Sarah Mlynowski - Milkrun

milkrun

SARAH MLYNOWSKI

For Elissa Harris

who always knows just what I mean

and lets me call her Mom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With many, many, many thanks to the people who helped me not become that-girl-who-always-blabbed-about-one-day-maybe-in-the-far-distant-future-writing-a-book: Sam Bell for being the nicest editor a North American girl could hope for and for showing me how to make it spot on (I think that means just right in British-talk).MerjaneSchoueri for being a marketer extraordinaire and for literally giving me the shirt off her back. Margie Miller and Tara Kelly for the perfect cover. RandallToye ,KathrinMenge ,NatasaHatsios , SusanPezzack

, JulieHaroutunian and Louisa Weiss for being bottomless pools of encouragement. My dad for being proud of me and for trying really, really hard to salvage chapter ten after I dropped my laptop again. Laura Morris for her one-liners.Bev Craig for the initial inspiration.

RobinGlube for being my Boston tour guide and personal copywriter.Shoshana Riff for her Back Bay road trip. Kate Henderson and Michael Hilliard for helping me with those legal issues. TOR Retail for their constant support and for letting me hog the printer while I printed out, um, reports. BonnieAltro , RebeccaSohmer , JessicaDavidman , LisaKarachinsky

,RonitAvni , Jess Braun and JudyBatalion for being my personal focus group, fabulous friends and for letting me talk about my book ad nauseam.Aviva June for giving me stuff to write about. And of course, ToddSwidler , because without him this book would not exist.

And yes, Mom, thanks again.

Jerk

JERK. JERK,JERK, jerk.

I cant believe what a complete jerk he is.

I am constantly debating whether or not I have a reason worthy of aggravating my boss by making a personal long distance call to Wendy in New York. All minor emergencies merit phone calls to Natalie right here in Boston: tension with a coworker, plans for the evening, boredomBut thisthis complete and utter humiliation at the hands of a male, this travesty, definitely merits an emergency-Wendy phone call.

I minimize my e-mail screen in case my boss, the copyediting coordinator, walks by. Instead of seeing Jeremys random act of devastation in the form of an e-mail from Thailand, Shauna will seeMillionaire Cowboy Dad, the manuscript Im supposed to be copyediting. I dial Wendys number at work.

Wendy speaking, she says in her investment-banker-dont-mess-with-me voice.

I hate him. Ireally hate him. Its me, I say.

I must be psychic. I wasnt going to pick up, but I thought it might be you.

No time for small talk right now. Did you also have a premonition that the jerk would meet someone in Thailand and then write me to tell me about it? I will never speak to him again.

If he e-mails I will press delete. If he calls I will hang up. If he realizes he cannot live without me, jumps on the first available flight to Boston, and comes straight to my house with a diamond ring worth five months of his salary, that is, if his salary werent nonexistent, I will slam the door in his face. (OkayIll probably get married. Im notthat crazy.)

Shit, she says. Who is she?

Dont know. Some girl he met while he was busy finding himself. I dont hear from him for what, three weeks? Then he writes to tell me hi, how are you, Im good and Im in love.

He actually said the L word?

Jeremy has never even written the L word, let alone said it aloud. I think his hands and lips are genetically programmed to be incapable of combining the lettersL-O-V-E.

I really,really hate him.

No. He said he just wants me to know that hes seeing someone.

But you did tell him he could see other people, right?

Well, yeah. But I never believed he would actuallydo it.

Unfortunately, I constantly imagine him doing it. I dream about him having orgies with groups of naked and frolicking Thai women. Instead of working onMillionaire, I find myself picturing him having wild, drug-induced sex with a six-foot Dutch goddess who looks like ClaudiaSchiffer and backpacks in stiletto heels andcapri pants. But up to now I believed that these self-inflicted tortures were manifestations of my overzealous why-would-he-want-to-travel-without-me-if-he-really-loved-me paranoia. Jeremy was supposed to come home after one month and tell me that, while he was away finding himself, he realized how much he truly loved me and that he wanted to spend the rest of his adult life ravishing my naked body with kisses, using the L word over and over.

Of course he had to go and ruin everything.

Jackie, hes been backpacking through Asia for over two months. Hes probably slept with half of Thailand by now. Let me hear the e-mail.

Will my computer malfunction if I throw up all over it?

I cant read it out loud at work. Ill forward it to you. Hold onone seconddid you get it?Millionaire returns to my screen.

Call waiting, hold on. She puts me on hold and an elevator rendition of Chicagos Youre the Inspiration plays in my ear.

Oh, God.

I know Im about to start crying because the computer screen is slightly smudged as if it had been run over by the crappy orange eraser on the end of a cheap pencil.

Must think happy thoughts. Julie Andrews dancing. Cadburys chocolate Easter eggs. My sixteen-year-old half sister Iris believing Im the coolest person ever.Jackie, you look just like Sarah Jessica Parker, only prettier.

Okay, I can kind of see again. The screen has almost returned to its previous non-orange color.

What other happy thoughts? The way Jeremy used to draw little circles on the inside of my arm with his thumb.

Shit, shit, shit.

Try again. The ninety-two percent ProfessorMcKleen gave me on my Edgar Allan Poe essay.

The day I got my braces off and my lips felt like they were sliding off my teeth and I kept smiling in the mirror. Okay. Im all right now. Nothing to see here, folks.

Yuck. I notice that Helen, the associate editor who sits in the cubicle beside me is peeking over our wall divider. She always pops up at the exact moment I dont want her there. Like how you always get your period on prom or Valentines or pool-party day. Whenever Im checking out new-movie sites on the Net, or sneaking in just a few minutes late, there she is.

Its like some kind of superpower.

Her hair is pulled back into afrizzless tight bun, and as usual, not one hair has strayed. I think she uses glue; she looks frighteningly likeLilith fromFrasier.

Yes? I ask in my Im-very-busy-here voice.

Im sorry to bother you, but would you mindumrefraining from making so much noise? she whispers, putting her index finger up to her lips in her be-quiet motion. Im having concentration difficulties.

I resist the urge to tell her to kiss my butt. On my first day of work at Cupid almost two months ago, I decided I would not allow this type of person, this presumptuous know-it-all, to get to me. On that first day, when I told her I had gone to Penn, she said she knew someone who had transferred there after he hadnt been able to take the pressure at Harvard. She, of course, was a Harvard graduate.

And then there was the time when I swear I was still willing to give her a chance, and I peeked over her cubicle and said, Helen, Shauna wants to talk to you and I. Without looking up, she answered, Jacquelyn, itsumShauna wants to talk to you andme.

And for some reason, most of the other copy editors seem to think shes Gods gift to Cupid.

Oh, Helen, they chime. Youre the queen of commas. And What was it like at Harvard, Helen? Or Tell us your theory of deconstruction and subjectivity in JoycesUlysses, Helen. Okay, maybe Im exaggerating, but tell me, what normal person spends her lunches readingParadise Lost andThe Metaphysical History of Literary Criticism ?