The Balance Thing (21 page)

D
id you say it back?” Vida had let me get through almost an entire phone call filled with excuses about why I hadn't seen her over the weekend and halfway through my whole you-won't-believe-what-Josh-said story before she demanded an answer.

“Well…”

She groaned. “Tell me you said it back.”

“I—” The truth was, I didn't quite remember. “It's all kind of a blur.”

“Becks!”

“Well, he did catch me a little off guard,” I snapped. “I mean, one minute he's yelling at me and the next—”

“Stop! If you tell me you didn't totally fall into his arms right there on the spot, I'm never speaking to you again.”

“Vee—”

“And I was already never speaking to you again because of the Connie thing.”

“Have you talked to her? What's happening?” Connie hadn't returned any of my calls on Sunday. I hadn't had a word from her since I'd let it slip about Ian's subterfuge at the wedding—which I completely blamed on Oktoberfest and the evil Germans who'd dragged me to it.

“Don't change the subject. How did you leave things with Josh?”

She was my best friend, but I balked at telling her the details. About how we'd just clung to each other silently in the studio for a while. About how he'd carried me—
carried
me—up to his loft. About everything he'd said, and the very, very good things he'd done afterward.

“Becks!”

“We left things, um…nicely.”

“Oh my God. You're impossible. Did you at least—”

“He took me to the airport this morning.”

That stopped her. At least for a few seconds. “You let him?”

“Not only that,” I told her. “I liked it.”

“Becks! This is
huge
!”

 

I HAD LIKED IT.
And it was huge.

I never let people take me to the airport. I hate it. I hate that they're doing me a favor. I hate that I have to make conversation with them all the long way there, and keep telling them what airline I'm on because they
always
forget and have to circle the departures level
forever
after they've missed the right turnout. And I have to be cheerful about that, even though it means I won't have time to stop at Starbucks before getting on the plane because this person is taking time out of their life to get me to the damn airport.

I'd much rather just pay an anonymous cabbie who does this for a living, doesn't care if I want to spend the time in the taxi thinking about everything that I have to do once I get wherever I'm going, and who knows when to turn to get me to the right drop-off zone.

But Josh had woken me up early that morning, taken me to my place, and made coffee while I threw things out of last week's suitcase and into this week's. And then we hadn't even discussed it. He'd taken me and it hadn't felt like a gigantic
thing
, and the conversation hadn't been forced, and he'd known better than me what flight I was on, because he'd printed my itinerary out from my e-mail while I'd been in the shower.

It had been…nice.

 

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

It was Tuesday and I was talking to Max. “Boston.”

“Why?”

“Because I work for a living.”

Actually, I hadn't done any work in the two days I'd been there. The Boston office was in an uproar because a power outage on Monday morning had thrown everyone's schedules into chaos. I'd spent the day dealing with hysterical graphic artists who were completely stressed out over their deadlines because of the precious time they'd lost the day before, and I still hadn't seen their new and allegedly brilliant technodemo.

Max wasn't impressed. “Have you even seen your own office yet?”

“No, but I've seen my paycheck,” I told him.

“Money isn't everything.”

“You haven't seen this paycheck.”

I heard him take a deep breath. “Anyway, that's not why I called.” He paused. “Vida told me something interesting about you.”

“I'll just bet she did.” I knew I couldn't tell Vida some
thing as gigantic as Josh saying he loved me and expect her to keep it to herself.

“So…” Max said. “You're happy?”

“I think so.”

“Try to commit to it,” he urged.

“Max,” I asked. “Would you tell me if you thought I was just being date-lazy? I mean, Josh is the one who's kind of pursued me, and I'd hate to think I was just into him because…are you still there?”

“I'm still here. And if I knew where Connie was, I'd slap her silly for ever putting that stupid date-laziness theory in your head.”

“So you don't think that's it? With Josh?”

“Becks, from the bottom of my jaded and cynical heart, I don't think that's it.”

Which was an enormous relief. I mean, I may be delusional on occasion, but if my friends share the delusion…maybe it isn't a delusion after all. I decided to change the subject while things were still going so well.

“So nobody's heard from Connie yet?”

“I had to promise her assistant I'd give her free Botox before she'd tell me that Connie was still alive and coming into the office. She just isn't returning my calls. Or Vida's.”

“Or mine,” I told him. “I wonder what the hell she's thinking.”

 

“I'VE DECIDED TO TAKE IAN BACK.”

No “Hello.” No “Sorry I've been making you all worry about me.” No greeting whatsoever. Just a phone call at two in the morning and an announcement.

“Connie! Are you okay? What's going on?”

She sighed with impatience. “I've decided,” she said slowly, “to take Ian back.”

“That's…great.” I struggled to sit up. Josh had talked me into an elaborately comfortable position involving four pillows when I'd called him earlier, and it was a little hard to extricate myself while dealing with what apparently was not a nervous breakdown from Connie.

“You sound great,” I told her.

“I've decided to interpret the entire wedding episode as an endearing attempt to please me. When you think about it, it was actually quite sweet of him to go to all that bother.”

Well, yes, in a pathological kind of way.

“And now that I've adjusted my perspective,” she went on, “there's no reason why we can't make a fresh start.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed in what I hoped might pass as a supportive-friend tone. “Of course. Connie, where are you?”

“Home.”

“I mean…”

“Home as in my home with Ian. Although you wouldn't recognize the place. Honestly, a few weeks on his own and he's living like a bachelor again. Would you believe I found a pizza box in the living room? And it wasn't even
empty
.”

“Is Ian there now?” Because she probably wasn't going to win him back with comments like that. But where else would he be at midnight?

“He's in China.”

“China?”

She sniffed. “On business.”

I got a very bad feeling. “Connie.” I wasn't quite sure
how to phrase the question. “Does Ian know you've taken him back?”

“Um,” she answered in a very small voice. “Not exactly.”

 

“YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING.”

Vida had said it that morning, Max had said it that afternoon, and now Josh said it as I steeped in the hotel bath after yet another day of not seeing the fabulous high-tech marketing blitz that was behind schedule at WorldWired's Boston office.

“She's planning on just being there when he gets home.”

“When will that be?”

“She doesn't even know for sure.”

“Wow.”

“Uh huh.”

“Listen, it's not that I'm not interested in Connie, but we need to discuss the crucifix delivery.”

Things with Josh hadn't really changed much. Except, of course, that I now had a constant, rhythmic sort of pulsing refrain of
he loves me, he loves me
as the accompaniment to everything I did. But in terms of work, I hadn't taken him up on his offer to drop Vladima and he hadn't forced the issue. I didn't want to drop Vladima. I liked the work, and so far I didn't see a problem in balancing it against my as-yet-to-be-defined WorldWired duties. Despite whatever I might mutter in my sleep.

So, with ComixCon only a week and a half away, and Vladima's needs reaching the critical stage, I found myself saying those three little words that every woman dreams of someday saying to the man in her life.

“What crucifix delivery?”

 

“JUST PROMISE YOU'LL BE HOME
this weekend, okay?” Vida caught me as I took a cab from Boston to someplace in Cambridge for something to do with communications research. “Remember? Phillip is coming to visit Max and we're all going out Saturday night.”

“Does Phillip know about the whole Connie and Ian thing?”

“I don't know, but I'll find out this afternoon. I'm going to give him a surfing lesson. You didn't promise yet.”

“Don't worry,” I said. “I'll be there. I have to be home this weekend—I have tons of things to take care of.”

“Don't tell me that! You have to go out with us tomorrow night!”

“Seriously, Vida, I don't know if I can. I've gotten way behind, and—”

“Josh already said you would.”

“What?”

“I talked to Josh this morning, and he said you guys would make it. His exact words were ‘We'll be there.'”

Then it must be official. We were a “we.” We were a “we” with a serious amount of work to do on behalf of a certain undead someone, but we were a “we.” And for once, that thought didn't give me hives.

“Becks?” Vida prompted me.

“I guess we'll be there.”

 

“I WANT YOU IN
a black leather frock coat.”

Josh waited a beat before responding. “I thought we decided on work before phone sex.”

“This is work. I want you in a black leather frock coat at the convention. In the booth. Walking around.”

“You're kidding.”

“And leather pants.”

“Becks.” There was something like the slightest hint of warning in his voice. “I am not the artist formerly known as Prince. I'm a cartoonist.”

“You're a rock star cartoonist and I want you to dress like one.”

I was getting more resistance from everyone on the ComixCon dress code than on anything else. I'd brought in a sample cloak for the minions over the weekend and you'd have thought I was asking them to eat stale spiders. But even I had to admit that it had made everyone who tried it on look like a hobbit. So we compromised on a uniform of black jeans and black T-shirts with “Vladima's Minion” written on them in a lurid red scrawl. Dripping, of course. But Josh needed to make more of a sartorial statement.

“I'll concede the leather pants,” he said. “But they'll be damn hot on the show floor.”

“That's true.” Conventions were always a crowded, noisy, sweaty mess for those who worked them. I reconsidered the leather coat. “How about a black silk shirt?”

“Fine.”

“With French cuffs.”

“Whatever.”

“And ruby cuff links.”

Again a pause before his reply. “I'm not sure the wardrobe budget will stretch to rubies.”

I rolled my eyes. “Garnets, then. Something that looks like a single drop of blood.”

“Becks, are you getting just a tiny bit too into this?”

“From a man who—I'm willing to bet—right now has votive candles burning under his
Nosfuratu
poster, that's rich.”

“Jeremy lit the candles.”

“Nevertheless.”

He was going to look good if it killed me.

 

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

“I'm in an airport, Max, where are you?”

“The beach.” He made it sound like the valley of the doomed. “I'm freezing my ass off while Vida and Phillip do unnatural things in the water.”

“Like surf?”

“So they say, although it looks to me like it's just an excuse to swim away from everything safe so they can talk among themselves.”

“Why didn't you go out with them?”

“Someone had to stay on shore and guard the Bloody Marys.”

“You brought cocktails to go surfing?”

“I thought, you know…blood in the water…sharks and blood…I don't know. I can't think straight around Phillip.”

I let that line pass without comment.

“Let's change the subject. I hear enough about blood from the minions. What's new on the Connie front?”

“She's still at the house.”

“And Ian?”

“Shanghai, I'm told.”

“Has she at least talked to him?”

“You can ask her yourself tomorrow night.”

The phone line started breaking up as I got closer to the security check-in. “Where are we going tomorrow?”

“Martuni's. Connie says she's going to wear white and sing ‘Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.'”

I lost the connection. I could only hope he'd been kidding.

I
've never seen two women more in need of big sloppy martinis and sing-along show tunes in my life.”

Josh stood in the doorway looking underfed, sleep-deprived, and in need of a haircut. In short, perfect.

Shayla spoke up. “I've been telling her to get out of here for an hour, but she can't make up her mind about the teeth.”

We were in the studio's break room, and we'd been trying out variations on the theme of pointy teeth for, I had to admit, quite some time.

“I think I'm leaning toward just the canine extenders,” I told him. “What do you think?”

“I think if she's wearing the Vladima costume, nobody's going to be looking at her teeth.” He looked at Shayla. “No offense.”

“Don't be silly. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me,” she beamed.

“Okay, then we'll go with these.” I handed Shayla the two teeth. “Now—”

“Now nothing,” she interrupted. “Now I have a hot date
with a colorist from Vidal Sassoon, and you have some big sloppy martinis waiting for you somewhere. Let's get out of here.”

I looked at Josh. “Vladima speaks.”

“I love this.” Shayla clapped her hands and did her best to look imperious. “Leave!”

It would have been perfect if she hadn't giggled.

 

THE PIANO BAR BACK ROOM
at Martuni's on a Saturday night. Huge drinks, wall-to-wall people singing their hearts out, and the only request that's off-limits is “Piano Man.”

There were some good singers that night, and the piano player seemed to have a working knowledge of everything from
The Sound of Music
to
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
.

Connie did attempt “Don't Cry, etc.” but enough people joined in so that she didn't make a complete fool of herself. Phillip got into the spirit of the thing with a fairly rousing rendition of “I Get a Kick Out of You,” sung in Max's general direction, which confirmed my suspicion that he was all right.

He was also clueless about the state of his brother's marriage, but that was fine by Connie.

“He's using Ian's absence as an excuse to stay with Max,” she hollered in my ear. “So everyone's happy.”

Everyone was happy, including me. I was being crushed on all sides by my friends, and I knew I'd pay tomorrow for the amount of Bombay Sapphire I was drinking, but I didn't care.

“Okay! Okay!” Vida attempted to get all our attention
when a new piano player took the keys with an Elton John medley. “Okay, listen!”

We did our best.

“The comic convention is in Vegas next weekend, right?” She still had to shout to be heard, but at least “Your Song” wasn't terribly intrusive.

“Right,” Josh yelled, nodding.

“Tim and I are going!”

Tim gave us all a huge grin and double thumbs-up.

“Great!” I shouted. “I'll get you both passes.”

“No!” Vida yelled. “We're not going to the show! We're going to Vegas!”

We must have looked confused because Vida started laughing. Then Tim put his arms around her and shouted an explanation. “We're getting married!”

Connie shrieked. Max did a spit-take with his martini. I don't even know how I reacted.

“We're eloping!” Vida yelled. “And you're all invited!”

Which is right when the piano player launched into “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” I hate that song—it's so sappy—but even I wasn't capable of bitching about the background music in the midst of a massive group hug, followed swiftly by a period of jumping up and down and squealing, a few tears, calls for more drinks, and lots more hugging.

Even I had to admit it. I could feel the love.

 

ON MONDAY MORNING
I could only feel the stress. I was in LA on yet another WorldWired trip. Over the weekend I'd thought about calling in sick and canceling, something I'd never done in my entire professional life. I actually
got as far as picking up the phone, but when it came down to it, I just couldn't say the words. It's hard to break a lifetime of conditioning.

Josh and I had worked feverishly all day Sunday, and he'd taken me to the airport in the morning with a huge list of things I needed to do before Thursday, when I was scheduled to meet him in Vegas. Thursday was setup day, with the show officially starting Friday morning.

I'd had a vague uneasy feeling that, in light of Vida and Tim's news, Josh might try to steer the conversation toward relationships or commitments or something, but he'd made only one comment, in the cab on the way home from Martuni's.

“I guess some people move faster than others.”

I'd looked into those great big dark damn eyes of his and my throat closed up. “I guess.”

And that had been it. Thank heavens.

 

“VIDA, I CAN'T BELIEVE
you didn't tell me!” I'd been dumped in a random office after a perfunctory tour of the extremely cool and retro WorldWired Los Angeles building, and I was taking the opportunity to berate my best friend.

“When have I seen you? Saturday was the first time in weeks I'd had more than a five-minute phone call or an e-mail from you.”

She had a point. “Still—”

“Still nothing. Be happy for me.”

“I
am
happy for you! Which doesn't mean you couldn't have mentioned it in one of our five-minute phone calls.”

“It only happened on Friday,” she said. “After we got back from surfing with Phillip and Max.”

“He just came out and asked you? Did you at least get to change out of your wet suit?”

“It was over a totally nice dinner at a totally nice restaurant, and we were wearing totally nice clothes. And he didn't ask me—I asked him.”

“Vida!”

“What? It all worked out. He said yes.” She paused. “In fact, he said ‘absolutely.'”

“But why? I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” She took a breath. “I think it was because of Phillip. You know how in England I went completely nuts over him? I didn't even see who he really was because I was too busy projecting all this
stuff
on him about who I thought he was.”

“I remember.” I remembered doing the same thing myself with a certain minor member of the nobility whose face I couldn't really recall at the moment.

“So when I saw him again on Friday, it all kind of came back to me. How crazy I'd been. And then I looked at Tim over the dinner table, and I don't know what came over me. I just knew I was
seeing
Tim, you know?”

I thought of Josh's face over the dinner table and I knew. Okay, our dinner table was usually covered in my spreadsheets, his sketches, and a few miscellaneous knickknacks from the netherworld, but I still knew.

“Yeah.” My voice cracked.

“So I just said it. And Friday night in Vegas we're going to do it—no muss, no fuss—so we can start spending the rest of our lives together without wasting any more time.”

I cleared my throat. “Is Connie giving you grief on the ‘no muss, no fuss' part?”

“What do you think?”

“I think she's probably having a selection of bridal gowns delivered to your office today.”

Vida laughed. “She
is
. With a traveling seamstress, no less, so when I pick one, I can get it altered on the spot.”

“Does that make her your maid of honor?” I can't believe I felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought.

“God, no. No bridesmaids—I promise.”

“Bless you.”

“Shit. I have to go. There's a guy pushing a trolley full of wedding cakes down the hall, and he's headed my way. See you Friday!”

Friday. It seemed months away. Until I looked at my to-do list.

 

JOE ELLIOT TURNED UP
on Thursday.

I was scheduled to be in the office until around noon, when I'd head for LAX and catch a short flight to Vegas, meeting up with Josh and the minions. It wasn't really the WorldWired Way to take a day and a half off when you'd been an employee something short of six weeks, but I'd e-mailed Joe Elliot about it and he hadn't seemed to mind.

Then I got a note.

Shit. Chris was Joe Elliot's assistant. The one he habitually referred to as “my girl.” It was weird that, after all this time, my boss suddenly needed to see me “urgently.” And it was also weird that the note was just waiting for me on my desk Thursday morning, when I would normally have expected an e-mail or a voice mail.

The timing, on the other hand, wasn't at all weird. It was just completely disastrous.

 

“DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT,”
Josh said.

“Don't worry about it? You guys are going to be setting up all afternoon.” I checked my watch, grateful Los Angeles and Las Vegas were at least in the same time zone. “If you're still waiting for a cab at the airport you're already behind schedule.”

“We can handle it,” he insisted. “You already had everything shipped to the convention hall, right? The plans are all in place, you've triple-checked everything; you've given everyone—including me—more explicit orders than Eisenhower gave the troops on D-day. We'll be fine.”

Part of me knew he was right, and part of me hated him for not needing me more.

“Besides, we can get you on your cell if anything comes up, right?”

“I can fly there this afternoon and just come back here on an early flight tomorrow. It'll only be an hour each way.” I'd been checking a travel Web site while we talked.

“Don't be crazy. You'd wind up exhausted by the time the show started, and that's when we'll really need you.”

“It's nice to know you'll need me at all.” That came out a little more sullen than I would have liked.

“Becks, just relax. You organized this thing down to microscopic details. The booth isn't complicated, and Jeremy knows how to hook up the video displays better than you do. We'll be fine for the setup.”

Relax. He wanted me to relax. And I thought he knew me.

“But if you're not here on Friday, the entire world will come to an end,” he said.

Maybe he did know me. “Really?”

“Absolutely. The oceans will boil and it will rain toads and we'll all completely fall apart.”

“That's nice.”

“So just do whatever you have to do for WorldWired, and we'll see you as soon as you can make it tomorrow, okay?”

“I still don't like it.”

“Neither do I, but we'll deal with it. We'll be fine,” he insisted. “Here's the cab. I'll call you later.”

I hung up. “We'll be fine,” he'd said. How annoying. No wonder he didn't believe me when I told him the same thing.

 

BY LATE AFTERNOON
I was jumping out of my skin. I knew Joe Elliot was in the building, and I didn't see why I couldn't just grab fifteen minutes with him and catch the next plane to Vegas instead of waiting around for a day.

Waiting and wondering. What the hell did he need to talk to me about? And why now, after weeks and weeks of avoiding me, was something suddenly urgent? And what could be so important that he had to talk face-to-face instead of sending me an e-mail or calling me?

Only one answer satisfied all the questions. He was going to fire me.

But why? I hadn't done anything to deserve being fired. Hell, I hadn't done anything at all.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe all of this traveling around had been intended to give me a chance to spot an opportunity for success and seize it—or at least to send him thoughtful analyses of what I'd seen and heard everywhere.

I thought about it. I thought about how I might have handled all the travel and all the meetings if I'd been the old Becks—the one with her head in the game. I probably would have done all my research before New York and been able to come up with some brilliantly insightful feedback for the ad firm. I probably would have drunk down every word the technogeeks had spoken at the conference in Dallas, and I'd now be the WorldWired's greatest expert on future trends in the industry.

As I obsessed about everything I hadn't done, I started to feel a little feverish. My hands started sweating when I realized that the resignation of the VP in Atlanta could have been a huge opportunity to show Joe Elliot that I could pull people together in times of corporate change. The power outage in Boston could have been a providential chance to take the team back to the basics of working with pens and paper on ideas rather than on computerized visual trickery.

My hands started to shake when I realized that Frankfurt could have been an opening for me to really get a handle on the European markets, instead of tuning out what everyone was talking about until they'd said the magic word—
beer.

I hadn't been giving WorldWired the attention I should. If I was being honest with myself, I'd known that all along. And although I'd never consciously realized it, I knew now
that I'd been assuming, in the back of my mind, that eventually something would change and I'd get into gear and…focus.

But the truth was, I was focused. I just wasn't focused on WorldWired. My entire intellectual capacity seemed to be filled with the detritus of a cartoon graveyard and its undead mistress. Vladima was what I thought about, schemed about, dreamed about. Making her successful had become my obsession. On planes when I could have been preparing for meetings, I was writing press releases. And after meetings, when I should have been preparing insightful reports with brilliant recommendations, I'd been monitoring the progress of the Vladima movie e-mail campaign.