Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions by Bacon Press Books

job you don’t perform very well as is?” he said.
    “I’m writing copy now,” I said.”I’m really a
junior copywriter.”
    I handed Mr. Fischbach ‘Wake Up to a New
Face.’ He handed it back.
    “The last time we advertised for your
position we had fifty applicants,” he said.
    Lenny saw me when I came out of the Ladies
Room, my eyes all puffy from crying.
    “Meet me across the street after work,” he
said.
    .
    Lenny guided me to the large corner booth in
back and ordered us both martinis.
    “I’m serious about that book,” he said. “We
could make a fortune.”
    The touch of his hand on the tense spot just
between my shoulder blades felt like kindness itself. How starved I
was.
    Heaven protect the working girl.
    Nothing can stop the Duke of Earl.
    “It’s about time you took advantage of your
opportunities,” Eva said that night.
    “It still doesn’t feel right,” I said.
    “It’s not cheap if you actually like the
guy,” she said.
    “I like Lenny all right, I just don’t respect
him,” I said. “How can you respect an old guy who cheats on his
wife?”
    “You don’t have to marry him,” she said. You
just have to let him improve your career.” She tossed me her
favorite leopard print Banlon shift, which reeked of My Sin. “This
dress is Checkmate,” she explained. “I save it for closing the
deal.”
    Kenneth and Ralph told me how nice I looked
in the checkmate dress. Even Mr. Fischbach managed a wintry little
smirk when we passed in the hall. Lenny winked at me over the
coffee tray. Later, he phoned me from his office.
    “Under the clock at the Biltmore at 5,” he
said.
    Soon I would be reborn as the Cosmopolitan
girl, realistic and proud of it. Dressed to kill and eager to
please. Something would be lost. Nothing marketable, just my jaded,
provincial side.
    At three-thirty Ian called me into his
office, and shut the door.
    “Take the rest of the day off,” he said.
“You’re fired.”
    .
    This is what my dream tells me: the world is
still cold, and I’ll never find a parking place. Wih my hard won
law degree I should have been a contender, one of those
mini-skirted babes who does it all, instead of a frump in sensible
shoes.
    “I’m a failure!” I tell Dr. Freundlicht.
    “If you say so,” he said, in an accommodating
tone of voice. “But aren’t you being a little disingenuous? It
sounds to me like you are bemoaning your failure to become a whore
instead of an honest lawyer who works for the Department of Labor.
You can’t have it both ways, not if you’re looking for
sympathy.”
    “I’m only an honest lawyer by default,” I
explained. “It’s because I don’t have what it takes to succeed. I’m
no good at sales. When I try to please I miss by miles. There’s
nothing more pathetic than a failed prostitute.”
    “You often start stories but never finish
them,” Dr.Freundlicht said. “What happened with you and the married
man?”
    .
    Here’s what I felt the moment Ian fired me:
sheer relief.
    Dutifully, I waited for Lenny under the clock
at the Biltmore because a nice girl never stood anyone up. I didn’t
know if Lenny would come once he’d found out I was fired. I sort of
hoped he wouldn’t.
    In which case, what was the point of waiting
for a married man under the clock of the Biltmore?
    I thought wistfully of fresh sheets and an
absence of kitty litter. There was still time to catch the next
train back to Larchmont. No, what I really wanted to do was get out
of Eva’s slimy dress and into something cotton, something that had
my own smell on it.
    The next Monday, I went down to Church
Street, flashed my college diploma at the personnel specialist, and
was hired by the New York City Department of Social Services at
twice my old salary to be a welfare caseworker. A union would
negotiate raises on my behalf, and I couldn’t be fired except for
criminal behavior. I also signed up to take the LSATs. I would
never be poor again, except in my dreams. I could