“Confrontation. Calling them on the bullshit. Publicly demeaning an employee is wrong. Let’s start there.”
“Okay, Rosa Parks,” I say sarcastically. My two phone lines are ringing. I ignore Amy and answer. “Yes?”
“Say something before I say something.” It’s Amanda. “We have to stop trying to fit in with them. It’s wrong. This is our first chance and if I say something I look like some muthfreaker badass from Queens, but you’re the one they respect, you’re the one they’re dumping on. Confront them. Call them on this bullshit.”
“Look, you first. I have way too many people depending on me at home. I’m not your groundbreaker.”
Amy looks at me with something bordering disgust. Amanda goes silent.
CHAPTER 7
How Not to Meet Your Husband, Part II
FROM WHERE I sat nine years ago in that Arctic-cold Las Vegas ballroom, the sea of men in dark suits appeared to all have splendid lives. When you’re the girl who was left on the literal curb, the climb back to normalcy appears as easy as ascending the sheer side of El Capitán, far off and unattainable. My fiancé had dumped me over a year before, making the trading floor and work my comfort zone and the only place I wanted to be.
I was putting all my former love energy into work and sure, I had a job where complete focus was translating into extra dollars, but I was certain I was the sorriest millionaire there ever was. That’s why when the guy working the video and lights that went along with the presentation—a guy so cute I had noticed him at several of these conferences—came up behind me and said, “Hey,” I thought for sure he was going to tell me that my giant head was reflecting on the screen and could I please somehow make myself disappear. I turned toward him, ready to comply, ready to vaporize.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, not even making eye contact.
“Wait, what?” he asked. “What are you sorry for?”
“For my head being in the way.”
He laughed, and that’s when I looked up. He was tall and liquidy, with joints that seemed to gush synovial fluid. He shrugged his shoulders and they floated instead of moving the way most thirty-year-old shoulders do. He was a sandy-blond guy with biceps peeking from a simple black button-down shirt that looked natural, rather than steroidally supplemented. This guy looked like it all just came to him so easily.
“Who said your head was in the way?” he asked me sweetly.
“I heard myself think that,” I said, letting those stupid words out before being screened by my brain.
Surfer guy laughed and pushed back some of his longish hair. He had beautiful green eyes that looked electrically lit. I hadn’t looked a guy in the eyes in a long time.
“No, I, um, just wanted to say that your bag is open and, well, it looks like you may want to shut it,” he said, all Boy Scouty.
I bent to look at my bag and saw what he saw: a slightly tattered Speedo bathing suit, goggles, bathing cap, and an envelope of small bills that had opened itself and spread money, like litter, throughout. Dishevelment had become part of my latest look.
“Are you running away from home?” he asked, and when he smiled, my eyes welled up. Nobody had tried to flirt with me since Henry. Nobody had made me laugh since Henry. Nobody. I turned away.
Since Henry dumped me, the only place I felt calm was in water. The YMCA near my apartment opened at 4:45 a.m. and losing myself in a chlorine bath each morning, crying into a pool so big, mixing water with water was my most comforting place. I carried a Speedo suit around like an anxious person carries tranqs. I had the equipment I needed to swim in case things got bad, in case life presented me with a swimming pool in an over-air-conditioned, glitzy hotel in Las Vegas.
“Name is Bruce,” the cute audiovisual guy said, not giving up so easily, “as in Wayne.”
Leave it to me to find the only penniless guy in a roomful of investment bankers, and a Batman fanatic at that. I tidied my bag, zipped the top, and turned from him.
“This is the last presentation,” he continued to my back. “Want me to show you the real Vegas?”
“Yeah, no. It’s not my kind of place,” I said not unkindly as I imagined shows with high-kicking women wearing rhinestones or smoke-filled gambling halls. “I mean, I have stuff to do.”
“Yeah.”
Marcus Ballsbridge, sitting in the row in front of me, turned around as if asking if I needed a save. Back then the older guys on the desk treated me like some heartbroken puppy they rescued from the shelter. I turned toward the guy.
“I have things to do,” I said weakly.
“Can totally see you have big plans for your afternoon,” he murmured, nodding to the swimsuit. “And I bet they don’t get a lot of Speedos in the pools here.”
“Yeah, well, my thong bikini is in my other bag. The one with the handcuffs and blindfold in it.”
He laughed. I made a cute guy laugh.