I took a breath. There seemed to be more room in my lungs now, more room in my head, too. The hours with Blinda must have taken hold. I’d broken the reverse Oedipal thing, and I was free of him.
I smiled to myself in my new office. I felt lighter, happier. Not only had I gotten over my dad, but I’d had a wonderful morning with my husband, I’d been promoted and Evan had flirted with me. Even my mother had begun her own fabulous life. I had no idea how it happened, but in one night I’d gotten incredibly lucky.
I thought of my visit with Blinda last night and the frog she’d given me. Could they have anything to do with this? Intuitively, I answered yes! but that seemed entirely illogical. Yet either way, it didn’t matter. I’d gotten everything I’d wished for. And I was going to enjoy it.
chapter four
When Evan made VP, I had pumped him for every bit of information he possessed about the perks of the promotion. He’d gotten a new computer and cell phone, ditto for new office furniture, and there were no longer limits on client lunches and entertainment, the way there were for the non-VPs.
I rubbed my hands together at my desk now. Time to spend some company money. Then it occurred to me—maybe I had already done that, somewhere in the yawning chasm between my today and my yesterday.
I hit Lizbeth’s button again.
“What’s up, Billy?” she said cheerily.
I still hadn’t seen the girl, and I supposed I’d better “meet” her now so that I didn’t run into her in the hallway and give a blank stare. “Can you stop by my office for a second?”
A moment later, a woman in her early-twenties appeared in my doorway. Her sandy brown hair was worn in artful waves about her very round face. She had wide, startled eyes and a rosebud mouth shellacked with cotton-candy pink gloss.
What’s going on?” she said, taking one of my visitor’s chairs.
“When I made vice president…well, maybe I should say, do you remember when I made vice president?”
“I got hired right after, so I don’t remember the exact day, but yeah.” She looked at me oddly.
“Sure, right. And when was that? I mean when did you get hired?”
She laughed wryly, as if this were an easy question, but then she scrunched up her shiny mouth and looked at the ceiling. “Gosh, when was that?” She looked back at me with a stumped expression. “I can’t remember.”
Just like Evan, I thought. Everyone seemed to assume I’d been in this position forever, but I knew different. It made me feel as if I were playacting. It made everything unreal.
“Billy?” Lizbeth said. “Did you want something?”
I shook away my thoughts about the strangeness of it all. No sense fighting a good thing, I told myself. “What I really wanted to ask you was if you remember some information I got about furniture and technology stipends.”
“Yeah, I think it was in that packet of material from Ms. Frankwell.”
“Great, great. And where do I—I mean we…keep that?”
“You told me to file it at my desk, remember?”
I made a big show of snapping my fingers. “Right! That’s right. Could you grab that for me?”
A few seconds later and she was back with a stapled set of papers, headed New Vice President Information Packet.
“Thank you, Lizbeth. And can you find out for me where the firm buys our computer equipment?”
I leafed through the packet while Lizbeth trotted off down the hallway. The terms were the same that Evan had received. Perfect.
Lizbeth soon buzzed me with the name of a computer dealer we used. Five minutes after that, I was on the phone with one of the salesmen and browsing their Web site for different computers and monitors. I finally settled on a sleek, flat-screen monitor and a top-of-the-line computer that had tons of memory and would allow me to burn my own CDs and download lots of music. Not that I knew how to do that. Not that I even owned one of those cute MP3 players. But then maybe that was different now, too. I’d gotten what I wanted overnight, and I’d always wished I could be one of those iPod people. It might all just flow from my hands as soon as I got the new computer.
When that was done, I buzzed Lizbeth. “I’m going to look for new office furniture,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t forget about your 1:30 lunch meeting.”
I looked at my watch. It was 12:00. “No problem.” I clicked the intercom off, and sat staring at my watch for another minute. It had a large mother-of-pearl face and a burnt orange leather strap. My mother had given it to me for Christmas last year, and she’d selected it carefully. Was she now selecting dresses and skirts from a runway in Milan?
I knew where the company-approved furniture store was because I’d been there with Evan. Outside our building, I fought the tourists for a cab and headed to the intersection of Ohio and Franklin.
The showroom was a loft space with brick walls and high ceilings. I found a salesman and told him I needed a new desk and chair, explaining that I already had a pine credenza I planned to keep.
The salesman, a short, balding man in a suit, clearly saw a purchase ready to happen. He practically clicked his heels together before whisking me around the showroom, pointing out various styles of desks.
“You know, maybe I should just focus on the chairs,” I said after a few minutes. Who knew how ridiculously expensive desks could be? And my stipend wasn’t that large.
The smile on the salesman’s face dimmed a little, but he gave me a pert nod and began showing me chairs. All of them seemed to be black leather—black leather with chrome bases, black distressed leather, shiny black leather with buttons.
“These are all so—” I searched my mind for the word “—typical,” I said at last. I thought of the wine-colored chair in my office. It was entirely too huge but at least it was a little different. Maybe I should stick with that.
But then I saw it. Across the showroom, next to a mod, curved desk was a small, butter-yellow leather chair. I quickly made my way and sank into it. The chair hugged me like an old, comfortable sweater, yet it was stylish and sleek.
I glanced at the price tag. One hundred dollars more than my furniture stipend, but I could pay that out of my own pocket. “I’ll take it.”
When I got back to the office, I called Chris. “I have some news.”
“What?” He actually sounded excited.
“How about dinner tonight and I’ll tell you?”
I waited for him to “cry swamp,” as I called it—I’m so swamped with this merger, I’m swamped with my billing statements, I’m swamped with this deposition. But to my surprise, he said, “Absolutely.”
“How about Spring at six?” Spring was a restaurant in Bucktown where Chris and I first started talking about getting married. We’d been giddy that night with our plans for our future. For some reason, we’d never been back.
“Perfect,” I said.
“I’ll make the reservation.”
Just then Lizbeth buzzed me. “Your meeting is about to start.”
I grabbed my purse from under my desk, patted powder on my face and swiped lipstick across my mouth. Ready.