547. DELETE AND BUH-BYE

At 5:00 pm the dot, I collect my things, pop my head into Daniel’s office, wish him a nice evening and leave the office. Once outside, I am met with a beautiful March evening and decide to save $2.25 and walk home. I can’t stand the 6 train. For some reason I like the trains on the west side and the buses on the east side.

The walk does me a lot of good because I am so annoyed and livid with him.  How dare he contact me after he spoke to me that? After he led me on? How? HOW? HOW?! And now, that I have worked at working through my feelings (feelings that I don’t understand and feelings that I the control freak cannot control) and getting over him, forgetting him, and then he comes back?

As I stomp past the Armory on Park Avenue, I think, really, really? Really? Hey. How are you? Was he really that casual? Did he FORGET being a DOWN RIGHT ASSHOLE when he YELLED at me? Fine, whatever I am not perfect …  I mean, blah, blah, blah. But REALLY? He was OVER the top with his mean and nasty texts.

Was he raised in a cave? Does he NOT know to say SORRY? Who the hell does this arrogant bastard think he is? Just because he is rich and smart, he thinks himself SOOO important, I wonder and march by the Metro Minis shop. It is not like he is saving lives.

I have half a mind to tell him off, tell where he can go, and by his pompous ass the ticket to “Bite Me”. I turn east onto 79th Street and have an idea. What if I just ignore him? Like he does me. It is not like I want to talk to him. He is the one who wrote to me. And I am not not not in the mood for another round of this. I don’t want to be his friend. I made that clear. I am looking for THE ONE. So I don’t want to deal with him and his toddler tantrums. I don’t want to go back on that emotional heroin infused roller coaster he puts me on every time he enters my theme park of a life.

I stop at the corner of 79th Street and First Avenue and pull out my phone and delete his message.

546. IT IS LIKE HE KNOWS

Okay. Wow. I am not sure what is more mind numbing. Dealing with the NY DMV. Or the realization that after 53 minutes on the phone with the DMV (53 minutes of my life that I CANNOT get back) that we are saving $10 per plate to move the cars from Manhattan County to Suffolk County. Surely my time has to be worth more than $20?

Ugh. I hang up the phone and push away from my desk. It’s lunchtime so I get my peanut butter sandwiches from the fridge and take a bite. I set one sandwich on my desk and nibble on the second. I begin eating the crust and saving the middle, where the bread is soft and layered with peanut butter, for last. I do this. For some reason, I like to save the yummiest thing for last. Like with life savers, I eat the green, then the orange, yellow, pineapple and then the best ones – the cherry ones – for last. One would think you want to eat your favorite thing first, but me; I want my favorite thing to be the last.

I stand by the window and stare at the traffic moving along the street. I have plenty of filing to tend to. Then I remember that I have to remind Daniel to write two checks to the DMV for license plate tab fees. But right now, I just want to enjoy a few minutes of peace and quiet and watch the army of yellow cabs race down the street.

From across the office I hear my phone beeping, alerting me to a text. I take a couple more bites of my lunch, brush the bread crumbs against my skirt and walk back to my desk. I am expecting a message from Tate asking how my day is going. Or Siobhan wanting to meet up for dinner. Or Ainsley asking the next time I have a volunteer meeting. I am not expecting this.

Text from Town and Country: Hey. How are you?

I read the four words, twelve times. How is this possible? What is going on? Is this really happening? Again?

I mean I really smarted for several days after he yelled at me over text. It took several days after that to get okay with knowing he ended our friendship. It took all my might not to wish him a happy birthday. And slowly, days, spilled into a week and the weeks into one month and then the second. In time, I accepted that this “relationship” had been lopsided since day go. That I had always liked him more than he liked me.

Eventually, I stopped thinking about him. Eventually I stopped hoping that there was something there. Eventually I stopped wishing that something could come about when he had more time and space in his head and heart and mind for me. Yes, I wished I had not had never found him attractive. But I did. So now, I just wanted to be Town and Country free.

So now that I am OVER him, NOW is when he decides to resurface? Does he have some Desi Girl-dar? It is like he KNOWS that I decided to move on --- and knowing that I am moving on, this is when he returns? What kind of messed up universe do I live in?

545. DESI GIRL AND THE NY DMV

“Hello, Daniel,” I say when the phone rings and I pick-up. “How do you know it is me?” he asks. I hear honking and voices screaming in the background and presume that he is on the sidewalk, walking to the office, or going to a client meeting, or however else an entrepreneur who has seven projects going on at all times, spends his day. “Caller id,” I reply. “I see,” he says. I hope he does not think I answer the phone like this, because I don’t. I simply find it more efficient to cut to the chase when I know it’s him.

In the few weeks I have worked for Daniel, I have learned that he gives no direction, which is fine.  I’m a quick study and can generally figure things out. There is also an absent minded professor element to Daniel, which is why I think he is disorganized. But I’m okay with this, too. My immediate reaction to chaos is to organize it.

“How much money is in the accounts,” he asks. Every morning I log onto the internet and print out the bank statements, highlight the outstanding monies and cross out what cleared. I then summarize the accounts and tell him the total monies available. Then he tells me to call the bank and ask them to transfer it around between the accounts. None of this is remotely mathematical or financial or within my skill set. But someone stole Daniel’s identity and now he (though his agent, me) monitors his credit score and all of his dollars with the vengeance of a left lane vigilante.

“Hhhmm. I need you to call Jack and then Sam. Find out where their payments are. And then I need you to change my residence with the DMV. I want my cars to show the Hampton house not the apartment in the City,” Daniel says and hangs up.

Okay. First, who are Jack and Sam? Are they a couple? Gay? Straight? Two clients? What are their last names? And two, ugga-bugga. DMV?  I have not changed my Minnesota driver’s license to New York because I have spent the better part of four years avoiding government agencies. This should be fun…

544. DESI GIRL OFFICE SUPPLY JUNKIE

Oh boy. These files are more complicated than I imagined. Silly me thought I could pile, reconcile and file. But I am at a loss of understanding because I don’t know much about Daniel or his clients or the other businesses he owned or why he has so many insurance policies. I also don’t know how he has avoided properly filing anything in five years. How does he find anything when he needs it?

Because he doesn’t have time between client and supplier meetings, Daniel is not able to educate me about what I am organizing. So I am going to have to teach myself about him, in order to support him. All of this has slowed me down and since I am a detail oriented, goal-driven individual, I am not sure how long it will take to straighten out these files. I am hoping that Daniel doesn’t ask me how it will take – because I don’t know. My best guess is months. But definitely, this exercise is the BEST way to learn about him, what he does and how I can better assist him.

I will admit, in this instance, I don’t mind not knowing how long this will take. I love to organize and file. I love bringing order to chaos. I love to feel papers in my hands, I love to sort through papers by date, oldest on the bottom, newest on the top and FIND what I was looking for. This is the one reason I wish I was stronger in my architecture skills when I was working for Town and Country. It was fun to look at his space and sleuth for different ways to re-design and enhance it. Similarly, I am an office supply junkie. I can do more damage at Staples than I can at in the shoe department in Bloomingdales. Colored paper, pens, Sharpies, notebooks, file folders in colors and prints, funky paper clips, scissors that cut squiggly lines. My list of addict-ables goes on!

When Daniel comes in he hangs his coat in the closet and surveys my desk, the floor surrounding me. I don’t know him well, but I know he is neat freak. So I am sure this mess makes his eye twitch. But he is also absent minded. We have already engaged in two full hunts for his keys that his misplaced.

“Desi Girl, I am going to need you to check my bank account balances every day, okay?” Daniel asks. Yes, okay, however I wonder two things. One, is he going to give me passcodes and account numbers in order for me to access his records? Surely I am not expected to know these things. Two, will he expect me to do math or accounting with the information? I hope not, both of these are outside of my skillset – I suck at math. Under no circumstance should anyone leave their small child or their finances in my inept hands.

543. THE RE-ORGANIZATION OF DANIEL

I let myself into the office and walk around Daniel’s immaculate, clean and extremely modern, almost-too-modern-for-my-taste office. The chairs around the conference table are molded plastic, the look like art sold in SoHo stores, adorning a glass table suspending on thin metal legs. Adjacent to the conference area are two square shaped camel colored Italian leather chairs, flanking an animal print rug, huddled in front of a non-working fireplace. 

Daniel’s desk, located across the room, is a long, wide, massive, but made of a light-weight material – so it floats under piles of papers and the computer. Along three sides of the Daniel’s office are built in drawers and shelves. The storage space doors are smooth, and blend into the wall. You need to look closely to realize there are cupboards behind the wall.

On the other side of his office is where I sit in reception, under a pyramid shaped skylight, which is great since there is no natural sunlight other than what will shine down on to me. I am worried about it leaking rain on my head during a storm and beating a hot heat on my head in summer. But right now, in March, it looks and feels nice. There are two Wassily chairs in the lobby for guests to sit on while they wait for Daniel. Then just to the right of me is the small kitchenette with a Nespresso maker, Breville tea pot that brews water into hot in 90 seconds, sink, counter tops and a small stainless steel fridge. Daniel has told me he ordered a microwave and it is coming soon. He has only been in this space about four months. The bathroom has a fancy towel racks, faucet, sink and toilet. The entire 1000 square foot office space is light, heavenly and divine.

Daniel is not in rght now, so I hang my coat in the closet, stow my purse under the desk and get to my first assignment. Organizing Daniel. I open his file lateral file cabinets and one by one find all eight to be in disarray. Actually, disarray is an understatement. MESS more like. His personal papers are mixed with work papers, his Park Avenue apartment papers are interspersed with his Hampton House papers. I cannot figure out why he has five sets of current Con Edison bills – because I am pretty sure that he does not have six residences in the City; and why he is paying car payments on a Toyota because he drives a Range Rover and an Aston Martin.

For a fleeting second I wonder if he has mistresses, but he is s sprightly petite man who dons well tailored clothes, even his casual clothes are custom made. I know this sounds naïve, but I just don’t a cheating husband vibe from him.

Oh boy. For a moment I sort out my thoughts and decide the way to start is pull everything out of one drawers and begin putting it all into piles by category -- all Con Ed bills regardless of account number go in one pile, call car payments for all three cars go into another, all insurance policies go into another, etc. I do this for a few hours until I am surrounded by towering piles of bills. From behind the piles I hear the door open. I hear footsteps enter, the closet door open and Daniel clears his throat.

“Desi Girl are you back there?” he asks. He is Middle-Eastern and has an accent. He’s about 60 and in some ways reminds of me of Dad. Determined, plucky, entrepreneurial.  “Yes,” I reply. He laughs a little and says, “It took me years to make this mess, I hope it doesn’t take you as long to clean it up.” Amen, I think. Amen!