around with scrambled eggs in your pocket, Zelda," I cried. "It's not—it's not how one transports scrambled eggs."
She reached over, patted my forearm. I tipped my chin down to match the sensation of her hand on my body to its physical form. It didn't make sense to me that it felt this way while looking like an ordinary hand. Her fingernails were painted mint green and, by my estimation, she wore at least twelve tiny rings, and she was going to melt my skin off.
"It's okay," she said, nodding. "We won't talk about it anymore." She removed her hand. I frowned at my arm because, for the first time in forever, I wanted to find out how it felt for my skin to melt off. I wanted to know the beginning and end of that sensation. "You tell me about these statements. That way, I can agree with you and you can have a single moment of happiness in your otherwise tyrannical and obsessively pessimistic day."
Well…fuck me.
4
Zelda
And…there it was. The line. The one I'd long-jumped past because why merely cross a line when you could medal in an Olympic decathlon of awkward?
Because that was what I did. I made it awkward in ten different ways.
This time, I went there with some funny-mean. The entirety of my conversation with Mr. Yes-I-Am-Very-Posh-and-Proper was rooted in funny-mean, but that last comment, the one about him being happy for a hot second, wasn't funny. It was just mean.
It would've been funny if his frown hadn't straightened into a flat, bloodless line and his gaze cooled by a thousand degrees. It would've been funny if it hadn't been the exact button I wasn't meant to push.
Yet that was my gift. My great talent in a life marked by useless gifts and talents. I was direct and honest, and I saw through the bullshit…though direct, honest, and no bullshit were gifts best handled like sweating dynamite. I handled them like a sack of soccer balls. I said quick, snappy things that were horribly inappropriate. I made jokes about myself that were unnecessary. I was quippy in a superbly off-putting way.
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, I was giving a presentation to a big group on ancient burial practices in the Hopewell culture. That was my sweet spot—analyzing archaeological evidence of ancient death customs in the indigenous peoples of North America. One woman kept raising her hand with questions that not-so-gently attacked every shred of research in my slide deck. When she raised her hand toward the end of the session and said, "I'm sorry, can I ask one more thing?" I'd replied with "You're not sorry but go ahead, ask anyway."
So, that was great. Almost as great as informing Ash he only knew how to be happy in tiny increments when spoon-fed righteousness.
And now, with my seatmate blinking at the clouds on the other side of his porthole window, I'd well and truly fucked up. Not only did I turn the screws on his soft spot, but I probably cost myself this job. The one I'd nearly landed. Ash probably wouldn't cop to it but he was warming up to me. If I hadn't stomped all over his tender soul, he might've hired me as an interim helper while he searched for someone with the alphabet soup skill set he thought he wanted. I would've been good at it too. When it came to creating lists and plans, organizing things, and making it easier for smart people to do their work, I was the tits. Sixty years ago, I would've been the top student in my secretarial school class, I would've rocked a beehive and cat's-eye glasses, and my shorthand would've been on point.
But, no. No circle skirt, no retro glasses, no wicked typewriter skills. Not for me.
Because not only did I make it awkward on the regular, I was also fully incapable of reversing course. If I tried to clean up my mess, I only succeeded in leaning into the mess. Case in point, the you're-not-sorry incident. An uncomfortable giggle sounded after I'd said it and the woman announced she'd hold her question. That meant I had to push through the remainder of the presentation knowing I had a one-on-one conversation waiting for me after. Since I wanted the whole damn world to know I wasn't a bitch—because the worst thing for a woman to be was not nice—I spent that time responding with uncomfortably kind, sugarcoated answers to everyone else asking questions.