I'll Be Your Everything Read online

  At the time, MultiCorp was allegedly having “explosive growth” in its workforce. A lot of people had quit MultiCorp when many clients’ advertising revenues fell 10 percent the year before. That’s where the explosive growth was coming from. They were expecting “natural account growth,” which at that time was as slow as watching moss form on a tree. They needed someone like me to be the right-hand gofer and general masochistic suck-up, as it turned out, to the most underhanded advertising account executive in the company.

  They “matched me up” with Corrine, who had a reputation for putting her assistants into therapy, and that first day was rough. I couldn’t do anything right. I answered the phone wrong. I dropped some of her calls. I directed some of her calls to the wrong people. I even brought her the wrong food order. I fought with Microsoft Excel all afternoon. However, I stayed not one but fifty steps ahead of Corrine the next day and for the rest of that week, kept her on track and in her “space” for more than a few hours at a time (she likes to takes long lunches), and was hired full-time only two weeks later.

  I should have been more suspicious when they hired me so quickly. Piper, the personnel director, asked me “Are you sure?” at least a dozen times.

  I should have gotten the hint.

  My mama and daddy were not pleased, but they have never really ever understood me. I was their only child, their “baby,” their “blessing from heaven.” I believed that they wanted to keep me around for as long as they could so that they could continue to stunt my growth and I could keep paying on the house note. They tried to tag-team me by stressing “home” and “not your home,” as in “this is your home” and “that is not your home.” They loved Salem, where they had lived their entire lives. I don’t fault them for that, but their minds were so closed because of it. I got tired of the same thing day after day, year after year: Olde Salem Days, Salem High School football, and dusty softball tournaments at the Moyer Sports Complex. I didn’t want any of that. When I told them I had a full-time job with benefits in the greatest city in the world and an apartment of my very own in Brooklyn, they begged me to come home immediately. “You belong here, Shari,” Mama said. “All your friends are here,” Daddy said. “You know that sinful city will chew you up and spit you out,” Mama said. “Don’t you love us anymore?” Daddy asked. “Girl, I didn’t raise you to live in no Brooklyn!” Mama shouted.

  And yet Brooklyn suits me just fine.

  Mama stopped calling me to come home three years ago.

  Daddy hasn’t called since last Christmas.

  I was always a daddy’s girl.

  Do I miss them? Sure. Am I afraid to visit them? No. I just don’t want all the drama they will throw at me. Do I appreciate them? Oh yes. They made me what I am today: strong, self-sufficient, determined, and spiritual. One day I hope they’ll understand why I had to leave, but until then, I’m staying. The benefits far outweigh the costs.

  And the benefits MultiCorp gives me are outstanding. I get medical benefits I rarely use since I’m so healthy. All that walking, you know. I use my dental benefits religiously to keep my pearly whites pearly. My vision benefits cover my glasses every two years. I don’t wear granny glasses, though. Mine are kind of like librarian’s reading glasses, and they’re the same shade of brown as the color of my skin. MultiCorp even gives me life insurance (my beneficiaries are my parents), LTD (“Long-Term Disability,” which I will earn after a few more years of this “Long-Term Depression”), three weeks of vacation or personal days (which I am accumulating instead of using), a matching 401k plan (which means I can never ever retire), and an IBP—an Itty Bitty Paycheck.

  When Corrine isn’t here, I usually float among the other account execs, but their assistants don’t like me hanging around them at all. They think I’m trying to steal their bosses. I would never do that. Though I know that Corrine is the devil’s stepsister, I would never leave her for another executive. Better the devil’s stepsister you know, right? I’ve also heard rumors that the other administrative assistants don’t want me to rub off on them. All of them have their MBAs already, and none of them want to be me after they work here for five years. Whatever.

  So, what do I do all day when Corrine is here? First of all, I own Corrine’s calendar. She can’t fart, tinkle, or burp if it’s not on the calendar. MS Outlook and I are one. I have trained Corrine to obey MS Outlook. Until lunchtime. I can’t control her then because her stomach has a mind of its own. I also own Corrine’s travel schedule. She travels nowhere without me, except that she, um, travels everywhere without me. What I mean to say is that Corrine could go nowhere without my expert planning and itineraries that are accurate to within five minutes. I order her plane tickets (“first-class window seats only, Shari dear”) and book “four-star or better or else” hotels, but I don’t have to set up rental cars anymore because she expects car services or limousines to drive her everywhere. I also do her expense reports, and I have to be more and more creative every time I do them. Corrine has never seen a spreadsheet or a purchase order, nor does she know what they are for. She buys things or spends the company’s money in shady ways, I creatively write the POs and the spreadsheets, Ted in accounting rubber-stamps them with a wink, and the MultiCorp universe continues to spin wildly into debt, I mean, into space.

  I read all her e-mails and answer most of them as quickly as she does. She types the letter K in reply to nearly all of them. That’s it. Just K. And she’s a Harvard graduate. I’m not allowed to read the e-mails from Tom “Terrific,” her LTD (long, tall Dexter), who has yet to commit to her, and who happens to be (shock and awe!) white. And in the twenty-first century, no less. Corrine acts as if this is an earth-shattering thing. It isn’t, especially in New York City. It wasn’t even that earth-shattering in Virginia since Bryan is also white, though he sometimes tries to act black—and my daddy probably still doesn’t like either version of Bryan. I know I didn’t mention Bryan’s color before. It’s no big deal. I’ve been knowing Bryan since we were in middle school, and like I said, he’s more of a friend than anything else.

  But what irks me most about Corrine and Tom is what she once told me: “If I want to make it to the next level in my career, I have to have a white man on my arm. You need a white man on your arm, too, Shari.”

  She actually said that to me out loud and in complete sincerity. I didn’t want to remind her that she worked for Mr. Dunn, a black Hispanic who started the company from scratch, nor did I share with her that my “one and only male friend”—wow, that is so depressing—is also white. I don’t tell Corrine my business because, as the phrase “my business” implies, my business is my business.

  Nevertheless, I do happy dances for Tom all the time, even though I’ve never met the man and there are, eerily, no pictures of Tom in Corrine’s “space.” You’d think she’d have at least one picture of him somewhere after five years of dating. Maybe she’s afraid of what folks at MultiCorp might think, I don’t know. But no pictures after five years of dating? That’s odd. I hope Tom never loses his mind and commits what has to be an unforgivable sin by marrying Corrine-cula. Unless, of course, he can tame her in some way... .

  Nah. That only happens in the movies or in really old English plays.

  Not everything I do is as glamorous as keeping Corrine’s schedule. I also do freakishly long, dull, and boring spreadsheets. Excel and I do not get along. Too many columns. Too many straight lines. Too many freaking formulas, and I always forget to type the stupid equals sign at the top. I also get to deal with our current clients when Corrine would rather go out to eat or leave early for the day. Most of our clients are understanding and easy to pacify, but some days they light up my phones all day asking questions about future changes and tweaks that I don’t have the answers for. I’m worried that some of our clients will eventually take their business to another agency, and I just know that Corrine will blame me. I’m the dog she kicks.

  I also have to clean up her presentations so they sound intel
ligent, elegant, and feasible. Most of what she gives me is insane, cheesy, and impossible. Each time she gives me her version of a PowerPoint, I want to nod, make my little O, and let her go make a fool of herself in the conference room. She’d get laughed out of there for sure, because I am the PowerPoint Queen, and as long as she has had my script and graphics, she hasn’t gone wrong.

  But only if they don’t ask her any questions about her (our) proposals and pitches. She’s pretty evasive during Q&A and often calls me for help. One time she even texted me right from the meeting while she was being grilled by the client. I don’t know why they don’t let me sit behind her during those meetings. She’ll sit on my knee, and I’ll be her ventriloquist. That’s what it all amounts to anyway.

  In between photocopying, faxing, mailing, filing, getting her Toffee Nut Lattes, and, well, generally doing her job, I handle all incoming telephone calls. I’m supposed to screen out the unwanted and the desperate, and I usually do a pretty good job without ticking them off. “Hold all calls,” Corrine sometimes says, “but put Philip Golden Fat Cow of Make Me Rich So I Can Afford Thousand-Dollar Shoes through right away”—and I do, eyes rolling. “Only the upty-ups,” she tells me on other days, and only the higher (and I mean that word in all its negative definitions) MultiCorp executives get through to her. “Only Tom Terrific,” she says, and, well, I sometimes whisper to him a long time before putting him through to her.

  Tom and I have been talking to each other for five years, and I consider him to be a good friend. Tom has a very sexy voice and is so easy to talk to. He’s kind of rough, not too refined, and I imagine he wears hiking boots while he travels. Tom travels a lot because he works for Harrison Hersey and Boulder, “the agency God Himself would use if the Almighty ever needed a bigger market share,” Corrine once told me. Harrison Hersey and Boulder has offices in many of the places I’ve always wanted to visit: London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, and Paris.

  Just last Monday Tom called the second I sat down at nine, and I never put him through to Corrine because he never asked to speak to her. She wasn’t in the office, of course, but I might have whispered to him for a while anyway.

  “Hi, Shari,” he said.

  “Hi, Tom. Where are you today?”

  “Tokyo. It is an amazing city, Shari, especially when it’s all lit up like it is now. It’s a little too crowded for my tastes, but I bet you’d love it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d love it because I’d be almost as tall as everyone else for a change. What account are you working on?”

  “Panasonic. They have some fancy new digital zoom cameras. Very cutting edge stuff.”

  “Expensive?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I’d wait a few years for the price to drop if I were you. I could recommend a few cheaper brands that do much the same thing if you like. How’s your weather?”

  “Cloudy, crappy, and raw with a one hundred percent chance of gray,” I said. “What time is it over there now?”

  “Seven p.m. Just settling in for the night.”

  “So early?” Tom rarely stays out later than ten no matter where he is.

  “I’m bushed. They work thirty-hour days over here.”

  “You work too hard, Tom.” He does. He’s rarely in New York.

  “Hey, it’s a living. Did you read any good books over the weekend?”

  I laughed. “Is that all you think I do on my weekends, Tom?” It kind of, um, is.

  “You read more than anyone I know, Shari. And your recommendations have always been accurate. You have another recommendation for me? I just finished The Girl Who Played with Fire, and I need another good read.”

  I recommended Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness, a wonderful collection of short stories.

  “You can never have too much happiness,” he said.

  “As long as they don’t start taxing it,” I said. “When are you coming home?”

  “Shari, I wish I could just stay home for a change,” he said.

  “But you love to travel.”

  “Yeah, but my next stop is Detroit, and that won’t be any fun ...”

  I have no idea what Tom sees in Corrine, but like the rest of us, he has to see a lot of her whenever he does see her. She’s just out there, as in busting out there. She never leaves her Upper West Side penthouse without a plunging neckline that shows off all her stretch marks, I mean, cleavage. She sometimes wears so-called custom-made skirts that I think belong to a woman swiveling down a pole. Corrine definitely has the legs for it. She wears so-called designer spiked heels that I think also belong to women swiveling down poles. She has long relaxed hair that, well, glistens so much I wish I could wear sunglasses. Think Black Beauty (the horse) at noon on a cloudless day a few feet from the sun. I didn’t know black hair could blind someone, but it does. I sometimes have little spots floating in front of my eyes after one of our “storm sessions,” as she calls them. “Tom just loves my hair this way,” she says.

  Tom must squint a lot. I’ll bet Tom, who’s thirty-four, looks older than he really is. Corrine can age a person a lot in just one day, and all she has to do is, well, do her hair.

  Now here’s the ultimate question: Why am I still here at MultiCorp if I loathe this job and my boss so much? It pays the bills. Period. I know, I don’t have a whole lot of fulfillment here, but it does keep me under a roof, in clothes, and fairly well fed. If I get to the end of my month with enough money to splurge on a dozen glazed at Dunkin’ Donuts, I am fulfilled.

  I also stick around because I’m good at what I do. Yeah, it’s infuriating to see someone else getting credit for my intelligent ideas, but at least my words are out there. I also have power, and I sometimes even let Corrine think that she has it. I get to walk eight miles a day in all sorts of weather, I get to take initiative daily and even hourly, and I get to keep trade secrets. I get to be creative. Remember “Buy this, by George”? That was me. Yeah, I let that one slip, too. Corrine sold the idea to Kmart. It’s still cool to see that phrase out there harassing Kmart shoppers this holiday season.

  Corrine is the most fickle boss I’ve ever had. She says she likes my “strong work ethic” (at least one of us works) and my “positive and productive attitude” (at least one of us is productive), but she usually finds something petty to put in my “Yipe,” my YPE or Yearly Performance Evaluation. “Shari needs to brush up on her Spanish,” she wrote four years ago. Corrine has never had a Spanish client and pronounces the J in frijoles. “Shari might advance with proper, intensive training,” she wrote three years ago. The woman has barely trained me.

  I take classes to help me with advertising and business lingo and practices, but I still use a commonsense approach to any product thrown our, I mean, her way. I simply ask myself, “Why would I ever buy this?” My mama used to say that to me whenever we’d shop. It works. The more you think that question, the less likely you’re going to buy anything. In other words, I think for a while about any product we’re trying to sell, and then I come up with possibilities. Corrine? She just spews the first thing that comes into her pointy, horse’s hair head and expects this single thought to be the junk.

  The dig she gave me last year on my YPE—“Shari must learn to dress more professionally”—is kind of true. I schlep around in my clothes. I’ve learned a lot of Brooklyn-ese in the last five years, and I certainly schlep around fashionably unfashionable every day. I have a decent body, somewhat ample cleavage for my size, and a definitely toned booty, but I like to hide it. I wear boots. Waterproof. Warm. Sensible. Rugged. Able to leap long puddles and potholes—or walk right into and out of them if I have to. I live in jeans, preferably faded and frayed, no designs, a little baggy, held up by braided rope or twisted leather belts. Flannel shirts and earth tone, oversized fisherman’s sweaters hide me in warmth in the fall and winter, garishly bright and loose tank tops keep me cool in the spring and summer. I wear my waterproof North Face Windbreaker and long johns under my jeans on really cold days. I like wearing mul
ticolored knit or wool caps and hats that match nothing I’m wearing. I even have multicolored mittens with little finger holes. I call my fashion style “Y’all Don’t Pay Me Enough to Dress Professionally” chic.

  And my whole ensemble doesn’t cost as much as one pair of Corrine’s shoes.

  My phone lights up, and my caller ID tells me it’s Ted from accounting, and he’s one minute late. Ted is slipping. “Corrine Ross’s office,” I say. It is just so stupid to say “office” when there is no office! “This is Shari Nance. Hi, Ted.”

  “Shari, uh, is Corrine in yet?” Ted asks.

  I look at Corrine’s creepy space. She uses this huge, clear piece of Plexiglas to cover her mahogany desk while my standard-issue wood-grain and metal desk overflows with files. Most sane people put pictures or mementos under their Plexiglas. Corrine places nothing. The Plexiglas magnifies the wood nicely, though. Other than a port for her laptop, there’s only a green banker’s lamp and a phone on her desk—and not a single fingerprint.

  It’s nauseating.

  “No, Ted, Corrine isn’t here yet.” I wave at Ted, who sits in his “office” forty feet away and with a direct view of Corrine’s desk. “What’s up, Ted?”

  “Have you seen Miss Ross’s expense account from last month?” he asks.

  I wrote the stupid thing, Ted. “Yes.”

  “What does ‘various and sundry client incentives’ mean again?”

  I made up that frivolous phrase five years ago, and now all the administrative assistants are using it. “Alcohol, Ted. Booze. Cigars. Gifts. Anything that makes it easier to sell the client.”

  “Oh right, right.”

  But Ted already knows that. Ted just likes to flirt with me. He could just take a few seconds to walk to my desk and say, “Hi,” but Ted’s super shy, and I know he doesn’t like to talk to or even spend time with anyone face-to-face. Five years ago he asked me out to see City Lights, an old Charlie Chaplin silent film. What a date that would have been. Silent Ted, silent movie, silent me. I turned him down gently, but he still calls me every morning. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. It kind of jump-starts my day, you know? I even rented City Lights once, and I cried at the end—not because I didn’t go out on a date with Ted. That was such a romantic movie! The little blind flower girl regained her sight, and a grown man didn’t speak for almost two hours!