Harper's Rules (18 page)

As I walked to my car the reality set in. If I really cared about Peter, I wouldn't want to see another man. Peter adores me. I don't really know Jamie. He is older than me, has a teenager, has been divorced a long time—there has to be a story behind that, right? I wondered all this aloud to Hannah before she took her last, annoying loud suck on her smoothie.

“Duh. Because he reminds you of Harper.”

I tried to imagine Peter calling me and telling me some random girl from back in the day had reached out to him and since we were not yet “committed,” he was going to see her and wanted to be upfront. I would be devastated. If I had any arts and crafts skills I would make a voodoo doll and spend the appointed evening poking it in the groin with a pin.

And yet, I was about to seriously consider thinking about planning on calling Jamie . . .

Suddenly I was in my driveway. I didn't remember taking my exit or making the turn on Boynton or crossing Chevas, but here I am. I started my day with a relaxing massage, and now my chest feels tight and my shoulders ache. I carry no house key because I have a garage door opener and never go in through the front door. I sat zoned out for a full minute before I realized the door had only raised two feet off the ground.
I hit the remote about twelve times before giving up and going to the front entrance, lifting the welcome mat, and picking up my key. “You can't hide it in a planter or buy one of those fake rocks that hold keys?” my mother asks. No, I can't. It ruins the irony of a burglar getting access to everything I own by lifting a mat that promises
WELCOME
. I can live without valuables, but not without irony.

Before I could even get inside, I heard a man yell my name and come trotting across my yard. He was tall and rugged looking, the deep leathery tan of a guy who works outside for a living. He flashed a big smile and shook my hand. He informed me he was from the housing development association. He was sorry, this was the part of the job he hated, but there had been complaints from the neighbors about my lawn. He handed me a document, which he said was a “warning.” He assured me it was just a formality.

“You're telling me that people complained because my lawn wasn't mowed?”

“Like I said, no worries. We get it mowed, we tear that up, it goes away.”

“I just don't get it. Don't they have lives? I am
busy
. I live alone, I travel for a living.”

“Oh, well, that makes it tough. Where do you work?”

“That is not relevant!” I said, in the Laura Linney–district attorney manner I adopt when I am embarrassed.

My cell going off saved him further ire he didn't deserve. It was Lucy. Did I forget to pay her for the massage? No, I remember leaving the cash under the little Buddha statue.

“Hey. Apollo was in here today. He just left.”

Apollo is Steve Adamzyk, a male model, incredibly beautiful, and he is not gay. Lucy gets to manhandle him once a month and get paid for it.

“He asked for your number.”

“What? What is going on here? Who opened this spigot? Did I unknowingly change perfume?”

“You smell great,” Lawn Man said.

I waved my finger at him.

“Can I give him your number?” Lucy asked.

“I don't even know him. I see him in your lobby once in a while.”

“You don't have to know him. Do I need to remind you that I see him naked, front and back? There is
ample
reason for you to take his call. So give him your number, right?”

“No. Yes . . . I need to think about it. I have to go. Wait, does he mow lawns?”

I hung up and looked out at my lawn. It looked like hell. Everything felt like it was slipping again, and Lawn Man could sense I was about to lose it in front of him.

“Listen, once a week I do the Randall's yard down the street,” he said. “I could swing by and do your place in no time. No charge. Okay?”

“The Randalls are, like, 300 years old. Each. They can't do their own lawn. I can.”

“You travel for a living; you're not around.”

“I'm not working right now. I lied about that. I just suck.”

“I do the Randall's day after tomorrow; I'll be here then. If you're home . . . well that would be nice. I'll say hello.”

He smiled to let me know things would be all right. Then he took the “warning” out of my hands, tore it in half, and trotted back across my yard to his truck.

I went into my kitchen and realized that since I now had to come to terms with my expanding world of job opportunities and men—Apollo, Jamie, Peter, and Lawn Man—it was time to go through my snail mail, which had been piling up for weeks. And where was my welcome from Starbucks?

Wait, what is this registered letter from Lending Tree? I have no account with Lending Tree. I scanned the letter and began to feel panic. They were confirming my request for a 250K line of home equity credit, and they were making sure the 75K “instant” cash portion was being sent to the right address.

I called the customer service number provided and was on hold for ten excruciating minutes. In that time, I got an email from Harper attaching the registration tickets to the Mobile Media Marketing tradeshow he wanted me to attend at Lincoln Center next week, a text from Peter asking what time he should pick me up tonight, a text from Hannah asking what I had decided about Jamie, and a text from Jamie asking essentially the same thing.

The customer service rep picked up. I told her I had no interest in a loan, had never asked for one, and had never applied. She read back to me my social security number and my mother's maiden name. How the hell did they get that? Even my mother would be hard pressed to come up with her maiden name.

She said the loan had been applied for online. I couldn't believe this could be processed without a signature. She said when the income is as high as mine (was), there is enough equity in the house, and the request is below 300K, it can be done online as long as they have the PIN, the maiden name, and the social.

My identity had been stolen.

She was savvy and super sweet and she walked me through the procedure of killing this loan request, but she made it clear I had better move quickly. Things began to hover, darken, and close in around me. I'm not even sure if what I said next I actually said out loud.

“You want my identity? Take it. Maybe you can make it work.”

Okay, whom could I call to deal with this financial crisis? If I called my dad I would risk the stent from his angioplasty caving in, if I called Peter it would take me twenty
minutes to explain that Lending Tree was not a yoga pose. I wasn't about to call Harper. I tried my own CPA but got his machine. I had no choice: I had to call my sister Jill.

“I don't get it,” she said. “Hold on, we're at swim practice. I told you to bring your goggles. What would you like me to do now if you left them home?”

“Look, if it's a bad time—”

“So you borrowed how much? 250K! Honey, did I not say you could not continue to spend as if you were working?”

“Okay, Jill, try to focus. I didn't borrow any amount. My identity has—”

“This comes at a really bad time. We have two mortgages on our place; we have the note on all the new equipment Todd needed to stay current. I'm not saying we don't want to help—”

“Jill! Save the ‘doctors are not made of money' rant! My identity has been stolen.”

I walked her through the chain of events. Finally she locked in.

“Okay, here's what you do the minute we hang up:

“Close all your accounts. You don't know what's been tampered with, so close everything. Call the bank and see if they attempted any charges or withdrawals. Your guys seemed like online pros trying to pull off bank fraud, so you're probably okay; they wouldn't have wanted you tipped off.

“Contact one of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion; they talk to each other) and place a fraud alert. Then they won't be able to do it again.

“Request a copy of your credit report and review it and look for suspicious charges. You aren't responsible if you find them and report it.

“File a police report right away. They won't catch them, but you'll have less issues if you need to prove it happened.”

“Wow. Okay. Thanks. You rock. How do you know all that? Was your identity stolen?”

“Oh God, no, I would never let that happen.” She laughed.

“Okay, Jill, I didn't
let
it happen; it happened. It's not a sign of my universal ineptness or your superiority.”

“I'm just saying when you're a mom, you are more aware of things.”

“How do you do that? It's amazing. You make everything bad that happens to me about me not having a child.”

“You know,” Jill said, impersonating my mom dead-on, “you are Sheila's godmother and favorite aunt, and she had a birthday party last week, and even though you are not working and not traveling, you didn't show.”

“What? Really?! I thought her birthday was next week.”

“I didn't think you'd remember that. I lied. That
was
a total Mom move. Whoa. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. When I find out who has my identity, I'll see if they'll throw in yours for the hell of it.”

After I went through Jill's list, I decided to be happy that I dodged this bullet and to become a better human being
instantaneously
. As proof of my new solicitude, I remembered to close the finicky garage door with the remote attached to the wall. All Starbucks needed was that one-foot opening and she'd be off on an adventure. My vet says there is no reason a cat ever has to go outside, but nobody ever seems to explain that to the cats.

I then remembered that I still hadn't paid Starbucks any attention amidst all the chaos I came home to, and I started my way up to the study where I knew she was sleeping on the nubby blanket I lay out for her on the corner futon.

My phone was vibrating before I could even get out of the kitchen. I checked the number. Peter.

“Hi, I'm sorry for not calling you back about tonight. I came home to some issues.”

“I left three messages.”

“I know that. I believe I just said I was sorry.”

“I was at work, but I still found the time to call you. You can't find the time to call me back?”

“What is it you think I do all day, Peter?”

“No idea.”

Peter, trust me; you don't want to do this. You are out of your depth. “Well, let's take today. Today I got a call from a bank telling me someone had stolen my identity and was trying to get 250K in my name, thereby ruining my credit, and so I have had to deal with that.”

I decided to leave out the tiny matter of Jamie and the not-so-tiny matter of Apollo.

“250K! Holy crap!”

“Just to give you some sense of scale, Peter: 250K is the equivalent of you training clients all day every day and then multiplying that times forever.”

“Look,” he said slowly, “I know you have a big interview coming up and you are stressed—”

“Forget it. Look, let's take a pass on tonight.”

“No, I'm coming over and we're going out. I'll be there at seven.”

“No. I'm not up for it. I'm not trying to punish you, Peter. I just want to be alone.”

“That's not fair, Casey. We had plans. I'm picking you up at seven.”

“Not unless you want to keep your streak of consecutive restraining orders going.”

“Wow. Okay, well, you win,” Peter said softly. “I don't want to come over anymore.”

I stood on the deck and tried to gather myself. Donald and I chose this house mostly because it backed up to a natural preserve of five hundred acres. We thought it was so great that no one could ever build behind us. Now I am making my isolation worse.

Regret was gnawing at me. Do I go out with Jamie now that I have freed up my evening, or is that a silly knee jerk to Peter?

I sent Harper a text that said simply, “I'm sorry to bother you, but I need another chapter. Now.”

Harper called back just as I opened the door to the study and found that Starbucks was not asleep on her favorite blanket. This meant she was in one of her other hiding places. I asked Harper to hold for a second and called out to her in a falsetto voice that alternated her name with a fast, repeating smooching sound. Harper sighed, and it was rude, but I didn't feel like chasing her.

“Give me my chapter, Harper. Dating and interviewing. They are exhausting. How much is too much? Why shouldn't I play out the situation with Wallace and with Peter? And if they don't work out, then I'll start over. If that's wrong, I need to know why.”

“Okay,” he said. He still sounded tired.

HARPER'S RULE
Covering Jobs

All good headhunters ‘cover' jobs. This means simply that every time headhunters accept a search assignment from a client, they send the client a short list of three to five excellent candidates in as fast a time frame as is possible given the parameters and complexity of the search. Studies show that if you ‘cover' a job within a couple of weeks, the chances of a completed search are almost 100 percent.

Why?

1. There is a rhythm to hiring. If the clients interview every other day for a few weeks, the candidates stay centered in their minds, and the momentum continues. If too much time elapses, they can't remember the candidates as well.
   
2. Closeness of comparison. When you interview a candidate in close proximity to his competition, you do a better job of comparing strengths and weaknesses.
   
3. If you liked the first candidate, interviewing four others quickly makes you feel you didn't react emotionally to the first person you liked.
   
4. If you liked the first candidate, seeing others quickly allows you to have a choice without the fear of losing the first candidate.
   
5. If the hire is urgent because the work needs to be done, seeing a short list of strong candidates quickly comforts you that you didn't hire someone who is not right for the company long term just because you needed the work done.