Slightly Settled Read online

  “Can I come up?” he asks, low, in my ear.

  “You already told Ishmael you’re going to Brooklyn.”

  “Huh?”

  I gesture at the driver.

  “Oh.” He shrugs. “I’ll give him a big tip.”

  He kisses me, an intensely sweeping kiss.

  Life comes down to a few Moments of Truth. This is one of them.

  What will happen if I say yes?

  What will happen if I say no?

  There’s no way of knowing.

  Nothing to do but take a deep breath—and make a decision.

  5

  Monday morning, I wear a frumpy navy rayon dress that’s two sizes too big for me, no makeup and sunglasses.

  The sky hangs low and gray over Manhattan, but I don’t give a damn. I’m in disguise. At least, in the lobby and in the elevator, where I stand in the back silently facing straight ahead while the crowd chatters about the office party.

  Is it my imagination, or are people nudge-nudge, wink-winking about me?

  It has to be my imagination. I’m no stranger to paranoia. Just because I flirted—

  Oh, all right, made out with—

  —some guy at the office party, well, that doesn’t mean anybody noticed. Or that if they noticed, they care.

  Insert Kinks’ guitar riff here. Duh…duh-duh…duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. Paranoia, Self-Destroya…

  I find myself wishing I had called in sick today. Or, um, you know…quit.

  On my floor, Lydia greets me as usual from beneath a green-and-silver garland of tinsel. She doesn’t even do a double take before chirping, “Morning, Tracey” and going back to her Newsday.

  Mental Note: Disguise not 100 percent foolproof.

  I have to take off the glasses anyway when I get to my desk. Luckily, it’s barely nine o’clock and the place is deserted. It’s also got that Monday-morning chill after a weekend with the heat turned down.

  I’m shivering as I head for the kitchenette—also deserted—and grab coffee from the community pot. Normally I drink it with skim milk and an Equal, but I hear somebody coming and duck out the opposite door sloshing black coffee all over my hand. Ouch, dammit!

  This is ridiculous. I can’t go sneaking around all day like I’m starring in The Mole.

  Why, oh why, was I such an all-out Don’t on Saturday night? Why didn’t I stop and consider the consequences?

  Back at my cubicle, I set my coffee on my desk and take several deep breaths. I can’t stop shaking, and it’s not just because it’s cold in here. I feel a panic attack coming on.

  Needing a distraction, I turn on my computer and sip some coffee while it whirs into action, and then I log on to the Internet and see that I’ve got a bunch of e-mails. One is from Buckley, asking if I want to have lunch today; one is from Kate, asking how the Christmas party was; three are from my sister-in-law Sara, all of them forwarded jokes as old as my screen name. But she and Joey are new to e-mail, so lame forwards are still a novelty to them.

  “Hey, what happened to you on Saturday night, girlfriend?” Latisha calls from somewhere behind me, in her loudest yoo-hoo voice.

  “Shh!” I wave my arms at her, almost knocking over my coffee.

  “Here,” she says, handing over my camera. “I figured you were going to lose this at the club, the way you were—”

  “Carrying on?” I supply when she hesitates.

  “That’s one way to put it.” She smirks. “Anyway, I brought it home safely for you.”

  “Thanks.” I didn’t even realize until now that I didn’t have it. “But why didn’t you bring me home safely? You guys abandoned me.”

  “We didn’t abandon you. We told you we were leaving,” Brenda pipes up, materializing behind Latisha. “Three times. You didn’t hear us. You were too busy kissing that guy.”

  I cringe.

  The two of them park themselves on my desk, wearing expectant expressions.

  “Well?” Latisha asks. “Did you go home with him?”

  “No!” I act totally outraged, as though the thought never would have entered my chaste mind. “Do you guys really think I’m that sleazy?”

  They look at each other. Obviously, they do.

  “You were kind of all over each other,” Brenda says with a shrug. “I was a little surprised.”

  I rub my eyes with my hand, utterly humiliated. “Oh, Lord, do you think anyone else saw?”

  Yvonne pops her bubblegum-colored bouffant over a filing cabinet. “It was hard to miss, honey.”

  Not honey as in You Poor Misunderstood Thing. Yvonne might be my grandmother’s age, but there isn’t a maternal bone in her weedy former Rockette body; her honey is brash and laced with sarcasm.

  I bury my face in my hands, fighting off panic, doing my best not to hyperventilate.

  Brenda pats my back. “Look on the bright side, Tracey. You met a nice guy. Did you give him your number?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?” Latisha demands.

  “He didn’t ask.” Talk about humiliating. I add hastily, “And anyway, I don’t want him to call me. I just want to forget the whole thing.”

  “Why?” Brenda asks. “I thought he was a good guy.”

  “Hot, too,” Latisha says approvingly.

  “He had tight buns,” Yvonne puts in.

  Eeewww. Tight buns?

  Like I said, she’s my grandmother’s age. That’s hip slang for her. But the phrase has me picturing some unappealing loser in snug-fitting beige polyester slacks—which, if nothing else, is enough to take the edge off the panic.

  “Morning, Chief.” Mike pokes his head around the edge of my cube. “Ladies.”

  They greet him and disperse, leaving me alone with my boss standing over me. My thoughts whirl back to the party.

  “So I heard you met my roommate.”

  “Hmm?” I reply absently, trying to remember whether Mike left early. I wring my icy hands in my lap. God, I hope so. Or could he have still been around while I was sucking face with Jack at the bar?

  “The funny thing is, he didn’t realize you worked for me.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Wait a minute.

  What?

  I gape at Mike’s big grin, searching for words, coming up with only, “Wait a minute. What?”

  “My roommate,” he says. “Jack.”

  Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

  “Jack’s your roommate?”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “Yup.”

  Clearly, nobody is kidding here.

  This development sinks my Office Party Don’t-dom to a whole new level.

  “Jack? Jack, uh—” Okay, I don’t even know his last name. “Jack the guy I, um, met—” that’s one way to put it “—is your roommate?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But…I didn’t even know you had a roommate,” I say weakly. (Yes, I know, Dianne did mention it on the phone, but I do not remember that conversation at the moment. It will, however, come back to me eventually.)

  Here’s where Mike says, “Just kidding. I don’t.”

  But he doesn’t. Say it, that is.

  He does, apparently, have a roommate and his roommate’s name is Jack.

  Mental Note: Update résumé during lunch hour.

  “So what’d you think of him?”

  “Jack?”

  “Jack,” he says with an anticipatory quirk of his eyebrows.

  Christ, I feel like he’s shoving a microphone in my face.

  Well, Mike, to be honest, I thought Jack had nice, tight buns.

  “Jack was a good guy.”

  There. A nice, G-rated reply.

  Thank God, thank God, thank God I didn’t sleep with Jack.

  I wanted to. I really did. Standing there on the street in front of my building, with everything hanging in the balance and his big warm arms around me, I desperately wanted to give in and let him come upstairs with me.

  But I mustered every ounce o
f willpower I possessed, and I didn’t. I just kissed him one last time and ran inside.

  How the hell did I, in my Stoli-soaked, turned-on state, manage to find and embrace my inner Catholic schoolgirl?

  It can only have been divine intervention.

  Like I said, Thank God, thank God, thank God.

  My inner Catholic schoolgirl zaps me with stinging Catholic guilt.

  Mental Note: Unearth rosary beads from bottom of underwear drawer and check Sunday mass schedule.

  “Yeah, Jack’s a great guy,” Mike is agreeing. “He’s the best.”

  I smile. Nod pleasantly. Yup. That Jack’s the best.

  Mercifully, the phone on my desk rings before the painful conversation drags out any longer.

  “That might be Dianne,” Mike says hopefully.

  No, it might not. Because it isn’t his extension that’s ringing; it’s mine.

  Probably Buckley, wanting to know about lunch. Plus, I screened his calls yesterday.

  Or it could be Kate. Or Raphael. I screened them, too.

  I had a massive hangover and spent the entire day lying on my bed in sweats eating carbs, rehydrating and watching made-for-TV movies on Lifetime. And shivering, because my apartment is so drafty. Oh, and cringing every time I thought about what I’d done the night before.

  All in all, I’ve had better days.

  “Tracey Spadolini,” I announce into my phone in a brisk, efficient voice—only because Mike is standing here. Calls that come in on my own extension are almost never business-related, but he doesn’t have to know that.

  “Hi,” says a voice.

  A male voice.

  Not Buckley’s. Not Raphael’s.

  I make it’s-for-me motions at Mike, who nods and disappears.

  “Hi,” I say cautiously into the phone.

  “It’s Jack. From Saturday night.”

  Jack. Boss’s roommate Jack.

  “Hi,” I say again. My heart is beating a little faster. Despite my ambivalence, he’s got a great voice. It was hard to tell when we were screaming over the music at the party. He sounds low and manly, unlike Will, the tenor, who was sometimes mistaken for a woman back when he did telemarketing.

  “Tracey, you work for my roommate.”

  No shit.

  “I just found out,” I tell him. “I, um, didn’t even know Mike had a roommate.”

  “Yeah. I was telling him about you yesterday, and we figured it out.”

  Cringing, I imagine that conversation.

  Say, Mike, I met a liquored-up strumpet in a skimpy red frock last night.

  Why, Jack, that sounds like my assistant, Tracey.

  “So anyway…I looked you up in the company directory….”

  Excellent detective work, Watson.

  Part of me—the eagerly expectant, shamelessly aroused part—is flattered that he wanted to find me again. Part of me—the utterly disgraced part—would have been content to slink on into oblivion.

  “…and I thought we should go out.”

  “You did?”

  He laughs. “I mean, I do.”

  “You do?”

  With a Don’t?

  He wants to go out with me after the spectacle we made of ourselves in front of the entire agency? Isn’t he the least bit mortified?

  Apparently not. He asks cheerfully, “Are you busy Friday night?”

  “I’m, uh, not sure. Can I let you know this afternoon?”

  He hesitates. “Okay.”

  “It’s just that I was supposed to have these plans with my friends….”

  Did I ever mention I’m a terrible liar?

  “That’s all right.”

  “I just—”

  “I understand. If you’re busy—”

  Suddenly, I’m Kate Winslet awash in the North Atlantic, clinging to his icy hand as he begins to drift away.

  Noooooooo! Don’t leave me, Jack!

  “Actually I think we switched the plans to Saturday,” I say quickly. “I’m not sure. I’ll just check and let you know this afternoon. I’m probably free.”

  “That’s fine.”

  I hear ringing in the background.

  “That’s my other line,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  “So I’ll talk to you later?”

  “Okay,” I repeat, quite the sparkling conversationalist.

  “Bye.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “Sure. Bye.”

  I’m elated.

  He asked me out!

  I’m suspicious.

  Why the hell would he ask me out?

  I’m—

  Dialing. That’s what I’m doing. I’m calling Kate. I need advice.

  She’s home, of course. She’s not working these days—or, probably, ever again. When I met her, she was temping, just like me. But her parents back in Mobile pay her bills, and the only reason she worked at all was to meet rich businessman types. Now that she has Billy, she’s basically a housewife without the house. Or the husband. Yet.

  “You’ll never believe who’s on Regis and Kelly this morning,” she says by way of a greeting. I can hear the television in the background; sounds of applause and Regis shouting something.

  “Kate, listen—”

  “Remember the short blond guy who was in that lame movie we saw last summer at the—”

  “Kate, I need to talk to you. I’m at work and I’ve only got a minute. It’s important.” Sometimes you just have to pluck her out of her insulated little Kate universe.

  “What happened? Are you okay? Why are you whispering?”

  “Because I’m at work and I don’t want anyone to hear.”

  “Hear what? Oh my God, are you pregnant?”

  “No!” I should have called Buckley instead. He’s a better listener.

  But I can’t leave her hanging now, so I quickly tell Kate what happened.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “No! We just kissed,” I hiss. “But everyone saw. And he’s my boss’s roommate,” I point out for, like, the third time. “How can I go out with him? I mean…what if I slept over at his house and ran into Mike walking around in his underwear?”

  “I don’t know…it might be good for you,” she says.

  “Spinach is good for you. Seeing your boss in his underwear is not good for you. Or maybe it’s good for you, but it isn’t for me.”

  I shudder at the mental image of a scantily clad Mike.

  Okay, he probably doesn’t wear Spider-Man Underoos in real life, but still.

  “I don’t mean seeing your boss in his underwear would be good. Nobody said you have to sleep with this guy. In fact, whatever you do, don’t sleep with him. I’m just saying that it might be good for you to go out on a date with him. After the way Will shit all over you, you deserve to have somebody take you out and treat you well.”

  Well gee, thank you so much for that, Kate. The thought of Mike wearing Underoos has been replaced by the oh-so-graphic image of Will shitting all over me.

  “But he’s my boss’s roommate.”

  I can just see her rolling her light blue eyes. Even I’m getting sick of me saying it.

  “So? It’s a date. Just a date. Period. I mean, it’s not like you’re ready for another relationship yet….”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It would be purely rebound, Tracey. You don’t get dumped after spending a few years of your life with somebody and turn around and meet the right person immediately. It takes time. You’ve got to heal.”

  “I’m healed.”

  Really.

  These days, when Will calls me, I never think he’s going to ask me to get back together. Well, hardly ever.

  Okay, I didn’t think that the last time he called. At least, not the whole time. Not after he mentioned that he and Esme were going skiing in Vermont over Christmas.

  “You’re healing, but you’re not entirely healed, Tracey. You’re not ready to invest wholeheartedly in another rel
ationship,” advises Dr. Phil. I mean, Kate.

  “Then why bother going out with this guy at all?”

  Her prompt, precise answer: “Because you need a Transition Boy.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone to ease you back into the real world,” Kate explains. “Someone to help you cross the bridge between your old identity as Will’s girlfriend and your new identity. You know, someone to—”

  “Wipe off the shit and make me feel all fresh again.”

  There’s a pause. I picture her delicately wrinkling her powdered nose.

  “Well, if you really must put it that way, Tracey…”

  “Yes, I really must.”

  “Well, anyway, you should never turn down the opportunity to get to know somebody new,” Kate declares. “Even if it obviously can’t work out with him, he may have a friend who might interest you, down the road when you’re healed.”

  Concluding that Kate is watching too many daytime talk shows, I thank her and hang up, still not sure what I want to do.

  I can’t even remember what Jack looks like. Is he really as handsome as I thought the other night? Or did all those drinks cloud my judgment? For all I know, he looks like Dobby the house elf.

  Not that it matters.

  Of course looks don’t matter. I’m not that shallow.

  Wait, am I?

  Am I shallow?

  I do spend an awful lot of time thinking about looks. My own, and other people’s.

  But who doesn’t?

  Okay, my family back home doesn’t.

  Buckley doesn’t.

  My friends at work don’t.

  But just because I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to look good, and just because I want to make sure the guy I might go out with isn’t a beast…

  Well, that doesn’t mean I’m shallow.

  Shallow is Are You Hot?

  Shallow is everybody who works at She magazine.

  Shallow is…

  Will.

  Shallow is Will; Will is shallow.

  He’s also beautiful—but only on the outside. He was cold and cruel on the inside. That should have taught me something.

  I ponder.

  I reflect.

  And then I think, the hell with it.

  If I’m going to have a Transition Boy, I might as well make sure he’s good-looking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it better to go for the looks now and the other worthy qualities later, when, according to Kate the Relationship Guru, I’ll actually be ready to find Mr. Right?