Emmaline Waters, This Is Your Life Read online

  The footsteps stop. I don’t dare look up.

  “Emmaline Waters?”

  “Um, yeah,” I mumble, folding in on myself.

  A man’s hand reaches into my peripheral vision. “Mitch Heywood. Good to meet you.”

  I give a limp, clammy shake, my gaze glued to his belt, a sturdy woven number partly obscured by a potbelly hangover. “Hi.”

  His hand twirls excitedly through the air, as if he’s whipping up a cyclone (though, apparently, he’s only summoning a colleague to join us). Another set of footsteps clip-clops our way. I shift my focus sideways eight inches, to where someone—a woman, judging by the polka-dotted blouse and pin-tucked skirt—has assumed a Wonder Woman stance. “Oh my God, this is her?” she asks.

  My stomach boils with nausea. I have been at the newspaper no more than ninety minutes, and already tales of my ineptitude are legendary?

  Mr. Heywood reaches for my critique, and I make a command decision: I will look him in the eyes while he crushes me. “Honestly, I don’t know where to begin,” he says.

  My gaze crawls up his maroon-and-gray-striped shirt, skips over his scruffy chin, and comes to rest on the puffy bags under his eyes.

  The woman, who hasn’t bothered introducing herself (probably because we’ll be in each other’s rearview mirrors soon enough), pipes up with: “We’ve hired three food critics in the last year”—they have?—“and we’ve never seen anything like this before.” She stabs a purple-polished fingernail at my critique, so it’s clear what—or whom—she’s maligning.

  “How on earth did you come up with this?” Mr. Heywood asks, leaning conspiratorially close to Wonder Woman. They share an inside glance that says: Can you believe the amateur bullshit this flake tried to pass off as journalism?

  Wonder Woman takes my critique and starts reading it aloud, her voice like dull razor blades on my eardrums. My hearing goes in and out, catching only snatches of the performance, which unfolds between bouts of wild laughter from both Wonder Woman and Mr. Heywood.

  I want to die.

  “Listen, uh, this was all very last minute,” I say, unsure which version of “the dog ate my homework” to pull out. “I should’ve worn something different—I know I should have—because my dress is too tight, and I can barely breathe! And that stopwatch! It was like a bomb ticking down!” I puff my cheeks full of air and simulate an explosion. “You can’t expect people to work under that kind of pressure! Then the guy next to me starts choking on his tongue, which was probably some kind of cosmic payback for all the cheating he was doing! I mean, the assistant specifically told us to PUT AWAY ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES!!! She couldn’t’ve been clearer, really, so . . .”

  Instead of calming down and apologizing, my tormentors roar even louder.

  “I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying, even though they don’t deserve it. “But I have to . . .” I grab my purse, swing it over my shoulder, and dart for the door.

  The cackling follows me into the hallway, but my tormentors’ spasming lungs are no match for my fully shoed feet, which take me to the Boston Sunday Times’ reception area, posthaste. I’m about to storm out the door in jilted-lover fashion when I remember that I’ve parked in the garage at a cost of ten dollars an hour. For the two hours I’ve been here, I’ll owe a cool twenty I don’t have to spare—unless, of course, I reduce myself to groveling for parking validation.

  I fish the parking stub out of my purse and slap it down on the graffiti-laden counter. “Excuse me,” I say to the receptionist, a rotund man with greasy blond hair and a pencil tucked comically—I mean, how cliché!—behind his ear. “Can you stamp this?”

  He grumbles as he bats around in search of whatever office supply is required to save me from living off Ramen noodles and tap water for the next two weeks; meanwhile, I stare out the window, the sidewalk busy with pedestrians rushing to and from jobs more meaningful than anything I am ever likely to do. What is taking this guy so long? I wonder, the receptionist digging around with such determination that, if he’s not careful, he might just unearth Jimmy Hoffa. I return to gazing at the street, where a tow truck is backing up to a flaming-red BMW. Douchemobile, I think, imagining the fake-tanned, hair-plugged, capped-teeth jerk who’d drive such a hideous, look-at-me symbol of materialism.

  The receptionist clears his throat. “Here,” he says, thrusting the parking stub at my palm.

  It’s none of my business, but . . . “Whoever owns that midlife crisis on wheels out there might want to move it.”

  “The Beemer?”

  “That’s the one,” I confirm, forcing a smile. “It’s about to be towed.”

  He scrambles for the phone. “Shit.”

  As much as I’d like to stick around and witness the douchebag melting down (the tow truck has already winched the car off the pavement, making a reversal of fortune unlikely), I have to be to work.

  “See ya,” I say to the receptionist.

  He’s too busy babbling into the phone to reply.

  Chapter 2

  Despite the dismal state of my postcollege existence, I got lucky with one thing: my apartment, the cozy space above a two-car garage in a leafy neighborhood of wide streets, joggers, and recycling bins. My landlord is a cardiac surgeon who adorns his lab coat with a sheriff’s badge—he’s some sort of eccentric genius, apparently—and works up the street at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The apartment I share with a grad student named Jung Lee, who spends twenty-four hours a day rotating among the various MIT libraries and/or slaving over research studies for her PhD.

  I tuck my reliable little Chevy Prizm—twelve years old and still humming—into its spot between the garage and the stockade fence and, with my purse clamped under my elbow, shimmy out, my dress acquiring a lovely coat of grime as I hug the clapboard siding on my way to the mailbox.

  Why do I even bother? I wonder as I sift through a stack of bills, credit card offers—yeah, right!—and a record number of scientific journals to which Jung subscribes in supplementation of her microbiology course load. Truth be told, I thought about grad school myself, but when I couldn’t muster the energy to fill out the application, it seemed smarter to wait out my undergrad burnout by getting some on-the-job experience . . . if anyone would sink low enough to hire me, that is.

  It’s not exactly true that I’m unemployed, though. In fact, I’m stuck in a spectacular state of being known as underemployment, loosely defined as working a shit job (at a dive bar, in my case) for peanuts, while the student-loan police billy club your door down for the five hundred bucks a month you must now bleed out of your eyeballs to pay off that sparkly new degree you just HAD TO HAVE TO GET A DECENT JOB NOWADAYS!!!

  I unlock the garage and plod upstairs to the second-floor landing, a four-by-four alcove with a generous window and a scraggly geranium (thanks again, Mom) that I have resurrected from the dead too many times to count.

  I nudge my way inside, drop the mail in our “incoming” basket, and kick off my shoes. I’m about to shuffle into the kitchen, when . . .

  Eeeek!!!

  The ticklish feel of insect (or—oh, no!—arachnid) legs skips across my bare shoulder and, before I can react, scurries down my cleavage.

  Holy mother of GodJesusMaryJoseph . . . SOMEONE, please help me!!!

  Blindly, I slap at my stomach, my arms, my chest, hoping to head the critter off before it circles my belly button like it’s a shower drain. Please, oh please, don’t let this disgusting creature sink its fangs into my terrified abdomen—or worse, my bikini line.

  I throw an arm behind my back and tug at the zipper of my dress, getting it momentarily stuck. Eventually, the teeth cooperate, allowing me to unzip to waist level and wiggle out, not a moment too soon.

  SPIDER!!!

  This is not happening. I am not standing—or, more accurately, hopping around—in the living room of my apartment in my bra and underwear, my feet bare, my hundred-dollar interview dress crumpled in a ball on the floor, its fabric smeared with fil
th and a GIGANTIC SPIDER scoping it out as a new home.

  Of course, this is when my cell phone chooses to start ringing.

  Kill me now.

  I take a few steps backward, keeping one eye on the spider, my other eye roving for just the right annihilation device. Too bad the only things within reach are a pen, a pad of sticky notes, and a basketful of mail—unless I crouch down and reach around the corner, to where one of my high heels has landed. As ludicrous as I must look, I have no choice but to do it.

  But now what? I mean, the smashing surface of a high heel is minimal. And a rough glance tells me it would only take five or six of these Incredible Hulk-size spiders to overwhelm my shoe-weapon.

  Shit! The spider is on the move! IT’S MOOOVING!!!

  I do a little freak-out dance, emit a scream only dogs can hear, and . . . smash!

  I miss completely.

  The spider scuttles dangerously close to my toes, then swings around the leg of a mosaic table I snagged a few months ago at Goodwill.

  I have no idea where my purse ended up, but I wish it would smother that goddamn incessantly ringing phone! I chase the spider along the baseboard toward the kitchen, because the only thing worse than a steroidal arachnid in your dress is one loose in your home sweet home, plotting and scheming against you.

  Slam!

  Miss!

  Slam!

  Miss!

  Slam!

  Miss!

  Motherfucker, why won’t this bastard die?!

  We’re at a crossroads: either I splatter the thing before it hits the stove, or it will be forever lost, the cracks and crevices around our French-style cabinets the perfect spot for an army of diabolical spider-warriors to entrench.

  I summon my courage and wait. And wait some more. I’ll lumber around the apartment in my underwear all night if I have to, for the opportunity to squash this beast dead.

  But I don’t have to, because soon the spider abandons its tricky course behind our wobbly dining set in favor of a wide-open expanse of linoleum.

  Jackpot!

  I tiptoe in and, with a little mental geometry (based on the spider’s current direction, the crumb distribution on the floor, and the inevitable reverberations of my footsteps), figure the exact spot to strike. When the beast wanders into “the zone,” my arm is already in motion.

  Bam!

  IT’S A HIT!!!

  IT’S!!!

  A!!!

  HIT!!!

  Oh, fuck.

  As I bring the shoe back up, dozens of baby spiders scatter. If I had the time to think—which I don’t, if I’ve any hope of escaping Spidergeddon—I’d question whether that creamed spinach was laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  I drop the shoe and sprint for the bathroom, where, if need be, I can subsist for days on strawberry-flavored lip balm until Jung sees the need for a shower.

  Huh, that’s weird. The bathroom door is closed. Without a moment to spare, I fling the door open and lurch inside. I’m irrationally shoving the hook through the eye latch when the shower curtain ripples open.

  Oh. My. God.

  “Wha— Wha—” I stammer, the impending spider doom erased from my mind by the sight of my slippery, sudsy neighbor, Dex, who is STARK RAVING NAKED IN MY SHOWER!!!

  He grabs a handful of rubber-ducky-printed fabric (the shower curtain was here when I moved in, I swear!) and covers his—how do the Brits say it?—naughty bits. “Oh, Em, what are you doing here?”

  I need a cigarette.

  “Me?” I ask, averting my gaze first to the foggy mirror, then to the pile of clothes Dex has shed on my bathroom floor. Eventually, my eyes have nowhere to go but to my own nearly nude self.

  Bow-chicka-wow-wow. The porno script is practically writing itself. If Dex has a stranger hidden behind that curtain—preferably an Amazonian woman and her pouty-mouthed identical twin—we’ll be in business. “I wasn’t expecting . . .” he has the nerve to say, when he’s—and I can’t stress this enough—NAKED!!! IN MY SHOWER!!! A SHOWER ON WHICH HE PAYS ZERO RENT AND IN WHICH HE HAS NO BUSINESS BEING!!!

  My arms reflexively hug my belly, in case he might notice those two extra donuts I inhaled this week. “Um, I live here. You on the other hand . . .”

  He gestures at the floor. “Would you mind passing me my pants?”

  As a matter of fact, I would. I mean, bending over in one’s underwear is among the most unflattering sights known to man. “You might want to turn off the water first,” I suggest with a laugh. I reach for the narrow closet beside the toilet. “How about a towel?” Or not, I think, remembering how shabby my selection of towels is. I flip through a couple of doozies until I find one that is marginally acceptable. “Here.”

  He grins sheepishly, the shower controls whining as he shuts them down. “The leak’s fixed,” he reports. “Good as new.”

  I push the towel into his hand. “Oh, so that’s why . . . ?” Now it makes sense: Jung reported that dripping faucet to Dr. Jacobs a good three weeks ago. He must’ve finally suckered Dex into checking it, though I’m not sure the job required a full-on test run—soap and all. “Thanks.”

  “Is there a reason why”—he motions in my direction—“you’re wearing . . . that?”

  The nerve of this guy. “Is there a reason why an otherwise normal twenty-five-year-old man allows a neurotic genius-surgeon—who’s loaded, by the way; he owns half of this block!—to pay him pennies on the dollar for grunt work that really should be done by a professional?”

  He shakes his head. “The kindness of my heart?”

  Man, he needs to towel off and get out of here. Trent (the new boyfriend) and I are “taking things slow,” meaning we haven’t had S-E-X yet. Not a problem for me, normally. Then again, I don’t normally have attractive naked men hanging out—literally—in my shower. “Aw,” I say, trying to walk a line between sincere and snippy, “isn’t that sweet? Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get ready for work.” I toss him a we’re-done-here look and pivot for the door.

  Two steps down the hallway, I hear: “It was nice seeing you.”

  I bet.

  Nice seeing you too, I want to respond, but I bite my tongue.

  Chapter 3

  “You’re late,” Jimmy barks as I sweep into The Crowbar in the middle of the happy hour rush.

  After twenty minutes of chasing spider babes around with a can of Raid, followed by an abbreviated shower to rinse the poison off my skin—not to mention the disastrous, career-ending-before-it’s-begun job interview of this morning—my mood is hovering somewhere between miffed and I’ll-bite-your-head-off-if-you-look-at-me-funny.

  “No kidding,” I retort, though I probably shouldn’t be snapping at Jimmy, since his kindness keeps me in grilled cheese sandwiches and, on the occasions I’m feeling rich enough to afford them, mocha lattes.

  I drop my purse under the bar and pull my hair into a ponytail; meanwhile, Jimmy pinches three Heinekens by their necks and serves them, sweaty and clanging, to a trio of women about my age who are huddled together whispering and giggling and acting more like carefree teenagers than the business professionals their chic, torn-out-of-the-pages-of-Vogue outfits imply.

  An immature wave of jealousy hits me. These women are living the dream—or so I imagine: sophisticated cosmopolitan jobs with six-figure salaries, gorgeous Latin boyfriends who pick up the check (along with their dirty underwear), metabolisms of Olympic athletes without all the pesky calorie counting and early-morning jogs.

  Me? In fifty years, they’ll probably haul my broke, bloated ass out of The Crowbar in a pine box.

  But enough fantasizing . . .

  The to-do list Jimmy has scrawled across a cocktail napkin takes me an hour to complete between the bursts of customers demanding bottles of sauvignon blanc and shots of ouzo. (Seriously? This is a beer joint, people! What’s next? Requests for virgin absinthe from the 18th-century French countryside?) I’m busy wiping the bar down—what the hell happened in here this afternoon, a tsun
ami?—when, on the heels of an old hippie couple, in saunters Trent.

  The boyfriend.

  To be honest, after three months of dating, I’m still getting used to the idea. “Hey,” I say, putting on an easy smile as he claims an open stool. “I thought you were working tonight.”

  He leans in for a kiss. “I’m always working.”

  “Not here, okay?” I say, rebuffing him with a frown.

  He lifts an eyebrow. “How about a UFO White, then?”

  UFO White. Two years ago, I’d never heard of the stuff. Then every yuppie-hipster-foodie-wannabe on the planet started asking for it and acting bowled over when we came up empty. As much as Jimmy hates chasing trends, he eventually caved. Now it’s one of my favorite beers, and Trent is beyond obsessed with it. “That I can do,” I say. I duck over to the cooler and pull the UFO, plus a couple of Michelob Lights for the construction workers who are perched in front of the men’s room like gargoyles.

  Trent takes a long pull from the beer. “So?”

  Ugh. How does one inform her on-his-way-to-über-success beau that she can’t even land a crummy food-critic gig? (Okay, the job isn’t exactly crummy, but referring to it as such—even in my bereft little mind—helps me deal with the rejection.) “Um . . . I haven’t heard anything yet.” A bright-eyed, cheery face. “We’ll see.” Another thing that helps me cope, obviously, is denial.

  He cocks his head. “What kind of lame answer is that? Of course, you got the job.”

  “It’s just that . . . you never know. The competition was brutal, and I don’t have any experience, and it was a long shot in the first place, and . . .”

  “What about your clips?” he asks, referring to a series of investigative articles I penned on restaurant cleanliness—or lack thereof—for BU’s student newspaper, The Daily Free Press. “You can’t tell me they didn’t love those.”

  “Well, they were food related, I guess.”

  “And brilliant.”

  “I wouldn’t say . . .”

  He gulps a third of the UFO at once, his Adam’s apple bobbing. In the distance, a midthirties professorial type—in fact, the guy may have been my freshman humanities teacher at BU—rustles a twenty-dollar bill in the air. “Hang on,” I tell Trent, holding up a finger. I get the professor and his boyfriend the microbrews they request, biting my tongue the whole time. I mean, if this guy really is a college instructor, he’s playing the wardrobe way too literally. Tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and eyeglasses the size of the Hubble telescope belong one of two places: a dusty attic or the costume department of a Harry Potter film. I turn back to Trent. “So, you were saying . . . ?”