He was handsome, and so when he asked her to hang out, she said okay. “I wil ignore his weirdness,” she told herself. “I wil not be judgmental.
This is the summer of yes.” She gave him her number and he cal ed the next day.
“A friend of mine from art school is having a party in Greenpoint. You want to go? You can bring some of your girls if you want.”
“Yes,” Isabel a said. She hung up and went to Lauren’s apartment to beg her to come with.
“Please?” she asked. “Please? For the sake of the summer of yes?”
“Fine,” Lauren said. “But if anyone there asks me to play on any teams, then I’m saying no.”
“Fair enough. Oh, and it’s also a costume party,” Isabel a said quickly.
Lauren stared at her. “What kind of costume party?”
“Um, so Kirk kind of explained it as that—wel , um, okay. So, what everyone is going to do is dress up as their spirit animal.”
“Isabel a, are you serious?”
“Yeah. He kind of sprung it on me at the end.”
“He sounds like a freak,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, he might be.”
“I hate the summer of yes,” Lauren said.
“I don’t think I have a spirit animal,” Isabel a said.
Lauren ended up making out with a guy at the party who was wearing a green sweatsuit and shamrock antlers. “What are you?” Lauren asked him when they walked in.
“I’m the spirit animal of St. Patrick’s Day,” he said.
“That’s real y stupid,” she answered.
“That’s what I’m going for,” he said. Twenty minutes later, they were grinding on the dance floor and Lauren was wearing his shamrock antlers.
Kirk was dressed up as a deer. “I’m gentle inside,” he told Isabel a. She wanted to hit him with a car.
“What are you?” he asked her.
“A bunny,” she said.
“That’s your spirit animal?”
“No, it’s just the costume I had.”
“Isabel a, do you mind if I make an observation?”
“Go for it.”
“You strike me as a closed-off person.”
“Real y?”
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad,” Isabel a said. She watched Lauren and tried to gauge how much longer she would have to stay.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Kirk asked.
Isabel a thought for a moment. “Absolutely not,” she said.
Isabel a decided to quit her job at the mailing-list company. “I don’t even understand what I do,” she would say when people asked her to explain her job. “I organize lists, okay?”
The thing about this job was that Isabel a was good at it. She had been promoted three times since she’d started. “I am now an account manager,” she told Mary. “I am an account manager of a mailing-list company.”
“It’s a good job,” Mary said. “Your salary is decent, the hours aren’t bad. It’s a good job.”
“I hate it.”
“Then you should quit. If you real y hate it, you should quit. But you should do it now. You’ve been saying that you hate it for a long time, but the longer you wait, the harder it wil be to leave.”
“I want to work at a publishing house,” Isabel a said.
“Then you better get on it,” Mary said.
Isabel a nodded. She hadn’t updated her résumé in five years. It took her a week to find the file, and when she did, she realized that she should just start over. “The last thing on my résumé is an internship at Harper’s Bazaar, ” she said, looking at the piece of paper.
“You have to do it sometime,” Mary said. “Just get it over with.”
Isabel a sent out e-mails to every single person she knew who might have a contact in publishing. She typed cover letters and perfected her résumé. She hounded the HR departments of every publishing house she could think of. She did not get one single interview.
“Why did I waste al this time?” Isabel a moaned to Lauren one night. “Why didn’t I do this two years ago?”
Lauren didn’t say anything, and it didn’t matter. Isabel a already knew the answer. She hadn’t noticed how much she hated her job when she was with Ben. He distracted her from the misery of list sel ing. And now, it just glared in her face.
“I wil probably end up running the fucking company,” Isabel a said. “I wil probably be the best list compiler and maker in the whole world. And I’l have Ben to thank for it.”
“That should be your acceptance speech,” Lauren said.
Mary cal ed her, out of breath. “My brother’s friend Andrew works at Cave Publishing, and he said that they need a new assistant. I have the e-mail of the woman who’s doing the interviews, so e-mail her right now. Okay? Are you ready? I’l read it to you now.”
“An assistant?” Isabel a asked. At the list company, she had her own assistant.
“Isabel a,” Mary said, with warning in her voice.
“What?”
“Just take the e-mail and send her your résumé. You have to start somewhere, okay?”
“Okay.”
Isabel a sweated through the entire interview. Her upper lip had never been so wet, and she was sure she wouldn’t get the job. She assured the woman that she wouldn’t mind starting over as an assistant, that she wouldn’t mind a pay cut, and that she was eager to learn.
The woman took notes as Isabel a talked. “I real y want to make a change,” Isabel a said. “I’m not chal enged at my current job, and I’ve always wanted to get into publishing.” Isabel a hoped she sounded desperate enough, but not pathetic.
She got the job and was offered a salary that was about half of what she was making. “So, I’l eat macaroni and cheese a lot,” she said, trying to convince herself. Her parents told her they would help her out at the beginning. Isabel a wished she could say, “No thanks, I’l make it work!” but her new salary barely covered her rent, so she just said, “Thanks. Hopeful y it won’t be too long.”
At her old job, people had treated Isabel a like she was a savant. “So organized!” they would crow when they walked by her office. “So efficient!”
they would cry when she doled out tasks. Now she sat in a cubicle that was covered in paper. “I don’t even know what to do with most of it,” Isabel a admitted to Mary. “They keep handing me stuff, and I literal y don’t know what to do with it.”
“You’l get the hang of it,” Mary said. “Give yourself a break. It’s only been a few weeks.”
At night in her apartment, Isabel a talked out loud more often. “I’m tired,” she said to the TV. “It’s exhausting having no idea what you’re doing al day,” she told the rug. “I think I’m just going to order Chinese,” she confessed to the coffee table, while lying on the couch.
“Maybe you should get a dog,” Lauren suggested. “Or a cat.”
“Lauren, if you ever tel me to get a cat again, we are not friends anymore. Okay?”
“Touchy, touchy,” Lauren said. Then she considered it and said, “That’s fair.”
“I met a guy,” Lauren told her. “He’s great.” Isabel a immediately hoped that it wouldn’t work out, and then felt awful about that. Lauren was her friend, but she didn’t want to be the last single one standing.
“Come out with us tonight,” Lauren said. “He’s going to bring some friends. What do you say?”
“Yes,” Isabel a said.
Isabel a walked into the bar, and Lauren rushed up to her. “So, none of his friends could make it. Sorry! But I want you to meet him.” She grabbed Isabel a’s hand and pul ed her over to the table. “This is Brian,” she said, and Isabel a was relieved. He looked like Bert from Sesame Street—no, he looked like Bert with pockmarked skin. Isabel a smiled. “It’s so nice to meet you.”