L.a. Woman
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Sarah was still thinking about the exchange on Sunday, the first day off she’d had in…hell, too long. They were testing the building for asbestos or something, so Becky couldn’t force her to come in. Though she’d tried.
Sarah sat at a lunch table at Il Trattorio on Melrose with Judith. It was nice to see a friendly face that didn’t want a mound of paperwork done.
Sarah toyed with her salad. “Judith? Do you think Benjamin…I mean, does he strike you…”
Judith sighed, putting her own salad fork down. “This has your roommate Martika written all over it. What’s the so-called problem with Benjamin now?”
“You don’t think he’s a prick, do you?”
Judith goggled. Sarah didn’t think she’d ever heard Judith say “prick” in her life, now that she thought about it.
“No, I most certainly do not think he’s…that.” Judith straightened out her napkin on her lap with a cluck. “Just because he’s not some sideshow freak or a candidate for that Jim Rose tattoo show doesn’t mean the man’s a…” Judith glanced around, seeing if any of the other tables were noticing the inappropriate turn this conversation was taking. “Well, he just isn’t.”
Sarah smiled, suppressing the urge to say “Prick! Prick! Prick!” and watch Judith turn purple.
“Why do you ask? Do you think he is?”
Sarah looked down at the table. “I’ve been sort of unhappy lately.”
“Well, that’s understandable,” Judith soothed. “You’ve been apart for a while, and you guys haven’t been separated since college, for pity’s sake.”
“I know, I know,” Sarah said. “It’s just…”
She paused.
“Spit it out already.”
“Well, don’t you think it’s sort of…well, prickish of him to be completely behind me moving down here, to help him out, and then all of a sudden he can’t help me make ends meet with the rent?”
Judith looked at her inscrutably. “You mean, when he found out the promotion he was counting on suddenly fell through?”
Sarah continued doggedly, “Okay, but…he never calls, and he’s only visited the once, and it always seems like it’s all about him…”
“When it ought to be all about you?”
Sarah glared at her. “When it ought to be, you know, more even.”
Judith shook her head, then took a sip of her iced tea. “Sarah, what exactly do you think he’s done to you that’s so ‘prickish’?”
“He just doesn’t seem supportive at all.” Sarah knew that was a lame way to put it, and her carefully thought out argument, the one that made so much sense when she ranted to herself in the car on the way over to this lunch, suddenly seemed like a cross between a whine and a wail. “I mean, I know he’s busy and all—and he has a set career, while I’m still bobbing, but…but I mean, I’ve been working really hellish hours…”
“That he’s been working all this time,” Judith interjected.
“Judith, you’re not helping!” Sarah finally burst out.
“Sarah, I’m trying to. I’m trying to help you put this in perspective.” Her voice had the cold logic of Mr. Spock. Sarah bit back on a pout, feeling like a complete and utter idiot. “He’s been working really hard to try to get down here to be with you. He’s been working crazy hours for years, while you’ve flitted from job to job. You volunteered to help him out by moving down here. Now, are you going to help him out or not?”
“I thought you’d be on my side, is all,” Sarah finally grumped. “I’m being a complete baby about this, aren’t I?” Strangely, she felt a little better—like she wasn’t dating a loser prick, as Martika was intimating.
Judith smiled. “You’re just losing perspective a little, that’s all. You’ve become really independent lately, and that’s a big change.”
Sarah sighed. “Work has really been grating on me.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
But I don’t want to get used to it!
Sarah sipped at her Diet Coke. “Well, does it get any easier?”
“Yes. After a while, it’s like you’ve been doing it all your life. It’ll be like…brushing your teeth, washing your face. You won’t remember a time when your life wasn’t like this. Here’s a bit of advice from a greeting card I once got…”
“Judith,” Sarah warned.
“I like it. It said, ‘Not shelter from the storm, but peace within the storm.’ You just have to look at life like that. Recognize how everything is, and be okay with it.”
That was depressing enough to send Sarah to the dessert tray with Chocolate Suicide in mind.
Chapter 5
Break on Through
Peace within the storm, peace within the storm, Sarah thought, as she made copies in the office. It was three in the morning. She was here, alone, with a temp from CompuPros. He was working furiously on one of their stronger graphic design computers, doing some complicated presentation with animation and music and movie clips. He hummed the theme to Star Trek to himself incessantly as he ate Chee•tos and drank Mountain Dew. “Highest caffeine of any regular brand,” he confided in her, producing a two-liter bottle from his knapsack. “I don’t like the taste of Jolt. Those are a hell of a lot of copies,” he noted, as the computer whirred, processing something. “Why don’t you send it out to Kinko’s?”
Sarah rubbed at her eyes, waiting for the bleary, blurred vision to clear. After a second, it did. “My boss wants me to keep an eye on it. Kinko’s screwed up her last order.”
“Must’ve been pretty bad.” He shrugged.
“It wasn’t entirely their fault,” Sarah said, trying not to lose count. At least the conversation was keeping her awake. “But…well, you met my boss.”
“Briefly.” The man’s tone spoke volumes. “She always like that?”
“She’s been stressed…” Sarah started to make the excuse, then sighed. “Yes. She’s always like that.” She took a deep breath as she hit the stapler with a little too much force. She pulled out the crumpled bit of metal and tried again, more carefully. “She threw such a fit that the Kinko’s manager said not only would he not help her, he was going to send her picture out like a Wanted poster to all the other branches in a fifteen-mile radius. I thought Becky was going to have an aneurysm.”
“So you’re here by yourself.”
Sarah nodded. She was doing the binders, and revising the spreadsheets, and revising the presentation notes, and making sure that all the arrangements for the team offsite that Becky was planning was going according to schedule. Raquel, their admin, had lost her marbles over the weekend, and had quit by sharpening a pencil to a spike point and driving it through a note on Becky’s desk that said I QUIT in a quavery red line. Sarah prayed it was ink.
“That’s gotta suck.”
“Not so bad,” Sarah said stoically, frowning. She’d lost count. She went through the piles again.
She was trying to hold on. She really was. She spoke with Benjamin every Saturday religiously, and didn’t bother him during the week. The promotion was on the cusp, he told her, just weeks to days away. He would be coming to L.A. And, like the caterpillar says in A Bug’s Life, “then things would be much better.” She just had to take Judith’s advice, grow up and hold out.
“Man, I’m tired.” The CompuPro guy leaned back, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes.
“When do you think you’ll be done with this?” Sarah asked hopefully. When he was done with the mechanics, she could proof it, do the notes and stills from it, and then get some sleep, herself.
“Oh, man. Not too much longer.”
“Great.” Sarah breathed a sigh of relief.
“I figure not later than six.”
“Six?”
“Yup. You said you wanted it done by tomorrow, that’s before workday tomorrow,” he said defensively, as he saw Sarah’s ashen face. “Maybe sooner.”
“Please, God,” she murmured.
Good as his word, he was done with the presentation just as the sun rose. It was six on the dot. “I’ll send the bill on,” he said, yawning. “God, I’m glad I don’t have an assignment today.”
She hurried him out, then looked over the presentation. She had hit a nice buzz…her second wind (or perhaps third wind) had struck at around five, and she was moving on a pleasant little high. She went through the presentation. It looked pretty good to her—but then, a Crayola presentation would look pretty damn slick at this point, she reasoned. Becky would be in the office in about an hour, she thought. She briefly considered going home, then decided against it. Something of the martyr was creeping up on her. If Becky sees that I’ve stayed here all night, Sarah reasoned as best she could in her sleep-deprived mind, then she’ll see how dedicated I am. She’ll go easier on me. I’ll have paid my dues.
With this, Sarah collated, made calls and got a good chunk of her to-do list done. By seven, she was frenetically wiping down her desk with Windex when Jacob came in.
“Have you been here all night?” he said, eyeing her clothes…studying her eyes.
“Yes, I have,” she said, noticing her hands were shaking a little when she stopped doing something with them. She took another sip of Mountain Dew, sighing as the caffeine and sugar hit her bloodstream. That CompuPro kid wasn’t lying. “I’ve gotten a lot done.”
“You certainly have,” Becky said.
Was that a pleased tone? In her delirium, Sarah smiled, sure that it was. “Those are all the packets,” she said proudly, “and these are the graphs and the reports and sales figures and media charts you wanted. And here’s the presentation.” She handed Becky the chart, the pièce de résistance. And now, can I please go home and go to…
Becky looked at the disk like it held the plague. “What the hell is that?”
Sarah stared at her. “It’s…the presentation,” she said. Seeing Becky’s blank stare, she reminded her, “You said you wanted it to be really snazzy, remember? You authorized us to bring in a temp from CompuPro to add animations and…and music, and…”
“Yes, yes,” Becky said, with an impatient wave of her hand. “But where are the slides?”
Sarah stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “They don’t come with slides,” she said, trying desperately not to add you stupid slut. “You use the LCD projector…it runs right off the laptop.”
She should have known better. Becky’s eyes rolled back in her head like a terrified cow just at the mention of laptop. “Oh, no, I’m not,” she said, angry and accusing. Jacob, Sarah noticed, vanished. “I’m not using a goddamn laptop to give this presentation. Why didn’t anybody mention this earlier? I’ve got to give this fucking thing at two o’clock, why didn’t somebody mention it earlier?”
How precisely Becky thought that you could add moving images to a piece of plastic with ink on it, Sarah wasn’t sure. But obviously that’s exactly what she thought. “I…didn’t realize that you didn’t know about the LCD projector,” Sarah said slowly, feeling that delicious euphoria start to fade and the cold hard reality sink in.
“Listen here. I want slides printed up. SLIDES!”
Sarah did mental calculations. The meeting starts at noon. Presentation at two. It was now eight. It took about a minute a slide…there were one hundred and twenty slides…she could get them all printed out with an hour to spare. Plenty of time.
“All right, Becky,” she said. Peace within the storm, peace within the storm…
Becky had picked up one of the booklets…one with the printed stills. She glanced through it quickly and to Sarah’s horror, picked up a pen.
“Also, I’m going to need some changes.”
Sarah quickly saw the mountain of velo-bound presentation folders, the slides, all of it, getting shot to hell. Peace within…oh, suck.
By noon, Sarah had moved from euphoria to hysteria. She had already burst into spontaneous tears at her keyboard not once, but twice. Jacob was her godsend, fetching her Jolt and Mountain Dew. He would have set up an IV if he’d known how. She flashed through the changes Becky made, then sent him with the prints to make the note pages and velo-bind the presentation stuff. She printed out each slide, removing the animation stuff that would leave the little icon. Stupid cow, stupid cow, stupid cow, she thought. The “peace within” mantra just wasn’t working, and the stupid cow one at least gave her enough fuel to continue going. She was seriously considering taking a cab home…or saying fuck it, and going to sleep under her desk. She’d probably go with the cab. At least she’d be away from Becky…
“Sarah, how’s it coming?”
Sarah glanced at the printer, which was moaning like it was going to die a horrible electronic death. She picked up the last sheet of acetate. “Last slide,” she said, putting it over the last white sheet of paper with a flourish. “And the overhead is all set up in the conference center.”
“And you ordered lunch, of course?” Becky’s eyes narrowed. “I know I didn’t ask you to, but I figured you should know…”
Sarah smiled with an exhausted sort of smugness. “I ordered lunch. Maria’s. They delivered at eleven forty-five.”
“You’re tired, aren’t you?” As if she had only just noticed, Becky squinted her eyes, studying Sarah’s face.
And about to remedy that, Sarah thought. “Yes, I am.”
“You shouldn’t stay at that keyboard.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“You should get up,” Becky said thoughtfully. “Walk around. Definitely pick up some lunch. I’ll be out of my meeting at three, and maybe we could go over the Veggi-round TV spots they’re shooting next month.”
Sarah didn’t believe she’d heard correctly. “You mean…you want me to stay?”
Becky looked at her like she was from Pluto. “It’s noon, Sarah. You did a good job, and all, but I wasn’t going to give you a half day.”
“A HALF DAY?” Sarah felt like she was channeling the voice that was yelling. “I was here all night!”
Becky blinked, obviously not expecting her docile A.A.E. to start shouting. “And I appreciate it,” she said, in that sickly smooth voice that Sarah hated.
“I am going home,” Sarah said, grabbing her coat. It tangled when she tried to stick her arm through it…she slowly realized she was putting it in the wrong hole. She straightened it out. “I am leaving here. I’ll be lucky if I don’t wrap my car around a telephone pole from here to Santa Monica Boulevard. Are you out of your mind? I am going home!”
Becky sighed wearily. “Oh, all right. There is just one more thing I need you to do, though. It’ll be quick, and it’ll be on your way.” She shot her an accusing glare. “You said you’d do anything to make my job easier, you know.”
Paying your dues, peace within the storm…
“What did you want me to do?” Sarah said instead. Sainthood, here I come.
Becky rummaged around in her pockets, pulling out a key. Sarah stared at it. “This is the key to my apartment. I just need you to take care of Charlie. You remember Charlie, right? The cat I asked you to feed over the July Fourth weekend, when I was out of town?”
Sarah sighed. “You want me to feed Charlie.”
“Not…well, no.” Becky shrugged. “His litter box is just behind the…”
“NO.”
Becky looked at her. “Well, it will get you out of work early, won’t it?” she said like she was conferring a favor.
Sarah stared at the key, at the pile of presentation booklets, at Jacob who was staring at Becky like she was possessed. She didn’t even have any inflection in her voice when she spoke.
“Becky, I quit. I completely, utterly, totally quit.” She grabbed her purse. “I’m through paying my dues, I’m not growing up, and fuck peace within the storm!”
Sarah made it home safely, guessing that it was probably due to whichever saint it was that watched over drunks, tramps and stupid twats who stuck to jobs long past the point of abuse. Martika was blessedly still at work when she got home at twelve-thirty. She took off her clothes and burrowed under her covers naked. She wandered through the living room at around three naked, to pee, then promptly went back to sleep. She finally emerged at around seven, realizing she was hungry. She’d been crying in her sleep…she’d left makeup on, and there were rings of mascara around her eyes. She looked like she’d been beat up.
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