Chapter Three
It might just kill me.
"You want me to do what?" I glance across my boss’s desk in shock. Surely I am misunderstanding something because there is no possible way I am hearing this correctly.
"I want you to go down to Times Square and pass out some flyers, Lauren. Was that unclear?"
I hate the way she says my name. I don't even like hearing my name come out of her mouth, but the tone she says it in makes it all the worse. And she's always adding it to sentences needlessly to intimidate me. Normal people don't repeat your name to you in conversation because it's unnecessary.
"Did you have a late night? You seem a little off your game today, Lauren. Has the weekend started early for you?"
See what I mean?
She smiles when she says it but she doesn't mean it. Because she's a bitch. That's really all there is to that.
"No, my weekend hasn't started early. I'm just a little confused about why tourists in Times Square would be interested in a sale at the Budget Bridal Stop in Brooklyn. But I have some ideas about how we could better reach the target audience," I start, but that's as far as I get because she cuts me off.
"I didn't ask for your thoughts, Lauren. If you're interested in a career here you need to learn how to follow direction. The team can only have one leader and that's me."
Sometimes I wonder if she was a bitchy baby. I think she probably was.
"Now I understand this probably isn't the most challenging task you've been given and I can see you're not excited about it, but it needs to be done and I hope I can trust you to handle it like a professional."
I swallow the words 'fuck you,' and place a fake smile on my face as I stand.
"You'll need to change here and then have the car service drop you off in Times Square. The case of flyers is much too heavy to walk with." She adds a big smile that anyone else would think was genuine but I know better.
"Sure thing," I call out as I slide the garment bag off the top of her office door and fold it over my arm as I prepare to leave her office.
"And this shouldn't take more than two hours, Lauren. Please don't waste the entire day on this, okay?"
I bite my lip and nod as I walk out of her office. I stop at my desk to arrange the car service the company uses for a pick-up and then head into the women's bathroom to change.
And that is the story of how I end up in Times Square in a wedding dress.
Fuck. My. Life.
This day is shit. Complete and utter shit and I'm done trying to spin it. Done! It's a good day for nothing is what it is. You know that old saying? It's not you, it's me? It's not me. This day sucks.
Oh, God, this was probably a sample dress. It's likely been tried on a hundred times already and now I'm wearing it and sweating in it and—gross.
I have to swallow the lump in my throat to keep from crying. When I left the office in a wedding dress I almost died. I know it's New York and people should be used to seeing anything and everything, but that doesn't help when it's you. And a woman walking through an office building lobby in a wedding gown is going to get some odd stares.
Walking around Times Square midday on a Friday in a stupid white dress isn't much better.
It's not anything I would have picked out if I'd gotten that far in my wedding planning before booting the fiancé. My mom and my maid of honor would have gone with me and I'd have tried on something resembling a picture I'd torn out of a magazine. I'd have practiced walking down the aisle and stood up on my tiptoes to get an idea of what the length would look like with heels. I'd have twirled a little to get a sense of how the material would move and what it would feel like brushing against my legs.
It might have been a princess style with three-quarter-length lace sleeves and matching lace detail over the bodice. Or maybe a ball gown with a sweetheart bodice. Possibly an A-line with a plunging V-neck and a satin ribbon around the waist. It would not have been this dress. Not this spaghetti-strapped, empire-waisted chiffon dress I'm currently wearing.
I drop the box of flyers at my feet and kick it before grabbing a stack off the top. At least I'm wearing my sneakers. See, everything happens for a reason. These sneakers are like a little gift from the universe right now.
"Huge wedding dress sale!" I call out to a couple of women walking nearby, but they don't even turn their heads. Well, that's a great start. I manage to pass out a couple dozen before I'm asked what my rate is. For the night. Because the guy thinks I'm a hooker.
I tell him to fuck off and contemplate looking for a new job, good company be damned. This is ridiculous.
I'm grabbing another handful of flyers when I'm approached by one of New York's finest. If this ends in me getting arrested I am definitely quitting. I could always move to Hawaii and be a waitress. I've got loads of experience from college. I'd find an outdoor ocean-front restaurant to work at and I'd make more than I do now, plus I'd get to enjoy a million-dollar view and fresh ocean air. Fine, I may have fantasized about this a time or two and done the odd hour or three of research. Visualizing a life of shorts and flip-flops all year long is my escape.
"Miss, you can't perform here. You need to move to one of the blue zones." He points to a section of pavement covered in blue paint.
"What?" I question, glancing over at the area he's pointing at. I'm vaguely familiar with the groups of costume characters and street performers working for tips in Times Square being restricted to designated zones.
"I'm not a street performer," I tell him with a shake of my head. "I'm just telling people about a sale at the Budget Bridal Stop." I hold up a flyer. "See?"
"Solicitations in the blue zone, miss. Move along before I have to ticket you."
Solicitations? I'm not soliciting! Wait, maybe I am. Does advertising a bridal shop sale count as selling? Shit. I pick up my box and walk over to the blue zone while wondering how much a one-way ticket to Honolulu is.
Probably more than I have.
I'm in the blue zone for less than five minutes before some idiot in a superhero costume makes a pass at me. I literally cannot make this shit up.
Twenty minutes after that I get my first tip. A tourist drops a quarter into my box as he walks past. I'm about to yell at him that I'm not a street performer when it hits me.
I left the office without my purse.
Without my phone.
Without my subway card.
Without a return ride.
That's the exact moment I start to cry. I'm not a complete disaster, I don't start sobbing, but my eyes are filling with tears, so I focus on a giant neon sign advertising Broadway’s latest hit to try to distract myself from the knowledge that it's a two-and-a-half-mile walk back to the office from Times Square. It's not that I'm incapable of walking that far—it's the idea of walking it in a wedding dress. It's gonna be one hell of a walk of shame, that's for sure.
"Oh, she's doing performance art!"
I blink and focus on the woman standing in front of me. She's clasped her hands together and has a wide smile on her face, staring at me as if she's just discovered a wombat in the middle of the concrete jungle that is the pedestrian plaza in Times Square.
"What are you supposed to be? A jilted bride?"
I start to shake my head but when I do a single tear breaks free and rolls down my cheek. Fuck.
The woman nods and seems satisfied that she's figured me out. "Very well done. Give her a dollar, Frank."
Well then, now I can add performance artist to my resume. Fan-fucking-tastic. I wipe the tear off my cheek and take stock. I've got a dollar twenty-five. I think a single subway ride is three bucks if I remember correctly. It's cheaper to get a MetroCard and buy a monthly pass so that's what I normally do. So problem solved, right? I just need to get a couple more tips and I can take the subway back to the office. Still embarrassing, but the subway is full of odd characters so people will probably just think I'm a stripper on her way to a gig. In any case it'll get me back to the office a lot quicker.
I don't think I could pay the rent on street performing because it takes me another twenty minutes to collect two bucks. Once I do I stuff the rest of the flyers into the trash. My boss can fuck herself.
Not that I'm going to tell her that.
Out loud. In my head I tell her that all the time.
Besides, she's never going to know I tossed the rest of the flyers. Normally I wouldn't do something so unethical, but let's face it: I'm almost certain she made up this job just to get to me, and I did hand out most of them. Or more than half, which is most.
I wonder if the Budget Bridal Stop is even a client.
I bunch the material of the dress below my waist and lift it a few inches so I don't trip on it as I make my way down the subway steps so I can hop on the One towards the West Village. I buy a pay-per-ride card with my panhandling earnings and hold onto the quarter I have left over. Yay me.
According to the monitors the train is due to arrive in three minutes. I've been whistled at twice and received another offer for paid sex just in the time it took me to buy a ticket so I move as out of the way as possible and try to blend into the wall while I wait on the train's arrival.
I am sort of curious about the sex offer. Like I wonder what he wanted and how much he was willing to pay. Not that I would have! Of course not. But it'd be nice to know how much I could fetch in a jam. Just saying.
The subways in New York have these incredible old tile mosaics spelling out the names of the stops. I find the workmanship so lovely in an age of neon signs and electronic monitors. They're so permanent in an era of disposability. I'm in the midst of examining the tiny tiles, marveling over how they must be near a hundred years old, when I feel someone beside me. When you live in the city you get pretty good at detecting people in your personal space versus just passing by, so I take a step to the right and turn, expecting another prostitution offer. I think I'm just gonna ask this time what kind of money we're talking about because I always imagined myself as a high-end call girl and not a twenty-dollar-blow-job hooker. I mean, if it ever came to that. It's like three back-up plans behind waitressing in Hawaii.
But it's not an offer for sex. It's the hottie from yesterday, grinning at me in all his dimpled glory.