Time sheets
August 1996
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | My cubicle
WHERE I WAS | The boat. And the island. And the Cellar
The end of summer was hot and sticky. Long, sweaty afternoons in the rolling master berth of the Summer Hours, long nights when I twisted in my sheets, too keyed up to close my eyes.
We met as often as we could. I took long lunches, or slipped away at 4:30 or 4:00 or 3:45. My small work assignments had never felt mission critical, and now, though I needed the money, they seemed utterly pointless.
But one morning after I failed to unpack a shipment of swag (retractable dog leashes with the CommPlanet logo), I found a blue Post-it on my computer screen from Stephen:
Rebeccca. Pls see me immed. Thx. S.
I walked to his office with my heart in my throat. Sure he’d dropped by my cubicle the evening before and found the box untouched—and me MIA.
Stephen scowled at his computer screen, tapping furiously. “Sorry to tell you this...” he said, pausing and shuffling through some papers in his black wire In tray.
I knew it. Punishment would rain down on me, right through the five high-rise floors above my head. Punishment and disgrace and ruin.
“...but you’ll have to redo your time sheet for the last five days.” He tossed me the yellow triplicate form. “We have new department codes. You need to put 14, not 11.”
At the annual boondoggle, this time at a Santa Barbara resort, I again watched Cal from across the conference room. Thinking about how he’d look later.
Knowing how he’d look later.
The two of us stole away after our agreed-upon seventy minutes (me) and eighty (him). We met at the boat, laughing, flushed from our separate escapes.
And no one noticed.
Sometimes we sailed to Catalina, to our shady spot on the hill.
Often, we didn’t make it out of Balboa Marina, and had to stifle our cries, still our sticky limbs, when voices approached above.
This summer, he did not say, Don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not.
He said, “You’re so...” and trailed off. He said it and shook his head, marveling.
The Friday three weeks after our first time, we lay in the bedroom of the Summer Hours, late-afternoon sun seeping in behind the curtains over the high windows. On our stomachs, him over me. Positions altered only by inches from how we’d been rocking together moments before.
“You’re so...”
“I’m so what?”
“You’re the word person,” he hummed into my shoulder blade.
“Aggressive.”
“No.”
“I think what you’re trying to say is you’ve corrupted me.”
He bit my shoulder blade. “Wrong again. Hot enough for you?” He lifted the hair from my neck, blew on my sweat-glazed skin.
“Let’s sail somewhere private to swim. I have a little time.”
“I have a better idea. The coldest place in Orange County. It’s like a cave, you’ll love it. Dark, air-conditioned, and utterly discreet, for those who worry about such things.”
We hadn’t met anywhere public since we’d started sleeping together. Only the boat and our hiding place on the island.
If it was light out when we sailed, I tucked my hair down my shirt as I navigated the swaying white ramps, walking briskly until I was safely on board. Even then I insisted on staying below, like a stowaway, until we were out of the marina.
We were careful, the few times we spoke in the office. Careful to keep our voices casual instead of intimate, careful not to chat too long over my cubicle wall.
But off land he was sometimes reckless and laughed at my elaborate efforts at concealment.
Once when I’d arrived to find four men on the neighboring boat drinking Coronas, I’d retreated and called from the Crab Shack up PCH, insisting I couldn’t come until they’d left.
“Those clowns wouldn’t say anything.”
“You have a pact? All the men in the marina?” I meant it as a joke.
But there was a slight pause as he assessed this, and then tuned his voice to a lower, more serious tone. “All I meant is you worry too much.”
Maybe you don’t worry enough. I’d waited until they left.
“Get dressed! You’ll love this place.”
“I really shouldn’t go,” I called from the boat’s bathroom as I splashed my face. I’d blown my mom off all summer, and the evidence of her lonely evenings—blue-and-yellow video cases from Blockbuster, dinner leftovers carefully Saran-wrapped in the fridge—plucked at my heart when I saw them in the morning.
And it didn’t seem smart to go to a restaurant, no matter how discreet.
When I looked up from the sink, Cal stood behind me. Dressed in a fresh white shirt, hair brushed. I was naked, face dripping.
I watched his reflection lift my hair, kiss the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes as his mouth moved to my shoulder, his hands sliding down my back to my hips.
“We’ll go another night,” he murmured. “I’ll just have to sit in the air-conditioning with my ice-cold drink all alone. Poor me.” Hands between my legs now. One exploring from the front and one from behind. I wanted to step wider but the bathroom was too small.
“Poor you.” I pressed my forehead against the mirror.
6:00 p.m.
The Cellar restaurant in Fullerton
We hid in double darkness. A curtained booth inside the candlelit underground dining room. It was stone walled like a wine cellar, with the same damp, chilly air. A place so clearly for new lovers that the velvet curtains might as well have surrounded beds instead of tables.
“Like it?” Cal asked.
“How have I never heard of this place?”
Someone cleared his throat tactfully outside our green velvet curtain.
“Come in?” I said, trying not to laugh.
The waiter slid the curtain open, revealing a silver trolley of steaks. We chose our filets, ordered sides of creamed spinach and potatoes au gratin, then he slid the curtain shut and rolled the cart away on silent casters.
“What did he think we were doing?” I said.
He laughed. “I’m sure he’s seen it all.”
“What are we doing?”
He reached for my hand. “Getting to know each other.”
“I don’t know you. Who are your friends? Not the boat people.”
“No.”
“That guy Schwinn from the boondoggle?”
“That clown? The Footsy King of Silicon Valley?”
“The what?” I sputtered.
“It’s this stupid joke. First you have to know that there’s a famous guy in London called the Footsy King. Big analyst on the FTSE index.”
This was the Financial Times stock index. “Okay.”
“Well, a couple years ago at CommDex in Vegas, Schwinn became notorious for playing footsy with his female dinner companions. He slips his shoes off under the table and...explores the territory under the tablecloth. Sees if any feet want to reciprocate. He’s a weird guy, but basically harmless. A useful lightweight.”
“That is weird. And gross. Did he ever end up investing in CommPlanet?”
“Alas, I couldn’t get him to bite. It’s too bad, because I’d really like to sell him my stake.”
“But I thought CommPlanet was going to be huge.”
“I’m not so sure now. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m stuck with it. I think I’m losing my touch.”
But I knew this wasn’t true. He took great pride in his ability to connect ideas with investors, though he downplayed it. He said he wasn’t a real VC, just a matchmaker who paired startups with investor friends for fun. That there wasn’t much skill in it these days, it was so easy. Millions of dollars being thrown around at the Woodside Deli over chicken sandwiches. Not so much rainmaking as turning on a tap, he’d said. I’m a glorified washroom attendant. Everything was diminutive. Like it was play money.
“Okay, so you’re not best friends with the Footsy King. Who do you hang out with?”
“I have some guys I play tennis with, do races with. My college roommate and I talk on the phone once a week.”
“That’s cute. I don’t know one thing about your childhood. Tell me where you grew up.” I withdrew my hand and settled back.
“Wisconsin.”
I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “Really?”
“Why’s that so shocking?”
“Because you’re so...California. Wisconsin?”
“Tiny little Craftsman house in Deer Lick Valley. An hour outside Madison. Snow. Tuna casserole on Friday nights, basset hound, public school with twenty kids to a grade.” He shrugged. “My dad worked at the post office.”
I tried to picture this. A blond boy in a red hat and mittens making a snowman, getting called to dinner. But I couldn’t connect the innocent boy in my head with the man in the booth across from me drinking his scotch on the rocks. He’d landed in my life fully formed. The ultimate successful California male, amused and assured. Complete with boat and convertible.
I’d never even seen him in a sweater.
“Didn’t you go to USC?”
“For biz school and half of undergrad. I started at U of Wisconsin, in Madison, then transferred out here junior year.”
“Are your parents still alive?”
He nodded.
“Are they happy?”
“They think they are.”
“Do you visit them?”
“Twice a year. Any other questions from the press pool?”
“Sorry, I’m just trying to get my head around it.”
“It’s a sweet little town, but California always had a hold on me. From TV, I guess. Three’s Company and CHiPs.” He laughed. “Anyway. I wanted to move here and I did.”
He caressed my wrist with a hand still cool from his drink, his fingers brushing the tender spot perfume articles in magazines called a pulse point. “What? You’re thinking something serious, I can tell.”
“I was thinking that you didn’t just move to California. You became it. Your name.”
“Well...yeah.” He smiled at this, tilted his head as he considered. “Clever human. And now you. What do we know about you?”
“You tell me.”
“Rebecca is twenty going on thirty. Like me, she knows she’s bound for bigger places than her hometown—”
“You make me sound awful, that’s not—”
“Hey, my turn. She is bound for bigger places than her hometown. She loves roller coasters but not crowds. Books but not Beowulf. Sun but not heat. Rebecca is tenacious, especially when you tell her she can’t have something.”
“Like...?”
“Oh. Scotch.” He tossed back the rest of his. “Answers. Such as what is data scaffolding...”
“You explained it well.”
“...which promotion outfit is spray-painting cat graffiti around Berkeley.”
I laughed. This had become a running inside joke, one of a handful, and I enjoyed it when he teased me about my lingering obsession: my cats, as I called it. I was no closer to an answer than I’d been freshman year, despite a notebook scrawled with interviews of marketing firms, fraternities, security guards, paint stores. One night I’d even staked out a spot in East Campus, by the health center, where there’d been a cluster of recent appearances. All I got was a hand cramp from gripping my pepper spray too tight.
But I liked our moments of good-natured teasing because it proved that our hours together, though often short on conversation, were not as shallow as the outside world would think.
“Please stop with your boring theory about my cats,” I said. “I’ll be so disappointed if it’s all some lame commercial. How else am I stubborn when people say I can’t have things?”
“I said tenacious, not stubborn. You were tenacious about me.”
“Nobody told me I couldn’t have you.”
“No?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Well. I did.”
“Briefly. I’m starving, aren’t you?”
“See. It’s hard to be in the hot seat. You prefer doing the reporting.”
We were heading for the stairs when I saw them. On the landing above us: blue espadrilles with ballet straps crisscrossed chicly around shapely calves.
I pushed him against the dark wall.
“Well, now.” He grinned, thinking I had other intentions.
I clapped my hand over his lips and pointed up at the staircase landing.
I held my breath, waiting. It would serve me right if the blue espadrilles were followed by my mom’s white Naturalizer flats, if the promised lunch had become dinner. I’d treated her shabbily all summer; the answering machine tape on the kitchen counter was full of my lies. The latest, left only a few hours ago: Hey, I’ll be home pretty late. I’m invited to the company box at the baseball game.
I have to make an appearance, I’d said.
If my mom found out about me and Cal, she’d be horrified and blame him, raise a fuss. Mrs. Haggermaker would yank my scholarship. And Eric would find out.
In that moment, holding my breath in the darkest corner of the cold basement restaurant, each of the three seemed inevitable and equally catastrophic.
But the shoes that appeared behind Donna’s were men’s leather loafers.
Cal and I watched the two of them descend the stairs.
Her smooth calves, white tennis skirt and tank, a red sweater knotted around her shoulders, her hair down. His sharp blue suit on this hot day. I knew from the fit of the jacket that it was the husky, attentive man from her pool party.
Please don’t come this way.
If she decided to visit the ladies’ room before being seated, there would be no place to hide. What would we say?
Hey, Donna! Great place. Try the flourless chocolate cake!
We froze, silent, until they were seated.
The next morning at the sunny white breakfast table, my mom turned the pages in her Gardening section without her usual cheerful commentary.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Of course! How was the game?”
“We won, 5–4.” I’d checked the score in the paper while she was getting juice. “We all went to sushi after. Did I wake you up, I...” I spotted the tickets propped against the pepper grinder.
The Pageant of the Masters. It was our annual tradition—a living-portrait art benefit in Laguna, in an outdoor theater. Actors dressed up like Girl with a Pearl Earring or The Last Supper, replicating the outfits and backgrounds, painting their faces. It was pretty cool. And it had been on my blotter calendar all summer.
“Mom. The pageant.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“I can’t believe I forgot.”
She took her Cheerios dish to the sink and rinsed it. “Would you like the last bit of OJ? There’s a splash left.”
“I’ll pay you back for the tickets.”
She spoke over her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey! I’m glad you could blow off steam with your coworkers. You’ve been working so hard.”