Hardly Working. Betsy Burke

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      She’d avoided me for the rest of the day. She hadn’t understood that it was just one of our little office tests.

      To see if she had a funny bone.

      But the test had resulted negative.

      And really, one ersatz male morsel during the lunch hour doesn’t qualify a woman as a man-eater.

      Sunday

      Here it was, two hours and twenty-five minutes to the official end of my thirtieth birthday and I was still brooding on Penelope’s words, wishing they were a bit true. I was still having trouble imagining me, Dinah Nichols, as a man-eater. Penelope clearly needed to get a life.

      Cleo and Joey were late. We were supposed to be having a birthday drink together at my place. I’d even dusted.

      Thirty was so big, so critical, so depressing now that I was minus a boyfriend, that I decided maybe it was something I would just brush off lightly.

      Okay.

      Deny completely.

      It didn’t matter, I told myself, that my closest friends had better things to do on my birthday. I’d just stay at home, holed up by myself and meditate on my singleness.

      Okay, to be fair, both of them were very busy.

      The office had sent Cleo down to the Urban Waste Congress in Seattle. Joey had gone down with her to do an agent audition there and they’d be driving back together.

      Joey’s film and TV roles were mostly very, very small and nonspeaking. He’d been lucky. He’d worked a lot over the last few years in sci-fi and police drama series. In the course of his career, he’d been slimed to death, machine-gunned in the street, set on fire, pushed off the side of a building, had his eyeballs drilled by Triassic creepers, had himself disintegrated into fine white talcum powder, and been sucked violently up a tube.

      Ever the perfectionist, trying to improve himself in his craft, Joey often begged me to critique his performances. What can you say to a guy who has basically been fodder for extra-terrestrials? “Excellent leg work. Fantastic squirming, Joey. You really look like you’re being mashed to a pulp.”

      I made some popcorn to stave off the gloom and settled back into the couch to wait for my friends. Some irrational part of me expected a sign that I’d reached that scary thirty benchmark, like an earthquake or a total eclipse of the sun. But it had been a very quiet Sunday, filled with vital activities like scouring the rough skin off my feet and giving my hair a hot oil treatment. By evening, I’d slumped onto the couch to wait for Joey’s immortal three seconds in an ancient X-Files rerun. I was going to have to resign myself to a life of solitude and strawberry mousse.

      Then the phone rang.

      I jumped up from the couch too fast and tripped over the plastic bowl on the floor, scattering salty buttered popcorn all over the Persian carpet. It wasn’t too late to hope. Someone had remembered after all.

      Some ex-boyfriend from my past?

      Or Mike—my ex-true love?

      Or an ex-boyfriend-to-be from my future? Some guy I’d met at a fund-raiser then forgotten about, who might be a friend of a friend of a friend and had gone to a lot of trouble to get my number?

      Or Thomas? My therapist? For all the money I was paying him, he was supposed to be making me feel better, wasn’t he? And a little birthday call would make me feel better.

      And then I remembered.

      The Tsadziki Pervert.

      He’d been phoning me up and, in an eerie hissing voice, proposing to cover my whole body in tsadziki. You know that Greek dip made of yogurt and cucumbers? Then he was going to scoop it all up with pita bread until my skin showed through. It had to be some guy who had seen me around. Probably with Mediterranean looks and visible panty line, knowing my luck. He knew who I was because he was able to describe some of my physical features. If it was him again, this would be his third and last call.

      I skidded into the hallway and found the shiny silver whistle, the kind that crazed PE teachers use. It was supposed to be dangling from a string next to the phone for any kind of Telephone Pervert Emergency that might come up, but I’d forgotten to do it. I’d made a mental note to avoid all of Vancouver’s tavernas and Greek restaurants but I’d forgotten to tie on the secret weapon. I held the whistle near my lips and got ready to pierce the Pervert’s eardrum.

      I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I have a call-checking phone or an answering machine? And you’re right. I should have. But that would have taken such a big chunk of mystery out of my life. Not knowing who was on the other end, and anticipating something good, or something evil involving sloppy exotic foods, burned up at least fifty stress calories. And there was always that got-to-have Gap shirt to spend the money on instead.

      My buttery hand grappled with the receiver. “Hello?”

      “Happy birthday, Di Di.”

      “Mom.” I was relieved and let down at the same time. If my own mother hadn’t called, it would have meant that things were grimmer than I thought. “I didn’t expect to hear from you. Aren’t you supposed to be out in the field up there in the Charlottes?”

      “Cancelled that, poppy. Off to Alaska in a couple of days. They want me to go up and take a look at the Stellar’s sea lion situation there. Been following a project on dispersal and we’ve got quite a few rather far from natal rookeries. Shouldn’t you be celebrating with friends, Di Di?”

      “I am.” I turned The X-Files up higher.

      “Sound a little odd. Not on drugs, are they? By the way, a couple of things. Now…what would you like for your birthday? I think it should be something very special. Thirty. You’re on your way to becoming a mature person.”

      As if I needed to be reminded.

      “I’ll give it some thought, Mom.”

      “Righto, Di Di. We’ll be seeing each other soon anyway. I’ll be popping in and out of Vancouver. Have several guest lectures to give up at the university. Migration of the orcinus orca is first on the schedule. They’ve organized an entire cetacea series this year. I told them I was quite happy to do the odd one as it would give me a chance to see my daughter. Oh, and another thing I keep forgetting to mention. Mike and his little wife came around several weeks ago.”

      “His little WHAT?”

      “Tiny limp thing, Dinah dear. Believe they’ve been married for about three months. I should think she might just blow away with the first strong wind. Don’t think she’ll be helping old Mike much with the hauling.”

      “What hauling?”

      “She and Mike were just about to move to Vancouver when I talked to them. I gave them your address and phone number. He seemed very eager to see you again.”

      I could feel the popcorn backing up into my throat.

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