Slim Chance
by Jackie Rose

Excerpt from Chapter 1

If you've ever puked at work, it has probably been for one of two reasons — either you're desperately, uncontrollably ill with some type of stomach flu or food poisoning, in which case you're just glad to have made it to the bathroom on time and don't really care if anyone hears you throwing your guts up, or else you're sick in the sort of way you'd prefer to keep to yourself (i.e., violently hung over; just discovered you're pregnant; fired, and so on). That afternoon, as I stared down into the bowl in the unforgiving light of the ladies' room on the third-floor offices of Kendra White Cosmetics, The Second-Largest Direct-Selling Makeup Company In America, I realized that this situation definitely falls into the latter category, the sort of barfing where you pray for privacy while processing the certain knowledge that your entire life as you know it is about to change.

I can't believe I said yes.

Until that moment, thanks to a healthy aversion to mayonnaise and an inherited ability to hold my liquor, I'd never suffered the indignity of being sick in public. Now, though, a gaggle of thick-stockinged coworkers fretted outside the stall door, gossipful glee disguised as concern. They'd seen me bolt for the bathroom. Now they waited for completion.

Please, just let me not puke.

But it was no use. My eyes filled with water, my knees hit the floor and the bowl became my whole world. In my day-to-day life at Kendra White, I make a concerted effort not to put my ass anywhere near these toilets. Now, my face was inside one.

An eternity passed, during which time I pretended I was in the Ally McBeal Unisex, so sterile, so sleek, so much fun…not at all like this abysmal pit, where ladies' unmentionables are strewn all over the wet floor and the garbage can's always over-stuffed. Oh my God, is that a pubic hair on the seat?

"Are you all right, Evelyn? Do you need someone to hold your hair back?" Pruscilla Cockburn, my boss, wheezed from the other side.

"No, I'm fine," I gagged.

"Well then, get a hold of yourself, dear. It's only nerves! You're going to make a wonderful wife. And what a fellow, that Bruce. He's waiting just outside the door, you know. Gosh! Have you ever seen such a romantic proposal? Well I know I certainly haven't — not even on A Wedding Story, and I've got every one on tape. I mean, can you imagine? Asking her at work? In front of everyone…?"

At this point, it was obvious she'd forgotten all about me, and was simply sharing with the others. What a hag. I had just suffered the worst sort of humiliation imaginable, my love life savagely ripped from the privacy of my own heart and put on display in front of everyone I hate most in the world, and all Pruscilla could think about was what a great story it would make at the coffee cart tomorrow morning. My entire life had just been turned upside down, and all they could think about was how it affected them. I turned away from the bowl and saw four pairs of feet, each in worse shoes than the next. Pruscilla's were stuffed like sausages into worn-out red pumps. She always matches her shoes to her outfits — vast swaths of brightly colored fabric that go under the guise of "caftans" and "capes" in plus-size stores. They should be illegal, as far as I'm concerned.

"I'm okay. I'm coming out," I sniffed, opening the door.

I should have seen it coming. Bruce's proposal, I mean, not the puking.

That morning, for some reason, I read my horoscope, which is something I never do, seeing as how I'm usually far too late to read the paper, or even bring it in, mind you. Plus, I hate touching newsprint — it always ends up all over everything, especially my face. Not that I really believe in astrology anyway. Except for maybe the page at the back of Cosmo, since it's a magazine, not a newspaper, and because once I used the lucky numbers and won $125 in the lottery. But I suppose that's numerology.

Anyway, that morning, my horoscope was dead-on, although I had no way of knowing it at the time. The first sign that the planets were aligning against me occurred when I actually woke up early. Well,not so much early as just not late. And Bruce, dear that he is, made us breakfast. Three-egg cheese and mushroom omelets — with the yolks, of course; none of that whites-only shit for us — and coffee. It was unusual for me to lose my dietary resolve so early in the day (that usually doesn't happen until right before lunch), but I knew that since it was Friday anyway, Monday would doubtlessly be a better time to start watching myself. Better not to spoil the weekend, and all the wonderful meals that might have been.

"Evie, you wanna go out for dinner tonight, just us?" Bruce asked, knowing full well we almost always go out Friday nights, just us. He probably thought he was being adorable for asking, but to tell you the truth he was verging on smarmy. Or maybe it was just that he'd already asked me three times. With our busy career-person schedules, Bruce doesn't always see as much of me as he'd like, so I try to keep our weekly date sacred no matter what. That is, unless his mother, Roberta — known as Bertie to those who love her, or at the very least to those who don't despise her, since not too many people can claim more than that — decides that she wants to have us over for watery soup and boiled potatoes, in which case we drop everything and run directly to the Fulbrights' Greenwich, Connecticut compound for a meal that would make dinner with the Royal Family seem like a hoedown.

I was at the very least glad to hear tonight would not be one of those nights. One Friday a month with his mother is quite enough for me, though Bertie would have us over every week if I didn't put my foot down. It's my theory that these so-called family nights are really just an excuse for her to try and turn Bruce against me, since she obviously thinks I'm stopping him from fulfilling his true potential. And who could blame me? Bertie sets the tone with interview-style questions like "Bruce, do you feel that teaching second grade is a challenge for you, intellectually speaking?" (A: "As you know, Mother, it's a school for gifted children, so yes — it is a challenge"). Or perhaps a confusing zinger like, "Evelyn, does being Italo-American give you an edge in the mail-order cosmetics industry?" (A: Well, I'm only one half Italian-American, Mrs. Fulbright, but no, I don't think it really makes a difference.")

Then we all sit back and enjoy the show while Bruce's wicked WASPy sisters, Brooke, Wendy and, of course, Diana — each lovelier and thinner and perkier-breasted than the next — turn the emasculation of their older brother into a spectator sport, while at the same time taking an obvious mental inventory of every bite I manage to put in my mouth without gagging. By the end of the night, I'm ready to kill, ready to shake his sweet old dad and say "Wake up! They've got you by the balls, man! Get out now, while you've still got a good 20 years left!" But nobody seems to notice any of it except me, and Bruce and I spend the train ride home fighting.

But we'll save all that for next Friday. Tonight, we're free.

"I was thinking Luna," Bruce continued. "I made reservations for nine."

He knows I love it there. Luna is where my parents had their first date, a blind date. It was where they fell in love the second they laid eyes on each other. When I was little, and sad or not feeling well, I begged my mom to tell me the story over and over, and she would always oblige, sparing no details — what she was wearing, the food they ate, how my dad said she looked like Elizabeth Taylor, only with brown eyes and a bigger butt. I tried to imagine them there, sitting next to the steamy window on a dark winter night. Luna was also where they went to eat the night I was conceived. It was the last time they did it before my dad died, although she left that part out until I was a little older.

Bruce and I always save Luna for special occasions, never more than once or twice a year. And walking around Little Italy makes us horny and couple-y feeling, so it's always a guaranteed good time. There's something so nice about prancing around, arm in arm, flaunting our delirious happiness to the droves of miserable Manhattan singletons out hunting in packs, or, even better, those on obviously painful blind dates. It's like we're members of a private club of two, and it reminds me how being a part of something, no matter how troubled or even depressing it may be at times, is usually far superior to being a part of nothing.