Bellamy's Redemption

“We’re concerned because usually these shows are entertaining, but once they wrap up people forget all about them. And you haven’t,” said Rachel.

“Rachel’s right. Why are you still hung up on him?” asked Betsy.

“Still hung up on him? It all happened yesterday!”

“Technically, no,” said Rachel. “It aired yesterday. It all happened many months ago.”

“To me, it’s still very fresh. Why are you two ganging up on me?”

“We’re not,” said Betsy. “We’re just asking you to check back into reality, please.”

“Totally,” said Rachel. “From one successful, professional, too-good-for-reality-television woman to another, come back down from the world of the weird.”

“Oh,” I said. I don’t like to be called weird. It makes me feel… weird.

“Thank you for seeing our point, Em,” said Betsy, taking my ‘oh’ as an affirmative acknowledgment of my wrongdoing.

“Well, even if I do apply, which I probably won’t, the odds of them choosing me to go on the show are pretty slim,” I said, sipping my wine.

“You’re right about that,” said Rachel. Her eyes brightened. “On to other news, I have a new assistant and she’s wretched!”

“Oh no! Wretched’s the worst thing a person can be. Why did you hire her? Tell us everything about her,” said Betsy, trying to conceal her delight.

I relaxed, happy the subject had changed, and nibbled some roasted almonds from the complimentary bowl on our table. Despite my germaphobia, I can’t resist free nuts.

“She is twenty-two and incredibly naïve. Today, now remember, this is day one, she mispronounced my last name to a customer, mispronounced my boss’s name, and told someone on the phone, no one important, I hope, that our company has been ‘struggling’ but is ‘recovering nicely.’ She was wearing what appeared to be a brand new J. Crew outfit that she probably couldn’t afford, but her car is a rusty piece of shit covered in bumper stickers with sayings on them about how much she loves drugs. One was like, Bob Marley or something and the other was like ‘Be Free and Smoke Weed’ or something like that. Another one said something about trees. That is not the car she drove to the interview!”

“I’m so glad I’m not that immature anymore,” said Betsy.

“Anyhow,” Rachel continued, “she came back from lunch with her sandwich wrapped up in a napkin and for the rest of the afternoon she tried to discretely eat it when she thought no one was looking. I think it was egg salad. That can only mean she is really poor, wouldn’t you agree? And what is up with the secret eating? I mean, why didn’t she eat it during her lunch break like a normal person? Do you think this means she has an eating disorder o

n top of all her other problems? Or worse, does it mean she has poor time management skills? To eat a sandwich, under her desk, on day one! I don’t know what the story was on that. Then, it gets even worse, she raised her hand to ask me a question, and then got embarrassed and turned red and tried to pretend she’d been stretching… Oh, it was not good. Not good at all! And all this clumsiness was crammed into one day. Who knows what tomorrow is going to look like.”

“She was under the desk?” I asked, trying to focus on the story instead of Bellamy.

“Her hand was under the desk. The sandwich was under the desk,” said Rachel.

“She’ll come around,” said Betsy. “What do you think she meant about your company struggling?”

“I think she is clueless. We can’t possibly be struggling. I mean, they just bought me a new chair for my office. They would be cutting back on stuff like that if we were in trouble.”

“You might want to google it,” said Betsy. I nodded, wondering what kind of sandwich Bellamy liked best.

“Our company can tell if you google them. They’ll be like, ‘Rachel, why are you googling us?’ I’m sure I would have heard if there was a problem.”

“Your company knows if you google them?” I asked.

“I think so. I think companies know everything about their employees,” said Rachel.

“That’s horrible.” I took another drink of my wine, wondering if my company knew everything I googled. That would be creepy. It would make them like Santa Claus or God. Yuck.

“If you like your privacy so much, you shouldn’t be thinking about going on a show that films your every move,” said Betsy.

“It’s probably not going to happen. Pete was telling me that they look for people who are really, really out there, and I don’t know if that’s me. Even if I’m trying my hardest to be a wacko, it probably just looks like some sweet, boring girl, playing a psycho.”

“Pete the infomercial guy?” asked Rachel, raising an eyebrow.

“Yep, that’s him.”