“Go for it.”
“You strike me as a closed-off person.”
“Real y?”
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad,” Isabel a said. She watched Lauren and tried to gauge how much longer she would have to stay.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Kirk asked.
Isabel a thought for a moment. “Absolutely not,” she said.
Isabel a decided to quit her job at the mailing-list company. “I don’t even understand what I do,” she would say when people asked her to explain her job. “I organize lists, okay?”
The thing about this job was that Isabel a was good at it. She had been promoted three times since she’d started. “I am now an account manager,” she told Mary. “I am an account manager of a mailing-list company.”
“It’s a good job,” Mary said. “Your salary is decent, the hours aren’t bad. It’s a good job.”
“I hate it.”
“Then you should quit. If you real y hate it, you should quit. But you should do it now. You’ve been saying that you hate it for a long time, but the longer you wait, the harder it wil be to leave.”
“I want to work at a publishing house,” Isabel a said.
“Then you better get on it,” Mary said.
Isabel a nodded. She hadn’t updated her resume in five years. It took her a week to find the file, and when she did, she realized that she should just start over. “The last thing on my resume is an internship at
“You have to do it sometime,” Mary said. “Just get it over with.”
Isabel a sent out e-mails to every single person she knew who might have a contact in publishing. She typed cover letters and perfected her resume. She hounded the HR departments of every publishing house she could think of. She did not get one single interview.
“Why did I waste al this time?” Isabel a moaned to Lauren one night. “Why didn’t I do this two years ago?”
Lauren didn’t say anything, and it didn’t matter. Isabel a already knew the answer. She hadn’t noticed how much she hated her job when she was with Ben. He distracted her from the misery of list sel ing. And now, it just glared in her face.
“I wil probably end up running the fucking company,” Isabel a said. “I wil probably be the best list compiler and maker in the whole world. And I’l have Ben to thank for it.”
“That should be your acceptance speech,” Lauren said.
Mary cal ed her, out of breath. “My brother’s friend Andrew works at Cave Publishing, and he said that they need a new assistant. I have the e-mail of the woman who’s doing the interviews, so e-mail her right now. Okay? Are you ready? I’l read it to you now.”
“An assistant?” Isabel a asked. At the list company, she had her own assistant.
“Isabel a,” Mary said, with warning in her voice.
“What?”
“Just take the e-mail and send her your resume. You have to start somewhere, okay?”
“Okay.”
Isabel a sweated through the entire interview. Her upper lip had never been so wet, and she was sure she wouldn’t get the job. She assured the woman that she wouldn’t mind starting over as an assistant, that she wouldn’t mind a pay cut, and that she was eager to learn.
The woman took notes as Isabel a talked. “I real y want to make a change,” Isabel a said. “I’m not chal enged at my current job, and I’ve always wanted to get into publishing.” Isabel a hoped she sounded desperate enough, but not pathetic.
She got the job and was offered a salary that was about half of what she was making. “So, I’l eat macaroni and cheese a lot,” she said, trying to convince herself. Her parents told her they would help her out at the beginning. Isabel a wished she could say, “No thanks, I’l make it work!” but her new salary barely covered her rent, so she just said, “Thanks. Hopeful y it won’t be too long.”
At her old job, people had treated Isabel a like she was a savant. “So organized!” they would crow when they walked by her office. “So efficient!”
they would cry when she doled out tasks. Now she sat in a cubicle that was covered in paper. “I don’t even know what to do with most of it,” Isabel a admitted to Mary. “They keep handing me stuff, and I literal y don’t know what to do with it.”
“You’l get the hang of it,” Mary said. “Give yourself a break. It’s only been a few weeks.”
