giggling.
“Look, I’d better get going,” I say.
“Hey, don’t take offense,” Missy adds quickly, putting up her hands. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Missy is very small. She is literally half my size. Her feet look like children’s feet.
“So, where do you live?” Missy asks me, deliberately ignoring my “this conversation is over” vibe. She’s also blocking my way out the door.
“Lakeview,” I say, trying to avoid giving an actual street address.
“Me too,” Missy says. “Where?”
“Uh, near Sheffield’s,” I say, being deliberately vague.
“Me too!” she says. “What street?”
It’s impossible now to avoid it. “Kenmore,” I say.
“Cool,” she says.
Missy is eyeing the Tiffany charm bracelet on my left arm (a college graduation gift from my maternal grandparents) with interest. I tuck it into my sleeve.
“One bedroom or…?” she trails off.
“Two bedrooms,” I say.
“Got your own washer/dryer?”
Missy is beginning to sound like a real estate agent.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I say.
“Hardwood floors? Exposed brick?”
“Look, I’m renting the apartment, I’m not selling it,” I say.
“Touchy,” Missy says, holding up her hands.
I think for sure this conversation is over. But because Missy, like so many techies, is unfazed by deliberate rudeness, she continues. “I’m just asking because I’m looking for a place to live. I’m house-sitting but that gig is up in a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not looking for a roommate,” I spit, quickly. No use in giving her false hope.
“Oh,” she says, shrugging. “Well, if you change your mind, here’s where you can reach me.”
She gives me one of her old Maximum Office business cards. Most of the information is scratched out, except for a handwritten number at the bottom. She’s drawn devil horns on the o in “Office.” I put it in my purse, as if I intend to keep it, when I plan to throw it out at the next available opportunity. Only a mentally deranged person would shop for a roommate at the unemployment office.
I arrive back in my apartment and immediately take a shower to wash off the stale smell of government work and the recirculated air of lowered expectations.
I change into a set of clean pajamas and feel like I never left home. I feel like there’s something I ought to be doing, and when I realize that that something is paying the rent because it’s due today, I sigh. I have next to no money in my checking account. I blame the financial advisors on CNN who claim that the only way to get out of credit card debt is to pay for everything with cash. I did that at the beginning of the month (including some extravagances like seven cab rides, a pair of Prada shoes that were on sale, and a pair of cashmere gloves). And now I have no cash to pay my rent. How does that make any sense?
I’d been spending like crazy (in part because I’m an art major and math and budgets are foreign concepts to me, and in part because I thought I was falling for Mike and wanted him to fall for me, too, and so I bought a new wardrobe of borderline professional, borderline sexy, kittenish outfits for work). Honestly, it never occurred to me that I would be laid off — again. Something about third time being the charm, that while layoffs could happen twice, three times seemed a bit of a stretch, even for a person with my kind of persecution complex.
Plus, I had insurance: my relationship with Mike. Not that I consciously counted on that, as it was a consensual relationship, but I felt protected. Little did I know that Mike was plotting to discard me like Kleenex.
* * *
The next day, I get my last check from the Evil Pink Slip Company, and I deposit it into my bank account and, for a full afternoon, soak in the illusion of being rich. It is a double paycheck (the extent of my meager severance), and it feels like I’ve won the lottery. I go and buy five full bags of groceries with luxury