Me: Haha. Okay I need to get moving, I’ll text you later.
I don’t know why that conversation has made me feel better. “Don’t beg for a job you don’t want” is great advice, and I take it to heart. That isn’t who I am. I put my phone down and take in my bedroom. This is the space that Jack and I share. He loves the gray Roman shades on the windows and the matching club chairs at the foot of the bed. We both gravitated to the muted gray color scheme in the Pottery Barn catalog because it felt calm and sophisticated. But today it makes me feel like I’m in a military cafeteria.
I arrive at Human Corps ten minutes early. I walk through the lobby like I have a million times, but this time as I say good morning to Alvin behind the security desk, I’m preemptively embarrassed about the fact that I’ll probably be back down in thirty minutes carrying a telltale cardboard box. I’m in a casual dress and sandals, mainly because it’s ninety-eight degrees in midtown Manhattan, but looking down at my feet now, I realize I’ve never shown my toes here before.
I make my way to Eleanor’s office, nodding hello to cubicled people who likely know my fate already. I knock on her open door and she looks up and smiles. A smile is a good sign.
“Sam, come in.” She’s in a black wool suit, because maybe she doesn’t know about its being August outside. I take a seat across from her desk, which puts me a full inch lower than she is. Everything at Human Corps is by design, and I’m sure this is no exception. She leans forward and clangs her gold bangles on the desk. “This has been really stressful for me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I don’t know why. Am I sorry about the flash mob or wasting company time or just having inflicted work stress on my boss?
“Well it’s been hell trying to explain this to management, how my best organizational consultant brought about sheer chaos.”
“Chaos” seems a bit extreme. The whole song is less than four minutes. “Their dance was actually very well choreographed.” I don’t know where these words came from but they are out, and I cannot grab them back.
“Is that a joke?” Eleanor is clenching her folded hands.
“No. I mean, it doesn’t matter now, but I was impressed with how well they all worked together. Which was what the client asked for.” This is not going well. She is perfectly still, staring at me. I need to go back to the general “I’m sorry,” but I’m just not feeling it.
“Do you want this job or not?”
It’s a great question, and all I know for sure is that I don’t want to look for another job and have to explain over and over about the flash mob. “I do,” I say.
She’s looking at the floor as if she’s trying to formulate the right words. She’s making this overly difficult, and I wonder if this is the first time she’s ever made a decision like this without a chart.
“You’re wearing sandals,” she says finally. “I’ve never seen you in sandals before.”
“Yes, I hope that’s okay. It’s ninety-eight degrees out, though it’s actually freezing in here.”
“It’s fine.” She shakes off whatever conclusion she was coming to about the state of my footwear and goes on. “Purcell and I have decided we want to give you another chance. I know, we are not about second chances for our clients’ employees, but we’re making an exception here because you have a history of being exceptionally diligent.”
“Thank you.” I feel a “but” coming.
“For your next few projects, you will not be client facing. You’ll be here sorting through the reports and data that you’re sent. The first one is an analysis of employee health care costs, so it’s all in black and white.”
I have a feeling of being let back in, like I was on the outside and the circle has opened back up to me. I think of the girls at the beach going to that party without me and how it was okay because I knew I belonged with Wyatt, sitting there on the cove looking at the water while he buried my feet to keep them from burning.
“Sam, why are you smiling? I feel like you’re not taking this seriously. You can keep your job, but we are course correcting. You shouldn’t be smiling.” If your job is micromanaging other people’s behavior, it’s hard to stop.
I realize that I need to end this meeting. I have been away for one week and it’s like I completely forgot the script. “Eleanor, I love this job and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with you and to make a difference for our clients. Just tell me when this next project starts and I’ll be all over it.”
“That’s my girl.”
* * *
I walk out into the thick August air wondering how I’m supposed to feel. I still have a job. I just need to keep my head down for a couple of projects, and then they’ll let me out in the world again. With less engaging work, maybe I’ll even start making it to waltzing lessons. I feel no relief at all. Spreadsheets and waltzing lessons give me that itchy-sweater feeling all over.
I reach for my phone to text Wyatt, and as I start to type I realize how wrong that is. I text Jack instead, even though I know he’s with patients: They didn’t fire me, they’re just going to torture me with boring work for a bit.
An hour later, I’m reading an unsanctioned work of women’s fiction in bed when he texts back: Oh wow, I’m shocked but happy! I’ll see you later.
Jack comes home from work with a bouquet of lilies. “I’m so happy and relieved,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. “I know this whole wedding thing has been stressful. It was killing me to think you were going to lose your job over it.”
I hug him back but then let go. “Wait. Do you think the flash mob was about our wedding?”
“Well, sort of. Not directly, but you’ve been distracted. Like forgetting appointments, doodling in your little book. You’re not quite buttoned up, and I sort of assumed it was about the wedding.”
I have in my mind the image of someone in a very long dress with buttons that go all the way up to her neck. She looks regal and polished and she can’t quite breathe. I look down at my sandals and wonder if it’s okay to just undo the top button every once in a while, without your whole life falling apart.
“I’m still buttoned up,” I say. “Sometimes my mind wanders, but that’s just what minds do.”
“Mine doesn’t.”
I laugh and hug him again. “That’s my favorite thing about you,” I say into his neck.
“I want to hear all about your job drama. Let me change real quick and I’ll take you out for sushi.”
Jack goes in to change, and my phone buzzes. It’s Wyatt: So?
Me: They didn’t fire me but I don’t get to have any human contact until they think I’ve learned my lesson
Wyatt: Ouch
Me: It’s fine. This is what you get for farting in the elevator
Wyatt sends a string of laughing emojis, and, just like that, we have a new inside joke.
47
My parents have put down a deposit on the Old Sloop Inn for October 28 and we’ve ordered invitations. It feels like a concrete decision and it feels like everything is back on track. At least the wedding. I’ve started my analysis of a department store chain’s health care offerings, and it’s nine hours a day of mining data. My cubicle doesn’t get any natural light, so I’ve started going to Central Park at lunchtime to try to catch a breeze and some bird sounds. On the Monday that starts the third full week on this project, I sit on a bench just outside the Central Park Zoo with a soft pretzel and a Coke. I find myself unable to move. Children are walking out of the zoo with ice-cream cones dripping down their little hands. A boy in a chicken costume points up to a bird that’s landing on a balcony on Fifth Avenue. A man dances to music that’s in his head, and if I watch long enough it seems like the squirrels hear it too. I am overwhelmed by how intensely I want to be where people are having ideas.
My mom calls. “Sweetheart, am I interrupting you?”
“I’m in a meeting,” I say, breaking off a piece of my pretzel for a pigeon couple.
“I hear birds.”
“Well, yes. So what’s going on?”
“We need to get this wedding nailed down,” she says. “The invitations should be arriving soon, and we have to start picking things out. Donna’s called me twice asking for the color scheme, and I’m not entirely sure what she means.”
Apparently, we are cutting things pretty close for an October 28 wedding. My mom wants us to come this weekend for Labor Day and to meet with the florist and taste the cake.
“Weren’t we just there?” Jack asks when we’re walking down Madison Avenue after dinner.
“That was three weeks ago.”
“I’m not sure I can do two hippie beach visits in one summer.”
I stop walking. “I thought you were the one who wanted to get married out there.”
“Oh I do. I love it. But not the whole thing with your parents and that house and the stuff everywhere. The paint fumes alone took a year off my life.”
“Huh.”