“Fabian,” she said, loving the sound of it and its pretentiousness.
“Hey, Fabian, it’s Babcock here. How you doin’ this beautiful morning?” Jeff asked.
“Hi, Jeff, I’m good. What about you?” Marie asked in return, crestfallen. For a moment there, she had forgotten that someone else was dead.
“I’m good, too. Whatcha doin’ for lunch today? I have to be in town around one, and I thought we could meet.”
“I will know in an hour or so, okay? We have new staff starting today, and there is a big meeting at nine-thirty. My boss may be expecting us for lunch.” Marie missed lunching with someone; most of her days for the past twenty years were spent eating hot dogs from a vending cart with Jack. Or going with him to Ali Baba’s for the best Middle Eastern food each Friday, although she was sure it was for the belly dancers. A list of wonderful restaurants filed through her head, and then she remembered there was someone else waiting on the line for her, someone who was alive and not married. “Can I let you know?” she asked.
“That would be fine. I’ll call you around eleven-thirty, okay? I hope you can go. My brother and his wife are in town, and I’d like them to meet you,” he added.
Her heart beat a little faster. “Okay, fine, talk to you later.” And she hung up. She put the phone back in its cradle and sat down at her computer. He wanted to introduce her to his family. She moved the mouse, and the screen saver popped on—a big picture of Jack, handsome in a white tennis sweater, his arm around a younger, smiling Marie. She stuck her tongue out at him and said to the image, “You are replaced.”
The staff meeting was interesting because an announcement was made that, unbeknownst to Marie, the new writers were to report to her for assignments. Even after working there for over twenty years, she didn’t know much about her colleagues, nor was she interested, and they returned the sentiment. By 11:00 that morning, she knew that she would be able to meet Jeff for a quick cup of coffee, but not lunch. He was fine with that; he really just wanted to introduce his brother to Marie. They made arrangements to meet at the TGI Friday’s by Madison Square Garden; his brother would be getting on a train at Penn Station when they were finished, and she would have a short cab ride. She thought that was an odd place for a gourmand to choose in a city teeming with fabulous restaurants.
She arrived right on time; Jeff and his brother and sister-in-law were waiting for her outside of the restaurant. Jeff made a big show of greeting her, hugging her and kissing her on the mouth. She was suspicious right off the bat.
The brother, John, and his wife, Betty, seemed absolutely thrilled to meet Marie. Over coffee, they went into great detail about how they had been praying that Jeff would meet the perfect woman and then listed all the attributes they wanted that woman to have.
You’ve got to be kidding me
, Marie thought. Among the many qualities Jeff’s girlfriend needed to have, “being saved” topped the list.
“Do you know Jesus as your savior?” Betty asked.
“I went to Catholic school as a kid. Does that count?” Marie asked, knowing full well that she was about to get a lengthy lecture on being “born again.” She needed to get back to the office, though, so standing up, she put out her hand. “It was so nice meeting you, but I have to get back to my office. We have an entire company that merged with us today, and unfortunately, I am in charge of their work assignments.”
Everyone stood up and shook her hand, including Jeff, whose excitement since her arrival seemed to have diminished. She would be walking out of the restaurant alone.
For the first time in her distant memory, Marie was excited about going back to the office after lunch. It was a combination of the eager faces awaiting her and getting away from Jeff and his boring brother. Work might not be so horrible, after all; there would be other human beings who wanted to talk to her, who were interested in her. She herded everyone back into the conference room, where she would divide up projects among the new players. She sized up each one as they passed by her, smiling and shaking their hands. The requisite beautiful blonde—
why in the
hell was there one in every group
?—was followed by the faction of entry-level journalism majors who couldn’t get jobs at the
Times
or AP. Then there was the lone middle-aged woman, possibly longing for retirement and tired of working and juggling family and husband. Marie would go easy on her. And finally came the squadron of men, from ages thirty to sixty, probably all married, but a few gay men thrown in, who were angry that they had to work in this new environment, but even angrier that they had to work for her.
One guy in particular stood out as they filed past her—older, at least sixty, built, and graying, but not totally gray. He was as tall as Jack, so Marie, who was tall for a woman, had to look up.
He smiled at her and said hi.
“Welcome!” she said to him with her biggest smile. And then to the group at large, “Welcome to you all. Have a seat, and we’ll get started.”
There was chatter and the shuffling of chairs on carpeting. When everyone appeared settled, she started.
“We have so much work right now that if the assignment I give you today is not to your liking, I’m sure I can do better for you next time,” she said. “As you heard earlier, my name is Marie Fabian. I’ve been here for a long time, and it seems like just yesterday—or forever, depending on the way the day is going. Your presence here is a tremendous boon for us; we have been short of staff for the past five years. I won’t take up any more of your time so we can get down to work. The way we decided to distribute the work is to divide you up into four groups. I’ll call out four names, and you may choose whose team you want to
be on. Try to divide yourself so that there are five people on each team. We’re adults; this should work, right?”
There was laughter all around.
She called out the four team leaders’ names and then gave the green light for the group to choose who they wanted to work with. Except for the middle-aged woman, everyone joined a team. She’d make six to one team. Marie looked at her list and called out the woman’s name.
“Carolyn?”
The woman nodded yes.
“I need some help with a special project.” The others looked her way as she walked forward. Marie was glad; she hoped it stirred up some jealousy. “I am going to pass out file folders of work to the team leaders,” Marie continued to the group. “It is your responsibility to see that everything I give you today is addressed by Thursday at our weekly staff meeting. Okay?” There was a general murmur of agreement. Before lunch, everyone had been given their office or cubical.
“You can stay in here to talk about how the work will be divided up and then you may go to your own space or stay here in the conference room. There’s a Starbucks down on Thirty-third that we often go to to work when we can’t stand the office anymore. Make sure you have your cell phone and that your team leader approves of you working off-site. That’s about it. You know where to get me if you need any further direction.” She motioned to Carolyn. “Come with me. I think you’ll like what I have for you.”
One of the last surveys Jack’s company was commissioned to do before he died was to find out exactly how
the youngest of the baby boomers who lived in Manhattan were planning on spending their retirement. The research filled an entire file cabinet. It needed to be collated, graphs developed, reports written. It specified a development on the west side of the city, close to everything a retiree might need. It would be a project that would keep one lucky writer busy for at least a month. Marie presented the work to Carolyn as though it were the holy grail of technical writing jobs. It really was; Marie was supposed to have worked on it herself. But now she could safely pass it on to someone else and not feel possessive or controlling about it. Carolyn had come with good recommendations.
“Come into my office,” Marie said. She could not remember the last time someone besides herself had crossed her threshold. “I use the term ‘office’ loosely. ‘Closet’ is more appropriate.” The two women walked in, and Marie shut the door. She had taken the explanatory files out to show to whoever drew the lucky straw. “Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a folding chair set up to hold overflow from the desk. “The project I am going to ask you do is dear to my heart. I was waiting for someone who I could trust to take over. Your references are flawless. I think that I am a pretty good judge of character and that you could be trusted with this.”
What the hell does that mean?
she thought.
I’m a terrible judge!
“Would you like to give it a try?”
Carolyn was smiling and looked pleased. “I’d like to give it a try,” she responded, taking the file from Marie and opening it up. She leafed through the first ten or so pages.
“Take a look at this one file and then you can dig into the other two hundred,” Marie said. They laughed. Marie stuck her hand out. “Thank you, Carolyn. I’ll have one of the janitors wheel the file cabinet into your office later today. Let’s talk before we leave tonight, okay?”
They agreed to meet at 6:00, and Carolyn left Marie’s office, closing the door behind her. It wasn’t really a “close the door” office; in the past, there wasn’t enough staff to make it necessary to close doors. Now, however, people were walking down the hall all day long.
Marie, at last, turned her attention to her computer. She worked nonstop for the next four hours and, finally, at 6:00, turned everything off and went to meet Carolyn in her office. On the way there, it occurred to her that, for a good part of the day, Jack Smith’s name or face didn’t enter her mind—as a matter of fact, not since she had first turned on her computer that morning and saw the picture of them together.
Ha-ha, Jack, you didn’t wreck my day, you didn’t wreck my day
, she sang to herself.
Jerk
.
C
arolyn Fitzsimmons closed the door of her tiny, airless office, throwing the thick file of paper onto her new desk. She wasn’t complaining about the work or the office; she had never had her own space like this before. She wondered if it was mandatory to knock or if people would open her door and just come in. If that were the case, she would be careful about falling asleep sitting up, as she had so ably taught herself to do this year. Menopause had opened the door to so many new experiences. Exhaustion and insomnia were her constant companions. She had watched her body morph from an average-sized, moderately fit woman to a saggy, haggard, misshapen crone.
What the hell had happened to the woman I used to be?
Her husband road her constantly about the need to exercise and watch her diet. He could easily spend the entire weekend on the golf course, but by the time she got done cleaning the house, running errands, doing the laundry, and watching three soccer games in a row, the last thing she wanted to do was get on the treadmill. She tried to explain to him that change of life was responsible for most of what he saw her going through.
“Don’t give me that horseshit,” he replied unsympathetically. “We’re the same age, and I have never been in better shape.”
“The only reason you’re still alive is because I took Paxil when you had your mid-life crisis,” she yelled back to him.
He just laughed at her. “I know I gave you a rough way to go there for a while. Forgive me?” He asked, kissing her on her forehead.
It was true that he was a miserable prick just a few years ago, mean to her, more critical than he had ever been. And now the reward she got was to see him looking so handsome and fit that she hardly recognized him at times, and she never more miserable.
“I guess so,” she replied. “It’s pretty tough to stay mad at such a good-looking guy.”
“Stop acting like such a dimwit and figure out a way to fit the exercise in with your responsibilities here.” He waited for her response, sure he had hit a nerve.
“You didn’t think I was a dimwit when I was sucking your penis last night, now did you?” The words slipped out of her mouth, surprising both of them. He was a good man, just a jerk at times. She had taken him by surprise, and he grabbed her and held her in a passionate embrace, dipping her over. “Yeah, now you want me to kiss you!” she said. They had been married all of their life, and although they didn’t always show the respect to each other that they should, they had never been unfaithful.
The icing on the cake was finding out that the company she was vested in, where she had spent twenty-five years giving everything she had, was going to be sold. She was the oldest woman working there. She imagined she would be the first person to be fired when they finally found a buyer. She wasn’t going to just lie down and die,
however. She stopped eating sweets, started walking during lunch every day, and made time for a haircut, a dye job, and a facial. She felt better about herself, and that was half the battle. Of course, her husband didn’t notice, but she wasn’t doing it for him, anyway.
The office they assigned her had a window, which looked out on a parking garage.
Does every building in this neighborhood look out on a garage?
But beyond the garage was the Empire State Building. She called her mother to tell her she could see the iconic structure from her office, and she had a project that her boss’s brother-in-law had generated. It had been a while since Carolyn felt so good about her life. She actually felt…hopeful.
Marie knocked on Carolyn’s door and then opened it without waiting for a reply.