Cheapskate in Love

chapter 6





The lobby down the hall from the marketing office and across from the elevators wasn’t a place to impress anyone, at least in a favorable way. Two of the walls were white, and the third was electric blue. Standing in this lobby, visitors felt as if they had been dropped into a slice of frigid ocean between two icebergs. The funky furniture made out of geometric shapes in bright primary colors provided some visual warmth, enlivening the space. But it heightened the sense of displacement visitors experienced, and to a few it suggested global warming and the tasteless consumerism polluting the globe. Crude paintings of nightmarish city landscapes for sale on the walls seemed to confirm that the decorating style was pro-environmental. Those paintings gave the place a threatening aspect. They appeared to be the visual ravings of a psychopathic hermit with apocalyptic opinions, which probably explained why they had been on the walls for a while, without anyone expressing any interest in buying them. Because there were no windows, the two ordinary office plants in separate corners of the lobby were weak and wilting from lack of sunlight. Their appearance seemed to strengthen the message of world destruction that the lobby conveyed. If anyone stayed in that lobby for long, they seemed to wilt, too.

After leaving the office with Katie, Bill had made a trip to the bathroom to comb his hair and check his appearance in the mirror, sprucing up what he could. He arrived in the lobby at the same time as Claire and Matt. While all four were there during the photo shoot, other workers on the floor would pass by from time to time and stare at them, curious at what was going on. Frequently, the other office tenants would smile at what they saw or heard.

“Do you want to sit or stand?” Katie asked Bill.

“I’ll sit,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you look thinner, standing?” Claire wondered.

“His posture isn’t good,” Matt pointed out.

“I’ll sit,” repeated Bill, more firmly than before. He then sat down on the couch where bright red-, blue-, and orange-colored square cushions, connected by white metal tubes, pulsated around and underneath him.

“Not there,” warned Claire, pointing to the wall behind Bill, where there was a painting of skyscrapers, which resembled a bouquet of bloody knives under a sooty sky. “Scary picture.”

Bill looked behind him at the picture, shrugged his shoulders, and moved to a chair made of blinding yellow discs that looked like a display of super-large lemons. Striking a rather sour pose, he looked at Katie, who was ready with the camera.

“Are you going to smile?” she asked without showing one herself, indifferent to what he did with his face.

“A mug shot isn’t attractive to most women,” Claire noted. She was a born leader and perceived that she had to manage the picture taking. Since she bossed Bill about in his professional life, and everyone knew he lacked such assistance in his private life, she clearly thought that she was doing him a favor.

Bill smiled a little.

Matt had been surveying the scene, and his eye for design was coming into focus. “Sit up straighter,” he said. “Maybe you should put an arm around the back of the chair, like this. It’ll push your chest out. Make it seem as if you actually have a chest. Now you look like a Buddha statue.”

Matt went to show Bill what he meant, taking his arm and positioning it until it looked right. At one point, he pushed hard on Bill’s shoulder to see if Bill’s deflated chest would rise more, which caused Bill to jerk back in pain. “Ow. That’s my bad shoulder,” he said.

“Sorry,” Matt said, continuing to position him, now turning his head to different angles. “Perfectionism hurts sometimes.” Bill submitted as best he could. “Sit up. Suck your belly in,” Matt ordered.

Unable to tolerate how she had been sidelined, Claire stepped in to take over twisting Bill’s limbs and prodding him. “Let me fix him,” Claire told Matt, who moved to the side.

With more force than Matt had used, she pulled and squeezed Bill’s body, as if he was a creature made of clay. After trying a number of new poses, she came back to the one Matt had left him in. “That’ll look manly,” she said. “You look like you want to squeeze her shoulders.”

But after a moment’s deliberation, she still wasn’t satisfied. She told him to stand up. She took him through some yoga poses to loosen his limbs and spine in an attempt to straighten out his shoulders and posture. Bill was put through considerable discomfort, because the last time he had done so much stretching was fifteen years ago when he had dated someone who competed in triathlons. That romance was very short-lived, because she insisted that he train with her, if he wanted to see her. While Claire led him through yoga moves, Bill’s body recalled long-forgotten aches that had occurred during that brief season of athletic love, but the benefit was negligible. When he sat down again, he was tired. Instead of sitting up as straight as he could, he drooped like one of the lobby plants and wanted to take a nap.

Unwilling to admit that her efforts had been useless, Claire had another idea and told Katie to go grab her purse. Bill and Matt wondered what Claire was up to. “What does every woman want?” she announced mysteriously.

“Money,” said Bill.

“A baby,” said Matt.

“Wrong,” said Claire. “They want a movie star.” She spoke with the assurance of the best authority—herself. “You may not be one, Bill, but you can look like one. A little blush will give you a California glow. A little mascara will draw attention away from all the bags under your eyes. And a dash of lipstick will make you look hot-blooded. You’ll be sexy, movie-star material.”

To Matt, what Claire said made a little sense. He had to see first. To Bill, it made none. “No, no, no,” he insisted. “I just want a picture. Just take the picture. I don’t need makeup.”

Claire, however, had her way. She was after all his boss and knew best. Two visitors, who disembarked from the elevator during Bill’s glamorization, saw Claire coloring his face and asked if they were having a costume party. Bill twisted his head to them suddenly and responded with New York crotchetiness that there wasn’t any party, which caused the red lipstick in Claire’s hand to streak across his cheek. Claire had to grab his chin tightly to prevent another mishap. The visitors were amused to hear from Matt that Bill was only having his picture taken for a dating website.

“There,” said Claire, beaming with satisfaction at her work when she finished. “Doesn’t that look better?” she stated out of politeness as a question. Bill had no mirror to see for himself. He looked at Matt’s reaction. Matt thought it best to stifle his opinion and bobbed his head without nodding yes or no. Katie kept looking at her cell phone to see what time it was.

“Now we can take the picture,” Claire trumpeted. She put Katie in the right spot to take the photo. Claire and Matt stood behind Katie.

“Wait, Katie,” Claire said. “One more adjustment. Cross you legs, Bill. You’ll look more like a gentleman, a cultured man of the world.” Bill crossed his legs.

Matt objected. “No. Don’t cross your legs.” Bill uncrossed his legs.

“Tilt your head a bit to the right,” Claire directed. Bill did.

“No, to the left,” Matt urged. Bill obeyed.

“The right side shows your softer features,” Claire explained, insisting. Bill turned there.

“Your face has a more masculine look when you turn to the left,” Matt responded.

Tired of turning his head from left to right and all the other preparations, which he did not think were going to help him in his online wooing, Bill looked straight ahead. “Katie, take the picture.”

“Smile,” Claire said. Bill crinkled his face into a fake smile with his teeth showing.

“No teeth,” Matt said. Bill sealed his lips.

“A genuine smile shows teeth,” Claire observed. Bill’s teeth reappeared.

“His teeth are bad,” Matt replied. Bill’s teeth disappeared. With a strained, half-smiling look on his face, as if he was walking into a wind storm, Bill held his body rigid in its staged casualness, looking as comfortable as a monkey in a medical experiment.

Claire had another idea and burst out, “He would look better with a facial. He has so many blackheads on his face, and they’re so big, he seems to have a rare form of chicken pox.”

“His hair should be dyed,” Matt added. “There’s too much grey in it. Dark hair would easily take twenty years off his appearance.” He gave Bill another look. “Well, at least ten.”

Bill was fed up with such helpful advice. “Katie, I’m ready.” Katie took three photographs. The first two times he blinked with the flash.

As Katie photographed him, Claire remarked to Matt with a lowered voice that Bill could still hear, “He has a fifteen percent chance of succeeding with these photos, I think.”

“You’re optimistic,” Matt replied. “I think it’s less than two percent. He’d probably have more responses without posting any picture at all.”

“Thanks, Katie,” Bill said, relieved that the ordeal was over and he could finally relax. “If you could send me those photos, that would be great. I’m going to stay here and make some calls.”

“Sure, no problem,” Katie said, fleeing back to her desk and all her electronic socializing that had been interrupted.

Claire and Matt looked at each other, certain that one of Bill’s calls would be personal. They had both known him for a while—three years for Claire and a year for Matt—which was ample time to understand the elementary workings of Bill’s mind.

“Is doctor Linda on that list?” Claire simpered.

“She must be wondering why you haven’t called yet,” Matt snickered.

“I have work to do,” announced Bill, appearing to be completely unruffled by their impertinent remarks. He didn’t even look at them, because he had already started to read through the messages on his Blackberry.

Claire and Matt walked down the corridor, back toward the office. When they thought they were out of Bill’s hearing range, peals of laughter broke loose. The merry sounds still reached his ears.