“It’s Philly’s Hottest hitting you with the best in hip-hop
and R&B. The Heat 95 and your boy—“ Click! I hit the “OFF” button on alarm
clock on the nightstand beside my bed.
My eyes attempt to focus on the indeterminable red numbers as my ears
begin to adjust to the traffic outside.
Somewhere nearby a phone is ringing.
I locate it under the bed, to the right of my left hello kitty slipper
next to the vulgarly-priced stilettos, still unworn, and push Greyson off of it
to answer.
“Hello,”
I drowsily mutter.
“Good
Morning, Sydney. I called to confirm your
three appointments for today, your dinner reservations in New York, and your 7
AM flight for Washington tomorrow morning,” intones the monotonous voice of Denise,
my new assistant, “Will you be meeting the representatives at the airport, or
later for lunch?”
“Well,
good morning to you too. Yes, Yes, No;
Mr. Forrester will not be having his appointment, he has given his contract to
another research facility, yes; table for two instead of three, you know where,
yes, no, lunch will be fine at the hotel.”
An all too familiar routine for which I do not care, I regret being so
impersonal with those around me, especially because I cannot remember where the
ever-present stress in my voice originated.
After a
quick shower, I was downstairs waiting for Isaac to bring my car from the
garage. I live only twenty minutes from
our main office building near Broad St., but in the traffic of the morning, it
takes me forty-five minutes to get anywhere and parked. When I left the little city of Douglassville,
an area northwest of Atlanta, I thought I would become a great and dedicated
scientist, and I’d be in a lab searching for the perfect specimens to discover
a cure for everything…now, I hardly research anything but what my latest stock
is doing. Sometimes I wonder if my life
was supposed to end up like this.
The
world is filled with dead people. Those
that walk around with no inner light, who can’t repair what’s wrong with them,
and in the worst cases, who don’t know that there is something wrong at
all. My hands started getting cold and
stiff in high school, and a toe tag was attached at my Howard graduation
ceremonies. I had severe cases of being
blind, and I find myself reverting back to old habits even now.
My
office is visible from the glass and marble elevator as soon as you hit the
third floor. Graduate students, other
professors, and “tourists” from other departments love to wander through my
territory, touching, prodding, and leaving in disarray thousands of hours of
work in documentation. The phone rings
literally seconds before I enter my own personal brushed steel-bordered and
sound-proofed portal of hell and yet my retreat from the insanity of the rest
of the world, my office.
“Dr.
Taylor, University Research.”
“Good Morning Sydney.”
Eric is a corporate attorney in
Philadelphia and Washington, and New York, and God knows where else. We met quite a few years ago, just as I was
graduating from high school and he was entering his last year in undergrad at
the University of Pennsylvania. We were completely oblivious to each other for
months, until my supposed best friend decided to try to date him and break his
heart…supposedly as a favor to me because I had such a crush on him and neither
of us were aggressive enough to her liking.
Eric is everything I once thought
would make me completely happy in a relationship: Financially stable almost at
birth (rather, upon his mother’s marriage to his step-father when he was 6),
articulate, overwhelmingly arrogant, and reminiscent of the first guys I dated
from the summer camps I’d attended on scholarship. He was the epitome of the Ivy Leaguer—exactly
like the guys with whom I grew up and attended private schools: soccer/lacrosse/polo
players living off of a trust fund left by their grotesquely wealthy
grandfathers, exquisitely groomed for success, except he has black
ancestry.
I lost all sanity in my pursuit of
him, disregarding scholarships to spend my first year attending Drexel just to
leave for Howard University. My weakness
has always been confidant men, even when I find out they have no real reason to
feel special. I portrayed myself as
having the same background as he did, sending gifts like cuff links from
Tiffany’s for a birthday and a Breitling for Christmas. I couldn’t even afford the watch batteries working
three jobs and living as a paid Resident Assistant in Tubman. One of my closest companions, Cheryl, thought
the clincher was that I had to rise early to ready myself for him, which meant
pre-dawn to wash my face and apply makeup.
She thought I was completely crazy, but she was a part of my past; and I
wanted to forget the past.
“Hi, I
was going to call you about dinner, but I just got in the office. What’s going
on?” I ask, hoping that he would become bogged down in something legal and I
wouldn’t have to ride for two hours just to eat overpriced crab.
“Nothing
much really, I still have a lot of work on this shipping deal, you know, no
details being disclosed during the transmission of this call, I’m swamped with
the minor stuff. I’m just reminding you
about I know it’s a lot to ask of you,
driving two hours for dinner and all, but I’ve had these reservations for
nearly four months, and I’m sure you’ll like it, even if you’re leaving for the
airport immediately after. I was hoping
for a little desert at the Four Seasons.”
“Sure Darling, I know that whatever
you have planned will be worth driving any distance, and I’m looking forward to
spending time with you tonight, but I have a call coming in from the CDC so I
will call you later, okay?”
“Actually,
I can’t talk until tonight. There’s
something important I have to ask you Syd, and I’ll be at your place around six
okay? Love you.”
After
faxing the documents Atlanta needed, I actually had two seconds to breathe
before Carmen called. She and I were best friends in middle and high school,
then roommates at Howard for a couple of years. We still keep in touch more
than with other people from DHS, though we have grown apart with age. Attending American University for law school,
she has been a marketing consultant with a few of the Fortune 500 companies,
but is currently based with Ford in New Jersey.
She is also the same best friend who dated Eric while interning at his
firm, only to dump him as an L2 a year before he and I rekindled our
acquaintance at a charity gala at Temple, where I was entering my Doctoral
Program.
“
Sydney! I have fantastic news…Remember David Hathaway? He called me...” We both
know that I remember him. David is
plastered on ESPN from Spring Training through to the World Series annually
just on the buzz that one day he may leave The Capitols for the Yankees, so she
continues with no need of response from me, “…but don’t get it twisted, because
I know about you two… he called about you anyway. He’s been asking around for you. My mom
called the other day—”
“Oh, how
is your mother? Tell I her said hello”
“She’s
fine, I will, but as I was saying: My
mom called the other day and said that David asked her if she had your
number. She of course said no, and that
I did, and he called me yesterday. We
had the regular “How are you” and “Oh Great, yada yada yada” and the usual,
“Oh, how’s your season going?” and whatever and he asked “SO, how’s Sydney? Do
you two still keep in touch?” I told him
you were fabulous and considering marriage finally-- ”
“Why would you tell him something
like that?”
“You can’t be serious Sydney Elise
Taylor!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re thinking about him aren’t
you? It took you over a year to get over him, and now ten years later you’re
doing it again! I knew I shouldn’t have told you anything! You’re supposed to flash in his face that
you’re with someone who makes just as much as he does and yet has a career
averaging decades longer, and who is a strong candidate for FOREVER once he
gets you a ring!”
“Whatever you say,
Carmen, but I’m not considering marriage until I have at least 200 saved, or
menopause…whichever comes later… But, call me later on my work cell.”
“You didn’t let me finish! I almost forgot to tell you, David has your
personal cell number now. He gave Jonathan his number to give to you, and he gave
him yours and he’ll probably be calling you as soon as he gets in from his
flight to Washington tomorrow.” Jonathan is her husband of 3 years, and the man
with whom she’d been cheating on Eric before eventually leaving to continue
dating and subsequently marrying weeks after passing the bar in Maryland.
“David Hathaway has my actual cell
number…what were you thinking? I KNOW Jon consulted you before doing such a
thing, and you probably told him it would be a perfect opportunity for me to
brag about my life a decade later…What if he calls? How would I explain to Eric that my high
school crush is a baseball player on HIS fan team and it’s nothing serious…he’s
the only man in the world to mean anything without sounding cheesy? Really
Carm?
I quickly ended our call as the
In-House Chemical Engineering guru, Michael Braxton, came in during my
conversation unannounced and now sat on the couch facing my desk. In front of him were a few files I had
acquired from the CDC on a Vitamin A Assay study involving HIV strains.
“Hello Michael. What have you gotten from the data sent in
last night?”
“Morning
Syd, Atlanta is up to their ass in funding but they don’t know where to
start. We’re dealing with a minimum of
40 variations of nucleotide patterns, and a more aggressive cytophagic cycle.”
“Who’s on the team?”
“Twelve
specialists, the 2 we sent back to Howard U, 2 from Georgia Tech, 4 from
Hopkins, and the four Tokyo members you recruited last April. They’ll all be here when you get back from
D.C.”
I’d forgotten he’d been in the room
during part of my conversation with Carmen until he turned slowly towards me
and whispered, “Let Barracuda call you. Eric
doesn’t fit you…he’s too stiff. Plus, Hathaway gave me a bonus last week, I bet
three hundred in the office pool…” He overestimates my respect for him, knowing
he is the only person in the entire university who I consider close enough to
friendship because of our time together that his comments don’t instantly get
him beheaded. He earned my loyalty
during his stint as a Teaching Assistant in 3 of my classes during my Master’s
studies at the University of North Carolina, and accepted my offer to join my
team as soon as I left for Philadelphia.
I would not have survived the MD/PhD program without him.
“…I know I’m stiff and just an old
man and all (We’d just celebrated his 34th birthday) but I haven’t
yet forgotten how bright and happy you were coming into the lab at 5 AM and
cracking jokes until whenever. You’ve
always had a spark, but now you’re so serious, especially around Rick, you’re
growing rather dull, my child,” he says with a smirk.
“Well, thank you for the insight
Michael. You’ve always told me that I
should grow up. I guess I’ve matured a
lot, I’m trying to catch up to your old ass…6 years is such a large gap and I’m
so far behind you” I retorted in playful sarcasm, “ I’ll see if I can have some
fun.” Then, he was off.
I have
had six calls since he left and yet I still can’t shake my thoughts about what
Carmen was saying about David. I feel my
high school days coming back to me, and not with a content nostalgia. I have a lot to think about...
