Someone I deeply respected told me it would be good for my career. That’s the only reason I joined in the first place. I can blame her for that.
But I can’t blame her for my stumbling so badly on a last second excuse that I ended up actually agreeing to go to for drinks after the meeting.
It was a nice bar, no matter where you sat it felt private enough to plan a revolution or something. That’s not what we were doing though. They were talking about their kids, or dogs. I was thinking about how cool it was that no matter where you sat, you could hear the murmur of interesting conversations without being able to make out the words. Felt very cozy.
The kind of place where you could probably smoke at your table if you had enough cachet. But I didn’t have enough cachet. And I quit smoking.
Someone tapped on my shoulder.
“I SAID,” she said, enunciating each word as if I wasn’t paying attention, “HOW’S. THE. JOB. HUNT. GOING?”
“Fine,” I said, “I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek and I’m waiting to hear back from Safeway.”
Everyone around the table nodded slowly, you know the way. It’s kind of big eyes, raised eyebrows, and a tight smile. It’s like, “Coooooooool.” Long and drawn out, like this whole evening.
I’d already moved back to the bald man, sitting across the way from us. From my spot in the booth, I only had a direct sight-line to one table. And at that table, I only had eyes on one man. He was bald, the cul-de-sac type of bald, and wore a navy blazer over a white and blue checkered shirt. No tie.
He leaned on the table, elbows on the mahogany, right hand gripping his stemware like it was his oldest child who was graduating high school and getting ready to leave for college. Yeah, just like we were talking about at our table. I wished I was at his table though, because it looked like whatever he was talking about was the most important thing in the world,
I looked down at my tie. It was five dollars at the thrift store down the street. It had little motorcycles on it. I couldn’t ride, but I was “going to learn” one day. Okay. I was better dressed than the man across the restaurant but only if better dressed meant wearing more pieces. We both wore a shirt and coat, but I had a tie. We both had wristwatches, but I was wearing a pair of nifty cufflinks.
But under the tie, the shirt didn’t fit right. It bagged out over the sides and you could clearly see where I frantically stuffed it in the back of my pants. I ironed it every time I wore it but still deep creases cut across the front, the back, the sides and the arms. My chinos sat a few inches too high above the second hand black aldos that covered my twelve ninety-nine for a half dozen dress socks that were fifty percent off at the suit store in the mall.
I yawned, and stopped even pretending to follow the conversation.