Pink Slip Party

  At My Door, There’s an Electrical Charge in the Air.

  I can’t decide if it’s the champagne I ingested, or the fact that Kyle is flashing me one of his deliberately charming smiles. I’ve seen him use The Smile countless times on unsuspecting women. He reels them in with a smile, and then when he gives them the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech six weeks later, they never know what hit them.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me up for coffee?” Kyle asks me, still smiling.

  It occurs to me that Kyle actually is quite good-looking.

  “That’s pathetic,” I tell him. “You’re so used to girls fawning all over you, you aren’t even trying to come up with good lines anymore.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, pretending innocence.

  “You know very well that most women, God knows why, find you attractive,” I say.

  “Hmmmm,” he says. “Perhaps, it’s my boyish good looks,” he jokes.

  He pauses. “So why is it that…you know.”

  I smile, amused. “No, I don’t know.”

  “That you never…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well…” — he’s squirming — “…wanted to date me?”

  Praise for I Do (But I Don’t):

  “Lockwood’s debut has all the ingredients of a

  good chick-lit novel…with a warm and friendly

  writing style.” — Library Journal

  Also by Cara Lockwood from Downtown Press

  I DO (BUT I DON’T)

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  DOWNTOWN PRESS

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Cara Lockwood

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-8883-0

  First Downtown Press trade paperback edition March 2004

  DOWNTOWN PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Jaime Putorti

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For Daren,

  for saying I can quit my day job if I want to.

  Acknowledgments

  I had tons of help in writing this book. I’d like to thank my parents, Jean Hass and Cary Tanamachi, for always encouraging me to do what I love to do: write. Much gratitude goes to my husband, Daren, for listening, supporting, and hiding the paper shredder. Thanks to my brother, Matt, who is, as always, my “inspiration.”

  A heartfelt thanks to Elizabeth Kinsella and Stephanie Elsea, two layoff survivors who shared their stories and got the last laugh. I’d also like to acknowledge the many friends who make up my honorary publicity and marketing staff, with special thanks to: Kate Kinsella, Jen Lane Lockwood, Keith Lockwood, Shannon Whitehead, Mary Chalfant, Jane Ricordati, Kate Miller, Carroll Jordan, Linda Newman, Stacey Cohen, Amy Van Etten, Kelly Ballarini, Diane Nale, Eric Bryn, Stacey Causey, Cyndi Swendner, and everyone else who convinced strangers at book stores to buy my books.

  As ever, I’d like to thank my agent, Deidre Knight, and my editor, Lauren McKenna, for their hard work and invaluable insight.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Chapter 23

  Up Close and Personal With the Author

  To: Jmcgregor@maximumoffice.com

  From: Ferguson@maximumoffice.com

  Date: February 15, 2002, 9:05 a.m.

  Subject: FWD: RE: Notice of Indefinite Layoff

  Jane,

  Read message below.

  — F

  Dear [insert employee’s name here],

  We regret to inform you that your job at Maximum Office Supplies Incorporated has been eliminated.

  We ask you to do your part to leave on good terms:

  1. Clear your desk out by noon. Be considerate of coworkers who will be attempting to work this morning by doing so quietly.

  2. Don’t take what isn’t yours! Any employee seen taking office supplies, furniture, or computer equipment from the building will be prosecuted for theft.

  3. You aren’t an employee anymore, don’t act like one! You are no longer eligible for employee benefits, including but not limited to free coffee or soda and access to the company gym.

  4. Profanity only reflects badly on you! Unruly behavior will be dealt with accordingly by our security personnel.

  Let’s pull together as a team to make this a great transition!

  Go Team Maximum Office!

  Mike Orephus

  Vice President, Midwest Division

  Maximum Office Supplies

  1

  I think if someone fires you, they should have the decency to do it in person. My boss, lower than vermin on the food chain, was too chicken to actually tell me. Instead, I found out via email.

  It’s not like I would have wanted a show of tears and prostrated apologies (although these would have been nice). I just wanted a minimum level of decency. Personally, I’d prefer a twenty-one-gun salute, but that’s just me. My dad always says I have an over-inflated sense of my place in the world.

  Three days ago, on the day after Valentine’s Day, I was part of a massive layoff of 1,000 employees from my company (an office supplier that manufactures pink slips). The irony here is not lost on me. Technically, we print office supplies — your blue phone-message pads, your Post-it notes. I worked in design and development on such riveting projects as redesigning “While You Were Out” notes and writing instructions for the backs of correction fluid jars.

  On my last day of work, my boss (is it wrong that I wake up and hope daily he’s reincarnated one day as toe fungus?), a bald, corpulent, smelly man with a shiny, greasy-streaked ring of hair around his ears and down the back of his neck, blinked his black, beady eyes at me and said, “Your severance package would be greater, but you’ve used up all your sick days.”

  I suppose I should have been glad. Some people got laid off via voicemail. And others got the news scrolling across the screens on their Blackberry pagers.

  The worst thing about being laid off is that it completely nixes your dream of storming into your boss’s office, telling him what he can do with his status reports, and quitting to internal audience applause.

  “Does Mike know about this?” I asked my boss. Mike Orephus was the vice president of the Midwest Division, and just happened to be the same man I’d been dating for seven months.

  “He knows,” my boss said. “He’s the one who signed your pink slip.”

  The pink slip wasn’t actually pink at all. It wasn’t even a slip. It was just a regular piece of paper, white, with large even margins and a form filled out in Helvetica font, point size 12.

  “Listen, we both know this isn’t working out,” Mike said, when I went into his office
that same day. He couldn’t look me in the eye. He fixed his gaze on the framed picture of his chocolate Lab, Buddy, sitting on his desk. I didn’t know whether he meant my job performance or our relationship or both.

  “You’re firing me and breaking up with me?” I squeaked. I thought he’d show me a little pity. I didn’t take him for the type who’d run me down with his car, and then throw it into reverse for good measure.

  “Jane, come on, you know that the layoffs are not my decision. They come from above me.” He sighed. “And, you had to see that our little fling was over. I mean, I didn’t call you for almost a week. You had to see this coming.”

  I’d believed it when he told me he couldn’t talk, that he was swamped at work.

  “I thought you were just busy,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. He used that annoyed snappish tone. The one that all men use when they’re breaking up with you and feel bad about doing it, so they try to make it somehow all your fault.

  “But, I thought…” Now would not be a good time to tell him I’d been thinking we were headed somewhere. That I’d been secretly flipping through Martha Stewart Weddings magazines on the newsstands — not because I expected us to get married, but when you reach seven months, anything could happen. “I thought you loved me,” I finished.

  Mike just shook his head at me, looking annoyed.

  “Are you going to cry?” he asked me, squinting.

  I didn’t cry. I’m not a crier. I’ve never cried in a movie theater, not even when I saw the Joy Luck Club. My ex-boyfriend Ron says I’ve got a heart of granite, but he was a geology major, so who knows what he really meant. There are events that make me teary — plucking my eyebrows and looking at my MasterCard bill are two that come to mind. I’m just not overly sentimental. I worked for two years designing Post-its and while-you-were-out notes. It’s hardly the sort of work that encourages romantic dreams.

  Besides, I’ve lost better jobs and boyfriends. At least, I think I have.

  I’ve been laid off three times now, and I’m only twenty-eight. My dad always tells me that I should be sure to make a niche for myself in the market. “You see a need, you fill it,” is what he would say.

  I’ve made a career out of being disposable. I’m always the first one to go.

  When I told my mother about the layoff, she told me, “Well, dear, look on the bright side. This will give you more time to date.”

  I’m skinny, but don’t hate me. You try going through grade school being called a skeleton. It’s not at all fun. Sure, now I’m reaping the benefits, now that I’m an adult and still sometimes dream of a bully named Sheila who would body-slam me into the jungle gym bars and call me Toothpick. As far as I’m concerned, I deserve to be able to fit into boy jeans.

  Besides, the downside of being skinny is that I have no boobs. I should invest in Miracle Bras, but I think that would just be false advertising. There are men who have more cleavage than I do.

  I’ve got honey blond hair, but not naturally so, which I usually keep up at the nape of my neck in a messy knot. When I’m lounging around the house, I wear glasses, which are thick and boxy and I think they make me look like Lisa Loeb, but my friend Steph says I look more like Elvis Costello.

  I am not normally what you’d call a go-getter. But, I did try hard at Maximum Office. More than tried, really put forth an effort, my best work. I wanted to impress Mike, naturally. Mike, the youngest VP in the company at age thirty-five. Mike who looked thirty, who would listen to my ideas in department meetings and congratulate me on them, like a doting professor. I worked fifty hours a week almost every week. Now, I see that as time wasted. Hours I could’ve spent happily watching The E! True Hollywood Story.

  Here’s my life in a nutshell:

  I’m unemployed. I am currently living in a gigantic, two-bedroom apartment that I can’t afford. And instead of saving three months’ salary, like every fiscally responsible person should in these uncertain economic times of two weeks’ severance pay, I blow three months’ salary repeatedly and often and carry roughly that and then some spread out over three credit cards. You could say I’m financially dyslexic.

  My mother wishes I’d date more.

  My dad feels like I should get married and have babies and stop trying to prove I can handle a career.

  I made the colossal mistake of sleeping with an executive who dumped me and was kind enough to spare me the awkward runins at the water cooler by firing me.

  There. You now have the vital statistics. My life isn’t so bad, really. The one perk about being unemployed is that you have the perfect reason to lie around in your flannel pajamas and sulk. It’s nice to have a real reason to mope. It’s nice to be able to frown at family gatherings and have people whisper: “The job market is getting to her, poor thing,” instead of “She’s twenty-eight and single, poor thing.” At a cousin’s couples shower yesterday, my aunt and uncle stuck a couple of $100 bills in my purse. Personally, I’m not above pity as long as it takes the form of cash.

  “Tell me what Star Jones is wearing,” says my good friend Steph, calling as she does every day around ten. Steph works at Maximum Office and was spared during the last round of layoffs. This does not make her happy, as she’s never been laid off, and she feels like she’s missing out. Not to mention, now that she’s a layoff survivor, she has to do the work of the five other people they let go in the public relations department.

  “Let me just say that probably fifty polyester stuffed leopards had to die for her outfit,” I answer.

  “Has she started shouting yet?” Steph asks me.

  “Not yet,” I say. I have an irrational dislike of Star Jones and everyone on The View. When I had a job, I liked The View. It was a guilty pleasure to watch when I called in sick. Now that daytime television is my only intellectual stimulus and social outlet of the day, I find I have no patience.

  I wonder why they have jobs and I don’t. I could shout. And be opinionated on subjects I know nothing about. And badger celebrities with dumb questions. Watching daytime television always sinks my morale, but I simply can’t help it. It’s one of those self-destructive desires like craving cheese fries or nicotine.

  “Be glad you aren’t here,” Steph breathes to me.

  “What’s happening? Has anyone quit?” I ask, hopeful. I like to imagine that after I was laid off, hundreds of other workers took to the parking lot with lighted torches, flipping executives’ cars and demanding their fellow coworkers be reinstated.

  “God, no,” Steph says. “Everyone’s scared shitless. Plus, there’s no time to quit, not with the work we have to do. Did I tell you I have to write marketing proposals for eight new clients? And that’s just what I’m supposed to do today. I haven’t left the office before nine anytime this week.”

  “That does sound rotten,” I say.

  “Worse, Mike’s been talking about having a weekend retreat,” Steph says. “As if we aren’t giving enough blood to the company, they want our Saturdays and Sundays, too.”

  “Well, it could be worse. You could be held captive in front of The View like I am,” I say.

  “Considering I have a stack of work on my desk taller than the Sears Tower, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Steph says. “Shit, here comes the boss. I think he’s going to tell me I have to stay late again tonight. Let me call you back later.”

  Two minutes after I put the phone down, it rings again. It’s my brother Todd.

  “Jane, you promised you’d look for jobs today,” he says. He’s older and put together and doesn’t like the idea of his tax dollars supporting my extended hiatus. He can’t stand the idea of anyone not being a slave to the same institutions he is. He can’t bear the thought of someone else living a free life outside the box.

  “I am looking,” I lie. The classifieds are open and they’re sitting on the other end of the couch. If I stretch my neck to the right and squint hard enough I could probably make out one or two of them.

  �
�If you were really looking, you’d be online, and the phone line would be busy. Have you at least made a plan?”

  Todd feels planning is essential. Like showering. His idea of spontaneity is to use free hand calculations instead of an Excel spreadsheet.

  “I was thinking of checking out the profession of dereliction,” I say. “I’m more than qualified for it.”

  “Jane. Be serious.”

  “I am serious. I’m not a picky eater. I could eat out of trash cans.”

  “I hardly think that counts as a valuable skill,” he says.

  “Maybe I could test out new Nabisco products,” I say.

  “Have you sent out your resume?” Todd is nothing if not relentless. I know that this is just his way of showing he cares.

  “I’ve sent out twenty resumes, and I got one call-back from a man who informed me the fax number I was dialing was out of service,” I say.

  “Well, maybe we should update your resume,” Todd says.

  “Todd — don’t you have tax returns to do?”

  “Look, I don’t mean to be an asshole, I’m just saying, you should think about what you’re going to do next,” he says. “You should take this time to re-evaluate your life goals.”

  It’s hard to re-evaluate your life goals when you’ve just lost a job you didn’t even much like. It’s hard to plan for your future when you are beginning to suspect that everything you touch turns to crap. I don’t exactly have the confidence at the moment to engineer my next brilliant career move, since my Fall-in-Love-With-an-Executive plan didn’t work out.