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"But I do."
"Okay, okay. But I'm buying the wine for dinner tonight. We have to celebrate your first paycheck!"
Helen had been an awfully good friend to Amanda, sharing what she had, taking up the slack without ever making Amanda feel small. When she cooked, she always cooked enough for several meals and then told Amanda, "I made way too much spaghetti; can you help me eat it?" or "I got the wrong kind of soup. Do you want it?" or just, "I just don't like leftovers very much; can you finish this?" Amanda had promised herself that one day she was going to do something super nice for Helen, something to say "thank you" for all the kindness.
And tonight she was going to make dinner. She was buying a roasting chicken, some new potatoes, and fixings for a big, beautiful salad. With Amanda's wine, it would be a feast. And there would be strawberries and ice cream for dessert.
Life was starting to seem good again.
On the way home Helen said, "So you're going to have to tell me all about the jobs you did. Do you have any stock tips? Were you privy to any insider information?" she teased.
"Buy low, sell high."
"Rude thing."
Amanda laughed. "Mostly it was me trying not to screw anything up. It's fairly dull stuff."
"You think of all that money being glamorous, and the people--"
"It's really not." Amanda told her about the Forlanie call, and imitated Mr. Spitty. Helen got to laughing so hard she could barely get her shopping bags up the stairs. "It was actually kind of interesting, though," she admitted. "They talked about their resorts; they have them all over, the Caribbean, Mexico, the Canadian Rockies, Hawaii, even in Japan and a couple of European spots. Very nice places. High end, you know?"
"Hey, maybe you can get an employee discount."
"Even if I worked for them I probably couldn't."
"Damn."
"I know, right? But it was kind of fun to listen to them talk about their resorts and the amenities at each one, like the spa they're building at their resort in Japan where you'll be able to bathe in thermal pools all winter, even with snow on the ground. I Googled it, and it's a really gorgeous area, but now I've forgotten the name of the town. It's outside Tokyo, I think, in the mountains."
"That sounds great. Hey, maybe someday, right?"
"Yeah, we can put that on our To Do list, right under World Peace." Amanda didn't say that she'd also looked up Bill McConnell, too, and had been a little disappointed to find some photos that suggested that he was about sixty. Nice looking and all, but not really fantasy material for her, though she knew a few women who would have been willing to overlook his age for the kind of money he must have had.
She and Helen had a nice dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and put a DVD on. "Ah, this is the life," Helen observed.
"Right, stuck at home with me on Saturday night."
Helen shrugged. "Sometimes it's good to hang out with your girls, y'know. Anyway, I'm in no hurry to get back out there after Todd."
They both chugged the rest of the wine in their glasses. It was part of the Todd drinking game. One drink when his law firm was mentioned, two when the phrase "ambulance chaser" came up, and if anyone mentioned his name, they chugged. Helen said it was one way to make the memory of her time with him tolerable.
"Still, it's not time to settle down with cats."
"Oh you don't know that for sure. We all have our internal clocks, Mandy, and mine may be ticking down towards a comely Maine Coon, or a Siamese with shapely ankles."
"I'm still hopeful."
"And so you should be. You're only thirty. You're not over the hill yet, like me."
"You're only thirty-one!"
"A well-seasoned thirty one."
"You're a nut," Amanda told her, but it was said with great fondness.
When she arrived at work on Monday, Amanda was surprised to find a note from her supervisor stuck to her monitor. "Come see me," it read.
Okay, she thought, and tried to tell herself that he was going to congratulate her for a great first week. She stowed her things, then went to his office.
