Who You Know by Theresa Alan

dramas. She’s in drivers’ ed now.”
    â€œYou’re kidding? She’s driving?” I’d met Audrey only once, about a year ago, but she’d seemed impossibly young. Maybe Audrey was small for her age. I knew she had asthma because Pam had been called out of the office on emergencies a couple times. Maybe the asthma made her smaller than other kids her age. In any case, I could barely envision her riding a ten-speed.
    â€œJoe is teaching her. She says I make her nervous. She claims I clutch my heart in a panic-stricken sort of way that makes her too anxious to concentrate. All lies of course.”
    I laughed at the image. “It’s too bad you can’t make it tonight. Let’s do lunch sometime.”
    â€œThat would be great.”
    â€œHave a nice weekend. Don’t work too hard.” I knew that last part was futile. Pam always worked like a horse. She was a truly talented writer, and she generated an amazing amount of material. I would have loved to work for her as a copywriter or something. But since what she did—deliver products promised by sales to clients—wasn’t a revenue-generating department, it, like editorial, rarely got the budget for additional staff.
    Pam was attractive for her age, but she’d aged a lot in the past year. No matter how talented she was, I doubted she would be hired if she were applying for a job at McKenna Marketing today. These days Morgan wanted a young, energetic company filled with people who looked like they belonged on an episode of Friends .
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    A fter work, the seven of us met over at the Rios for appetizers and drinks. After a few glasses of ginger ale for Lydia and Sharon and a lavish number of margaritas for the rest of us, Jen, Lydia, Les, and Sharon’s husband, Mitch, went to play pool. When Sharon got up to use the bathroom, I was abruptly alone at the table with Lydia’s husband, Dan, in a suddenly awkward silence. It occurred to me that in the three years since I’d first met Dan, we’d never had a conversation, just the two of us.
    â€œSo,” I began, groping for a conversation topic, “a baby on the way. Pretty exciting.” Lydia and Dan made a cute couple. I’d always been a little jealous of their relationship. I’d gone to a dinner party at their place one time—this was toward the end of things with Gideon, when I was feeling acutely lonely in my marriage—and I’d been struck by the happy pictures of Lydia and Dan around their house. On the coffee table was a framed photograph of them smiling beside a sign that said “Welcome to Rocky Mountain National Park.” Lydia’s hair was blown back by the wind; Dan’s friendly smile seemed so content. On the bookshelf was a picture of them sweaty and smiling after their run in the Bolder Boulder and another picture of them playing with their dogs. On the refrigerator were several photos of them held up with smiley face magnets: one in which they were on a mountain with their arms wrapped around each other; another of them at Disney World; another of them fishing off a pier. Soon the house would be filled with pictures of them with their kid, who would no doubt be a cheerful, adorable child with an infectious giggle.
    â€œI couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been trying to knock her up since we got married seven years ago, but she kept putting it off,” Dan said, smiling. His smile caught me off guard. Until then I had never really noticed just how good-looking he was. “She’ll be such a great mom. She’s so giving, so considerate, you know?”
    I nodded. Lydia wasn’t the most exciting person in the world, but she was nice. She’d be the kind of mom who would smile sweetly down on her dimply faced kid as they baked Christmas cookies together. She’d say something like, okay, you can have just one, but you have to save room for dinner! The kid would eagerly