Less Than Zero looks kind of taken aback. But then she goes, “Um. Yeah!” to the sales clerk.
The sales clerk swallows nervously. And audibly. You can tell he’s having a bad day. After work, he’ll probably go to some bar and be all “And then these women were just ON me about the vanity sizing…. It was awful!”
To us, he just says, “I, um, think I’ll just go, um, check and see if we have those jeans you were interested in the, um, back.”
Then he scurries away.
I look at Less Than Zero. She looks at me. She is maybe twenty-two, and very blond. I too am blond—with a little help from Lady Clairol—but I left my early twenties several years ago.
Still, it is clear that, age and size differences aside, Less Than Zero and I share a common bond that can never be broken:
We’ve both been dicked over by vanity sizing.
“Are you going to get those?” Less Than Zero asks, nodding at the jeans I have on.
“I guess,” I say. “I mean, I need a new pair. My last pair got barfed on at work.”
“God,” Less Than Zero says, wrinkling her chipmunk nose. “Where do you work?”
“Oh,” I say. “A dorm. I mean, residence hall. I’m the assistant director.”
“Rilly?” Less Than Zero looks interested. “At New York College?” When I nod, she cries, “I thought I knew you from somewhere! I graduated from New York College last year. Which dorm?”
“Um,” I say, awkwardly. “I just started there this summer.”
“Rilly?” Less Than Zero looks confused. “That’s weird. ’Cause you look so familiar…”
Before I have a chance to explain to her why she thinks she knows me, my cell phone lets out the first few notes of the chorus of the Go-Go’s “Vacation” (chosen as a painful reminder that I don’t get any—vacation days, that is—until I’ve passed my six months’ probationary period at work, and that’s still another three months off). I see from the caller ID that it is my boss. Calling me on a Saturday.
Which means it has to be important. Right?
Except that it probably isn’t. I mean, I love my new job and all—working with college students is super fun because they’re so enthusiastic about stuff a lot of people don’t even think about, like freeing Tibet and getting paid maternity leave for sweatshop workers and all of that.
But a definite drawback about working at Fischer Hall is that I live right around the corner from it. Which makes me just a little more accessible to everyone there than I’m necessarily comfortable with. I mean, it is one thing to get calls at home from work because you are a doctor and one of your patients needs you.
But it is quite another thing to get calls at home from work because the soda machine ate someone’s change and no one can find the refund request forms and they want you to come over to help look for them.
Although I do realize to some people, that might sound like a dream come true. You know, living close enough to where you work to be able to drop by if there’s a small-change crisis. Especially in New York. Because my commute is two minutes long, and I do it on foot (four more minutes to add to my daily exercise quota).
But people should realize that, as far as dreams coming true, this one’s not the greatest, because I only get paid $23,500 a year (about $12,000 after city and state taxes), and in New York City, $12,000 buys you dinner, and maybe a pair of jeans like the ones I’m about to splurge on, vanity sized or not. I wouldn’t be able to live in Manhattan on that kind of salary if it weren’t for my second job, which pays my rent. I don’t get to “live in” because at New York College, only residence hall directors, not assistant directors, get the “benefit” of living in the dorm—I mean, residence hall—they work in.
Still, I live close enough to Fischer Hall that my boss feels like she can call me all the time, and ask me to “pop in” whenever she needs me.
Like on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon in September, when I am shopping for jeans, because the day before, a freshman who’d had a few too many hard lemonades at the Stoned Crow chose to roll over and barf them on me while I was crouching beside him, feeling for his pulse.
I’m weighing the pros and cons of answering my cell—pro: maybe Rachel’s calling to offer me a raise (unlikely); con: maybe Rachel’s calling to ask me to take some semicomatose drunk twenty-year-old to the hospital (likely)—when Less Than Zero suddenly shrieks, “Oh my God! I know why you look so familiar! Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Heather Wells? You know, that singer?”
I decide, under the circumstances, to let my boss go to voice mail. I mean, things are going badly enough, considering the size 12 stuff, and now this. I totally should have just stayed home and bought new jeans online.
“You really think so?” I ask Less Than Zero, not very enthusiastically. Only she doesn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm.
“Oh my God!” Less Than Zero shrieks again. “You even sound like her. That is so random. But,” she adds, with a laugh, “what would Heather Wells be doing, working in a dorm, right?”
“Residence hall,” I correct her automatically. Because that’s what we’re supposed to call them, since calling it a residence hall allegedly fosters a feeling of warmth and unity among the residents, who might otherwise find living in something called a dorm too cold and institutional-like.