The Xmas Ride Read online

  This may not be what I want for my life anymore, but I never talked to the cops. It doesn’t matter. I’m where a lot of the men in this room want to be. Whether they believe I had anything to do with the raid or not, it’s an opportunity.

  Through the years, I’ve earned the respect of nearly everybody in here. That might give me a day, maybe two. Respect for Rev’s wishes might give me a few more days, but however long I have isn’t long enough. Unless I can get Rev out of jail and prove someone else was the rat, I’m dead.

  Chapter Two

  Julie

  It’s 3:30 when the door to my office flies open and a bunch of people burst in screaming. “Happy birthday!” they shout, and I wish I could crawl under my desk without the glaring professional implications of such a maneuver. Every day, it seems like the social contract gets longer and longer. I’ve been through this particular ritual enough I should have it down to a fine art by now. They’ve been surprising me at precisely 3:30 on my birthday as long as I’ve been working here. I just hope nobody brought me a gift.

  The last time someone left me a present, I didn’t see who put it on my desk. There was no card, no tag on the gift, nothing.

  I couldn’t sleep for days.

  Somewhere, there was a coworker of mine wondering why I didn’t properly thank him or her for such a generous offering. Everyone was out of my office before I even noticed it was sitting there, green-bowed and grimacing. The paper was a dark-purple flower pattern against a black background, and I didn’t dare touch it. Not until I found out who left it on my desk. I just knew everyone in the office was going to end up hating me. The one I snubbed: he or she would tell a few of their friends who would tell a few of their friends, and before long, I’d be sitting in Mr. Marchant’s office, trying to explain why I was so hostile toward my coworkers.

  That’s what I thought was going to happen, anyway. As it turned out, everyone just ignored me like usual and that was that. I still haven’t opened the gift, though. It would be rude to enjoy something without suitably sharing my appreciation for the opportunity.

  I still have nightmares where I come into work, and everyone’s sitting on their desks, facing me, each one of them holding the same flowery-papered box with the neon green bow. They never say anything, but I know they’re all quietly judging me. Why else would they go to such lengths for the effort?

  Okay, so I have some mild social issues.

  Last night, I stayed up late practicing my surprised face. The more I practiced, of course, the more mortifyingly awkward the expression became. Finally, I gave up on the surprised face and spent a few hours planning alternate approaches. After much internal deliberation and, I’m almost ashamed to say, more than one pie chart, I decided my best bet was to be spontaneous with my reaction. Maybe my instincts aren’t awful at all. Maybe I kill everything by overthinking it. I was up until almost five this morning trying to decide if there was enough evidence to suggest I empirically do overthink things, but I fell asleep before coming to a reasonable conclusion.

  I like to think I’m a people person. I’m not actually a people person, but I like to think that I am. It’s like a mantra, or a positive affirmation. If I just say it enough, I’ll suddenly fit in, and it won’t matter that I never left the books at school long enough to learn basic human interaction. One of these times, I’m going to say it, and it’s going to be the truth, I just know it.

  Today is not that day.

  Spontaneity fails miserably as my voice comes out in a variety of pitches and volumes, pronouncing words I’m not sure I’ve encountered whilst learning any of the five languages I speak. I know it’s appropriate to make eye contact while embarrassing one’s self in a captive public setting, but I spend a lot of time checking the area of my desk for incoming gifts. I’m watching for hand movements, the subtle shifts in posture which could indicate the retrieval of some sort of token of recognition for having not died in the last year.

  It’s not until they’re at the point in the Happy Birthday song where they say my name that I realize they’re singing to me. In the last moments of the song, I do manage to look up in what I could claim later was a genuine show of affection and appreciation toward my coworkers for their kindness in remembering such a trifling thing as the anniversary of the day I was brought screaming into the world.

  The song’s over, and I’m clapping way too loud, smiling way too much, and laughing a lot longer than makes sense. “Thank you so much!” I half-whisper, half-shout in surprising, irregular patterns. My mouth is dry and my lips are stuck to my gums. I try to force my top lip down, but only one side moves, so I just bring it back to that full smile that makes my cheek muscles feel like they’re going to snap.

  Now everyone’s looking at me with expecting faces, and I don’t know what they want. I wish I could just ask them, but apparently, I’m just supposed to know what everybody’s thinking. It doesn’t really seem fair.

  Finally, someone in the back who’s anxious to get a piece of cake and leave saves me, calling out, “Blow out the candles!”

  I don’t even know why they allow candles in an office setting like this. It’s a fire hazard, and I’m exactly the kind of person that would end up with a birthday-cake-fire in my office.

  “Make a wish!” someone shouts, and I can actually hear people groaning at the thought of spending the extra time it’ll take me to pretend I’m thinking hard about something I really want, and then, with exuberant eyes, “deciding” and quickly blowing out the candles like wishes have shelf lives.

  They’re still standing there, and so I pucker my lips and blow. It’s one long candle with the world “Mazeltov” written over a Star of David, but the room erupts as if I’ve pulled off some super-human feat.

  They set the cake on top of the carefully laid out pages from last quarter’s report on the effects of current market trends on last quarter’s investment activities. They use one of those cheap plastic knives to cut a jagged grid of too few slices into the cake, smearing cheap plastic-tasting icing over every single page on my desk.

  I’m still smiling. It has to be unhealthy for a person to smile this wide for this long. At this point, I think the corners of my mouth have attached themselves to my back molars. I’m still smiling as half the people in my office get a piece of cake and the other half complain to each other about how they “never get a slice.” And I’m still smiling as everyone quickly files out of my office a few seconds later, closing the door too hard behind them.

  I look down at my desk. Yep, they forgot to give me a piece again. It’s the third year in a row. Hey, at least this time, they didn’t bother with a present.

  My face slowly unpeels from its contrived position, and I spend the next few minutes searching the internet for ways to get icing off of time-sensitive financial reports.

  Twenty-seven years. To me, twenty-seven is just the polite way of saying, “Almost thirty.” It used to be, I was always the youngest person doing things. I got bumped up a couple of grades in junior high and high school, so I was always the youngest person in the class. I graduated high school early, so I was the youngest person in my college classes, in grad school classes.

  I was the youngest applicant to Futuere Industries that year, and by far the youngest to get the job. Now, though, I’m the oldest person in the company still trying to figure out a way to fit in. Everyone else: A couple of weeks. Me? I’ll let you know when it happens.

  If it happens.

  It’s almost five, and I can’t stop thinking I should have figured it out by now. I know the name of every person working on the floor, even the new guy they hired to come in and wipe dust off of the plastic plants. His name is Bruce, and he has three children, each from a different marriage. I know this, because I started having my favorite intern, Riley, make up cheat sheets on everyone in the office. Now, I can walk the floor and say, “Hi, Sharon,” or “How are the dogs, Rob?” like I’m everyone’s office chum. I’ve gotten to be almost decent at small ta
lk because of it.

  Bruce, he’s currently single again and looking, if I’m interested.

  I’m not interested.

  My plan for tonight is to go home, put on the same crappy movie I used to watch with my mom before schooling ate my childhood, and my career ate everything else, while telling myself repeatedly I’m choosing to spend my birthday alone this year. At 4:58, though, something happens. I don’t even think about it, but my phone is in my hand, and I’m asking Riley, my intern, if she can step into my office for a minute.

  If I start thinking about what I’m doing, I won’t follow through with it, so I try to remember the lyrics to “My Sharona” as I wait for Riley to arrive.

  There’s a knock, and then my door opens. “Yes, Miss Montierth?” Riley asks.

  “I’ve decided to go out tonight for my birthday, and I was wondering if you’d care to join me,” I say.

  Riley has a look on her face I can’t quite interpret, but she answers quickly. “Sure. Where?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer.

  “Who’s all going?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Right now, it’s just you and me, but if you have any suggestions, I’m, you know, open to them…” This is going better than I feared, but much worse than I’d hoped.

  “I can ask a few people if you want,” she says. “How many would you like to have join us?” She takes out a pen and her ubiquitous notepad. This is just another task from the boss to her: not exactly the breezy moment I’d hoped it would be.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “What’s the smallest number of people I can invite and still say ‘I went out with the girls for my birthday?’”

  “Three,” she says. “Two people and you’re just hanging out, one person, and you’re grabbing a drink with a friend—I’m sorry, you didn’t say where you wanted to go.”

  I repeat, “I don’t know.”

  “I know a few places,” she says. “Do you like dancing?”

  “Yes.” I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never gone dancing in my life. The only dancing I do is the slight shimmy and occasional head nod to the radio on my way to work.

  “Great, I’ve got the perfect place. If that doesn’t turn out good, we can go somewhere else more colorful.”

  “Colorful,” I say, tapping my pen against my desk. “Colorful is good. I like the idea of building up to it, though, so yeah, let’s do that second.”

  “Great,” Riley says, no longer able to contain the slight chuckle she’s been visibly holding in for the last minute and a half. “I’ll go round up a couple of people and we’ll head to the club.”

  “We’re going to a club?” I ask.

  “Is there somewhere else you prefer to go dancing?”

  “Okay, then we’re going to a club, but this isn’t going to be one of those things where the boss invites a couple of people out after work and then ends up humiliating herself in a never-to-be-forgotten barrage of flailing limbs, is it?”

  Riley lifts an eyebrow. “That kind of depends on you, I think.”

  There’s always a chance this won’t be a horribly scarring experience, but that chance is growing slimmer by the moment. “Set it up,” I tell her. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t the way I wanted it to come out. I’m trying to be free-wheeling and spontaneous.”

  She gives me a thumbs-up and walks out of the office.

  I sigh and, rubbing my temples, I mutter, “This is going to be a disaster.”

  ***

  I sit in the front seat of the cab. Riley assures me this is the position of honor, but to me it just feels like I’m making it easier for the three women to talk about me, literally, behind my back.

  Turning around, I say, “So, what kind of club is it?”

  Marcy and Jenna, they look at me like I’m speaking some long lost dialect nobody understands anymore. Riley looks like she wants to answer, but she’s keeping quiet. After a painful ten seconds of me turned halfway around in my seat, Jenna finally says, “You’ve never been to Pascal?”

  “Huh,” I say. “I wonder if the name was inspired by the French mathematician.”

  “Why would they name a club after a French mathematician?” Jenna, the blonde from the office two doors down from mine responds. That exchange right there includes more words than we’ve spoken to one another in the entirety of our working together.

  “Well, music has math in it, doesn’t it?” Marcy, the redheaded intern who brings her coffee from home, brews it at work, and won’t let anyone else have any, asks.

  “Music has math by necessity,” I answer. “Art can, but doesn’t always have to, unless you’re taking proportion into account, in which case—”

  “So, you’re twenty-seven, huh?” Marcy interrupts.

  I glance to the cab driver as if he’s going to help me somehow understand these people. He winks at me. I’m not certain, but I don’t think he’s coming to my aid.

  “Yeah,” I say finally. “Twenty-seven years old.”

  “I am dreading turning thirty,” Jenna says.

  “I know, right?” Marcy responds. “It’s like, kill me now before I leave my twenties.”

  “You know, I saw this thing online that says that women who turn thirty lose like all of their sexual drive,” Jenna announces.

  “That can’t be true,” Marcy says. “My dad always said thirty’s when a woman really discovers her sexual identity.”

  “Your dad told you that?” Jenna asks. “Gross.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Marcy says. “None of my step-moms was ever around long enough to go over that stuff with me, and he did the best he could, so whatever. Anyway,” she pats me on the shoulder, “you’re not dead yet.”

  “Thanks,” I respond, not knowing what else to say.

  “So,” Jenna says, “is it true you graduated high school when you were like twelve?”

  “Fifteen,” I answer. “I probably would have made it through sooner if I—”

  “Fifteen?” Marcy gasps. “That’s crazy!” She leans forward a little. “So you’re like crazy smart, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. At the moment, I feel pretty stupid.

  “So, like,” Marcy continues, “did you go to college and stuff after that? I mean, I guess you’d have to ‘cause they don’t give jobs like yours to dropouts, huh?”

  “Yeah, I went to college,” I tell her. “It was kind of crazy having my mom drop me off on campus when everyone else has been driving for a couple of years.”

  “That’s right,” Jenna says. “You were too young to drive back then, weren’t you?”

  “I was fifteen,” I answer.

  The cab pulls over, and I look out the front window. There’s a line of about fifty people snaking its way halfway down the block.

  “These lines,” I say, “do they usually move pretty fast?”

  “Not really,” Jenna snickers. After that, I can hear her whispering something, but I can’t pick it out. I was afraid of this. I’m the extra wheel at my own birthday celebration.

  “How are we going to get in then?” I ask.

  “We can always show off the girls,” Marcy says.

  “Show off the girls?” I ask.

  Jenna laughs, and Marcy answers, grabbing a couple handfuls of her own chest, “You know, the girls. Give the bouncer a little show and we’re in, no problem.”

  I understood what she meant.

  Jenna’s whispering again, but this time it’s loud enough I pick up what she’s saying. “It’s Miss Montierth. She’s not going to flash her tits to get into some club.”

  “How long?” I ask, looking back over the seat to avoid the lascivious gaze of the cab driver.

  Jenna’s head snaps around to face me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it like a two-second thing, or am I going to be standing there for a while? It’s kind of chilly,” I answer.

  “Oh my god, she’s totally going to do it,” Marcy says, patting Jenna repeatedly on the
knee. It’s then that I receive my first full, proper, and ear-piercingly loud, “WOO!” from the girls in the car.

  “You know,” the driver says, “you give me three seconds, and you girls’ve got a free cab ride.”

  Without turning to face him, I reach into my purse and pull out a twenty. Handing the money to the driver, I say, “So, are we doing this or what?”

  Riley asks, “You sure about this, Miss Montierth?”

  “Oh, come on,” I answer. “It’s Julie. Let’s go show some random guy our tits, shall we?” In psychology, they refer to this sort of thing as immersion therapy: Surrounding one’s self with something frightening in order to normalize the fear. This is so far out of my comfort zone, I’m terrified. I want to ask what the risk of getting arrested for indecent exposure is like with this sort of thing, but figure it’s probably not the “cool” thing to say.

  I get my second “WOO!” followed by a whole lot of laughter and Marcy reflecting, “Miss Montierth totally just said ‘tits!’”

  The word felt funny coming out of my mouth, but the more I show myself as an outsider, the more difficult it’s going to be to gain the acceptance of the group. It’s similar to the way zoologists will often take on some characteristics of the animals they’re studying in order to gain the latter’s trust. Of course, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would suggest that I shouldn’t make these three aware I’m studying them, lest it changes their behavior. Actually, Heisenberg would say the mere act of observation changes the results, and it’s therefore impossible to get an unadulterated study. There I go, mischaracterizing Heisenberg like I’m back in grade school.