Laura Caldwell - The Night I got Lucky

“Of course.” I kissed him.

“I love you, Treetop.”

“You too, Marlowe.”

A woman dressed in a stylish tuxedo jacket appeared at our side. “We can seat you now. Sorry for the wait.”

“Ready?” Chris asked me. He stood up and held out his hand.

I let the questions fall away then. I reached out and placed my hand in his.

T he next day, I left the office around 4:00 p.m. I walked the crowded streets of Michigan Avenue and made my way up the steps of the Art Institute. At the top, I stopped for my traditional pat of the stone lion on the left.

I’d spent most of the last eight hours trying to pretend that my new job was exactly the way it had always been-everyone at work seemed to think so-but it was hard to keep up the facade when I had no idea what I was doing. Much to my chagrin, I found that budgeting was a big part of my new position as vice president. For each account I oversaw, I had to design the budget. When I was a mere account supervisor, I used to toss my hair and complain that I simply didn’t have enough money, but now that I was making decisions on how much to charge a client (and therefore how much money we had to work with), I realized how tricky it was. If you decided a client needed too large a budget, they might balk and take their business elsewhere, yet if you reduced it, you might not have enough money to execute the campaign properly. By the time 4:00 rolled around, my head was aching and my eyes were exhausted from crunching numbers.

Inside the Institute, I flashed my annual pass at the ticket taker and wandered the cool marble hallways. I gazed at the Etruscan pitchers made of bronze and the metal armor that seemed too tiny to hold a knight. I stared at the Cassatt and strolled through a Manet exhibition.

Meandering through the Art Institute was an old trick of mine, something I’d discovered when I first started working. I loved the unhurried reverence of the place. And by taking in the beauty and the antiquity, it reminded me how small my purported troubles were, how insignificant. I was able to laugh (or at least chuckle grudgingly) at my so-called problems and forget what ailed me.

But it wasn’t working today. There was no way to overlook what had happened-the massive shift in all facets of my life that had occurred with no transition, no official proclamations and very little recognition of the change by anyone. It was almost like being a car accident victim, someone who had glanced down to switch the dashboard radio station and looked back up to find a tractor-trailer stalled in their path. Life can change in an instant-we all know that-but in my case, I seemed to be the only one to know the change had happened.

Finally, staring at a miniature portrait of a woman with ruby-red lips, I decided to just get on with it. Embrace the new life, the new job.

And so I slipped my silver cell phone from my purse and called Evan, still at his desk, and asked him if he’d discuss budgeting with me over a cup of coffee. I couldn’t talk to him in the office, for fear that someone would overhear us and I’d look ill-suited for the job.

“No coffee,” Evan said. “I need a beer. Sounds like you do, too.”

“Fine. Wrightwood Tap, I presume.”

“Baby, I love how you know me.” It wasn’t hard to guess that Evan would want to go to Wrightwood Tap, a DePaul University hangout. Evan had attended DePaul for his undergrad degree, and the Tap was still his favorite watering hole. It probably didn’t hurt that the place was always full of female coeds, sipping beers and hiking up their very low-waisted jeans.

At five o’clock, I met him at the bar, and we found a tall open table by the front windows. The place had a center rectangular bar, scarred wood floors and laminated menus boasting the usual bar fare.

We ordered beers-a Corona for me, Old Style for Evan. Despite being a VP and living in a slick, north side condo, Evan was still very south side in his beer tastes. “It’s in the genes,” he always said. Personally, I felt that Evan was holding tight to something that would make him similar, in some small way, to his father. Tommy O’Reilly, Evan’s dad, was a career plumber who wanted his only son to learn the business and eventually take it over. Instead, Evan got a scholarship to DePaul and went into PR. He endured constant barbs from his father about how he must be a “fairy” to do such a job, but Evan still went back to the south side on Sundays to watch football or baseball with his dad. And he still drank Old Style.

“So what’s happening, hot stuff?” Evan asked as our beers were delivered.

“It’s the budgeting. I don’t know how to do it. I mean, math has never been my forte, and now I’m crunching numbers all the time. I never know if the numbers I’m throwing out there are legit or if they’re totally off. And how do you decide on an initial figure? It’s so random. And-”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. It’s no big deal. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“It is a big deal.”

“Why?”

“Hello? Because I’ll get fired if I can’t do this job correctly.”

“So, you’re afraid someone will do to you what you did to Alexa?”

I silently fiddled with the label of my beer bottle. I’d been trying not to think about Alexa all day. I’d avoided her now empty cubicle. I’d sent her file back to HR. But I couldn’t stop seeing her shocked face when I’d told her, and I couldn’t stop hearing the sound of those lyrically vindictive Spanish words.

“Thanks for the reminder,” I said at last.

Evan shrugged innocently.

“All right, yes,” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll get fired or demoted or whatever. You know how hard I worked to get here, Ev.”

“Sure, I do, but no one’s going to fire you.” He reached across the table and patted my hand. Actually, it was more than a pat. It was something like a rub. His hand was very warm.

I felt a crazy desire to grasp his hand, but instead, I pulled away and made a show of glancing at the menu. “C’mon, Roslyn will demote me or fire me in a heartbeat if I don’t pull my weight.”

“No, she won’t.”

“What do you mean? Remember Chad from two years ago? She fired him after he’d made VP. And she just okayed me to fire Alexa, so she obviously doesn’t have a problem with axing people.”

“Yeah, but that was Chad and Alexa. She’d never fire you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Evan’s mint-green eyes squinted for a second, as if searching for something in a bright room in his mind. “She just wouldn’t. You’re supposed to be a VP. So it doesn’t matter what you do.”

I was reminded of Chris last night, when I raised the topic of why we were suddenly getting along so well, telling me it didn’t matter. I got a flash of that green frog on my nightstand.

“Look, Ev, just help me out, okay? Tell me how to do this.” I pulled a manila envelope from my bag, the one holding Odette’s account, which was up for rebudgeting. I wanted to be able to do so much for her, but I knew she had limited funds to pay us.

“Anything for you.” Evan dragged his stool around so we sat side by side. Our arms touched as he pulled Odette’s file from the envelope.

“Okay,” he said, holding out the old budget. As he did this, he put his other hand very lightly on the side of my thigh. It seemed an innocent enough gesture, but I could feel the warmth of his hand on my leg, and for a moment, my Everlasting Crush turned on with full force.

Evan began talking about the different figures on the page, about the results we’d gotten for Odette thus far and what that meant in terms of revising her budget. I tried to focus, but the numbers swam. His hand now felt heavy and hot. I had a brief flash of longing for that hand to move higher.