life is all pretty much
improv anyway
I walked into the office and everyone was looking at me funny. It was reminiscent of the day when I’d been splashed on my way to work, but I was totally clean and they weren’t looking like they felt sorry for me this time—they looked like they were in on a secret. That stupid look they’d get on somebody’s birthday when they’d say, “Oh, Sally . . . they need you in the Bermuda conference room”—and Sally would show up to find a not-so-surprise cake and crowd waiting to celebrate her birthday.
Then when I got to my desk it was cleaned out—totally empty. Not a red Swingline stapler to be found, a conspicuous vacancy where the Hasselhoff poster had been. My heart started to pound and my stomach did the panic flip-flop that’s usually reserved for when I get caught in a lie.
I looked around, but nobody would look me in the eye. Was I busted? Fired? Yeah, maybe I’d been a little deceitful, but I thought I’d kicked ass on the VibraLens pitch.
“Jordan?”
I turned and saw Lydia. “Hi, good morning,” I said, but I nearly choked on my own saliva out of nervousness.
“What are you doing there?” she asked.
“Just . . . standing?”
“Wondering what happened to all your things?” Thump-thump, thump-thump. Can anyone else hear my heart pounding? I wondered.
“Kind of?” I said.
Then Laura J. Linvette, human resources manager and accounting manager (bad idea normally, but we were tiny by agency standards), appeared. “Congratulations, Jordan. This came quickly, so we didn’t have time for a lot of planning, but I think you’ll like what we’ve come up with.”
“Really?” Now it did feel like amnesia. What the hell was going on? Then Billingsly turned the corner and smiled at me.
“Jordan! Here’s my star,” he said, stepping close. “VibraLens signed on to do print and broadcast with your ‘Reinventing’ campaign. They actually increased the buy after we laid out media strategy because they were so impressed by the creative potential here. And you, my dear, are officially in creative. You’re on the Surf team. Starting today.” At Splash, in addition to having conference rooms named after vacation islands, our teams were always named after water sports.
“Your new office is right next to Kurt’s,” Laura J. added. Someone else in her family was named Laura, so she’d come through life as Laura J. (Although I’d known a few HR managers who used middle initials. Maybe they fancied that the extra initial made them sound important?)
“Next to Kurt’s?” Lydia piped up, and I could tell she wasn’t entirely pleased about the whole turn of events. In fact quite the opposite.
I, however, was elated. “My own . . . office?”
“Right down the hall,” Lydia muttered in her trademark annoyed fashion.
I walked down a few doors, reading the little signs with the names, and there he was. Not Kurt—David Hasselhoff. My poster, plastered on the front door of my new office. Kurt pushed off from his desk and spun around in his chair.
“Hey, neighbor.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Think we can not have that poster there so I don’t have to look at it first thing every morning?”
“I think not,” I said, confusing Kurt.
“You think we cannot have the poster in here . . . or we cannot not have it there?”
“He’s been here longer than you have, Kurt.”
“Okay, that’s cool,” he said. “Had to try. It kind of creeps me out.”
“That’s the point.” I nodded.
I got settled at my new desk in my new office and the first thing I did was pick up the phone and call my machine at home to replay the cute message from Travis. Then I hung up and watched the clock while I calculated exactly when I would call him. Ten A.M. was way too early. Eleven? That was manageable. Not like I called the second I got up, but not like I was waiting all day to make him wonder. I decided to wait until eleven—11:30. . . 11:20. No, 11:30.
I picked up the phone at 10:47 and dialed.
“This is Travis,” he said, when he picked up.
“This is Jordan,” I replied.
“Jordan. Jordan—hey!”
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, you know. I’m just cookin’ over here.”
“I love a guy who can cook.”
“That’s me. Wearing an apron and a smile.”
“That’s quite a visual,” I said, picturing it in my head.
“I’m actually fully clothed. Last time I showed up for work in an apron I got called in to human resources.”
I laughed a little too hard at his joke. Then I rolled my own eyes at myself.
“When can I take you out?” he said.
Direct. I liked that. Then again I liked everything about him. What? You like to club baby seals? Me too! Let’s book a charter flight.
“I’m pretty flexible.” Shit. Play it cool.
“That’s promising,” he said. “We’ll get to that later, though. Now, when can I take you out?”
“Aren’t you clever . . .”
“How about tonight?” Hmmm, let me think about that. I was flexible but not totally available. In fact, I was practically unattainable. Not in his dreams! But tonight. Was there something I had to do tonight? Other than play hard to get?
“I’m yours.” Shit.
* * * * *
We decided that he’d pick me up straight after work. This could have taken on nightmare ramifications had I not anticipated the same-day date in my best-case scenario when I called him. I might not have shaved or I might have carelessly dressed, not worn a good bra and a top that would show off the effects of the good bra (thank you, Victoria, and all of your many wonderful secrets). But the new Jordan dressed on offense, not on defense—as though I were always anticipating that something good might happen, rather than something bad—and taking a little extra time every day to look nice. And I’d gotten up an hour earlier that particular morning to make an extra-special effort, just in case. So it was all working out according to plan. Nothing had ever worked according to plan for me before. I didn’t even have a plan before. I was starting to love my life.
I darted out of Splash at 6:20 P.M., and as I started down the steps, I saw Travis sitting on my bench across the street. My stomach did an entire gymnastics routine and my knees felt wobbly. My heart pounded as I walked down the steps, and all I could think was, Please, God, don’t let me trip and fall. And thank you, God, for introducing me to Travis. But next time, maybe we can skip the hospital part and maybe try a run-of-the-mill bump into in the grocery store vegetable section. He crossed the street to meet me.
“Hi,” he said. “You look beautiful.” And my face felt hot again.
“Hi, yourself,” I said, and then we stood there awkwardly for about an hour (probably eight seconds in actual time). “So what’s on the agenda?”
“Well, I was thinking that we could go to that new indoor games place and ride bumper cars . . . in honor of our meeting.” I was smiling so big my face hurt. “And then, if it doesn’t blow a diet of some sort, hand-mixed ice cream.”
“Sounds like a blast.”
“Until I ram you off the road,” he ribbed.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I taunted back.
“Ouch!”
* * * * *
We had one of those near-perfect movie-montage first dates that you think doesn’t exist in real life. We sped around in our bumper cars and yelled obscenities at each other.
“Payback’s a bitch, baby!” I called out as I crashed into him.
“Women drivers!” he shouted.
“Oh, did I hear someone whining helplessly?”
We smashed each other up but good. And then when the novelty wore off we found ourselves with two impossibly large frozen ice cream drinks in front of us. I had a vanilla and he had chocolate.
“And what else?” Travis asked.
“That’s it,” I gurgled with a mouth full of ice cream.
“I want to know more about you. I want to know everything about you.”
“Well, so do I! But I’m at a disadvantage since all I can tell you about me has happened since the day we met. Or should I say, first ran into each other.”
“Rub it in, why don’t ya?” he said with the cutest little pout, inspiring an incredible urge to lick the ice cream off his lips. I managed to resist.
“No, not at all. I was just saying . . . Tell me about you. Where’s your family?”
“My mom lives upstate. My sister is married and lives out in Portland. And my dad died when we were in college.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, he was a terrific guy.” He looked straight ahead, and it felt as though we’d stumbled onto something tender. “He was a lighthouse keeper.”
“Really? That’s not your average, everyday profession. Where?”
“Out on Long Island. But it doesn’t work anymore. It’s in desperate need of restoration.”
“I’ve never even seen a lighthouse close up.”
“They’re . . . majestic. Wonderful, wondrous.” Travis thought about this. For a second he was a million miles away. I guessed he was thinking about his dad, and I wanted to climb across the table and hug him or touch him or do . . . something. But he snapped out of it just as soon as he’d disappeared and changed the subject. “What else? Let’s see. I don’t believe in the colorization of old black-and-white films, I do believe in Santa Claus . . . ”
“And you don’t believe in artificial turf and the infield fly rule, I gotcha.”
“Oh, that you remember,” he said. Our eyes locked.
“Go on . . . tell me more,” I said. The old Jordan would never have had the confidence to flirt this way, but it felt good to speak so freely.
“Okay,” he went on. “I like André Three Thousand better than Big Boi, prefer running outside along the river over inside on a treadmill, phone calls instead of text messaging . . . and I can do wonders in the kitchen.”
“Like levitate?”
“No, but I’ll make the best damn whatever you like that you ever ate.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard since you’ll be competing with memories of food that go back about two months,” I said, giving him what’s known in the airline business as the wave-in for approach. “And most of that was hospital food.” He made a guilty face. He felt bad. Then I felt bad. “Seriously? You’re a good cook?”
“That’s something I don’t joke about.”
“Then I’m going to have to taste this cooking.”
“How’s Friday night?” he asked, as if on cue.
“I happen to be free,” I said. For the rest of my life, my giddy mind shouted, in case you’re not doing anything either.