Ten years later, you bump into Julia when you end up temping for her at an ad agency. It doesn’t feel good to be temping at age 43, but you don’t want to take full-time work as it will keep you from working on your documentary monologue collection Where YOU Were On 9-11. Even though 9-11 will have occurred over a decade and a half ago, you still think your piece will be relevant (if you can just manage to get some dickhead who was in the towers to finally talk to you).
“Oh dear,” Julia says when you arrive. “You’re my temp?”
“I knew your name was kind of familiar for some reason,” you say. “So…you lived?”
“Can you tell from there?”
You laugh a little too hard. Then you go to your desk.
The day isn’t too bad. There aren’t too many awkward moments, except for around three PM when you come back from a long bathroom break and she says, “I was calling for you but you never came.”
At the end of the day, she invites you for a coffee at Starbucks. There she tells you that when the kidnappers tried to cash the check you gave them, the police swooped in and eventually she was saved. You explain to her that you only left her to live or die at the kidnappers’ mercy because you were pretty down on the state of current events and you figured, what’s the point.
Things are awkward after that. You make a joke that you think is really funny about how many Starbucks there are in the city, the punchline involving a proctologist and a freshly made venti Frappucino being pulled from an anus, but Julia doesn’t laugh. You try to relate to her about both of you being in your forties, but Julia reminds you that she is three years younger than you, and her 40th birthday isn’t for two months.
“We established that on our only date together.”
You say, “Oh.”
“You’re the only one here who is in his forties,” Julia says.
You take a sip of your blended beverage.
“Just like you’re the only one here who’s still temping,” Julia adds.
You say, “I thought about you, you know.”
“Did you?” she says.
“Yeah,” you say. “I used to think that maybe if I had stuck it out and saved you, like really saved you, then things might have turned out a little better for me.”
Julia says, “I made you my hero. When I gave them your phone number, you became my hero in that moment. I really built you up in my mind. You blew it.”
When she gets up, you say, “Wait. Can I still temp for you tomorrow?”
She’s thrown and doesn’t answer immediately.
“I need the money,” you say.
She looks confused, then says, “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
You sit for a while after she leaves, trying to figure out what you should eat for dinner that night. You browse the pre-wrapped sandwiches at the counter, but ultimately, you decide to order a pizza when you get home. You’re going to have some work this week, so it’s okay.