I’m happy (and a little nervous, let’s be real) to let you know that going forward, all chapters of my novel, Rom-Com Rehab, will be available here to read for free! (Or as Mel Robbins says, at zero cost.)

You can read Chapter 1 here.
If you’d like to support my writing on Patreon, you can do that here (thank you!)

New chapters will be released monthly. Subscribe and you’ll get them delivered straight to your inbox! (You know how to subscribe, don’t you? Just put your email in the box and blow.)

And now, back to our story. In chapter 2, our rain-damp and disassociating heroine discovers just how incredible American Express customer service truly is, and Lily arrives with no underpants on (probably). In chapter 3, Tabby goes to work and tells us why this is not her beautiful house.

And let’s not forget our standard disclaimer: While based on some things that happened to me in real life, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER 2

When Lily and I go on vacation together, or just meet people out at a bar, we tell them we’re sisters. We look enough alike that people take us at our word — dark curly hair, brown eyes, pale. I’m taller and rounder; she’s got the good hair — thick and long. Sometimes, if we’re feeling mischievous, we tell them the real truth is we’re half-sisters; we have the same father, but different mothers. And our mothers are best friends. This never, ever fails to fascinate and quietly horrify people, and we always brush it off by saying, “It was the 70s.”

That story is true, more or less.

Our mothers ARE best friends. They grew up together in the Bronx, went to school together, got married within a couple of years of each other. Lily was born in March of 1969, and I arrived two months later. I have never known a world without Lily in it. They raised us together, Elaine Kidd and Liz Cassidy, through the early years, when they were still married, through their divorces, through their single mother years. It might have gotten complicated when my mom married my stepfather, Ben, when I was 12, but luckily he realized he was marrying all of us. He’s a good guy, Ben. But he’s not the father we share.

What we share is a hole in the air, a vacuum. Lily’s dad, Scott, took off when she was two. Liz Cassidy kicked out my dad, Carl, when I was six. These are not good guys, is what we say when we talk about it. They’re still around, tangentially, occasionally. But when they left, they left casualties. They left our mothers with debt and bills to pay and girls to raise. Girls who bruised easily, who kept vigil with wide eyes to make sure no one else went away.

That’s the father we share. A two-headed, four-armed ghost, a crime scene chalk outline where someone should have been but wasn’t. We call him Scott Cassidy, or Carl Kidd, depending on our mood.

I dialed Lily from the wall phone in the kitchen. She picked up on the third ring, and when she said hello I found myself unable to speak.

“Oh my God, Tabby, what is it?” (I just want to point out here that she recognized me from my silence.)

“Nate,” I stuttered in a hoarse whisper. “Nate. He…Nate.”

“Nate. Did something happen to Nate?”

“He…”

“Tell me. What happened?”

“Met someone. He left me.”

She said nothing to that. I slid to the floor, holding the receiver, and smoked. The cat came over and settled himself in my lap. Set to purring like a motorboat.

“That cowardly, manipulative, lying asshole,” she said at last. “I will kill him. Is he there? You tell him to stay there so I can come kill him. Are you SMOKING?”

I exhaled. “No.”

“Are you lying?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “I don’t imagine there’s any way I can persuade you to stop?”

“Not right now, no.”

“Stay where you are. I’m putting on shoes and a coat and I’m coming there.”

“Okay.”

“Is he still there?”

“No, he left. He left.”

“I don’t believe this. After everything he… Did he prepare a musical number to break the news? Was there a marching band? A monologue?

I coughed, “There was no band. It was vaguely reminiscent of Lear.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“King Lear. It’s a play. By Shakespeare.”

“Oh for the fuck of shit.”

“That sums it up, I guess.” I lit a new cigarette off the old one and leaned my head back against the wall. The cat butted me with his head, then snuggled deeper into my lap. “It’s been going on a long time. She’s 24.”

“So? That’s not so much younger than we are.”

“It is, Lily,” I said, my voice scaling up an octave. “We’re almost 30. I’m just…I’m shocked there are women younger than us that our husbands can have affairs with. Aren’t we the younger women that people have affairs with?”

“I don’t have a husband, and you’re spiraling. Stop.”

“Her name is Kimberley.”

“That is a very stupid name. She probably has terrible hair, and wears acid washed jeans. I’m walking outside now.”

“How are you still talking to me?”

“I’m on my cordless phone.”

“It works outside? I want a cordless phone. I’m sitting here in the kitchen like Ma Ingalls.”

“I’m not sure how long it’ll work but I’ll keep talking until I get out of range. Ma Ingalls didn’t have a phone.”

“Eventually she did.”

“I don’t think so. Who did Ma Ingalls even have to call? I’m going to…”

“Lily?” Out of range. I had the phone in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, and I wasn’t sure what to do with either. Eventually the phone started to make a terrible bleating noise, and I looked at it, utterly confused. Then I was standing at the kitchen sink, holding a teacup. I think I was planning to use it as an ashtray, but I couldn’t stop running my thumb over it, feeling how smooth it was, how whole and carefully made. I smashed it against the side of the sink. It was harder to break than I thought it would be, but finally it shattered.

I had a bad moment where I couldn’t find my backpack, and then I was shaking too hard to get my American Express Card out of my wallet. There were things to do, in order. A towel to wrap around my bleeding hand. A cereal bowl to use as an ashtray.  Dialing the phone. Sitting down on the floor, in the safe place under the phone. The cat slid back into my lap. I wrapped an arm around him.

An automated voice asked me to key in my card number but I ignored it. After a few attempts, the automated voice passed me along, and a pleasant man’s voice said, “American Express customer service, this is Sean, how can I help you tonight?” He sounded like a cornfield, that sweet Midwestern sound.

“Hi Sean,” I said, “This is Tabitha Cassidy, and I have a problem.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How can I help you tonight, Tabitha?”

“Uh, my husband just left me. About an hour ago. And I need to cancel his card, it’s on my account. And I need to know what he’s spent in the past few days, I need to know what he’s bought.” I negotiated contracts for a living, and to my own ears I sounded exactly the way I did at the beginning of every negotiation. It was my, “We’re gonna make this deal work out great for everyone, pal!” voice.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Tabitha. I can help you cancel his card, that’s no problem at all. Do you have the account number?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead and give it to me, please.”

I read him the numbers. He asked me a few more questions, to make sure I was who I said I was.

“And your husband is Nathan Alexander?” I crumpled inside, hearing his name.

“Yes.”

I heard his hands clicking away on a keyboard. “OK, Tabitha. I’ve cancelled his card and I’ve flagged the account. Now let’s have a look at the purchase history.”

My stomach flip-flopped at this. Nate had a bit of a spending habit. It went along with his small drinking habit. Sometimes when those things ran into each other, our American Express bill could be terrifying.

“Here we are,” said Sean. “I see a charge for $57.82 two nights ago at Frederico’s, and another for $100.63 at Macys. Do those sound familiar?”

“Yes. That was me.” We’d gone out to dinner, and I’d bought a new dress. “I think I’m going to throw up, Sean. Can you hang on?”

“Certainly.”

I half-crawled, half-ran for the bathroom and stuck my head in the toilet. I know no one likes to throw up, but to me it always feels like a personal defeat. I considered just staying there, in the cool quiet of the toilet, but I forced myself up and splashed cold water on my face, rinsed my mouth. My reflection looked like a PSA, all matted, frizzy hair and dripping mascara.

“Sorry,” I said when I got back to the phone.

“Are you all right?”

I was shivering and sweating, but I felt a little better. I lit a cigarette. “Yeah. I just started smoking again and I think I might not be used to it yet.”

“I’m sorry. All right, Tabitha, over the past week I see purchases at Bed, Bath and Beyond for $230.78, Astor Wine and Liquors for $50.89, and Duane Reade for $45.67. Does all of that sound right?”

New sheets. Wine and the makings for martinis. Birth control, razors, body lotion. Given the circumstances, this was the saddest, most pathetic shopping list in the history of buying things. “Yes, that sounds right.”

“And the total balance on the account is…and then he said a number so large I kind of blacked out for a second. Does that sound right?”

As always, that number made me want to curl up in the fetal position. Unfortunately, it was exactly right. It also wasn’t all of it. But at least Nate hadn’t run the balance up any higher before exiting stage left. “Yes. That’s right,” I said in a little voice.

“Is there anything else I can do for you this evening?”

“No. That’s everything. Thank you.”

“Tabitha, can I ask you, do you have someone coming to be with you tonight?”

“Pardon?”

“Is someone coming to be with you tonight? So you won’t be alone.”

“Oh. Yes. My sister is coming.”

“And she’s on the way?”

“Yes.”

“How about if I stay on the phone with you until she gets there?”

I’m still not certain if this is something they teach at American Express, or if I just stumbled upon the world’s kindest customer service rep. But this happened, nearly word for word.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said. To be honest, I was sort of horrified at the idea of him keeping me company. This was private business, this part, the part that comes after the money and the paperwork and the details.

“I’m happy to.”

“Well, if it’ll make you feel better.”

Sean took a breath and let it out. “You know, Tabitha, sometimes things can seem so dark. This is a terrible night. But in the morning, the sun will come up, and it will be a new day. Maybe not a better day, not yet. But it won’t be this night anymore. This night will be over.”

My inclination was to thank him for his kindness and hang up. Instead, I started sobbing. To the American Express guy.

“You know, Sean,” I wailed, “The thing is, I feel so stupid. I had no idea what was going on. That he, for almost two years. And this whole time I kept thinking, if I just hung in there, eventually it was going to be my turn, but it was never going to be. It was always just going to be about him and now he’s gone and I’m, and I don’t know.”

“There was someone else?”

“There was. There is. Her name is Kimberley and she makes costumes in Seattle.”

“I’m sorry. But you gotta know, that has nothing at all to do with you. That’s to do with him. And her. And honestly, you’re better off without him. Once someone cheats, you can never trust them again. A cheater cheats.”

I swallowed hard at that. “I guess. It’s not even the cheating so much. It’s just, he’s my friend, he’s been my friend for so long. I don’t know how I’m going to do anything now.”

“He doesn’t sound like a very good friend, to tell you the truth.”

“I know. He wasn’t a very good husband either, to be perfectly honest with you.”

“How long were you married?”

“Five years. But we’ve been friends since I was 15. And we’ve been together since I was 21.”

“That’s a long time.”

“That’s a VERY long time, Sean. That’s my whole 20s. All of them. My 20s are gone. Gone.”

“How old are you now?”

“29. I am 29 years old.”

“And when will you be 30?”

“May. May of next year.”

“See? Your 20s aren’t gone. You’ve still got, what, five months of 20s left.”

I chuckled, in spite of my weepiness. And even as I was bemoaning the end of my twenties I was conscious of how much I sounded like Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally, panicking that she’s going to turn 40…in eight years. Nate would have gotten that reference, without my ever having to explain it. “Are you trying to be helpful, Sean? Because that’s not helpful. If you’re trying to be helpful, be the opposite of what you’re doing right now.”

“You’re going to get through this, Tabitha. You will.”

“You don’t even know me,” I protested.

“Here’s what I know. I know you have a sister who loves you enough to come be with you. I know you have sense enough to call and check on your credit card when most people would be curled up in a ball on the floor.”

I took a drag off my cigarette and looked around. “I actually am on the floor,” I admitted.

“Are you curled in a ball?”

“No. I’m sitting.”

“That’s not anything. Lots of people sit on the floor.”

A moment of quiet passed between us. “Smoking is really bad for you,” Sean said.

“Wait, what? I had not heard that.” I took another drag and blew it out loudly. “Sean, did you ever watch Little House on the Prairie?”

“My sisters did.”

“Ma Ingalls had a phone, right? In the later seasons.”

“Let me think,” he said. “Well, a line gets set up in town. And Mrs. Oleson runs the switchboard and listens to all the conversations.”

“Yes. That’s right.” For half a second I was convinced I would marry Sean someday. That I would track him down in whatever state he was talking to me from, and he would be tall and blond and pink cheeked, with big hands, and we would live in a farmhouse and have four kids, three sons and a baby daughter, and I would have a garden and my tomatoes would win some kind of tomato prize at a fair.

The buzzer rang then. “Sean, hang on, my sister is here.” I let the phone drop, stubbed out my cigarette. I pushed the button to open the front door downstairs, and pulled my door open. “Lily?” I called.

“I’m here! I’m here!” she yelled back as she ran up the stairs. She came around the curve in the hall and I catapulted myself into her arms. She caught me.

“I know, I know,” she said, hugging me tightly. I started sobbing again. She rocked me back and forth, kept saying “I know,” over and over, until she was nearly singing it. I stepped back from her, wiped my running eyes and nose with my coat sleeve. “I have to hang up with American Express,” I said, and turned back into the apartment.

“Why are you talking to American Express?”

I pulled the receiver up by the cord. “Sean? Are you still there?”

“I’m still here, Tabitha.”

“My sister is here, so I’m going to hang up now. Thanks for talking to me while I waited.”

“Tabitha, before you hang up, would you put your sister on the phone?”

“Really?”

“Humor me, would you?”

“Okay,” I held the phone out to Lily, then changed my mind and put it back to my ear. “Sean?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“You hang in there, Tabitha.”

“We’ll see,” I said, and then tried to hand Lily the phone again.

“What?” she asked.

“American Express wants to talk to you.”

“Why?”

I shook the phone at her, “Just talk to American Express.”

She took the phone from me. I lit a cigarette and she glared. I rolled my eyes at her. She’s a marathon runner. She’s such a pain in the ass about things like smoking. And ice cream. And French fries. And pie.

“Hello?” she said. “Yes, this is Tabitha’s sister. Hi, Sean, I’m Lily. I’m really here. What’s going on exactly? Well, that was very kind of you. Yes, it is. Did you hear about the girlfriend? Kimberley. I know, the smoking. I will. OK, thank you. You too, Sean.”

“What was that?” she asked, handing the phone back to me and slipping off her coat.

“I don’t know. I guess he wanted to make sure I didn’t kill myself until I paid my bill in full.” I looked at her then, closely. “Lily, what the hell are you wearing?” She looked down at herself. “Clothes,” she said. “This is what I had on.” She was dressed in pink thermal bottoms, a white wife beater, an oversized flannel shirt, and duck shoes. Her hair was in a Pebbles Flintstone ponytail.

“Did you really just put on shoes and a coat and walk out of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring clothes for tomorrow?”

“No. What’s tomorrow?”

“Work?”

“We’re not going to work tomorrow.”

“We’re not?”

“Of course not! Your husband just left you. I think you can take the day off.”

“I’m planning to go to work.”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning. Why are you wearing your coat?”

“What?” I looked down at myself, confused. “I don’t know.”

“Why are you holding a towel?”

“I broke a cup,” I said, putting my hand behind me. She looked from my hand to my face and back again, and then held her own hands out to me.

“Let me see,“ she said. I hesitated, and then put my wrapped hand in hers. She opened the towel and breathed in sharply when she saw the blood, and asked what I’d done to myself. I shook my head, I honestly wasn’t certain what had happened. We didn’t talk for a while then, as she unbuttoned my coat, slipped it off my shoulders, washed my hand and pulled a few cup shards out of my palm. She rewrapped my hand in a clean towel and told me to go sit. When I didn’t move, she led me to the couch, sort of folded me into it. “I think you’re in shock,” she said, as she tucked a couple of blankets around me.

“No, I’m fine,” I answered. My teeth were chattering, and I felt like I was about to have diarrhea. “I’m fine,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “Just stay there for a minute?” She walked into the bedroom and came back carrying Harold. He liked to hang out in there, with his front paws tucked under the radiator. “Here,” she said, draping him across my lap. “I’m going to make tea. Do you want anything to eat?”

“No. I don’t want tea.”

“That’s fine.”

She went into the kitchen. I stared at nothing. I stroked the cat. I shivered. I chattered. I closed my eyes and shrank into my blankets. Time passed. It could have been 100 years. Probably it was closer to 10 minutes.

“Tabby?”

I opened my eyes. Lily was standing there holding a tray with two mugs and a plate of cookies. “Yes?”

She put the tray down and held a mug out to me. I looked at it. “Take it,” she instructed. I accepted it from her and she curled up next to me on the couch.

“Now drink it,” she said. “I put in a lot of honey, and cream. It’s delicious.”

I took a sip. It tasted like nothing. “Thank you,” I said. I held the cup and dangled the tea bag. “Where’d you get the tray?” I asked.

“From the cabinet over the refrigerator.”

“I have a serving tray?”

“Yes. And many platters. Have a cookie.”

“What kind are these?” I asked, taking one from the plate she held out.

“Peanut butter chocolate chip.” They were delicious, gooey and fresh. Lily doesn’t sleep much, or well, and she fills her nights with baking. She’d hadn’t put on a bra or thought to bring a toothbrush, but she’d had the presence of mind to pack a Tupperware of cookies. Because she has her priorities straight. When my mug was empty she took it from me and set it alongside her own on the old piano bench Nate and I used as coffee table.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

Someone once said there are three versions to every story – yours, the other guy’s, and the truth. I tried to tell the truth. I knew I was going to have to tell this story many times in the coming days, and I was already thinking of what that would sound like, what I’d leave in, what I’d keep secret. But that night, I told Lily every shameful scrap of what really happened between me and Nate. What he’d demanded from me, what I gave away, to keep us together. My loneliness. His anger. Everything we’d never forgiven each other for. The ways I’d found to avoid having him touch me. I felt wrung out when I was done, and I put my head in her lap and closed my eyes.

“Can I ask you something?” Lily said into the quiet.

“Sure.”

“Are you absolutely certain Nate isn’t actually gay?”

I started laughing, flopped over so I could look up at her. We’d had this conversation before. I’d had this conversation with many people over the years. He truly wasn’t. “No, Lily,” I said, wiping my eyes, “For the millionth time.”

“Are you sure? Because he always seemed really gay to me.”

“He’s emotionally expressive. He likes musicals. He was a theatre major. That doesn’t make him gay.”

We listened to the rain against the windows, and the wind.

“Didn’t he used to dress up like a Dreamgirl?”

“Yes, but that was just for coming out parties at college. Lots of men dress up as women for shows. It doesn’t make them gay.”

“Explain this to me again.”

“It’s just, a lot of guys are in the closet at home, and then when they get to school, they feel safe enough to come out. So Nate and some of his friends made up this thing where they’d throw a coming out party for guys who were new to being openly gay, and they’d dress up like the Dreamgirls and sing for them. It was sweet.”

“Why didn’t they sing I’m Coming Out?”

“Because the guys who were coming out sang that at the end of the party.”

She stroked my hair. I closed my eyes.

“I need to call Liz Cassidy,” I said.

“Tomorrow. You can call her tomorrow.”

I dreaded making this call. My mother and Ben had thrown Nate and me an elaborate wedding at a country inn, which I’d obsessively modeled after Father of the Bride, right down to the white fairy lights in the bushes and my ornate headband. On my wedding day, moments before I walked down the aisle, Ben had grabbed me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, “You don’t need to do this. I will take you out of here right now, and your mother will make excuses, and it will be fine. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I’ll take you home right now if that’s what you want.” I’d been shocked and laughed at him, called him a nervous father. He and my mother walked me down the aisle, and when the officiant asked who was giving me away, he said, “She gives herself, with her parents’ blessing,” but he was squeezing my hand so tightly, I thought he’d break it.

“Will you tell Elaine Kidd?” I asked.

“Yes, I’ll tell her.”

“She’s going to be upset.”

“I’ll handle it.” Lily’s mother was my “other mother,” as Liz Cassidy was Lily’s. During the years Liz and Elaine had been single, we’d functioned as a little family of four, sort of like the TV show Kate & Allie, except we never lived together and we didn’t have Chip. Elaine Kidd was delicately beautiful, soft-spoken, and cannily resourceful. She worked as a concierge at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. No one could say no to that sweet, modulated voice and flower-like presence. But Elaine was also sort of fragile. She wounded easily, often descending into melancholy. She’d had a string of troubled relationships after Lily’s father left, but had never remarried.

“I wish he was gay,” I said sadly.

“Why?”

“Because if he was gay, then I could just say, ‘Oh, you’re gay! That’s awesome! We can still be friends, we can still work together. I’d like to meet your new gay lover!”

“You’d probably be really good friends with his gay lover. The three of you could have brunch.”

“But this way,” I went on, “I can’t have him in my life. How can I possibly do that?” I sat up and looked at her. “I have no idea what to do now. What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think you have to know tonight. I think tonight, it’ll just be enough to wake up tomorrow.” She got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To get your cigarettes,” she said over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen. She came back with all three packs, the lighter, and the cereal bowl. She sat back down, retucked my blankets, lit a cigarette and handed it to me. I inhaled gratefully.

“Actually, for tonight, I think you just need to smoke,” she said.

“Well, if you insist,” I said. She leaned back into the couch and said nothing as I chain-smoked three cigarettes.

“Tabby, can I tell you something?” she said when I set the ashtray aside. I nodded. “I never liked him,” she said.

“Oh, yes you did.”

“No. I really didn’t. He always seemed so…acting!” She waved her arms around over her head. “Always performing. And he was so enamored of himself. He loved himself so much. He loved himself the way he was supposed to love you.”

“He loved me,” I said. He’d been gone just a couple of hours, and we were already talking about him in the past tense. Neither one of us noticed how easily we’d made the transition.

“I know, just…not enough,” she said.

I shook my head at her, chuckling darkly. We’d had this conversation too, or a version of it, so many times, since we were small. “What’s enough, Lily? What’s ever enough?”

She smiled at me, that sad smile of hers. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” I agreed.

I stretched out and put my head back into her lap. “I don’t want to get into bed.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I mean at all. Ever. I think I need to get rid of that bed and buy a new one.”

“I’ll help you do that. We can do that tomorrow.”

“Sheets too. Everything.”

“Whatever you want.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I know. Why don’t you just close your eyes, and you sleep.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll watch TV.”

I thought she’d make me go to bed, at some dark hour. Or that she’d make sure I was tucked into the couch and crawl into bed herself. But that’s not what happened. She sat up and channel surfed, from primetime to Letterman to late night to the early morning news, while I slept fitfully with my head in her lap, the cat curled behind my knees, all night long, that night he left.

CHAPTER 3

I did go to work the next morning, because I couldn’t think of what else to do, and the idea of sitting in the house with all his things — his clothes in the closet and his books on the shelves, cups he’d sipped from in the cabinets and the towel he’d used the morning before — it all seemed unbearable. Lily insisted on escorting me to work before heading back to her place on the Upper East Side to get some sleep, and I protested this hotly, insisting I was capable of riding the F train on my own, but was secretly glad she did. I felt fragile, breakable, and not entirely like I was inhabiting my body. It was as if I was hovering a foot or so over my own head, observing my actions and my feelings, narrating as I went, “Oh look, the very sad woman is putting on pants. Now she’s drinking coffee and smoking another cigarette. That mascara she’s putting on probably isn’t a very good idea.”

I went to work because I had friends there, and hard phone calls I needed to make, and I was a little afraid to be alone in the apartment when I made them. I had a strong sense that if I stopped moving, if I let myself think, I would die. I would turn to sand and blow away, or lie down somewhere and not get up. I knew I wasn’t really in this yet, wasn’t actually feeling it, and I was certain no one could be expected to feel whatever it was I was going to have to feel eventually and survive it. Also, it was chicken potpie day in the company cafeteria, and no way was I missing that.

On paper, I had it made, career-wise. I worked for a children’s cable channel called Kaleidoscope, which was part of the Music Inc. network — home to the famous music video channel Music Inc., the slightly less famous music video channel Radio-Broadcast, and a channel devoted to classic television called BunnyEars. My first day on the job, in the fall of 1994, Sheryl Crow played our company cafeteria. Because why not? Because All I Wanna Do was everywhere. Because our cafeteria, styled after a hunting lodge and officially named Woodsy, was so unique and beautiful it got written up in Vanity Fair as a hot spot for lunch in Manhattan, if you could get in, which was impossible unless you knew someone who worked there. Because we were the lucky ones, working for this company that felt like family, where music was everywhere and people had serious opinions about sitcoms from the 50s and 60s, where the news was reported by bright, beautiful twentysomethings, and we all had perfect hair knots and choker collar necklaces.

I hated my job. That’s not exactly right. I loved a lot about it. I loved my office, which was on the 15^th floor of a glass skyscraper on the corner of Broadway and 44^th Street and overlooked Times Square. (I would stand on my window ledge and peer down at the crowds, and I had a small pair of binoculars I used to spy on people in the hotel across Broadway.) I loved my paycheck, which was steady and substantial. I loved my annual bonus. I loved my boss, Michelle, who was wise and generous and excellent at what she did, and who treated me like a friend while she taught me everything she knew. I really loved my assistant, a petite spitfire named Trish, who was so gorgeous men would stop in the street to talk to her, and so bright and intuitive she was usually three steps ahead of me.

But the job itself, the work I did all day, was nothing I had trained for, or wanted. My whole career was an accident, something I had stumbled into and got stuck in, like the world’s most alluring tar pit. I was a contract negotiator in the Business and Legal Affairs department, which meant I spent my days arguing over money and perks and logistics, and then writing contracts based off templated language. I wheeled and dealed all day – dozens of contracts, for acquiring programming, staffing and casting series in development and production, and creating online content for the nascent digital group. Most of the contracts I negotiated were for actors and voice over artists, but I also handled animators, puppeteers, writers, composers, directors, and once, notably, a dog. He was a Chocolate Lab named Cook, and it took days to finalize his contract rider, which specified what kind of bottled water, treats, and chew toys he needed on set, along with a list of requirements for his owner and handler. He was a very nice dog, even if he had a taste for Evian.

I had a telephone headset (I thought it made me look like Madonna, but the first time Lily saw me in it she called me Tabitha from Time Life) and an entire wall of my office was filled with tacked up index cards, each one representing a deal in progress. Every morning, Trish would come sit in my guest chair, and we’d run the board — go through each deal and make notes on how the negotiation was progressing, what still needed to be sorted, if we’d gotten additional information from our supervising attorney or the show producer. And then we’d start rolling calls, me pacing around the office, tossing a tennis ball from one hand to the other, Trish listening in while on mute, making notes, lining up the next call. In the afternoons there would be meetings, with other members of the legal team, with the lawyers who were our bosses, with the series development department and the channel marketing department, with scheduling and the cheerful online group.

I had no business doing any of this. I was the furthest thing from a lawyer you could imagine. I’d come to New York with a B.A. in theatre from Ursidae College, a small liberal arts school near Rochester, NY. I also had a minor in Religious Studies, which my mother joked, not unkindly, was my back-up plan, in case a career in the theatre didn’t work out.

My first job out of college was at an independent casting office, where we would cast plays for regional theatres all over America. After a year and change of casting for the regionals, I got a huge opportunity to move to New York Stages, which was one of the most highly regarded off-Broadway theatres in the city. I’d directed plays — in college and at the summer theatre Nate and I had run together — that had premiered at NYS. When I went for my interview I walked the halls and gently touched the original cast photos of the shows I’d done — Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune by Terrence McNally, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley, John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God. I actually got a little choked up during my interview, so moved was I to be there, in the closest thing to temple or church I’d ever known. I loved everything about NYS, the beautiful work they did, and how seriously they took it. It felt exactly the way a theatre should — a little down-at-heel, but shimmering with energy and creativity. I loved also the fact that NYS had a woman artistic director, and she and the executive producer, a man, were the best of friends. Nate and I had dreamed of having a shop like NYS someday, and when they hired me as their casting assistant we celebrated like we’d won the lottery, a Tony Award and an Oscar, plus inherited a rent-controlled classic six apartment in Manhattan, all on the same day.

The problem was money. We had none. None. We were actually operating at a deficit, which we filled with credit cards and faith that things could only get better. I was making $18,000 as a casting assistant, and Nate was making $17,000 plus commission as a junior talent agent for a small agency. Granted, it was the early 90s, but there were weeks when we had to choose between doing our laundry or eating. Things came to a crisis point when I’d been at NYS for about a year and a half. It was payday, and for some reason payroll had been delayed. Without my paycheck, I found myself unable to get home. I had to borrow money from petty cash to pay for my subway token back to Brooklyn, and one to bring me back to work the next day.

Nate and I had one of our worst fights that night, a real screamer. Round 1: all our wedding gift money was gone and we were still somehow in debt and broke. Round 2: someone had to get a real job, that was clear, the kind of job where your salary was more than your age. Neither one of us wanted to be that person. We both had dreams, of saying something meaningful, of being the kind of person who stuck it out and made it, made a life in the theatre. Round 3: I still had dreams of graduate school, of studying directing at Yale or Northwestern or Carnegie Mellon. If I was headed off to grad school anyway, Nate said, I should be the one to find the real job, since I’d be quitting within a year or so.

It was hard to argue with that. But then, it was always hard for me to argue with him. Fight, yes. Scream and carry on and flail about, sure. We were ace flailers. But to really argue, to make myself heard, to ever win the point? I never managed that. It always felt like he’d let me yell myself out and then we’d end up doing what he wanted anyway.

I called my friend Alix, whom I’d met at my first casting job. She was sitting pretty at Kaleidoscope, working in Rights & Clearances, a specialized part of the Business and Legal Affairs department wholly devoted to getting permission to use content with underlying rights, like songs and clips from shows. Over a tearful lunch I explained my problem, the lack of money, the fighting, Nate’s refusal to be the real job person. She brushed off my concerns with a wave of her hand. They were handing out jobs at Music Inc., she said. All I had to do was show up. And show up I did, in a little skirt suit I’d purchased at Ann Taylor just for the occasion. Despite my being completely overdressed and having almost no idea how to operate a computer, they took Alix’s word for it that I was smart and funny and cool and loved music, and they eventually hired me as the assistant to a manager in the Business and Legal Affairs department named Robert. He was extremely kind, and when he hired me he asked how much I wanted to make. I told him I wanted to make one more than my age: $26,000.

No problem, was what he said. I found out, years later, I’d sold myself short by almost twenty thousand dollars.

But still, I was happy, sort of. I felt like a Rockefeller, with my new salary and my shiny health insurance folders, my 401K and pension eligibility. And there was no denying the fact that I was hanging with the cool kids now — I was part of the first Music Inc. generation, and there was an undeniable cachet to working there. And it was only for a year or so, I was certain, just long enough to chip away at our debt while I got my grad school applications in order.

I turned out to have a knack for the job. I was a natural at the sort of detached, single-minded persistence that makes for good negotiation, and the linear precision of drafting contracts appealed to the part of me that craved order. Every year I swore this was the year I was applying to grad school, and every year I got a raise, and a promotion, and then an office, and then an assistant, and a bigger bonus. Suddenly it was four years later, and I was negotiating dozens of deals at a time, some of them for big money, some of them kind of high profile. It was a rush, in a way, going head to head with charming agents and slick entertainment lawyers, beating them at their own game. But when I stopped to think about it, I felt a queasy sense of time passing while I wasn’t any closer to anything I’d planned on being, which at various times had included actress, director, artistic director of a theatre, and professor (the subject varied from theatre to literature to religious studies). My temporary job had become my career, and I was still casting about, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Mostly what I wanted to do was float in the bathtub and read, but they weren’t hiring for that job.

The morning after Nate left I skipped my usual stop at the Star Lite Deli, where I’d been getting breakfast for four years, and instead took up a position with the smokers in front of my office building on the corner of 44^th and Broadway. I recognized a few people, and they gave me a nod of solidarity but said nothing, which suited me fine. I smoked three cigarettes in a row and then forced myself to go upstairs. My first stop was Woodsy, where I grabbed an extra-large coffee with cream and a muffin the size of baseball, and then I went directly to Michelle’s office on the 14^th floor.

Michelle had been my boss since my first promotion, from Assistant to Coordinator, three years before. That first promotion was the most exciting, because it meant I wasn’t anyone’s errand girl anymore. I was still sitting in a cubicle in the hallway, but my days of answering phones and filing were behind me. She was a tall, elegant woman, with an easy smile and a gentle way about her, beautiful manners and a wonderful laugh. Which is why no one who had to go head-to-head with her in a negotiation ever saw her coming, a mistake they regretted when she sliced them open, delicately plucked what she wanted from them, and left them for dead. She was a killer, a cold-blooded shark who could make anyone do anything just by talking to them in that sweet, slow voice of hers. Once they knew her, she scared people to death.

I presented myself at her office door, coffee in one hand, muffin in the other, windblown, nicotine high and just on the edge of hysterical. She was at her desk reading the NY Times.

“Michelle?” I could hear the shakiness in my voice and I hated myself for it. I desperately wanted to keep it together, to be calm and collected the way I imagined she would be. In three years of working beside her I never saw Michelle lose her cool, not once, not even when she was planning her wedding, negotiating contracts for Hootie & the Blowfish, Green Day, and Hanson to appear at the Kaleidoscope Awards, and buying a house, all at the same time.

“Good morning,” she said, lowering the paper far enough to look at me. She tilted her head to the side and her perfect brows drew together. “My goodness, Tabby,” she said in that smooth voice, “What’s the matter?”

I burst into tears (so much for that mascara), and she was on her feet and across the room to me in a few graceful steps. “No, no, no,” she said quietly, reaching to close her office door behind me. Our offices were fishbowls, with large windows looking out onto the hallway where a wall might otherwise be. She positioned herself in front of me and kept my back to the window wall. “Listen to me,” she said quietly, “Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. But you cannot cry here. We don’t cry in the office.”

I nodded my head vigorously. “I know,” I said. Crying meant you were weak, that you couldn’t handle yourself. Crying meant they might want to think about replacing you with a lawyer, or a man at the very least, someone tough. We didn’t cry, not here, not ever. If you needed to cry you took it outside the building. She was always paraphrasing A League of Their Own: “There’s no crying in children’s television! There’s NO CRYING in children’s television!”

“Out with it,” she said. “Did you screw something up?” Things got screwed up all the time. You’d miss a deadline or forget to include a vital clause in your deal, you’d make a verbal agreement over drinks with an agent who would claim to have no idea what you were talking about when you sent the contracts over the next day. Part of our job was to not screw things up, of course, but even more importantly, to fix them quietly when we did.

I took a deep breath, tried to steady myself. “No. No I didn’t screw anything up. Nate left last night. He left me. For someone else.”

She looked confused for a moment, and then she gave me a look of such sadness, such compassion, that I could feel myself tearing up again. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh Tabby, that’s terrible. Come sit down.” She led me to her guest chair and settled herself back behind her desk. She looked at me thoughtfully. “You can cry if you want,” she declared. Instead I laughed, because if Michelle was giving me permission to cry in the office, I was truly fucked indeed.

I unwrapped my muffin and sipped my coffee, “I got home last night and he was sitting on our deck in the rain…” I began,

“Wait,” she said holding up a palm. “I’m going to call Trish and Nancy, so you only have to tell this once.” Trish was also Michelle’s assistant; Nancy was Michelle’s boss. She was actually the big boss, the general counsel of Kaleidoscope, and supervised all of the attorneys and contract negotiators. We were close, all of us, not friends exactly — we didn’t hang out on the weekends or call each other to chat — more like an excellent all-girl professional volleyball team.

I nibbled at my muffin and drank my coffee while Michelle called them and asked them to come to her office. They arrived together.

“Hey gals,” said Nancy, letting herself and Trish in.

“Close the door,” said Michelle.

“Uh oh,” said Trish, taking the other guest chair. She looked from me, to Michelle, to Nancy. “What’s happening?”

“Tabitha has something to tell us,” said Michelle.

“Oh no. You’re not quitting, are you?” Nancy asked.

“No, no, of course not,” I answered, and then I launched into my story — finding Nate on the patio in the rain, the girlfriend, how he packed a bag and left, the world’s kindest customer service representative, Lily coming to stay with me. I knew I’d have to tell this at least twice more today, once to my mother and once to my grandmother. “And so that’s that,” I finished lamely. I balled up my muffin bag and threw it and my coffee cup into Michelle’s trashcan. “That’s that. I just wanted you to know what’s happening.” They were all happily married, Nancy for many years, Michelle for a couple, Trish a newlywed. I looked around at them, at their pained faces. “Lighten up, Francis,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”

“Of course it will,” said Michelle.

“Absolutely,” Nancy agreed.

Trish put a cool, beautifully manicured hand on my arm. She was so tiny, so perfect, I always felt like some kind of hulking hobbit next to her. I wanted to hide my own hands, with their bitten nails and picked over cuticles. “You tell me what you need,” she said quietly. “Whatever it is, you just tell me.”

I thought about it, what I might need. “Let’s go run the board,” I said. “And act like everything’s normal.”

“Let’s do that,” she agreed, and we left Michelle’s office together.