Chapter 1 : Part 6

It's About Your Husband
by Lauren Lipton

(Page 6 of 7)

Or maybe, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day, you're somewhere arbitrary-perhaps in a parking lot, walking back to the car after an appointment. Someone you love, someone you trust more than anyone, could be no more than a few feet away in an illicit embrace. But you're not expecting to see this person, so the scene doesn't register, and you walk on by. Cognitive dissonance is just another way of saying it takes some time to come to terms when a person you thought you knew turns out to be somebody else entirely. My mother once felt moved to describe it, "Just as Mother Nature hates a vacuum, human nature hates a discrepancy."

This is what I ponder on my long walk home from happy hour. Any other day I would have taken a taxi without a second thought, but my new econo-life has me spending a lot of time-the one thing I suddenly have in abundance-performing what my "friend" Kevin would call cost-benefit analysis. Let's see. A cab from Grand Central to my brownstone at Seventy- sixth and Columbus equals about what I make an hour, based on my new state-subsidized paycheck-about an eighth of what I was bringing in at Hayes Heeley. There's the subway, but ten subway rides not taken equals one meal-two if I stretch the leftovers. Over the past two days everything but my rent has begun to seem a frivolous waste of resources. Truthfully, my rent has always seemed a frivolous waste of resources, but Val assures me that after enough time in New York it feels normal to spend half your take-home pay on a "cozy" studio with a parked-cars view and a kitchen renovated in seventies reject materials.

Michelle, my erstwhile boss and head of the qualitativeresearch department at Hayes Heeley, promised to send a check for two weeks' severance in a week or two, and I've got six months of medical insurance, which seemed pretty good at first, considering I wasn't there that long. ("Guilt money," Val called it when I told her. "You should have cried. They would have started throwing hundred-dollar bills at you.") I can also count on twenty-six weeks on the dole while searching for a new job. I'm certain I'll land one before the money runs out. Fairly certain.

The truth is, we responsible career-girl types know we're supposed to have a cushion of savings, equal to six months' salary, specifically earmarked for times like these. I remember back in high school reading that savvy financial tip in Cosmopolitan, along with the more interesting advice about how to attract a man at the office by ever so subtly crossing and recrossing your panty-hosed legs: "The faint whisper of nylon on nylon will drive him wild!"

I never imagined I'd end up in a time like this. "My roots are here. In Los Angeles," I tried to explain to Michelle Heeley, after she phoned me at my old firm in Brentwood one day out of nowhere with what she called "a oncein- a-lifetime career opportunity." Despite my protests, she insisted on flying me to New York for an interview. "I couldn't think of leaving," I told her again in person a week later. "My whole life is in California."

Michelle wouldn't take no for an answer, ticking off arguments on fingers laden with gems so large they looked edible. "It's time you moved out of recruiting. It's a dead end." She paused to move the clasp of her necklace from her throat to the back of her neck. "You'd have a much better future as a focus-group moderator. And as you know, no firm offers a better pedigree than Hayes Heeley."

Michelle was right: I did want something more. For seven years, I'd been slogging through data banks of names and numbers and making phone calls. Hello, Kimberly Anne Smith? Are you between the ages of twenty-five and thirtyfour?

Do you purchase mass-market cosmetics? Would you describe yourself as having dry, oily, or combination skin? Dry, you say? Would you like to take part in a two-hour discussion about moisturizer?

I took the job and moved, telling myself it would help my career and make me rich at the same time.

On my way to Midtown the first day, I pulled a wad of bills from the ATM, paid for a MetroCard for the subway, a taxi after I couldn't decipher the subway map, a cup of coffee, a bagel, a copy of the New York Post, a box of Band-Aids to protect me from my new pumps, and a few other assorted sundries. By the time I arrived at the office, I'd spent every last cent. Val calls this the ten-bucks-a-block rule, and until now I've coped by stopping every ten blocks at the ATM-a strategy that, clearly, will no longer work.

I meditate on all this for thirty blocks, up Madison Avenue, through Central Park, and on up Columbus. It keeps my mind off both the developing blister on my left heel and the nagging little voice in my head insisting the real reason I took the position was, in fact, to run away from my life. Shush, I tell it. Following Vickie's husband will keep me occupied until I can figure out what to do next.

I'm in the front hallway of my brownstone, about to unlock my mailbox, when I hear the phone start to ring inside my first-floor apartment. I have time only to grab a FedEx envelope addressed to me off the table in the foyer before bursting through my apartment door and catching the phone on the fourth ring, just as the machine is about to pick up. Maybe it's Val; her date canceled and now she can come over. Bad girl, Iris, that's unsportsmanlike. Maybe Kevin, my friend-withbenefits? I wasn't expecting to hear from him until tomorrow night but could use the company, not to mention the benefits. "It's me," a woman says.

Copyright © 2006 by Lauren Lipton

About the Author

Lauren Lipton is a deputy editor at Cosmopolitan. Previously she was a senior editor at In Style and a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, where for the popular Weekend Journal section she reported on supersize engagement rings, copycat brides who steal their friends' wedding ideas, and luxury homes with his-and-hers garages. Her work has also appeared in publications including Glamour and Marie Claire and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She began her career as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, covering television and lifestyle trends.