All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,77

and move back to Aspen for good. Maybe I would marry Stephen, maybe not, but either way I would hike and ski and ride horses and meet other men if this turned out not to be the right one. I was ready. I was expecting to be back in Colorado within two weeks.

When I arrived home, my first appointment was with my therapist, who applauded loudly when I told her my plan. I think she had a tear in her eye; I know I did.

“This is the best decision I have ever known you to make,” she said, “regardless of how it turns out. I will miss you very much, but I hope we will never see each other again.”

Before I left her office, I mentioned, almost off-handedly, that my back had been bothering me, more and more of late, enough that it was beginning to interfere with my exercise. I told her I’d been putting off seeing a doctor because I feared it was some sort of nerve issue or degenerative disc, which might require surgery, which would keep me off my treadmill for longer than I thought I could bear, but now the pain had risen to a level where I felt it was going to limit me sooner rather than later.

“Go see your doctor before you leave New York,” she told me. “Start your new life without anything like that hanging over you.”

Seemed like a good idea.

I saw my doctor the following day. She said I needed to see a physical therapist, that I could probably get an appointment before the end of the month.

“No, Sheila,” I told her, “I’m leaving town much sooner than that, and I don’t plan to be back for a while. We need to figure this out right now.”

She told me she didn’t think there was any way to figure anything out so quickly, but in the interest of skipping a step or two, she would take X-rays and send me for an MRI. She also wrote me a prescription for a painkiller, which she described as “Aleve on steroids,” and told me to take one if the pain got in my way. I took two that night, with a glass of white wine, and fell asleep looking forward to quitting my job.

I woke up feeling great. The painkillers were magical; I hadn’t felt so loose in months. I ran effortlessly and without pain on my treadmill for forty minutes before breakfast. I had a noon appointment with the radiologist, which left just enough time to summon my CEO and offer my resignation. (I should tell you that I was more eager for the opportunity to tell him to his face that I was finished than I was anything else. That’s a long story. A good one, by the way, filled with sex and betrayal, but I don’t have time for it right now.)

I went straight to his office.

“I need to see Phil immediately,” I announced to his troglodytic assistant, loudly enough that anyone in the hall might hear.

“Oh, um, well,” she said, along with a lot of other meaningless words people use when they are startled and helpless.

“That’s insightful,” I said bitchily. “Just push the button and tell him I’m on my way in.”

What happened next was like a scene from a bad sitcom. The assistant, Danielle, rose from behind the desk and started to run to the door that separated her small office from the huge one she was there to protect. I was closer to the door than she was but she had a fairly good angle of pursuit and she wasn’t fooling around. In fact, she would have beaten me there had it not been for the five-inch heels on her Jimmy Choo Lizzy Leather pumps. (I’ve worn those and trust me they are not meant for running.) The woman took three quick steps toward me and then went sprawling face-first into the carpet, landing with a thump directly between me and the door. All I had to do was step over her, which I did with great relish.

But before I did, I knelt beside her. “Everything you may have heard about Phil and me is true,” I hissed, with a smile, “and if you already knew that but insisted on torturing me all these years anyway, all I can say is fuck you.”

Then I went inside and told the man who almost ruined my life that I wasn’t working for him anymore. Now, you tell me, can