Wherever the Dandelion Falls Read online

  Soon my face hurt from smiling at the customers as I poured beer and mixed drinks. I flipped flimsy napkins onto the damp bar and set the cups down before poking a straws into the ice and telling the customers how much of their hard-earned money they'd have to part with. When a slight lull in the crowd happened around midnight, Dave gave me a friendly nod.

  “How are you doing?” he yelled over the noise of the music.

  Despite Dave's burly stature, he was as sweet and nonthreatening as a teddy bear. I was always glad to work with him. I had seen him break up a few brawls and knew he would be able to keep things under control and protect me should the need arise. Like most of our customers, Dave was so gay that when I wore my "boob shirt" he commented on how well the color went with my skin tone.

  "Not too bad," I said, pouring a vodka tonic without looking. I noticed he was more clean-shaven and primped than usual. "Someone special here tonight?" I teased.

  Dave blushed as he picked up a tray of dirty glasses. He ran a hand over his gelled hair and tried to bite back a grin. "I'm meeting up with someone afterwards."

  I made a mock wolf-whistle at him and he flushed deeper pink. I studied him as he loaded the tray into the wash, avoiding eye contact.

  Chuckling, I turned back to a pack of hairless, preened young men who were crowding the bar, elbows resting on the wood-stained counter to claim their territory. I didn't know who had been there the longest, but I went with the one who looked least like an asshole. "What can I get you?" I shouted over the music.

  "Appletini," he said.

  I nodded and ducked to get two glasses from under the counter. I kept my gaze down as I selected the bottles and mixers I would need, thinking that maybe Dave and I could start a bet about how many appletinis we would sell that night. The charming, arrogant gay boys of San Francisco seemed to love them.

  I love the patrons at Jules', but there's no denying that in their world, there is a pecking order. As a blonde, white girl with simple style, I wasn't even on their radar.

  Over the hypnotic thumping of Rihanna's Pour It Up, I turned back to the counter, asking the next “homo-lemming," as Dave called the perfectly chiseled men that frequented the bar, what he wanted to drink. The customer ordered a Shirley Temple and I smiled at him. There were a fair number of men who came in and never drank alcohol. I admired that their abstinence from booze didn't curtail their partying.

  I mixed a Shirley Temple and scanned the crowd to see if any of the regulars were around. Chad was my least favorite patron, a orangey-tan man who wore too much gold jewelry and had his teeth bleached until they glowed almost blue. He rarely tipped me, and I'd once overheard a particularly graphic account of his most recent anal bleaching experience. Not that that was an anomaly at Jules'; I'd heard just about everything under the sun, from fist-shaped dildos to cum fetishists to a young man who claimed to have banged Lance Bass once. But Chad annoyed the hell out of me, and he always seemed to have a harem of boys around him. It wasn't Chad's preoccupation with his appearance that made him undesirable. It was just that there were so many more deserving people. People like Dave.

  Relieved to not see Chad and his harem, I glanced over at the dance floor. I saw a flash of pink feather boa, which wasn't unusual. But when a rhinestoned tiara caught the light, I realized it was a bachelorette party. That meant good news for the bar, but bad news for tips.

  I finished printing someone's bill and lay it on the bar for the customer to sign. I put my hands on my hips, feeling the bar apron slung low and secure, and gave my practiced and impersonal smile to the next customer.

  Holy god. She was beautiful. Her hair was silky and not a single black strand was out of place. Her skin was flawless and her cheeks were so round and smooth they looked airbrushed. Long, painted lashes hung over dark, shiny eyes and a straight little nose. And below that... lips. Perfect, pillowy lips that were stained to perfection with what had to be the luckiest lipstick on earth.

  "Two Long Islands," the girl said, a folded twenty poking out from between two manicured nails.

  I was able to look away and regain my bearings. I found the plastic cups. I found the rum and gin and tequila. I found the vodka and triple sec. I scooped ice into the cups, poured everything together and stuck a lemon wedge on the rim of each cup.

  As I reached for two napkins, I heard myself say, "Who's the other one for?"

  The girl smiled and I felt my insides melt like warm butter.

  "They're both for friends. I'm driving. Someone has to look out for the bride."

  I nodded, staring blankly at the beauty before me. When she didn't move to take her drinks, I asked, "Who's the bride?"

  She twisted around, standing on her tiptoes to see over the crowd. "The one with the white boa and the god-awful tiara."

  It lifted up to view the girl in question. She didn't look older than twenty. "She looks young," I said, frowning.

  "I know," the girl said, rolling her eyes.

  I gave her a blank nod, frozen again.

  After a second, the girl flicked her wrist an inch, bouncing the twenty-dollar bill towards me. "Do you want this or are these free tonight?"

  I blushed and took the bill from the girl's hand, being careful to avoid touching her. If I touched her, she might turn to dust, the illusion shattered by my clumsiness. I didn't want that to happen.

  I looked back over at the bride, who was falling onto a tall blonde girl.

  "She looks too young to drink, let alone get married," I commented.

  The girl ordering didn't seem to mind my frankness. "She's twenty-five, but I agree she is too young on both counts. Keep the change," she said, letting her gaze flit down to my cleavage for a moment before she turned back to her gaggle of drunk flamingo princesses.

  Had I imagined that? Imagined those dark, shiny eyes swooping down into my shirt? The girl was so beautiful and so polished, she didn't seem like the type. Girls like her were usually attached to a scruffy hipster or startup entrepreneur, not ogling female bartenders at a gay bar.

  As I took the next order and my hands flipped and measured the alcohol in my thirtieth Long Island of the night, I arched up on my toes to see if I could spot the group of girls on the dance floor. I saw their feathers and plastic tiaras and a few faceless heads, but I didn't see the girl who had come up to order again.

  I gushed to Justine about it over a bottle of red wine that night. "Justine, if I get this job, I'll die happy. Dr. Turner is probably the sexiest scientist to walk the planet."

  Justine smiled over the rim of her glass. "Do you know anything about the company?"

  I had to admit that I didn't and vowed to browse their website the next day and learn more about it. When I did, I didn't find anything striking or alarming, so I called the number on Dr. Turner's business card on Monday. The receptionist scheduled me for an interview using a fatigued drone of prompted script and promptly hung up. Everything about the conversation contradicted my excitement. I was applying for a big-girl job, and everyone I knew would be proud of me if I got it.

  The interview went at most interviews go. Dr. Turner and a balding man with wiry glasses and a bad haircut looked over my résumé and asked me generic questions about my strengths and areas for growth and career aspirations. The balding man asked how well I worked with others and what my preferred management style was. Afterwards Dr. Turner gave me a handshake and nod that told me nothing about the outcome. So a few days later when his assistant called and offered me the job, I was thrilled. My parents and friends and professors were proud of me, proclaiming they had always known I'd find something in my field right away. And for a few minutes, I was proud of myself too.

  But working for Dr. Turner was tedious. My first few weeks on the job were spent doing tasks far below my education and training level. All day I ran statistics and double-checked data, which anyone with half a mathematical brain could have done. I didn't get to participate in any of the lab work, which made my title of Lab Assistant painfully iron
ic. I didn't even know the passcode to the laboratory section of the building.

  My sister kept reminding me that a job was a job, and I'd do more interesting things eventually. So I tied my hair in a bun every morning, not thinking too much about the slacks and blouses I wore under my lab coat, and spent the next twelve months filing and documenting and running reports for Dr. Turner. And it wouldn't have been bad, if I were a person who liked dull things. But the fact is that I dislike dull things intensely, and dreaded the moment my alarm clock went off every morning. Most of all, I dreaded having to see Dr. Turner's handsome face every day, knowing that he would never be interested in me.

  Not that Dr. Turner wouldn't have liked me in some alternate universe where he dated smart, ambitious women. But he didn't. He was a bachelor, which I knew was code for gay or womanizer. And considering the way he looked at his secretary's ass, my bets were on the latter.

  On the days when Dr. Turner's assistant was out, I was assigned to the phones. I hated it. No one with a Master's in neuroscience should be assigned to answer phones. I repeated my sister's words: it's a job, it's a job, it's a job. There was a future for me. Dr. Turner had great contacts. I had insurance and a 401k. I had everything that made me certifiably boring.

  One day I returned from my lunch break and flopped into my rotating chair, feeling it bounce under the weight of my boredom.

  No sooner had the chair steadied from bouncing, then the intercom on my phone rasped. "Riley, could you come here for a moment?" Dr. Turner asked.

  When I walked into his office, he handed me a slip of paper without making eye contact.

  "Give this woman a call. Tell her you'll do the interview."

  "What interview?"

  "She wants to interview someone from the lab. You'll do."

  I tried to brush off Dr. Turner's minimizing "you'll do" as I went back to my desk.

  A few days later, I arrived ten minutes early at the coffee shop where Faye Nguyen of The Chronicle and I had planned to meet. When she arrived three minutes late, I was stunned by how beautiful she was. Her hair was perfectly pulled back and her makeup was impeccable. Her blouse was starched and her pencil skirt looked like it had been tailored to her body. She was younger than I thought she would be. Suddenly I was intimidated.

  She looked around the coffee shop for a moment before I raised my hand. When she reached the table, she quickly shook my hand as she reached into her bag and pulling out a long, narrow recording device. She placed it on the table without ceremony and turned it on. "Miss Montgomery, would you state your job for the record?"

  I was taken aback by the lack of introduction on Faye's part. Weren't we supposed to talk about what I was going to say? The direction of the article?

  "I'm an assistant at Turner Research Institute.”

  "And how did you get into that?" she asked.

  It was a dry question with an even dryer answer. I'd liked neuroscience in college and decided to get a Master's in it because I didn't have a plan for after college. It was the answer I'd given at every social gathering I'd attended for the last three years and I was tired of it. So this time I answered the question differently.

  "I was in an elevator and I said the right thing," I responded.

  She looked up for the first time in our conversation. "Said the right thing to whom?"

  "To my professor."

  "Okay..." she said, looking down at her notes again with a shake of her head. "What would you say is the most exciting part of your job?"

  In all honesty, I wanted to say payday. It was the day I paid off my credit card and picked up a gourmet salad for lunch instead of my pre-packed sandwich or leftover lasagna. But that, again, was a boring answer.

  "Probably this interview," I said.

  She looked up at me again. She paused, as if she wanted to ask more questions, but in the end she stuck to her original script. "Can you give me some insight into what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated field?"

  I tried not to roll my eyes at the question. "No better than you can."

  She took her notes out of her lap, pursing her lips in frustration. "Do you want to do this interview or not?"

  I hadn't realized I'd be so bristly. "I do. But it seems like these questions are something I could have answered over email." I paused, taking a risk. "Do you want to do this interview?"

  She looked at the recording device and its flashing red light. After a moment she clicked it off and lowered her voice from her journalistic façade. "Look, I get it," she said. "I know these interest pieces suck. I was assigned to this column because I'm a woman and the newspaper is doing a feature on sexism in the workplace. So please... just answer the questions so we can get out of here."

  I was surprised by her candidness. Although she was still bristly, she was at least honest. That made me like her more.

  "Okay," I said, nodding towards the recording device.

  She gave me a relieved sigh and clicked it on. "So Miss Montgomery, what's it like to be a woman in a male-dominated field?"

  I thought for a second before I began to speak.

  "When most people ask this question, they want to hear one of two things: that it's not a big deal and I'm just doing what I love, or that I've hit the glass ceiling and will spend the rest of my life pushing against it. But neither of those scenarios is interesting. Being a woman in my field is no different from being a woman in most fields. The strangest thing to me is when someone gives me a pat on the back for the kind of work I do, as if I'm somehow genetically different from other women for liking science. It's like having a vagina precludes me from liking certain things."

  She gave me a look of surprise and pleasant curiosity at my genuine response. "Do you get asked that a lot?"

  "If having a vagina precludes me from liking things?"

  She tried not to laugh. "No, do you get asked how it is to be a woman in a male-dominated field often?"

  "Yeah. Mostly women who want to engage in a socio-political discussion when I'm trying to enjoy a drink or a day in the park."

  Her smile bloomed across her face.

  Suddenly, something behind the register crashed and shattered, the tinkling of broken glass echoing through the coffee shop. Everyone around us froze for a moment as the typically lackadaisical employees with their dreads and gauged orifices spun into a frenzy trying to clean up whatever had fallen. “That doesn't go there!” someone shouted furiously from behind a swinging door.

  Faye and I clapped our hands over our mouths, stifling laughter. Something about the suddenness of the crash, followed by the exclamation that whatever had broken had obviously been improperly placed was hysterical. We shook with laughter for a few moments before we both settled.

  From there, the rest of the questions flowed smoothly. We chatted for another twenty minutes before she clicked off her recorder and said, "I have to run, but would you like to have coffee some time? Without this," she said, nodding towards the recording device. “You seem like a cool girl.”

  I found myself nodding.

  She looked positively delighted, as if she didn't know the power she had over people. "Wonderful," she said, reaching into her purse to pull out her phone. "Can I get your cell number? I don't want to call you at work."

  I recited the digits automatically, watching her manicured fingers transfer them into her phone. When she was done, held the phone to her ear. After a few seconds, I startled when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I shifted awkwardly to take out my phone, seeing a number with the 210 area code. I slid the call open and, looking her in the eyes, said, "Hello?"

  She giggled and brought the phone away from her ear. "Now you have mine." She bent to pick up her purse strap. "I'll call you soon," she said. "And I'll email you a copy of the article before it's published."

  I nodded, wondering what on earth I'd have to contribute to the article she was writing. I had no idea why I'd been picked for the article in the first place, or why she wanted to spend time with me ag
ain. But I was okay with all of it, because it broke up my drab life.

  That night I went home and found Justine on the couch in her Legalize Love t-shirt, eating cruelty-free jellybeans.

  "How was the interview?" she garbled, not taking her eyes off whatever documentary she was watching.

  "It was nice," I said, realizing too late I put too much emphasis on the last word.

  "Nice?" Justine asked, twisting to look at me.

  I paused to take off my coat and hang it up before I offered, "I'm having coffee with the lady again."

  "Oh yeah? More interview stuff?"

  "No, just to hang out."

  Justine seemed intrigued by my statement. "Is she hot?"

  I frowned at Justine, but didn't answer the question.

  "She's hot," Justine decided.

  "So?" I said, defensive.

  Justine wiggled her eyebrows. "Maybe if you brought your hot girlfriend to the office Dr. Turner would notice and suggest a ménage à trois. Guys like him dig lesbians."

  I blushed crimson. "I'm not a lesbian."

  "But Faye is."

  I froze. "She is?"

  Justine paused her chewing and gave me an amused expression.

  I looked around, feeling as though I had missed something obvious.

  "Oh, Riley..." Justine cooed. "Are you ever going to learn to use Google?"

  I felt foolish.

  "Have you read anything she's written?" Justine asked.

  I shook my head, embarrassed. "Does she only interview lesbians?"

  Justine burst out laughing. "Don't worry, she can't trick someone into liking pussy just because they sat for an interview."

  The word pussy made me cringe, but I tried not to show it. I'd briefly dated a girl in college, but that had been my rebellious phase. I still found women attractive – Faye Nguyen especially — but I had long since written off relationships with women. I always pictured my future with a man. It was the easiest thing to fit into my life.