Chapter 4
The flight back to Oakland was quick. Alex hadn’t given her a ride back to the airport, but he sent her a text that morning.
Hey, it was great of you to come over last night, he’d written. We’ll have to do it again.
She’d replied with a few heart emoticons that she reserved for people she genuinely liked. Candice had felt good about her experience with Alex and wanted more. It had been a while since she’d been with someone who seemed genuinely concerned with her. Mitch was just a dick on a body. He was proving to be quite a handful as well. He’d left her a bunch of angry voicemails calling her a cunt, a bitch, and a stream of additional profanities. She wasn’t sure what she should do about it either.
Candice got back into town on a Sunday night, and when she returned home everything seemed the same. Her apartment was clean, which she liked to do before she left. Her bed had been made and everything was ready for the next day.
She spent the afternoon going back and forth between thoughts of Mitch and Alex. Her feelings were a pendulum. On one side was vehement dislike and on the other a budding sense of passion. She didn’t want to rush things with Alex, although she definitely wanted to see him again soon.
To get her mind off of things she watched more Netflix. This time she didn’t order pizza. Instead she made some popcorn and put on Sixteen Candles. She forgot how racist the movie was with its stereotypes of Asian people. Every mention of the Asian foreign exchange student’s name, Long Duck Dong, was accompanied by a gong.
She rolled her eyes when the hot female ended up suddenly and drunkenly falling for “The Geek.” Candice couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been wasted and wanted to saddle up with some condescending asshole. There were enough of them in the Bay Area though. If she wanted to, she could go out any night of the week and get wasted and get into some asshole’s arms.
***
Work the next day was different. Being a copywriter meant that no day was ever the same. She began as normal with research. She read a slew of advertisements to get an idea of what she should do for her newest client, a start-up that was selling fancy alarm clocks that tracked people’s sleep patterns.
She tried to think of the words. Candice was to write the text for the website. She borrowed, invented, sliced, cut and copy and pasted from other sites and adverts. She thought about the client and then about the audience. Who were they? She went back and looked over her notes.
She spent a couple hours writing down things in her notebook. All she saw was an elaborate series of words and phrases that looked good at first and then crumbled into gibberish that didn’t make any sense to her.
Candice spent an hour talking with the graphic designer figuring out how the site would look. The words, the pictures, the design all had to go together. She quality checked a project she started nine months ago and looked at some past projects. She wondered about grammar and punctuation problems from those old projects and now. She wondered if it was all worth it, if all this pain staking writing and emotional labor was worth it.
Candice wasn’t sure. She was comfortable with the amount of money that she was making, but the Bay Area wasn’t getting any less expensive and she worried that in a few years that she might be pushed out of her apartment. Landlords all over the city were kicking tenants out and raising their rents, and Candice wasn’t in a rent-controlled apartment.
“Hey, Candice,” a voice said.
“Oh, hey, Tiffany.”
Tiffany, Candice’s coworker, was standing in front of her desk. Tiffany was tall and thin. She had dark black hair and olive skin. She was Candice’s age and the two had bonded during Candice’s first week of work. They had lunch together on an almost daily basis and the two frequently chatted about things both inside and outside of work. Candice liked Tiffany and the two had gone on weekend trips to Tahoe, Vegas, and Los Angeles together. Candice had even invited Tiffany to her home. Tiffany, who’d grown up in upstate New York, taught her about skiing and snowboarding, and Candice had taught her about surfing and burritos.
“Want to get lunch?” Tiffany said.
“Sure. Where should we go?”
“Want to get pizza?”
“Nah. I think I’m good.”
“Really, there’s a good new pizza place in the Ferry Building.”
“I have a new-found aversion to pizza, to be honest.”
“Oh, really?” Tiffany said.
The two had grabbed their jackets and began walking outside. Tiffany worked doing graphic design, so the two would frequently collaborate. While they argued occasionally about creative decisions, they both had defended each other in company meetings before. Tiffany lived in the city, and had somehow secured a rent-controlled apartment in the Tenderloin.
It was a bright warm summer day and there was a cool ocean breeze that tugged at the women’s jackets. The office was off of Hyde Street near the Embarcadero BART stop which made it an easy commute for Candice, and just a short walk from her home for Tiffany. Since it was early afternoon, crowds of office workers walked through the area on their way from meetings and lunches.
A group of people rode by them on Segways, led by a tour guide in a black hat who started talking about the beauty of the city.
“So, did something go bad with Mitch?” Tiffany asked as the two crossed the street to the Ferry Building.
“Yeah. I thought things had just dissolved after the pregnancy. I told you I saw him, right? At the bagel shop?”
“The one by the MacArthur BART?”
“That’s the one. He was just staring listlessly into his coffee cup. His eyes were beady and red. It grossed me out to be honest. Made me happy that I used the pill,” Candice said.
The two had entered the building and there were a variety of small artisanal shops selling all sorts of items. One shop sold a variety of different olive oils, another sold organic fair trade chocolate, and a third sold vegan donuts.
“To be honest I never liked him,” Tiffany said.
“You also never met him.”
“A good reason not to like him, right?”
“Anyways, I was in L.A. this weekend and I told him about the abortion.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. Is there some sort of etiquette for these things? Like I should tell the guy I’m hooking up with about it? Or shouldn’t I?” Candice asked. She stopped in front of a small fruit stand and took a sample of a strawberry. She bit into it. It was sweet and juicy.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ve been on birth control for a while.”
“That shit fucks me up. Gives me bad mood swings.”
“Anyways, what happened with Mitch?” Tiffany said. She took a strawberry and popped it in her mouth.
“When I told him about it, he freaked the hell out. He started screaming at me. I was on my parents’ lawn talking to him and you could hear his voice out of my phone like a mile away. It was so really awful.”
“I understand your aversion to pizza now. About the only thing interesting about that guy was his penchant for pizza.”
“Exactly. I hung up on him and told him that I didn’t want to talk to him anymore but he kept calling all night. I had to shut off my phone,” Candice said. The two continued their walk and sat down at a sandwich shop. They ordered their food and waited while their lunch was delivered to their small table.
“Have you heard from him again?”
“Luckily, no. I don’t know what I should do if he contacts me again.”
“You should probably slash his tires.”
“Ha. I do know where he lives,” Candice said with a laugh. “His bike is shitty too.”
“That’s the way to deal with it,” Tiffany said. She picked up her sandwich and took a bite out of it. She chewed for a while and then looked at her friend. “So how was L.A.?”
“It was good.”
“Anything exciting?”
“I met my dad’s friend, Alex. He’s nice and he’ll be up here soon. I think this weekend.”
“Oh? You met him or you ‘met’ him.”
“Ha ha, you’re terrible!”
“Look at you, moving on in the world. Good for you and your dad’s best friend. Sounds hot. Is he handsome? Does he have a silver mane?”
“Yeah. He’s sophisticated. He has a nice simple place down in L.A. It has a minimalist style to it,” Candice said.
“You were over there? Did you spend the night? Give me the dirt, girl,” Tiffany said, leaning forward in her seat.
“Well, we had cocktails and then we went back to his place. The sex was good. Really good. He’s a gentleman you know. Nothing like Mitch…”
“Soo… is there gonna be more?” Tiffany said. She leaned in further with a mischievous smile.
“I hope so… We’ll see. Anyway what’s new with you? Did anything happen to you this weekend?”
“Not really. I signed up for that marathon. I’m going to start doing training runs. Want to come with?” Tiffany said.
“Uh, no. That’s far.”
“Oh, I forgot you just like those culty SoulCycle classes or those culty CrossFit courses.”
“It’s not a cult,” Candice said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Tiffany said looking away.
There was a rumble in Candice’s purse.
“One sec,” Candice said. She looked at her phone quickly. “Speaking of the devil…”
“The handsome devil or the devil devil?” Tiffany said with one eyebrow raised.
“The handsome one,” Candice replied.
“Well… go ahead.”
“Give me a second,” Candice said getting up from her seat.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Tiffany said. She grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her to her seat. “You don’t have to go anywhere. You can feel free to talk to him while I am here. Besides, I want all of the juicy details!”
Candice rolled her eyes at her friend and then answered the call.
“Hey, Alex!”
“So, I’ll be in town this weekend. Clae, my son, has a hockey game. I was thinking that we could get together.”
“I’d like that.”
“Saturday?”
“Sure. What time?” Candice replied.
“Well, he plays right down town at the rink near 14th Street. You know the place?”
“It’s next to the Fox Theatre, right?”
“You got it,” Alex said. “Let’s meet around there at 8 p.m. I’m going to stay at the Marriot downtown.”
“Awesome. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon,” Alex said.
“Ooooh, someone has a date with an older man,” Tiffany said with a smile. “Are you gonna call him daddy?”
“Shut up!!” Candice said with a smile. She lightly slapped her friend and took the last bite of her sandwich.