Read Online Ten Girls to Watch by Charity Shumway - Free Book Online
Authors: Charity Shumway
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as someone who ordered cheese plates for dessert. The unmasking of my aspiration was horrifying. Lily, undoubtedly, bought cases of fine wine, and all their future parties would be smashing, catered affairs.
Enough reasons to decline the invitation right there. But the list went on. There was, of course, the other guest: the founder of TheOne.com . The company’s ads, plastered all over the subway, traumatized me on a daily basis. Each one was a famous painting, like Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon or Hopper’s Nighthawks, edited so that two individuals in each picture, inevitably individuals who weren’t paying any attention to each other, were outlined in glowing white auras, with taglines like “Where’s Your One?” “Help Her Find Her One,” or, more ominous, “Don’t Miss Your One.” Mutated versions of the ads made their way into my dreams. I’d be glowing, a la TheOne’s Ones, but it wasn’t a good thing—I was always trying to escape from something and the giant aura made hiding impossible.
Self-preservation dictated that I should thank Lily but let her know I was busy tomorrow night and for the foreseeable future. But that’s not what I did. No, instead I disregarded all those rational instincts and wrote back saying I’d love to come to dinner.
Being upset by my boyfriend’s new girlfriend just felt so typical. I wanted to be the sort of self-possessed person who didn’t have such feelings or, at the very least, kept such feelings folded up and tucked in a private closet. And finally, though undoubtedly there was an element of masochism in it, I wanted to see Robert. Or maybe more than to see him, to smell him. Why I thought that was a good idea was a real mystery.
E-mail answered, I microwaved a veggie pattie and continued my pretending by faking that I wasn’t depressed by my dinner. Then I headed off to the coffee shop around the corner to dole out lawn care advice. On one of the eight or so ratty couches at Tea Lounge, I sipped a café au lait (a whole dollar cheaper than a latte!) and took advantage of their generous seating policy (one hot beverage bought you as many hours of free Internet and blaring Fugees music as you liked) to struggle through some brutal weed identification questions. Next, I wrote a column on planting a new lawn, complete with ample keyword usage. The sort of lawn fertilizer typically sold for mature lawns won’t give newly seeded lawns the boost they need. Starter lawn fertilizer, which has more potassium and phosphorus than the average lawn fertilizer, is key. Starter lawn fertilizer should be applied at the same time you seed. Somehow the soft, yellow lamplight and the company of strangers and Lauryn Hill almost made me feel like I’d had a night out on the town rather than a shift of work.
Once my search engine optimization efforts were over, I headed home and climbed right into bed. Had I not snagged back issues of Charm, I might have spent some time on sites that I’d become quite familiar with in recent months, like adoptapet.com or cashmerebathrobeemporium.com , researching the possibility of cats and warm and fuzzy clothing as reasonable alternatives to human companionship. Instead, I flipped pages till I found Elliot Kaslowski’s old columns.
August’s column was cute, but ho-hum. Your basic, went on a date, it was pretty bad, here’s how, ha-ha. July was pretty similar. But June, oh, June had meat. The column told the tale of a night out with an old flame, code name “Boots.”
Boots looks good in all lights, but in candlelight she’s like a painting. When she looks at me across the table, her eyes brown and glowing, I don’t know why we’re not together.
He rambled on for a bit about commitment and temperament, standard stuff, then got back to Boots.
I kept wanting each part of the meal to last longer—no, don’t bring the dessert yet. Yes, pour another cup of coffee. But finally the check arrived, that dread signal of the end.
Enough reasons to decline the invitation right there. But the list went on. There was, of course, the other guest: the founder of TheOne.com . The company’s ads, plastered all over the subway, traumatized me on a daily basis. Each one was a famous painting, like Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon or Hopper’s Nighthawks, edited so that two individuals in each picture, inevitably individuals who weren’t paying any attention to each other, were outlined in glowing white auras, with taglines like “Where’s Your One?” “Help Her Find Her One,” or, more ominous, “Don’t Miss Your One.” Mutated versions of the ads made their way into my dreams. I’d be glowing, a la TheOne’s Ones, but it wasn’t a good thing—I was always trying to escape from something and the giant aura made hiding impossible.
Self-preservation dictated that I should thank Lily but let her know I was busy tomorrow night and for the foreseeable future. But that’s not what I did. No, instead I disregarded all those rational instincts and wrote back saying I’d love to come to dinner.
Being upset by my boyfriend’s new girlfriend just felt so typical. I wanted to be the sort of self-possessed person who didn’t have such feelings or, at the very least, kept such feelings folded up and tucked in a private closet. And finally, though undoubtedly there was an element of masochism in it, I wanted to see Robert. Or maybe more than to see him, to smell him. Why I thought that was a good idea was a real mystery.
E-mail answered, I microwaved a veggie pattie and continued my pretending by faking that I wasn’t depressed by my dinner. Then I headed off to the coffee shop around the corner to dole out lawn care advice. On one of the eight or so ratty couches at Tea Lounge, I sipped a café au lait (a whole dollar cheaper than a latte!) and took advantage of their generous seating policy (one hot beverage bought you as many hours of free Internet and blaring Fugees music as you liked) to struggle through some brutal weed identification questions. Next, I wrote a column on planting a new lawn, complete with ample keyword usage. The sort of lawn fertilizer typically sold for mature lawns won’t give newly seeded lawns the boost they need. Starter lawn fertilizer, which has more potassium and phosphorus than the average lawn fertilizer, is key. Starter lawn fertilizer should be applied at the same time you seed. Somehow the soft, yellow lamplight and the company of strangers and Lauryn Hill almost made me feel like I’d had a night out on the town rather than a shift of work.
Once my search engine optimization efforts were over, I headed home and climbed right into bed. Had I not snagged back issues of Charm, I might have spent some time on sites that I’d become quite familiar with in recent months, like adoptapet.com or cashmerebathrobeemporium.com , researching the possibility of cats and warm and fuzzy clothing as reasonable alternatives to human companionship. Instead, I flipped pages till I found Elliot Kaslowski’s old columns.
August’s column was cute, but ho-hum. Your basic, went on a date, it was pretty bad, here’s how, ha-ha. July was pretty similar. But June, oh, June had meat. The column told the tale of a night out with an old flame, code name “Boots.”
Boots looks good in all lights, but in candlelight she’s like a painting. When she looks at me across the table, her eyes brown and glowing, I don’t know why we’re not together.
He rambled on for a bit about commitment and temperament, standard stuff, then got back to Boots.
I kept wanting each part of the meal to last longer—no, don’t bring the dessert yet. Yes, pour another cup of coffee. But finally the check arrived, that dread signal of the end.
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