Women's Fiction

My unpolished toes curl into my bedroom closet’s carpet while I sit on the floor in my pajamas and read the paperback novel I hold in my hand, my elbow propped on a bent knee. Above my head, grouped by color and sleeve length, my wardrobe of silk blouses and wool suits gives off a faint odor of dry cleaner’s fluid. Conservative heeled pumps line up in shoe racks beneath them. The door is closed; the light on.

On the book’s cover is a broad-shouldered man looking down at a young woman draped over his forearm. She’s a headstrong old maid of twenty-four because she isn’t willing to live without love. He’s a reformed rake who rescues her from a degenerate old man with pistols at dawn. And, of course, he’s incomprehensibly wealthy. She’ll never lose sleep over her mortgage payments like I do.

I surface from the story, become aware of the closet’s stale air.

I sigh, rub my dry eyes. I have no idea what time it is. My wristwatch is on the bathroom counter where I left it half a book ago. The rational part of me screams, Get to BED, but another voice lures me back into this fantasy world where the ending is always happy, and no one has regrets.

And no one has to fire five people they’ve never met later today.

I know I shouldn’t be reading this trash. I know I should be asleep. I know my kids will be up at 6:00, no matter what time I go to bed. I know I need at least seven hours of sleep to function. I know I cannot miss the 8:03 express train to Chicago’s Loop so I am on time for those in-person meetings that start at 9:00 sharp. I know my husband is stretched to the breaking point.

Outside the closet, Simka, our Lab mix, is splayed out on the floor at the foot of the bed I should be in. The door blocks the night noises of my husband’s deep sleep breathing and the sound of the dog’s paws scrabbling on the rug in pursuit of a dream rabbit.

Just one more chapter.

I turn another page, then skim over the sex scenes: too much fiction. There will be one more plot twist, a final choice to stay or go. However, love breaches the man’s wall of reticence, and she is forever protected against the harsh winds of reality.

I know in the epilogue they will sit at the breakfast table as sunshine pours in from a large window that overlooks his massive estate. She will have a baby at her breast. He will smile in contentment at his wife and heir.

Our kitchen table overlooks a compact backyard with a wooden playset and a sandbox that is used recreationally by the neighborhood’s cats. I can’t remember the last time I sat down for breakfast, let alone smiled in contentment.

#

In the three months since the 9/11 terrorist event, the dot-com greed bubble has burst. The start-ups and network companies which secured eye-watering sums to build out the internet have declared bankruptcy and are shuttering their businesses. Bankers and venture capitalists who six months before accepted a business case written on a cocktail napkin have left for their safe houses in the hills.

My client, Global Crossing, based in New Jersey but headquartered as a tax dodge in Hamilton, Bermuda, lives up to its name as it connects the world’s inhabited continents with undersea cables. Today their doors are still open, but the CEO has recently quit to jet off to his home in Beverly Hills with a $734 million dollar golden parachute. Two years from now, the physical infrastructure will be purchased for pennies on the dollar. Developing countries such as India will use it to build billion dollar outsourcing businesses from scratch. For now, I continue to catch the Monday 6:30  a.m. flight to Newark and return to O’Hare on the Thursday 5:00 flight to build a system I doubt will ever go into production.

My husband works at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, eight hundred miles away from the World Trade Center, but a heartbeat away from the many intertwined businesses that trade commodities and stocks. In his desk drawer is a visitor’s badge from an August breakfast meeting at the Windows of the World and a stack of business cards from people who will never return his call.

The five people spaced at thirty-minute intervals on my Outlook calendar are twenty years my junior: summer hire college graduates on the receiving end of a voicemail I sent yesterday. It instructed them to come into the office and meet at a specific time. Only one asked for the meeting purpose. I didn’t reply. She already knows why. It will be on her face when she knocks on my office door. She will enter the room to sit across from me, hands clenched in her lap, terrified at what I’m about to say. The surface of my desk will be clear except for a half inch stack of documents, a box of Kleenex, and a pen. I will pick up a sheet of paper and recite the words on it as dictated by our legal department.

#

My jaw aches. I put down the paperback to rub the corners with my fingertips at the hinge point. I’ve started to grind my teeth at night, loud enough to wake Malcolm on occasion. My tooth guard is worthless—I spit it out in my sleep.

I cannot believe how much has changed this past year, the year I made partner. I was ecstatic to attend my first Masters of the Universe partner meeting at Disney World in Orlando. Our firm’s leaders strode across the stage thumping their chests as two-story sized pictures of positivity were projected behind them. At night, a soundtrack of DJ infused dance music pulled us into a ballroom—the bacchanal of victory marked by shrimp cocktails and an open bar.

The eighty-hour workweeks, the out-of-town travel, the marital negotiations balancing childcare and career—I had made it to the top. Bring on the champagne! I readily shouldered the yoke of company rainmaker to pull the weighted sled of sales targets behind me and keep the party going.

But then the music stopped.

The only people in the office these days are those who deliver bad news and those who receive it. Rumor has it that the purge process has begun for those at my level, but nothing official has been announced. I’m safe while I have a client, right?

At 3:42 a.m. I slip into bed.

My husband mumbles, “What time is it?”

I say, “Don’t worry. It’s okay.”

He rolls over, back to sleep.

It’s not okay, not really.