See Jane Date Read online

  Right now Eloise was dating a Russian immigrant hair-stylist named Serge. He looked like an Eastern European John Travolta, if you could picture that. They’d been seeing each other for three months, and he adored her. Serge was an old-fashioned gentleman. He stood up when a woman entered a room, brought Eloise flowers before every date and complimented her pathetic attempts at cooking. A month ago, he’d raved about the new hairstyle that was all the rage in Moscow, and Eloise, being game for anything, had let him do his thing. When he triumphantly spun her around to face the mirror, she had the Jennifer Aniston “do,” circa Friends six years ago. She didn’t have the heart to tell Serge that Friends was a few years ahead in America. Or that she’d already had this very hairstyle, like every other woman in the United States.

  Eloise knocked her special triple knock, and I unlocked the dead bolt, the three lesser locks and slid off the safety latch. She was beaming, with her hazel eyes twinkling, which meant she was about to do me a very big favor. She liked making people happy.

  “Don’t say no,” she ordered. She held out her hands and opened her fists; a one-carat diamond stud earring sat gleaming in each. Her mom had given her the heirloom earrings just weeks before she’d passed away from ovarian cancer. Those earrings were the most precious things that Eloise possessed. I knew what it felt like to cherish what your mother left you. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. Eloise laughed her don’t-make-me-cry-too laugh.

  I’d once asked her if she thought we’d be best friends if we didn’t have the loss of our mothers (to cancer) in common. Eloise had said definitely. I agreed. My mom died when I was nineteen and a sophomore in college. I’d already lost my father when I was nine. Eloise’s mother had passed away when she was eighteen. She never talked about her dad, but she was very close to her mother’s mother.

  “You’re wearing them tomorrow, end of story,” Eloise announced, closing the door behind her. She pulled the tube of Super-Straight out of the waistband of her jeans and placed it on the Parsons table. “Natasha will definitely notice them. And they say Senior Editor.”

  I took the diamond studs and put them in my ears, pushing back my hair to model them for Eloise. I mouthed a thank-you, then admired the brilliant gems in the full-length mirror attached to the back of my bathroom door. “But El, do they say, My Very Successful Boyfriend Gave Them To Me, So Take That, Natasha Nutley?”

  Eloise laughed. “Say” was the word at Posh Publishing. That was how the big cheeses (meaning William Remke and Jeremy Black) decided if a book was worthy of being published. It had to say something that would make everyone buy it.

  Last year, my boss, senior editor Gwendolyn Welle, had stuck me with a former child actor’s autobiography that said: If You Read Me You’ll Be Depressed For A Week. Sitcom Kid: No Laughing Matter had landed on the extended New York Times bestseller list at number twenty-three, which for small Posh Publishing was as good as number one. Remke had been thrilled. He threw a big party in our loft office to celebrate. As the project editor of the memoir, I got to take a two-hour lunch (whoo-hoo). Gwen, who’d acquired the manuscript (but did only one quarter of the work) got a huge raise. Jeremy, who’d done nothing but green-light the deal, got his gorgeous mug and a special interview in Publishers Weekly, where he was heralded as the “brilliant mind behind the success of Posh’s Real Life Books imprint.” Posh’s only imprint, mind you. And Remke got a gazillion stock options from our parent company.

  A major television network was making a movie-of-the-week out of Sitcom Kid: No Laughing Matter. Eloise and I joked that the child actor playing the role of the sitcom kid would also end up homeless and addicted to drugs one day. Not that that was funny. Oh, wait. That reminded me. I did get something else for being project editor on the book: depressed for a week.

  Eloise went into the kitchen and rooted around in the refrigerator. She came back into the main room with diet Snapple iced tea, then settled herself on the futon that dominated the small room. She leaned back against the pastel throw pillows, hugging one to her stomach.

  “Okay. We’ve gotta focus. Which is more important?” Eloise asked, tucking her auburn Jennifer Aniston layers behind her ear. “Impressing the Gnat, scoring a drinks invitation from Jeremy or getting that promotion from Remke?”

  That was easy. I grabbed the Snapple and took a sip, then handed it back to Eloise. The promotion would begin to negate the necessity of lying to semi-famous former classmates about my pathetic title at age twenty-eight. And it would impress Jeremy, who could possibly ask me out to celebrate my hard work and dedication to the Posh family.

  “The promotion takes care of everything else,” I explained, picking up the pack of Marlboro Lights. I almost knocked over the cheap plastic Parsons table; Eloise saved the bottle of Snapple just in time. I couldn’t get a real coffee table until I had a real apartment, with a bedroom. I had to move the table every night in order to unfold the futon, which I folded back up every morning. Such was life in a studio apartment.

  “Ugh! Only one left,” I complained, lighting the cigarette. I took a good long, satisfying drag and blew out the smoke toward the ceiling.

  Eloise plucked the cigarette from my fingers and took an equally long puff, then passed it back to me. “We have to quit.” She said that once a week or so.

  “Yeah, because walking down and up six flights to get a pack is the real drag.” I inhaled, then exhaled. “Maybe we can get the bodega on the corner of First Avenue to deliver.”

  “One pack of cigarettes?” Eloise asked, searching the tips of her hair for split ends.

  “The night clerk has a crush on you,” I reminded her. “He’s always staring at your chest when we go in there.” Which, I should note, was much smaller than mine. She was a B, and I was the C. But she attracted more men. Maybe it was because she wore tight ribbed turtlenecks. I tended toward serious Ann Taylor jackets. As an artsy type, Eloise didn’t have to dress too corporately.

  She rolled her eyes and gestured for me to pass her the cigarette. She took a puff. “So your big meeting with Remke is first thing tomorrow, right? Nervous?”

  I nodded, watching the stream of smoke rise up and disappear. Perhaps arranging a meeting to discuss my fate on a Friday wasn’t such a hot idea, after all. If Remke laughed in my face (or the professional equivalent), it would ruin my weekend. I bit my lip and peered at myself in the mirror.

  “You’ll get the promotion,” she assured me. “You’ve earned it. You just have to go in there and state your case. Don’t let him intimidate you, Jane.”

  Ha. That was a joke. Intimidating was William Remke’s middle name. He was very New York, very sophisticated. He looked like a less handsome version of Blake Carrington from that old television show Dynasty. Remke was meticulous—his hair, his suits, even his in-box. He liked his “team” to have a certain look, so he’d know we were his kind of people. Therefore, everyone at Posh had a very streamlined appearance and wore muted colors.

  I’d modeled myself after Gwen, since it was her job I aspired to. She never wore jeans to work, so I never did. She worked till seven at night, so I worked till 7:01. She drank green tea and ordered exotic salads for lunch; I gave up Coke and brown-bagged ham-and-cheese sandwiches from home. She wore DKNY; I did my best to copy the look. I wasn’t too great at style, but I had Eloise to help me. Eloise had the look naturally, but that was because she was from here—Manhattan, I mean. Private school on the Upper East Side and everything. She’d been obsessed with Anna Wintour as a teenager. Natasha Nutley and Fran Drescher from The Nanny had been my role models during high school. Natasha because she was everything I wished I could be. And Fran because she was from Queens.

  I’d changed since graduating from Forest Hills High. That old saying about taking the girl out of wherever, but not the wherever out of the girl didn’t hold true with me. You couldn’t make it in the world of New York City publishing with the boroughs on and in you. So I’d worked hard. There wasn’t a drop of Queens on me, accent incl
uded. No one would ever guess my bridge-and-tunnel origins. Sometimes I wondered if my own mother would recognize me. If she were still alive, that was. I think she’d be proud. Virginia Gregg always said I’d be a big-deal something someday. Aunt Ina always said I was trying too hard. But she didn’t know how hard it all was.

  “I can’t take it,” Eloise announced, blowing out a perfect smoke ring and smushing the butt in the ashtray. “I’m going down for a pack. I’ll be right back.”

  I gratefully unlocked the door for her. I needed cigarettes to get through tonight. Tomorrow was major. I had the appointment with Remke, my first meeting with Natasha (over lunch), and because tomorrow was Friday, it was the last chance for Jeremy to suddenly realize I had breasts and a vagina and ask me out for Saturday night.

  Like that would ever happen.

  I eyed my reflection, wondering what else I could possibly do to make myself attractive to Jeremy Black. Gwen had once told me I looked like That Girl. All I remembered about the sitcom was that my mom used to watch it and crack up when I was little. I suppose there was a resemblance between me and a young Marlo Thomas, except I didn’t have the flip to my hair. I did have similar sparkling dark brown eyes and shiny dark brown, shoulder-length hair and a pale complexion, but I was hardly That Girl. I was more Invisible Girl. At least as far as Jeremy Black was concerned.

  Maybe I was trying too hard, like Aunt Ina thought. I wore prescription-free glasses a few times a week to make me look more editor-ish; they were knockoffs of a pair I saw on Julianne Moore in In Style magazine. Gwen wore glasses, too, but she may actually have needed them. My nails were always pale pink and short, per an article my mom had once read about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who’d said that fingernails should be the color of a ballet slipper, and toes a classic red. My mom had idolized Jackie O the way I’d idolized Fran Drescher. Thank God I hadn’t taken my style cue from The Nanny.

  I stared in the mirror, turning to the left, then to the right. I decided I was cute. Very cute, even. But I wasn’t a hot babe. Not by any stretch. A few months ago I saw Jeremy leave a restaurant with his arm around a woman who looked like Heidi Klum. Nothing round on her except her perfect butt. Who was I kidding? Jeremy Black was never going to look twice at me—except to ask me either to make a copy of a manuscript or read his friend’s sister’s cousin’s brother’s girlfriend’s manuscript and write a thoughtful revision letter.

  I stuck out my tongue at myself like the twelve-year-old I felt like and dropped down on the futon with a big fat sigh. I suddenly wished I had that stereotypical single woman’s cat to cuddle. There was absolutely nothing of comfort in my apartment. Except my photo of me with my parents, when I was eight. But you couldn’t hug a photo.

  “I’m back!” Eloise called through the door. I unbolted again, and she staggered in, out of breath. “Those stairs are going to kill us before these cigarettes do.” She threw the fresh pack onto the Parsons table. “Okay—it’s promote-me time! Let’s do your makeup first, then your hair, then you’ll get dressed. I’m thinking the black suit with the cropped jacket and—”

  I threw my arms around her and squeezed. Eloise was all the comfort I needed sometimes.

  We both lit cigarettes. “Oh, wait!” I said. “We need the ultimate inspiration.”

  In moments I had the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium CD cranked up in my tiny apartment. Eloise laughed. Remke was trying to get the least-known, least-publicized Backstreet Boy (as if there were one) to write a tell-all memoir. A told-to, tell-all, actually. Remke wasn’t sure if cute nineteen-year-old singers could actually write or not.

  Eloise and I sang along as she started working her makeup magic, showing me the steps in the mirror. The goal was sophisticated chic, yet natural. The light bronzing powder she’d whisked on my cheeks made me look slightly sun kissed—like an executive savvy enough to stay out of the sun during her weekend of frolicking with her successful boyfriend in the Hamptons.

  My next-door neighbor pounded on the wall. Eloise and I rolled our eyes in unison, and I turned down the volume on my CD player.

  An hour later, I stood in front of the mirror, grinning at Eloise. She beamed back at me through a puff of smoke and adjusted my black jacket and the little neck scarf. “You definitely say Promote Me.”

  Now all I had to do was recreate it tomorrow morning at seven-thirty.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak.

  “Oh. Oh, oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  I opened one exhausted eye and glanced at my alarm clock. The red glowing numbers were too bright. It was 6:38 a.m.

  Opera Man’s sex life was going to ruin my chance to get promoted. I desperately needed my remaining hour of sleep. I’d tossed and turned for hours last night, perfecting my opening speech to William Remke. It had been close to two o’clock when I finally conked out. I’d drifted off to sleep hearing the squeaking of Opera Man’s bed and the strains of Celeste Aida. I should be grateful I’d slept through his girlfriend’s orgasm, which this morning was so loud that I could hear her breathy little moans between ohs.

  Opera Man lived directly across the hall, and we shared one long wall, which my futon was against. I had no idea what Opera Man’s name was. Well, I knew his last name was Marinelli. But I only knew his first initial, “A,” because “A. Marinelli” was on the sticky label on his mailbox and on his apartment door. I could hear almost everything that went on in his apartment. Including his sometimes annoying but mostly soothing obsession with opera. I got to hear all the major performances. He’d had some nerve pounding on my wall about a little teenybopper music when he blasted Carmen and had such noisy sex. Eloise and I figured he looked like Ricky Martin. Who else could make a woman scream like that? In the two years he’d lived across the hall from me, I’d never seen him. Except for Eloise and two other single women—one on the second floor and one on the fourth—I didn’t know any of my neighbors and rarely ran into them.

  “Oh, Oh, Ohhhhhh!” Too bad she didn’t scream his name. I’d finally know what the “A” stood for.

  Maybe Opera Man had done me a favor by waking me up so early. I could use the extra hour to get ready and eat something other than the usual cream-cheese-slathered bagel.

  “Oh, oh. oh. Oh, yeah! Ohhhh!”

  Sometimes I wondered if everyone in New York had a better sex life than I did. The last time I was naked with someone was when I dated Soldier of Fortune Guy, so dubbed by Eloise. He was a friend-co-worker of our friend Amanda’s boyfriend Jeff. Soldier of Fortune Guy and I had gone out twice, and on our second and last date, I’d broken a big rule by sleeping with him before date four. In the morning, he’d served me instant coffee and an English muffin on a makeshift coffee table that turned out to be a stack of Soldier of Fortune magazines dating back to the Neanderthal era. I’d made the mistake of expressing my shock. We got into a huge argument, both snapped “Fine,” and I slammed out of his apartment. He was the fourth guy Amanda’s boyfriend had fixed me up with. That had been almost two years ago. Jeff had stopped offering up his friends after that episode.

  I hadn’t had sex in almost two years. And that last time hadn’t been so hot, by the way.

  “Oh. Oh. Oh!”

  Opera Man himself never made noise. Only his partners.

  My alarm buzzed, and I decided to let it buzz the ohs out of my earshot. Opera Man immediately pounded on the wall. I shut off the alarm.

  Maybe the “A” stood for Asshole.

  I lay back in bed and closed my eyes. I had more important things to do than wish I had a sex life. Like fantasize that Jeremy was Opera Man and I was his Oh Moaner.

  Two

  “Jaaane.”

  I turned around and found myself standing way too close to Morgan Morgan, the assistant shared by Remke and Jeremy. Morgan Morgan was her real name, honest to goodness. She claimed that Morgan was her mother’s maiden name and her father’s last name, so her parents thought calling her Morgan Morgan was fated. I thought it was—

  “William is
ready to see you now, Jaaane.” Morgan always drew my name out in a Long Island whine. She was twenty-two, fresh out of Barnard, pretty in a horsey way, and she had her eye on my job. She was not to be trusted.

  I glanced at my watch. It was exactly 8:59 a.m. My meeting with Remke was set for nine. The man was never, ever late for anything. I glanced around the loftlike space of Posh Publishing to see if Eloise was around for a thumbs-up. She and her boss, Daisy, the art director, were huddled over slides on the light-box in front of the art department’s wall of windows.

  I shot Morgan an icy smile and walked past her and her puny cubicle, pausing for a second in front of Remke’s door. This is it. You’re entering the corner office. About to demand your due! Deep breath, deep breath, deep breath. You can do it. Don’t let him intimidate you!

  The door suddenly opened.

  “Ah, there you are, Gregg,” Remke clipped out as I stumbled inside. “Morgan!” he shouted past me, his head poked through the door. “Coffee! Let’s go, let’s go,” he snapped at me. “I have a meeting in fifteen minutes.”