Pug Hill - Alison Pace [51]
“Well, I think this has been a great class. I think we really learned and accomplished a lot,” Beth Anne says, nodding again to us, smiling at us warmly, telling us that, like last week, she’ll remain after class for a while to answer any questions.
“Great class!” Beth Anne calls out again after us as we shuffle out the door and stand in front of the elevator, leaving her alone in the room, questionless.
“Do you feel relaxed?” Amy says, to no one in particular, as we all stand, each of us with our arms crossed in front of us, staring at the lights on top of the elevator, waiting for the “five” to light up, waiting for the doors to open. The communication has startled me, and I stare ahead harder, not wanting to engage.
“I am not feeling so much relaxed,” Martine says in a way I think sounds ever so slightly contemptuous, or maybe, just French.
“Me, neither,” says Lawrence very loudly.
Alec chuckles, much more a huh-huh than a caw-caw I notice, and says, “We should really all just go get a drink.”
He says this, remember, to a group of seven people about whom it is questionable as to whether or not we are actually socially ept. We all take a moment to look around cagily at our group. I notice some people even uncross their arms, and then, almost shockingly, six of us agree to go for a drink. It is only Rachel who says, “I cannot. I need to get home,” so much like the robot I secretly think she is, and disappears through the stairwell door.
chapter sixteen
The Encyclopedia of Dogs
“Cedar Tavern is just a few blocks down on University.” Alec offers as we walk out onto the street. Everyone nods in agreement. “Great, maybe we can get one of those big tables in the back,” he adds in as we head down the street. Alec and Lindsay walk in front, the well-dressed leaders of our strange group. I walk behind them, Lawrence, Amy, and Martine, silent behind me. Alec strides purposefully, Lindsay not quite as proficient in the posture department, keeps pace with him, but is slightly hunched over.
He turns to her. “So, dude, are you that girl from that accounting firm whose pretty raunchy e-mail got sent everywhere?”
My initial thought is that I’m surprised, and yes, a little disappointed, that Alec is the type of guy to address people as “dude.” Though I don’t want to have a crush on Alec (clearly) I hope in spite of myself, that his addressing Lindsay as “dude” was a one-time slip. Then, as Lindsay hunches inward a little bit more and mutters, “No,” I think, Oh my God, I remember that story!
Six, maybe seven years ago, a woman at some big accounting firm forwarded to her friend an e-mail, one from a guy asking her if she’d like to go out with him. She included in the forward some fairly X-rated, and actually now that I think about it, pretty awful commentary about how the guy who’d just e-mailed would buy her and all of her friends drinks because she hadn’t slept with him yet. She then went into way too much detail about someone she had slept with the night before (she used a far less G-rated term for it) and how he’d fallen asleep during the, uh, act. Her big, or rather biggest mistake, one she must regret really a whole lot, is that rather than hitting the forward button, she somehow hit reply. The guy then forwarded her e-mail to his entire address book, and it traveled around from there. I must have received it ten times, once from a college friend who lived in London.
I looked up at her, and even though she’d said no, I guessed it was she. Wow, I think, remembering even more of the e-mail, Her Grapes of Wrath is so much worse than mine. We all stop in front of Cedar Tavern. Lindsay looks up. I remember after that e-mail scandal, I read how she had to work from home, how her company’s e-mail servers had crashed. I’d wondered a few times what it must be like to be her. And here we are: so completely different, but in exactly the same place.
“You know, I have a conference call at eight. If you guys go out after the next class, I’ll try to make it then,” she says to the group.
“Aw, come