“I’m not sure it would work.” I get out knives and forks.
“Please.” She bats her eyelashes playfully.
“Well, Jason does need a date for his brother’s wedding.” I don’t mention that he wants to take Lucy. Krista’s cute; maybe it could work.
“See, that’s perfect. I love weddings!” She leans back against the fridge, her eyes glazing over. “They’re so romantic.”
I remember my promise to Craig. I swore I would stop meddling in our clients’ lives. I swore I’d take Your Big Break Inc.’s cardinal rule more seriously: Do not get personally involved. But part of our job is to help people get over a breakup. Going on a date with Krista could really make Jason feel better. . . . I mull it over. Maybe setting them up isn’t such a bad idea. I can kill two birds with one stone: find Jason a date for his brother’s wedding and find Krista a potential boyfriend. Who knows? It might work out. And it would be a great way for me to throw myself into my work again. “I’ll call Jason tomorrow,” I say. “See if he’s interested.” I spoon rice onto my plate.
“Call him tonight.” she prompts, clasping her hands together in a begging motion.
“It’s after business hours.”
“Great!” she says. “Then you’ll probably catch him at home.”
“All right, I’ll call him.” I heave a sigh and reach for my cordless. I dig Jason’s number out of my purse. “But don’t get your hopes up too high. He’s still pretty hung up on his ex-girlfriend.”
“I can take care of that,” she says, tearing off a piece of naan bread and popping it into her mouth. “By the time I’m finished, Jason won’t even remember her name.”
I pick up the phone and dial his cell phone, pressing *67 to block my number from appearing on caller ID. He answers on the first ring.
“Can I speak to Jason Dutwiler?”
“Dani?” he says excitedly. “Any news on Lucy? Has she changed her mind about the wedding?”
“No, I’m afraid she hasn’t.” I take the plunge. “But I may have a solution. There’s a girl I’d like you to meet. . . .”
16
YBB INC. EMPLOYEE RULE #4
You are an impartial observer.
It’s time to launch Operation Dump Brady Simms.
All the key pieces are in place. I’ve got to drop everything in the mail today to ensure that it will arrive by this Thursday. I assembled his Breakup Recovery Kit over the weekend, and it’s pretty nice. There’s a mix CD, which includes a variety of songs downloaded from iTunes, a dark brown poetry journal, and a stash of stuff from Blockbuster. Sean really hooked me up—in addition to a stack of free rental coupons, he gave me a couple of boxes of microwave popcorn and a DVD of Tomb Raider that was “damaged during shipping.” I wanted to include a card, but the greeting-card industry is seriously behind the times when it comes to cards meant specifically for getting over a breakup. The closest I’ve seen are sympathy cards, so I had to make one myself. I designed Brady a card in Quark. I used a clip-art drawing of a broken heart on the cover and included a poem inside:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Love really sucks
And Erin does, too
I’m in major violation of Your Big Break Inc.’s rule #4: You are an impartial observer. But whatever. Erin does suck. Besides, it’s not like Craig will ever find out what I wrote. At least, he probably won’t. For added effect, I picked up a couple of scratch-off lottery tickets and stuffed them inside the card, along with this message: Here’s hoping your luck improves. Dani M., Your Big Break Inc. Then I boxed up everything and wrote Brady’s name and address on the front in bright purple marker.
All that’s left to do is write him a Dear John letter.
I still have a copy of the original letter I wrote, the one I was going to give him that night at Barnes & Noble. I pull it up on my computer and reread it. It’s not bad, but it lacks a certain amount of heart. I toil with it for nearly forty-five minutes, cutting and pasting, rewriting, rearranging. Finally, I hit print and read my efforts:
Dear Brady,
This is one of the hardest letters I’ve ever had to write. I don’t know where to begin, what to say. I guess I’ll start with the truth. For a while now, things haven’t been right between us. I know you’ve felt it, too.
Our conversations are strained, our times together awkward. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, and I think the sad truth is that we just aren’t compatible anymore. People change, and because they don’t change together, they drift. The two years I had with you were among the best in my life, but I feel our relationship has run its course. Our lives are on different paths now. I think it’s time we both move on.
I want you to know that I’ll always love you. And maybe, someday in the future, we can be friends. But for now it’s best if we go our separate ways. I’ll be thinking of you often, but we probably shouldn’t talk for a while. I need this time to get over you.
Sincerely,
Erin Foster-Ellis
P.S. Attached you will find a list of items I’ve left in your possession. Please return these to Danielle M. at Your Big Break Inc. Additionally, you’re advised to contact Danielle M. with any questions or concerns.
Unless the client requests otherwise, I always tuck a copy of my business card inside Dear John letters, along with a short cover letter explaining that Your Big Break Inc. will serve as a liaison between the dumper and the dumpee. I encourage people to call me when they have questions and concerns, to keep them from calling their ex. Sometimes this works (Jason Dutwiler); sometimes it doesn’t (Sophie Kennison).
Every now and then, you meet a client who requests ambiguity. They don’t want their ex to find out they hired Your Big Break Inc., so I ghostwrite the letter and deliver it to the client, who will in turn send it to the dumpee; job resignations are typically done this way.
I print out a clean copy of Brady’s breakup letter, paper-clip one of my business cards to the top, and stick it in an envelope. I’ve just written his address on the front when it hits me: I can’t send this. If I do, he’ll think back to that night at Barnes & Noble when I introduced myself as a friend of Erin’s. Once he learns I work for Your Big Break Inc., he’ll put two and two together and realize I came to the poetry workshop that night to dump him. He’ll realize Erin’s been planning this for a while. It would completely defeat the purpose of having had her wait these two weeks to do the dumping.
I’ll have to do this anonymously.
I rip the envelope in half and toss it in the trash. I go back to work on the letter, cutting out the P.S. I ask him to mail Erin’s stuff back, rather than give it to communications specialist Dani M. Then I dig through my desk drawer and find a plain white envelope—the one I used before had our bright-red Your Big Break Inc. logo in the corner.
I also realize that I can’t send him the Breakup Recovery Kit. Then I decide to mail it anonymously, in care of his school. With any luck, he’ll think some cute single mom sent it over. I print out a new copy of the sympathy card and rewrite my greeting: Here’s hoping your luck improves. Signed, A Friend.
I put a stamp on the letter to Brady and deposit it in the mailbox outside our building. I feel kind of guilty—Erin paid me to stop by Brady’s and pick up her stuff in person. It’s what I promised to do during our initial consultation. It seems kind of chintzy, just sending this letter and then doing no more. Then again, Erin was originally supposed to give me $110. She bargained the price down to thirty-five bucks.
You get what you pay for.
The storage facility is stifling hot and smells of mildew. “How long have you had your stuff in here?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
Sophie doesn’t answer. It’s obvious she’s still mad. After the disastrous ice cream outing, she doesn’t trust me. But I’m here, just like I said I would be, giving up my Sunday afternoon to help her move boxes. We load up our cars and then I follow her back to Cambridge. I’m lucky to find a metered space in f
ront of her building. I park and get out of the car.
“You can leave my stuff on the sidewalk if you want,” Sophie says, coming up beside me. “I can take it from here.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll help you carry it upstairs.”
She gives me a small smile. “Thanks.”
It takes us nearly thirty minutes to move everything. We make trip after trip, carting boxes up the narrow stairwell to her apartment on the third floor. By the time we finish, I’m panting and drenched with sweat. The weather’s unseasonably hot, made worse by the lack of ventilation in her apartment building.
Sophie and I lug the last of the boxes into her bedroom and plunk them down on the hardwood floor. I wipe the sweat off my brow. “What have you got in here? Rocks?”
“Books,” she says.
“Nine boxes full?”
She nods. “A lot of them are left over from college. I was a lit major before I dropped out.” She opens one of the boxes and begins pulling out texts, stacking them in a pile beside the bed. I’m amazed at her collection: Keats, T. S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Thoreau.
“Have you read all these?” I ask, crouching down to sort through the pile.
“Most of them,” she says. “We studied them in class. But I read a lot on my own, too.”
Her modern books are just as impressive. I lift up a paperback copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. “You’ve read Infinite Jest?” I ask, shocked.
“Off and on. I never finished it. I finally gave up on page seven hundred and something.” She looks embarrassed.
“Don’t sweat it. I think most people give up at page ten.”
Sophie laughs. “I used to be an obsessive reader, but I don’t have time anymore.”
I lean back on my heels and stare at her. “Why did you drop out of school?”
“It didn’t fit with my long-term career goal.”
“Which is?”
“To be a dancer.”
“Ballet?” I guess. She’s certainly thin enough.
“Backup,” she says. “I’d like to tour with Britney Spears or Madonna.”
I eye her quizzically. “That’s your life’s dream?”
She stretches her arms above her head and twirls around gracefully. “Yes, but I’m probably too old to do it now.”
“You’re twenty-four!”
Sophie stops twirling. She sits down on the floor and stretches out her long, slender legs. “Dancing’s like modeling. You’re over the hill by the time you hit twenty-five.”
I study her. “You’ve certainly still got the body for it.”
“Thanks.” She smiles sadly. “Evan used to say the exact same thing.”
“So, if you weren’t dancing, what would you do?”
“My secret dream is to own a bookstore.” She grins. “That’s pretty far-fetched. I’ve got a better chance of dancing for Janet Jackson.”
“If it’s what you really want to do, you should go for it. Go back to school and take some business courses.”
“Maybe.”
Sophie looks uncomfortable, so I change the subject. “How have you been handling things? Have you kept up with our no-calls bargain?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. Don’t ask me how I’ve done it. I’m not even sure myself. But I haven’t contacted Evan at all. Well, except for one little call to his office. But I hung up when he got on the line.” She sighs. “I don’t have any vices. It sucks sometimes.” She flips through a book of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poems. “I don’t crave drugs or cigarettes or anything like that. But it leaves me so few options.”
This sounds like the perfect opening to work in the ammunition that Evan gave me. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m not sure. If I had a weakness, then I could succumb to it in times of crisis. I could prop myself up with it, use it to get me through. Instead, I fall apart. I go crazy. I obsess about people and things—like with Evan.”
I’m taken by how remarkably self-aware she is. I’m starting to think she is far smarter than people probably give her credit for. “You two were together for a month, right?”
“Five weeks,” she confirms. “I guess I was his Miss April.”
“Have you ever heard the breakup rule?” I ask. “That it takes one month to recover for every year you were together?”
She tucks her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “It takes me a year to recover from one month! I always have these brief, passionate affairs, and then I spend months agonizing over what went wrong.”
I can’t help smiling. “Same here.”
“I don’t know how people bounce back so quickly. I’ve never been like that.”
“Me neither.”
We sit there in silence for a moment, and then Sophie says, “I know it’s stupid to obsess over Evan.” She hangs her head. “I want to move on, but I don’t know how.”
“I think I know a way to help you,” I say. An idea’s been forming in the back of my head for a while now, ever since we started going through Sophie’s boxes.
“What?” She looks skeptical.
“How would you feel about a blind date?”
“Blind dates are for losers.” She groans. “Everybody knows that.”
“Not necessarily. I think I have a guy that will blow Evan out of the water.” Sophie begins flipping through a book of essays. I can see her interest waning. “I know this guy named Brady. He’s a lawyer turned high-school English teacher. He’s well-read, and he’s into poetry and writing.”
She drops the book. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”
“Brady’s new to the singles scene,” I go on. So new, in fact, he doesn’t yet know it. “He just got out of a long-term relationship.”
She makes a face. “Sloppy seconds.”
“It’s perfect timing! You’re newly single, he’s newly single.”
“I’ll be catching him on the rebound.”
“In this case, is that a bad thing?”
Sophie considers it. “I see what you mean. I’m not really in the market for something serious. Just a distraction, someone to take me out to dinner.”
“And Brady can do that! No strings attached, just two people enjoying each other’s company, helping each other through a rough time.”
She smiles. “We can rebound together.”
Part of me feels funny about setting them up. Jealous, almost. I try to picture Brady and Sophie together, and it makes me sad. I push the feeling away. I can do this. She’s just a rebound girl. What do I care who Brady Simms dates? He obviously likes only drop-dead-gorgeous women like Erin Foster-Ellis. Sophie Kennison is in the same league. This is meant to be.
We brainstorm for twenty minutes, coming up with a plan. We decide that on Friday, Sophie will pay an impromptu visit to Addington Academy, the school where Brady works. She’ll show up around lunchtime, bearing a picnic basket full of treats.
“I’ll tell him I’m a secret admirer,” she says. “We’ll eat lunch together, enjoy each other’s company. Who knows where it will lead.”
Good places, I’m sure. What man could resist Sophie Kennison?
It can’t miss.
17
This Hurts Me AS Much AS It Hurts You
“What’s this I hear about you turning away potential clients?” Craig demands, catching me as I come into the office the next morning.
I feign ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Does the name Gretchen Monaghan ring any bells?”
I don’t say anything for a minute. Then I mumble, “I had a consultation with her a few weeks ago.”
“That’s what I thought.” Craig narrows his eyes. “You want to explain yourself here, Dani? Because I got a call from Ms. Monaghan early this morning. She wanted to know if our client load had eased up any, if we had enough ‘free manpower’ to take her case.”
“What did you tell her?” I
ask, staring down at my shoes.
“I told her you’d be more than happy to take her case.”
I squeeze me eyes shut. “I can’t do it, Craig.”
“Why not?” he demands. “Is the boyfriend a rageaholic ex-con?”
“No, he’s my father.”
Craig bursts out laughing. “Good one, Dani. Don’t play.”
“I’m not playing. Gretchen wants to hire us to break up with my father.”
He looks utterly perplexed. “I thought your parents were married.”
“Craig, my father’s having an affair!” I burst out. Is he really this slow to catch on?
“Morning!” Amanda comes sauntering in. Halfway to her desk, she turns and asks, “What’s wrong with you guys?”
We must look pretty ridiculous. Craig’s standing there, mouth agape, and I’m teetering, my lower lip quivering. “Dani’s just told me a really funny story,” Craig covers. His face is so red, it blots out his freckles.
“I love funny stories!” Amanda prances over to us.
“It’s kind of personal,” I explain.
“I don’t mind.”
I can’t tell if she’s too dumb to take a hint or just plain nosy. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Talking about it might be the best medicine.”
Craig recovers from his momentary stupor. “The time for talking’s done. Back to work, peeps. Chop, chop!” he says, making a beeline for his office.
I head to my own office. I’ve just plopped down at my desk when an IM pops up on my computer screen.
Bossman: Sorry ’bout earlier. Didn’t mean to bust your chops.
Bossman? Craig’s IM name is Bossman? I quickly type a response.
DaniM: no problem. it’s a nutty situation.
Bossman: Tell me about it. At first, I thought you were flodging.