must have noticed me licking my lips in response to his job description, because he commented on my apparent enthusiasm for the project. Actually, all I’d had for lunch was a pathetic pile of tuna and three slices of melba toast.
Lambert is building a completely automated and computerized plant and wants Harry to design some specialized software. Apparently he wants a computer that can roast peanuts. If technology can provide a way to burn CDs, it seems like roasting a peanut should be a snap.
Harry always calls me in for the preliminaries. This is usually best for all concerned, as I have some social graces. I take over while Harry disappears with his stable of computer geeks to work his software magic. He has a deft hand on a mouse and the ability to memorize all of the numbers in a phone book. I, on the other hand, have a personality.
While I was dreaming up a way to ask Mr. Lambert if he wanted to discuss his new alliance with Innova over coffee, his cell phone rang and he was summoned away. It’s my mother’s fault. She filled my head with all that talk about “nice young men.” (I did glance at his ring finger first, though. It was bare. Promising…)
It wasn’t until I got back to my desk that the cell phone thing began to annoy me. How do people justify thinking they’re so important that they have to be accessible to everyone, everywhere at all times? Humans are so vain. Men in gyms run on treadmills and talk into their cells. I’ve heard women in toilet stalls making luncheon dates and others in dressing rooms at the mall counseling their friends on the latest jerk they dated. Just last week I pulled up at a stoplight beside a guy on a Harley. He was talking on a cell phone and there was a bumper sticker on his bike that said, Thugs Are People Too. Go figure.
September 22, later
Eric has been calling. This boy/girl stuff can ruin a great friendship. Still, if he asks me, I wouldn’t mind going out for an evening. It’s been months since I’ve seen a movie that wasn’t on television.
Just the thought of an evening out inspired a rush of adrenaline through my system. Having recently traded my exercise bike (obscenely expensive clothes rack with wheels) for a bookcase, a yoga mat and a lava lamp, I decided to wax my legs.
Three minutes into the project I remembered why I hate waxing my legs.
Rather than scald off my skin by overheating the wax in the microwave, I heated it on the stove. I forgot about it for just a moment when I spied some leftover potato chips (very rare at my house). Not wanting to waste food (starving children in Beverly Hills and all that), I stuffed them into my mouth before I remembered my goal to lose fifteen pounds. Occasionally I worry about my memory. Some days the only thing I seem able to retain is water.
I tried spitting the chips out into the sink, but accidentally spluttered them into the hot wax instead.
Deciding that the potato chips wouldn’t hurt either the wax or my legs, I carried the pan to the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I began frosting my hairy legs with chip-speckled yellow wax. The wax went from being too hot to too cold in a nanosecond. I didn’t dare toddle back into the kitchen to return it to the stove as I was afraid the wax would harden on my legs and become a permanent part of my flesh.
I edged my fingernails under the globby sheet of goo and pulled upward. A rush of tears filled my eyes as hairless pink skin shined up at me. If someone told me I had to do this, I’d call it abuse. As it is, I inflict it on myself and call it grooming.
Since my legs were sticking together anyway and I couldn’t walk, I decided to call my mother.
“Whitney! How are you? Isn’t this weather something?”
“It’s been raining, Mom.”
“But warm rain. I’ve been wearing shorts all day.” I didn’t tell her that I expect she’ll have them on in January, too.
When I broke the news to her that I’m going to Las Vegas for a trade show, she was not happy.
“Sin City? How can your employer send a young girl like you there?”
“I’m thirty, Mom. And I’ve always traveled with my job.”
“It’s a den of iniquity, darling. Tell him you can’t go.”
Kim, on the other hand, was in love with the idea. “Bring me something, will you?”
“I promised Mother I wouldn’t leave the hotel for purposes of a touristy nature,” I reminded her.
“Something from the hotel, then. With rhinestones.”
So much for the good influence of friends.
September 23
I’ve been inundated with plans for the trade show. Whitney’s my name, Creativity’s my game. At least that’s what Harry thinks. Only Bryan knows that today, between brilliant zaps of originality and ingenuity, I figured out which was the longest word I could type with my left hand—stewardesses (a travel-related exercise accomplished while being left on hold by a travel agent who went shopping and had a facelift before getting back to me). And—this one is big—when you rearrange the words slot machines, you can make the words cash lost in ’em.
Of course, after foisting the Las Vegas trade-show problem on to me, Harry promptly forgot about it and began trolling for bigger fish. In this case it was someone from whom he’d already had a nibble but wanted to land completely, Matthew Lambert, the nut-roasting magnate I’d fondly begun referring to as Mr. Peanut.
As I walked toward Harry’s office this morning, Bryan—wearing that panicked look he so often does—raised his eyebrows and pointed frantically toward Harry’s door. Figuring my assistant was trying to indicate that Harry was out of sorts, I strode in expecting to see a man who hadn’t yet had his sixth cup of coffee today. What I did see nearly knocked me flat.
Harry had gotten himself a permanent. Though not yet bald, his hair is thinning except for the thick assortment of hairs that halo his head in the traditional style of medieval monks.
I took a deep breath and attempted to quash the image of an unevenly growing Chia Pet on Harry’s head. No wonder Bryan had looked as though he was about to faint. He’d probably been under his desk laughing himself silly.
“Are you busy tomorrow evening, Whitney?” Harry leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his neck and fingered the tight curls at his collar.
A working dinner? With Harry? Harry never paid for anything he didn’t have to, and he was married, so this wasn’t a social dinner. Had his permanent given him so much aplomb that he was asking me out on a frivolous whim or were the newly tight curls on his head squeezing his brain? My relief was actually physical when he added, “I’m having dinner with Matt Lambert, and I’d like you to come along. What do you say?”
I was so happy I didn’t have to dine alone with Harry and be forced to admire his Chia Pet scalp that I agreed immediately. That Matthew Lambert would be there didn’t hurt either.
It wasn’t until I was back at my desk that I realized that I was not in any way prepared to go anywhere or do anything with a hunky, single man. I’m a woman who—as recently as six days ago—was holding her clothing together with rubber bands. I had nothing to wear. Visions of pilled and holey sweatpants, stained T-shirts, too-tight jeans and my work clothing—mostly interchangeable black and beige separates and low-heeled pumps—danced in my head. I usually go into a shopping
