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Excerpt

Excerpt

Is That a Moose in Your Pocket?

CHAPTER 1

ex marks the spot

six months earlier

The e-mail arrived in my in-box as I was killing time adding books and CDs to my Amazon wish list that I would never buy. Starting a Dialogue with Your Inner Child's Child and The Best Latin Dance Party Hits of 1980-1990 ring any bells?

To: Carl Hanson

From: Nancy Teason

Subject: Department changes

C,

I've been giving the changes we talked about some thought, and the topline is, Jen's just not ready for this kind of responsibility. She has tons of talent, and with the right kind of mentoring, I think she could be a managing editor in a year or two. Irregardless [sic] of the current budget freeze, I think we need to look out of house on this one. We can talk about it more but this is really my gut call.

p.s. Steve and I have tickets to the Giants game on Sunday. Interested in making it a foursome?

Nance

Nancy Teason, Director of Product Development

Technology Standard / TechStandard.com

I read it through several more times, heart pounding. My college roommate, who is now a practicing personal coach with two homes (Laguna Beach, California, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut) and two ex-husbands (both in L.A.), says that the important thing in times of stress is to isolate the thought attack and put it away in your "negativity closet." I have tried this method several times and have found that it is nowhere near as satisfying as imagining backing an SUV slowly over the backstabbing turncoat who has wronged you.

For about six weeks now, I've been going through the humiliating process of applying for my own job. Why do I think it's mine? Well, for one, my former boss, Jem Abbott Pierce (yes, that's really her name--Mayflower forebears), had the temerity to go have a baby and leave me stranded with her work. Not that I mind, since her job is infinitely more interesting than my own, what with the trips to L.A. in spring, New York in fall, and free shwag up the wazoo.

It just stands to reason that I, Jem's Fully Anointed Protege, am supposed to take her place when she invariably decides that darning pashmina shawls, painting landscapes of rotting barns, and nurturing her blue-blooded progeny are more important than covering high-tech news in Silicon Valley.

One Internet hiccup, and a message I was never intended to see found its way to my in-box. This happens, what, once every five years or so? Twenty? As there was something omenlike about this, I grabbed my spongy carpal-tunnel wrist ball and squeezed obsessively while staring out at the parking lot, hoping for a divine or at least everyday revelation. I considered my options: Forward dreaded message to Carl and cc Nancy Teason (Treason?) with a kind fyi at the top, and pretend ongoing ignorance while conducting a quietly dignified job search, which would hopefully offer me 387,000 instantly vesting stock options and an all-straight-male staff? Delete dreaded message and sublimate my rage into therapeutic massage and book club? Reply to dreaded message using colorful expletives, stomp over to Carl's office, urinate on the copier, and fling my meager belongings in a box?

In the end, I did what I always do when I'm panicked--I called Robert.

He answered before the first ring ended.

"O'Hanlon." Robert always sounds incredibly butch on the phone.

"It's me. You are not going to believe this."

"Try me." Keyboard clacking.

"Somehow an e-mail from Nancy to Carl was misrouted to me. They're not going to consider me for Jem's job." Tears at the back of my throat threatened to choke me. This only happens with Robert and my mother.

"Holy shit."

"Yes," I whispered.

"Hang on."

I can hear Robert ordering his minions around in a charming, drill sergeant-esque kind of way. Robert is creative director at a trendy advertising agency in The City, and that, in addition to his brilliant wit, ridiculously handsome black Irish looks, and ambiguous sexual orientation, has everyone from junior copywriters to VPs in a constant dither to get his attention.

"Okay, I'm back. What are you going to do, lovey?"

"I don't know. I've worked hard for this, and I deserve it! It sucks, it just sucks . . ." Then I ranted a little more.

"Okay, what time is it?" he asked when I was done. I held my tongue on this one because most of Robert's non sequitur remarks end up somewhere good.

"Three forty-five."

"Leave. Leave right now and meet me at work."

"I can't. I have to finish editing this week's bullpen and call some of the freelancers and--"

"No. Drop everything. It is absolutely essential that you leave immediately and take the special O'Hanlon job-fuck treatment."

Treatment?

Which is how I ended up puking in a gutter at three a.m., the Meredith Gazette editor's business card crumpled in the back pocket of my favorite jeans.

DK is one of those revoltingly hip bars where San Francisco's yuppies and fashionistas can, for the price of a few highballs, pretend that Manhattan has nothing on the Left Coast in matters of personal style and price gouging.

When I walked in at exactly 5:35 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, the dim space was mostly empty, with the exception of a couple of precious dyke girls with chin piercings and a tatty-looking guy with a skateboard talking to the bartender.

After guiding my battered VW Fox through seemingly endless traffic on Highway 101, I just had time to throw on my Lucky Brand jeans and a black turtleneck (professional mourning) and run some pomade through my short, curly hair in order to make it to the bar by 5:30. I had successfully talked Robert out of making me meet him at Kleiner Price by reminding him that their mailroom clerk, Andy, had a crush on me. What would it do to the poor boy's universe to see me looking like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Naturally, Robert was late, so I grabbed a barstool and ordered a Sierra Nevada and a couple of shots of Cuervo Gold. I'm really not too much of a drinker, but there is something so cliched about the experience of getting dicked around by upper management while you toil haplessly away in cubeville that it seemed to demand an equally cliched response.

By 6:05, I'd killed the Sierra, three tequila shots, a handful of green olives, and was starting on my second Cape Cod. The bartender, a really nice guy named Zurik--like Switzerland!--was getting cuter by the minute, and the dyke babies in the corner weren't looking too bad either.

Robert finally walked in at 6:15, his overcoat flung over his arm, leather bookbag strapped across his very attractive chest. He threw everything in a heap under the bar and pulled me into his arms. It is at moments like these that the phrase gay husband leaps to mind, a concept that every woman over twenty-one living in an urban milieu should embrace and promulgate with fervor.

Finally, the dear man released me and did that head-nod thing that had Zurik in front of us in two seconds flat.

"What can I get you?"

"I'd have what she's having, but I want to be alive tomorrow," Robert said. "How about a vodka tonic? Stoli, please." Zurik nodded and sidled over to the part of the bar that housed alcohol that didn't taste like it came from Hawkeye's tent.

"How are you?"

"Okay, I guess. I just don't understand how they think I can stay if they don't promote me, which leads me to believe they don't want me to stay."

Robert made affirming noises, and we talked for a while about the feasibility of chucking everything and buying a charming villa with sex-crazed houseboys included in Cabo San Lucas (low), enrolling in a graduate program on a Caribbean island that is conducted entirely in English (slightly better), and ending up homeless and disease-riddled as we troll the sidewalks outside of our former offices (best). We sipped our drinks in silence for a minute.

"Robert O'Hanlon?" I glanced up to see a little gnome of a man in a horrible brown suit place his hand on Robert's shoulder.

"Bernie!" Robert jumped up and hugged the little guy like he was his long-lost dad (which he could have been, given the proclivities of Robert's gin-loving mother).

"It's been--how long?--six, seven years?" Robert pulled out a stool for the gnome.

"More like eight, I think." The gnome took off his brown polyester jacket to reveal a funky stars-'n'-stripes-motif short-sleeved shirt with a bona fide pocket protector.

"What are you doing here? I saw Nate Beckham at a conference about a year ago and he told me you were up in South Dakota or something," Robert said.

"Well, you're looking at the editor-in-chief of the Meredith Gazette. You probably didn't know I was from Montana, did you? We went back a couple of years ago when my mother took ill. Elaine wanted to get out of the city, and the kids were all gone away to college anyway." The gnome had a raspy, cigarette-cured voice. He looked a little like Harvey Keitel, but after a few drinks, who didn't?

"Amazing. I didn't know they let short Jewish guys into the state," Robert said.

The gnome laughed. "Oh, sure. But only if they can prove their parents are first cousins and they know how to shoot a moose at a hundred feet."

I leaned over and pressed my leg against Robert's under the counter. Robert turned to face me. "Oh, sorry. Bernie, this is my friend Jen Brenner. We worked together a couple of jobs ago here in San Francisco. She's an editor for the Tech Standard down on The Peninsula. Jen, this is Bernie Zweben. He was the managing editor at the Manhattan Business Journal when I was a copywriter there. We all worshiped Bernie. The man is an institution. His breakfasts are an institution." At this, Robert and Bernie slammed their glasses down hard enough to lose liquid and had a good laugh.

Robert wiped tears out of his eyes. "The Journal was famous for its blowout dinners with the financial folks. I mean, the guys from Morgan Stanley and the other Wall Street firms would drink like fish, and most of the reporters couldn't keep up the pace. Bernie would insist that we all be at work at the usual time the next day no matter what time we got home. But he'd always have a big eggs-and-sausages breakfast waiting for us when we got there."

"I still do it, you know, but it's caribou and venison instead of pork." When Bernie smiled he looked just like Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs.

At this point, Robert and his new old best friend Bernie Zweben got into this deep conversation about: (1) old times; (2) drunk old times; and (3) drunk old times when you were on deadline. It was all pretty interesting, but I was feeling a little parched, so I called on Zurik again.

"Zurik!" Oops. Too loud. I leaned across Robert's lap. "Sorry, Bernie. I'm just trying to get our old friend bartender Zurik over here." Bernie nodded like he was right there with me. I really liked this guy.

Turned out Bernie was down for a conference of local newspaper editors in Oakland. He was staying with friends in The City, which is how he ended up at DK, which he had mistaken as the local dive bar (don't tell the fashionistas).

"So, Jen, Robert's been telling me you're having some problems at the Tech Standard. I'm looking for city reporters at the Gazette. Any interest?" Bernie asked.

"Are you guys thinking of relocating to, um, somewhere with sushi?" I parried.

"I hear they have sushi in Sun Valley, Idaho. For all the movie stars that are moving in, you know? That's only about seven hours' drive from Meredith." Bernie showed me his fangs.

"But seriously, it's a bitch recruiting talent up there. We've got the kids coming out of college in Bowman and Missoula, and a few escapees from the big city, but by and large it's a mom-and-pop operation. We've got one columnist who has been writing an unsyndicated etiquette column for forty-seven years. Can you imagine? I don't have the heart to let Madeleine go, and, truthfully, her column is pretty popular with the locals."

By now the potent blend of disappointment and alcohol had me ready to say yes to a street-sweeping gig in Tulsa, just so I never had to see Nancy and Carl again.

"Why don't you take my card and call me after you've had a chance to think it over?" Bernie dug a slightly dog-eared business card out of his pocket protector.

Robert chose that moment to leap up and stand between me and the door.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, ducking under his arm.

"Er, incoming. Door. Damon." Robert jerked his head toward the door.

Ah, Damon. Damon Sanchez is my ex. Ex-what, you ask? Answer: Ex-everything. We both grew up in Miami. I guess you could call us college sweethearts, but that would mean negating the many nights we flung bilingual insults at each other and sought refuge from the other's angst in everything from food and booze to blondes and bungee jumping. We moved out to San Francisco together and tore our way through four more years before survival instinct kicked in and we parted ways. Oh, there was also Kristina, whose sleek honey-blond ponytail and sleeker legs had Damon dreaming of a Cuban-Swedish merger even while he traded bonds on the stock-exchange floor where they both worked for Paine Webber.

Don't get me wrong--there were many good times too. Nights when we had just arrived in San Francisco and huddled together under our first down comforter, lulled by the fog and wind and fantastic multiethnic food that felt so foreign to us, weaned on the warm embrace of Miami.

Two years out isn't so long, is it? His smooth olive face and sweet grin could still stop my heart, and on the few occasions I'd seen him in public, my instinct was still to meet his eyes across the room and smile warmly at him. Generally, this feeling faded after a few moments and was replaced by thoughts like, Does Kristina still go to advanced step every day at the YMCA?

When a six-foot-two, black-haired hunk in a Zegna suit leaps wildly in front of his woman friend in a bar full of malnourished boys in capri pants, it's bound to attract attention, and Damon spotted us as quickly. Frantic, I tried to raise my attractiveness quotient by swiping at my mouth with lipstick and tucking my shirt in over what was surely a gross display of plumber's crack.

"Robert." Damon shook his hand firmly. "Good to see you."
 

CHAPTER 2

the world of hurt

To: [email protected], [email protected],[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: friday night

Hi, Friends.

Friday night is ON. If you want something to drink, bring it with you, otherwise expect dinner and dessert and exceptional conversation. Swing by around 7:30 or so. Jen—will you bring that big platter?

thx
els

My otherwise gentle father's best turns of phrase were reserved for the times when Karen, Ben, and I drove our parents over the top with our brattiness: "I'll give you something to cry about" and "You're going to be in a world of hurt" are two I remember quite well, having had them directed at me every couple of days for the better part of the 1970s.

Well, I was finally there, and Dad wasn't even here to see it.

When I woke up on Friday morning, the wreckage of my life poured in like toxic sewage in a Rio shantytown. My turtleneck was still on, but bunched up around my neck. Mouth cottony, eyeballs parched, head pounding rhythmically against the walls of my skull. I felt like those gnarled, blackened mummies you sometimes see in touristy pseudomuseums that everyone says are fake but you just have to wonder.

It had been years since I'd drunk enough to be sick. Like the good Jewish girl that I am, I first checked to make sure my chastity and purse were intact before attempting to achieve vertical stature. Sadly, all was well in the chastity department—jeans still on, buttons cutting into my bloated stomach.

"Ahhh!" I moaned, collapsing back into my IKEA pillow set. Welcome to the World of Hurt! Dad was going to be so pleased— all those years of parental permissiveness were not to go unpunished.

After about an hour, things stabilized somewhat, and I was able to ease myself shakily over to the bathroom. Like La Streisand says, the mirror has two faces—and neither one of mine was fit for public consumption. My dark curls stuck up in matted clumps, and my normally olive skin was pale and blotchy, dark blue-gray eyes moist and red-rimmed.

I trudged over to the phone to call Nancy, praying for voice mail. Taking pity on the hideous among us, Goddess answered my prayers this time when Nancy's recorded nasal tone kicked in. I gave her my regrets and then stumbled back to bed.

The bleeping of the phone pierced through my subterranean coma at six o'clock in the evening. I had slept the entire day! I groaned and slid the earpiece off the nightstand, knocking off a pile of jewelry, receipts, and Claritin tablets.

"Hello?" I croaked.

"Hallo, Jen, is that you? You sound horrible."

My friend Els Janssen is many things good, but diplomatic is not one of them. She likes to say that she gets her big hands, big tits, and no-nonsense conversation from her German mother— and her big hands, big hips, and no-nonsense conversation from her Dutch father. At five eleven, with a head full of springy blond curls, Nordic bone structure, denim blue eyes, and a rack that belongs on a St. Pauli Girl, Els is more often taken for a supermodel than the brusque pharmacology student she is. We met two years ago when I was doing background research for a story on pharmacologists gone bad who operate crystal-meth labs in their dorms. 
"I was out drinking with Robert last night. I'm not feeling well today," I said evenly.

"You're still coming tonight, right? I need to borrow that large platter for the hors d'oeuvres." Els pronounced hors d'oeuvres in that charming European way that implied—correctly, in this case—that she was equally at home speaking French, Italian, or Cantonese.

"What time is it? Oh, God, it's after six. I just need to jump in the shower and throw on some clothes. I'll be over in forty-five minutes."

"Ja, okay. See you later."

"Bye."

"Bye."

I hung up and surveyed the clothes situation. I had two choices: dress like I felt, which would be somewhere between sinner monk in hair shirt and crack ho, or dress for bravado, which would require a little more strategic planning.

One of the worst things about being single in a town full of couples is that you are made to feel like you're not really trying if you are not constantly ready to meet The One. Being ready, as far as I can tell from my many conversations with the gainfully attached, means maintaining a repository of scintillating conversational gambits ("Can you pass the cocktail napkins?"), maintaining that delicate aesthetic look I like to call executiveaerobi- gamine-whore ("Love those capri pants with that jacket and G-string"), and wearing lipstick at all times ("You know, my husband always says it was my Viva Glam that drew him to me during that five A.M. swim class at the Y"). You are also not permitted to skip parties where straight quasi-functional male hominids might be in attendance, throw away the Learning Exchange catalog, or go to more than three women-only affairs per year (you try to find a woman over thirty at Lilith Fair). The rules get even tougher after the big four-oh. I once heard of an attractive fortyish woman whose mother hit her in the face with an iron (yes, it was on) when the daughter refused to go on an arranged date with her first cousin. I looked for that one on the urban legends Web site but—horrors!—couldn't verify its falsity.

Rummaging through The Pile was too painful to contemplate, so I honed in on the part of the closet that housed things that were too small, too 80s, or clean. I settled on a pair of clingy black bootleg pants, a charcoal form-fitting three-quarter-sleeve button-down, and my best platform mules. The perfect outfit— slip on a white collar and I could go from tart to nun in a heartbeat.

After a blissfully hot shower, I rubbed on some face lotion and glittery eyeshadow, applied a little cherry Blistex, and squirted myself all over with vanilla aromatherapy oil to neutralize the alcoholic fumes I feared were still emanating from my pores.

I grabbed the platter for Els, a bottle of red that someone had left on my table at the last party, and my short black trench coat and headed out.

Els lives in a nondescript cinder-block building near the university, in a foggy, predominantly Asian part of San Francisco called the Sunset. When I arrived, she buzzed me up to the second-floor, three-bedroom apartment she shares with two other students. Richard, a sweet guy with a pompadour from New Jersey, is premed and is never home. Evangeline, a massagetherapist- cum-psychologist, once told me that her clients tell her all their problems anyway; she might as well get paid a hundred dollars more an hour to listen to their shit.

"Hi, Jen," Els yelled from the kitchen in her lilting English.

When Els says my name, it sounds more like Yen than Jen.

I dumped my coat and purse on Els's bed and followed her voice to the kitchen, which looked like a cross between Bosnia and Beirut. Cocoa powder dusted the Formica countertops, and mysterious brews bubbled angrily on the stovetop. A pile of spinach lettuce littered the floor near the fridge, and Els was up to her elbows in a giant lump of dough.

She looked up at me sadly. "I can make a multicompound analgesic, but I can't cook. Look at this pizza dough! Is it supposed to be this gummy? And my chocolate mousse didn't gel at all."

"Don't worry. When you get married, it won't be for your cooking skills," I said. "Here, let me do that. We can have Robert run down to the corner store and get some Ben & Jerry's."

I took the lump of dough from her, washed my hands, and got to work kneading while she resumed her attempts to toss a spinach and feta salad with roasted pine nuts and a tamari– balsamic vinaigrette without feeding the entire mess to the linoleum.

It was then that I noticed a suspicious glint in Els's bright blue eyes. My own gray-blue eyes narrowed.

"So, who's coming tonight?"

"Well, let's see. Robert and George, of course. Teryl and Eric. Katie. Pieter and Anna—do you remember them from the German-American club? Oh, and a first-year student in my program. Colin's his name. I'm his mentor. We met last week at orientation." Els tossed the salad furiously, her lean, tanned arms going in what seemed like every direction at once.

"Hmm. Colin. Now, why haven't I heard of Colin before?"

"He's a great guy. Too short for me, and of course I have Rainer, but really smart, you know? And he's only been in San Francisco a month. I think he said he was from Kansas City. Or maybe it was Oklahoma City. One of those middle places. He really doesn't know anybody yet," she said with satisfaction. Els finished abusing the salad and set it on the dining-room table.

"Ha!" I snorted. "A setup. I knew it! Let me guess, you're seating him between me and Katie."

Katie met Els in Holland while she was attending an exchange program at the university in Leiden. Katie was first-generation Vietnamese-American from Newport Beach, California, and her persona was distinctly New World. The first thing I noticed about her when we met two years ago was that she played down her natural beauty by knotting her waist-length, glossy hair in Bjork-inspired buns and wearing industrial-plastic granny glasses and striped polyester track suits over her slender figure. The second was that she had a mouth that would make a sailor blush. Next to Els and, of course, Robert, Katie is my closest friend in San Francisco, and the three of us women try to spend at least two or three nights together a week.

"Look, he's a nice guy, and why shouldn't you all meet?" Els reprimanded. "Besides, don't be so selfish. The guy doesn't know a soul here, and I think he's lonely."

Great. Now I'm supposed to baby-sit some Midwestern schmo who doesn't know enough to get his rocks off in a town teeming with brilliant, beautiful, sexually deprived straight women.

"Okay, just don't expect anything from me. I had a serious trauma at work this week. And I've given up on men for the time being."

I filled Els in on the trials of life at the Tech Standard and last night's Damon sighting. She made all the proper noises and puffed air through her full lips derisively, which, I have discovered, is the Dutch sign of sisterly compassion.

Els herself maintains a long-distance relationship with a mysterious Austrian artist named Rainer, whom none of her American friends has met and whose tortured appeal is only magnified by the few grainy black-and-white photos we have seen of him lounging in industrial cafés in Europe. Sometimes he writes longhand letters to Els describing his latest attempts to capture Teutonic angst with his installations made of garbage culled from the streets of Berlin. Having been to Germany on one uninspiring occasion and seen her preternaturally clean avenues, I wondered if the garbage shortage wasn't Rainer's real problem, not inability to commit. But I keep my mouth shut on that one.

Robert and George arrived first. Robert looked luscious in a slate gray shirt and shiny slacks that set off his light eyes. George, Robert's longtime boyfriend, was equally dashing in preppy, assistant-to-the-mayor khakis, his cyclist's body shown off to full advantage.

After everyone hugged and kissed, we opened the bottle of merlot they brought (which made mine taste like pond water) and sat in the living room nibbling crackers and Camembert while the others arrived.

Katie, Pieter, and Anna arrived en masse. Anna was one of those German women who are drawn to San Francisco's women's scene like their fathers are drawn to bratwurst; it was probably love at first sight. Her soft, light-brown hair was buzzed military short, and her creamy, pink-cheeked complexion and feminist fervor gave her face a youthful glow that must have made her a hit at her Berkeley women's studies groups. She had on Birkenstocks, a hand-dyed lavender cotton shirt, and olive green drawstring pants, with a crystal earring in her left ear. Pieter remained an enigma—I'd met him only once—but he seemed tolerant of his wife's escapades. With his classically Germanic looks, he appeared as if he had just jumped off Das Boot, replete with snub nose, straight flaxen hair, and the physique of a Gstaad ski instructor gone slightly to seed.

Katie tossed back her shining hair—Els must have told her there was an available male hominid invited tonight—and unbuttoned her red plastic Barbie coat. She had on matching red platform boots and a sexy 50s pinafore and looked like she was going to serve us root beer floats.

We hugged. She drew back and looked at me.

"Hey, Brenner. I heard you got really shit-faced last night," she said.

"How did you hear that?" On countless occasions, I am reminded that Katie's intelligence-gathering network is vast and unparalleled, rivaled only by that of the Mossad.

"I saw Zurik at the artists' collective on Valencia today."

Major oversight! I knew he'd looked familiar. I tried to place him as one of Katie's wanna-be paramours, ex-paramours, or gay husbands. Before she could fill me in, the doorbell pinged and Els called to me from the kitchen to get it.

I opened the door to an attractive, normal-looking guy who was in an obvious state of agitation. He had a bunch of semiwilted Gerber daisies in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. He crammed everything under his left arm and shook my hand with his right. I noticed he had a heavy gold ring on—dear God, not a frat boy—and that his handshake was firm and only slightly sweaty.

"Hi, I'm Colin. I'm in Els's program."

"I'm Jen Brenner, Els's friend. Come on in. Those flowers are beautiful. Can I take something from you?"

Colin managed to juggle things around and hand me the wine bottle, retaining his knight-in-shining-armor image by keeping the daisies for himself. He had warm brown eyes, lovely coffee-colored skin, short springy dreadlocks, and an undefined air of gallantry that pegged him as Midwestern even before he opened his mouth.

I deposited him in the kitchen with Els and started transferring bowls of gourmet pizza fixings to the sideboard table. Teryl and Eric, whom I didn't know, arrived next, and we all trooped into the dining room to start assembling our personal pizzas.

I found myself sprinkling smoked trout and capers on my circle of dough next to Colin.

"So, how did you decide to move to San Francisco?" I asked him.

"Well, it's kind of a long story." He had a funny up-and-down sort of accent, like the people in the Coen brothers movie Fargo.

"My, uh, mom raised me and my twin brother by herself in Minneapolis. I knew all my relatives on my mother's side. But my dad left us when I was just a kid, and I think he's living somewhere out here. He's a jazz musician. I think he might be living in Oakland or something." Colin gamely picked at the marinated tofu.

Aargh! Why does it seem like I only meet guys who are: (a) on some sort of depressing personal quest driven by their inner child; (b) foreign; (c) foreign and crazy; or (d) foreign, crazy, and on a personal quest driven by their inner child?

Colin stared at me with his large brown cow's eyes, and I now saw that what I had mistaken for the gleam of a male's interest in a female hominid was really the crazed gleam of a neglected boy of color who had been raised by lutefisk-eating gringos and abandoned by his Huey Newton–worshiping African-American father for the siren call of music and loose women in smoky nightclubs.

Feeling suddenly faint, I excused myself, pleading dehydration, and stumbled out of the kitchen and down the hall into Els's bedroom. I pushed the pile of coats and purses aside, kicked off my mules, and burrowed under Els's extra-thick down comforter, inhaling eau de fig or whatever mysterious concoction Rainer had sent her. Why does the pursuit of love have to be so undignified? How did things go so horribly wrong with Damon, the love of my life? Why am I such a freak magnet?

Eventually, the door cracked and Els poked her springy head through the opening. I could hear Katie's big braying laugh from the other room, and Buena Vista Social Club trickled in. When Els saw me quivering under the blankets, she closed the door and came over to the bed.

"Hey, are you all right? What's going on?" She stroked my head, which felt nice, so I whimpered a little and pressed against her long jeans-clad leg.

"I hate parties, I'm never going to meet anyone, and I'm going to be fired for incompetence and drunkenness," I said. "And I think there's a law somewhere that Jewish parents can disinherit their children if they don't provide them with grandchildren by the time they're thirty-five."

Els shushed me and squeezed my shoulder. "Now you're being silly. You're thirty, and a young thirty at that. You're gorgeous, you're bright, and your parents would love you even if you told them you were running away to join the lesbian circus. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up and join the party. Everyone's asking where you went. Colin thought he had done something to offend you."

"Did you know that Colin's black father abandoned him and his twin brother, so he grew up in poverty in Minnesota and now he's out here looking for him, probably to make him pay back child support or stalk him or something? I bet you didn't," I said triumphantly. "I bet he isn't even in the program. I bet he's faking it to get cheap housing."

Els looked at me strangely.

"First of all, Colin's father isn't African-American, he's a white music professor who Colin thinks is teaching at Berkeley. And his parents' divorce, from what he was just telling me, was amicable. The family just drifted over the years. And his mother's family are rich southern transplants who own a chain of hardware stores and didn't like their daughter marrying a poor white guy from New York, which doubtless contributed to the distance. He grew up with maids and nannies and trips to Europe in summer, so I don't know what you're talking about."

Shamed by my lack of political correctness and plain old bitchiness, I tried to dig back under the coats, but Els dragged me out of bed and down the hall while I protested feebly.

The party was in full swing. The now harmless-looking Colin was sharing a pesto pizza with Katie, who was laughing at all his jokes and swinging her long fall of hair around. Depressed, I plunked myself down next to Robert and George and swiped a slice of artichoke-olive with marinara. I could eat what I wanted—foreigners liked plump women, and men in search of their inner child were too preoccupied to notice whether I was a size 8, 10, or 22.

I decided to try out the Montana concept on them.

"So, if I moved up to Montana to take that job at Bernie's paper, would you guys visit me?"

George put down his beer and grinned. "Does a bear shit in the woods?"

I punched him. "Seriously. This is a major life decision here."

"I think the best decisions in life are calculated risks," Robert said, looking at George. "I believe in the old chestnut about never knowing if you don't try."

His voice was warm and loving as he met his lover's eyes, and I felt suddenly embarrassed, as if they were talking about something totally different and I was merely a fly on the wall.

Then Pieter was there, asking George about the mayor's decision to extend the subway system to the airport. And Katie and Colin came over to see if we wanted some pesto-olive-caper slices. And then, as conversations will do, that one turned to other things.

CHAPTER 3

The decision

To: Loehmann's insiders

From: Loehmann's

Subject: Summer Sale

You are receiving this newsletter because you have selected this option. If you want to unsubscribe, <click here>. If you want to update your newsletter selections, <click here>.

Dear Jen Brenner,

The Summer Sale is in full swing at Loehmann's! Get up to 50% off on designer suits, slacks, swimsuits, and more in the bargain basement. Plus, get in shape for summer with our new fitness department.

Yours fashionably,

Loehmann's Sales Team

The next few weeks passed in a holding pattern. I struggled with how to act around Nancy and Carl, who, presumably, weren't aware that their betrayal had been discovered. In the meantime, I hung out with Robert and George, went to the movies with Els, and spent one wrenching nuclear-familial afternoon with Jem and her husband, Micah, watching their adorable baby, Milo, systematically destroy their living room and wondering about my own dwindling procreative prospects.

As always, Jem's view of my situation was illuminating.

"Why don't you just take that job in Montana with that friend of Robert's?"

We were sitting in the sunroom of her Noe Valley Craftsmanstyle home. Organic vegetables, crayons, and New Yorkers were scattered across the pine table, and for once it was quiet except for the wind chimes tinkling on the sunny backyard deck. Milo's nanny had put him down for his nap, and we were alone with Jem's old red Lab, Bonnie, who sat snugly on my right foot.

"Montana? Jem, are you kidding? I live here, I have a life here. I can't just go off half-cocked to the boondocks for the first half-baked offer I get." I stroked Bonnie's auburn back.

Jem put her latte down and looked at me. Her thick, honeycolored hair was pulled into a messy bun and skewered with a chopstick, and her kind eyes had the kind of crinkly, soft lines around them that only made them look bluer.

"How do you think I ended up in San Francisco, Jennifer? Do you think the Abbotts and the Pierces grow up thinking of the West Coast as a civilized place with cities and culture and decent marital prospects? Hell, no," she snorted. "I know it may seem like nothing to you, but when I decided to come out here alone after grad school, my family took it as a slap in the face. To leave without succeeding on their terms . . . well, it's a kind of failure, and one I wouldn't have risked if I hadn't been in the deepest, most dangerous rut of my life back in Boston. Sure, I could have stayed and married somebody suitable, had kids right away, given up all my ambitions as a writer. You think arranged marriage is a Third World concept, try hanging out with some of these Social Register families for a while. I'll tell you, my leaving may have seemed like a lark to others, but to me it was the first spontaneous, unpremeditated act of my life. If I hadn't left, I never would have met Micah, had Milo, or even had the courage to get a job from someone who wasn't a friend of my family's.

"I'm not saying Montana is the panacea for everything you feel is wrong with your life, but you need to look at what is really keeping you here. You came out because of Damon, and I wonder if you're still here because of him. If I were your age, I'd definitely consider it. You're like me. We like everything scripted and deliberate and guaranteed. And that's fine, but it would be a shame for you to miss out on some really interesting opportunities just because you still hold out hope that Damon—who has his own baggage, mind you—will realize what he gave up and come back to you."

I doodled periwinkle happy faces on the corner of The New York Times crossword. I knew she was right. I had rationalized my solitude over the past two years as a kind of break between relationships —or at least a break from Damon—and a day didn't go by that I didn't bemoan my lack of a partner to experience life with. It was interfering with . . . oh, just living, and I knew it.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to send him my résumé," I said slowly.

Jem gave me her serene, patrician smile.

"I've always wanted to see Glacier National Park." My voice quickened. "I could sublet my apartment, maybe even take a leave of absence from the Tech Standard. It's not like it has to be a permanent thing—more like a vacation, really. A chance to do some beat reporting, see the country, get away from here for a while. If I don't like it, I can come home anytime."

Now I was getting excited. I could reinvent myself in the great outdoors, the Wild West, home of the free and survivalistic. A vision of me slinging a battered four-wheel-drive truck into a snowy parking lot crystallized. I would live in a cabin à la the Unabomber and order all my clothes from L.L. Bean. I would get to know people who gutted fish, shot moose, and maintained stern silences when confronted with the sissified behavior of city folk. I would eat steak for breakfast. I would be automagically skinny, a fortunate side effect of extreme cold and daily tussles with bears. If I didn't rope steer and barrel-race horses myself, I would at least drink beer with those who did.

I was going to Montana.> 

Excerpted from IS THAT A MOOSE IN YOUR POCKET?: A Novel of Dating, Mating, and Other Animal Instincts © Copyright 2003 by Kim Green. Reprinted with permission by Delta, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

Is That a Moose in Your Pocket?
by by Kim Green

  • Genres: Fiction
  • paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Delta
  • ISBN-10: 0385337175
  • ISBN-13: 9780385337175