Читать книгу: «Slim Chance»

JACKIE ROSE

was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, where she now lives with her husband, daughter and dog. After cutting her teeth in the publishing world editing a travel magazine, she decided to devote herself to writing full-time. Slim Chance is her debut novel.

When she’s not looking herself up on the Internet, Jackie likes to spend her time sleeping, shopping and musing about the meaning of it all. She’s also currently hard at work on her second book.

For Dan, my one and only love

Slim Chance

Jackie Rose

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to…

Robyn Berman, for lighting a fire under me and keeping it burning. Sam Bell, my devoted editor, for all your help and encouragement, every step of the way. Rachel Pritzker, for being the absolute polar opposite of the mother-in-law in this book. Nelu Wolfensohn, for that whole roof over our heads thing. Riana Levy, Tara Cogan, Wendy Cooper, Kathy De Koven and Ilana Kronick, for being the very paragons of friendship, if not always virtue. Lorne Scharf, photo expert, for the back-cover shot. Rose and Issie Lipkus, for your endless smiles and support. Natalie Rosenhek—aka “Bubba”—for baby-sitting with a passion. Shoel Rosenhek, for getting me started with all those trips to the library. Jordy, for sending news of the world home from New York, London and beyond. Sarah, lover of ideas and pursuer of wisdom, for everything, always. Sandy Lipkus, for being the best teacher I ever had.

And, of course, Abigail,

for helping with revisions from the inside.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

EPILOGUE

1

If you’ve ever puked at work, it has probably been for one of two reasons—either you’re desperately, uncontrollably ill with some type of stomach flu or food poisoning, in which case you’re just glad to have made it to the bathroom on time and don’t really care if anyone hears you throwing your guts up, or else you’re sick in the sort of way you’d prefer to keep to yourself (i.e., violently hung over; just discovered you’re pregnant; fired, and so on). That afternoon, as I stared down into the bowl in the unforgiving light of the ladies’ room on the third-floor offices of Kendra White Cosmetics, The Second-Largest Direct-Selling Makeup Company In America, I realized that this situation definitely falls into the latter category, the sort of barfing where you pray for privacy while processing the certain knowledge that your entire life as you know it is about to change.

I can’t believe I said yes.

Until that moment, thanks to a healthy aversion to mayonnaise and an inherited ability to hold my liquor, I’d never suffered the indignity of being sick in public. Now, though, a gaggle of thick-stockinged co-workers fretted outside the stall door, gossipful glee disguised as concern. They’d seen me bolt for the bathroom. Now they waited for completion.

Please, just let me not puke.

But it was no use. My eyes filled with water, my knees hit the floor and the bowl became my whole world. In my day-to-day life at Kendra White, I make a concerted effort not to put my ass anywhere near these toilets. Now, my face was inside one.

An eternity passed, during which time I pretended I was in the Ally McBeal Unisex, so sterile, so sleek, so much fun…not at all like this abysmal pit, where ladies’ unmentionables are strewn all over the wet floor and the garbage can’s always overstuffed. Oh my God, is that a pubic hair on the seat?

“Are you all right, Evelyn? Do you need someone to hold your hair back?” Pruscilla Cockburn, my boss, wheezed from the other side.

“No, I’m fine,” I gagged.

“Well then, get a hold of yourself, dear. It’s only nerves! You’re going to make a wonderful wife. And what a fellow, that Bruce. He’s waiting just outside the door, you know. Gosh! Have you ever seen such a romantic proposal? Well I know I certainly haven’t—not even on A Wedding Story, and I’ve got every one on tape. I mean, can you imagine? Asking her at work? In front of everyone…?”

At this point, it was obvious she’d forgotten all about me, and was simply sharing with the others. What a hag. I had just suffered the worst sort of humiliation imaginable, my love life savagely ripped from the privacy of my own heart and put on display in front of everyone I hate most in the world, and all Pruscilla could think about was what a great story it would make at the coffee cart tomorrow morning. My entire life had just been turned upside down, and all they could think about was how it affected them. I turned away from the bowl and saw four pairs of feet, each in worse shoes than the next. Pruscilla’s were stuffed like sausages into worn-out red pumps. She always matches her shoes to her outfits—vast swaths of brightly colored fabric that go under the guise of “caftans” and “capes” in plus-size stores. They should be illegal, as far as I’m concerned.

“I’m okay. I’m coming out,” I sniffed, opening the door.

I should have seen it coming. Bruce’s proposal, I mean, not the puking.

That morning, for some reason, I read my horoscope, which is something I never do, seeing as how I’m usually far too late to read the paper, or even bring it in, mind you. Plus, I hate touching newsprint—it always ends up all over everything, especially my face. Not that I really believe in astrology anyway. Except for maybe the page at the back of Cosmo, since it’s a magazine, not a newspaper, and because once I used the lucky numbers and won $125 in the lottery. But I suppose that’s numerology.

Anyway, that morning, my horoscope was dead-on, although I had no way of knowing it at the time. The first sign that the planets were aligning against me occurred when I actually woke up early. Well, not so much early as just not late. And Bruce, dear that he is, made us breakfast. Three-egg cheese and mushroom omelets—with the yolks, of course; none of that whites-only shit for us—and coffee. It was unusual for me to lose my dietary resolve so early in the day (that usually doesn’t happen until right before lunch), but I knew that since it was Friday anyway, Monday would doubtlessly be a better time to start watching myself. Better not to spoil the weekend, and all the wonderful meals that might have been.

“Evie, you wanna go out for dinner tonight, just us?” Bruce asked, knowing full well we almost always go out Friday nights, just us. He probably thought he was being adorable for asking, but to tell you the truth he was verging on smarmy. Or maybe it was just that he’d already asked me three times. With our busy career-person schedules, Bruce doesn’t always see as much of me as he’d like, so I try to keep our weekly date sacred no matter what. That is, unless his mother, Roberta—known as Bertie to those who love her, or at the very least to those who don’t despise her, since not too many people can claim more than that—decides that she wants to have us over for watery soup and boiled potatoes, in which case we drop everything and run directly to the Fulbrights’ Greenwich, Connecticut compound for a meal that would make dinner with the Royal Family seem like a hoedown.

I was at the very least glad to hear tonight would not be one of those nights. One Friday a month with his mother is quite enough for me, though Bertie would have us over every week if I didn’t put my foot down. It’s my theory that these so-called family nights are really just an excuse for her to try and turn Bruce against me, since she obviously thinks I’m stopping him from fulfilling his true potential. And who could blame me? Bertie sets the tone with interview-style questions like “Bruce, do you feel that teaching second grade is a challenge for you, intellectually speaking?” (A: “As you know, Mother, it’s a school for gifted children, so yes—it is a challenge”). Or perhaps a confusing zinger like, “Evelyn, does being Italo-American give you an edge in the mail-order cosmetics industry?” (A: Well, I’m only one half Italian-American, Mrs. Fulbright, but no, I don’t think it really makes a difference.”)

Then we all sit back and enjoy the show while Bruce’s wicked WASPy sisters, Brooke, Wendy and, of course, Diana—each lovelier and thinner and perkier-breasted than the next—turn the emasculation of their older brother into a spectator sport, while at the same time taking an obvious mental inventory of every bite I manage to put in my mouth without gagging. By the end of the night, I’m ready to kill, ready to shake his sweet old dad and say “Wake up! They’ve got you by the balls, man! Get out now, while you’ve still got a good 20 years left!” But nobody seems to notice any of it except me, and Bruce and I spend the train ride home fighting.

But we’ll save all that for next Friday. Tonight, we’re free.

“I was thinking Luna,” Bruce continued. “I made reservations for nine.”

He knows I love it there. Luna is where my parents had their first date, a blind date. It was where they fell in love the second they laid eyes on each other. When I was little, and sad or not feeling well, I begged my mom to tell me the story over and over, and she would always oblige, sparing no details—what she was wearing, the food they ate, how my dad said she looked like Elizabeth Taylor, only with brown eyes and a bigger butt. I tried to imagine them there, sitting next to the steamy window on a dark winter night. Luna was also where they went to eat the night I was conceived. It was the last time they did it before my dad died, although she left that part out until I was a little older.

Bruce and I always save Luna for special occasions, never more than once or twice a year. And walking around Little Italy makes us horny and couple-y feeling, so it’s always a guaranteed good time. There’s something so nice about prancing around, arm in arm, flaunting our delirious happiness to the droves of miserable Manhattan singletons out hunting in packs, or, even better, those on obviously painful blind dates. It’s like we’re members of a private club of two, and it reminds me how being a part of something, no matter how troubled or even depressing it may be at times, is usually far superior to being a part of nothing.

“That sounds all right, sweetie,” I said, playing along. Our anniversary was coming up—six years. I figured that’s what he had in mind.

“Okay, so I’ll call you around lunchtime. Will you be in the office or are you planning to go out?” he asked.

“Um, I should be in all day, but I have a meeting around one.” In retrospect, I can see now that he was being unusually inquisitive, but since interest in my workday comings and goings wasn’t something Bruce normally displays, his clumsy attempts at making sure I’d be there were lost on me.

“Good, good,” he said. “Well, have a nice day, then. Call me if you leave work for some reason.”

So I was wide-awake, full of omelet and full of energy as I stepped out the door on September 24, a glorious autumn morning, and decided to bring the paper to read on the train, despite the fact that I was wearing my new winter-white three-quarter-length trench from Anne Klein (Marie Claire, September: “Revamp Your Fall Wardrobe with These 10 Must-Haves”). It’s about a 40-minute commute from our Park Slope apartment in Brooklyn to the midtown Manhattan offices of Kendra White. Normally, I use the time to drift in and out of consciousness. Yes, I’m one of those unfortunate sorts you see on the train or bus whose head lolls to one side like an idiot or whose mouth suddenly drops open. At least once a week I miss my stop, usually twice a week.

That morning, though, I read the paper alongside the other commuters like a real Cosmo girl, maneuvering the pages deftly, spilling my grande latte only once. There’s the usual something or other about Afghanistan on the front page… Better turn to the Entertainment section…oooh, it seems Madonna might be considering having another baby, just as I suspected. That’s good. She’s such a stylish mom… Bla, bla, bla, Leonardo DiCaprio broke his clavicle tripping over his feet outside a hot but unnamed L.A. nightclub…That little cross-eyed boy from Jerry Maguire has a new movie coming out…. Dreadful, I’m sure…Wonder how far off my horoscope will be for today….

Virgo (August 23-September 22) See the forest for the trees. Focus on partnership, communication, personal advances. Individual close to you confides, “I need you now more than ever.” Keep an eye out for details. Work situation may be stressful, but don’t lose your head. Taurus plays key role today. Spotlight on domestic situation, home, cooking. Financial prospects good. Be leery of Uranus, planet of sudden changes. Stay cool! This too, shall pass.

Oh for God’s sake, that could mean anything—they really do all sound the same. I can see why Morgan thinks horoscopes are for idiots who feel powerless over their own lives. How utterly ridiculous! As if planets could have any effect whatsoever on what’s happening down here on Earth. Except for the moon, maybe. Now that’s another story. And it’s not really a planet anyway. I’ve heard that since the moon controls the tides, it can also pull all the water in your body around every which way, accounting for things like PMS and unexplained weight gain….

I woke up only one stop too late. By the time I got off the subway, the front of my trench coat was covered in black smudges and coffee, more than enough to ruin my good mood for the day. Ridiculous—white coats are even sillier than white carpet. What the hell was I thinking?

Upstairs, comfortably ensconced in my gray-carpeted cubicle, I worked hard at online solitaire for a good two hours until I realized that I’d forgotten to forward out Pruscilla’s memo regarding that afternoon’s staff meeting. Oh God, no one even knows about it, and it’s Friday—half of them are probably out to lunch already.

As one of the legion of marketing assistants at KW, and, more specifically, as Pruscilla’s immediate underling, my responsibilities tend to lean more toward the administrative than the intellectual. A great way to put my four-year honors degree in philosophy (with a minor in psychology) to work, although, to be fair, I suppose my career does allow me to hone my existential angst.

After an hour of damage control and an hour and a half of lunch, I managed to round up most everybody in the department and assemble them in the boardroom. It’s not like it would matter much who was there, although pretty much everybody was. Pruscilla, Queen of the Universe and Director of Product Marketing for the East Coast, had called the meeting for no reason really, other than that she likes to call meetings from time to time to berate some of us for our laziness and impress others with her uncanny knack for finding typographical errors in promotional materials after they’ve been printed by the tens of thousands. The usual blame-laying and defensiveness followed, and I was getting quite sleepy, until there was a knock at the door.

And then someone walked in. A tall guy with rounded, wire-rimmed glasses and freckles. I stared at him for a few seconds until I realized that I recognized him. It was Bruce. My Bruce. Of course, my first thought was that someone had died. My mother? My heart flew up into my throat. His mother? My heart settled back down to its usual position.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” I stammered, already embarrassed. At this point, the ten or twelve women seated around the boardroom table realized with interest that Bruce wasn’t a courier. One of them whispered to me, “Isn’t he yours? He’s got roses!”

And he did. A gigantic bouquet of bloody-looking ones. I know red roses are supposed to signify romantic love and all that, but to me they’ve always seemed a bit on the cheesy side. Orchids—now those make a beautiful bouquet, or maybe lilies… I glanced around the room nervously. All eyes were on Bruce. Awe and jealousy and confusion hung thick in the air. Oh, Evie—give it a rest! Red roses are beautiful, and you know it! Most of the desperados in here would drop dead with shock and gratitude if they got even a single half-dead rose on Valentine’s Day, and here it was, a Friday afternoon in September, and my man was holding at least two dozen….

“Evelyn…” Bruce got down on one knee on the floor in front of me. Instantly, my cheeks start to burn. In my peripheral vision, I could see open mouths and stunned faces. None more stunned than mine, I’m sure.

“Evelyn, I came here today to tell you that I love you, that the past six years have been the best of my life, that I cannot imagine my world without you….”

Was he really talking to me?

“…From the day we met in the cafeteria at NYU, when we reached for that same pudding, I knew you were special….” Somebody behind me giggled loudly. Panic set in, along with elaborate fantasies of revenge.

I can barely breathe—how can she laugh? She’s ruining my moment. I will kill her, whoever she is, I will kill her. I will drill everybody later and find out who laughed. I bet it was Violet from Skincare. She never really liked me, even though I visited her twice in the hospital after she had those polyps removed. It really makes you wonder how some people can be so selfish and intrusive, especially regarding things that don’t even concern them. When it comes to their own amusement, jealous people will do just about anything to take the focus and attention away from those who deserve it….

All of a sudden, everybody laughed, shocking me out of my reverie.

“…which is why you finally agreed to let me take you out to dinner, and promised to throw out that hot plate and never try cooking in your dorm room again!”

Oh God, was he still talking? I had no idea what he’d just said. What the hell was the matter with me?

“So all that to say, that if it wasn’t for the New York City Fire Department, I might not be kneeling here before you today,” Bruce concluded. Everyone laughed again.

Bruce put the roses down on the table beside me and grabbed my hand. “You’re my best friend, Evie, and I adore you. I love you more today than I did yesterday, and I will love you more tomorrow than I do today. And that will be true for every day of the rest of my life…”

Tears suddenly filled my eyes. I blinked and they fell onto my lap. It was undeniably the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. But he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

“…So I want to know, Evie…will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” And just like that, he pulled out a little blue velvet box and opened it up. Everyone gasped.

But I didn’t even see it. The room started to spin.

For the next few moments, it was like I’d somehow been dropped into someone else’s body on the other side of the world, and everyone was speaking a different language. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Where was I? Who was this guy with the glasses in front of me? He needed a haircut, that was for sure. Time stood still.

“Evelyn?” the man said.

“Evelyn?”

And then, just as quickly, it all came thundering back. It was Bruce, the love of my life. Asking me to marry him. I guess I must have been on autopilot or something because I jumped up and someone that sounded an awful lot like me shouted, “Yes! Yes! Of course I will!” He scooped me up in his arms and then the tears really started and I was laughing and crying and I couldn’t stop. Everyone burst up out of their chairs and began clapping and cheering. People from outside heard the fuss and came flowing into the boardroom, incredulous that such a spontaneous display of romance and drama could ever invade the unlikely weekday world of Kendra White. And it was all happening to me. Everyone was looking at me.

And then I was running from the room.

When I opened the stall door, four blank faces stared at me through overly made-up eyes.

“I’m all right, I’m all right. I just need to freshen up a bit,” I sniffled, managing a smile. “I’m just so excited. I mean, I guess I’m in shock. I never expected it, well not like this, anyway. I just can’t believe it.” It was the truth.

“Aw, it’s just like being tossed into a tub full of icewater, hon,” laughed Cheryl-Anne, who works in Sales Rep Training and looks the part. “You’ll get over it soon enough. When my Dickie proposed to me, I just about flipped my wig.” Chuckles all around—she really does wear a wig.

“It was New Year’s Eve, and I’d had more than one too many,” she continued unnecessarily. “I sure do like to have a good time, though, as you ladies already know. Remember the Christmas party of ’98? Oh, Lord—the buns on that copy boy. Anyway, when Dickie popped the question, the whole world started to spin, and I just fainted dead away. I was sick for two months after that. But I guess it musta had something to do with the morning sickness!” she shrieked and slapped her thigh.

Everyone hooted like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. As if a drunken, unwed pregnant woman falling flat on her face in the middle of Times Square were a legitimate source of amusement. How could they laugh? I’d seen pictures of her children. They were very disturbing.

“I think you’re right,” I managed in a weak voice. “It must be nerves.” Back to me now, please.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Winnie from Cosmetics said and grabbed my hand. “This is your day and here we are going on and on. You just have a good cry if you need to and don’t worry about a thing. You don’t have to go back out there before you’re good and ready.”

I hugged her and nodded. I didn’t really know her all that well, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. She was sweeter in one instant than my own mother had ever been, and I vowed then and there not to ditch out on the surprise 50th birthday party I knew was planned for her next Thursday night, although I normally try and get out of those types of things. Hell, I might even chip in for the present.

I straightened myself up a bit and faced the mirror.

Pathetic. I looked as bad as the rest of them. Puffy black eyes, puffy white face, puffy alien body. A distorted imprint of Winnie’s pink-and-tan face remained on my collar. My wrinkled, camel-colored CK jacket (Glamour, March: “15 Work Essentials You Can’t Live Without”) strained at the chest, buttons silently groaning. The size twelve felt like a size two. When did this happen to me?

But Bruce doesn’t seem to mind. He’s good that way. In fact, he never really says a thing about my weight, even though I’ve gained about thirty pounds since we met in my junior year. He just listens patiently as I rail on and on about it, fit after fit, diet after diet, year after year. Feeding me M&M’s all the while… Oh God, that’s it, isn’t it? He must actually like me fat.

Funny how it had never occurred to me before now. He must be one of those guys who gets off on it (Marie Claire, October: “Men Who Like Their Ladies Large”). But should that piss me off or not? I couldn’t decide. Was it wonderful that Bruce loved me no matter how I looked, or was he betraying me by fattening me up just to satisfy his own twisted sexual fetish? My heart began pounding again.

Courage, Evie. Pull it together—now is not the time to lose it. Bruce loves you, you love him, and it’s all gonna be okay.

Pruscilla caught my gaze in the mirror, sighed and looked over toward the door dramatically. Bruce was waiting outside. What to do? What to do?

I loved him. I really did. Besides, I’d said yes. How could I have let myself say yes if I didn’t really want to marry him? And if there was only one thing in this world that I knew for sure, it was to trust my instincts. Always listen to your inner voice—I’ve taken away at least that from years of watching Oprah (plus the fact that liquid diets don’t work in the long run).

Bruce was the best thing for me. Everybody knows it—Morgan, all my other friends, Mom, my grandmother. Bruce grounds me. He accepts me. He loves me. And even though he usually drives me crazy, we’re a perfect match. I’d be a fool to let him go.

So there really was only one thing I could do—plan a fabulous wedding. That, and lose about forty pounds.

2

Later that afternoon, Pruscilla Cockburn stood over me dictating her latest memo, shifting the ample burden of her weight from foot to foot. With each lumbering sway, a noxious waft of Kendra White’s “Honeysuckle Garden” perfume, discontinued since 1996, assaulted my senses. Through watering eyes, I squinted at my screen.

“Evie, please try and pay attention. I’ll start again. Date it for today.” Obviously. “And send it out to the usual team—all the Division Managers.”

I typed dutifully.

To: Marketing Department Product Division Managers

cc: Teresa Delallo, Fragrances; Alexis Desmond, Cosmetics; Sophie Swartz, Skin Care; Thelma Thorpe, Hair Care; Elaine Scarfield, Health and Fitness.

As per company policy, employee evaluations will take place during the last two weeks of October. Please schedule meetings for each of your senior team members during this period, and remind them to schedule evaluation meetings with their own staff. Self-evaluation forms and suggestion sheets must be distributed no later than by the end of next week. See me for the proper forms. Please try to keep these meetings short (no more than 30 minutes)…

“Do you think half an hour is long enough?” I interrupted, remembering my evaluation last year. Pruscilla spent the whole meeting extolling the virtues of a serious attitude. If I ever expected to be promoted, she’d said, then I’d have to start buckling down, taking things seriously. She never so much as glanced at my list of grievances (“Nobody else I know has to work between Christmas and New Year’s”; “Why can’t we have fat-free creamer in the coffee cart?”) and helpful suggestions (“Yearend bonuses should be scaled according to company profits and not employee salaries”). In the end, we ran out of time before I even had the chance to plead my case for a raise, which to my mind, is the whole point of these meetings in the first place.

Pruscilla glared at me and continued.

“…and do not engage in endless discussions regarding salary increases. Notify me regarding any employee whom you feel has met the requirements for a raise…”

“That’s good,” I assured her. “You’re definitely right about that. No sense in wasting time.”

“I’m not done yet,” she said. “I will be out of the office from October 16 to December 1, so all five Product Division Managers will need to see me within the next two weeks to complete their own evaluations. Please make an appointment with me as soon as possible, as my schedule is already quite full. Pruscilla Cockburn, Director of Product Marketing, East Coast Division.”

Pruscilla, gone for six weeks? This was the woman who’d notoriously used a personal day to clean out her desk. She hadn’t missed a single day of work in the three years I’d been there.

“You’re leaving for six weeks?” I asked, barely able to contain myself. My mind was reeling with the possibilities. I could come in late, leave early, take long lunches…

Wait a second…instead of just slacking off, this could be a great professional opportunity, provided I take proper advantage of the situation. After all, there’s supposed to be more to work than just getting away with things and looking busy (Cosmopolitan, September: “Seven Secrets to Job Security”). And everyone knows that the higher up you climb on the corporate ladder, the less you actually have to do yourself and the more you can delegate to others, not to mention perks like expense accounts and parking spots.

This was brilliant! Pruscilla would probably entrust me with everything. As chief note-taker at her biweekly brainstorming sessions, I know exactly how her mind works. Once or twice I even had the feeling she’d taken credit for my work. My gift for product names, especially lipstick, has gone completely un-appreciated (Prissy Persimmon, Sycophantic Cinnamon—those were mine!) and I also have a way with words, as my contributions to the wildly successful direct-mailing campaign of the Fall of ’99 can attest (“Why Buy Foreign Makeup at Department-Store Prices When You Can Have American Quality for Less, Delivered Right to Your Door?”). With her gone, I could make a real name for myself, maybe even get promoted before she gets back….

Pruscilla interrupted with a thoughtful wheeze, “I’m just taking some time off for personal reasons.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to sound concerned. I was still pissed off at her for not giving me the afternoon off. True to form, Bruce had to go back to work anyway, but still—it isn’t every day a girl gets engaged, and it’s not like I was going to get anything done here. I’d spent the last hour staring at my ring and graciously fielding congratulatory visits from co-workers who’d heard about the proposal.

“I’m fine, nothing to worry about,” she replied in a singsong voice about an octave higher than normal.

“Well, I certainly hope so. Six weeks is a long time to be away from the office,” I continued, trying to play to her insecurities.

“Thelma Thorpe from Haircare will be stepping in to my position temporarily to make sure things run smoothly.” Shit.

“Are you sure that’s necessary? I can handle…”

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” she cut in, “but I need somebody I can trust to stay on top of things. As it is there’s going to be a lot more for you to do so you’ll have to try very hard to stay focussed, Evelyn. Especially since I’m sure you’re going to be preoccupied with your engagement for the next little while.”

Nice reversal. I had to hand it to her.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m up to speed on everything,” I said with a wave of the hand. “And you know I’m not one to get distracted easily. But can I call you if I need to after you’re gone? I mean, if there’s an emergency or something I can’t handle?” I had to know what she was up to, if she was leaving town or something.

“No…I don’t think so,” she said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “At least not for the first month or so. But we’ll work out all the details later. For now, why don’t you go home early? You’ve had quite a day!”

Pruscilla smiled beneficently. I looked at my watch. Five-fifteen. Thanks a lot. I grabbed my bag and coat.

“But come in a bit early Monday morning, say around seven-thirty?” She was still smiling. “We’ll sit down and have a quick meeting when it’s nice and quiet.” Then she leaned in for a hug. “Congratulations again, dear.”

“Thanks.” An invisible cloud of Honeysuckle Garden all but consumed me.

The subway ride home was a long one. As the train lurched forward, my stomach bubbled and my mind raced, playing over the day’s events. Sure, my private life had been dragged kicking and screaming through the office like some kind of circus sideshow, but aside from that, I felt quite good. And the rest of the day had passed pleasantly enough.

Most days at work, I tend to keep to myself more or less, especially since there are really only a handful of people there I actually like. All in all, I think I’ve managed to maintain just the right combination of professional courtesy, friendly water-cooler approachability and social aloofness. That way, after I’m promoted, the respect I’ll need will already be in place. Without that, things can get pretty messy—I heard of one girl down in Accounts who, after a promotion, ended up having to fire her daughter’s godmother, a woman she’d worked side by side with for years. Eventually, she became so reviled by the underlings that she was forced to quit, and ended up playing the fiddle in the subway for spare change.

But today, anonymity shattered, I decided to make a show of it. At the coffee cart, I let Andrea, a bitter marketing drone who works in Fragrances, grab my hand to get a better look at The Ring. On cue, it sparkled brilliantly under the fluorescent lights. Inspired by her courage, two other girls skulking nearby came in for a peek.

“That’s at least a carat and a half, you know,” Andrea said. “I thought your boyfriend was a teacher.” The girls behind her laughed. It was well known that Andrea had been expecting Phil, her boyfriend of far too many years, to propose during Labor Day weekend on their romantic Caribbean cruise. But Phil, an actuary, had booked during hurricane season to save a few bucks. He ended up spending the rainy days in their cabin with his laptop, while Andrea played bingo and shopped for gold-plated chain by the foot.

“Oh, he is a teacher,” I replied coyly. “He teaches gifted children at a private school on the Upper East Side. He went there himself, actually.”

“Really? Must pay well,” she said, releasing my hand and reaching for a Sweet’n Low.

“Not really,” I told her, leaving her to wonder about Bruce’s mysterious and wealthy family.

So I’d managed to keep it together quite nicely, apart from that little thing in the bathroom. But Bruce was a pretty good sport about it. He always is when it comes to my dramatics. After I came out of the bathroom, there he was, surrounded by five or six women hanging on his every word, and looking remarkably pleased for a guy whose girlfriend had vomited at the thought of marrying him.

“…I wanted it to be old-fashioned and romantic, a real public declaration of my love, you know?” I heard him saying as I walked up behind him. His fan club quickly scattered at the sight of me and my puffy eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stifling a laugh.

“Yeah,” I sniffed, and laughed myself.

“You know, if I didn’t think you could handle this, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“You mean ask me to marry you?”

“No, stupid, I mean ask you here at work!”

“Oh,” I replied, feeling a bit foolish. Loud shushing sounds came from behind the bathroom door, but Bruce didn’t seem to notice. “Of course I can handle it. I guess I just never expected my professional life and my personal life to collide in exactly this way.”

“I just wanted it to be something you’d remember forever. Like a story we’ll tell our grandkids, you know?”

“Well, good job, then. But I’m pretty sure I would have remembered it no matter what, even if we were, um, I don’t know…walking in the park or something,” I said, glaring at the crowd of women pretending to be fixing a photocopy machine nearby.

Bruce just laughed and hugged me. His shirt smelled good, and I buried my face deeper.

“But we never go for walks in the park, Evie. If I’d asked you to go for a walk in the park, you wouldn’t have wanted to.” True. Walks in the park are for old ladies and people without cable.

“You needed this, Evie. We needed this. Shake things up a bit, you know?” He held my tear-stained cheeks between his hands and kissed me. Not a long kiss, but it was more than just a peck. And then he looked at me with a face that, in an instant, said, “You silly, silly thing. Don’t you know that I’ll take care of you? And whatever problems we may have, we’ll work them out. These people, this job, the rest of world, none of it matters. What matters is us, so let’s forget all this crap and get on with it!”

Yes, let’s get on with it. Bruce has a wonderful way of forgiving me no matter what; it’s really one of the things I love most about him. So, once again, even though I’d behaved like a complete idiot, he managed to make me believe I was a completely normal person, and not the freak I truly was.

He kissed me again. Whether it was all the crying or the barfing or the seven cups of coffee or the kiss, I felt a little wobbly. I took it to be the kiss—even though it had been a long time since Bruce made me weak in the knees. He looked into my eyes and smiled. It was pretty obvious that he was pleased with himself. I guess he deserved to be.

We’d talked about getting married before. You don’t date a guy for six years and not talk about it. But I really, truly didn’t expect it to happen any time soon. For us, or for me, rather, it was more of an abstract idea, like “Of course we’ll get married one day. Then we’ll move out to the suburbs and buy our kid a pony.” But this time it was for real. And the more I thought about it on the ride home, the more I saw that it was a great thing. And on top of it all, for what might have been the first time in his life, Bruce had done something completely on his own. Made a real decision, without consulting me, his mother or anybody. He deserved to feel good. And so did I. Something was finally happening in my life, something real. Like I’d been asleep for years, content to play the woman in the gray flannel suit, only now the alarm clock was ringing.

The train was pretty crowded, and I hadn’t noticed till then but the man sitting on my right was leaning up against me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was clutching a ratty pink Barbie backpack tied up with brown cord. His left knee bounced up and down frenetically as he tapped his heel against the floor. On one foot, he wore a filthy Reebok cross-trainer smeared with what was probably not rust-colored paint. On the other foot, a purple toe with a black nail stuck out of a dirty sock. Disgusting. I’m so sick of this shit. His bulging eyes darted from my hand to my chest then back down to my hand. My Ring! He was staring at my Ring!

Normally, in situations like these, which occur not altogether infrequently on the A Train, I get up and move. But today, the sight of this greasy interloper inspired within me the courage to take a stand for all peace-loving female commuters everywhere.

I looked directly at him and cleared my throat. Bruce would have absolutely killed me. The guy looked up suddenly and when his eyes met mine, he let out a shriek so loud that the force of his very bad breath blew my bangs up off my forehead (In Style, April: “The New-Fashioned Fringe: Bangs Are Back!”). With a gasp, I jumped back onto the lady beside me. But she was wearing a Walkman and I guess she hadn’t heard him yell, so she freaked out and reflexively pushed me forward into the group of stunned passengers. I reached out wildly for the man standing in front of me wearing a black trench coat (as it turns out, a very sensible color for a trench coat). But he just deflected me and used the opportunity to slide into my seat. I landed on my hands and knees on the floor of the car. The crazy guy, whimpering a little, just rocked back and forth, staring at someone else’s hands.

By the time I got home, Bruce was already there. I threw down my newspaper-stained, Pruscilla-smelling, mud-smeared, formerly white trench coat and flopped onto the couch and cried again. We decided not to go for dinner, not to call our parents, not to call our friends. We just stayed in and ordered a pizza. It may not sound romantic, but it was. We talked and talked, and by the time we went to bed, I felt like myself again.

I woke up before Bruce the next morning, something which almost never happens. He’s the type who claims not to be a morning person, because it’s such an unpopular way to be, but who actually gets up on weekends at the exact same time, almost to the minute, that he does during the week. He usually spends Saturday and Sunday mornings on the Internet researching obscure factoids for his students or doing the grocery shopping or reorganizing my closet, while I sleep till noon and then thrash about in bed for a half hour or so complaining about him making noise. Like Bruce, I suppose I have an internal clock, too, it’s just that mine must be permanently set on Snooze because I’ve been working full-time since college and waking up at 7:00 a.m. was as torturous yesterday as it was my first day of work. I think it bugs the crap out of him, my sleeping in—his early-morning antics sure piss me off—although he’d never admit it. Let him think I’m lazy. I am.

In that blissful moment of nothingness before I opened my eyes, before true awareness set in, the first thing I remembered was that it was finally Saturday. Thank God, no work. Maybe I’ll just go back to sleep for a bit. Then later I’ll go into the city. Yeah. There’s that Clinique Gift With Purchase thing on now at Saks…and I need some new pants for work. But I refuse to buy a size 14. Okay, so no clothes shopping till I’ve dropped 15 pounds, till I’m a 10. Serves me right, after what I ate this week, and last night, that pizza…wait a minute…the pizza…ohmygod…Bruce….

And it all came flooding back. I turned over and looked at him. He lay on his back, still asleep, his chest rising and falling. Bruce always seems different without his glasses on, like I don’t really know him. Still cute, though. He was whistling softly through his nose. Did I really say yes? Did yesterday really happen? Am I actually going to marry this guy? My heart began to pound as I replayed the scene at work in my head about 37 times. God, I can’t believe I actually threw up. With a psychic snort, Bruce turned over and faced the wall.

Just to make sure it was all real, I pulled my left hand out from under the pillow. The room was dark, but there it was, plain as day—The Ring. Turns out it was his grandmother’s. Mr. Fulbright had kept it for Bruce since she died, like, twenty years ago. Last night was nice, come to think of it. Bruce told me all about how he’d been planning to propose, and how his dad had been in on the whole thing.

“My grandfather gave her this ring in 1939, the night before he left to fight in the war,” Bruce explained as he held my hand. “Six months later, he came back and married her. And nine months after that, my father was born in an air raid shelter during the Blitz.” Over the years, the Fulbright Nativity Story has evolved into an epic tale, complete with evil Nazis and valiant R.A.F. pilots fighting to the death in the Battle of Britain, including Bruce’s grandfather, shot down three months before little Bruce Jr. came into the world.

I already knew the story, minus the ring detail. Bruce’s dad, whose name is also Bruce (Bruce Jr., actually—yes, that makes my Bruce, Bruce Fulbright III. God, that better not make me Mrs. Bruce Fulbright III), loves talking about the night he was born. The only time he’s ever animated about anything seems to be when he’s telling stories about the war and his parents and the horror of butter rations and all that. It was as if being born was the only thing Bruce Sr. had ever done with any style, and it’s been all downhill from there.

Poor Mr. Fulbright. With the exception of Bruce, the only respect his family ever shows him is when he’s telling his stories, now only once or twice a year, usually on his birthday. His perpetually self-involved daughters know better than to dismiss him on this, and even Bertie tries her hardest to refrain from seeming bored. And while Bruce doesn’t quite hang on his dad’s every word like he probably did when he was a kid, now he listens intently. I’m sure trying to memorize every word so that one day he can tell his own kids. Make that our kids, I guess.

“An insane woman tried to steal the ring—this very ring—off her finger while she was in labor,” Bruce continued, almost in a whisper. This was a new twist. Sounds like ole Bruce Jr. was getting a bit carried away.

“Oh, come on,” I said, incredulous.

Bruce raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side. “I’m just telling you what he told me when he gave it to me.”

I looked down at The Ring, imagining a stoic, placenta-splattered Granny Fulbright fending off crazies in the bomb shelter as she simultaneously struggled to birth a child and hang on to the only thing she had left of her dead war-hero husband.

It made me think about my mom and what she must have gone through having me all alone, especially since her parents had disowned her because my dad wasn’t Italian, or even Catholic for that matter. But then I wondered if Granny Fulbright would have cruelly refused to let her child go to school in California, even though she’d scored over 1300 on her SATs and had a partial scholarship to UCLA… Oh, no wait…that was my mother. And I was the one stuck at NYU, pissing distance from the house I grew up in. No, there would be no great collegiate adventure for me. But that’s where I met Bruce, so I suppose it had all worked out for the best. If you consider marrying your first real boyfriend the best.

So last night was pretty good. We talked a ton about the wedding, what we wanted and all that. And we really laid our cards on the table. Bruce is as far from a commitmentphobe as is humanly possible in this city (Glamour, April: “Is Your Man Afraid To Commit? Take This Test and Find Out!”), so the usual male worry of only being able to have sex with one person for the rest of his life doesn’t really seem to concern him. “Evie, I would have asked you two years ago if I thought you were ready,” he’d said while massaging my feet.

“How can you ever really be ready for something like this,” I mused, but he just looked at me, not understanding at all how marriage isn’t the most comfortable or logical step for some people.

No, Bruce’s marital stress comes from more of a mama’s boy place. He was worried, and rightly so, that his mother was going to give him a hard time about it, especially since his dad didn’t even tell her he’d given Bruce his mother’s ring.

“Especially since she hates me, you mean,” I said.

“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just a negative person sometimes. And she’ll think my dad went behind her back. I think she wanted to give the ring to Brooke, ’cuz she’s the eldest daughter or something I guess.”

“Oh great. Now Brooke will hate me, too.”

“Oh, Evie, don’t say that. She won’t.”

“Yeah right. Then it’ll be my fault when she loses it and has another one of her ‘spells.’” His sister is a frail, skittish girl with four full-blown nervous breakdowns under her belt and she’s barely twenty-four. “She’ll probably cry as soon as she sees the ring on my finger.”

And that’s a scene I can look forward to witnessing in person tomorrow night when we “stop by” to break the good news. Bruce’s dad was so excited about the whole thing that he made Bruce promise we’d come as soon as possible.

“I doubt it,” Bruce said.

“You just watch—she’ll be back in the looney bin by the end of the week,” I said, then instantly regretted it. Sometimes, I can go a little too far. It’s not that I don’t mean what I say, it’s just that I know that some thoughts are better left unsaid, especially when it comes to things like people’s families or haircuts. I think I get my big mouth from Claire, my grandmother. Only she gets away with murder because she’s old, and people seem happy to confuse her brutal honesty with quaint eccentricity.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“It was a relaxation facility, not a looney bin,” Bruce said, peeved. “They didn’t strap her down or anything.” He knows I know that—he’s only told me like a thousand times—but he can’t control himself either, sometimes.

Despite my occasional overstepping of boundaries, it’s this sort of honest interchange about important things like family that convinces me that Bruce and I may actually have a chance. And in my own defense, there is an upside: There’s no point in letting the little things fester into giant, repressed issues when a bit of well-directed hostility can bring stuff out into the open right away. And so we make a point of being very open with each other about everything, although it’s not a natural thing for Bruce to be like that. He’s much more reserved when it comes to saying what’s on his mind, especially if it involves hurting someone’s feelings, but I’ve been helping him to try and get over that a little bit.

It was in this spirit of openness that I admitted to Bruce later in the conversation that the idea of marriage makes me a bit crazy.

“It does? I thought the puking and crying meant you were calm and rational about the whole thing,” he laughed.

“I’m glad you can laugh about it already,” I told him. “That’s a good sign, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, well, I hope so. But I think we’ll leave that part out when we’re telling our grandkids the story.”

“Seriously, Bruce. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t worry. Have another piece of pizza. And don’t be so hard on yourself.”

I wanted to tell him that I knew that getting married was the next logical step in our relationship, and that it was definitely the right thing for us. Because we love each other and that’s what’s important. And not to worry about me—that I was ecstatic and sure and positive and all that sort of thing. But I don’t think he wanted to talk about it anymore.

But there I was the next morning, lying in bed in a full sweat, feeling an awful lot like I had the day before in the bathroom. It was almost twenty minutes before my heart stopped thumping and I had psyched myself into a “Marriage is Good” place again.

After mentally planning my nuptial dietary strategy for a good half hour—wavering back and forth between invoking the Member for Life clause in the Weight Watchers contract and developing a simple starvation plan on my own—I was firmly back in the camp of, “I’m getting married and I’m gonna look like a million bucks!” Trying not to ruin Bruce’s first attempt at sleeping in in years, I snuck out of the bedroom and into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on. There were so many people who had no idea what had happened, and it was too cruel to keep them in the dark any longer.