Out front, there are no trees, no patches of dirt, just long wide filthy sidewalks glittering with broken glass, stained with feces, smelling sharply of urine. The flat patchy painted front of the building seems to make the sun hotter, the smell thicker. I am early for my 11am meeting.
Inside there is dank old industrial carpeting and partitioned off cubicles. It smells so familiar I can’t smell it anymore, but I know it smells like old shoes and air conditioning sealed together in a jar for ten years. I see the woman I’m supposed to meet, the woman who told me to be there on this day, at this time, in her email. Emails from managers asking for unexpected meetings always wash over me from the inbox, make me feel like I just got caught in an undertow. I know: swim parallel to the coastline. But you always end up really far from where you started, and it’s a long swim back. Exhausting.
She tells me she’ll see me later in the afternoon. I ask about the 11am. "Oh? Did we agree on a time?" Yes, you emailed me and told me to be here on this day, at this time. This is the third week since the first attempted meeting.
We sit down. It is dark, there is no light in this corner of her office. It smells like funeral flowers and old carpet, I think it’s perfume. She talks for a long time and all I notice is that her eyes are really watery. She was hired a few months ago, and I’ve never sat down to talk with her, never looked into her eyes. Never been asked to. They’re so wet. Is she going to cry? I wait for the tears to spill over. But they never do. I return to the conversation and she’s not talking about anything that might make her cry.
I listen. I try to talk but can’t get a pause in her stream to slip in. I lightly hit my hand on the table. I calmly, quietly say two small sentences that explain the confusion I’ve been holding for the past four months. I want an explanation. Someone else is blamed, someone who is never around. She sounds like a car salesman as she talks about her new plans, and that she was told to include me. I make her repeat the last part. It’s like I’m being given a cookie and patted on the head, and I know she doesn’t know anything about me, and doesn’t care. She slips in a compliment, but not one that makes sense. I am confused. I am in a movie that is being filmed in reverse. Will it make sense at the end? I want to say something but she keeps talking. I feel really small, like I’m at the grownup’s dinner table and need to sit on some phone books to reach my plate. This is how I’ve always felt here.
She tells me things I don’t understand about reaching alternative markets and I don’t understand what it has to do with me, right now. I’m to be a photo, an add-on to other people’s publicity because they can’t "do it all" themselves. A promise to do one small thing that should’ve been done months ago. Nothing compared to what I do every day on my own, with no assistants, ads, campaigns, publicists, support, family, cookies, bullshit. That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. She can tell me what she sees and I’d tell her what she’s missing in me, if she listened. Or asked. She talks for nearly five minutes. I can’t hold my breath anymore and have to start swimming. Sometimes life has stabbed me and hurt so bad I wanted to die, sometimes it’s made me want to destroy everything. But it’s made me understand that life is beautiful, even when it hurts. And most of all, it’s made me understand that life is a rental.
I tell her it’s too late. I rise, all mammoth 5’4" of me, and tell her "I am no one’s understudy." I hear the words come out from a deep place, a place I forgot I had. I feel like I’ve wanted to say it in this place all my life. "I quit, effective immediately." "You’re quitting over this?" She doesn’t understand that this is my life. Yes, I tell her, I am.
After 7 1/2 years, I no longer have a day job. I should’ve left months ago when I overheard the other manager on the phone, behind her closed door, imitating and making fun of me on the phone. I went home crying instead. But I’ve always known that retail is just a concentrated form of high school, not that I went to high school.
I packed up my belongings in a "US Mail Only" crate, turned in my keys, stopped in payroll to kiss Mr. J on the cheek with a wet, sticky vanilla lip gloss kiss, and walked through needle alley to the underground. Now, a nap. Later, I’ll write my submission to Friday Pussy Blogging, which is really fucking cool, and then round up a posse for a happy hour celebration. Now the adventure begins.
