Page 45 of Same Time Next Summer

“Sam, why are you smiling? I feel like you’re not taking this seriously. You can keep your job, but we are coursecorrecting. You shouldn’t be smiling.” If your job is micromanaging other people’s behavior, it’s hard to stop.

I realize that I need to end this meeting. I have been away for one week and it’s like I completely forgot the script. “Eleanor, I love this job and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with you and to make a difference for our clients. Just tell me when this next project starts and I’ll be all over it.”

“That’s my girl.”

I walk outinto the thick August air wondering how I’m supposed to feel. I still have a job. I just need to keep my head down for a couple of projects, and then they’ll let me out in the world again. With less engaging work, maybe I’ll even start making it to waltzing lessons. I feel no relief at all. Spreadsheets and waltzing lessons give me that itchy-sweater feeling all over.

I reach for my phone to text Wyatt, and as I start to type I realize how wrong that is. I text Jack instead, even though I know he’s with patients: They didn’t fire me, they’re just going to torture me with boring work for a bit.

An hour later, I’m reading an unsanctioned work of women’s fiction in bed when he texts back: Oh wow, I’m shocked but happy! I’ll see you later.

Jack comes home from work with a bouquet of lilies. “I’m so happy and relieved,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. “I know this whole wedding thing has been stressful. It was killing me to think you were going to lose your job over it.”

I hug him back but then let go. “Wait. Do you think the flash mob was about our wedding?”

“Well, sort of. Not directly, but you’ve been distracted. Like forgetting appointments, doodling in your little book. You’re not quite buttoned up, and I sort of assumed it was about the wedding.”

I have in my mind the image of someone in a very long dress with buttons that go all the way up to her neck. She looks regal and polished and she can’t quite breathe. I look down at my sandals and wonder if it’s okay to just undo the top button every once in a while, without your whole life falling apart.

“I’m still buttoned up,” I say. “Sometimes my mind wanders, but that’s just what minds do.”

“Mine doesn’t.”

I laugh and hug him again. “That’s my favorite thing about you,” I say into his neck.

“I want to hear all about your job drama. Let me change real quick and I’ll take you out for sushi.”

Jack goes in to change, and my phone buzzes. It’s Wyatt: So?

Me: They didn’t fire me but I don’t get to have any human contact until they think I’ve learned my lesson

Wyatt: Ouch

Me: It’s fine. This is what you get for farting in the elevator

Wyatt sends a string of laughing emojis, and, just like that, we have a new inside joke.

47

My parents have put down a deposit on the Old Sloop Inn for October 28 and we’ve ordered invitations. It feels like a concrete decision and it feels like everything is back on track. At least the wedding. I’ve started my analysis of a department store chain’s health care offerings, and it’s nine hours a day of mining data. My cubicle doesn’t get any natural light, so I’ve started going to Central Park at lunchtime to try to catch a breeze and some bird sounds. On the Monday that starts the third full week on this project, I sit on a bench just outside the Central Park Zoo with a soft pretzel and a Coke. I find myself unable to move. Children are walking out of the zoo with ice-cream cones dripping down their little hands. A boy in a chicken costume points up to a bird that’s landing on a balcony on Fifth Avenue. A man dances to music that’s in his head, and if I watch long enough it seems like the squirrels hear it too. I am overwhelmed by how intensely I want to be where people are having ideas.

My mom calls. “Sweetheart, am I interrupting you?”

“I’m in a meeting,” I say, breaking off a piece of my pretzel for a pigeon couple.

“I hear birds.”

“Well, yes. So what’s going on?”

“We need to get this wedding nailed down,” she says. “The invitations should be arriving soon, and we have to start picking things out. Donna’s called me twice asking for the color scheme, and I’m not entirely sure what she means.”

Apparently, we are cutting things pretty close for an October 28 wedding. My mom wants us to come this weekend for Labor Day and to meet with the florist and taste the cake.

“Weren’t we just there?” Jack asks when we’re walking down Madison Avenue after dinner.

“That was three weeks ago.”

“I’m not sure I can do two hippie beach visits in one summer.”

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