32aa by Michelle Cunnah Page B

phone line.
    I love Rachel. She’s a lot like my mother with all her radical feminist theories. But sometimes you need a bit of sympathy, and not a scientific dissertation on why your boyfriend was wrong for you from the start, and how immature it is to obsess over your lack of cup size.
    “What you need,” Rachel tells me firmly, “is a covalent bonder.”
    A what?
    “You must remember high school chemistry.”
    Must I?
    “Er…” I squint at the window as I grope for the answer. Rachel forgets that she was in advanced-placement science and I wasn’t. I struggled in the regular class. And I’m thinking, I’m trying hard to remember…
    Nope. Too busy fantasizing about Chris Stevenson and Jon Bon Jovi in high school.
    “Covalent bonding is when two atoms, i.e., a man and awoman, bond and share electrons, thereby filling each other’s outer electron fields and stabilizing each other. Look at David and Sylvester or Katy and Tom—the perfect covalently bonded relationships.”
    This doesn’t cheer me up and I miserably wonder if all male covalent bonders of my acquaintance are either gay or married.
    “Yes, but what should I do? Everyone knows I didn’t get the promotion. And I can’t face Adam and Stella. I feel like such an idiot…” I wail. Someone fix my life. Fix it quick!
    “This is what you’re going to do,” Rachel tells me firmly.
    Good. A clear voice of reason amidst chaos.
    “Wipe all your files off your computer—no reason why Bastard Adam should steal any more of your fabulous ideas.”
    “Good, this is good,” I say.
    “Then shred his office diary, push a paper clip into his disk drive, and reformat his hard disk. For God’s sake, you’ve already devoted three years to that testosterone-biased company. Call it quits and leave.”
    This is tempting. If I walk out, I won’t have to face any of the people here (or Adam and Stella) again. But if I do that, they definitely won’t give me a good reference (plus the thought of jail time is not tempting). And I can’t just walk out of a job, not with the current economic climate. And if I don’t have a job, I won’t be able to make rent and…
    Oh, God, I’ve just realized that I’m homeless!
    At thirty years of age I’ve just become a street person! I can’t move back to Julia’s in London, or in with Dad and Peri and the twins…
    As I said, Rachel is great but her advice is usually extreme.
    I hang up on Rachel after she forces me to promise to meet her at Chez Nous in an hour. She’s calling ahead to tell Sylvester and David my news, so I am spared the misery of having to repeat my tale of abject rejection and betrayal a million times. I don’t really want to go out and party, because I have nothing to celebrate, but I know she won’t take no for an answer. Besides, it will be good to get support and sympathy from people who really love me.
    I dial Tish and repeat my tale of woe to her.
    “Oh, Emma, that’s terrible,” she sniffles down the telephone line, already in floods of tears on my behalf.
    Then she says something really un-Tish-like.
    “I just knew it. I should have warned you about his shifty eyes—you can never trust a man who doesn’t look you squarely in the eye without admiring his own reflection in them.”
    Now she does have a point, because Adam can be rather vain, but for Tish this is a radical statement. She’s one of the nicest, sweetest people ever to grace the face of the planet with her presence, and for her to say Adam has shifty eyes is tantamount to the Pope announcing that he’s gay and is leaving the Vatican to start a new life as a drag queen.
    “Oh, sweetie.” She continues to sniffle and I wonder who is supposed to be comforting who? She’s now sobbing and I spend five minutes reassuring her that I’m not about to slit my wrists with the letter opener or join a nunnery. And then I tell her I’m fine, I’m meeting Rachel at Chez Nous earlier than planned. On account of no engagement