Forget About It Read online

  I didn’t know if I should say something to Travis because I didn’t want to come off as a complainer, but it was pretty awful.

  “Excited for your first—?” He stopped and sniffed. “Do you smell something?” he whispered.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Yes, I just wasn’t sure if that was part of the shabu-shabu charm, so I didn’t want to say anything.”

  We both looked around and under the table and in the same instant zeroed in on the culprit. Our tablemate. A man, late forties with his wife and twelve-year-old son. It had to be him. His socks looked filthy, and there was a hole in the left one with his big toe peeking out.

  “Hole-in-one, twelve o’clock,” Travis said, speaking in code.

  “Roger that,” I said. And try as I might have, I couldn’t help but focus on that one renegade toe. “Kind of gross.”

  “I’ll say. It’s like he wore the same pair for a week just for the occasion.”

  “Well, let’s just try not to focus on it,” I said, trying to be upbeat and optimistic even though my eyes were practically watering.

  “Sounds good,” Travis said and snuck one last peek at the table. The son was flicking his retainer in and out of his mouth.

  “So what’s good here?” I asked.

  “Not that,” Travis said, with a glance at the kid. “On the menu? Meat. And meat.”

  “With a side of meat?”

  “There’s not a lot of variation on the menu—it’s pretty much just how much of it you want to have.”

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  “This is too much effort,” said Mrs. Stench. “If I’m going to a restaurant I want them to cook it for me.” Travis and I shared a smile.

  The waiter came over and took our order. The smell wasn’t dissipating like we’d hoped. I took a sip of water and could swear it tasted like feet.

  I didn’t see it happen, but I definitely heard it—a plunk. And then a scream. The boy had flicked his retainer out of his mouth and into the hot pot in the center of our table. Then not thinking, he reached in to get it out and burned his hand. Then the mother started yelling at the kid for playing with his retainer, which she’d told him not to do “a thousand times,” and the boy was crying, and the father was yelling that he just wanted to have “one nice God-damned family dinner once in my life.”

  The whole place was in an uproar. The stink, the retainer, and the mayhem were too much to bear. Travis grabbed my hand and helped me up. We put our shoes back on and ducked out of the restaurant.

  “If you think I have good taste in restaurants,” he said, “wait till I pick our first movie.”

  It may have been the worst restaurant ever, but the promise of another date made it entirely worth it. “Our first movie.” I liked the sound of that. We ended up on the corner of St. Marks and Avenue A, eating pizza and watching angsty, pseudo-punk rock kids beg for change and hiss at the people who didn’t oblige.

  “This is the real deal,” I said as I took a dainty bite of my pizza.

  “Who would have thought she’d prefer a meal totaling a whopping five dollars and twenty-three cents?” he asked and then stopped. “Don’t look down,” he said suddenly, staring at my chest.

  Normally, any flattery implicit in a man’s staring at a woman’s chest is overridden by her anger at being reduced to a pair of boobs. But in this case, he was so obvious—and his gaze expressed so much alarm—it caught me off guard. Naturally, I looked down.

  “Perfect,” I said, now comprehending what he’d regarded with such dread. My “dainty” bite had resulted in a stripe of tomato sauce not much shorter than my forearm, in a neat diagonal across my shirt between my breasts.

  “If anybody messes with us later, just tell him it’s blood from the last guy who messed with us,” Travis said.

  I gritted my teeth and growled, but it couldn’t completely disguise my smile.

  * * * * *

  When I walked into the boardroom at 12:59 p.m. the next day, everybody was already there. Everyone except Lydia. I’d timed it to reduce the odds that someone would send me hunting for her. The marketing vice president and president of VibraLens were seated next to Mr. Billingsly, who looked confused when I walked in alone.

  “Where is Lydia?” he said quietly to me, with just a hint of concern.

  “Not sure,” I said, sharing the concern, putting my arm around it as if to say, I’m with you, brother—what the hell?

  “I sent her an e-mail, notifying her of the time change,” I whispered.

  “Well, where’s her material? Do we have that? Is Darryl around?” I smiled and pointed to the easel to reassure him, then shrugged about art director Darryl, knowing full well he hadn’t been invited to the party. It didn’t matter. Experience taught me Lydia rarely invited her art director on any given assignment to present, perhaps fearing to share credit even with the person who’d made her words come alive on the page or screen. We’d done boards and electronic mock-ups and I’d made sure everything was ready. Everything. Even if she wasn’t.

  Two other teams were on the pitch—a touch of creative excess Mr. B. always demanded from us for a new account and a strategy that sometimes had the unfortunate side effect of overwhelming the clients and paralyzing their decision making. In this meeting, he was juggling the need to play host with the desperation about Lydia’s absence, sending an assistant searching, to no avail.

  Within forty minutes, both teams had pitched their ideas, none of which were blowing away the VibraLens suits. I had a little rule of thumb: If anyone’s first words were “That’s interesting,” you were dead. And Splash had produced a load of “interesting” material. Mr. Billingsly looked in my direction.

  “Okay then. Next, we have Lydia Bedford, who I know has come up with some great ideas. She’s unfortunately been held up, so . . .” He looked at me, the idea not yet occurring to him—so I gave it a little shove into his line of sight.

  “I can do the honors, Mr. Billingsly.” I looked at him and smiled reassuringly. He announced me with a strained laugh, then muttered something under his breath which I wasn’t positive I heard right. It sounded like, “Don’t fuck it up,” but I’m sure that was just my ears talking. I just smiled again at him and walked to the head of the room.

  “Thank you, sir. I am Jordan Landau. Lydia was very excited about these mock-ups and I hope you will be too. The first concept plays to a demographic that came up earlier, a missed opportunity I think someone said—beyond the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old vanity set. We’re in a lawmaking chamber—maybe the floor of the Senate. Image is everything for these power brokers.” I pulled up her first storyboard to show her lame-ass idea. It was a Senate hearing with one woman staring dead ahead with her impossibly bright blue eyes. “So, in this world, and in our target consumer’s world, ‘The Eyes Have It.’”

  I looked around at the execs and saw that they probably thought what I’d thought. It was cute . . . but that was it. No reaction at all—they just seemed to be waiting for the next one. “Second, she evokes the powerful words of a great American leader but in a way that’s not overly serious.” I revealed the image—a table of dozens of multiethnic faces, eyes blazing with colored contacts that suggested a world in which every person had been forced to hand over his or her eyes, one person to the left. “‘Eyes Are the Prize.’” The room was deadly silent. But only for a moment.

  “Interesting,” the marketing VP finally said.

  Mr. Billingsly shifted in his seat. The VibraLens camp looked neither happy nor unhappy, the worst-case reaction to a creative presentation. Indifferent. I wondered if they were aware of how awkward and inappropriate that idea was. I hoped so. And now was my chance. I steeled myself.

  “If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to continue with just a few very recent additions to our thinking on this . . . some things that were inspired by some experiences in my own life.” I smiled to gauge the reaction, and Mr. Billingsly’s eyes had widened to a point where I half expected them to fall
out for lack of containment. Amazing how one eyelid extension could speak such volumes.

  “First, the colored lens really holds a promise: that without much trouble, you present a new face to the world—and at last you’re in control of that face. What did you say, Diane?” I pointed at the advertising manager. “That it makes your eyes a fashion accessory? That’s at the heart of this concept.” I revealed my first board. “VibraLens—Change how the world sees you.”

  Then I moved to the second. “A central part of your strategy is about breaking out of the commodity world of the contact and restoring the ‘cool cachet’ of the colored lens. So this concept builds not on how you look wearing VibraLens colored lenses but on how they change your outlook.” I unveiled the second board, which Deb had done for me, thinking she was working on a crash concept for Lydia. It was a flowing image that changed from a blurry black-and-white photo to wildly colorful, crystal-clear Impressionist landscape. “See the world differently.”

  They seemed mildly interested. Then Lydia burst into the room.

  “Hi!” she screeched. “The meeting was moved?”

  Nine heads, four of them on the necks of clients, turned to see her. Billingsly tried to cover with a smile and an odd khhghg sound in his throat. Calmly, I replied, “I sent you an e-mail Monday about the change and then one again this morning.”

  She was wound tighter than a boa constrictor’s grip on a rat. “But I never check my e-mail. You’ve known that for two years, Jordan.” She was now screaming. Everyone in the room was getting uncomfortable. Except me. I was loving it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, with a saccharine wide-eyed innocence. “I didn’t remember. I assumed you’d read it. I’m so sorry.” I was cool as a cucumber. Lydia looked like she was going to implode.

  “Well, it’s not a problem, we’re just about through, so find a seat and we’ll be back to it,” Mr. Billingsly said, and then got in his characteristic late hit. “But I believe I saw the notice—so let’s continue.” Ha! Take that, snake woman! But then Mr. Billingsly said something that sounded like sweet, sweet music. “Jordan, please go on.”

  I shook off the Lydia intrusion and continued. “Right. Keeping with the same theme, I thought, we show a woman one way, possibly corporate, stuffy, buttoned up . . . and then we see the rock-star version of her. Not a total one-eighty and not ridiculous, but a definite change, highlighting her bright eyes. She walks in one way, dressed appropriately, and walks out completely different—and happier for it. ‘VibraLens . . . Reinvent yourself!’”

  Lydia looked like she was about to have a conniption.

  “That’s not my idea!” Lydia said loud enough for everyone to hear, straining mightily with a cracking smile to remain civil but utterly failing. She looked like she was in the early stage of a total breakdown. And as she melted, the VP of marketing for VibraLens clapped his hands together.

  “Well, it should be,” Mr. Billingsly said. “It’s great!”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I love it! Reinvent yourself!” chimed the VibraLens guy. “Jordan . . . ”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s interesting. No, it’s wonderful. It’s just the kind of thing we need. Fun, hip. I even like the rock-star thing. Any others?” He smiled and leaned forward.

  “Research told us that much of the resistance to your product among your target demographics is that colored lenses tend to be so noticeable. With ColorSense, you’re toning them down, making them more like real eye colors, and avoiding the stigma of ‘pretending.’ Some places, they don’t mind people pretending—people make a living at it. But we’re casting our nets wider. For everyone who ever dreamed of altering eye color with contacts.” I flipped to my last board. A woman looks seductively into the camera. “So subtle—no one else can see through them.”

  The room applauded. Mr. Billingsly smiled and acted as though he’d known it all along. The truth about Jordan . . .

  “Jordan has always been our diamond in the rough. I think she’s finally starting to sparkle.” Was he serious? I went from “leave it in the gutter” to a diamond in the rough just like that.

  Meanwhile, Lydia was mortified—which tickled me to no end. When everybody got up to leave, Mr. Billingsly put his arm around me with an off-balance hug (he had that post-positive-creative-meeting euphoria) and said, “How about this one, huh? Huh? Jordan, stop by my office this afternoon. I think it’s time we start talking about your future here.”

  “Will do. Thank you!” I said, then mumbled but loudly: “Because I sure can’t remember much of my past.” And he actually laughed, long and hard, at my line. I was beginning to see and be seen differently.

  17.

  curious jordan

  Dirk had called again. After experiencing a heaping helping of the new, indifferent, and significantly less slavish Jordan, he’d called again with a swagger in his voice and I’m sure a glimmer in his eye. I couldn’t be positive, though, since the initial contact had been a message on the phone (so delicious hearing him say, “Dirk? Remember? Dirk?”). He wanted to see me, and I believe that bears out the truest lesson about romance—at least when one of the parties is a brick head: Desire is directly proportional to disinterest. If you want him to come, tell him to go away.

  But I had a mission, as I’ve earlier revealed. The secret part of my mission was that I was only wearing a mask of forgetfulness. The not-so-secret part of my mission was shoving aside anyone who had stood in my way before with an innocent shrug and forlorn smile. Fake ignorance was bliss.

  So I agreed to get together for what I’m sure he imagined would become a torrid sexual get-reacquainted session. (“Unbelievable, dude!” he’d say. “It was like fucking Jordan and a total stranger all at once!”) I had other plans. One last hurrah before I’d say good-bye for good. I’d agreed to meet him at Houston’s, one of his firm’s favorite restaurant bars. It wasn’t high on ambience, but they had a great artichoke dip that I could always get into. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do to humiliate Dirk, but I figured he would give me plenty of opportunities to figure it out.

  I got there about ten minutes late. Prior to that moment I was always on time or early for him. Punctuality was always a big factor in my life, and I’d spent the better part of my relationship with Dirk waiting for him to show up somewhere. Thinking about being late made me remember Lydia’s inspired mangling of the Gandhi lateness-violence theory, and I laughed as I walked in. I’d incorrectly assumed he’d have a table for us, but he was seated at the bar, surrounded by people, his eyes glued to the television.

  I called his name a couple times to no avail—then resorted to snapping my fingers in his face.

  “Hey, you,” he said, mouth full of some indeterminate snack food, fumbled, no doubt, through handfuls of fingers on the way into his trap.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said, smiling pleasantly to remind him I’d basically forgotten who he was. Dirk had already gone through one beer and ordered a second. His eyes were on me now, but the football game was a powerful temptress, and he succumbed over and over again to the urge to cast a look in her direction. He’d earnestly nod at me, say “yeah!” enthusiastically about nothing at all, stroke my forearm awkwardly—but you’d think the TV was about to attack him any moment, the way he kept eyeing it. Watching Dirk watch TV in a bar had definitely lost its appeal.

  “Hi, there,” I said again, more forcibly. He turned in his seat to face me.

  “Remember anything yet?”

  “Nope. Nothing,” I said, but before I got through the “ing” in nothing, he’d already turned to watch the game again. “Although getting ignored in favor of a football game seems like something I’d remember. Or maybe I’m blocking it out on purpose.”

  “I was just watching that one play.”

  “So this isn’t a usual thing with us?” I asked, counting up in my head the dozens of games I’d suffered through—not to mention how many times his team lost, which would result in an im
mediate depression and no victory sex. The converse being, his team would win and we’d have crazy energetic sex that made me wonder if he wasn’t secretly picturing Derek Jeter or Tom Brady.

  “Course not, baby,” he said as he casually popped another nut in his mouth. Liar. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Really? What’s that?”

  “Well, it’s something you and I had been talking about a lot before you caught amnesia.”

  Caught amnesia? Okay. You could call it that. I was pretty curious about what he was getting at. Considering we rarely talked about anything anymore, let alone talked a lot about something. “What is it?” I asked, all kinds of curious.

  He leaned toward me, and it was all I could do to keep from recoiling. And then he looked side to side and got that mischievous half-mouth smile on his face. The one that had struck me as such an adorable, impish little grin before and that now only made me want to strike him.

  “Women.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Other women,” he said. I was floored. Was he actually going to fess up to cheating on me? That I hadn’t prepared myself for. It would be totally out of character—and why now, since he didn’t think I had any recollection of catching him . . . Could he have developed a conscience? Was he sorry?

  “What other women?” I asked.

  “You were getting bi-curious,” he answered.

  Oh. No. He. Didn’t.

  “Pardon?” I coughed. “Did you just say ‘bi-curious’?”

  “Yeah. Believe me, I was as surprised as you are probably—but you were serious.”

  I nearly did a spit take. “You don’t say.”

  “I do. Say. You had mentioned that things were great with us, but it was, like, the level of crazy that we were having was making you, like, hungry for even more. Like, you were thinking, whatever, like a three-way.”