up with the next Snapple wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. The problem is, I haven’t found a ceiling really worth breaking. Panda recruited on campus and I dropped off my resume, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then they called me in for an interview and then they offered me a job. I am quite talented at convincing people to do what I want, even when I’m not sure I want it.
But I’m only twenty-four, still building the resume. One day I’ll do something real. Change the world. And in the meantime, unlike Dana, since the day I started college, my father hasn’t had to lend me a dime.
A piece of pineapple is trapped behind my bottom teeth, in the wire that my orthodontist glued on after I got my braces off. “It’s not irrational,” I say, while digging for the stray piece of fruit.
“I can’t understand you. You’re mumbling. Are you going to quit your job?”
Spit or swallow? I spit the de-wedged pineapple into a tissue. “I thought of flying in every morning, but it’ll be difficult.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
Dana breathes heavily in my ear, waiting. I don’t breathe that loudly, do I? Now that Steve and I will be permanently sleeping in the same bed, I’ll have to train myself to inhale and exhale through my nose so that I don’t kill him with my morning breath.
I see Liza huff by through the two window panels by my door. They don’t let us lowly assistant managers have blinds for fear we’ll spend all day playing Tetris, downloading porn or write to the higher-ups that we’re secretly doing their jobs.
“I’ll find a new job.”
“Isn’t Panda considered one of the top five companies to work for in Florida? Aren’t you on the fast track over there?” Of course, that she remembers.
“I won’t be promoted for another year.”
“Why? Don’t you do all of your boss’s work?”
True. “But I’m not ready to be a manager. I still need to have someone look over my stuff. And I’m only twenty-four. They don’t let twenty-four-year-olds be managers.”
“You’re a mature twenty-four. You should have asked for a promotion by now. Don’t be such a pushover.”
I bite my tongue to keep from telling her to take her own advice. First she was a freelance journalist. And now she’s been a radio reporter for over a year. When is she going to go after the job she wants?
She takes a breath. “Have you even started looking for work?”
“I already have one interview,” I say. Not that I expect to get a job right away. I know it takes time. But hopefully not too much time. I don’t want to quit my job until I have a new one. But I have to give my landlord at least thirty days’ notice before I want to move out, and I can only move out on the last day of a month. Which means that if I want to move out by October thirty-first I have to tell her by the end of September, next Tuesday. Otherwise I have to wait an entire month and Steve will end up paying for his entire apartment for all of November, since his roommate is moving out at the end of October.
This is all way too complicated.
“Don’t you think you’re a little young to move in with your boyfriend?” She sighs for effect.
“I thought I was a mature twenty-four?”
“Not that mature.”
“Dana, by the time Mom was twenty-four, she had you.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to quit your job, give up your apartment, sell your car—you can’t bring a car, never mind a convertible to Manhattan, you know—to follow some guy across the country. Are you going to get married next? Take his name? Become a stay-at-home mom? Buy a bread-maker?”
I wish I’d been offered a fabulous job in New York first and then met Steve while buying a hot pretzel from a street vendor. “I’ve always wanted a bread-maker.”
“I worry about you.”
“Don’t.”
“What if you can’t find a job?”
“Then I won’t move.”
Dana snorts. “Don’t think you can bullshit me the way you do everyone else. I know you. Do what you want. But don’t come crying to me when you’re forty, have five kids, no life of your own and need help filling the two-car garage with carbon monoxide. You should live a little. Experience life.”
Instead of finding a job after college, Dana did a one-year women’s studies master’s (that’s why I did the women’s studies minor—she kept bugging me to do it). Then, she decided she needed a master’s degree in journalism. Dana never believed in settling down. Especially for a man. Last year she slept with twelve. A bona fide member of the Man-a-Month Club, she quantifies life experiences as men’s boxers over her bedpost. “You’re too inexperienced to make such an important decision,” she continues. “And you’ve been dating him less than a year. You don’t know him long enough to know he’s not a complete asshole. You haven’t done enough research. You’re making a mistake.”
I hang up the phone and turn back to my e-mails.
Millie has already written me back.
My phone rings. I’m not going to talk to her if she’s going to be annoying.
It rings again.
Still ringing.
I pick up. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going to miss you, okay? I like having you an hour drive away. If you’re sure, I mean absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure it’s the right decision, I’ll stop protesting.”
I imagine an army of stoned, ponytailed picketers waving felt-tipped marker-written signs and chanting at the airport, “No, no, don’t let her go!” “She’s too young, have more fun!” “She’s delirious for getting serious!”
“It’s the right decision,” I say.
Of course it’s the right decision. I’m in love. He’s in love. If it’s going to work, we can’t live in different cities forever, and he can’t leave New York. Saturday night was the ten-month anniversary of our first date, and after an hour of wine and sweaty sex he placed a little blue box on top of his pillow and whispered, “Happy anniversary.” My heart stopped, as if its plug had been ripped out of the wall. Holy shit, I thought. Is it a ring? Is he proposing? Am I going to get married? Do I love this man? I’m too young to get married. How can I marry him when we’re never in the same city for more than forty-eight hours? He loves me. I’m going to get married. We’re going to have a home. And then I opened the box. And it was a silver key chain. Smooth and silver, the inscription said, Move in with me? I love you, S. My heart turned over again, and still not sure if I was relieved or disappointed I kissed him, kissed him again.
Yes, yes, yes.
It’ll work. It’ll be perfect. I’m in love. Aren’t you supposed to take risks when you’re in love?
But
