5. Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
I’m seconds away from chucking my laptop across the living room when Angie, my roommate, pokes her head out of the bathroom.
“Did you say something?” Angie asks, toweling her hair dry. “I thought I heard a barbaric yelp.”
“That was me.” I massage my temples. “It wasn’t a yelp. It was a roar of desperation.”
“Are you still trying to figure out that ASSET thing? Have you made any progress?”
“Well...” I drop my laptop on the coffee table like it’s hot garbage. “I’ve successfully stopped it from crashing the computer. I might have deleted a crucial line of code. There’s a giant gap in the sequence and now this...”
I flip the laptop around to show her a black screen with one tiny green skull.
Angie squints. “I don’t get it.”
“Me either.”
She plops down next to me, her mocha skin slick with strawberry body lotion. “Were you hacked?”
“I might have hacked myself into a corner,” I moan.
“But you don’t know how to hack,” she says dryly. “That’s the problem!”
Defeated, I bury my face into a throw pillow and indulge in another barbaric yelp.
“That’s good. Let it out.”
“I am so screwed.”
“You’re in quite a pickle. It’s impressive, actually, how you manage to get yourself into these messes.” Unconcerned by my distress, Angie reaches for her phone and snaps a candid of me. “Smile!”
“What the fu—” I flinch as she takes another photo. “What’d you do that for?”
“For my memories,” she says, showing me the unflattering results, “this is the first time I’ve seen you this stressed. And it’s the first time you’ve brought work home with you. It’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“This effort,” she gestures vaguely at my prostrate figure, “you’re trying. You never try.”
“Of course I try! I’ve always tried,” I fire back, affronted. “It’s the jobs that never tried, and now… this ASSET. What even is this thing? It’s unnatural, is what it is.”
“I think you’ve finally found your kryptonite,” Angie says with a shake of her head. “Look how it’s hobbled you. I’ve never seen you look so defeated.” She snaps another picture, ignoring my murderous side-eye. “So deliciously low.”
“Having a good time?”
“I’m having a great time.”
Angie and I go way back to freshman year of college, but we’ve only been roommates for the past three years. It’s a test to the bedrock of our friendship that we hadn’t killed each other already.
I was living alone in my two-bedroom apartment until Angie, just ending a messy divorce, joined me.
And the rest was history. Angie is the ying to my yang, the Ethel to my Lucy, the Monica to my Rachel, an open ear and skeptical eyebrow to my many schemes.
Sometimes she assists (but she’ll never cop to that).
She’s a produce buyer for a fancy chain of boutique grocery stores, but I like to think she was a priest in another life.
It’s not because she’s especially spiritual or has taken a vow of chastity (oh, no.
Angie gets more action in a month than I do in three years), but because she’s a great listener and absolver of sins.
If I had a penny for every time I’ve stomped into our apartment announcing, ‘I’ve really done it this time,” I’d be rich.
The current income from my sham job puts me well within the high six figures, so technically, I am rich by Midwestern standards.
By L.A. standards, I still need a roommate to live comfortably.
Yeah. I know. Highway robbery. The point is, I’m a padder of résumés, an embellisher of accomplishments, and an all-around dirty rotten liar.
Angie knows it, and she’s willing to take my secret to the grave.
Plus, my little white lies have landed us in a 900 sq ft, 2-bedroom Redondo Beach apartment, which doesn’t sound like much, but by L.A.
standards, it’s a grand life. If you crane your neck at just the right angle, you can see a slice of ocean through our living room window.
In summer, the Spanish courtyard smells of honeysuckle.
In spring, the jacaranda bloom transforms our street into a lavender confetti parade.
Some may say a smog-choked sky is an ugly environment, but they’re not SoCal natives like us.
They don’t see the beauty of a smog-pink sky or the dandelions growing in the cracks of the concrete.
But now, because I embellished too close to the sun, we might have to move.
Rent increases year after year, and the thought of buying a home in L.A.
is laughable with a solo income, even if it’s a high income.
This job is a pair of golden handcuffs and every time I even consider freeing myself, I think about growing up in a 1940s tract home at the end of the freeway, which may sound unpleasant, but all I remember are bougainvilleas climbing the freeway wall under a neon pink sky. Beautiful.
I want to set down roots where I grew up, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay in California.
Needs must. The golden handcuffs stay on.
The lies continue. I can never stop lying.
I’ll do anything to stay in the South Bay.
Like a cat on a hot tin roof (a play we just saw, courtesy of my company’s ‘Endowment in the Arts’ perk), I’m just trying to stay on as long as I can.
“Well, I’ve really done it this time. I’m getting fired. Humiliated first…” I have an ominous vision of myself presenting to the board with an empty slide deck and nothing to say. “Then fired in front of everyone.”
“You’re catastrophizing.” Angie rubs my shoulder. “It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s pretty damn bad.” As if on cue, my phone dings with notification after notification.
“My team is hounding me about the presentation and I can’t find anything about this goddamn program anywhere.
If I don’t come up with something, I might as well hand in my resignation.
Say I’m retiring my ASSET expertise and preserve what dignity I have left.
Maybe I can get my old job at Lyons back. I know what I’m doing there.”
“You’ve got two days. Let’s not start downgrading our career prospects just yet. Here, let me help.” Angie grabs her glittery phone and embarks on the same fruitless Google search. Seconds later, she hits the same dead end. “It’s amazing. You really can’t find any tutorials online.”
“Don’t I know it. And guess what? My direct reports are little cheats. ‘Making progress on their accelerated ASSET course,’ my ass! My team’s been lying to me. As if I wouldn’t find out… I’m an ASSET expert!”
“But you’re not.”
“They think I am.”
Angie frowns. “So you’re mad at them for lying about the ASSET when you’ve been lying about the ASSET?”
I stiffen. “I suppose I am.”
“Your own medicine doesn’t taste so good, does it?” Angie mutters, eyes fixed on her screen. “Okay, Miss ‘ASSET expert.’ Your name is the only thing that comes up in search.”
“Of all the programs in all the world, I had to add the ASSET to my list of hard skills.”
“If no one knew what it was,” Angie asks, “how did it occur to you to add it to your résumé in the first place?”
Clutching the throw pillow to my chest, I try to retrace the steps that led me to the corner office. “I was chatting with Michelle Santos. You know her—”
“Right. I met her at your birthday party. Pretty girl. Big tits.”
Angie is nothing if not blunt.
“She’s my Director’s PA at Lyons,” I say, trying to clear the fog.
“Anyway, she’d just been on the most awkward blind date.
With some guy who was working with this new program called the ASSET and I thought, ‘The ASSET sounds like a badass program. Let’s add it to the résumé.
And here we are...” I wave my hand, encompassing a triangle of hard knocks: my pathetic balled-up state, the ominous green skull on my screen, the Costco-sized bottle of Advil on the coffee table.
“Should we start looking at apartments in Inglewood? Downey?” I take a deep breath, my bottom lip trembling. “Riverside?”
“And commute to the West Side from the Inland Empire?” Angie shudders. “Not in this life.” She sits up straighter. “So, this guy, the blind date... Why didn’t it work out again?”
“Incel vibes.” Now, that part of our conversation I remember. “Michelle said, and I quote, “I think he’s an actual incel. Wouldn’t look me in the eye. And he implied that I was fat.”
Angie rolls her eyes. “Asshole.”
I nod in agreement. “Is it any wonder he’s an incel?”
“Sounds like my ex-husband. The body-shaming part. Not the incel part, because Marcus couldn’t keep it in his pants.” She takes a long-suffering breath and turns to me, her big brown eyes sparkling with the birth of a scheme. “But this incel knows how to use the ASSET, right?”
“Yes…”
We lock eyes.
“Did Michelle give you his name?” she asks.
“I’ll ask her.” I grab my phone and drag Michelle up in my contacts.
While I’m composing my text, another memory resurfaces.
“During my interview, HR mentioned another candidate, another ASSET specialist. They were going to hire him until I showed up. Apparently, he was a jerk and not a team player.”
Angie slaps my arm. “You think it’s the same guy?”
“Only one way to find out.” I pull up my text chain with Nisha from HR. Angie knows Nisha. We’ve all gone out for drinks, and we’re impressed by how much tequila Nisha could put away.
N! Would you happen to remember the name of that other guy you interviewed before me? The other ASSET specialist? I want to—
I freeze. “What do I want him for?”
“To pick his brain for a mastermind?” Angie offers. “To collaborate?”
My thumbs fly.
Hit him up for future collaborations.
“That sounds good. I’m always trying to level up my ASSET skills, right?”
Seconds after I hit send:
Nisha
Gotta love a mastermind. But fair warning, this guy’s a know-it-all and a piece of work. His name is… Let me check.
I show Angie Nisha’s response.
“That’s what you need,” she nudges me with her leg, “a know-it-all because you literally know nothing.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, waiting for Nisha’s reply.
Nisha