Take Me Twice

“Oh, I will.”

Not.

Laine returned the bare squeeze her soon-to-be ex-co-worker proffered, and nearly gagged on the way-too-familiar perfume stench. Eau de Suffocation. She sure as hell wouldn’t miss that. This fact-checking job at I am Woman magazine was her fourth since graduating from Princeton eight years ago and she was done. Done! June first, and she was on her way to a summer of fun and relaxation before she started Columbia journalism school in the fall. Her first real break since…ever.

Ha! Take that, repressive slave-driving capitalist tools. She was history.

Her boss, Petunia Finkseed—whose real name was much less fun so why think of her that way—shook her hand gravely. “Thanks for the hard work and good luck, Laine. When you graduate, if you want to come back, please do. There’s always a job for you here at I am Woman.”

Laine grinned broadly, murmured thanks, and wondered just how high those pigs would have to fly before she’d think about coming back. Not that it had been a bad job, by any means. But she was free! Free! Free from the constant pressure, from the snarly office intrigue, from the barely veiled leers of the company V.P.

An entire summer stretched ahead of her; she’d take Manhattan by storm, do all the things she’d wanted to since moving here after college but had never had time for. Sleeping late, reading the paper every day, taking long bubble baths, sight-seeing, irresponsibly late nights dancing during the week, trips to the beach, a solemn vow to avoid panty hose before 8:00 p.m. She wanted to take French, pottery, learn yoga, skydiving, tap dancing, cooking…

And…find a Man To Do. Or a couple of them.

She’d joined Eve’s Apple, an online reading group, after her high school friend Samantha recommended it not only as a place to find fun and stimulating reads, but also as a good place for female companionship. Not long after, Laine had joined the smaller e-mail subset of the group, Men To Do Before Saying I Do. Their mission? To find unattached, sexy, thoroughly inappropriate males…and do them.

What could be more perfect? Call it an age-thirty midterm break. Then in September, graduate school at Columbia and the rest of her life would get started. She’d be on her way to becoming America’s best reporter. Granted a few years ago she’d enrolled briefly in a master’s English program at Boston University, and thought she was on her way to writing the Great American Novel; and granted after college she’d applied to medical school, but this time she was on her way. For real. She was pretty sure.

She grabbed her small box of personal items—pictures of her parents on their vacation at the Grand Canyon, her niece Carolyn on her first birthday, the scraggly air fern that, frankly, she couldn’t tell was alive or dead, and the gold-plated bracelet her coworkers had chipped in and bought for her.

Outta here!

Her next-door cubicle prisoner, Fred, got a genuine hug and a promise of lunch sometime, and Laine fled.

Down the hall, down the elevator filled with tall, gorgeous women in black and men in dark suits, across the huge marble lobby filled with tall, gorgeous women in black and men in dark suits, and hot damn, out into the gritty dusty chaos of Times Square. Free! She wanted to hug the harassed mom with three cranky kids, she wanted to kiss the gorgeous blond guy across the street, she wanted to create a scene by skipping, no, frolicking, no, gamboling her way to the subway, kicking up her heels and crowing like Peter Pan.

Except, in Manhattan, no one would even blink.

She bounced down the 42nd Street subway stairs and pushed her way through the turnstile, following the commuting crowds the same way she always did. But instead of bleary-eyed, leaden, sheeplike, obedient herding, she practically danced onto the subway platform. Hello, New Yorkers! Laine’s here!

She must be practically glowing. People would raise their heads and murmur when she walked by. Who was that woman with so much joy in her heart? What was her secret?

Instead she stepped in some just-chewed gum and spent a good three minutes trying to scrape the goo off the bottom of her chunky black heels.

No more black! The rest of the summer she’d avoid it like the plague. Except of course a killer black minidress on a hot date.

She filed onto the C-train, headed downtown and clutched her box of belongings, bumping against the other commuting bodies when the train swayed. She gazed at the ads along the top of the car to avoid gazing at other people, though she wished sometimes she could stare openly, like a child. Maybe she would do that sometime. People were so fascinating.

A body came a little too close behind her, pressed a little harder than the crush of commuters would make necessary. A pelvis planted firmly against her rear end. Ewwww. She grimaced and let her elbow make “accidental” forceful contact with the soft male belly behind her. There was a grunt, and the body moved away. City living could be so charming. But nothing could keep her down today. Nothing! Not even a gross grinder.

So what would she do tonight? Champagne? A soak in the tub? Maybe rent a nice romantic movie? Or maybe her roommate of six months, Monica, would want to go out, not that she ever did that anymore since she’d started dating Joe the Smotherer.

Just as well. Laine shouldn’t go too wild too soon. Taking into consideration her grad school tuition and expenses, she’d saved barely enough to scrape through the summer without a salary, but finances would be tight if she went too crazy. She had a part-time job as a marketing writer with an architecture firm lined up this fall, but she’d really, really wanted the summer totally free.

The train arrived at Fourteenth Street. She got off and tossed a glare at the subway humper, who grinned back obscenely.

Ick.

Somehow she was always the target for the creepos. Maybe because she was tall, she hadn’t a clue. Maybe she had been born with weirdo-magnet genes.

She charged up the stairs, enjoying the challenge to her body, and strode down Eighth Avenue to Jackson Square and toward her building on Horatio Street, mildly breathless. The sun was shining. Pigeons fluttered, shop windows sparkled, subways rumbled underground, taxis endangered pedestrians.

Everything was perfect.

She pushed through the revolving door to her building and waved at the tall, bushy-haired evening doorman. “Hey, Roger, what’s going on?”

“More flowers.” He bent slowly and pulled out a huge spring bouquet of tulips and irises from behind his station.

She shook her head, chuckling, and glanced at the card, not that she needed to. Ben. A guy she’d gone out with once or twice, a close friend of her cousin, Frank. Sweet man. Lovely man. Zero chemistry. At least on her end. And she wasn’t sure on his, either; he acted more like a protective brother than a suitor. Maybe Frank had told him to watch out for her.

“This guy is nuts about you, huh?”

“Between you and me, Roger? He’s just nuts.”

Roger shrugged and fingered one of his enormous ears. “He’s sure trying hard.”

“He loves sending flowers, I guess. You want this one for Betty?”

Roger’s red, lined face broke into a smile that transformed him from a sour, craggy Scrooge to an indicator of the handsome man he must have been thirty years ago before, she suspected, a love affair with the bottle had begun. “Betty thinks I’ve gone nuts. But she sure appreciates it.”

“They’re yours. He won’t let me send them back, refuses to stop, and the bouquet upstairs is still plenty fresh.”

She waved to acknowledge his thanks, got her mail from the back room and took the elevator to the eighth floor.

Friday evening, sprung free from employment, the city waited, the summer was at her feet.

She put her key in the lock of apartment 8-C, pushed open the door and stopped. Monica was sobbing over an open suitcase on the living room couch, clothes strewn all around it.

“Monica!” Laine rushed into the room, forgetting to hold the door, which slammed behind her, sounding like doom. “What’s going on?”

“He…he…he…”

Laine waited while the word surfed out on sobs. “Joe?”

She nodded. “He…he…he…”

“Oh no.” Laine moved forward and put her hand on Monica’s shoulder. Whatever he…he…he had done, it didn’t sound good. And from what she’d seen of Joe—cocky, brash, overbearing, big-nosed, obnoxious—she was only surprised it had taken this long.

“Dumped you?”

“Yes.” The word came out on a wail of anguish.

“So—” Laine gestured around “—why are you packing?”

“I’m going home.”

Laine turned her shaking roommate around by the shoulders, melting in sympathy. She’d been exactly where Monica was four months ago, with Brad—a stunning, charming, self-absorbed, cheating sleazebag. “I totally understand. A little TLC from your parents is just what you need.”