Wendy Markham - Slightly Settled

“Who’s that guy? He’s cute!” Brenda says, nudging me and pointing at someone I’ve never seen before. He’s got blond hair, which is usually not my type. Not Brenda’s type, either, but look at her gaping.

“You’re married, Bren. Remember?”

She shrugs. “I’m not dead. I can look. And you should look. Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You should start mingling.”

“Maybe I will,” I say again, but I’m having a good time just hanging by the bar with my friends.

Then again, it’s getting a little warm in here. The music seems to be abnormally loud, and I’m thinking I should switch to a spritzer after I finish this drink. The insert the pharmacy gave me with my happy pills says that I’m not supposed to overindulge in liquor.

I spot a very familiar face approaching as Brenda and I pose for a picture Latisha is about to take with my camera.

Yes, I brought my camera. Is that a Don’t? It’s not on the list, but it probably isn’t considered a Do. Especially when Latisha and I keep cracking ourselves up pretending to be private detectives furtively taking photos of Alec, a married account executive who looks a little too cozy at the bar with Mercedes, the buxom and boozy sixth-floor receptionist. Which is a borderline violation of She magazine’s Don’t Gossip rule.

The familiar face stops in front of me, and its mouth says, “Hey, how’s it going, Chief?”

“Hi, Mike!” Am I slurring? “Here, get in the picture with us!”

“How about if I take it?” he offers, setting down his bottled Molson Ice and taking the camera from Latisha. She gets into the picture with me and Brenda and we all pose with our arms around each other, flashing big, cheesy smiles.

God only knows where Yvonne is. Last I knew, she was heading outside for a smoke. I decide I’ll join her just as soon as I’ve had a courteous—and hopefully sober-sounding—conversation with my boss.

“Hey, Mike, great tie,” I say, admiring the green silk background imprinted with teeny-tiny Santa Claus faces.

“You like it? Thanks.”

I do like it. Somehow, what’s grotesque overkill on Merry seems pleasantly festive on anybody else.

“Ooh, anybody want to Slide?” Brenda squeals as a familiar refrain of “boogie woogie woogies” erupts from the DJ booth.

Mike and I pass. I’d do it, but I’m afraid my boobs would pop out of my dress every time I did the leaning-over step. Pleased with my foresight, I stand sedately with my boss and watch Brenda and Latisha join the line dance.

“Dianne said if she ever saw me doing the Electric Slide, she’d break up with me,” Mike confides.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Well, then, she’s kidding.”

“She’s not,” he says. “She thinks it’s a ridiculous dance.”

I glance at the ranks of office workers gliding four steps back, four steps forward in perfect sync—except for Merry, who keeps going the wrong way and crashing into people.

Okay, it might be a ridiculous dance, but it’s fun. Suddenly I feel sorry for Mike, banned from the Slide and God only knows what else.

“You know, Dianne’s not here,” I point out. “You should try the Slide.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. She’d never find out.”

He looks around the room nervously, even skyward, as though expecting to spot Dianne in a trenchcoat and dark glasses astride one of the fake shooting stars.

I find myself thinking of Alec the married account exec, flirting madly with Mercedes. And even Brenda, wearing the rock that consumed a few months’ worth of Paulie’s NYPD salary, yet blatantly checking out other guys. And Buckley, dragging his heels about moving in with Sonja.

Of course, in the back of my mind there’s always Will, who cheated on me with Esme Spencer, who played Dot to his George in a summer-stock production of Sunday in the Park with George.

Maybe it’s good that I’m single. Maybe I don’t want to meet someone after all. At least, not for a while.

I look at Mike, who’s wistfully watching the dance floor.

“So, are you allowed to Macarena?” I can’t resist asking, expecting a big laugh and maybe even applause.

He fails to see the hilarity. In fact, he takes the question seriously and actually looks uncertain. “She never mentioned that, but…”

You know, maybe it’s the martinis again, but I’m starting to really dislike that Dianne. She seems so sweet on the phone, but as a girlfriend, she’s a little Nazi-ish, don’t you think?

“I need a cigarette,” I announce to Mike. “And you need a new beer. That one’s empty.”

“Okay,” he says obediently, and once again I’m saddened. Poor, poor Mike. He may be the boss in the office, but clearly his power stops there.

I head for the door and gratefully indulge my craving for menthol out on the litter-strewn sidewalk with a bunch of other banished addicts.

We smokers are an eclectic bunch. There are stressed-out upper-management types and administrative assistants who wear sneakers with their stockings on weekday subway commutes; fresh-out-of-Ivy-League assistant media buyers and well-past-retirement-age grandmotherly career secretaries who seem reassuringly immune to lung cancer.

We puff away and talk about the good old days when you could actually smoke in a bar in New York. One old-timer (not Yvonne, but she might as well be, given the overall blowsy broad persona, complete with raspy voice and borough accent) waxes nostalgic about smoking at her desk.

Then an icy wind gusting off the East River has us hastily stubbing our half-burned butts and scuttling back inside.

I head directly to the bar. Mostly because I don’t see any of my friends in the crowd, and the bar is always a safe place to park oneself. But also because I need another drink.

I order yet another blood-orange martini and try to sip it slowly as I watch everyone on the dance floor bopping around to “Love Shack.” I spot Latisha out there more or less dirty dancing with Myron the mail-room guy, who’s been after her since before she dumped her loser boyfriend Anton last summer. She’d better not screw things up with Derek, her new boyfriend, a single dad who shares her passion for the New York Yankees…and, according to Latisha, her passion for—well, for passion.

I wonder morosely if I’ll ever experience passion again. God forbid my sleazy romp between the StarWars sheets was my sexual swan song, but I can’t seem to conjure up any situation in which I’ll be having sex any time soon. I’ve sworn off one-night stands, so unless somebody sweeps me off my feet…“Hi.”

I turn around to see a strange guy standing beside me. Not Jeff S-n strange; just strange as in I’ve never seen him before in my life.

I look over both shoulders. Huh. Apparently, he was talking to me.

“Hi,” I counter, cautiously.

“I’m Jack.”

“I’m Tracey.”

And they lived happily ever after.

Yeah, right. I wish.

This guy is so cute that I find myself wondering why he’s come over to me, having momentarily forgotten that I, too, am now cute.

“Do you work at Blaire Barnett?” Jack asks.

Well, duh. Everybody in the room works at Blaire Barnett.

“No,” I find myself saying, “I’m a nurse at Bellevue. Mental ward.”

“You are?”

I laugh at the befuddled expression in his big brown eyes. “No. I’m just being a wise-ass.”

And probably sabotaging my chances of any kind of future relationship with this guy, but I can’t seem to help myself.

“Actually, I work at Blaire Barnett,” I confess, and sip my drink. This one is stronger than the last. Much stronger. So strong I taste no blood orange; I swear it’s all vodka.