Diary of a Working Girl (38 page)

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totally insane, not to mention mean. What if I really had gone nuts and spent the rest of my life in a drug-induced haze. Would she want me to write the article about
that
? Once again, I had to wonder why I want to continue doing this for a living. There has to be a better way. Once again, the sandwich idea popped into my mind—innocent, meditative cucumber flowers. . . .

But you know what? When Karen called me, after she’d read the piece (and absolutely “adored” it, by the way), she had the audacity to ask me to thank her! Thank her for nearly sending me to the loony bin!

“Oh come on! Look what you’ve learned. Look at the great piece you’ve given me. You should be very proud, Lane.”

“Hmmph,” was all I said, and believe me, I never thought I’d speak to a
Cosmo
editor like that.

“All right, you’re mad. But I have a proposal. Since I’ve heard that you did wind up meeting someone after you finished this piece, I would like you to do a follow-up—you know, give the ladies out there a little hope that after all the rough stuff, there comes all the great stuff.”

Now that definitely sounded like something that was totally up my alley, but I was mad, okay?

“I’m not sure I want to work with you again,” I said, not sure where I’d suddenly acquired this enormous set of balls.

“All right,” she dragged that out, like I was bargaining with her.

“Fine. If it’s four dollars a word you want, then that’s what we’ll give you.”

I was silent. I couldn’t believe she had the audacity to think that my feelings were nothing but a bargaining chip to me. Surely my dignity cannot be bought for four dollars a word!

“Okay, four-fifty, but that’s my final offer.”

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that? My feelings are all fine now anyway. And, of course, I owe it to my people. They need me. They are my people. (And you know how I feel about my people.) And it gets better than that. They liked the story about my wonderful Tom so much that they want me to continue writing about our trials, tribulations, romance, and growth for every issue! After all of that time reading about other people’s romances, not only do I get to have my own, I get to let other people enjoy it! What could be better?

Tom was hesitant at first, since he’s so private and all, and there were to be photos of us with each column. But when I insisted he wear the globe tie and finally showed him the first story about us, he was touched.

He said, “How could I deny you the pleasure of telling the world how wonderful I am? I won’t take no for an answer, Ab Fab.”

Could you just die? He is so sweet. And you know, I think he’s getting a bit too into this whole celebrity thing. He’s begun checking Page Six every day to see if there’s any news about us, although he says it’s just to “learn more about the world of Ab Fab.” But it’s so adorable I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve caught on.

I’d insisted that Chris shoot our photos for the column, since he’s the only one who consistently takes great pictures of me.

When we arrived at Chris’s apartment to shoot our pictures for that first issue, he was staring intently at a Polaroid, smiling. So I walked over to see who it was.

“Number twenty-six?” I asked.

“Oh Lane, number twenty-six is right.”

“Did you finally meet him?” I asked.

“Meet him? Oh, I did a lot more than meet him.”

“So was he everything we’d hoped? Witty, funny, intelligent?”

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“Oh, no, he’s absolutely none of those things at all. In fact, he’s completely thick.”

“So then why are you so happy?” I asked, extremely confused by this.

“Because now I can stop this ridiculous fascination with him and get on with my life.”

Surely this couldn’t be. I mean, we’d always joked around about how amazing these guys probably are (any seriousness was entirely on my part), but there’s no way he really entertained the idea that he would one day fall in love with the guy from the Polaroid that he’d never spoken a word to other than photographer lingo like,

“Good. That’s good. Now to the left. Now stick your butt out.

Spread your legs a little wider.”

Well, I guess that could be construed as something pretty intimate, but you know what I mean. Chris—levelheaded, always together, Chris—was just as much of a dreamer as I was! Who knew?

“Your article really helped me get through the whole thing. I knew you had it in you.”

I

Now that you know how our future turns out, there’s the little unresolved matter of the mushy stuff you are definitely due to enjoy, being that you stayed by me through all of the crazy times. Before Tom took on the role of Prince Charming and showed up with one very stylish pump, he had a little nudge from a real-life fairy godmother, who for once skipped the lofty, empty statements and got straight to the point. Let’s call her Joanne. For all the times my faithful friend implored me to remove my head from the clouds, when she read my article and my question about fate, along with the entire two hundred and fifty pages of
Diary of a Working
Girl
, she took matters into her own hands.

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She, the forward-thinking, rational woman that she is, realized I had, in fact, learned a very important lesson about what meeting my M&M is really all about. But she also knew that I had a history of taking things a
bit
too far. Pairing my now sullen outlook with the hints that had revealed themselves to me in my diary, she came to the same conclusion that I did—that Tom and I were a perfect match. Only, she came there much quicker than myself.

Waking the next morning before seven (I really should have realized how uncharacteristic this was for her at the time), she took the liberty of leaving a message for one Mr. Tom Reiner that she had a very important package for him. And while I was preparing for my investigation, she delivered the package herself and sat and waited while he read every word, clucking his tongue and muttering things like, “My tie was not
that
bad! I’ve had it since the first day I worked here. It’s a monumental tie, really it is,” when he got to a portion that riled him up.

She also said he blushed quite frequently.

And when she asked, “What? What part are you up to?” he just acted like he couldn’t hear her. Tom, as we know, is quite a shy guy when it comes to people knowing his feelings, so you’ll imagine my surprise when Joanne shared the next bit with me.

When he was through, my insightful pal asked outright: “You broke it off with your girlfriend way back before Lane ever even started probing you about her, didn’t you?”

Before he answered, she whipped out her own copy and backed up her argument with legalese like, “If you’ll refer to page twenty-two, section three which reads, ‘I asked Tom how a girlfriend could ever allow her man to walk around in a tie like that and he just turned away and said “It’s fine,” ’ It is a very clear indication to me that a private man like you was just unable to share such a personal matter as a breakup with someone whom he had very strong feel-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 303

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ings for because he was afraid of the possibility of rejection. Am I correct in this assertion, Mr. Reiner?”

Joanne has honed these contract negotiation skills over many years of arguing that, no, her production company was not going to pay for a doggie au pair to stay on set at a photo shoot to keep a model’s purse-accessory pooch company.

“But I gave her a note that told her how I felt on the day that she left here in a state over Liam—page two hundred—and she never said anything to me about it!”

Joanne just said, “Tom, if I know Lane, and I think I do, she would have told me all about that note, had she seen it. Was she not flustered? Is it not possible that she lost it?”

Joanne tells me he took on a face like he was figuring out a quadratic equation and then said, “But what type of a girl takes a job just to find someone who fulfills the requirements of the man she has been dreaming about since pigtail-days?”

But even before Joanne could go on with the three-pronged defense plan she had prepared, citing cinematic obsessions, weaknesses for all things whimsical, and even (this is so sweet) how lovable and human this all makes me—after all it is why she is my best friend—

he answered for himself.

“The kind of girl that has used her magical powers to cast a home-brewed, black-magic love-spell on me. I’m even talking like her now, with run-on sentences and audibly hyphenated words.

I’m using exclamation points!”

She says his voice lifted here and he began laughing uncontrollably.

When he’d gotten up from falling on the floor in hysterics and let out a big, long sigh, he said, “If she wants a fairy tale, then by God, she’s going to get one! Now where are those ridiculously pointy shoes she hobbles around in and hides in her overhead cab-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:06 AM Page 304

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inet in case she feels the need to change in the middle of the day?”

Joanne says he was a man possessed at this point, trying to decide between the croc and the caramel-colored Jimmy Choos I’d splurged on at a sample sale. He held them both up and proclaimed,

“For the life of me, I will never be the kind of man to understand the unique merits of one pair of shoes as compared to another!”

But just as Joanne was about to offer up the suggestion of the croc, he recalled reading that passage in my diary and suggested that would be the perfect choice.

Joanne smiled triumphantly.

Now maybe needing your friend to approach your would-be love interest to show him the light is not the quintessential picture of romance to a love story–phile, and I’ll admit this bothered me a bit for a moment or two (three, tops) but that’s not the point, now is it?

The point is that it is
my
romance. And it is a
real
romance—

fabulous in its reality due to all of the pieces of me, fitting with all of the pieces of him. Different pieces with bits sticking out here and there, some in the right places, some in the wrong places—but bits that each of us has a place to contain within us. And, well, it does make for a good story, which everyone is always saying is a necessity for a lasting love. So that actually makes it better than a traditional romance.

That’s what Tom said when I suggested we do a retake and maybe stage the whole thing in a more
Hope Floats
–type of way—

maybe he could take a picture of himself and I could learn how to develop pictures and then I’d come across one of him before a pickup truck holding a bunch of flowers and then I could run out and hug him and he could toss me into the truck and we could ride off into the sunset.

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He’s right—who
am
I kidding? I would never want to learn how to develop photos, with all those icky chemicals and stuff.

You already know the next part—the shoe, the flower, me as Cinderella (which is, by the way, another dream come true), the kiss, the hands on asses.

I

There was a lot of work to do on my last day at Smith Barney.

When finally, the papers for the merger were signed and everything I’d ever fax, file, or e-mail for the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Smith Barney was faxed, filed, or e-mailed, I began packing all of the personal belongings I’d accumulated in the last two months. I took down the tiny card Tom had given me that first day with the flowers, I untacked the job-well-done posters he’d fashioned on expense day.

John stood up, looking over the cubey wall.

“You two were so obvious,” he said. “I think that blind guy in the cafeteria knew before either of you did. Sheesh, some people are so slow.”

John, master number-cruncher, discreet perfect-boyfriend, clairvoyant.

“Well, I’m glad we served as a great source of entertainment for you.”

“You know? I hate to admit it, but I’m really going to miss you.

But it’s just as well, because I couldn’t very well e-mail images of animals that remind me of you to
you
.”

“Ab Fab, can I see you in my office?” Tom asked into the telephone.

I leaned back in the chair to glimpse him glimpsing me.

“And don’t even think about touching my ass. This is a place of business after all.”

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“I would never do a thing like that,” I replied, hand over heart, eyelashes fluttering at him through the glass, loving this office-romance thing so much that I really hated to think this was my last day.

“So, what can I do for you?” I asked as I plopped down into the seat opposite his desk, wearing the croc heels, which I had changed into when I’d arrived.

“Well,” he began, trying to look very serious and failing, like a
Saturday Night Live
skit where the actors can’t keep a straight face.

“You really did a great job on the design for that presentation. And apparently it worked.”

“I’m sure you had
something
to do with the success of the meeting,” I insisted.

“No really, it was all you—that woman from AT&T called and said, ‘You know, I was on the fence, but that beautiful design brought me to my decision.’ ”

I rolled my eyes to emphasize that I was not buying this brand of logic.

“Whatever you want to believe, but either way, I would like to outsource all of our proposal designs to you. We pay a lot for that sort of thing and I know you really enjoyed it.”

“You’re not just doing this because I’m your girlfriend?” I asked, and as soon as I did, I realized the mistake I’d made.