Jackie Rose - Slim Chance

“Thanks.” An invisible cloud of Honeysuckle Garden all but consumed me.

The subway ride home was a long one. As the train lurched forward, my stomach bubbled and my mind raced, playing over the day’s events. Sure, my private life had been dragged kicking and screaming through the office like some kind of circus sideshow, but aside from that, I felt quite good. And the rest of the day had passed pleasantly enough.

Most days at work, I tend to keep to myself more or less, especially since there are really only a handful of people there I actually like. All in all, I think I’ve managed to maintain just the right combination of professional courtesy, friendly water-cooler approachability and social aloofness. That way, after I’m promoted, the respect I’ll need will already be in place. Without that, things can get pretty messy—I heard of one girl down in Accounts who, after a promotion, ended up having to fire her daughter’s godmother, a woman she’d worked side by side with for years. Eventually, she became so reviled by the underlings that she was forced to quit, and ended up playing the fiddle in the subway for spare change.

But today, anonymity shattered, I decided to make a show of it. At the coffee cart, I let Andrea, a bitter marketing drone who works in Fragrances, grab my hand to get a better look at The Ring. On cue, it sparkled brilliantly under the fluorescent lights. Inspired by her courage, two other girls skulking nearby came in for a peek.

“That’s at least a carat and a half, you know,” Andrea said. “I thought your boyfriend was a teacher.” The girls behind her laughed. It was well known that Andrea had been expecting Phil, her boyfriend of far too many years, to propose during Labor Day weekend on their romantic Caribbean cruise. But Phil, an actuary, had booked during hurricane season to save a few bucks. He ended up spending the rainy days in their cabin with his laptop, while Andrea played bingo and shopped for gold-plated chain by the foot.

“Oh, he is a teacher,” I replied coyly. “He teaches gifted children at a private school on the Upper East Side. He went there himself, actually.”

“Really? Must pay well,” she said, releasing my hand and reaching for a Sweet’n Low.

“Not really,” I told her, leaving her to wonder about Bruce’s mysterious and wealthy family.

So I’d managed to keep it together quite nicely, apart from that little thing in the bathroom. But Bruce was a pretty good sport about it. He always is when it comes to my dramatics. After I came out of the bathroom, there he was, surrounded by five or six women hanging on his every word, and looking remarkably pleased for a guy whose girlfriend had vomited at the thought of marrying him.

“…I wanted it to be old-fashioned and romantic, a real public declaration of my love, you know?” I heard him saying as I walked up behind him. His fan club quickly scattered at the sight of me and my puffy eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stifling a laugh.

“Yeah,” I sniffed, and laughed myself.

“You know, if I didn’t think you could handle this, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“You mean ask me to marry you?”

“No, stupid, I mean ask you here at work!”

“Oh,” I replied, feeling a bit foolish. Loud shushing sounds came from behind the bathroom door, but Bruce didn’t seem to notice. “Of course I can handle it. I guess I just never expected my professional life and my personal life to collide in exactly this way.”

“I just wanted it to be something you’d remember forever. Like a story we’ll tell our grandkids, you know?”

“Well, good job, then. But I’m pretty sure I would have remembered it no matter what, even if we were, um, I don’t know…walking in the park or something,” I said, glaring at the crowd of women pretending to be fixing a photocopy machine nearby.

Bruce just laughed and hugged me. His shirt smelled good, and I buried my face deeper.

“But we never go for walks in the park, Evie. If I’d asked you to go for a walk in the park, you wouldn’t have wanted to.” True. Walks in the park are for old ladies and people without cable.

“You needed this, Evie. We needed this. Shake things up a bit, you know?” He held my tear-stained cheeks between his hands and kissed me. Not a long kiss, but it was more than just a peck. And then he looked at me with a face that, in an instant, said, “You silly, silly thing. Don’t you know that I’ll take care of you? And whatever problems we may have, we’ll work them out. These people, this job, the rest of world, none of it matters. What matters is us, so let’s forget all this crap and get on with it!”

Yes, let’s get on with it. Bruce has a wonderful way of forgiving me no matter what; it’s really one of the things I love most about him. So, once again, even though I’d behaved like a complete idiot, he managed to make me believe I was a completely normal person, and not the freak I truly was.

He kissed me again. Whether it was all the crying or the barfing or the seven cups of coffee or the kiss, I felt a little wobbly. I took it to be the kiss—even though it had been a long time since Bruce made me weak in the knees. He looked into my eyes and smiled. It was pretty obvious that he was pleased with himself. I guess he deserved to be.

We’d talked about getting married before. You don’t date a guy for six years and not talk about it. But I really, truly didn’t expect it to happen any time soon. For us, or for me, rather, it was more of an abstract idea, like “Of course we’ll get married one day. Then we’ll move out to the suburbs and buy our kid a pony.” But this time it was for real. And the more I thought about it on the ride home, the more I saw that it was a great thing. And on top of it all, for what might have been the first time in his life, Bruce had done something completely on his own. Made a real decision, without consulting me, his mother or anybody. He deserved to feel good. And so did I. Something was finally happening in my life, something real. Like I’d been asleep for years, content to play the woman in the gray flannel suit, only now the alarm clock was ringing.

The train was pretty crowded, and I hadn’t noticed till then but the man sitting on my right was leaning up against me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was clutching a ratty pink Barbie backpack tied up with brown cord. His left knee bounced up and down frenetically as he tapped his heel against the floor. On one foot, he wore a filthy Reebok cross-trainer smeared with what was probably not rust-colored paint. On the other foot, a purple toe with a black nail stuck out of a dirty sock. Disgusting. I’m so sick of this shit. His bulging eyes darted from my hand to my chest then back down to my hand. My Ring! He was staring at my Ring!

Normally, in situations like these, which occur not altogether infrequently on the A Train, I get up and move. But today, the sight of this greasy interloper inspired within me the courage to take a stand for all peace-loving female commuters everywhere.

I looked directly at him and cleared my throat. Bruce would have absolutely killed me. The guy looked up suddenly and when his eyes met mine, he let out a shriek so loud that the force of his very bad breath blew my bangs up off my forehead (In Style, April: “The New-Fashioned Fringe: Bangs Are Back!”). With a gasp, I jumped back onto the lady beside me. But she was wearing a Walkman and I guess she hadn’t heard him yell, so she freaked out and reflexively pushed me forward into the group of stunned passengers. I reached out wildly for the man standing in front of me wearing a black trench coat (as it turns out, a very sensible color for a trench coat). But he just deflected me and used the opportunity to slide into my seat. I landed on my hands and knees on the floor of the car. The crazy guy, whimpering a little, just rocked back and forth, staring at someone else’s hands.