Rocker (Rockstar BBW Romance) (8 page)

“Please take that video of the internet,” he said.

“Ben,” I began, “I’ve been telling you for weeks that Kenny is an inappropriate creep, and you refused to do anything about it.”

“I know, I know, I was wrong. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be firing him as soon as I can reach him.”

“Listen carefully, Ben. If I hear that Kenny is back working at your store again, I will post this video back up on YouTube with the title,
Ben’s Food Place, Placerville, CA.
Your store will become synonymous with this video.”

“I’d be surprised if I ever speak to Kenny again,” Ben said. He’ll never work for me again.”

“OK, Ben. I’m taking the video down now,” I told him.

“April, you still have a job here if you want it. I’m really sorry. Now I see what you’ve been going through.”

“I’ll have to think about it, Ben, but thanks. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks.”

Leaving home was such a good idea.

“Honey, remember you’re a fatty. Don’t let people take advantage of you,” Mom had said to me when I was ready. Encouragement? The woman was off her rocker. She was nuts. As I was carrying my suitcase to the rental car, she began telling me another story about the sitcom
Golden Girls
. I told her I had to go or I would be late
for my plane ride to New York!

I had only flown once in my life. Back when my grandma was still alive, she flew my sister and
I all the way across the country to Buffalo, NY. Her brother lived there. He was some kind of scientist or university professor. I remember thinking they were rich. We slept at their big sprawling ranch house in the suburbs of Buffalo. I was about 10 years old I guess.

My great uncle and his wife took my sister and me to Niagara Falls. Wow, that was thrilling. Downstream from the falls was a whirlpool which terrified and intrigued me for years after the trip.

Something else stuck with me for years after that trip. I was the first time in my life that I was embarrassed by my weight. My mom had me convinced that I was her cute baby. I never thought of myself as fat. I thought of myself as cute. That was about to change.

My great uncle’s wife was named Betty. Betty still went to the beauty parlor and got her hair done. Betty was a prim and proper housewife. She had makeup and jewelry on, and wore a dress, while she cooked us all dinner. I liked Betty a lot.

We all ate her chicken, and then she brought us fresh baked blackberry crisp with whipped cream. She began to serve us all huge slabs, much to everyone’s delight. When she got to me, my plate had a tiny piece on it. She put it in front of me and said, “You should really learn to cut down on the sweets, Honey.” I could feel my face turn beet red. Nobody else seemed to notice, they just dug into their giant mounds of desert. I slowly ate mine, crumb by crumb. I remember it being delicious.

I still hurt from that even though I was at 30,000 feet in the air, roaring toward Stevie, brownstones, and Brooklyn at 600 miles per hour.

The day seemed to take forever, but seeing Stevie waiting for me when I got to the security checkpoint and Newark Airport was the thrill of a lifetime. He looked tougher, cooler, and sexier than ever. The man could rock a t-shirt and jeans. He kissed me passionately right there with hundreds and thousands of people from all over the world rushing this way and that.

It was almost 10pm by the time we were riding the shuttle into Manhattan. I was spellbound. I would have been excited just to hold Stevie’s hand in the dark bus, but instead, I was seeing the New York City skyline rise up before us. Then we were in New York!

Yellow taxi cabs thundering down the 4 or 5 lane avenues, rows of cars on the cross streets, and people of every color, shape and size on the wide sidewalks.

Then we went down into the earth to wait on a crowded cement platform with a train track running up against it. We smushed into seats on the stainless steel F Train and it pummeled its way to Brooklyn in short order. Finally we were on well-manicured, relatively quiet streets in Park Slope as we walked to the Astral Record’s brownstone.

“Yoko’s here,” I heard a one of the band say before I was all the way in the front door. I blushed. Stevie sighed and shook his head.

“Don’t mind them,” he said.

I did mind and so did they. Why shouldn’t they. They’d been together for 2 years, just the 5 of them. Now all of the sudden I was in the middle of the most exciting time in the band’s history? Not only that. Their charming lead singer, the focus of the band, was going to be seen with a curvy girlfriend?

Life wasn’t meant to be perfect, I told myself. Just look around at all the people that you thought had it all that have screwed up royally or gone down in flames. I was in love; I would have to put up with the circumstances.

Later that night, I heard Karl, and the drummer, Trey, talking about me. “It ain’t right,” Karl was saying. They were downstairs and I was upstairs with Stevie’s bedroom door open while Stevie had gone to the bathroom in the hall.

“You mean her being so fat?” Trey said, quietly.

“Yeah, and her being here, but mostly the fat part. How the hell are we supposed to make it big? The first break we get, there'll be pictures taken of him with a fat chick.”

“He’s in love with her, man,” Trey said. My heart went out to Trey for saying that.

“We’ve been working on this for two years,” Karl said, “now fat Yoko is gonna come along and ruin everything.”

I was listening so intently, I didn’t notice Stevie who appeared in the doorway and startled me. He closed the door.

Dear Diary, the man of my dreams has a phenomenal brother who hates my guts.

The next day was my first day in New York City. The Statue of Liberty? Ground Zero? Top of the Empire State Building? Central Park? Bronx Zoo? No, I think I’ll go job hunting.

It may sound ridiculous, but I had dreamed of the day when I was out of Placerville and in a real city where one could actually find interesting and decent paying employment. I was a big rock ‘n’ roller’s big girlfriend, and I was looking for a job?

I had bills piled up, Stevie didn’t have extra money, I wasn’t going to sit around all day, or worse, try to hang out at the studio. I knew about the New York temp agencies. Tara’s oldest sister had lived in New York for over a year trying to make it in theater, but she only ever made it as a temp. Temp agencies could get you jobs for a day or two that paid really well and all you had to do was answer phones and maybe type up some documents. I was good at both. I rode the F train into Manhattan before any of Mercury 7 was even up. I left a note for Stevie that read, “See you tonight. Love, April.”                                                       

I was into my first temp agency by a little before 8. A+ Employment Agency. I wore black slacks, and a dark blue blouse. I handed them my resume I had prepared just a week before, filled out an application, and took a typing test. “OK, April. We can probably get you something today. Just take a seat, and we’ll let you know when something comes in.”

Unbelievable! Is this how NYC works? I loved it. By 9:30 I was at an ad agency called DDB on Madison freaking Avenue! Some nice older lady from personnel showed me my cubicle and I sat down to make $25 dollars per hour. Who was I?
Cashier Girl?

Everybody was well dressed, professional, pleasant, and a lot of them were noticeably attractive. The office was quite, super clean, organized, tastefully decorated, and my computer was new and powerful. I didn’t even see my boss until after 11. She was a very good looking 30-something, who was friendly, but got me right to work on proofreading a 20 page proposal. “Read it out loud, quietly of course, it will help you catch any errors. And, um, April is it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“April, there can’t be any errors.”

I was happy because that’s what I liked to do: read. I did as Janet told me to do and read the entire document out loud. She had given me a hard copy so I marked in red the problems that I’d found.

I felt like I did it really slowly and at any time she was going to come out of her office and ask me what the holdup was. I kept plugging away. I found the document a good read. It was a 20 page pitch, but written from the viewpoint of the prospective client (a cruise line) about how DDB would transform their customer acquisition.

I gave my corrections to Janet and told her I was going to lunch if it was OK. “You haven’t had lunch yet?”

I looked at the clock, almost 3!

By the time I got back from a ½ hour lunch, Janet had the document on my desk. Her note read, “Looks good. Make corrections to file and print me a copy.”

By the time I was done it was almost 6pm. Janet thanked me and told me I could go. I had made over $200! I used to have to make it through 3 nights at Ben’s to make that much. I walked out of that beautiful office building onto Madison Avenue, with the sound of the evening traffic as music, feeling like I’d conquered the world.

In the fading sun, I was surrounded by the biggest buildings I’d ever seen. The trippy part is, they went on for miles up and down the island of Manhattan. I felt like I was off-planet. I felt like I had walked into a different life.

Back in Brooklyn, I had the whole brownstone to myself. I called Tara to tell her I was a temp just like her sister had been. I called Mom, past her bedtime, and left her a message to tell her I would have the bills and rent covered.

By the time I had made myself some pasta, cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, and had a bowl of ice cream, I brushed my teeth and passed out in Stevie’s bed. He had left me a note that read, “Don’t know when we’ll be home. Love, S.”

At dawn, they weren’t home. I went through my same ritual. I only had one nice blouse. I had washed it out in the sink the night before. I took a long, steamy shower with it hanging in the bathroom and it looked fine. I was on the F train by 7:30. Before I got to A+ Employment, they text me and said, “Please report to DDB by 9am.” I was a woman of the world.

I went on in and worked for Janet another 9 hours that flew by. Another $225, I’d made more money in 2 days doing something I liked than I made in week of graveyard shifts at my old job. Janet joked around, encouraged me, and seemed to genuinely take an interest in me.

Stevie called me around 3pm, he had just got up. “It’s going great, April,” he said about their recording sessions. Mercury 7 had plenty of original songs to choose from. Stevie had been writing songs since he was 15, and the band had been tightening up about 20 of them over the past 2 years. “Everybody is ecstatic over the progress.”

“Where are you?” he asked me.

“I’m at work.”

“What?”

“I got a job on Madison Avenue.”

“Ha, ha,” Stevie said.

“I really did. You made me into a new woman, Stevie.” I suddenly got choked up. “Really, I’m not joking. You saved my life. No matter what happens between us, you saved my life.”

“April, I…”

“My boss is coming,” I cut him off. “I’ve got to go. You just focus on your art and don’t worry about me. Love you.”

“Love you, too.

“April, you alright, Dear.” It was Janet standing beside my cubicle trying to get my attention.

“Oh, sorry, Janet.” I just got some really good news. Here are those latest revisions you asked for, and I’m gonna start on the VM account right now.”

“Great,” Janet smiled. “I’m going to ask personnel to have you become my permanent temp if that’s alright with you.

“Permanent temp,” I laughed. Janet laughed, too.

“They probably won’t do a permanent hire into this position for at least a few months, so for the time being, you can be my permanent temporary if you’re up for it.”