LITMIR.BIZ

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any lingering emotions and refashioned myself as Grace Noonan, daughter of Thomas and Serena Noonan. Brooklyn born. Long Island bred. Columbia University educated, compliments of my father’s tenure in the history department. Talented, successful, smart.

      It was a good thing I did, too. Because despite the fact that Claudia had tried to claim the Roxy D campaign for herself, she needed me.

      And, I discovered, I needed this campaign, too. If only to forget…

      Forget I did. I even canceled my therapy sessions in favor of the soothing rhythms of work. In fact, I worked so hard, it got to the point where I didn’t even know what day it was.

      “Lori, did that agency ever get back to us with a bid?” I said, stepping out of the whirl of paper that had become my office over the past two weeks. I glanced down at the proposal I still held in my hand. “Says here they have to get back to us by October second. Maybe you ought to give them a reminder call—”

      Lori giggled, causing me to finally look up at her.

      “Grace, it’s the ninth already,” she said, her exasperation apparent. Lori thought it was hysterical how I could sweep through blocks of time without ever realizing what month we were in, or what day we were on. I don’t know why it happened—I didn’t question it. Maybe I figured it might keep me younger longer if I completely ignored the passing of time.

      I glanced down at my watch, as if to verify the truth of her words. I frowned. “Ummm, would you give them a follow-up call?” I said. Then, turning on my heel, I headed back to my office, filled with a vague sense that some other event, momentous or otherwise, should have taken place in this time frame.

      I was about to consult my day planner when realization hit.

      My period. My fucking period.

      It was…late.

      A flurry of other realizations followed. Like that persistent ache in my breasts of late, with no follow-up act. And my cramps—was it my imagination, or did they feel different?

      My gaze dropped to the half-eaten corn muffin slathered in butter that sat on my desk. I never ate corn muffins. This morning I’d had a raging lust for one. With butter, no less. I never ate butter except when I was in restaurants and couldn’t resist the bread basket. This morning it was all I could think about. It was all I craved…

      Suddenly the half-muffin I had already ingested felt in danger of making a reappearance.

      I sat down, rolling the rest of that muffin right back up into its wrapping and depositing it promptly in the wastebasket next to my desk.

      It didn’t mean anything, I told myself, consulting my day planner and trying frantically to remember when I’d had my last period. I never really kept track, but I could usually figure out approximate dates by events in my life, as what I wore was sometimes impacted by the period factor. Ah…here, we go, I thought, spying the words “Met Fund-Raiser” written into the last week of August. I remembered I didn’t want to wear my silver-blue dress because of the old bloat factor—that Botticelli belly of mine sometimes bordered on blubber right before my period. Then came the weekend with Ethan, when he opted out of sex because I was menstruating (he was a bit squeamish—another reason to be glad he was out of the picture). My finger skittered forward to the next event I’d marked. That dreadful Wagner opera that even Ethan hadn’t wanted to endure any longer, so we snuck out, went back to my place and—

      “Fuck!”

      “Grace, are you all right?” Lori called.

      I leaped from my seat, startled. Then, as if by instinct, I strode toward the door. “I’m fine…fine,” I said, nodding distractedly at her. “I, ummm, need to… Uh, hold all my calls.”

      I shut the door, went back to my desk, stared down at my day planner once more and began to calculate, counting the days between my period and that ill-fated night. Oh, dear God. I could have been ovulating, for chrissakes.

      Of all the nights for the latex to give out…

      I put my hand on my stomach, gazing down as if I could divine what was going on inside my body just by looking at it. I tried to imagine a child growing inside me, and suddenly I saw it, alive and nestled in my lap. I could almost feel the warm weight of her—I felt certain that it was a her—against my body.

      And I got that feeling again. That warm wash through my veins that I had felt that night with Ethan. Except this time it felt more like…longing.

      “That’s insanity,” I insisted to myself, and then, as if to punctuate my words, my intercom buzzed, indicating I had a call from someone in the office. Claudia, I thought, recognizing the extension that lit up my caller ID screen.

      I picked up. “What’s up?”

      “What do you mean, what’s up? We have an eleven o’clock. It’s 11:05. Not that I want to disturb you.”

      I bit back the retort I wanted to make, letting Claudia’s sarcasm slide. I sometimes think she takes delight in seeing me fuck up, which isn’t often. But could anyone blame me for forgetting we were meeting with a prospective ad agency this morning?

      Needless to say, I was a bit preoccupied.

      My preoccupation did not end with my eleven o’clock. Because it was leaning toward eleven-forty-five when I finally began to emerge from the dense fog that had descended over my brain ever since I’d done my little calculation. I was utterly useless during the meeting. Well, not totally useless. I mutely handed over the focus group research while Claudia pontificated on what we hoped to bring to the younger market to the two reps who had come from the Sterling Agency. Not even the chiseled good looks of the elder of the two—Laurence Bennett, approximately thirty-eight, approximately one position away from agency president and, depending on how you viewed his presentation style, practically flaunting that ringless left hand at us—could revive me.

      I might not even have noticed his good looks, had it not been for the gleam I saw come into Claudia’s eye when, after she had gone over the slides laying out the desires, the hopes, the dreams and, more importantly, the buying habits of the 18-to-24-year-old set, Laurence winked and jokingly suggested that he was glad he wasn’t so young anymore.

      From then on, I saw a new tension in Claudia’s movements as she went through the rest of the slides. In fact, if she’d had a tail, it would have been riding straight up into the air the way my mother’s cat’s had whenever some randy tom meandered through our yard.

      Not that Larry noticed, I was sure. If nothing else, Claudia was subtle about her desires, or that desire was even part of her makeup. Nine times out of ten, the guy never even noticed she was female, much less attracted to him. Which probably accounted for the fact that Claudia hadn’t gotten laid since her husband left her for a younger woman five years ago.

      Somehow the sight of her preening today filled me with a sadness I could not fathom. What was the point? I wondered as I watched their heads lean together to examine a chart Lori had created which summed up the research. It all would result in nothing anyway, I thought.

      My hand went to my stomach reflexively.

      Whereas this…this was…something.

      What it was, exactly, had yet to be determined. And probably could have been determined sooner rather than later by a simple stop at Duane Reade for a pregnancy test. Yet somehow I was reluctant to verify what my body seemed to be saying.

      Instead I fed it. Quite literally.

      I went home that night and ate an entire pint of butter pecan ice cream. And that wasn’t the only indulgence I caved into. There was the bag of jalapeño cheddar potato chips I devoured, quite guiltlessly, along with lunch the next day. The Fettuccine Alfredo I grazed on at a café on my way home from work.

      By the time I came home at week’s end, a tub of chocolate-covered pretzels in tow, I realized something else.

      I liked the solitude of my life. The sight of my message-less answering

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