Slightly Settled by Wendy Markham Read Free Book Online Page A

picture with us!”
    “How about if I take it?” he offers, setting down his bottled Molson Ice and taking the camera from Latisha. She gets into the picture with me and Brenda and we all pose with our arms around each other, flashing big, cheesy smiles.
    God only knows where Yvonne is. Last I knew, she was heading outside for a smoke. I decide I’ll join her just as soon as I’ve had a courteous—and hopefully sober-sounding—conversation with my boss.
    “Hey, Mike, great tie,” I say, admiring the green silk background imprinted with teeny-tiny Santa Claus faces.
    “You like it? Thanks.”
    I do like it. Somehow, what’s grotesque overkill on Merry seems pleasantly festive on anybody else.
    “Ooh, anybody want to Slide?” Brenda squeals as a familiar refrain of “boogie woogie woogies” erupts from the DJ booth.
    Mike and I pass. I’d do it, but I’m afraid my boobs would pop out of my dress every time I did the leaning-over step. Pleased with my foresight, I stand sedately with my boss and watch Brenda and Latisha join the line dance.
    “Dianne said if she ever saw me doing the Electric Slide, she’d break up with me,” Mike confides.
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope.”
    “Well, then, she’s kidding.”
    “She’s not,” he says. “She thinks it’s a ridiculous dance.”
    I glance at the ranks of office workers gliding four steps back, four steps forward in perfect sync—except for Merry, who keeps going the wrong way and crashing into people.
    Okay, it might be a ridiculous dance, but it’s fun. Suddenly I feel sorry for Mike, banned from the Slide and God only knows what else.
    “You know, Dianne’s not here,” I point out. “You should try the Slide.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Sure you can. She’d never find out.”
    He looks around the room nervously, even skyward, as though expecting to spot Dianne in a trenchcoat and dark glasses astride one of the fake shooting stars.
    I find myself thinking of Alec the married account exec, flirting madly with Mercedes. And even Brenda, wearing therock that consumed a few months’ worth of Paulie’s NYPD salary, yet blatantly checking out other guys. And Buckley, dragging his heels about moving in with Sonja.
    Of course, in the back of my mind there’s always Will, who cheated on me with Esme Spencer, who played Dot to his George in a summer-stock production of Sunday in the Park with George.
    Maybe it’s good that I’m single. Maybe I don’t want to meet someone after all. At least, not for a while.
    I look at Mike, who’s wistfully watching the dance floor.
    “So, are you allowed to Macarena?” I can’t resist asking, expecting a big laugh and maybe even applause.
    He fails to see the hilarity. In fact, he takes the question seriously and actually looks uncertain. “She never mentioned that, but…”
    You know, maybe it’s the martinis again, but I’m starting to really dislike that Dianne. She seems so sweet on the phone, but as a girlfriend, she’s a little Nazi-ish, don’t you think?
    “I need a cigarette,” I announce to Mike. “And you need a new beer. That one’s empty.”
    “Okay,” he says obediently, and once again I’m saddened. Poor, poor Mike. He may be the boss in the office, but clearly his power stops there.
    I head for the door and gratefully indulge my craving for menthol out on the litter-strewn sidewalk with a bunch of other banished addicts.
    We smokers are an eclectic bunch. There are stressed-out upper-management types and administrative assistants who wear sneakers with their stockings on weekday subway commutes; fresh-out-of-Ivy-League assistant media buyers andwell-past-retirement-age grandmotherly career secretaries who seem reassuringly immune to lung cancer.
    We puff away and talk about the good old days when you could actually smoke in a bar in New York. One old-timer (not Yvonne, but she might as well be, given the overall blowsy broad persona, complete with raspy voice and borough accent) waxes