Nudity For Fun and Profit Chapter Three: Today’s Music

I groan as I wake up to the relentless beating of February rain against my bedroom window. The sky is a color I’ve never even seen before – it looks almost green. Menacing. Like the apocalypse is about to start. It’s going to be miserable out there all day.

What’s the point? I wonder. How much money am I really losing, after taxes, if I call in sick?

I drag myself out of bed, and am about to head towards the bathroom when I happen to turn around and look over at the clock on my nightstand. My heart jumps and I recoil. Crap, crap, crap! It’s ten after nine! How did I miss hearing the alarm?

When I pick up the clock radio and turn it over in my hands, I see my error immediately. Somehow I managed to set the alarm for 6:45 PM instead of AM. I feel like such an idiot.

I grab the phone and hurriedly dial work. I’m praying someone else is there to answer, and also that this someone else isn’t Rob. No such luck.

“Winston Global.”

He always makes me answer the phone, “Good morning, Winston Global Marketing, this is Alicia speaking.” He’s threatened to fire me for deviating from the script, railing on about courtesy, but obviously he’s exempt from setting an example for me.

“Rob, hi. It’s Alicia. Listen, I’m really sorry but –”

“You won’t be gracing us with your presence today,” he finishes for me. “Is that what you’re about to tell me?”

I pause, trying to come up with a lie that doesn’t insult either his intelligence or mine. While I’m contemplating this, he cuts in again.

“Alicia, you had better be dying. This is not the right day for you to call in. I have meetings all day! And for the love of God, why couldn’t you let me know last night?”

He’s unbelievable.

“Rob, I didn’t know I was sick last night. I woke up feeling awful this morning.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.” He’s being sarcastic again. “But you need to let me know these things before nine o’clock, and we’ve been over this more than once.”

“I’ve been throwing up for the last forty-five minutes, Rob,” I whimper. I almost believe what I’m telling him, because now I really do feel like vomiting.

“Do you have a fever?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, then you don’t have a fever. And if you don’t have a fever, you’re not too sick to work. So get it together, Alicia. I could hire someone else to do your job in a heartbeat. I want to see you in this office in half an hour.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the sweetest man that ever lived.

“Rob, I’m not even dressed.”

“Well, get in here as fast as you can.” He hangs up.

I peek out the window again. Getting to work in a half hour is never going to happen. It takes me about an hour, door to door, to make it from Brooklyn over to East 44th Street and Park Avenue, which is where our offices are located. My daily commute includes a transfer from the C to the 5 line. I still have to take a shower. Besides, it’s pouring. In fact, that’s not just rain. That’s sleet.

I’m not even supposed to be doing this job. Six months ago, I showed up at Winston Global with my Sternie degree in hand to interview as a marketing assistant. I was a shoe-in for that role, and I was so sure I would get it that I… sort of told my whole family that I’d already landed it.

My dad’s an economics professor, head of his division at SUNY. He’s a super achiever, he expects the same out of me and my kid brother, and he’s the reason I went to NYU for business in the first place. He was so proud of me. I couldn’t bring myself to break it to him that Winston Global ended up hiring someone more experienced for the job that should have been mine.

What I got instead was a consolation package. If I took a receptionist’s job at Winston Global, then in six months I’d be trained in a more appropriate role. Rob told me the company was growing and that my promotion was inevitable. I’m still waiting for that promotion. And I think the only thing growing is his nose.

In the mean time, my mother calls me at work a few times a week. Fortunately she hasn’t figured out why I’m always the one answering the phone.

Since my folks think I’m making thirty grand a year instead of twenty, I have to pay my own rent. This deficit was supposed to be temporary. Until I got promoted. Instead I’ve been, shall we say, supplementing my income. I have a Visa, a MasterCard, an Amex and even a Diner’s Club Card. And every single one of them is now maxed out.

We won’t even bring up the department store cards or the card from Radio Shack. Let’s just say it’s a good thing McDonald’s doesn’t give out credit cards. If they did I’d be writing out IOU’s to the damned clown.

So I owe fees on my bank accounts, I’ve got overdrafts up the yin-yang, and dodging phone calls from all these creditors is getting really painful.

Rent is due again in two weeks. Unless I find a second job, I’m screwed. Our landlady is nice, but late is late. And broke is broke.

“Ow!” I moan as I stub my toe on one of Heloise’s free weights, which she’s left on the floor in the hallway again. “Why do you leave those things lying around? You never even use them!” I rant in the direction of her empty bedroom.

The pain slowly dulls. I limp into the bathroom, still wincing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do to make some fast cash, and I’ve only come up with one idea. It’s not one I’m fanatically excited about.

Last summer, Heloise worked as a bartender for about a month before she decided she was sick of it. The drunks got on her nerves. A few of them tried to follow her home. Her job didn’t sound appealing, but at the same time, she was making insane amounts of money. Sometimes hundreds of bucks a night. In cash, too. She didn’t even bother collecting her two-ninety an hour in shift pay.

So I’m thinking that I could do that, too. In theory, I’d work weekends for a few months, pay off some of these credit cards, and hopefully put my life back together. I’ve never tended bar before, but how hard could it be? I know for a fact that I’ve got a thicker skin than Heloise does.

Anyway, I’ve made up my mind that on Saturday, I’m going into Manhattan in the afternoon, and I’m not coming back home until I have a bar job.

In the mean time, however, I still have to go face today’s music. And I’m fairly positive the song is titled Alicia Can’t Win.

I brush my teeth, rinse out the sink and turn the shower on full blast. I climb in, stand under the nozzle and then jump right back out again, yelping. There’s no hot water.

Perfect. Just perfect.

I look up at the ceiling. “Why do you hate me?” I ask out loud.

The wind moans and hisses, while the rain continues to splatter against my building. And a tree branch smacks hard against the bathroom window.

Oh, yeah. He works in mysterious ways, all right.

And he’s definitely a man.

Judging by the lack of subtlety I’m being treated to right now, he couldn’t possibly be anything else.

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