“What?”
“Nothing.” One at a time, I pull unused thumbtacks out of the corkboard walls, and then group them on my desk by color. Red, yellow, green, white.
“So you’ll look for a job here. It’ll be easy to find something once you’re in the city.”
I attempt to keep my voice at a consistent pitch, above the sinking level. “Everything is all screwed up. I didn’t want to move until I had a job. I don’t want to be the jobless girlfriend who has no life and sponges off her boyfriend, all right? How do you know I’m ever going to find a job?” I turn the thumbtacks around and stab them into the wooden desk.
“First of all, you’ll find a job. Second of all, you’re not sponging off me. I’m happy to cover the full rent until you find something. And second of all—”
“You already said second of all. You’re on third of all.”
“Third of all, you never thought you’d get the first job you applied for, anyway. And you only applied to jobs in the beverage industry. Can’t you apply for any new business job? And can’t you apply for manager positions, too? Not just assistant managers?”
“I wanted a job in an industry I’m familiar with. I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing. And I’m not ready to be a manager yet.”
“If you need to make some money, you can wait tables at the restaurant.”
I can’t get sucked up by his world. I need to have my own job, my own life. I can’t depend on him for everything. Is he not listening? “But I wasn’t planning on quitting until I had a job. You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” He sighs into the phone. “Sunny, I know you’re afraid you’ll end up like your mother. But you’re not her, okay?”
My head hurts. I close my eyes. “How did you know that was bugging me?”
“What do you mean how do I know? I know.”
“Carrie? Hi, it’s Sunny.”
“Sunny?”
“Sunny, Adam’s daughter?”
“Sunny! Hey! How are you? I am so busy here today. We’re having a major crisis. Major. Can I call you back? Why are you calling?”
Why am I calling? I rub the palms of my hands against my temples. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. The job that I thought I had fell through and I was wondering if you still had some temp work for me? You seem like you’re in a rush, though, so call me whenever you have a second.”
“Sure, Sunny, no problem. Let me ask around and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, okay? Gotta run! Crisis! ’Bye!” She hangs up.
She’s not calling back. Maybe my father has already dumped her and she’s going to make me wait by the phone as payback.
The bulletin board walls in the room start to contract, like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. My breathing feels shallower, faster, harder.
When we moved in with my father, this happened to me whenever my dad tried to take us on vacation. On a flight to the Florida Keys, I pretended to be asleep on Dana’s lap, imagining air leaking from my mouth as if from the rim of a balloon. Leaving me shriveled and empty.
When I was seven, on a trip to Epcot Center, on the Spaceship Earth ride, as Dana, my dad, his new girlfriend and her twelve-year-old son journeyed “to the dawn of recorded time…” I began to slowly hyperventilate. When our seats rotated to reveal a vast star-filled night sky, I felt as if I was being buried alive. Rambling, I told my father I had to find a bathroom, now, and Dana took my hand and led me through the blackness, toward the red exit sign. As soon as we entered the lit corridor, I started crying. She pulled me into her and smoothed my hair until I felt calm.
When Dana was seventeen, on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, she knocked on my father’s door, still in her pajamas, and told my father she was not going to synagogue. She’d had enough. She didn’t believe in God, and what was the point in pretending she did? Moronic, she said. Religion was moronic, so why should she be a hypocrite?
Sitting in the kitchen, eating my cereal and milk, dressed in my new striped gray Rosh Hashanah suit and black pumps, I thought about how after my mother died, Dana used to tell me that she was watching us from above, making sure we were all right. But as I heard Dana stomp toward her room and slam her door, I realized that it had been something she had to say, because what else do you tell a six-year-old girl?
Headhunter. Why don’t I e-mail a headhunter? I’ll write up a polite cover letter, using Steve’s New York address.
By noon Liza has passed by my closed door, scowling, at least twenty times. I’m about to send off my cover letter to Great Jobs NY when my phone rings, annoying me.
“What?” Did I just say that?
“Sunny. It’s me. Omigod.”
Will Omigod one day make it into the Oxford English Dictionary as an expression of disbelief or amazement among generation Y women?
“Oh, hi, Carrie.” Maybe she found something? Be calm.
“Omigod. Guess what? You’re not going to believe this. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down?”
No, I’m lined up vertically against the wall in a headstand. “Yes, I’m sitting.”
“Okay. Okay. One of the girls—not one of the two girls I found, but one of the girls my assistant Lauren discovered, my ex-assistant I should add—was arrested last night. Arrested! By the cops! I fired Lauren, of course. A bad judge of character has no future at Character. No future in this business at all. I can’t believe I hired her in the first place.”
“What girls?” I ask. What is she talking about? She’s sounding a bit pimpish. I change the screen of my computer to my To Do list in case Liza peeks in. No need to antagonize her for no reason.
“For Party Girls. The reality TV show. I told you about it, didn’t I? The camera follows four women on Saturday nights. And the unique part is that the show airs the next night because it’s ALR taping which is—”
“Right, Almost Live Reality. You told me.”
“Yes, Almost Live Reality and taping starts in eight days. Eight days! Eight days!”
Wow, I have good timing. I might be a timing goddess as well as deity of efficiency. Lauren got fired today. I need a job today. I am good. I can demean myself for a few months, while I make contacts and earn some cash. If it looks that bad on my resume, I don’t even have to put it on. I swivel my chair three hundred and sixty degrees, and smile. “I’ll take it,” I say.
Carrie squeals. “You will? You’re awesome! You’re going to be amazing. You’re going to be a TV star.”
What did she just say? Me? A what? “You mean a Character star, right?”
“Whatever you want to call it, honey. I’m going to make you famous.”
Famous? “Carrie, are you offering me a job at Character?”
She laughs a high-pitched, girly laugh. “I’m offering you a role on Party Girls.”
I drop the phone and then pick it up again. “Excuse me?”
“You’ll be great.”
“On TV. What do I know about TV?”
“You don’t need to know anything. That’s the point. It’s a reality show.”
I can’t be on TV. What would I do on television? “I don’t understand.”
Carrie is beginning to get impatient. “Sheena was arrested for shoplifting