What Was I Thinking? (12 page)

I shook my head. “Apparently I’m not. Busy just
left.”

She smiled. “Well, in that case, I’m looking
for a gossip fix and I thought we could grab a pizza.”

“Sounds great.
I just got home, though. Want
to come in while I take a bathroom break and grab my purse?”

“No, I’ll give you a few minutes to yourself.
I’ll close up and get my own gear. Just tap on my door when you’re ready.”

I was glad for the time to shower the sweat of
the day off, and to change out of biking gear. I know some people wear it
everywhere, but I feel like a geek in it, even on a bike. Jeans were better for
pizza and a chat.

We walked to the Mama’s Pizza a few blocks away
and settled into a booth. When we’d agreed on sharing a thin-crust pepperoni
and each ordered drinks, she turned to me.

“So, what’s the news in the big romance?”

I groaned. “Lord,
I
don’t know. Let’s talk about you. What’s new in your life?”

“Oh, no, I’m boring. I want to know about
flowers-and-poetry boy.”

“Oh, no, yourself.
You know all my deepest darkest
secrets and I know next to nothing about you. Besides which, I’m sick to death
of thinking about Bert. That’s all I’ve done all weekend. You talk, or you get
no gossip at all!”

She mock-glared at me and
pointed with her unused fork.
“You drive a hard bargain, missy, but you will
regret it, I promise you.”

I glared back, and hissed, “
you
cannot scare me, not you or all your minions of evil.”

She leaned back, laughing. “Okay, you are
certifiably nuts and you win. What’s new in my life? Well, I must be getting
over the worst of my divorce, because I’m actually looking forward to going
back to work next week and I’m getting stir-crazy and lonely in the apartment.”

The waitress came with our drinks. When she
left, I asked, “and this is good?”

“It is, yes. When I moved in, I was sunk in
situational depression and I didn’t mind not working or being alone in my
apartment. All I wanted was to stay in my sweats, eat ice cream out of the box,
and watch bad TV. I’m coming back to life and that’s good. It’s also a
confirmation that my depression
was
situational and not clinical, which is very good.”

“Would I regret it if I asked
the difference between situational and clinical depression?”

“Nah.
It’s one of the few completely
clear concepts in my line of work. Situational depression means you’re
depressed because your situation is depressing, and you’d be crazy
not
to be depressed. Clinical depression
is the serious kind, when it’s something going on with you, not the objective
situation. It’s the one that’s hard to deal with.”

“I see.” I thought a moment. “Are you allowed
to use terms like ‘crazy’? I thought that was frowned on.”

“It is. I’m counting on you not to turn me in.
Also, I’m not big on the unimportant rules like that. Important stuff, like
don’t sleep with your patients, or don’t gossip about them, I’m a stickler for,
but what terms to use…
meh
.”

The pizza came. I love pepperoni pizza. I don’t
care that it’s not an authentic Italian dish, and I certainly don’t care that
what we get here is nothing like what they eat in New York. I just love it.

We thanked the waitress, served ourselves, and
each took a first bite. It was great.

Then the reprieve was over. Susan pointed at
me. “Your turn,” she said sternly. “Tell me all.”

And so I did. I told her virtually all that
Bert and I had said and done since the last flower delivery, and then I told
her how confused I was, and then I stopped myself.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping on you
like this. It’s wrong to abuse a neighbor by taking advantage of their
profession.” I shook my head and grimaced, looking down at my plate. I seemed
to be off balance and handling everything wrong lately, and I was embarrassed.

“Don’t be sorry. I asked. And I asked for
gossip. That has to include the emotional component, or it doesn’t count as
gossip.”

“Still…” I met her eyes, but I still felt
embarrassed.

“See, this is why I don’t like to tell people
what I do for a living. Either they’re too nice to talk about anything real
with me, like you, or they dump all their problems on me, like you’re afraid
you have, or they’re completely nervous around me all the time, and keep saying
stuff like ‘I guess that means I’m neurotic, right?
Heh heh’.
And then I can’t take it anymore and I run off at the mouth, like this, and
make people uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

I sighed, and half laughed. “Don’t be sorry. I
already have dibs on that. I could make you feel better by asking your opinion,
if you like.
Casual, one single woman to another opinion, not
psychological opinion.”

“Shoot.”

“Why do I care that he hasn’t kissed me other
than that one night and why don’t I care that Pete did kiss me?”

She smiled a little crookedly. “That’s actually
an easy one. There’s even a poem for it. Probably lots of them, come to think
of it, but there’s one my mother taught me. It had been made into a pop song
back in the day, and she liked it.”

“So don’t keep me in suspense…what is it?”

“It’s called ‘The Look’ by Sara Teasdale. You
should look it up next time you’re in a library. It’s about being haunted by a
kiss that
didn’t
happen.

We sat silent for a moment after that, and then
we both sighed at the same time. I laughed. “That pretty much sums it up,
doesn’t it? Wanting only what you can’t have?”

“Maybe valuing what’s not given easily. I’m
sure it’s no coincidence that the poem is about a hundred years old and romance
is hard to find these days.”

“Are you going to start philosophizing about
how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and old-fashioned family
values are our only hope as a nation?”

Susan smiled and took a drink of her beer.
“No, not me.
I think we’ve gained far more than lost, with
all the freedoms—and with sexual liberty—over the past hundred years. But I
do
think that’s what happened to
romance. We stopped thinking sex was dirty, but we also stopped thinking it
should be special and that kind of clobbers romance.”

“Huh. Most days I’d say I think romance is
silly and I want the real thing, but I was very impressed by the rose poem. Now
I don’t know what I want.”

“So you’re saying Freud was right about women?
We don’t know what we want?”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, smiling again. “I try
not to think about Freud. I can be pissed off enough without making that kind
of effort.”

“Good point. Speaking of which, are you as
pissed as I am about the building policy on maintenance?” I was and we had a
friendly but impersonal discussion for the rest of the meal and the way home.
It was restful, as only speaking with someone who has the sense to share your
opinions can be.

Chapter Seven

Earned Income

Monday was a Monday.
More
rehearsals with the Gibson Girl team, more annoyance, more being treated like
the class pariah.
Oh well. They paid me to be there. At least I hadn’t
been late or yelled at first thing.

When the rehearsal broke for lunch and we
trickled back into the main cube farm, Beth stood and waved me over to her
desk. “I thought you’d never take a break. We’ve got a group running out for
Chinese. You and Pete want to come?”

“I do. Where’s Pete?” I turned to look. Molly
was standing right behind me, looking a little bereft. Oops. “Molly, would you
like to go? It’s just a bunch of us who got hired around the same time and got
in the habit of lunching. You’re welcome to come with.”

She looked a little uncomfortable, but she
agreed.

Beth found Pete, got everyone rounded up, and
we headed down a few blocks in a shifting blob of bodies. Once at Happy Garden
Palace, the regulars headed directly for the back of the room, and began
pushing several of the small, slightly tipsy tables together to accommodate our
big group. Molly looked concerned. Pete noticed, and hollered out “Don’t worry,
Mols
! They know us here. Isn’t that
right, Chan?”

Molly cringed a little from being singled out,
but the owner, Chan, nodded and waved to Pete. Some people can handle Pete’s
brand of exuberance, and some can’t. Chan seemed to think the business he
brought in was worth it.

A waiter came over and started going around our
big table taking orders, and we all jostled in and settled. I heard Pete over
the hubbub, introducing Molly to the gang as “a key member of our little Gibson
Girl team, right
Mols
?”

Molly seemed to cringe again. Maybe she hated
that nickname. Maybe she really didn’t like being the center of attention.
Trying to give her a break from unwanted scrutiny, I turned to Beth, and used
the first conversation starter I could think of. “What were you trying to say
about the project during the meeting last week? Something about Virginia
Slims?”

“Wasn’t that a brand of cigarettes?” Pete
asked, clearly not caring.

“It was, yes.”
Uh oh.
Beth was about to launch into a lecture. I should have known. “It was a brand
marketed directly to women, purporting to support women’s rights by encouraging
them to smoke.”
Yup.
She was on a roll and people were
sighing. “They had a marketing campaign in the seventies, with the tagline
‘you’ve come a long way, baby.’ It featured black and white photos of women in
period dress and short, allegedly humorous stories about their husbands
preventing them from smoking. It was a disastrous failure and became a symbol
of corporate America patronizing women while pretending to support them. A very
popular poster of the time said ‘we haven’t come all that far, and don’t call
me baby!’”

“Isn’t that poster your screensaver, baby?”
called one of Pete’s friends from the other end of the table. Beth gave him a
look. She was generally pretty laid back, but when she was in lecture mode, she
didn’t like being teased.

“The point is,” she said, with exaggerated
patience, “that while cosmetics aren’t as reprehensible as cigarettes, and
while the Gibson Girl campaign isn’t quite as condescending, the similarity is
still striking and I would think that any student of marketing …”

“Well, who among our management would you call
a ‘student of marketing’ anyway?” asked Pete, beginning to get interested. “I
don’t see a lot of serious theories getting kicked around. It’s more like
‘let’s try this!’ ‘
no
, this!’”

“Come on, it isn’t marketing theory that’s the
problem, it’s understanding the demographics!” That was Pete’s buddy again. Max
was his name.

“How do you figure that?” And Molly actually
spoke.
Amazing.

“Simple. We sell cosmetics, right?
High-end, luxury, expensive cosmetics.”

“So?”

“
Sooo
—”
Max dragged it out, exaggerating how patient he was being with the slower
folks, “so, it’s idiotic to target a major marketing campaign at
feminazis
. They don’t wear makeup.”

“That’s an obnoxious term—” Beth tried to
speak, but got cut off.

“Oh, don’t go all PC! You know it applies—”
replied Max, defensively.

“It applies to marginalizing women who are
interested in more than being doormats!” Beth got a whole sentence out. That
was a triumph in a discussion like this.

“That’s what PC means—getting hung up on the
words instead of focusing on the point!” I didn’t even see who that was.

I concentrated on my General Tso’s chicken. It
was good. It’s not that I don’t care about politics, but I hate arguments and I
had enough problems at work without taking sides.

I looked up when I heard Pete’s voice, the
voice of calm, which showed how out of hand the argument had gotten. “Isn’t the
point really that the fight for women’s rights was won a long time ago? This
campaign—whether or not it was the best choice—shouldn’t have the same effect
as the one in the seventies—what was that, Beth?” He didn’t give her a chance
to answer. “Now, the argument isn’t over whether women should have rights and
the same freedoms as men—they have them. Now women are just arguing among
themselves about the best way to use those rights.”

He saw me looking at him. “Right, Addie?”

I rolled my eyes. A month ago, I saw it exactly
the way he did. Now, after Campbell’s performance in the meeting, and my
reaction to it, I wasn’t quite sure. But was that a matter of rights, or just
of Campbell being an asshole? I didn’t know. I only knew I didn’t want to get
into the argument.

“Addie, I know you can hear me,” Pete wheedled.
“Tell everyone I’m right.”