CHAPTER TWO
The next morning felt like I was on a super secret spy mission; I was a spy who wore a business suit and rode a motorbike.
“You look nice,” my mother said as I tried to sneak through the kitchen without her noticing.
“Oh, thanks. Just felt like looking more professional,” I replied uneasily.
Her face brightened. “That’s my girl. Have to look the part. Don’t want them to regret giving you a promotion, do we?”
I shook my head and proceeded to leave the room.
“What’s in your hand?” she called curiously.
I looked down at the manila envelope that was full of my resumes and cover letters.
“I had some work I wanted to catch up on over the weekend.”
I was surprised at how easily the lies came to me.
My mother grinned again. “I’m proud of you, pumpkin.”
Oh God. Kill me now.
I laughed nervously and booked it out of the room before she said anything else.
I got on my bike Putt-Putt and roared off towards downtown Portland. Only a few weeks ago I was riding to work and wishing I didn’t have to go, that I could just go anywhere. And now that I actually could go anywhere I wanted, I was still heading into the city in hopes of finding a paycheck of some sort. Argh, irony was having a field day with me lately.
I didn’t really have a sense of what to do or where to go. Normally I would scour the job and career websites for openings and send off my resumes via email. But I couldn’t sit at home and do that all week without blowing my cover, so I had to go off and do my job search the old-fashioned way.
Let me tell you…the old-fashioned way sucks. I much preferred the easy anonymity of email submissions. I found it really hard to walk into random office buildings and inquire about potential positions. Luckily a lot of companies were OK with the drop-in (maybe it made me stand out) but I still felt embarrassed. I could tell each receptionist silently judged me and praised their good fortune for having a job and not needing to walk around town groveling. It probably didn’t help that most of the time I was actually applying for the receptionist position. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they tossed my resume in the trashcan afterwards.
By the time lunch rolled around, my stomach begged for nourishment of some sort (I still wasn’t too big on eating breakfast). I had visited 28 offices, which actually only covered about one square block downtown. I decided the next course of action would be to find an internet café after lunch and go back to basics.
As I sat in a sushi restaurant, drinking copious amounts of free green tea and looking over my resume for any errors (yeah, I probably should have done that before I started handing them out), my phone rang.
The sound startled me and naturally I knocked my cup of tea over my remaining stack of resumes. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, trying to defuse the bomb I felt slowly building up in my abdomen.
I calmly looked at my phone. It was Dex. For some reason that made my blood boil.
“Yes?” I answered (rather rudely, I must say). My waitress, who was dabbing up the tea with a cloth, gave me a wary look. I smiled at her apologetically.
There was silence on the other end. He carefully cleared his throat. “Perry?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Dex. That guy you did that show with. We were at a lighthouse…”
“Yeah, hi Dex.”
“You have caller ID, don’t you?”
“Sure do.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“Sort of. Though I don’t see it getting any better.”
I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I was practically spitting out the words as if they were bitter pills.
He sighed. I could tell he was thinking long and hard about what to say next.
Finally he said innocently, “How are ya?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Um. Did you see the show last night?”
“Yes.”
“You hated it, didn’t you?”
Now it was my turn to think long and hard. I didn’t hate it, per se.
“My parents hated it.”
“Oh. Well. You know parents.”
“And your parents?”
Silence. Then, “My parents what?”
“Did they hate it too?”
“Both my parents are dead,” he replied bluntly. “But yes, I’m sure the show is making hell even worse for them.”
Did he just imply that both of his parents were in hell? I couldn’t tell if he was joking since he was even harder to read over the phone than in person. He could be as deadpan as anything but he always had that little wild gleam in his eye, if you looked for it.
“More importantly though,” he continued, “was what Jimmy thought of the whole…ordeal.”
“Which is why you called.”
“And to say hello. Jesus, Perry. What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” I exclaimed. My problem? Where did I begin? How about how not only did I almost die making some shoddy internet show, but that I gambled my entire career on it as well?
Only I couldn’t bring myself to say that to Dex. I didn’t want him to think I had put more stock into the project than I already had. I needed to save some sort of face in this situation, even if it was my own bloated and confused one.
“Perry?” he asked with a little more finesse.
I sighed. “Sorry. PMS, I guess. I’m fine. Please tell me what Jimmy thought of the show.”
“He said it was crap.”
“Oh, perfect.”