Pink Slip Party Read online

  Todd is still talking.

  “You should take this opportunity to really ask yourself: What do I want to be?”

  “Todd, have you been reading Who Moved My Cheese again?”

  When I was in college, I had dreams of becoming the next Andy Warhol, except that after three art classes I discovered that my talent landed somewhere between Walt Disney and Sherman Williams. Not to mention, when you graduate as an art major, you don’t, as popularly believed, get a gallery showing handed to you along with a big fat check from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  “Have you at least gone down to the unemployment office?” Todd asks me.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in government handouts,” I say.

  “Well, you’ve more than paid for it in taxes. If you don’t go apply, then you’re letting Uncle Sam steal more of what’s rightfully yours.”

  “I’ll go, Todd,” I say.

  “When?”

  “Today, all right?”

  “That’s my girl,” he says and hangs up. Todd and I have your typical older brother/younger sister sibling relationship: He tells me what to do and I largely ignore him.

  Because I’d rather do almost anything than change out of my pajamas, I sit down at my computer and scroll through job listings for awhile. There are no new creative or graphic design positions posted. They are the same five that have been listed for the last week. Three of these are from now-defunct dot-coms (having tried emailing them, I know) and two are at companies currently going through a hiring freeze (it is cheaper to leave a posting online than to take it down).

  Since there are no jobs posted that I’m qualified for, I apply for a few I’m not, including Zoo Assistant. I make up a wild story in my cover letter about my fictitious exploits in India, where I grew up and learned how to train elephants by watching Biki, our family’s servant, care for the animals.

  I like to think that somewhere, there is a human resources employee with a sense of humor. I have faith that one must exist. Like life on other planets.

  While I am already in a foul mood, I decide now is as good a time as any to go to the unemployment office. I have been putting off this activity for too long. I do not want to admit to the state that I have, indeed, lost another job. It feels like admitting to your friends that the boyfriend you told them was planning to propose has run off with your downstairs neighbor. Dumped. Again.

  * * *

  The unemployment office is a dingy horrible place with army posters on the walls and horrifically artificial fluorescent lighting. All state buildings, I think, are required to have very unflattering lighting. It’s part of an elaborate plot to make state employees look even more disheveled and bored.

  When I arrive, around two in the afternoon, there is already a line of degenerates behind a coiled rope, much like a ride at Disney World, except there’s no sunshine and no overpriced soda stands. I am tempted, however, to raise up my arms and shout, as if I am sitting in the front car of a roller coaster. Ahead of me, there’s a woman in a business suit who looks like she only just got fired today (she’s clinging desperately to a potted plant). Ahead of her is a man with a full beard who has drawn swastikas on his shirt. At the very front, I can hear two unemployment office employees arguing.

  “That’s not my job, Lucinda,” one of them is shouting. “Why don’t you stop being so damn lazy.”

  “Mmm-hmmm, I know you didn’t just talk to me like that, biatch.”

  “Who are you calling a bitch?”

  “Well, you’s the only one here, so I guess I be talking to you. Biatch.”

  “You want to go right now? Let’s go.”

  “Oh, I’m ready to. Anytime you wanna go. I’m ready.”

  Somewhere, at the head of the line, a few of the lower dregs of society start cheering.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” says the woman in front of me with the potted plant.

  “That they have jobs and we don’t?” I say.

  “Exactly,” she says and sighs.

  A tall, sloped-shouldered man in a white short-sleeved collared shirt and a tie, the uniform of a lower midlevel supervisor, pulls the two workers apart. He tells them to “Take five” just like my middle-school gym coach.

  “Wind knocked out of you, eh, McGregor? Take five. Put your arms over your head and breathe deep.”

  I hated gym. Every time we played a sport involving a ball, I always got hit in the stomach with it. It was like there was a tracking device inside. Ooof. Every time. It’s no wonder then that my Pavlovian Response to physical exertion is acute stomach pain and difficulty breathing.

  “Come on people, let’s move,” the reedy man up front is saying. He has quite an overbite. “Everyone that’s just been laid off, go to the right. Everyone who’s been fired, left.”

  I go to the right. The low-level manager with the buck teeth eyes me suspiciously. Perhaps I look like I’ve been fired. Maybe I look guilty.

  I fill out more forms than are necessary to donate a kidney.

  I am jostled from window to window, like a nerdy party guest no one wants to talk to. The clerks have stickers instead of stamps, and fingernails longer than mechanical pencils. They smack gum irreverently as they glare at the back of their supervisor.

  I look at the floor and try not to make eye contact.

  “You need the blue form,” says the grandmotherly woman behind counter number two.

  “I have the blue form,” I say.

  “Not that blue form. This blue form,” she says holding up a form that looks exactly the same.

  “But isn’t that the same?”

  “Look, miss, would you hurry it up?” says a man who smells like onions standing behind me.

  “Step out of line,” commands the woman behind the glass partition.

  Just like that, I am bumped out of line, and back to the table with the forms at the back.

  It is almost five before I am finally, officially, registered for unemployment. They say it may be two weeks before I get my first check. I ask the woman behind the glass if this includes pay for the three hours I’ve stood in line. She doesn’t think this is funny and frowns at me.

  When I was fourteen, my mom thought I should audition for Saturday Night Live. She’d said so when I was younger and I’d make her laugh by sticking Pixie Stix up my nose and pretending to be a walrus. She thought I was a natural comedian. Then I went out into the real world and found that lots of people have mothers who think they should be on Saturday Night Live.

  It was the same feeling going into the working world. Discovering that you are not special, even if your mother thinks you are. You are expendable. Your worth is calculated by hourly rates and vacation time. You are not a person. You are no more than a series of numbers. A cell in a spreadsheet. A glint in a beancounter’s eye. Your whole existence fits into a neat series of ones and zeros.

  * * *

  As I’m leaving the unemployment office, I nearly bump into a girl coming in. She’s wearing entirely black, with silver eye shadow and a ring through her nose. Her hair is tied in two blond knots on either side of her head, and her T-shirt has a face, not a smiley and not a frown, either — indifference, and so I peg her as a techie. There’s something about her that looks vaguely familiar, and then it hits me: She used to work at Maximum Office.

  “Maximum Office, right?” I ask her.

  The girl nods. “Yeah, I worked there,” she says. “I was the system administrator before the cocksuckers laid me off last week.” She studies me, then extends her hand. “I’m Missy.”

  “And I’m Jane,” I say.

  “You’re the one who was sleeping with the Midwest Division VP,” Missy blurts.

  I turn bright red. I think everyone in the office knew. It’s why I couldn’t pass a water cooler without hearing hushed whispers and giggling.

  “Look, I’d better get going,” I say.

  “Hey, don’t take offense,” Missy adds quickly, putting up her hands. “I didn’t mean anyth
ing by it.”

  Missy is very small. She is literally half my size. Her feet look like children’s feet.

  “So, where do you live?” Missy asks me, deliberately ignoring my “this conversation is over” vibe. She’s also blocking my way out the door.

  “Lakeview,” I say, trying to avoid giving an actual street address.

  “Me too,” Missy says. “Where?”

  “Uh, near Sheffield’s,” I say, being deliberately vague.

  “Me too!” she says. “What street?”

  It’s impossible now to avoid it. “Kenmore,” I say.

  “Cool,” she says.

  Missy is eyeing the Tiffany charm bracelet on my left arm (a college graduation gift from my maternal grandparents) with interest. I tuck it into my sleeve.

  “One bedroom or…?” she trails off.

  “Two bedrooms,” I say.

  “Got your own washer/dryer?”

  Missy is beginning to sound like a real estate agent.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I say.

  “Hardwood floors? Exposed brick?”

  “Look, I’m renting the apartment, I’m not selling it,” I say.

  “Touchy,” Missy says, holding up her hands.

  I think for sure this conversation is over. But because Missy, like so many techies, is unfazed by deliberate rudeness, she continues. “I’m just asking because I’m looking for a place to live. I’m house-sitting but that gig is up in a couple of weeks.”

  “I’m not looking for a roommate,” I spit, quickly. No use in giving her false hope.

  “Oh,” she says, shrugging. “Well, if you change your mind, here’s where you can reach me.”

  She gives me one of her old Maximum Office business cards. Most of the information is scratched out, except for a handwritten number at the bottom. She’s drawn devil horns on the o in “Office.” I put it in my purse, as if I intend to keep it, when I plan to throw it out at the next available opportunity. Only a mentally deranged person would shop for a roommate at the unemployment office.

  I arrive back in my apartment and immediately take a shower to wash off the stale smell of government work and the recirculated air of lowered expectations.

  I change into a set of clean pajamas and feel like I never left home. I feel like there’s something I ought to be doing, and when I realize that that something is paying the rent because it’s due today, I sigh. I have next to no money in my checking account. I blame the financial advisors on CNN who claim that the only way to get out of credit card debt is to pay for everything with cash. I did that at the beginning of the month (including some extravagances like seven cab rides, a pair of Prada shoes that were on sale, and a pair of cashmere gloves). And now I have no cash to pay my rent. How does that make any sense?

  I’d been spending like crazy (in part because I’m an art major and math and budgets are foreign concepts to me, and in part because I thought I was falling for Mike and wanted him to fall for me, too, and so I bought a new wardrobe of borderline professional, borderline sexy, kittenish outfits for work). Honestly, it never occurred to me that I would be laid off — again. Something about third time being the charm, that while layoffs could happen twice, three times seemed a bit of a stretch, even for a person with my kind of persecution complex.

  Plus, I had insurance: my relationship with Mike. Not that I consciously counted on that, as it was a consensual relationship, but I felt protected. Little did I know that Mike was plotting to discard me like Kleenex.

  * * *

  The next day, I get my last check from the Evil Pink Slip Company, and I deposit it into my bank account and, for a full afternoon, soak in the illusion of being rich. It is a double paycheck (the extent of my meager severance), and it feels like I’ve won the lottery. I go and buy five full bags of groceries with luxury items like olives and salad dressing and brand name cereal that comes in a box. I buy organic vegetables and double-ply toilet paper and quilted paper towels. I feel like skipping down the street and handing out fives.

  Of course, this is willfully ignoring the fact that after paying off my minimum credit card balances for the month, and my utility bills (including my $480 gas bill for the record-breaking freeze in February), I will not quite have enough for the rent. Still, I allow myself to feel a little optimism. My mom always encouraged me to use my imagination. She never dreamed it would pave the way for my huge capacity for denial.

  To: [email protected]

  From: Headhunters Central

  Date: March 4, 2002, 10:30 A.M.

  Subject: RE: Your Resume

  Dear Jane,

  We have received multiple copies of your resume today via email and fax and feel compelled to tell you that changing your middle initial in no way disguises your resume.

  We will contact you should we find anything suitable for your needs. And we do not appreciate you asking, even in jest, if we include escort services in our job placement list.

  Please stop faxing us.

  Sincerely,

  Lucas Cohen

  Headhunters Central

  2

  Like all ill-fated work relationships, Mike and I got together at the company holiday party. The party, normally held in November, was moved up to early September because we were celebrating a good fiscal year. The party was at Blackbird, one of those upscale places that serves a single prawn on a plate of baby greens and calls it an entrée. Everyone was celebrating bonuses. Even I’d gotten an extra $300 in my paycheck that week, and my salary wasn’t usually tied to profits.

  I was sitting at the bar smoking a cigarette, because even if you quit like I had, company functions of any kind are exceptions. Everyone knows this.

  I was watching Dave Nedles from accounting swig down two cranberry martinis in succession, while he tried pathetically to pick up the cute, leggy cocktail waitress. Dave was smacking his lips, puckering them up like a big, wet fish. I hated Dave. He was the sort of guy who took off his wedding ring when he went out to bars. He thought nobody knew this about him. He thought he was sly.

  It was about this time that my boss’s boss, Mike, emerged from the smoke and shadows. Mike, boyishly handsome, was noticed by every woman in the office. The secretaries had fights over which one would take him his mail.

  He said, “You don’t look like you’re having much fun.”

  And I said, “I didn’t think it was possible to have fun at these things.”

  He’d laughed, and leaned in. He had that way of making you feel like every conversation was a shared private joke.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I will because I’ve had four drinks to work up the courage to do it,” he said. “I think you’re incredibly sexy. But I’m sure you have a boyfriend, right? Girls like you always have boyfriends.”

  That was all it took, really. I was that easy to pick up.

  We had drunk sex, blurry, would-be-embarrassing, clumsy sex, the kind you pretend didn’t happen. But he called me two days later and asked me out on a proper date. For the next seven months, we hardly ever separated. He said he loved me. I said I loved him. Then he fired me. That’s the short version.

  I feel like I have single-handedly pushed the feminist movement back thirty years. When a vice president had the hots for a secretary in 1972, she got promoted. In 2002, she gets fired. It’s about that simple. You can’t advance when you’re a liability.

  Mike left four things at my apartment: a toothbrush, a disposable razor, a pair of Halloween boxers, and a Gap T-shirt. This is all that’s left of a seven-month relationship. It’s all the proof that he was ever here at all.

  I lay out his things, one by one, across my living room floor and study them. I smoke several cigarettes in succession, stubbing out the last one into one of the jack-o’-lanterns on his boxers.

  A toothbrush. A razor. A pair of boxers. A shirt.

  If I can figure out why he tired of these things, then maybe I’ll figure out why he tired of me.

 
He used to call me a Live Wire. He used to say I was exciting, thrilling, sexy. He used to not let me even get into my apartment before he had his hands up my skirt. He couldn’t get enough of me. He’d call me every night, insist on seeing me, drink me up with his eyes.

  Now, I’m just one more thing that’s disposable. Like his toothbrush or razor.

  Part of me hopes he’ll call me for them. But I know better. He’s left things here he’s not attached to. He’s left things here he’s willing to lose. It’s like he planned a quick escape from the beginning.

  I realize that it’s over, and yet, I still haven’t stopped expecting him to call.

  “You’re better off without him,” Steph assures me on the phone.

  “I don’t feel better off,” I say.

  “For one thing, he’s got a funny walk.”

  “He does not,” I say.

  “He does. He sort of walks like a duck.”

  “He does not walk like a duck.”

  “Jane, you’re just in that ‘he’s perfect because I can’t have him’ stage. Trust me, he walks like a duck.”

  “I liked the way he walks,” I say.

  “In three more months it would’ve driven you crazy. You’d see him walking down the street, and you’d be thinking to yourself ‘why am I with a guy who walks like a duck?’ ”

  “I’m not that superficial,” I say.

  “It’s not being superficial, it’s being genetically practical. Do you want your kids to walk like ducks?”