These networking events were pretty mundane, but this looked like a lovely ship, so maybe it would be a good night. Either way, my objective was clear. I was there for one reason and one reason only. I wanted to meet and get the business cards of the people who controlled the advertising budgets for mymail.com. If I could make a strong connection with the VP of advertising or the marketing director, I was in. Just one good joke, or maybe a flip of my hair if it was a guy, or a name-drop of a company he admired, and the person would remember me when I called him from my desk tomorrow. And I’d exceed my goal for the year with just one account. Again. Yep, I was feeling real good about myself that night.
The five-leveled ship wasn’t set to sail for almost an hour. I walked over to the bar area and surveyed the place. There were maybe only fifteen people dressed in party clothes wandering around. A bartender was wiping down the glossy tan counters and hanging beautiful wineglasses upside down in brass slats above his head. I checked the time again and walked over and sat at a stool. I felt silly sitting there by myself. I took out my phone and called Eric. His voice mail picked up. I hung up.
A handsome and nicely dressed white guy in his early forties with piercing seawater green eyes that shone through his designer black wire-frame glasses walked over to me and sat down.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“My name is J. R. Mitchell,” he said, extending his hand.
“Chantell Meyers.” I gave him a firm shake.
He had pretty white teeth, and I could smell a hint of alcohol on his breath. “So what company are you with?” I asked.
He said he was a vice president of business development for Yahoo. We exchanged business cards and made small talk. He promised to connect me with his brother, who was a senior media buyer for Wolfe Advertising, and I promised that tomorrow morning I would get his press release to the business reporter who handled Silicon Valley.
The conversation was a nice mix of business and pleasure. “I haven’t been to that blues festival since they moved it to the amphitheater,” I said.
“Oh, it is a nice one. What would you like to drink?” asked my handsome new friend with Courvoisier on his breath. He reminded me of the actor who played Magnum PI, only thinner.
“Oh, nothing, thank you,” I said. “I am fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said with a smile.
He ordered himself another one. I thought of Eric and got worried. I hoped the ship didn’t set sail without him. I excused myself, and J. R. Mitchell watched me as I headed toward the other side of the room. My shoulder-length hair was pinned up, but stray wisps fell about my face and tickled my neck as I walked. Okay, I was flirting. It was sort of nice when people noticed you. I looked in the big mirror along the wall, and homeboy was still looking. But now his wife or girlfriend, whom I hadn’t even noticed, was nearby and had noticed him noticing me. She didn’t look pleased either. In fact, she looked at me with an expression of disgust.
Which brings me to an important issue about who I was. I didn’t have many women friends, and that was just fine by me. I mean, I had Tia, and there were a few girlfriends that I did stuff with from time to time. But in general, I didn’t go around looking for women friends because sooner or later there was bound to be a catfight. They always thought you wanted their boyfriends or something. I was twenty-eight years old, and I’d never gone after anybody’s man. Okay, well, maybe I did a couple of times in college, but I was young, and that is not what I was about! I was almost thirty years old. I was about prospering, building my new relationship with God, doing the marriage thing, and stuff like that.
I was not interested in him. So she could just stop with the piercing-dagger-look thing that she was trying to do, and check herself.
I needed to find Eric. I checked my watch and gave the couple a last good-riddance glance, and about fell over when I saw that the woman who was giving me the ugly looks was Mina Everett!
Mina had taken off her glasses and let loose her long, curly red hair. She wore a low-cut red-striped shirt that accentuated her fake D cups, with matching bright red capri pants and high heels. She was talking angrily and quickly in her friend’s ear. This let me know there might be trouble on the boat. I hoped that everyone could swim.
“Forget her,” I said aloud. I was there to meet some key players who controlled advertising dollars. “I’m sticking to my plan,” I told myself. Some people just loved to try to win at everything. Drama queens were full of negativity. Divas. Some people fed on chaos and confusion. It’s who we were.
I turned and looked around for my guy. When I passed by again, Mina’s date took another swig from his glass and smacked his lips at me. I shook my head. Drama kings existed too. When Mina put her arm in his and they walked in the other direction, I wanted to yell through the crowd, “Buh-bye!” And just where was Eric? What was the point of being in a relationship if I was still out dealing with that type of drama?
I went up to the third level. The host for the evening announced that mymail.com was celebrating receiving $50 million, their second round of venture capital funding that year. He welcomed us and said that we would be departing shortly on our cruise around the bay. “Here’s to revolutionizing the way that we send mail today!” he said and raised his glass. I raised my glass and toasted with everyone else.
A brunette in her early twenties with a cute little pixie haircut was standing to my right. She put her hand out toward me, smiled, and said, “Hi, I’m Heidi Wadore, with pets4u.com. Who are you with?”
I shook her hand and said, “Chantell Meyers. I work for the
San Francisco Daily News.
”
“Oh, the newspaper. Are you a writer?”
“Oh, no, I work advertising,” I said.
The ship was moving. I still hadn’t found Eric.
I said, “So, tell me about pets4u.com.”
“Well, we’re going to revolutionize the way people shop for pets. See, when people decide they want a pet, they go to pet stores, or look in the paper, or go to a shelter. Well, what pets4u does is it has a robust database with all of the local breeders. It locates all of the domesticated animals . . .”
Oh Lord! Everyone there had his spiel memorized and could recite it faster than Quick Draw could have his gun in hand. She continued: “. . . area including but not limited to shelters and pet stores. We then post them so that everyone has access to them on the Web for purchase.”
“Oh, interesting,” I lied. Too many dotcoms. Too many spiels; some just didn’t make sense.
The room was filling up fast. People were chatting and servers were walking around with platters serving hors d’oeuvres. I was so happy when I saw Eric making his way over to me. He was a sight to behold. Gorgeous. Six foot two, smooth Baileys Irish Cream skin. Muscular frame. Hair freshly cut because that is the only way that he would present himself. He had a thin face and curly black hair. His nose came to a semi-point at the end of his bridge. And his lips were thin and held his usual smirk that looked like an upside-down smile. His mustache was thin yet hard to miss. His five-o’clock shadow contrasted against his golden skin. Today he wore a button-down khaki-colored shirt open with a crisp white T-shirt underneath and dark blue J. Crew trousers. Meticulously casual.
“Oh, Heidi, excuse me. There’s my fiancé. It was nice meeting you,” I said, and walked over toward him and stood by his side.
I was five foot ten with heels on. My lipstick was a stylish brick color. My toes were freshly pedicured, the nails colored a dusty rose. And even with my pink sweater on, my bright pink-and-red Wilma Flintstone dress screamed: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have arrived.” Eric and I got nods of approval and glances of envy. Yep, together he and I told a great story.
“What’s up? How long have you been here?” Eric asked with what could have passed for a smile on his face.
“I’ve been here for a little while,” I replied with the same contagious half-smile. Eric and I, we were a lot alike. We prided ourselves on being tough. His was muscle. Mine was a mind of steel. So I said nothing to him about Mina and her boyfriend.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, babe. I had to make a run, then I got tied up, and my car wasn’t running right. Dang, it’s just been a crazy day!” he said, looking up toward the roof.
“Oh,” I said, just relieved to see him. I put my arm in his and we started walking around.
The ship was now filled up with people and had set sail. People were playing games and talking. I heard a man in a blue suit say they were forming a conga line below. Eric and I gambled with pretend money at the blackjack and roulette tables for a while. The speaker said dinner was going to be served soon and asked everyone to start heading up to the next level.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Eric.
“Yes, I could eat. You?”
“Yup. Let’s go.”
We went up to the fourth floor and found a seat at a table in the dining area. The waiter came over and asked us if we were having salmon, chicken, or vegetables. I ordered the chicken, then excused myself and went to the restroom. In the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror and relined my lips in my new brick-colored liner. Then I applied a light rose-colored gloss that glistened over it.
One lady made her way out the door as two others walked in, laughing, with wineglasses in their hands. They stopped laughing when they saw me. One was a black lady with an unmistakable Australian accent, and the other was Mina. They looked at me from my feet to my head and smirked at each other. Mina set her drink down and went into the stall while the other fixed her makeup. From the stall Mina shouted, “People are always trying to show off, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and it is so sickening. I mean, d**n, we see you. Advertising at work is one thing. Advertising yourself, that’s prostitution,” said the black lady with the accent, who had apparently gotten her boobs done too.
“Thank you!” said Mina, in a voice filled with laughter. I am sure they would have high-fived had they been standing next to each other. Whatever, I thought; who advertised more than they did?
“Some people are just tacky. Trying to steal other people’s men, when they really need to worry about their own!” The Australian woman was looking at me, smirking.
I promised God that I would try to live right. For me, that meant avoiding confrontation and turning the other cheek, but they were going too far. Had she been gossiping about me to her friend? They didn’t have to worry about Eric and me. We were just fine.
“You two need to mind your own business,” I said. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell Mina that she needed to worry less about Chantell and more about her MCI account at work. I’d overheard Canun talking about it and there were some problems with a recently run ad. I wanted to tell her that her eyebrows were arched crooked. But I’d said too much already. It was a ladies’ bathroom, and there should have been at least one lady in it.
And I almost walked right out of there too. But when one of them mumbled that it looked like I had a pen mark on my forehead, my blood boiled. Who did they think they were talking to? My beauty mark came from my mother, and I refused to let them insult me any further. So I smiled in the mirror, like they’d just paid me a compliment. I took the pins out of my hair and freed the soft-wild golden-streaked kinky curls that had been pulled into submission. My lips glistened. Never saying a word, I touched up my Asian-like eyes with a little liner and puckered my rose-colored lips in the mirror. They frowned and pretended like they weren’t paying attention. I smirked. Yeah, right. I touched my little mole like I didn’t have an insecurity in the world. Then I took off my sweater and stood back and took a good look at myself. The Australian lady rolled her eyes, along with Mina, who was washing her hands. I left the bathroom never saying a word.
I walked back over to Eric and we had our dinner. He didn’t say anything about the change to my hair and I didn’t say anything about the incident in the bathroom. It was over, after all, as far as I was concerned. They had tried to verbally attack me, and it had backfired. Now I was back at my table enjoying my guy and my meal. It was that simple. A woman holding a black and teal, catlike party mask to her face with a stick came up to our table. The mask’s feathers sprouted out all around its eyes. Then she removed the mask and confirmed what we’d heard so many times over the past two years. “I just had to come over and say something. You guys look so great together!” Her hair was brown and big and curled under right at the nape of her neck. Her face was small, and laugh lines etched the outside of her smile.
“Thank you,” we said, almost simultaneously.
Folks liking to be around us was an important thing to me. It was good because I wasn’t required to explain a whole bunch of personal stuff. Nope. They liked me for what they saw. I’d learned the hard way that you should never let people know when you’re down. Because they’ll pretend to empathize and understand, and as soon as you turn your back, they’ll get on the phone and call all of their friends. They’ll tell everyone in town, “Guurl, that Chantell Meyers is not really all of that. She is perpetrating. I’m telling you that she is as phony as a fifteen-dollar bill. She tries to act like everything is good, but she told me that her boyfriend did this and that . . . ,” or they’d say, “I called her on her cell phone on Friday, and don’t you know, it was turned off!” No, thank you. Not going out like that.
I looked over at Eric, who picked up his string beans one at a time with his fork and chewed slowly. He was an ex-high school football star who’d grown accustomed to the limelight, and often reminisced about how life used to be. Nowadays he was a manager at Safeway, in the meat department. Now, I know you’re probably thinking that Eric and I weren’t evenly yoked. But my man was fine, he was straight, and he had a good-paying job. That is a good man. We were as evenly yoked as we needed to be. He’d been there for over ten years, and he was a union member, but I think he got a little bored with his job sometimes.