Pencil Him In

“I’m sure it will.” Camilla was still smiling and Anna snarled as she shoved her tailored suits, all black and expensive, into her very large briefcase. “But you’ll be seeing me,” Camilla said.

“Probably not,” Anna answered over her shoulder as she went back to the closet for the toiletry bag she kept there. “I’ll probably be too busy getting married and having children and learning how to knit to hang out with you,” she growled. She grabbed the gym bag she used for her lunch-hour workouts, her blow-dryer, her contacts and spare glasses and the alarm clock.

“Well, actually.” Camilla smiled and looked at the papers in her hand. “I realized that you wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to actually get a life so I signed you up for some of the classes I take.” Camilla flipped the papers. “And I made a list…”

“A list?” This was crazy. Camilla was accusing her of not having a life.

“A short one, just a few things I think you should do….”

“Maybe you need a sabbatical,” Anna muttered.

“Starting,” Camilla talked over Anna, “with the picnic we have on Monday for Memorial Day and Meg’s birthday.” Camilla referred to her oldest granddaughter; this was an event Anna usually missed for work.

Apparently not this year.

“You are worse than my mother,” Anna said and didn’t feel at all bad about what they both knew was a serious insult considering Anna’s mother. But Camilla didn’t even flinch. “At least she never kicked me out.”

Anna shoved her extra blanket and the pillow into her gym bag and threw both bags over her shoulders. But they were so heavy that they fell a little bit and she ended up with them across her elbows, cutting off circulation to her hands. Her slippers fell out and she picked them up and carried them in her hand.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” she hissed when she saw Camilla laughing at all the stuff she kept at the office. But Camilla just smiled that enigmatic, could-be-a-model-for-Revlon smile. Anna grabbed the lists out of Camilla’s hand and shoved them in the feet of her slippers.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Camilla called as Anna breezed out of the office.

Anna ignored her and held her head up high as she walked out of the place she had considered home for the past ten years of her life.

2

ANNA STABBED another piece of bread into one of the dips in front of her. She noticed, but certainly didn’t care, that the roasted-red-pepper-whatever fell in huge globs onto the counter and onto her Donna Karan suit.

She shrugged and ate the bread in one bite. It was a few hours later and she still felt as though she was Chicken Little and the joke really was on her.

“Sis.” Anna’s sister Marie leaned against her oven and crossed her arms over her chest, ten bracelets arranged themselves on her wrists. “Take a breath. You’re losing it. You didn’t even taste those dips,” Marie pointed out.

“Well, I’m too busy coming to grips with the total destruction of my life to notice hummus,” Anna snapped. “I get to lose it. I am completely within my rights to lose it right now.”

Marie blew out a breath and hung her head for a moment before crossing the kitchen to yank the piece of bread out of Anna’s hand. “You have been here for an hour, you’ve eaten every carbohydrate I’ve got in my house. You’ve had half a bottle of wine and I still don’t understand what’s wrong.”

Marie’s long black curly hair fell over her shoulder, escaping from the scarf she was using to tie it back.

She looks like a gypsy, Anna thought a little glumly, her own self-esteem somewhere below sea level. She looks like a gypsy and I look like… Anna looked down at her probably ruined suit that was so terribly sensible and felt like her sister’s shadow. Which, frankly, was nothing new. She yanked the piece of pita out of her sister’s hand and ate it. Marie, who had spent most of the evening trying to be calm and sympathetic, finally cracked and laughed at Anna.

Get a grip, Anna told herself and mentally tried to rally.

“Okay, okay,” Anna said. She swallowed and dusted off her hands. “I’m all right.”

“There you go.” Marie nodded her head and leaned against the other side of the counter where Anna was seated. They were in Marie’s new apartment, her freshly painted orange kitchen. Not a color Anna would have picked, but somehow an orange kitchen totally suited Marie.

Marie picked up her glass of red wine and took a sip. “Now, let’s talk about this rationally,” Marie said. Anna chuckled, knowing those words had never come out of her sister’s mouth. Rational and Marie were like oil and water.

“What have we got here, really?” Marie asked. She began cleaning up the mess of breadcrumbs and dip splatter that Anna had made in her whirlwind of stress eating.

“I’ve been fired for six months.”

“Well, I imagine it’s all in how you look at it. You think fired. I think…six months vacation.” Marie shrugged. “Sounds like a dream to me.”

“Imagine telling me to get a life and then handing me a list…I mean, what is she thinking?” Anna asked, not really listening to her sister. She was not dealing with this well, she knew that. She would feel calm for a second, then there would be an explosion in the back of her head and all she could think about was not going in to work tomorrow and how dumb it all was. How ridiculous. What was she supposed to do?

“Camilla is just looking after you like she always has.” Marie walked back over to the sink and dumped the crumbs.

Anna laughed a dry little bark. “Couldn’t she just slip me a twenty or…?”

“She’s still doing that?” Marie asked, turning from the sink surprised. “She never slips me twenties anymore.” When Anna had gotten a job at Arsenal at age eighteen, Marie had been sixteen. And when Camilla started taking Anna under her fine and gracious wing, Marie found a place there, too. Now both women looked at Camilla as someone much more than a boss or a friend. She was family of sorts, like a favorite aunt and it made the pain of this six-month betrayal even worse.

“No, no twenties, but anything would be better than this,” Anna said glumly. She fiddled with the breadbasket and because it was empty, she used her finger to scoop up more of the hummous she wasn’t actually tasting and put it in her mouth.

“You work too much,” Marie said, snatching the basket and dips away from her. “And frankly, it’s not like you are really fired. You are being slightly overdramatic here and, as a woman with a fine appreciation for dramatic, I can tell you there is no need.”

“Yeah, but do you know what can happen in six months?” Anna asked her sister. “With Andrew in charge of Goddess, I may not have a company to run when this little vacation is over.”

“Come on, Camilla is going to be there,” Marie said skeptically.

“Sure, but she hasn’t been a part of the day-to-day life of Arsenal in years.”

“Anna,” Marie interrupted sharply. “Do not sell that woman short.”

Anna blew out a big breath and rolled her eyes. Camilla was hardly the one who needed to be defended here. Anna was the injured party, why couldn’t her sister see that?

Marie poured more wine in her glass. “What’s really got you so upset?” Marie asked quietly.

“You mean it’s not enough that life as I know it is over?” Anna asked and took a sip of her wine. Marie hummed and leaned on the counter. “It’s not enough that the fall line for my pet project is going to be run by a spineless imbecile?” Anna was working herself up; she could feel her heart rate doubling. “How about I really have no idea what she wants me to do? What am I supposed to do for six months?”

“How about sleep?” Marie suggested.

“I sleep,” Anna protested, but Marie obviously didn’t believe her. “Okay, so I sleep for a week, then what. Get a life? I don’t have any idea what she means.”

“That—” Marie lifted her glass and looked over the edge at Anna “—is the saddest thing I have ever heard.” Marie drank and the buzzer on the stove went off. She turned around to deal with what had become a very elaborate midnight snack.

Anna sat in her barstool and felt lost. She felt as though she was eighteen years old and her mother was leaving all over again. What was with the older women in her life abandoning her like this? Just when she felt like she was accomplishing things, someone she loved and trusted ripped the world out from under her feet. Get a life? It made no sense.

“So,” Marie was saying as she pulled a casserole dish out of the oven. The air filled with the smells of oregano, basil and buttery pastry crust. Despite having eaten everything within arm’s reach, Anna was starving. “You do what she needs you to do. You read some books, take naps, help your sister renovate.” Marie looked merrily out of the corner of her eye at Anna.

“You can’t take my lemons for your lemonade,” Anna laughed ruefully, but the gorgeous tart Marie was putting on the counter to cool distracted her. “What is that?”

“Tomato and basil tart,” Marie said and pulled out some dishes. “I am thinking of adding it to the menu at Marie’s.”

Tired and sad and lost and hungry, Anna looked at her sister buzzing around her kitchen and felt a sudden deep appreciation for her. Marie had finally moved back to San Fransico a few months ago and, after working in others’ kitchens for most of the past eight years, she had figured out, as Anna knew she always would, that she was not a good employee. She put down her savings on a little restaurant in a funky new area of town and was planning on taking the San Francisco dining world by storm. And she would, Anna was sure of it. Marie took everything by storm.

Not like Anna, she thought bitterly. Anna gets fired.