“So, how long have you two been married?” a very old man with a neon blue mohawk asked us. I think he was the owner of the shop.
“We’re not,” I said, looking at Jack and laughing. He smiled back at me, tugging at the kilt he had just tried on.
“If we’re not,” Jack whispered a little too close to my ear, “then how’d you manage to get me out of my pants?”
“Like it was difficult,” I said back, pushing him away from me, still looking at him in the mirror. I was trying not to stare too hard at his bare legs.
Stop staring at Jack’s legs.
I instead focused upon the fact that the firm “frowns upon” (read: fires) associates who date one another. Ever since those two summer associates got caught in a compromising position in the cafeteria late one night and that lovely rumor made its way into the New York Law Journal (“Gilson Hecht summer associates make the most of their summer associate experience,” the headline read), the firm has been hypersensitive about associates dating and the reputation the firm might derive therefrom. Since then, any time the firm got the slightest hint of impropriety amongst associates, Danielle Lewis, the head of the corporate department—and all around terrifying partner—would take you out for lunch and scare you straight. If lunch with Danielle Lewis didn’t do the trick, word on the street was that the next time Ms. Lewis visited your office, she would be accompanied by a Gilson Hecht security guard and your last paycheck.
And this is the year Jack is up for partner. Must try not to get Jack fired in the year he is up for partner.
Stop staring at Jack’s legs.
Must remember that Jack is totally on the rebound. Thus, even if you started dating Jack and got yourself fired from the firm, it would still never last. It never lasts when you’re the rebound girl.
Although rebound sex is hot. Yum. Stop thinking about sex! Must remember that even if you had totally hot rebound sex and ended up dating Jack and getting fired, you would find yourself three and a half years later without a wedding date set. You’d have your heart broken again, but with the added bonus of also collecting unemployment.
As I puzzled over how much one could reasonably expect to make on unemployment, I watched Jack pull the kilt down over and over in a vain attempt to make it longer. Try as he might, and my goodness, he was trying, the kilt did not get any longer.
Stop staring at Jack’s legs!
You are trying to get back together with Douglas, I told myself sternly. This task will be infinitely more difficult if you start dating Jack. Especially since Douglas knows all about your history with Jack.
“It’s crap,” Jack said, touching the kilt’s fabric as he looked at himself in the mirror.
“But it looks great,” I said, smoothing it out.
“Why are we doing this again?” he asked me for the fortieth time in forty-eight hours.
“You are doing this because it will be the role of your lifetime and any good actor worth his salt knows how to do accents. I’m doing it because I’m trying to keep my dignity ever-so-slightly intact.”
“And, are you doing that?” he asked.
“Anyway,” I said, ever so deftly changing the conversation, “it’ll be like a big real-life acting workshop for you, with art totally imitating life, to boot.”
“Did you answer my question?”
“I also think that you really need to spend some quality time with Marcus. I mean, Vanessa is one of your best friends and you barely know her husband.”
“Vanessa barely gets to spend any quality time with Marcus. It’s a miracle that she even knows him.”
“Are you two finding everything all right?” the man with the mohawk asked us.
“Everything’s fine,” Jack assured him.
“You two really make a delightful couple,” he said. Even with the fluorescent mohawk, he still looked like every other old man I’ve met. He was beginning to remind me of Mr. Rosenblatt, my grandmother’s “friend.” Though I was twenty-five years old at the time, my mother was afraid to tell me that my grandmother had found someone new after my grandfather died, so she called old Irving Rosenblatt my grandmother’s “friend.” Or maybe it was just because she just didn’t want me to feel bad that my grandmother had found a single man faster than I had.
“When are you popping the question?” Mr. Mohawk whispered to Jack a little too loudly.
“Just as soon as I think she’ll say ‘yes’,” Jack said, eyes on me. He wasn’t smiling, but I’m sure he was joking. He had just broken off an engagement six months ago, and since then, he’s always had a million girls hanging around him. He’s even more of a cad than Douglas! Well, maybe that’s unfair—Jack has never been living with one woman and engaged to another at the same time. As far as I know.
I don’t know why I ever even told Douglas the story about what happened between Jack and me; it only served to fuel the superiority complex Douglas had over Jack—he had succeeded in winning me over where Jack had failed—but, I think that at the time, I was trying to best Douglas’s ‘wildest place you ever had sex’ story. Douglas’s was in the bathroom at a wedding at the Rainbow Room with a bridesmaid he had just met. I now realize that for him, a black tie affair means easy access.
Since Jack and I never slept together, my story was a bit anticlimactic, but it was a lame attempt to show Douglas that, I, too, had had my share of wild spontaneous moments.
Jack and I were on our way back from depositions in South Carolina, racing to the airport in a rental car that smelled like cheap cologne and cigarettes. I had the windows down and was breathing in as much fresh suburban air as I could before getting onto the plane. We had just had an amazing day—Jack had gotten all of the testimony he needed from the witness, and some he didn’t even expect the witness to give up. At lunch, we had called the partner in charge of the case, who was elated, telling Jack that his performance would get the firm’s membership talking about his partnership prospects.
It was after 6 o’clock, and we were rushing to catch the last flight of the evening out of Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia, from what I had seen in the twenty-four hours prior, was not exactly the type of place you wanted to stay any longer than you had to. When we’d checked into our hotel the night before, the receptionist said to Jack and I “I’ve never met a Jew before” as easily as if she’d said “I’ve never met an alien before” or, even closer still, “I’ve never met the devil before.” When you live in New York you don’t realize that for other parts of the country, that can be a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation.
The traffic was behaving for quite some time on the expressway and it felt like nothing could bring us down. Nothing, that is, until we hit the approach to the airport. About three miles from the airport, the traffic came to a standstill. An absolute dead halt. We tried to keep our cool for a while, him—trying to convince me that the traffic would break any second and that we would make our flight, me—playing with the radio, trying to find ‘happy’ music that would make us forget the traffic altogether. We talked about taking shortcuts, experimenting with the service road, and that seemed to give us hope for a while. Except for the fact that we had no idea where we were and couldn’t afford to waste any time getting lost.
I finally found a classic rock station that was playing one Doors song after the other. I let it play. The people in the car next to ours yelled over to us to find out what station we were listening to. I told them and they tuned into the Doors also. They got out of their car and started dancing along to “Hello, I Love You.” I turned to look at Jack but he was unamused. He was on his cell phone trying to get through to the airline. Jack hated to work a second longer than he had to and was dead set on getting us home that night. I, myself, had already given up on any thoughts of getting home that night, consoling myself with the fact that I would be billing the client for all of my time. Other cars were listening to traffic radio and screaming reports out their windows (“Jack-knifed tractor-trailer one mile up—sounds like we’ll be here a while— anyone got a Snickers?”).
“L.A. Woman” came on the radio and I started to dance in my seat. All of the cars around us had emptied out and their owners were milling about the expressway, meeting other drivers and sitting on each other’s hoods. It was already dark. The cars were all in park, and some were even starting to turn their headlights off.
“I’m getting out,” I said to Jack, and hopped on the hood of our rental car. It was the end of March and one of those first nights that promise the coming of spring with a little kiss of warm weather. I took a deep breath and enjoyed the fresh air.
“What are you doing?” Jack called to me from the inside of the car.
“Billing Janobuilder Corp. for my time. Only it’s more fun to do it out here, watching the stars.” I heard Jack’s car door open. I took off my suit jacket and threw it into my window as Jack joined me on the hood, taking his jacket off, too, and loosening his tie.
“It’s beautiful out here,” he said and I nodded in agreement. “But what do we do if we’re still out here when the traffic starts back up?”
“I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that,” I said, looking at my watch. According to my count, we’d been outside waiting for 20 minutes already. A gentle drizzle started to drop and the crowd cheered as if Jim Morrison himself had descended from the heavens and brought the rain with him. I put my hands out to feel the drops while Jack tried to cover his head. Jack, seeing that his fight with the drizzle was futile, finally gave in to the night and started to show me some constellations. Somewhere between the Big Dipper and my zodiac sign, we saw our plane leave for New York City without us.
We got back to the hotel around 9 p.m. and the only place still serving food was the piano bar in the lobby. The singer was dripping from the piano, dressed from head to toe in red satin and black lace like a modern day Mae West, with the cleavage to really back it up. From the looks of things, it seemed as if she and her piano player had a thing going on. Jack and I sat at the bar and ate burgers and drank beers and started to sing along as best we could with Mae’s show tunes. Only Jack didn’t really know any of the words, so I had to quickly tell him each line of the song—from Cats to Pippin—before it played. He kept leaning in real close, way too many beers on his breath, and I would whisper the lyric, way too loud, into his ear. The piano player moved onto “West Side Story” and Jack’s face lit up—announcing to anyone at the bar who would listen that he played Tony in high school. He and Mae did a daring rendition of “America” before Mae took “A boy like that” as a solo. Then it was Jack’s turn to shine. Mae sat down on the piano bench while the piano player cued up Jack’s big number. Jack sang “Maria” to me in perfect pitch, except on the parts where he should have said “Maria” he instead inserted “Brooke Miller.”
“Brooke Miller, I just met a girl named Brooke Miller. And suddenly that name will never be the same to me!”
He came over to the bar and grabbed me to dance. He held me close to his chest, my hand in his.
“Brooke Miller, I’ve just kissed a girl named Brooke Miller, and suddenly I found how wonderful a sound can be.” He twirled me around and then sat me back on my bar stool.
“Brooke Miller, say it loud and there's music playing,” he sang to me, “say it soft and it's almost like praying. Brooke Miller,” he sang, leaning in tight for his big finish—“I'll never stop saying Brooke Miller, Brooke Miller, Brooke Miller. The most beautiful sound I ever heard, Brooke Miller!”
Is it any wonder that we ended up kissing by the time the bar closed? Truth be told, I’d secretly wanted to do that all day. There was something very sexy about Jack doing his job all day. Doing his job so well all day. Who knew he was so smart?
The following Monday morning, Jack came into my office looking dead serious.
“Are you quitting or am I?” he asked me. I laughed and he didn’t laugh back.
“No one’s quitting anything,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m talking about…” he said, brushing the shaggy hair from his baby blues.
“The kiss,” I said, cutting him off. “I know.”
“Shhh!” he said, jumping up and slamming my office door shut. “Someone will hear you!” I couldn’t help but laugh at how cute he was when he was trying to be serious. I had the sudden impulse to kiss him again.
“No one’s going to hear me,” I said, jumping on the desk and crossing my legs, trying to look seductive, like Heather Locklear in Melrose Place.
“One of us has to quit,” he said, and as he got closer to me I wrapped my legs around him. “Are you listening to me?” I pulled him to me and tried to kiss him. He pulled away.
“No one has to quit,” I said, still perched on the edge of my desk, legs now dangling over the side like a little girl whose chair is too high for her.
“You know the firm’s policy,” he said.
“I guess I don’t care about it that much.”
“Well, I do. We work on every case together. I don’t want to get fired. My father would kill me,” he said. “So, then, maybe you should quit.”
“Me, quit?” I asked. “I just got here nine months ago! I’m not going anywhere! Maybe you should quit!”
“Okay, then. I’ll quit.”
“Oh my God! You can’t quit! Not because of me, anyway. Are you insane?”
“Well, what then?” he asked and I didn’t know what to say.
I was still puzzling over it that day at lunch. As I sat at my usual table in the Gilson Hecht cafeteria with Vanessa and seven of our closest friends from the first year associate class, all I could think about was Jack. Vanessa and one of our other friends were engaging in a lively debate about whether or not the fat free balsamic vinaigrette the firm stocked at the salad bar was, in fact, fat free.
“Which is why,” Vanessa summed up her case, “there is no possible way that the vinaigrette is fat free.”
“Bet I know what you’re thinking about,” our friend Mindy whispered to me from across the table. I smiled and tried not to react, instead feigning interest in the Great Fat Free Balsamic Dressing Debate. Mindy could be such a troublemaker when her billables were low and she didn’t have a lot of work to do. “Who you’re thinking about, I should say.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I whispered back and put my head down into my salad. I took a bite and determined that Vanessa was right—there was no possible way that the dressing could actually be fat free.
“Jack,” Mindy said out loud and the entire table turned to look at us. Everyone except for Vanessa.
“What about Jack?” I said, tearing my whole wheat roll in half. I dipped it into my dressing and took a bite.
“It’s too late, Brooke,” Mindy said, “everyone’s talking about it.”
“Talking about what?” I asked, looking her dead in the eye. When the vicious Denise Rosen turned her sights on me in the first grade, my father told me that the best way to get a bully to back down was to stare her dead in the eye and fight back.
“You and Jack,” Mindy said simply, not backing down one iota. I then realized that it would take more than a firm stare to get a first year litigator to back down as opposed to an insecure first grader. “Keith in the file room told Ilene in corporate that you guys were totally making eyes at each other when you brought your documents back from South Carolina on Saturday afternoon. And then Ben Harper’s secretary saw you having a lover’s quarrel in your office this morning.”
“A what?” I said. “That’s ridiculous.” I couldn’t believe how fast the gossip was circulating around the firm. At this rate, people in our San Diego office would know the news by 4 p.m., their time. Who else knew and how were people finding out so fast? Was this information up on the firm’s website under the “What’s New at the Firm” section or something?
“You know what?” Vanessa asked from the other side of the table. “We should have the dressing sent out to a lab for testing so that we can figure it out for once and for all. Then we could bring it up as a topic at the next associate’s meeting.” I looked at Vanessa and for a second, actually deluded myself into thinking that the conversation could turn back to condiments.
“I can’t believe you told Vanessa and you didn’t tell us!” one of the girls yelled out. I can’t remember who it was. The entire table turned towards Vanessa like an angry mob.
“Well, there isn’t anything to tell right now,” I said.
“Don’t listen to them,” Renee said from two seats down from me. “I think it’s great. Who cares if this stupid firm has a policy or whatever? It’s your life.” Renee had recently told me that, despite the fact that we had only been at the firm for nine months, she was two months pregnant and planned to leave the firm entirely after she had her baby.
“That would be so embarrassing to be fired,” another girl said.
“No one’s getting fired,” Vanessa said.
“Or, worse yet, you could end up like Cheryl in tax,” Mindy said. I looked up and she was smiling slyly, like an arsonist about to light a match. Someone has got to get that girl some billable work. “When she broke up with Henry Kaplan in litigation, she had to see him every day. And now he’s married with two kids and she’s still single. And she still has to see him every day.”
“She’s not going to end up like Cheryl in tax!” Vanessa said. “Honey,” she said, turning to me, “you’re not going to end up like Cheryl in tax.”
“Well, I, for one, think it’s a bad idea,” Lori said. “Remember when we went to that women’s luncheon? All of the female partners said that you have to work very hard to be taken seriously when you’re a woman.”
“Only two people said that,” a voice from the other side of the table said.
“That’s because there are only four female partners at the firm,” another voice replied. Everyone was speaking so quickly, I could barely tell who was saying what.
“You really should try to keep things secret with him for a while, though,” another voice offered.
“But you can tell us, of course,” another voice said. “We won’t tell anyone.”
The whole table kept talking, giving their opinions, until they all turned into a blur. “I think you should.” “I think you shouldn’t.” “Who cares what you think!” They all spoke over each other, louder and louder, all the voices melting into one. The room began to spin.
“Everyone, stop it!” I said. The table became silent. It was just like in a movie. I spoke and everyone listened. It felt good to take charge of the situation. I would just tell everyone to calm down and to keep things quiet, and no one else would know a thing as I figured it all out for myself. I could make a clear, well thought out decision without the interference of any outside opinions.
As a smile crept onto my lips, I felt a presence behind me. Everyone at the table was staring, fake smiles frozen on their faces. I turned around to find Danielle Lewis, the head of the corporate department, standing behind my chair.
“Brooke,” she asked, “are you free for lunch tomorrow? We should go for lunch.”
And just as easily as it began, it was over. Seven months later, Jack was engaged to a girl he met at a Knicks game the week after our trip to South Carolina.
Jack and Mr. Mohawk were still quietly whispering. Mr. Mohawk winked at Jack as he walked away from us.
“How come no one ever mistook Douglas and I for married when we were together?” I asked Jack, “We were together for two years.”
“Maybe that’s because you two never really made a very good couple.”
“But, tell me, Jack, how do you really feel?”
“They’re all crap. I’m taking this one off,” Jack said, turning on his heel.
“No!” I protested.
“Yes!” he said. “None of these are any good. Why are we shopping for this at a costume shop?” he asked.
“You know why,” I said, making sure I was speaking softly enough that I would not offend Mr. Mohawk, “The kilts in the tuxedo rental place cost a fortune. This way is so much cheaper.”
“Well, it certainly feels cheaper,” he said, pulling the kilt off, revealing his boxers. They were faded blue chambray and they reminded me of a guy that I had a crush on in college. I felt like I was staring, so I fixed my eyes on the various angel costumes hanging on the wall.
“Who cares what it feels like?” I said, pretending to be interested in a marabou halo. “It looks fine, and that’s all that matters. Let’s just pick a color.”
“Maybe you should focus on what things really are and not just what they look like.”
“What did you just say?” I asked, turning around to face him.
“Nothing. I’m putting on the navy one again,” he said, disappearing into the fitting room. I walked past the angel costumes into the “Corner of Terror” and looked at the various instruments of torture.
“How’s this one?” Jack asked. As I turned around, he struck his best Marilyn Monroe “Seven Year Itch” pose. A fan that had been put on the floor to blow air into a ghost’s sails provided the gust of air he needed to make the kilt pop up as he held it down with his hands. I laughed.
“I think I like the red. Would you mind throwing that one on again?”
“Your wish is my command,” Jack said. Hmmm. Maybe that’s why he always has so many girlfriends. I mean, Jack isn’t exactly the best looking man in Manhattan, yet women always flock to him. He does have a good job, though, and anyone who can read can find out how much he makes since they print the salaries big firms pay every year in the Law Journal. Okay, I mean, he’s not bad looking. I’m not saying he’s bad looking. He has the kind of looks that grow on you. He’s tall, so that’s good, but it’s not like he’s movie star handsome or anything.
Douglas was movie star handsome. Not was, is. I mean, it’s not like he’s dead or something. I only wished he were dead. When I wasn’t wishing he’d get back together with me, that is.
I walked over to a light saber from the Star Wars display and picked it up.
“That’s a Jedi light saber,” a woman with a shaved head and a massive tattoo creeping up her neck said to me. “Leia never carried a Jedi light saber.” She was wearing combat boots, a black wife beater and a camouflage skirt. The fishnet stockings and blood red lipstick completed the look. Her name tag said ‘Jennie.’
As I turned to her, ready to give her my best ‘Luke, I am your father,’ Jack walked out of the dressing room with the red kilt on. And a gorilla mask on his head—one of those big ones that cover your head and neck completely. I practically fell over I was laughing so hard. Jack grabbed me and threw me over his left shoulder, making gorilla noises all the while. Jennie laughed like a schoolgirl. She must’ve heard the whole ‘your wish is my command’ thing.
Jack’s cell phone began to ring, and he rushed to pick it up with me still over his shoulder. Putting me and the gorilla head down, he answered the phone while I began to talk to Mr. Mohawk about price.
“Healthy Foods,” Jack said, coming out of the dressing room fully dressed and throwing the navy kilt onto the counter with a half smile. “I’ve gotta get back to the office.”
“Do I have to get back to the office, too?” I asked, praying that he would say no.
He hesitated. Never a good sign.
“But, it’s Saturday,” I whined.
“A lawyer’s work is never done,” Jack said.
“You’re a lawyer?” Jennie asked Jack. She had put a hot pink boa around her shoulders and was working it for all it was worth.
“Tell you what,” Jack said to me, “To make up for having to go to work, let me buy you a present. After all, we’ve forgotten the most important part of the costume.” He reached over to a display of ‘Fun Rings’ and started to sift through them. He first pulled out a ring that looked like a skeleton’s head, shook his head ‘no,’ and continued to sift. Finding what he wanted, he handed it to Mr. Mohawk.
“On me,” Jack said as he looked at me and handed the ring over to Mr. Mohawk. It was a silver ring with a round faux diamond. It even had tiny fake baguettes. Putting it on my finger, he said, “Consider yourself engaged.”
“That’s so romantic,” Jennie swooned. Truth be told, I kind of swooned, too.