Why the fuck bother?
A message pops up from Leanne.
Leanne T: Miles? I think you need to come into the office for a meeting.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
Miles I: I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Is that okay?
Leanne T: Yes.
And then, before I can think better of it.
Miles I: Hey, Leanne. Question for you. Do you know what a six-week pregnant belly looks like?
Leanne’s office is in a building that was clearly a warehouse until maybe three minutes ago, when some enterprising real estate mogul realized he could create about 450 closet-sized offices in there and charge people an exorbitant amount of rent for the privilege of working right next to the West Side Highway, which is at least a fifteen-minute, windswept walk from any subway line.
I wait for her to buzz me up, and then take one of the many freight elevators up to the ninth floor, until I end up in front of Leanne’s cupboard.
Up until two and a half months ago, Tell It to My Heart was located in a small, but airy office space in the Meatpacking District. Full-length glass windows looked out over the cobblestone streets where high-end shoppers in designer sunglasses and Jimmy Choos and/or hungover clubbers in designer sunglasses and taller Jimmy Choos hobbled to and fro. I used to look out and think it was very possible one of those clubbers was a client of ours, coming back from a successful date night that ended at seven a.m., rushing to get home and change and look presentable for work, but unable to hide that secret smile only a hot date with someone new was able to conjure up. It wasn’t a walk of shame, it was a walk of pride. Who wouldn’t feel proud and exhilarated to have come off of a night of passion and connection? And, maybe, just maybe, I’d had a hand in that. It used to make me feel proud and exhilarated, by association.
Now I know better.
Now I know one hot night will probably turn into agony somewhere down the road—whether it’s because of unreturned text messages, or fights over the other one’s overbearing parents, or splitting up and trying to figure out who gets the house-plants. I’m facilitating nothing but ruin and damnation.
And as for the office? Well. We can chalk that one up to another brilliantly catastrophic idea from Leanne’s ex-husband, Clifford.
To paraphrase Taylor Swift, once upon a time, many mistakes ago, Leanne and Clifford were two of those idiots who thought they were in a loving, long-lasting relationship. So not only did they exchange vows, and buy an apartment (a co-op no less, another nightmare), and adopt a cat together—they decided to take it to the next knuckleheaded step: co-owning a business.
Yup, they started Tell It to My Heart together, although it was Leanne’s idea originally. As both a writer and a person enthralled by love, she’d been watching her single friends struggle through the tortures of online dating, of constructing the perfect profile, and of saying the right things over e-mails, IMs, and texts. And one day she realized: She was a copywriter. She could help them craft their message better.
It snowballed from there, the idea to create a ghostwriting agency that would help people get their foot in the door on their paths to true love. “We’re not ghostwriting, we’re cupid-writing,” Clifford said.
That was Clifford’s task: taking care of the marketing and operations.
Meaning it was Clifford’s idea to name the company Tell It to My Heart (which was probably the last time Leanne and Clifford agreed on anything). And then his next logical step was to get the rights to that Taylor Dayne song to use in all the commercials.
It sounded fine in theory, of course. Except Taylor Dayne and the songwriters did not want to be associated with some weird, unknown, online dating ghostwriting agency thing, and had asked for an exorbitant fee to secure the rights.
Any normal person would have tried to either negotiate or realize the song wasn’t worth it.
If Clifford is one thing, it’s abnormal.
He agreed to their terms right away, without consulting Leanne or the lawyers or anybody.
Leanne got the company in the divorce, but she was also stuck with the consequences of Clifford’s poor business decisions.
So, yes, do have the pleasure of getting “Tell It to My Heart” stuck in your head if you come across any of our radio or occasional TV ads. While I and the other three full-time TITMH (pronounced tit-mee) employees have the pleasure of no longer having an office.
And poor Leanne, CEO, is relegated to this musty, windowless closet that can barely fit her desk and two chairs let alone all of the cool, eclectic artwork and sculptures she used to have as her backdrop at our old digs.
Still, despite her surroundings, she looks as impeccable as always. Leanne is Chinese-American, with long, straight black hair, the posture of a prima ballerina, and a wardrobe that almost entirely consists of structural pieces that look like they ought to come with blueprints. She somehow makes them work, whereas I’m pretty sure anyone else wearing them would look like they were dressed as the Empire State Building in a questionable Miss New York pageant.
“Care to explain what happened today, Miles?” she asks in her calm, deep voice, the kind you know has the potential to unleash a tsunami of devastating barbs if necessary.
I clear my throat. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s start with not knowing our client was in a string quartet. And move on to the whole pregnant belly debacle.”
“You know about all that?” I ask weakly.
“Miles. After the fiasco of the last three clients, I told you I’d be logged on to your computer to see your chats. And then you accepted my remote access request this morning.”
“Oh, right,” I say. Shit. I definitely had. And I definitely planned on being on my game today, but that was before Jordan announced to the world (and, oh yeah, me) that she was with child.
Leanne sighs. “Look. I know you’re going through a hard time right now.” I haven’t told her too much about what’s been going on, just that Jordan and I broke up. And that I moved out of our apartment into Dylan’s living room. And that Dylan’s boyfriend, Charles, has been passive-aggressively leaving me notes about how disruptive I am to their lives. And that he made me return the single-ply toilet paper I bought as a thank-you gift because, as he claimed, nobody’s ass deserves the degradation of single-ply, not even mine.
Okay, so maybe I have told Leanne a lot. The problem is that in the eighteen months we were together, I ended up co-opting most of Jordan’s friends, and now I’m stuck trying to scrape together some semblance of a social circle.
“Here’s the thing,” Leanne says, “I can’t afford this melt-down, Miles. I literally can’t afford it. Clearly, we are in some serious trouble here.” She waves her arms vaguely at the horror show of peeling paint and Formica office furniture she’s somehow ended up captaining. “And losing four clients in the span of a month? That’s just not acceptable.”
I nod, suddenly realizing it’s very possible that—on top of everything else—I am about to get fired. I’m like the pilot episode of a sitcom about a man whose life goes to shit before he changes careers and decides to become a cattle rancher in that quirky town his grandmother lives in. Except all of my grandparents are dead and, in the real world, losing your job doesn’t actually lead to a hilarious but poignant epiphany about what you’re supposed to be doing. Just a sudden need to add LinkedIn to the daily ritual of social media that makes you feel like crap about yourself.