Freeman Letters from Ceilia

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937674-04-5
Verlag: Barkley Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 332 Seiten

Ceilia Lybrand has it all, a design career that's bringing her money and recognition, along with a live-in stockbroker jock boyfriend. Life is good, or so it would seem. The chance finding of a company document on the copy machine sets her on a path of both self and career assessment that turns her life upside down, bringing her face to face with who she is and testing her willingness to put it all on the line. Support is half a world away in an almost accidental and continuing e-mail exchange with someone she's never met, close as her keyboard and as distant as a voice in the night. Letters from Ceilia touches on issues successful women would rather avoid looking at, much less confront. Like most career women on the rise, Ceilia approaches her life and work with female emotions, despite the fact that she lives in a world largely defined and run by men. Through her correspondence, we get an intimate look at Celia's psyche. Searching for strengths and struggling to survive, she puts her relationship and career at risk. But is it worth it?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Freeman, Jim

Leseproben

One
“There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me there.” -Rumi It wasn’t great sex and it oughta be, every once in a while, it oughta be, that should be a rule. Ceilia Lybrand lay very still and studied the ceiling fixture, a diamond-stitched down comforter stretched across her and Bill, the ambient light of a sleeping city leaking through the bedroom window. She scrutinized it, contemplating the dimpled bubbles in the opaque glass like so many nipples in a translucent breast, examined it as best she could from the half-dark of the bedroom, in all its minute and infuriating mediocrity. Round… half round anyway… a half hemisphere, let’s be accurate Ceilia. Common as a country hardware store, ordinary as page ninety-seven in a Best Buy catalog. She needed sleep, she needed Tiffany, she longed for Bohemian crystal and most of all, far more to the point than this endless study of the crap that appeared in the detailing of a pretty damned expensive Gold Coast apartment, she needed to get laid. C’mon Ceil, for God’s sake, tomorrow is Monday, you’ve got to be ready for the Emerson presentation and another week of juggling schedules. Close your eyes. She closed them, counted slowly to thirty-five and opened them again to stare at the ceiling. Sex would put her to sleep, good roaring breathless sweating sex, panting sheet twisting moaning do it again, please do it again sex, but they’d made love only an hour ago, or was it two? And he’d almost gotten her there, gotten her so close and she’d wanted so badly to be there, to feel herself rumble and chug, become a veritable unstoppable incredible insurmountable steaming hissing night-train of orgasm, headed for the Grand Central Station of dilated pupils, the Union Stockyards of every animal that ever fucked. Then he’d come, moaned that little catch-breath moan she knew so well and slumped over her, breathing hard and withdrawing, giving her a hug. Rolled over and turned his back to leave her there with all her boiler doors wide open and fairly belching flame, sidetracked while he coasted to a stop. A hug, he’d given her a frigging hug like it was a hundred dollar bill left on the dresser for a hooker. Left her like a gutted fish still flapping on the deck to listen to his breathing become regular, to hear him drift off to sleep and fucking leave her there to study the unbelievably ugly detail of the light fixture from hell, the piece of shit from page ninety seven. Two years and one month living with Bill, broad shouldered, big-grin Bill who supported her emotionally in ninety four percent of the ways she needed support, when he wasn’t caught up with the Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks. Dependable Bill, moving up at the brokerage firm as she moved up at WMA. Comfortable Bill, who didn’t run around on her. Her mind ran to the numbers, a mind made for numbers, a mind that terrorized every fellow student and nearly half the teachers in sixteen years of trig and calculus and world history. Sex an average four times a week over one hundred and eight weeks. Four hundred and thirty-two sexual encounters with this wall of shoulders, peacefully and damningly asleep a foot away on the bed next to her. Give or take a few, forty times tenderly and passionately, give or take a few, a hundred times lustily and give or take a few, three hundred times like tonight, nights when they turned out the light and Bill pulled her to him with little more than a “hey, babe” and his growing hardness. Three nights a week his good night kiss a passing brush of lips and four nights a week a firmer held kiss, his mouth opening against hers whether or not she returned the touch of his tongue. Then the whispered hey, babe. It wasn’t fair, not at all the place they’d started, but a place they’d drifted to and she blamed herself as well as him. More than him, she blamed herself a hell of a lot more than she blamed him and if she were honest, if she were really square with herself, that was probably what kept her awake and stuck with staring down the architectural failure above their heads. No drifting Ceil, you can’t allow you and Bill to drift along like this or you’ll end up eddying in some backwater, stuck up against the bank like a muddy leaf. You’ll end up like Mom, drinking your way to the end. He sometimes manhandled her to the edge of complaint on those nights, bullying her in that kidding way of his and she gave in, always wanting more, mostly settling for less. You’re settling, Ceil and you’re too damned young to settle. A woman’s always too young to settle, whatever age and you bloody well know it. Call it what it is, not worth the effort when he’s feeling like a stud, but if that isn’t worth the effort, what is? That’s the thing that really scares you. One time out of a dozen he left her sleepless like tonight, needing to be taken again but slowly, fondled and caressed and soothed and murmured to. Needing to be loved and stroked and played with and giggled at, a game played by teenagers alongside lakes where mosquitoes swarmed and no one paid a moment’s attention until the itch and scratch of morning. Needing that long dreamy building from way down deep inside that would leave her breathless when he entered her, wanting him, wanting it, wanting the night train out of town. In those moments no mosquitoes bit and they’d live forever in each other’s arms because death was merely an abstraction. She eased her fingers between her legs, a momentary flicker of guilt skimming across the need, with him lying so close. But Bill had brought her to this sleeplessness and left her, turned his back, hunched the pillow comfortably and drifted off to somewhere else. His breathing was regular as hers increased and he lay still as she began to squirm. Away… she’d take herself away from the numbers, away from the clumsy beaded design of the ceiling fixture, from shadows on the wall and this abstract, vague and undefined anger. Damp and perspiring and satiated, she relaxed and rolled on her right side, her back facing the wall of his, a stretched-sheet no man’s land between them, but the anger was fading as she drifted and it would be all right. Five hours to the alarm. Five hours of sleep would have to do before the week tackled her again. ___________ “Where in the hell did you come up with that? Larry Watterson grinned at her and set the bottle of Black Label on the conference table and turned to the broad black-lacquered credenza for glasses and ice. “Come up with what, Larry?” Ceilia pushed back in the chair, pleased, her face a mask of contrived innocence. The presentation was over, the clients packed up and gone, she’d pulled a stalled media proposal back from the edge of disaster. Her boss had the Black Label out for the post-mortem. Life was good. “You know damned well.” He shoved the ice bucket to the center and circled the table, setting a glass in front of Ron Erland. Ron needed a drink and looked like it. Emerson Mills was his account and account managers aren’t supposed to have their chestnuts pulled out of the fire by art directors. It’s part of the written code, right there in fine print, check it out. If Ceilia hadn’t stepped in when he floundered, the deal would be no deal at all, gone in a New York minute, blown coverage and Ron was too old and far too highly paid to drop a pass as the clock wound down. Larry set a tall glass and can of Coke in front of Tom Esterbridge, the media buyer. Ceilia liked Tom almost as much as she disliked Erland. Quiet and unassuming in a brash and outspoken business, he’d been off the booze for five years now, the Whiz Kid of media placement. The last glass Larry slid with a grin in front of Ceilia. “Here we are, sweating our way through our best pitch to Emerson Mills… a damned good pitch, I might add. But it was sweaty Ron, you’ll have to admit that. Emerson and his guys were listening, but they weren’t moving. Everything was uphill. Jesus I hate that in a pitch. Nothing rolls, everything has to be pushed. And at the crucial point, that pause we all know so well and fear so much, that moment of truth when the client buys the bit or turns to the numbers, good old Wally Emerson looks directly at my creative director and says, ‘What do you think, Ceilia?’”He mimicked the client’s soft Midwestern voice. “And you… you look him straight in the eye and roll all the dice. Roll all my dice, I might add and that takes guts Ceil, but you pulled it off.” Larry tried for Ceilia’s voice and got only halfway there. ‘Mr. Emerson, there are agencies who will pitch you with glitz and glamour for this account. It will look pretty as hell, but it won’t sell sportswear.’ I almost croaked. ‘This is a well thought-out program, with a lot of media balance and it will move product. WMA doesn’t expect to win a creative award on your bankroll, we expect to take Emerson Mills up two or three notches against their competition.’ And he buys it. Sits back in his chair, grins like a kid and says, ‘That’s what I was waiting to hear.’ Those pretty much the words, Ceil?” “You do his voice better than you do mine, Larry.” Ceilia sipped her scotch. “Yeah, those were pretty much the words, you’ve got a good memory. Looks...