visit me, then I would make the trip. As usual, Dana wanted nothing to do with him. She prefers his checks as direct deposits, rather than through person-to-person contact. On the second night of my visit, when my dad told me he’d be stuck at the office again and would miss our dinner plans, I thought of the boy with the nice smile.

It wasn’t until I told the cabbie to take me to the restaurant and he said he’d never heard of it, did it occur to me that maybe Steven wasn’t the owner of Manna. Maybe Manna didn’t exist. Maybe Steven wasn’t his name. Maybe he didn’t have a Bubbe. Maybe the guy I met ran around Florida, using his fictitious Jewish grandmother the way a single father uses his kids as bait to attract women who feel the need to be maternal.

“Here it is, West Ninety-first Street,” the cabbie said, pointing ahead of him.

After I was seated in a small table by the window, I asked the waitress if I could speak to Steven.

“I can’t believe you came,” he said, a carafe of wine and two plates of kosher ravioli later.

Like a water cooler in the desert, a pay phone glistens through an upcoming window. There’s even a—gasp!—nearby bench to sit on.

“Florida Telephone Systems.” Brrring.

I dial my calling-card number. “Hi, can I please speak to Jen Tore, please?”

“One moment.”

“Jen speaking.”

“Hi, Ms. Tore? My name is Sunny Langstein. I’m presently the assistant manager for new business development for Panda, but I will be relocating to New York for personal reasons. I’m very impressed with Fruitsy Corporation’s work. I’ll be in New York next week, and I was wondering if you’d consider meeting with me to discuss any potential job openings in your department.”

“You’re the one who e-mailed me her resume last night, right? Panda, huh? I know you guys. You did that strawberry-flavored water I liked. You know, we don’t run a huge operation here at Fruitsy. We’re not as fancy as Panda.”

“I appreciate that, Ms. Tore.”

“Call me Jen.”

“I appreciate that, Jen. I’ve worked at a large operation and am looking forward to exploring my professional growth options in a smaller work environment.” I’m amazed at the crap I come up with.

“Well, I’d love to meet with you. How’s Monday at nine?”

But not as amazed as I am that they buy it. “Perfect. Where are you located again?”

“On the southeast corner of Twenty-first and Ninth.” She coughs. “I’d like to see the stuff you’ve worked on, too, if you could bring a portfolio.” Three-percent chance she’s interested in hiring me, ninety-seven-percent chance she wants to rip off Panda’s ideas. “My office is on the fourth floor.”

Nine o’clock, fourth floor. Nine times four. Two-one-two-five-five-five-nine-four-three-six. Aha.

2
Sex and the City

I spit into the airport sink. Then I reapply the baking soda, super whitening, plaque/cavity/tartar/gingivitis-prevention gel to my toothbrush, repeat, and wonder if all these extra-strength ingredients will give my mouth superpowers.

In the mirror, my hair looks flat from leaning against the airplane pillow.

Dana constantly nags me that I should get some highlights and layers. “You’re naturally pretty, fine, but you’d be gorgeous if you made a tiny effort. A little blond never hurt anyone.”

I’m not really the blond type. I prefer my shoulder-length brown hair, off my face and in a ponytail.

I rummage through my purse for my lipstick, the only makeup I wear regularly. Due to a lifetime of (ew) cold sores, my lip color is a bit irregular. I like to make my lips look smoother, a bit more even.

Is that red mark on my lip the beginning of a cold sore?

I wipe the red blot away.

Phew. Just tomato sauce gone awry.

I hate cold sores.

My father gets them, supposedly my grandmother got them, and way back somewhere in Europe my great-grandmother probably got them. When I was four, I tripped on a pair of Dana’s discarded fluorescent-pink Cindy Lauper-esque leggings and ripped the left side of my top lip on her carpet. Since then, about once a year, I suffer from a cold sore in that exact spot on my lip. It could be worse, though. My father told me my grandmother got them in her nose.

Steve has never seen my reoccurring deformity. One major advantage of living in different cities. Last time I had one, about four months ago, I claimed I had the flu, couldn’t fly and had to postpone my weekend trip. By the next weekend I was able to camouflage the tiny scar with a cover-up stick Dana helped me pick out to match my skin tone and my lipstick.

I wheel my first fits-under-your-seat suitcase, purchased at the beginning of the Steve relationship as a time-saver investment, out of the bathroom and into the miraculously short line of cabs.

“He’s not picking you up at the airport?” Dana asked, which sounded suspiciously similar to her “he’s not taking off work on Saturday night for you?”

“Should he pick me up on his flying carpet?” I said. He couldn’t take off work on Saturday night, anyway. This time of year Saturday is his busiest night. Since Steve’s grandfather opened Manna in 1957, it’s always been closed on Friday evening and Saturday, reopening after the sun goes down on Saturday. According to Jewish law you can’t run a restaurant on Shabbat, because you can’t work. In the spring and summer the restaurant stays closed all day Saturday because the sun sets so late, but in the fall and winter it opens one hour after Shabbat ends.

There’s a calendar of this year’s Shabbat’s starting and ending times taped to his fridge. When I first saw it there, after pouring myself a glass of post-sex water during my first weekend sleepover, I did a little cringing. I had no intention of dating anyone religious, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, whatever. Any type of complete devotion to any deity was too much commitment for me. And besides, it was eleven-thirty and I wanted to watch Letterman and turning on the TV is somehow considered work to religious Jews. Thank God, I thought when Steve explained that the calendar was for work purposes only. When he took over the restaurant, he decided to keep it kosher. He’s actually quasi-kosher in private—no bacon or shellfish at home but anything is game when we leave the apartment.

I position my luggage in the trunk and slam the door shut. “Sullivan and Houston please,” I tell the cabbie. He grunts his response.

“Hi! I’m Jennifer Aniston,” a recorded voice in the taxicab says. “I tell all my friends to buckle up!”

I fasten my seat belt. As a kid, I used to mentally leapfrog over the streetlamps when we took the highway. As we approach the city, I do my imaginary exercise with the building-size billboards on my left.

I’m not sure if the funny feeling in my stomach is because of excitement, nervousness or because of the meatball sandwich they served me on the plane.

I give the cabbie twenty-six dollars, which covers the fare, the toll, the additional nighttime charge—what’s a nighttime charge?—and exactly a fifteen-percent tip.

“Can I help you?” the doorman asks, his head bobbing up from his small television set.

“Apartment 7D,” I say to the man who works every Friday night and never remembers me.

He dials upstairs, waits a minute, then scratches his goatee. “No one’s there. I think I saw Steve leave about an hour ago.”

I pull my suitcase toward the elevator. “I’m Steve’s girlfriend? Remember me? I have a key.” I have a key. A key. A key, a key. Sounds like yucky if you say it too fast.

“Right. Go ahead,” he says.

In the elevator the poster tacked below the emergency phone advertises, “Dog walker available! I live in the building and am very responsible!” If I can’t find a job, I can always become a dog walker. I’ve always wanted a dog. My father wouldn’t let me have one in the house because he didn’t want anything scratching his wood floors, or discoloring his white furniture. My college dorm didn’t allow pets. When I took the job at Panda and moved to Fort Lauderdale, I felt too bad leaving a poor pet locked in a one-bedroom apartment all day by himself.

When the elevator stops, I wheel the bag toward Steve’s door. Here it is. The momentous occasion. I pull the key, my key, out of my purse and insert it into the lock.

And insert it into the lock. Still trying to insert it into the lock. It’s not inserting. Why isn’t it inserting? What floor am I on? The sticker beside the peephole says 7D. Maybe someone changed the label as a practical joke? Did I press the right floor?

I wheel the luggage toward the apartment beside his. It says 7E.

He gave me the wrong key. I ring the doorbell in case he’s home, after all. No answer.

He’s a riot, I think as I wheel my bag back toward the elevator. This is by far one of the top five Steve-isms, as I’ve coined them, on the Steve-ism list. The Steve-ism list includes his leaving a bag of Gap purchases on the subway after an afternoon of shopping. Then there was the time he forgot his cell phone at my apartment post a weekend visit. When I answered the ringing under my bed he was laughing hysterically from the airport. Silly, Stevie.

My sentimentality lasts until the elevator doors open at the lobby level. I’m moving in with a man who might one day accidentally leave our child at a baseball game.

“Key’s not working,” I tell the doorman.

He looks at me suspiciously. Yes, I’m a crazy woman who gets off by riding elevators with luggage. “Can I use your phone?” I ask. Despite its supposed roaming capabilities, my cell phone never works in New York.

Steve says that while most of New York has gone back to normal post 9/11, cell phone service hasn’t been the same.

Sometimes when I see a stranger on the subway, I wonder if anyone she knew or cared about was killed. No one Steve knew was in the towers. He had friends of friends of friends that were killed, but no one whom he knew personally.

He was asleep when the planes hit, heard the commotion outside and watched the burning from his roof. For the next two weeks, he needed to show identification every time he came home from work because his apartment is below Fourteenth Street, where the lockdown was. He told me that for the following two months, he kept a pair of sneakers beside his bed in case he needed to make a run for it.

My father was on a project in Montreal when it happened, which I didn’t know. I called his office, his cell phone, his home number but I couldn’t get through. I knew he worked in midtown, but I still wanted to hear his voice to hear he was okay.

He called me on September fifteenth.

The doorman nods reluctantly and waves me toward a rotary behind his desk. Who still uses rotaries? Thankfully, the other amenities in this building aren’t also from the 1950s.

The message on his cell phone clicks on right away, so I know he’s left it off. He always leaves it off. What exactly is the point in having a cell if it’s never on?

Why can I remember this seemingly innocuous idiosyncrasy and he can’t even remember to give me the right key?

I call the apartment in case Steve decides to call in from whatever nook of the city he’s hiding in.

“Hey, this is Steve and Greg. Leave a message.” Beep.

“Hello, Steven, it’s me. I’m standing in the lobby of your building. You gave me the wrong key. If you’re checking your messages, please come home. I’m going to wait at the Starbucks on the corner.”

When do I get to leave the announcement on the machine? Hi, you’ve reached the happy residence of Steve and Sunny. We’re very much in love and are too busy expressing our love (wink, wink) to come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number, time you called, and maybe when we’re taking a break from all this exhausting loving (wink, wink) we’ll call you back.

Why hasn’t Steve taken Greg’s name off the machine? I guess he’s still paying the rent, but he’s never there. He’s not moving in with his fiancée until the first of November (that’s when he officially starts splitting her rent) but he’s been practically living there for the past four months. His room at Steve’s is empty except for his double futon. Steve also has a double futon. What is it with bachelors and their double futons? What is it with bachelors maintaining college-esque décor?

Not that I’m an interior designer, but their place looks like an abandoned warehouse. The living room could use a comfy, fluffy, non-cigarette burned couch, a TV stand, a coffee table, lots of throw pillows, some blankets, picture frames, candles, a plant or two and some funky posters. (The current décor consists of: Reservoir Dogs poster, a beer bottle collection, a Dennis Rodman–signed basketball on the television and a few sports magazines on the kitchen table and in the bathroom.) The kitchen could use some cutlery (due to no dishwasher, they prefer plastic disposables). The bedroom could use a queen-sized bed, inviting duvet, a dresser (belongings are supposed to go in piles on the floor?), a night table (alarm clock is often found under bed) and some candles and picture frames. And every wall in the apartment is thirsty for some color.

After years of living in my father’s sterile white-walled, minimalist decorated house, I prefer my living environments to be homey.

Greg deciding to move in with Elana, his fiancée, was the impetus for Steve asking me to move in with him. Steve said he’d lived with enough roommates. He had always figured that when Greg moved out he’d find his own place—he couldn’t afford to keep a two-bedroom on his own. But then it occurred to him that maybe I could move in and split the rent.

I give him the benefit of the doubt that his desire to move in with me is based on wanting our relationship to proceed to the next level and not because he’s cheap or too lazy to move.

I hang up the phone and turn back to the doorman. “Can you tell Steve to come get me next door when he’s back?” I consider leaving my suitcase behind the desk while I go for coffee, but what if he’s a pervert who wants to smell my underwear?

My suitcase bumps down the concrete stairs outside the building. My jacket is in my bag and I contemplate pulling it out, because the crisp wind is blowing straight through the light sweater I’m wearing. It’s only the end of September and it’s already freezing. Why couldn’t Steve have asked me to move in during the summer? What if I turn into an ice sculpture when the snow starts? I think I’m going to miss the ocean even more than I’m going to miss the perma-warmth. I’ve been a swimmer forever. I was the only girl in my bunk at Abina, the Adirondacks summer camp my father shipped me off to every July (he had gone there as a kid—he was from New York originally) who didn’t pretend I had my period every time we had swim instruction. I was also the only one who didn’t cry every time a nail broke. I still loved camp though. I got a job there as a junior lifeguard, and then eventually as a senior lifeguard, and then eventually as assistant head of swimming.

I should have been the head of swimming: I was a better lifeguard than the guy who was above me, but for some reason I hadn’t applied for the top position. The idea of being ultimately responsible for children’s lives was a little too scary for me. I liked knowing there was someone looking over my shoulder. In case I screwed up.

Where am I going to swim here? In the Hudson?

I’ll have to spend half of my first paycheck on winter appropriate clothes. After living with minor variations of one season, hot, I’m going to need a coat, scarf, hat, boots. Tomorrow might have to be a mall day. I hate malls. Today is an I-have-to-drag-my-suitcase-to-a-coffee-shop-because-I’m-lockedout-of-my-apartment day. I pull my suitcase down the last step and get mad about the key-thing all over again.

Do they even have malls here?

“Changed your mind already?”

Steve is standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building carrying a bag of groceries, a bottle of wine popping out the top. A lock of light brown hair has fallen over his right eye and into his wide smile, and he’s trying to shrug it away. He has a bit of a bowl cut, the kind that all the boys I went to grade school with had. When Dana met him, she told me he needed to see a stylist. I think it’s sweet. He has a dimple in each cheek. How can I be mad at a face like that?

“Had the locks changed already?” I ask. “I couldn’t get in.”

He pulls me into a hug, squishing my chest into the groceries. Then he starts humming “New York, New York” as he’s done on my voice mail every day since I agreed to move here. He waltzes me back up the stairs toward the entranceway. The top of my head reaches the bottom of his chin.

I laugh and try to get him to stay still. “What are you doing?”

“Celebrating.”

A woman trying to open the front door, which my suitcase happens to be blocking, glares at me. “Can we celebrate inside?” I ask him.

“Hey, Frank,” Steve says to the doorman in passing. After the elevator door closes, he pushes the grocery bag between us and kisses me gently on the lips. Then the kiss becomes harder and his tongue slips in and out of my mouth. I love the way he kisses me. His face is smooth and soft and freshly shaven. A trickle of dried blood is on his neck, from where he must have cut himself. It seems he can never use a razor without leaving a nick.

“Hey look,” he says pointing to the poster on the wall. “Let’s be dog walkers. Or let’s get a dog.”

“I’d love to get a dog, but I have a bad feeling about who’s going to have to remember to do all the feeding and all the walking.”

“No, Sun, I’d be great with a dog, I swear.”

“You can’t even remember to give me the right key. Go,” I say when we’re at seven.

“What’s wrong with the key I gave you?”

“Maybe someone gave me the wrong key?”

He seems to be mulling something over and then laughs. His green eyes turn to little moon slices and his mouth opens. He has great big white teeth. His laugh is loud and deep and waves through his body.

Another Steve-ism is coming, I bet. “Yes?”

“Guess who has a key to the restaurant?” he sings to the tune of “New York, New York.” He pulls me close for another hug.

“You gave me the extra key to the restaurant instead of the key to the apartment?”

He continues his made-up song, unlocks the door and tries to waltz me down the hallway and past Greg’s empty room.

I put on my mock-concerned face. “Does one of your waiters now have the key to our apartment?”

“Is that bad?” He cracks up and then says, “Our apartment, huh? Say that again.”

I’m concerned that I’m not more concerned. I kiss his neck. “Our apartment. Our room. Our fridge. Our phone. Our answering machine. When do I get to change the announcement on the machine? I want to leave the new message, okay?”

He puts the groceries on the kitchen table and tugs me the short distance to his bedroom.

I still can’t get over how small New York apartments are. My place was bigger than his, and his is a two-bedroom. His is also older. The appliances have a gray sheen. Or maybe that’s just dirt.

I hope he’s not thinking of touching me before he cleans his hands. “I want to wash up,” I say.

He follows me into the bathroom. “Yes, my little sex-pot.”

I pick up the half-dissolved bar of deodorant soap he uses for his hands, body, face and hair, which is wedged to the side of the bathtub. “We’re taking a trip to the pharmacy tomorrow to buy some supplies.” Like a non-corrosive facial soap. And shampoo and conditioner. I used to bring my own whenever I came to visit, but moving here entitles me to invest. As Steve lifts my hair and kisses the back of my neck, I notice that the soap scum around the sink has fermented into miniature statuettes. “We’re also going to invest in some sponges,” I add. “Do you have Comet?”

He bites my shoulder. “Let’s go into the bedroom and I’ll show you my comet.”

Tingles spread from my neck, to my stomach, down my legs. Mmm. “Bedtime already? And it’s not even eight o’clock.”

I follow him into the bedroom and onto the bed. His faded gray sheets, which I assume were once black, are crumpled in a ball with a long tail draping the floor. You’d think he’d make his bed for me, wouldn’t you? How long could it possibly take to straighten the sheets and throw on the comforter? Half a minute? I’m not talking hospital corners here. I don’t like immaculate, but I like tidy. He moves what I’m assuming are yesterday’s jeans, straddles my thighs, then pulls off his sweatshirt and T-shirt. I love touching his chest. The hairs feel soft and ticklish like blades of grass.

I push him down on the bed and undo his pants. I trace my way down his body with baby kisses. At his waist I add a little tongue for effect.

“Mmm,” he groans.

The woman across the street is loading her dishwasher. “I’m just closing the blinds,” I say. “Do you want to listen to music?” I press Play on the CD player. James Brown “I Got You” comes on.

“Let’s sixty-nine,” he says, pushing his pants off and onto the floor.

The thing is, I hate sixty-nine-ing. It’s not something I’d ever admit to Steve. What guy wants to hear that the girl who is about to move in with him hates a sexual position? That’s like a man telling a woman he never wants to get married. It’s not the oral sex part I don’t like. It’s the two-in-one action that bothers me. First, I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing. I’ve always prided myself on giving good head and I absolutely cannot concentrate on two things at once. Television and conversation, driving and cell phones, salad and pasta. I like my salad first, my pasta second. Why have them both on the plate at the same time? You end up with tomato sauce on your lettuce and noodles in your Thousand Island. It’s a mess. So I end up focusing on what he’s doing until he’s limp in my mouth or I concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing, unable to compute what’s going on down there. It’s a waste, I tell you. A complete waste.

“I’m in the mood to do you,” I say. Is it possible for a woman to be in the mood for a blow job? Except, of course, for porn stars who crave them anytime, anywhere, pool, library or den.

Steve has the Hot ’n Sexy Channel, and I’ve become a porn connoisseur. A porn critic, actually. For instance, the shrieking woman is something else I find absurd. Why does the woman sound like her partner is yanking out her nails, while the man can’t even get out a simple grunt? I guess the lone male viewer prefers his action stars silent. This way he can pretend that the Brazilian-waxed blonde’s “Oh God!” and “Oh baby!” or my personal porn favorite, “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” refers to him.

Since no guy in the history of mankind has ever turned down a blow job, Steve lies back.

“Your turn,” he says a song later, just in time, too, because my lips are starting to numb. He turns me over on my back and kisses his way down my body. Mmm.

Two songs later I’m moaning and wet and he looks at me. “Tell me what you want,” he says.

Steve always wants me to tell him what I want. I want him to stop asking.

“Sex?” I ask.

He thrusts himself inside me, sending waves of heat through my body. I squeeze his shoulders.

He pulls out of me and tries to make me orgasm with his hand. The song changes. The song changes again. His fingers must have lost feeling by now. “Does it feel good?” he asks.

“Yes, almost there,” I say. Why aren’t I orgasming? I hate when I can’t orgasm. I’m not sure what the problem is. He’s doing all the right moves. I’m certainly aroused—there’s a wet patch under me to prove it. But it’s as if I’m in a hurry and waiting for the subway—obviously when you have somewhere important to go, it’s not going to come. There’s some sort of jam at the last station, sorry, take the bus.

The look of concentration on Steve’s face is intense. Is this how he looked when he wrote his college exams? Maybe if I distract myself with thoughts of him studying, I can trick myself into forgetting that I want to orgasm and then I’ll orgasm. As soon as you climb upstairs to hail a cab, the subway speeds underground into your station.

Steve’s penis droops to the left.

“I’m coming!” I lie. I’ll come tomorrow.

The first time a guy put his hand down my pants, I came the instant his finger touched my clitoris. Since I thought this was abnormal, as no one had ever mentioned it in Seventeen, I didn’t shriek out one “Oh God” or “Oh baby” or even one “Fuck me, big cock man, fuck me!” and he kept at it until I was sore, and the whole time I was worried that the girl on the camp bunk bed above me could feel the frame shaking.

Unfortunately that party trick only worked once, my being able to come with just one touch. Now I have about a forty-percent success rate, which isn’t a bad rate. As long as it’s not your oncologist who’s doing the quoting.

“I love you,” he says and slides back inside me.

“How much do you love me?” I ask him later, tracing the letters I L-O-V-E Y-O-U on his back. He doesn’t know what I’m spelling, because I’m using the cryptic Palm Pilot alphabet, Graffiti. I even draw the underscore it makes you use to create a space between words. Sometimes I give the letters extra swirls at the end to confuse him in case he’s catching on. Not that he’s ever used a Palm Pilot. L-O-V-E M-E, I write next.

“Who said I love you?” he asks.

“Fuck you.”

“Again? Can’t we eat first?” He pushes his groin into my thigh.

“You’re not going to change your mind, right?”

“I can change my mind?”

I slap him on the back. “Once I move here, it’s over. You’re going to have to love me forever.”

He bites my earlobe. “Forever?”

“I’m serious, Steve.”

“You’re always serious.”

“It’s a serious thing. I’m about to quit my job and move to a strange city to be with you.”

“You think NewYork is strange?” He pulls himself up. Our skins make a slurping sound as we separate. “Let me tell you about strange. Did I tell you that someone asked me for a French fry yesterday? I was in Washington Square Park minding my own business, eating some fries, reading my book—” he points to The Tommyknockers, the Stephen King novel lying on his floor “—when some guy comes up to me and asks if he can have one.”

“We were being serious here, Steve.”

“He was being serious.”

I picture him waltzing me down a hospital corridor an hour after I have a miscarriage, offering fries to the orderlies. At least he’d make me laugh. “So what did you do?”

“I gave him a fry. And some ketchup.” He moves to the edge of the bed and tugs his boxers back on. “I’m going to make my chicken stir-fry, okay?”

I love his chicken stir-fry. He tosses random ingredients in the wok and it somehow ends up tasting gourmet. “What should I do?”

“You come tell me about your day.” He takes my clothes from my hands. “But you have to stay naked.”

“All weekend?”

“Buck naked.”

“Should I go to my interviews naked?”

“Definitely. Isn’t it a man who’s interviewing you?”

“One man, one woman. At nine and four. I’m not sure if they’d get the joke.”

“Okay, you can wear a sweater. You might get cold on the subway.”

I might get lost in the subway. I open my suitcase and take out a clean pair of panties. I can walk around topless, but his plastic chairs are cold. I take out my laundry bag and put my pants and sweater inside. “Is the place I’m meeting my dad for dinner tomorrow subwayable or walkable?”

I open my purse and take out my birth control. I pop the blue Friday pill into my mouth and swallow. I can even do it without water. Every night at ten o’clock. I’ve never forgotten. It’s kind of impressive, if you think about it.

“Eden’s is in the West Village. Walkable.”

Tomorrow night is dinner with my dad and his new lady friend. His new thirty-one-year-old lady friend who years ago was in Dana’s bunk at camp. Needless to say, Dana refuses to acknowledge the relationship. “Carrie was a slut, and still is,” she reminded me. “When we were Butterflies, she had the top bunk beside me. She used to give Michael Slotkin head under the covers. It was disgusting. How does she even know the jackass anyway?” It doesn’t matter anyway—he never keeps a girlfriend around longer than three months. And every three months they get younger and blonder.

Carrie was my counselor for two summers in a row, when she was eighteen and nineteen. Unfortunately, she always had more time for her blow-dryer and male staff than for us. She was somewhat apathetic about me. She seemed to like me more than the nerdy girls who stared into space while writing letters home and listening to the Backstreet Boys on their Walkmans, but less than my twelve-year-old bunkmates who had blond highlights and early onset eating disorders. As a teenager, she was tall, blond, tanned, busty, talked with her hands and brought her nail file along to every activity. Until two months ago when my father started dating her, I hadn’t heard her name since I stopped going to Camp Abina.

Steve moves his sweatshirt and T-shirt combo off the floor and back over his head. “Is she hot?” he asks, his voice muffled.

“Yes. I’m not sure what the advantage would be of dating an ugly thirty-one-year-old.”

“Tighter ass and firmer breasts?”

“Honestly, Steve, if you ever trade me in for some chickee twenty years younger than me, I’ll post the picture of you in the plaid skirt all over the Net.”

“I don’t normally date four-year-olds. I like my women with a little more flesh.” He licks my breast, as if to make his point. “It was a kilt, by the way. And I only wore it to that costume party because you have a thing for Scottish men.”

He does aim to please.

The sun is finally seeping through the blinds. Steve has a full-length blackout shade on the window and the pitch-blackness freaks me out. I hate darkness. It makes me think about dying, and why would I want to worry about dying when I’m only twenty-four and in the arms of the man I love?

I’m going to need a night-light or something.

When I was sixteen and alone in my house I would jump at every noise, convinced a murderer was breaking in. Once I locked myself in the bathroom for over two hours, clutching a carving knife, curled up in the fetal position in the dry bathtub.

My father fully alarmed the house, knowing how jumpy I was, and twice I pressed the panic button in my closet, bringing the police over.

A car horn blasts for the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. How does anyone sleep in this city? It’s so loud. The alarm clock says seven-twelve. I duck under Steve’s arm and shimmy down the bed.

We normally wake up late on Saturdays, around one. I tiptoe into the bathroom and gently close the door. I like to brush my teeth before he wakes up. This way, when he wakes up and rolls on top of me, I can have a discussion with him without worrying what I smell like. I realize that I won’t be able to do this every morning for the rest of my life, which would be insane, but I’ve managed to do it every morning so far and he’s never awakened. I brush, spit, rinse, spit, repeat, then climb back into bed and pretend to be asleep.

3
Wonder Woman

Should you be concerned if your boyfriend lies about you?

We’re lying on the grass at Union Square Park. My head is on his stomach and every time I move, I scrape my ear against his belt buckle. I shift so that the ants don’t crawl up my skirt while Steve tells me about when he was a junior in college and his mother found a crushed cigarette in his jean pocket.

“Why was your mother still doing your laundry?” I ask. “You were twenty-one, right?”

“Not everyone has her own house when she’s sixteen.”

A cloud covers the sun and the sky looks like one of its lightbulbs has burst. “My father flew in once a month for a weekend,” I answer.

“If I were your father, I never would have let you live by yourself,” he says, puffing up his chest.

“He asked me to come with him. I said no.” Even though I am looking down at Steve’s feet, I can tell that he is shaking his head. Is he wearing two different socks? Yes, he is wearing two different socks.

“I wouldn’t have given you a choice. There’s no way I’d leave my sixteen-year-old daughter by herself. Especially after what you’ve been through.”

He says “been through” with dread and awe, like a nine-year-old girl asking her older sister what getting her period feels like. Dana called it the Double D effect. Divorce and Death. “First that, and now this,” mothers of friends would whisper, not wanting to look us in the eye for fear the bad luck would spread through the room like cancer. Snapping the shoulder straps of our bras would be our secret signal, our “they’re feeling sorry for us” or “they don’t know what we know” sign.

Sometimes Dana makes fun of these people, behind their backs or to their faces. “It must be so hard for your father,” one of her co-counselors said, a co-counselor who was new to camp. Dana couldn’t stand her, thought she was an airhead. “Not so hard,” Dana replied. “He left her three years before she died, and he’d been fooling around since the day he married her. At least he doesn’t have to pay alimony anymore.”

When my friend Millie’s parents separated in high school and she lost ten pounds from “not being hungry,” I tried to patiently coax her to have a slice of pizza, to get over it, but eventually I snapped. “For God’s sake, at least they’re not dead,” I yelled at her and then felt cruel and horrible and spent the next week apologizing.

Any kind of loss is painful. But after your mother dies, divorce seems like a sprained wrist, compared to an amputated hand.

Dana and I divide people into those who know what we know and those who don’t. A secret club with loss as our badge.

Steve doesn’t know. He looks into the murky and bottomless future and sees something sparkling and blue. I love it that he doesn’t know, but constantly worry about the day he will. Sooner or later everyone does.

His grandmother died last June. It was sad for him, she was his last remaining grandparent, but it didn’t exactly rock his world. He still laughed at the Letterman’s Top Ten list that night.

I think the funeral was harder for me than it was for him. I hate funerals. I don’t breathe well and the walls start to contract.

I met his grandmother a few times before she died. Steve brought me to see her whenever he came to visit me. We sat politely with her at her retirement home while she fed us stale chocolate and tea. She liked me right away, I don’t know why, but she kept grabbing on tight to my wrist. “I want to dance at your wedding,” she said and we blushed. “You have to do it soon, I don’t have that much time,” she’d say.

We’d wave her comment away (“don’t be silly, you have lots of time”) but what are you supposed to say to an eighty-seven-year-old?

“You can have this,” she said and pointed to the engagement ring she still wore. It was beautiful, platinum band, a large round diamond, two baguettes. We kept blushing and she kept insisting.

I wonder what happened to the ring.

Back to my validation.

“Dana was doing her master’s, the first one, so she was only an hour away from my dad’s house,” I say. “She made the drive at least once a week to keep an eye out for me.” Dana had reveled in the pop-by—she’d claim to be drowning at the library and then sneak into the house to make sure tattooed men and acid tablets weren’t decorating the furniture.

My dad had invited me to move with him to New York. What was he supposed to do, not take the promotion? I told him there was no chance I was going. No way. Have a good time. Enjoy. I’d visit. Tobias, the guy I had been in love with since the first day of my freshman year in high school had finally realized what I had been telepathically telling him for twelve months—that we were meant to hold hands and laugh and sneak kisses between classes. There was no way, no way, I was moving now that we were finally a couple.

The idea of senior year, of trips to the shopping center’s food court where we’d hog tables and not buy anything, of destination-less drives of where-should-we-go-I-don’t-know-where-do-you-want-to-go taking place in my absence made me feel claustrophobic and abandoned, as if I’d been waiting in the back of the storage cupboard between the winter coats, not knowing that hide-and-seek was long over.

I told my dad that after all I’d “been through” it would be too traumatizing to have to leave behind the final memories of my mother.

When I was eleven at summer camp, I found out a boy I liked didn’t want to go to the social with me. Humiliated, I locked myself in the wooden bathroom stall at the back of my cabin and sobbed and sobbed until Carrie, my father’s now girlfriend, and my then-counselor, knocked on the door and begged me to tell her what was wrong. I told her I missed my mother.

Unlike Carrie, my father should have known that excuse was full of crap.

Before my parents separated, we all lived in Fort Lauderdale. When I was three, my mother started receiving a plethora of silent, heavy-breathing phone calls (Dana was ten so she remembers these things), which led to the discovery that my father was sleeping with his secretary. Very original, Dad. Anyway, when confronted, instead of begging for forgiveness, buying jewelry and taking large amounts of Depo-Provera, or whatever today’s chemical castration drug of choice is, my father decided that marriage, like last winter’s coat, no longer suited him. We stayed in the house we had grown up in and my dad bought a condo in Palm Beach. When we’d visit for a weekend, we’d transform the living room couch into our bed (“Sunny, doll, be careful with Daddy’s things please.”). “Fa-ther,” Dana would say, she always said his name like that, in two syllables, until she was older and started referring to him as The Jackass, “we’re here for two days, do you think you could make a little room for us?”

“It’s okay,” I’d say quickly hoping to placate them both.

Once every few months he would take us to Walt Disney World. “Sunny,” he’d say. “Do you want to go on ‘It’s a Small World’ again?” He tended to address questions to me, or to “You Kids” instead of directly to Dana. She was always watching him with her best Andy Rooney I-Know-What-You’re-Up-To look, full of mistrust and loathing. I’d walk between them holding their hands, trying to bridge the gap.

When I was six and my mother died, my dad bought a bigger house in Palm Beach. We got our own rooms. Mine was upstairs and Dana’s was in the basement.

My father viewed us as goldfish. Feed three times a day, or at least make sure housekeeper prepares meals. Drop three hundred dollars into jacket pockets weekly to cover transportation, entertainment and clothing costs. Occasionally, press face against glass bowl to make sure children are still swimming.

As a strategy consultant he spent most weekdays in other cities and most weekends in the company of various women we were only occasionally allowed to meet. Growing up we had various housekeepers/baby-sitters who lived with us until Dana was eighteen and I was twelve. After that they came Monday to Friday during the day only. Dana decided to stay in Palm Beach with me for college instead of going away to school, so I was never on my own. She only moved out when she was twenty-two and got into her first master’s program in Miami.

When she told me the news, we were eating chicken wings from our favorite Florida restaurant chain, Clucks, while lying on the white couch. I knew we wouldn’t drop anything, we’d been eating like this since we’d moved in whenever no one was around to tell us not to.

“Forget it, I won’t go,” she said.

“Yes, you will,” I told her. “It’s an hour away. I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m living alone—I live with my father. I’ll only be alone for a few nights at a time, tops.”

Two months later, he took the job in New York.

When I went to visit Dana in Miami for the day, and told her that our father was moving, she was furious. “That Jackass wants to play bachelor in the city. What kind of a father leaves a sixteen-year-old to live in a house by herself?” I begged her not to complain, not to ruin it. I was mature, I could do it.

“Sunny,” Steve says, mercifully interrupting my train of thought. I love listening to him say my name.

I roll over so I can see his beautiful face. “Yes, Steven?”

“I have to tell you something.” He sounds so serious, like a college recruiter asking me about my plans for the future.

Uh-oh. He’s changed his mind. Now? He changed his mind now? A week after he asks me to move in? Why did he change his mind? Bastard.

Maybe it’s worse. You don’t say, “I have to tell you something,” unless you’re unleashing appalling news. He cheated on me. He’s already married. He’s a woman.

“I…” He plucks a blade of grass from the ground instead of continuing.

Hello? I prefer the quick-motion Band-Aid removal rather than the taunting millimeter-by-cruel-millimeter torture. “Yeeeees?” I say, attempting to stretch the word into a multisyllable confession prompter.

“You’re so going to think I’m lame when I tell you this.”

He’s getting lamer by the second by not coming out with it already. “I won’t.”

“It’s just that…” His voice trails off again.

“What? I will not get mad, I promise, just tell me.” You have to act like you won’t get mad, otherwise they’ll never tell.

He sighs. “I can’t put your name on the answering machine. I don’t want to tell my parents that we live together. They’ll freak out.”

Is that all? I almost laugh out loud. Why should I care what he tells or doesn’t tell his parents? I put on my best I’m-the-most-even-tempered-girlfriend-in-the-universe smile. “Tell your parents whatever you want,” I say, my voice full of peppered reassurance.

“Really?” he asks, and his chest droops back to its deflated state. “I thought you’d be insulted.”

Insulted? Why would I be insulted? Unless what he said was intended to be a snub. Was it a snub? Was he cunningly letting me know that his parents don’t approve of me and will never accept me in their family? Because my mom converted to Judaism and wasn’t born Jewish? Am I not good enough? I met them a few times and they smiled and joked with me and invited us for dinner every time Steve was in town. The first few times he stayed with them, but eventually he told them he was staying at my place. Is Steve embarrassed of me? Is he never planning on telling them? Ever? Is he keeping me in the closet? I storm into a sitting position, jutting his stomach with my elbow. “Are you going to lie to your friends, too? Am I some dirty little secret that you think will parade around the bedroom in slinky lingerie but whom you’ll never take out in public?” Who does this guy think he is?

He turns the color of smoked salmon. “Of course, my friends know you’re moving in. What kind of person do you think I am? I’ve never been more excited about anything in my life. It’s just that you know my parents are religious. My mom would freak out if she knew we were living together without being married. It’s not like I’ll have to hide any of your stuff ever, they live in Miami. It’s not forever.”

“What do you mean it’s not forever?” I turn to glare at him. “So you think I move in with all the guys I date? That we’re living together until you find something better?”

He wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulls me back to his stomach and pinches my nose with his fingers. Normally, when he pinches, he says, “Honk,” which is one of his favorite and most embarrassing games to play in public places. “What I meant, Psycho, is that eventually we’ll get engaged.”

Oops. “I see,” I say, for lack of coming up with anything more clever.

“If it bothers you, I’ll tell them. Be truthful. Do you care?”

How can I be mad at him after an “eventually we’ll get engaged” comment? Is he planning on proposing? How long are we supposed to live together before we get engaged? Are we pre-engaged? Do his parents not approve of me? “I don’t care. Honest.”

Eden’s is loud, busy and green. The walls are covered in leaves. Pots of sunflowers stem up beside various tables. The waitresses are wearing skirts made of petals and sunflower-patterned bikini tops. My dad and Carrie are waiting at the bar. I can’t believe he made it. Hah! I told Dana he’d show.

As I approach, Carrie waves her Fendi bag at me with one hand and a martini glass with the other. I know it’s a Fendi bag because it has the FF logo trampled all over it, as if one medium-sized FF isn’t obnoxious enough.

My father’s arm is wrapped around her tanned, bare shoulders. “Hi,” I say, approaching them.

“Sunny!” she shrieks, and covers her mouth with both her hands. “Look at you! You are so gorgeous. Look how gorgeous you are! You got so big!”

She hasn’t seen me since I was twelve and she was my counselor, so I won’t be insulted. “Thanks,” I say. “I think.”

“Last time I saw you, you had braces and hair down to your waist! Adam, isn’t she gorgeous?” She waves her hands at the word gorgeous as if she’s Moses thanking God for the Ten Commandments.

My father nods. “Gorgeous, doll, gorgeous.” Am I the doll or is Carrie the doll? I haven’t seen him in about six months, since I met him for dinner at China Grill on South Beach when he was in Miami meeting a client. He only had the night free because he was meeting “a friend” in the Keys. It’s strange that I hadn’t seen him in so long, considering that lately I’d been coming to New York every few weeks. The last few times I was here, he wasn’t, which was fine with me, because it’s not like I came to NewYork to see him.

“Stop making excuses for The Jackass,” Dana says inside my head.

Two months ago he was supposed to meet Steve and me at Manna, but he didn’t show. “You surprised?” Dana asked later.

My sister hasn’t spoken to my father in three years. “He’s like tobacco,” my sister once told me. “Toxic. You’ll feel better about yourself if you cut him out of your life.”

Dana sees us as two orphans against the world. She’s either been reading too much Dave Eggers or watching too many reruns of Party of Five.

Tomorrow, I’ll definitely call.

You know how when you see someone daily, you don’t notice him getting older, but when you don’t see him for a few months, you’re shocked by the change? Like when you pick up People once a year and see a picture of Harrison Ford and you can’t believe how gray Han Solo got? Well, that doesn’t happen with my father. His looks never seem to change—he’s six feet, wide-shouldered, with a full head of chocolate-brown hair, wide blue eyes framed by dark spidery lashes, and a Tom Cruise smile that takes up half his face. Whenever he decided to show up on Parents’ Day at camp, all the female counselors would flock to him as if he were a free chocolate sampler at the supermarket. “Oh, Mr. Langstein. How are you? It’s wonderful to see you, Mr. Langstein.”

“Call me Adam,” he’d say, resting his hands on their seventeen-year-old shoulders.

I guess that’s when he first noticed Carrie.

My ex-counselor continues to review my outfit. “I love that dress. Did you get it here?”

I’m wearing Dana’s white V-neck cashmere sweater dress, one of the many items she bought but still had the tag attached when she handed it down to me. “Get good use of it, it’s Nicole Miller and cost three hundred dollars,” she told me. As if that would impress me. Tell me something, can anyone tell the difference between a three-hundred-dollar dress and a thirty-dollar dress? And would anyone who could tell the difference think less of me if I were wearing the thirty-dollar dress instead of the three-hundred-dollar dress? And if anyone would think less of me, is she really the type of person whose opinion of me matters?

The dress is really soft. I thought my dad would like it. It’s so girly.

“And your hair looks gorgeous.” All right, she’s made her point. I put it back in a low bun, because my father has always nagged me to “pull your hair back and show off that pretty face. Why are you hiding it with all that hair?”

Okay, Carrie, that’s enough sucking up for today. The occasional batting-eyed hopefuls I was allowed to meet have always held the mistaken idea that a nod from Dana or me would high-speed them from “we hang out on Saturday nights” to “look at the Harry Winston rock on my finger” status. As a teenager I was bombarded with tickets to see Michael Jackson (“Let’s do the moonwalk together, Sunny!”), Cabbage Patch Kid dolls (“Let’s change her diaper! Maybe one day we’ll have a real baby to change!”) and subscriptions to Teen Beat (“Isn’t your father as handsome as Tom Cruise, and by the way, do other women come over to the house, Sunny?”).

Sometimes I actually liked these women. Of course, as soon as my father moved on, I was expected to move on, too.

On my twelfth birthday, one of his ex-girlfriends sent me a card, wishing me a good year and telling me to call her if I ever needed anything.

“Throw that out,” my father said. “She’s only using you to get to me. Besides, it’s not appropriate for you to still see her socially.”

I threw it out.

Carrie always looked very—Vogue. Now her hair has that three-hundred-dollar blond highlighted, blow-dried straight then attacked with a curling iron look. She’s wearing black boot-cut pants, a tight silver strapless shirt and a black cashmere pashmina draped behind her back and over her arms. She looks shorter than she used to, despite her three-inch stiletto boots—ouch—but I think that’s because the last time I saw her I was only four feet tall. Now she looks about my height, five foot six. My brown patent leather pumps only add an inch. I don’t normally wear shoes like these out, they’re my suit shoes, my interview shoes. According to Dana, they’re called Mary Janes, meaning they’re pumps with a strap. They’re the only shoes I have that match with this dress. I’m not a fashion connoisseur, but I didn’t think my sneakers would go.

The hostess shows us to our table while batting her eyes, swooshing her petal skirt and thrusting her sunflower bikinied breasts at my dad. Carrie notices and wraps her fingers around his wrist like a jaywalking mother clinging to her daughter. Thankfully the waiter in our section is male. For some reason only the female staff members are dressed in garden-appropriate costumes. Maybe no one wants waiters clothed in fig leaves handling their shrimps. Carrie and my dad claim the seats in the corner, facing outward, and I slide into the art deco highly uncomfortable metal chair across from my father and an ivy-covered wall.

Carrie passes me her drink. “Their apple martinis are to die for,” she says. “Try mine.”

I take a careful sip, not wanting to touch her red lipstick marks. “Pretty good.”

“Do you want one?” my dad asks me. He looks at Carrie. “You want another one, doll?” That answers my previous unanswered question. She’s Doll tonight.

Alcohol will surely increase this evening’s enjoyment factor. “Why not?” I answer before Doll has a chance to speak.

Carrie raises her hand and waves over our waiter. “She would like an apple martini, please. Can I have another one, too? Thanks.”

We order appetizers and the main course after listening to Carrie’s endorsements. (“The crab cakes are heavenly, trust me. Do you like ostrich? It’s fabulous here. Try it. The shrimps in black bean sauce are also to die for.”) Eating ostrich sounds mildly grotesque, so I decide on the shrimp. Once we’ve ordered, my dad asks me about my job search.

“I have interviews set up all day on Monday,” I say. “Hopefully some sort of job offer will come out of it.”

“All you need is one, right?” Carrie asks. “Just like a man.” She smiles at my dad. I want to tell her she shouldn’t get her hopes up.

I wonder what she does for a living. What’s the etiquette for asking? People always strike me as crass when they inquire about my work. It’s as if they’re trying to sneak a peek at my paycheck. And what if she doesn’t work? She might be one of those Manhattan socialites. Maybe she’s never set a pedicured toe into a job since summer camp.

Oh, hell. “So what do you do, Carrie?”

She finishes the rest of the martini and swishes it around her mouth like mouthwash. “I’m an associate at Character Casting. It’s a talent agency.”

“Cool. You find actors for movies and commercials?”

“Basically. Lately we’ve been doing a lot of reality TV.”

“I thought reality TV used real people.”

“They do use real people,” she declares. “The reality shows all have open casting, but they also rely on agencies to find people with unique abilities and diverse backgrounds. We cast most of the singles for DreamDates. Have you ever seen it?”

“You watch those reality TV shows?” my father asks me.

“Not really,” I say. “I’m not a huge TV watcher. I watch the news, and Letterman. I used to watch a ton of TV when I was in high school.”

When I lived on my own, there wasn’t much else to do when all my friends were having dinner with their families.

“Honestly, I haven’t gotten into the reality TV trend thing. I watched a DreamDates episode once, and it was kind of funny.” If you consider witnessing someone else’s complete humiliation funny. Ex-boyfriends were there, background music was blasting, people were crying. I was surprised when I read an article reporting the show was incredibly popular.

“They’re everywhere,” Carrie whispers, leaning in like a conspirator. “The networks are premiering dozens more this season. They love them—they don’t have to pay the writers or the actors. Even stodgy cable networks like TRS are launching them. These days it’s the only surefire way to get into the eighteen-to thirty-four market. In the past year we’ve casted for Freshman Year, The Model’s Life, Party Girls, and get this one—Call Girls. Yup. It’s a reality show about a Vegas whorehouse. Unreal, huh?”

I shake my head, incredulous. Don’t individuals have enough problems without wanting to burden themselves with other people’s exaggerated ones? “How did you cast for that? Answer the Village Voice ads?”

“You don’t want to know.” Our drinks and appetizers arrive and Carrie continues between bites of crab cake. “We’re swamped these days. You know what—if none of your interviews work out, we could definitely use a temp at Character.” She looks over at my father, as though seeking approval in the form of a nod or pat on the knee.

My dad says, “That’s a great idea.”

If Carrie were a Labrador, her tail would wag.

Flipping through pictures of anorexic wanna-be actresses all day? Thanks, but no thanks.

A tall brown-haired man wearing a Hawaiian-patterned shirt, black pants, shiny leather loafers, a square goatee and tiny John Lennon glasses approaches our table and lays his hands palms down on our table. “Carrie! What’s up?” he says, his glance glossing over my father and me.

Carrie straightens up in her chair. “Howard, hello. You know my boyfriend, Adam.” He shakes my dad’s hand. “And this is his daughter, Sunny. Sunny, Howard Brown.”

“It’s a pleasure,” he says to me. I lift my hand to shake his, and he kisses the back of it. His lips feel oily and he reminds me of a counselor I knew at Abina, Mark Ryman, who had thought he was the camp’s Danny Zukoe. He would buy the fifteen-year-old counselors-in-training shots of tequila to get them drunk enough to sit on his lap.

Carrie looks around the room. “Who are you here with?”

He rubs his hands together as if he’s trying to warm them up. “My wife. She’s getting us another table. I don’t like where they sat us.” He motions across the room at a blonde in a fur-collared white sweater.

Carrie waves but the wife doesn’t wave back. “Tell her I say hello,” Carrie says.

As soon as he walks away, Carrie hunches toward me and whispers, “That was the executive producer for the show Party Girls I was telling you about. His wife is a complete bitch. A jealous freak. She’s convinced he’s screwing half the women in New York.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s screwing half the women in New York.”

“He has the slime vibe,” I say.

“Yeah, but he’s a genius. He created the show, too. He’s even the one who sold the idea to TRS, which is miraculous, considering that the network is so conservative. Since I cast two of the girls for his show, he’s considering hiring me as a liaison. You know, to make sure they stay gorgeous and do their job.”

“So what are these brilliant producers going to do next? Tape people going to the bathroom?” my dad asks, nipping back into the conversation at the word gorgeous. Maybe Carrie should start peppering her everyday conversation with sexy adjectives. Sizzling weather. Spicy clients.

“You’re so funny, honey.” Carrie giggles a little-girl laugh.

“What does a producer do exactly?” I ask. I’ve never understood what that job title entails.

“Not much,” my father says.

“Very funny, Adam, that’s not true. They plan everything, hire everyone, manage the money, make sure everything is on schedule, premiere the show.”

Sounds like what I do, but with TV shows instead of carbonated fruit juices.

“This concept is very original. It follows four girls at different bars on Saturday nights.”

Aren’t there a million shows like that? “Very original,” I say.

Carrie nods, either missing or ignoring my sarcasm. “The camera only follows the girls on Saturday nights. The unique part is that the show airs the next night. We call it ALR taping, Almost Live Reality. An incredibly quick taping-to-broadcasting turnaround.” Her voice switches into sell-mode. I imagine her shaking hands with prospective spicy clients, nodding profusely. “No one knows what’s going to happen next week, not even Howard. Also, this show is going to be far more accurate in terms of the scene than other Real TV shows. Usually these shows are taped in their entirety, then edited, then broadcasted. But even though a club is sizzling hot during the summer, it could easily be out by winter. With ALR, Party Girls will be a lot more immediate. Much more now. Much more real.”

Much more ridiculous? How could anyone be real when she’s being stalked by a camera? I can’t even be natural taking a passport photo. “So how do you pick the girls who are on the show?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes. “You would not believe the process. Applicants had to fill out forms and send in sample tapes, then we did a round of interviews, then we finally chose four girls.” Carrie looks over at my father to make sure he’s listening, but realizes that he’s busy watching the waitresses in their garden outfits. I can tell she’s contemplating what she can say to break him out of his two-timing reverie. Doesn’t she know it’s never going to happen? “Why four?” I ask.

She seems to be searching her stock answers for an appropriate response. “Women are normally friends in groups of four.”

I laugh. “And has that happened since Sex and the City became a huge success?” I don’t have HBO, but both Millie and Dana do and they’ve made me watch enough episodes. Not my life (the Mr. Bigs, the Cosmopolitans, the Manolo Blahnik obsession), but I still laughed. Is that show even on anymore? I take another sip of my martini.

She searches for a stock answer for that, too, but appears to come up blank. She nods. “I suppose so. I need another drink,” she says, motioning to the waiter.

Two martinis later, there’s a commotion behind me.

Carrie strains her neck to see what’s going on. “Yikes, something is going down over there.” She points multiple fingers over my head. I turn to take a look.

A blond woman in a tweed Newsboy cap is standing in front of her chair, clutching her neck. A flushed man beside her is frantically trying to convince her to drink a glass of water. “Take it! Karen? Kar? Are you choking?”

I doubt the bluish tint to her face means no. She’s fine, thank you very much, and why don’t you sit down and finish your black beans and shrimp?

Apparently, Carrie was right. The dish is to die for.

Is it too late to change my order?

Silence creeps through Eden’s like frost. Karen, the choking woman, motions to her neck and throws the water on the floor. The glass splinters around her.

The man spears his eyes around the restaurant. “I need a doctor!” he yells. Our waiter howls. The hostess starts to cry.

No one stands up.

“Oh my. Oh my,” Carrie says. “She’s choking. She’s choking.” She giggles and her hands respond by waving. “Oh my. What do we do? Adam? What do we do?”

Karen heaves silently, without emitting a single sound. Is she going to pass out? Is she going to die? Are we about to witness a woman die over a plate of shrimp?

Way back when, in the days before Hotmail, DVDs and Britney Spears, to get my lifeguard certification I had to practice doing a stomach thrust. Unfortunately I’ve never actually performed this activity on anything except a mannequin.

There must be a doctor somewhere in this restaurant. I look for someone exploding into action with a stethoscope around his neck, or a prescription pad in hand. Someone must be more qualified than a has-been summer-camp lifeguard. I don’t even think my certification is still valid. I’m barely qualified to throw her a lifejacket.

I coached children on the front crawl. I blew a whistle during free swim. Once every summer we’d pretend a kid had lost his buddy and we’d hold hands, sweep the water. Since we knew the kid was hiding in the flutter-board shed reading an Archie comic, that’s not saying much for my emergency skills.

The woman is the same color as the curaçao in her martini glass. “Can’t anyone help?” the man begs.

Shit.

My head feels light and I wish I hadn’t had that second cocktail, but I jump to my feet and sprint toward the air-challenged woman. “I’m going to do the Heimlich on you, okay?” Are you supposed to ask permission? Or does that scare them? Too late.

I stand behind her, make a fist with my right hand and place it, thumb toward the woman, between her rib cage and waist. Her stomach feels squishy and hot. I put my other hand on top of the fist. Okay. So far, so good. I’m already congratulating myself and I haven’t done anything yet. All right, it’s outward and inward. No, inward and upward. That’s it. I thrust my hand inward and upward. Nothing. Inward and upward. Again. Inward and upward. Fuck. How many times am I supposed to do this? She can’t die while I’m touching her, can she? There should be some kind of rule—someone can’t die in a stranger’s arms.

A chunk of shrimp soars out of the woman’s mouth, landing in her glass and splashing blue liquid onto the white tablecloth. She coughs. She breathes. She turns around. She throws up.

The restaurant claps.

“Are you okay, Kar?” her husband/date/male friend asks her.

She inhales again and nods. I hand her the cloth napkin that was on the floor. I assume it’s hers.

Dazed, she sits down and says, “Thank you.”

You’re welcome! Everyone is looking at me, pointing. Wow. I can’t believe I just did that. Pretty impressive. I’d love to see what that looked like. Any chance anyone got that on videotape? “How do you feel?” I ask.

“Light-headed,” she says, “but all right.” A waiter hands her a glass of water and she downs it.

People are still clapping. I look at my table in the corner—Carrie is honoring me with a standing ovation, her hands gesturing all over the place. My father has his glass raised to me in a toast. A toast. My father is toasting me!

I do one of those shy I-do-what-I-can smiles. I might be a superhero. I saved a person’s life. Aren’t there customs where she’s supposed to become my slave?

The maitre d’comes over and thanks me. Maxwell the chef tells me I’m a star. Karen and her husband start to cry and tell me they can’t thank me enough. Karen then hands me her business card and a hundred-dollar bill. I decline the bill but take the business card. Why not? It says Karen Dansk, VP Programming, Women’s Network. Who knows? Maybe I can get Dana a job as a Manhattan reporter.

Ten minutes and thousands of accolades later I head back to my table. My father motions to his mouth and then to his chest.

“What?” I ask. He’s so proud he’s speechless? I’ve touched his heart? I’ve rekindled his hope in the human spirit?

“Wipe your sweater,” he says.

I look down. Dana’s three-hundred-dollar cashmere dress is covered in shrimp and black bean remnants.

I wonder if I can ask Maxwell to make me the ostrich instead.

4
Six Feet Under

Sixth Avenue. Uh-oh. Wrong way. It’s three fifty-four. I have six minutes to find the right office. Time to sprint. Ow. Feet hurt. Can’t look sweaty. Click, click, click. Need this job. Not that I expected to get a job right away, but how many Mondays can I get away with calling in sick?

I have spent the last fifteen minutes being dragged by the commuter undertow, not having a clue that I was going the wrong way.

Sometimes I’m so off, yet sometimes I’m so on.

I still can’t believe I saved a woman’s life the other night. My lifeguard skills certainly came in handy.

I fell in love with the water when I was six, the summer my mother died. Whenever I felt lost and alone at camp, I would take solace in being immersed in the water.

I loved listening to the ping of the bubbles, flowing around me.

When I couldn’t stand the sadness, when I felt utterly overwhelmed, I would sink to the sandy bottom, feet of water above me and open my mouth and scream. I would scream and scream and scream, until I felt empty and calm.

I’m going to need to find a place to swim in this city.

I keep walking. Next to the soaring buildings I’m a speck of dust on a crowded Monopoly board. One of these buildings is my dad’s. I know his office is near Grand Central (not that he’d ever go slumming in the subway). With each step the corrosion of the soles of my brown Mary Janes intensifies. These pumps are made for walking, as the song kind of goes, except walking ONLY to and from boardrooms, in and out of elevators, not journeying along miles of jagged concrete. My feet have swollen to bee-sting proportions and each step pinches. Where are my sneakers when I need them?

Finally, at exactly five past four I arrive on the sixth floor of Soda Star.

“Hi, Heidi,” I say to the receptionist, feeling remarkably clever for remembering her name. “I’m here to see Ronald Newman.”

“You’re late.” A balding man wearing a lime-green golf shirt, beige shorts and golf shoes stomps across the waiting room.

How come he gets to wear sneakers and I don’t?

“Excuse me?” I say.

“I’m Ronald.” He sticks out a pudgy hand. “Sunny, right? Listen, Sunny,” he says before I finish nodding. “I have to get to a golf game. I’m running a little late, so let’s walk and talk?”

I nod and follow him back into the elevator. Fabulous. More walking.

“I’m hungry,” he says. “And you could probably use some coffee. Let’s do this down the road at my favorite diner. The cafeteria in this building is appalling.”

Fabulous. More coffee. I’ve already had two cups trying to wake up for my 9:00 a.m. interview. My 9:00 a.m. useless interview that began with my pal Jen at Fruitsy telling me, “It’s unfortunate we have no positions open. Your stuff is very impressive. Let me see it again.”

I can’t believe she duped me into waking up at seven—at seven—just so she could drool all over my portfolio. She knew she wasn’t hiring, but vulturelike, wanted to see what ideas and clients she could embezzle from me.

Then I had another two cups trying to stay conscious all day after waking up so early.

I hope there’s a bathroom at this diner.

Ten minutes later we’re in a seedy diner down the street, and I’m wondering exactly what his idea of appalling is. “They make the best sweet potato fries,” he promised as I sat on something sticky in a booth near the back.

My feet feel like they’ve been driven over by a bus. How unprofessional would it be if I took off my shoes? I accidentally on purpose drop my spoon and lean down. I can’t take them off, obviously, but what harm could there be if I unbutton the strap the tiniest bit?

Yes. Oh, yes. Much better.

“So if you worked for me, that’s what you’d learn,” Ronald says and takes another bite of his cheeseburger. After thirty-five minutes of lengthy descriptions of his swot analysis, his hatred of bottled water and his theories of advertising, all of which I couldn’t care less about, I congratulate myself on my skilled ability to stare someone in the eye, appear as though I’m hanging on his every word, while ignoring him completely. It’s all about the nod. “Between digital TV and integrated marketing services—we’re about to experience the modernization of the marketing of the soda industry as we know it—” Nod, nod. Between nods, I treat myself to sips of my coffee, while still maintaining eye contact.

I wonder if he conducts an interview a day just to hear himself talk.

“I can tell you’re highly intelligent,” he tells me.

And he can tell this by my continual nodding? He’s good.

“Thank you, Ronald. I think you’re very intelligent, too, and I am quite confident I would learn an immeasurable amount from you.”

He nods. Not quite my nod, but not bad, I grudgingly admit. “That you could.” His gaze drifts to the ceiling. Probably thanking the heavens for his virtuosity. “When we did the launch for our mandarin-and-vanilla-flavored caffeine-free soda…”

I have to use the bathroom.

Now.

“…you should have seen their faces when we won the ADDY award for the…”

Can I interrupt him to use the bathroom? People don’t like being interrupted. I have to wait for a natural pause in the conversation.

How is he not taking a breath? How has he not toppled over for lack of oxygen?

When he takes another bite of his burger, I make a jump for it. “Excuse me, I have to use the rest room. I’ll be right back.” I slide away from the table while he’s still chewing.

Ronald is staring at me strangely. Once I’m standing, I realize that a) the stall is only a foot away from the table, and b) he is staring at my unstrapped Mary Janes. Can’t do anything about the shoes, so I just smile as if nothing’s wrong.

If I ever design a restaurant, I’m putting the bathrooms all the way in the back.

The door handle rattles in my hand.

“I’m in here!” Someone screams from the other side.

Now what? Do I sit back down? Can I just stand here ignoring him? What’s she doing in there? Washing her hair? Why do women take so long in the bathroom? Don’t they consider that other people need to use it? She has rudely barricaded herself in there for over five minutes. I slink back into our booth and cross my legs. No more coffee.

Ronald is perusing my resume with one of his short stocky fingers. “What are your salary requirements?”

I hate that question. Do I say more than I want so he can offer me less, or less than I want to undercut the competition? “What range are you offering?”

“Forty to fifty.” Fifty’s not bad. I’ll take fifty. “Depending on experience.”

“I’m looking for fifty. I have the experience.”

“You don’t have Manhattan experience, but I think you’ll work out fine. Forty-five.” He smiles, showcasing gold fillings. “When can you start?”

Is that a job offer? Or a casual question? I take another sip of coffee to try to appear calm and normal and not as though his every word has the power to alter the course of my life. “I…um…I’d have to give two weeks notice. And then I’d like a week to move and organize myself. So if I give notice immediately I could start in three weeks.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you in three weeks.”

That was an offer. I just got an offer. I squeeze the metal rim of the ketchup-stained table in excitement. “Really?”

“Really. I’ll have all the paperwork drawn up and at your office by Wednesday morning.”

“Thank you,” I say, overwhelmed with gratitude. Ronald pays the bill, shakes my hand and then makes a run for his golf game. “We’ll be in touch,” he says, and disappears outside.

The bathroom door flies open and the toilet hog sashays through the restaurant. I notice that a woman in a beige suit is slowly rising from her seat, eyeing the open door, about to make a run for it.

I hurl myself to the empty stall before the suit-clad woman beats me to it. Since I’m far closer, I get there first and lock the door behind me. In my hurry, I almost trip on my de-strapped shoes, but in midfall I catch myself on the sink.

I might be a direct offspring of the goddess of agility.

Two minutes later, while still cramped in the stall, I decide that I’m going to surprise Steve and drop by Manna to say goodbye. I still have some time before I have to catch my flight. I undo the bun in my hair—wet and scrunch it because Steve likes it down and sexy, and then rummage in my purse for my lipstick to smooth out my lips.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door.

“I’m in here!” I scream while doing up my shoes.

Funny, there’s never a rush when you’re on the inside, is there?

“I did it,” I tell Steve.

“That was quick. It’s only nine-ten.” His morning voice is raspy and sexy and I wish I were lying next to him instead of back in my office with the door closed.

“I wanted to give Liza the full two weeks notice.”

“How’d she take it?”

“She was pissed. Told me I screwed her or something. But she would have said that no matter how much notice I gave. I want some time off to move. I don’t want my last day here to be a Tuesday, the trucks come Tuesday night, and I start at Soda Star 9:00 a.m. Wednesday.” I kick my feet up on the desk and swivel in my chair, executive style. I love my chair. I hope Soda Star has good chairs. Really, a proper, comfortable turbo chair makes all the difference in one’s performance.

“Congrats on your unemployment. I still can’t believe you got a job on your first try. Have you heard anything more from Ronald McDonald?”

After Ronald Newman’s cheeseburger appreciation, Steve has named my future boss after his favorite so-not-kosher hamburger joint. “Not yet. He said tomorrow, I think. Okay, gotta go. I have to give my thirty days notice at my apartment.” I estimate the discussion with Jocelyn, the superintendent, will take at least a half hour. She’s a talker.

By later Tuesday morning I’ve given Jocelyn notice (“New York! How exciting! Good for you! Can we show your place tonight? The rental market is fantastic these days. Do you know—”), e-mailed all my friends and acquaintances about the furniture I’m trying to sell, with digital pictures included, and placed an ad for my car in the weekend classifieds.

I am a goddess of efficiency.

“But you didn’t hear from Ronald McDonald?” Steve asks me on the phone that night as I turn my lights out, crawl into bed, and recount my excellent organizational skills, the portable phone balanced on my shoulder.

“I’m sure he’ll send me something tomorrow.”

By Wednesday at five-thirty, I’m starting to get a wee bit edgy. After biting my nails until my fingers are raw and red, something I haven’t done since I was twelve, I call Soda Star.

“Thank you for calling Soda Star. Our office hours are nine to five, Monday through Friday. If you know your party’s extension, please dial now. Otherwise, press one to leave a message for marketing, two for operations, three for sales…”

Ten minutes later: “If you do not know the department you wish to speak to, please dial the first four letters of the person’s last name you wish to reach. Have a nice day.”

“N” is six. “E” is three. “W” is…where’s “W”?

“I’m sorry, you lazy moron, you’ve run out of time.” The phone disconnects.

Bitch. I hang up and plan my attack. First, I write the numbers on a Post-it note, and then I redial.

“Thank you for calling Soda Star. Our office hours are nine to five, Monday through—”

Why does she tell me every possible number combination except for the one that means fast forward? Do all Soda Star employees get off on hearing themselves talk?

Finally I reach Ronald Newman’s voice mail.

In my frantic attempt to come across as utterly cheerful and imperturbable, I end up sounding pathetically desperate. “This is Sunny Langstein calling? I just wanted to catch up and make sure all the papers are in order? I gave notice here so I’m all set to start in two and a half weeks? Looking forward to hearing from you?” And then I repeat my home number, office number and cell number. Twice.

When I arrive at my office on Thursday morning, Liza is sitting cross-legged on my desk. “Guess what!” she says, patting her stomach. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to the baby.

“What?”

“I found your replacement. She’s fabulous. She has no work experience, but just finished her MBA. An MBA! I’ve always wanted someone with an MBA to work for me. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Exciting,” I say, and flip the power button on my computer.

“And she can start on Monday, giving you five days overlap to train her. Isn’t that fabulous?”

“Fabulous,” I say somewhat warily. A small pang tweaks through my body, like I swallowed water too fast and it went down the wrong pipe. How did she find someone so quickly?

Am I that replaceable?

I call in for my home messages. The message on my machine from Jocelyn tells me that she has great news:

“My niece just got evicted from her apartment last week—well, that’s not the great part of course, no one likes getting evicted—but she wants to move in by October fifteenth! So you’re off the hook for half of October’s rent, which I know will please you. But you have to move out by the fourteenth, okay? Isn’t that perfect timing!”

I call Ronald again. I don’t want to leave a message, again, so I hang up on his voice mail. And then I call my home answering service, again, and my cell answering service, in case Ronald is too dim-witted to realize that during working hours I am at the office.

“You have no new messages you big, fat, pathetic, jobless loser.”

I repeat this process at eleven. And at two. And at 2:30. At 3:30. At 4:00. At 4:15. At 4:21 my heart is beating louder than call waiting and I can’t take it anymore. I leave another message.

What’s his problem? I’ve always gotten anything I applied for. I had a full scholarship to the University of Florida. I was assistant head of swimming at camp. The youngest assistant manager at Panda. I was voted treasurer of my high school student body. My boyfriend wants me to move in with him, dammit.

“Sunny,” Liza points her pointy, pregnant head into my office. “Tomorrow, can you start writing up descriptions for everything you do?”

“What?”

“For the new MBA. It would help if she had To-Do lists. If you could write out everything you do and how you do it, that would be fabulous. Thanks.”

Great. Like I have nothing else to worry about. I’m going home.

That night I dream about sitting at the diner and Ronald picking hamburger meat with fat fingers out of the space between his two front teeth. He’s telling me that he’s decided to hire Liza’s unborn child instead of me.

I wake up hot and cold and sweaty, tangled in my clean cotton sheets. It’s 4:00 a.m. I can’t fall back asleep, so instead I shower and go to work.

I compose the list of things the MBA should do, and then at eight close my door and begin my morning ritual of calling Ronald.

“Ronald Newman speaking.”

My mouth is immediately zapped of all moisture. He’s alive! He’s alive!

Why didn’t he call me if he wasn’t dead?

“Hi, Ronald,” I say, wishing I had a glass of water nearby. What’s wrong with my mouth? “Sorry to bother you? It’s Sunny Langstein calling? How are you?” Must stop talking in question format.

Silence. Why is there silence?

“Sunny,” he says slowly. “I’ve been meaning to (ahem) call you—” Why the ahem? No one likes an ahem. “I have some bad news I’m afraid.”

Bad news? No one likes bad news.

“It’s very unfortunate, but we found a candidate with more New York experience.”

“More what?”

“More New York experience. Someone more familiar with the bars, the concert venues, the retail stores, the arenas. Television contacts. You don’t have any contacts here, Sunny. We need someone with a higher profile. What would you be bringing to the table?”

My new business experience in the soda industry? “I…um…didn’t you already offer me the job?”

“Like I said, the news is unfortunate. My secretary was supposed to call you and send you a fruit basket. Should I assume you never received it?”

What stupid fruit basket? “Why were you interviewing other candidates after you offered me the job?”

“You can never give up on finding the perfect candidate,” he says. I wish I’d received the fruit basket. I wish he was in the same room as me. Then I’d hurl an apple at him.

“I hope this hasn’t caused any inconveniences,” he says.

I have no job and no place to live, but what inconvenience? “Oh, oh, none at all,” I say in a singsong tone.

He doesn’t sense my sarcasm. “You never know, we could have another opening any day. Why don’t you give me a call once you’ve settled in the city?”

I am not going to cry. “Uh-huh,” I say, then add “’Bye.” I hang up. Rage and frustration and disappointment and what-a-fucking-asshole overwhelm me, and I sink into my fabulous swivel chair that now belongs to the fabulous MBA. I stand up and stand directly behind the closed door because it’s the blind spot, the one corner of personal space in the entire office where no one can see in. No job. No apartment. What am I going to do? I lean against my in-case umbrella and tears spill down my cheeks like rain.

5
The Wonder Years

This is the history of my parents: Father is in business school. Mother is a nurse. Father is Jewish. Mother is Catholic. Father meets Mother in Brooklyn. Father and Mother fall in love. Mother gets pregnant. Father proposes marriage but insists Mother convert, otherwise Father’s children will not be Jewish. Being Jewish is very important to Father because it’s important to Father’s parents. Father’s father, Daniel, died five years ago and Father promised he would marry Jewish woman. Mother cares more about Father than she does about religion so she agrees. Mother’s parents do not agree. Mother’s parents are horrified that daughter is pregnant and converting and tells Mother to never return home again. Mother converts. Process is far more strenuous than Mother imagined. Mother marries Father anyway. Father gets offered high-paying consultant job in Fort Lauderdale. Mother and Father move to Florida. Mother has baby girl, names her Dana, after Father’s father. Mother wants to return to work but has difficulty finding new nursing job with baby at home. Father becomes increasingly distant. Father’s job requires much traveling. Mother tries to have another child. Gets pregnant. Miscarries. Gets pregnant again. Miscarries again. Gets depressed. Gets pregnant again. Carries to term. Mother sees baby as shining light in marriage and names baby Sunny. Sings “You Light Up My Life” to rock baby to sleep. Father leaves Mother for secretary. Mother’s older daughter doesn’t understand where Daddy is and sits on the porch stairs waiting for him to come home. Mother puts three-year-old back to bed and explains to ten-year-old again. Mother gets sick. Mother doesn’t tell children that she is sick, but instead calls her own parents who she hasn’t spoken to in ten years and begs them to come take care of them. Parents come. Grandmother and Grandfather move into Mother’s house until summer when Mother dies and children move into Father’s new house in Palm Beach.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Steve tells me.

My office door is still closed. “Whatever you say, Judy Blume.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” One at a time, I pull unused thumbtacks out of the corkboard walls, and then group them on my desk by color. Red, yellow, green, white.

“So you’ll look for a job here. It’ll be easy to find something once you’re in the city.”

I attempt to keep my voice at a consistent pitch, above the sinking level. “Everything is all screwed up. I didn’t want to move until I had a job. I don’t want to be the jobless girlfriend who has no life and sponges off her boyfriend, all right? How do you know I’m ever going to find a job?” I turn the thumbtacks around and stab them into the wooden desk.

“First of all, you’ll find a job. Second of all, you’re not sponging off me. I’m happy to cover the full rent until you find something. And second of all—”

“You already said second of all. You’re on third of all.”

“Third of all, you never thought you’d get the first job you applied for, anyway. And you only applied to jobs in the beverage industry. Can’t you apply for any new business job? And can’t you apply for manager positions, too? Not just assistant managers?”

“I wanted a job in an industry I’m familiar with. I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. And I’m not ready to be a manager yet.”

“If you need to make some money, you can wait tables at the restaurant.”

I can’t get sucked up by his world. I need to have my own job, my own life. I can’t depend on him for everything. Is he not listening? “But I wasn’t planning on quitting until I had a job. You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” He sighs into the phone. “Sunny, I know you’re afraid you’ll end up like your mother. But you’re not her, okay?”

My head hurts. I close my eyes. “How did you know that was bugging me?”

“What do you mean how do I know? I know.”

“Carrie? Hi, it’s Sunny.”

“Sunny?”

“Sunny, Adam’s daughter?”

“Sunny! Hey! How are you? I am so busy here today. We’re having a major crisis. Major. Can I call you back? Why are you calling?”

Why am I calling? I rub the palms of my hands against my temples. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. The job that I thought I had fell through and I was wondering if you still had some temp work for me? You seem like you’re in a rush, though, so call me whenever you have a second.”

“Sure, Sunny, no problem. Let me ask around and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, okay? Gotta run! Crisis! ’Bye!” She hangs up.

She’s not calling back. Maybe my father has already dumped her and she’s going to make me wait by the phone as payback.

The bulletin board walls in the room start to contract, like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. My breathing feels shallower, faster, harder.

When we moved in with my father, this happened to me whenever my dad tried to take us on vacation. On a flight to the Florida Keys, I pretended to be asleep on Dana’s lap, imagining air leaking from my mouth as if from the rim of a balloon. Leaving me shriveled and empty.

When I was seven, on a trip to Epcot Center, on the Spaceship Earth ride, as Dana, my dad, his new girlfriend and her twelve-year-old son journeyed “to the dawn of recorded time…” I began to slowly hyperventilate. When our seats rotated to reveal a vast star-filled night sky, I felt as if I was being buried alive. Rambling, I told my father I had to find a bathroom, now, and Dana took my hand and led me through the blackness, toward the red exit sign. As soon as we entered the lit corridor, I started crying. She pulled me into her and smoothed my hair until I felt calm.

When Dana was seventeen, on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, she knocked on my father’s door, still in her pajamas, and told my father she was not going to synagogue. She’d had enough. She didn’t believe in God, and what was the point in pretending she did? Moronic, she said. Religion was moronic, so why should she be a hypocrite?

Sitting in the kitchen, eating my cereal and milk, dressed in my new striped gray Rosh Hashanah suit and black pumps, I thought about how after my mother died, Dana used to tell me that she was watching us from above, making sure we were all right. But as I heard Dana stomp toward her room and slam her door, I realized that it had been something she had to say, because what else do you tell a six-year-old girl?

Headhunter. Why don’t I e-mail a headhunter? I’ll write up a polite cover letter, using Steve’s New York address.

By noon Liza has passed by my closed door, scowling, at least twenty times. I’m about to send off my cover letter to Great Jobs NY when my phone rings, annoying me.

“What?” Did I just say that?

“Sunny. It’s me. Omigod.”

Will Omigod one day make it into the Oxford English Dictionary as an expression of disbelief or amazement among generation Y women?

“Oh, hi, Carrie.” Maybe she found something? Be calm.

“Omigod. Guess what? You’re not going to believe this. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down?”

No, I’m lined up vertically against the wall in a headstand. “Yes, I’m sitting.”

“Okay. Okay. One of the girls—not one of the two girls I found, but one of the girls my assistant Lauren discovered, my ex-assistant I should add—was arrested last night. Arrested! By the cops! I fired Lauren, of course. A bad judge of character has no future at Character. No future in this business at all. I can’t believe I hired her in the first place.”

“What girls?” I ask. What is she talking about? She’s sounding a bit pimpish. I change the screen of my computer to my To Do list in case Liza peeks in. No need to antagonize her for no reason.

“For Party Girls. The reality TV show. I told you about it, didn’t I? The camera follows four women on Saturday nights. And the unique part is that the show airs the next night because it’s ALR taping which is—”

“Right, Almost Live Reality. You told me.”

“Yes, Almost Live Reality and taping starts in eight days. Eight days! Eight days!”

Wow, I have good timing. I might be a timing goddess as well as deity of efficiency. Lauren got fired today. I need a job today. I am good. I can demean myself for a few months, while I make contacts and earn some cash. If it looks that bad on my resume, I don’t even have to put it on. I swivel my chair three hundred and sixty degrees, and smile. “I’ll take it,” I say.

Carrie squeals. “You will? You’re awesome! You’re going to be amazing. You’re going to be a TV star.”

What did she just say? Me? A what? “You mean a Character star, right?”

“Whatever you want to call it, honey. I’m going to make you famous.”

Famous? “Carrie, are you offering me a job at Character?”

She laughs a high-pitched, girly laugh. “I’m offering you a role on Party Girls.”

I drop the phone and then pick it up again. “Excuse me?”

“You’ll be great.”

“On TV. What do I know about TV?”

“You don’t need to know anything. That’s the point. It’s a reality show.”

I can’t be on TV. What would I do on television? “I don’t understand.”

Carrie is beginning to get impatient. “Sheena was arrested for shoplifting two thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise from Bloomingdale’s. She’ll be tied up in court for the next year. And we can’t have the show’s reputation tarnished before it even starts. And she was supposed to be the Miranda.”

“The what?”

“The responsible one. Remember my client Howard? At Eden’s? He had the Hawaiian shirt and the jealous wife. He called me at 3:00 a.m. last night and told me that Sheena was in jail and that I had to find a new girl, pronto. We need to have four girls. Four girls, Sunny, four girls. I’ve been frantically trying to find a replacement all morning. Howard nixed the runner-ups. All of them. He said, ‘If I didn’t hire them the first time I saw them, why should I hire them now?’ But isn’t that the point of runner-ups? Anyway, he said to find someone new. So I’ve been searching for a lawyer or an investment banker, someone sexy yet serious, but no one wants to take a sabbatical from work, and even if someone could, her management probably won’t allow her to moonlight in case the show’s material reflects negatively on the firm. But we need someone capable. And then you called. Didn’t you always want to be on television? Be like Barbara Walters?”

How did she remember that? “I don’t know—”

“Do you believe in fate? I believe in fate. I called Howard, after remembering that he already met you. I told him you were a career woman, moving to the city and wouldn’t you be perfect and do you know what he said? Bring her in for a screen test.”

“Really? Me?” Well, I never. He must have been impressed with my life-saving show at the restaurant. “He saw me do the Heimlich and thinks my life-saving skills will make me a good character?”

“Um…no. He left before that happened. He decided he didn’t like their table and they went to Nobu instead. But he thought you were cute.”

I’m oddly flattered. I catch my smiling reflection in the computer screen and attempt to make my smile TV appropriate. Am I showing too much teeth? How much teeth is too much teeth?

“Are you in?”

“I…um…” This is a bit psychotic. How can I be on TV? Who am I? Everyone has his or her own show, and who are they? But on Party Girls? The bubble gum of television?

Why not? It’s a job in New York. “I do need a job. I could certainly use the money.”

“Exactly. Although, I should tell you the show doesn’t pay much. But—”

“What’s the salary?” Isn’t that the whole point in being a star? That you get to be rich?

“There’s no salary per se. But there is a stipend of a thousand dollars. And there are a million perks. You’ll get a complete makeover. We’ll fix up that hair and the uneven skin. And we’ll definitely do something about those eyebrows.”

Those eyebrows?

“Plus,” Carrie continues, “because Party Girls is on TRS and TRS is owned by Metro United, you get tons of free stuff from everything Metro United owns. Including a thousand dollars a month clothing allowance at Stark’s, so twenty-five hundred in total for two and a half months. Isn’t that amazing? It’s amazing. And you’ll get fifty percent off any additional Stark’s purchases. They have everything there, Sunny. Everything. You can get a new couch. A sheepskin coat. Prada shoes. And since they pick up shipments around the country, I’m sure we can find a way for them to deliver your Florida furniture to your new Manhattan apartment. And Metro United, MU, also owns Gourmet Market. You haven’t tasted smoked turkey until you’ve bought some from their deli. You get a four-hundred-dollar expense account per month at any of their locations. And a free membership to Hardbody gym. There’s like one on every corner. They have spinning rooms, boxing rings and Pilates studios. They even have fantastic pools. Incredible, I know. Oh, and Metro United also owns Rooster Cosmetics. They make those fantastic facial-cleaning strips. And Purity tampons. You’ll get free Purity tampons. As many as you need. Sanitary products get expensive.”

My pubic region clenches at the very mention of a Purity tampon.

Free move? Clothing allowance? I could use that winter jacket. And Steve’s place could certainly use some new furniture. A lot of new furniture. A nice comfy bed, some lamps, blankets, candles…and a thousand dollars would pay for at least the first month of my rent…

What’s wrong with my eyebrows?

“It’s only ten weeks,” she continues. “Ten weeks. That’s it. Two and a half months of your time. And it only films once a week.”

That’s great. All that for only one night a week? I’ll have tons of time for a real job. “So I’m free the rest of the time?”

“Exactly. But Howard would prefer that his girls concentrate on the show and not work anywhere else. You’ll need to be free for press purposes. But you can certainly set up a job for after the show.”

No work? “But how will I pay my share of the rent?”

“Sunny, honey, big picture, big picture. Party Girls will make you high profile. You’ll meet everyone in the city. In ten weeks, companies will be begging you to work for them because of your contacts. You’ll know everyone in the bar and television industry. I couldn’t come up with a better career move for you if I tried. I’m kind of in human resources, remember? I know these things. You can put the stipend toward one month of rent. So you don’t pay December rent. You’ll cover food. And furniture. Can’t you borrow money from your dad?”

I don’t borrow money from my dad. My mom had to beg my father for alimony. He made her defend every purchase she made for us for two years. My sister owes my father about thirty thousand dollars, and hates him and herself for it.

I don’t ever want to depend on anyone else for money. For anything.

But this is only ten weeks. I can depend on Steve for ten weeks, can’t I?

“Your father thinks it’s a terrific idea,” she says.

“He does?” Why do I have a feeling my father couldn’t care one way or the other?

“Of course. Why not? He called it an incredible introduction to the city. And he’s happy we’ll get the chance to know each other all over again. Sunny, it’ll be a blast. What’s not to like? And I’ll be there with you every step of the way. Howard hired me full-time to help with the girls.”

She’s absolutely right. Why not? “Okay,” I say, suddenly giddy. “Let me just call Steve and make sure it’s okay with him. He will be covering my rent.”

“Really? Awesome. Okay, I’m sorry to rush you, but I have to know now. I’ll call you back in five. Okay? You’d really be saving my ass.” She hangs up the phone.

I call Steve at the restaurant.

“Hi, it’s me. Carrie offered me a job on a reality TV show in New York. It only pays a thousand dollars, but I’ll make amazing contacts. All I’d have to do is go to a bar once a week for a few hours and they’ll give us free food and free furniture and they’ll pay for my move. And it’s only ten weeks. But I have to tell them in five minutes. I’d be crazy not to, right?”

I hear the clatter of clanking pots in the background. He must be in the kitchen. “They’re going to give you free stuff just to be on television?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“But, Steve, I’ll need you to cover December’s rent.”

“I told you I could cover a few months.”

“You’re sure? You think I should do it?”

“Why not? Sounds like a blast.”

I pick up the ringing phone.

“And?” Carrie says.

“Why not.” Why not? It’s just one night a week for ten weeks. Not that a big a deal. Does anyone even watch TRS? It’ll be something funny to show my grandkids one day.

“Great. Great! Filming starts in eight days. Next Saturday.”

“Perfect. My last day of work is on Friday.” See, I am the goddess of timing.

“We’ll need you here a bit earlier than that,” she says. “To ensure you’ll be screen compatible. To buy you the right hair, clothes, publicity.”

Buy hair? Buy publicity? “When do you need me?”

She takes a deep breath. “Tomorrow morning at nine.”

Yikes.

I shake my head. “Tomorrow morning at nine?”

“It’ll be fab. TRS will pay for your flight out tonight. Let me e-mail the travel agent. There’s a seven-fifteen flight with American Airlines. Perfect. Pick up your ticket at Fort Lauderdale airport. Go to sleep as soon as you arrive tonight so you won’t have bags under your eyes in the morning. I’ll send a car to pick you up at 8:00 a.m. Wear something sexy and sophisticated. I’ll brief you in the car.”

I scan the many multicolored files on my desk and around my office. It’s like a paper rainbow in here. I was supposed to sort through them before I left to make sure everything is in order. And what about my e-mails? And my personal documents? “All right,” I say, and begin sifting. I’ll do what I can. The poor, poor MBA. “Do you know where Steve’s place is?”

“Who’s Steve?”

“My boyfriend, remember? He runs the restaurant? The reason I’m moving to New York?”

“Oh shit. Right. Steve. That’s where we dropped you off the other night after that woman choked, right? Listen, Sunny, I wouldn’t mention anything about Steve to the TRS people. You’re a wild, sexy, single girl, okay?”

“But—”

“There’s not much public interest in boring-pass-the-remote relationship types.”

Boring? I can barely keep up. “But when will I pack up my apartment? I have to be out by the fourteenth.”

“Don’t worry, everything will work out. All settled? See you tomorrow.” She hangs up.

I definitely need to take my phone contacts with me. Will anyone notice if I plunk the entire Rolodex in my purse? I write my new number and e-mail address on my pad of paper along with a note for the MBA: “I’m so sorry I didn’t get to train you. If you have any questions or concerns, please call me anytime. Good luck! Sunny.”

Liza throws open the door. “You know I don’t like when you keep your door closed for so long.”

“I…I just got the most horrible phone call,” I say, and try to appear misty-eyed and bewildered. “My grandmother…is sick again, very, very sick this time and I have to go to New York to take care of her.” Good thing I don’t believe in hell.

“That’s terrible,” she says, showing surprising compassion. “Is she going to die?”

What kind of question is that? You don’t ask if someone’s going to die. “She might,” I say, casting my eyes downward.

“But you’ll be back on Monday, right?”

“I don’t know if I can, unfortunately. She’s very sick.”

“Can’t someone else look after her?” Liza is beginning to look panicked. I hope she doesn’t go into labor. “I need you here next week.”

I widen my eyes, all innocent-girl like. “Well, since my mother is dead, there isn’t really anyone else. And if she does die, how horrible would it be if she was all alone without anyone to comfort her?” Yikes.

Liza still looks miffed. “When are you leaving?”

“I have to go home and pack a bag and attempt to make the seven o’clock flight. It’s all terribly sudden,” I say. At least that part is true.

“So that’s it? You’re leaving? This is your last day?”

I need to be at the airport for 5:30, which means I need to leave for the airport at 4:45, which means I need to be home by 3:30, at the latest—no, make that 2:30—to get organized. I’ll need to leave here at 2:00.

I look at my watch. “I’m going to have to say my goodbyes now, unfortunately.”

Liza turns white. She better not go into labor. I don’t have the time to take her to the hospital.

In the taxi on the way to the airport I call the Miami Herald to cancel my subscription (“Are you sure you don’t want to transfer it?”) and then quickly call my sister to tell her the news.

“Do you really want to be associated with the pimple on the ass of the history of media?” she asks.

“What?”

“Don’t you think being on a reality TV show is horrendously cheesy?”

“Don’t you think spending five hundred dollars on a new purse is horrendously cheesy?”

She ignores the dig. “What if you end up villainized like Geri from Survivor or that Simon guy? You’re not going to pose for Playboy, are you? And look at the Real World people now. They’re always whining. I think they even had to start a twelve-step program or something.”

“It’s so not a big deal, Dana, it’s just for a few weeks.”

“How can you be part of something that encourages people to aspire to the lowest common denominator? That promotes 20-somethings as asinine, shallow and incompetent? That’s so not you.”

Asinine? Shallow? Incompetent? “The shows aren’t that bad,” I say, apprehension fermenting in my stomach like bad yogurt.

“Have you ever even watched one?”

“Of course.” Once or twice. I haven’t watched a lot of TV since I moved out of my father’s house.

“What about your privacy?”

“I’m only taped on Saturday nights. I can make nice to the cameras for five hours a week. It’s a job. And there are so many of these shows, the characters are swapped faster than coffee filters. No one will remember my name two weeks after the show.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Dana, you’re making a big deal out of nothing. I’ll meet people. I’ll make a life for myself in New York and not have to rely on Steve for a social life. I’ll get a ton of free stuff. I’ll make contacts. I thought you’d see this as a good thing.”

“Don’t complain to me when you become a public mockery and they’re doing skits about you on Saturday Night Live.”

“Thanks for the support.” I turn my phone off.

Is she right? Is this actually a big deal?

Oh. Right. She’s jealous. Of course she’s jealous. She’s been trying to make her mark in television for the past five years. And I get this offered to me on a silver platter. She would kill for an opportunity like this, and I’m not even taking it seriously. Maybe I should call her back and apologize.

Forget it. She didn’t have to be so rude.

We get stuck in traffic, of course we do, and the driver attempts to engage me in a discussion about a new sales tax, but I’m too worried about missing my flight and therefore my new job, to partake in conversation. I grumble and close my eyes.

Finally I’m fastened in my middle seat on the plane—you’d think they could have sprung for business class—and there’s no room overhead for my carry-on so I have to cram my suitcase under my feet.

Not the best start to my new adventure.

When I get to LaGuardia Airport, I wait thirty minutes for a taxi and then fall asleep on the drive to the apartment. Finally, finally, I’m here! Here I am! I’m going to see my Stevie, I think smiling. The doorman doesn’t remember me, of course not, so I have to remind him who I am, and once he nods, I drag my bags into the elevator, and then to Steve’s door.

He doesn’t know I’m coming. In the past year I’ve never surprised him with a visit. What better opportunity than this to be spontaneous? At least he finally had the right key made for me last weekend, if he’s not home.

As I unlock the door I have a terrible thought: What if he is home, but he’s with another woman? What if they’re having sex on the couch, clothes dripping all over the floor? I just left my job for him, bastard. What would I do? His loss, I decide. I’m going to be on TV. I’m going to be a TV star. I’m staying in New York. I’m taking this job even if he is a cheating bastard and I have to stay with my father until I can find my own place. Maybe I should have knocked so they have a chance to get dressed. But then I won’t be able to catch them in the act, and they could always deny it. Say she’s a friend or a waitress from the restaurant or something.

I swiftly push open the door and storm into the living room.

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