Susan looked down and around her mid-section to the ill-fitting loafers on her feet, and sighed. She inspected the unflattering dress from Ross in the mirror and sighed again. She smoothed down the sides of her hair which were already curling into a halo of frizz, and groaned.
In her mind, she still fit the adjectives she used to attach to herself. Slim. Young. Ballsy. Enviable. She squeezed the doughy pudge covering her tricep, and thought, at least I’m still smart.
She looked up and startled, finding William Stokes standing over her shoulder, adjusting his tie behind her in the mirror. Her neck and chest burned red, blushing in the blotched and angry way she had begun to since hitting 40.
“Morning, Susan.”
“Good morning,” she said, turning to walk to her desk, avoiding his eyes.
“Don’t forget about the meeting at nine.”
She stopped and turned back toward him, as he continued to admire his reflection.
“Oh, I haven’t. I was planning…”
“Do me a favor. Head over to that bagel place on 7th. Grab some coffee and breakfast for the meeting. The company will reimburse you.”
Susan thought of the “under $50” notification she got from her bank that morning. “Don’t we have interns for that sort of thing?”
William turned toward her with a smirk that turned down at the corners. “They’re here to learn. Any idiot can get coffee and bagels.” He turned back toward the mirror and ran his fingers through his thick, blond hair. “Make it for 20 people. I’m sure some will want seconds.”
To the onlooker, Susan merely trudged through the office, in her dumpy dress and second-hand shoes, back to her desk in the middle of the cooperative working space. But inside Susan’s veins, sulfurous magma surged, and in her mind William had died a hundred agonizing deaths in progressively inventive ways.
William Stokes, the not-yet-30-year-old with the MBA and the golden mane. The one who had charmed and manipulated his way into the promotion that should have been hers, while she sat by meekly, stewing as she congratulated him. She could still remember his smarmy, winning smile, as he shook her hand and told her not to worry, she could still call him “William.” He wanted to be “accessible to my subordinates.” She thought of a thousand things she’d rather call him than his given name, and had been coming up with more every Monday through Friday.
Susan snatched her purse from the floor under her desk, and left the building before any one asked where she was going. Not that anyone would.
San Jacinto street was flooded in golden, morning light, and Susan shivered. It was October, and summer was beginning to wane in Texas. She put in her headphones and played the latest self-help audio book she had been listening to, ”Believe It: Creating the Life you Want through the Power of Belief.”
She was deep into chapter 6, “Fake it ‘til you make it,” and the author, Dr. Meyer, was encouraging her, in his sultry, baritone voice, to “act like you already are the person you want to be. Smile at strangers as though you are someone they want to meet. Initiate a conversation with the handsome man at the grocery store checkout. Apply for the job that the better you would expect to get.”
Susan could already feel the weight of the morning sliding off her shoulders as Dr. Meyer’s dulcet tones convinced her that she wasn’t what she saw in the mirror, in other people’s gazes, or in William Stokes’ arrogant sneer.
I’m going to try smiling, for starters, she thought. It felt unnatural at first, as her cheeks pulled her face and lips into a lie. For a moment, she wanted to let herself relax back into the sagging glower that she was accustomed to, but resisted.
The first few people passed, eyes-down, absorbed in their phones. Susan persisted. She met the eyes of an older man ambling slowly down the sidewalk, hands folded behind his back. He started for a moment, then smiled back, revealing the perfect white dentures behind the wizened curtain of his face.
Susan’s mood lifted, just an inch. She worked hard to dispel the thought that of course an old man would smile, he’s probably senile, and enjoy the feeling.
She tried her smile on a couple passing with their child in a stroller. The woman smiled first, then her husband. Even the child looked up, beaming. The smiles all seemed strangely genuine.
Encouraged by her success thus far, Susan decided she would try her smile out on a pack of gabbing businessmen moving toward her in a cluster of gray suit fabric and starched shirts. She gave her toothiest smile, even daring to make eye contact with each of the men.
The group’s conversation halted as each member looked at her and smiled, not seeming to see the bags beneath her eyes or the crows feet clawing angrily out from the corners.
“Hello,” she ventured, and in concert the group replied in like.
Susan was aglow with a tenuous but growing confidence as she walked through the door at “Holy Bagels.” A chime announced her entrance, and each face in the line at the counter turned toward her. With the momentum of her recent experiment, she decided to smile, rather than look away. Her smile was returned by all of the customers, but a particular smile of the man in the back of the line caught her attention.
She walked to take her place in line, ready to assume her usual shrinking stance, then remembered herself, and pulled her shoulders back and the corners of her mouth up.
The man in front of her was taller than she, but not too tall, and older than she, but not too old. He had luxurious salt and pepper hair, thinning a little at the top. The back of his neck was tanned without being leathery, and his cologne allured without cloying. Dr. Meyer’s words came back to her, and Susan knew she couldn’t just stand there surreptitiously sniffing his polo. She took a deep breath.
“Excuse me.” Her voice was weak but audible.
The man turned toward her, his just-handsome-enough face lighting up as it met hers.
“Yes?”
Susan really hadn’t thought this through. Her body began to betray her by engaging in all the classic panic signals: heart palpitations, reddening skin, profuse sweat, speech incapacitation. She blurted out “have you tried the pumpkin spice bagel?”
“I have, yes. It’s pretty good.” The man turned his body around to face her. “Say, do I know you? You look awfully familiar.”
Susan stared at him, dumbstruck. He extended his hand. “I’m Bill.”
She wiped her clammy palm on her dress before shaking his hand. “I’m Susan.”
They talked as the line moved forward, Susan’s panic symptoms fading into an easy posture and conversation. They chatted through Bill’s order, and Bill stayed to chat while they packed Susan’s order for 20.
As they stood outside the door of Holy Bagels, each awkward in the unsurety of how to say goodbye, Susan squeezed her sack of bagels in her hand, and told herself to “fake it ‘til you make it.”
“I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, Bill. Can I call you sometime?”
“Whew,” Bill grinned. “I thought I was going to have to ask you.”
When Susan entered the conference room bearing breakfast and coffee for the meeting, she was ebullient. She arranged the bagels in a pleasing manner in the center of the long, wooden table, and prepared an artful coffee bar near the door. She had been the first to arrive, and with Dr. Meyer and Bill in her corner, she decided to greet everyone as they came in.
Stokes was one of the last to arrive. Susan forced herself to smile and greet even him. He returned her greeting with a mocking smile and strolled to the head of the table, spine straight and pompous.
Mr. Everman walked in just as Stokes was beginning his meeting. Susan was delighted to see the look of unease pass across William’s leonine face, but reminded herself that the new Susan was not one to relish even her enemy’s suffering.
“Now this is a nice spread,” Mr. Everman said, his booming voice filling the room. He filled a cup with coffee, black, sat at the opposite head of the table, and grabbed an everything bagel. “Who can we thank for this fine breakfast.”
Susan saw Stokes’ mouth open to take the credit, so she spoke up quickly. “It was me, Mr. Everman. I’m trying to get my steps in anyway. And I knew everyone would have an easier time focusing with a full stomach.” She smiled and snuck a look at Stokes, whose perfectly formed nostrils were beginning to flare.
“That’s just the kind of thinking we need on this team. Looking out for each other, building each other up. Susan, come see me in my office on Thursday. Let’s talk.”
“Yes of course, sir!” Susan beamed. “You should try the pumpkin spice, sir. I made sure there would be plenty for seconds.”
“Yes, Susan. Thank you so much for breakfast.” Stokes had regained his composure, and was ready to steer the meeting into his own favor. “You know, Mr. Everman, this is the type of culture I have been trying to foster since I’ve been in my new position. In fact, just last week, I…”
“New revenue streams,” Mr. Everman interrupted. “That’s what you’re discussing today, isn’t it, Stokes? Don’t let me hold up your meeting. I’m just a fly on the wall.”
“Yes, sir,” Stokes said. Susan reveled in each little pulse of his clenching jaw.
Susan pulled her comforter back and slipped into bed, the incantation on her lips. She had been repeating the words for hours, over and over, until they had become a kind of chant she muttered without thought.
Earlier, feeling chipper from the day’s successes, she’d decided to finish chapter 6 of her audiobook on the drive home. Riveted by Dr. Meyer’s sage advice, Susan sat in her seat, leaned forward, worrying the steering wheel excitedly as she drove. The chapter closed with the suggestion that the listener begin writing affirmations and repeating them aloud in front of the mirror each night. Affirmations for what you could be, for your best possible self.
As Susan fumbled with her apartment keys, her mind was busy trying to hold the affirmations she had composed on the drive. When she’d found a tablet and a pencil, a list of new-Susan’s best qualities spilled out onto the page.
New Susan is attractive, obviously, and intimidatingly so. She isn’t younger, but has aged such that people guess her for at least ten years younger. New Susan is smart, and assertive. She is forceful and goes after what she wants. New Susan doesn’t shy away from opportunity, in love, in her career, in life.
Susan repeated the list, slowly distilling it down to the most minimal, powerful adjectives. Attractive. Young. Smart. Assertive. Forceful. Opportunistic.
Again and again, like a mantra, with single minded focus late into the evening. Eventually she no longer realized she was speaking. She became the words, merging with them, a coalescing miasma of confidence and beauty. Each word bled into the next until there were no longer words or sound, but something new.
Susan laid on her pillow, her head sinking in, lips moving, the words now just a hum on her lips, a deep vibration, lulling her into a dreamless, transformative sleep.
Susan’s eyes whipped open three minutes before her alarm went off, fully alert. Where usually her brain took half a pot of coffee to be functional, she could feel her mind whirring like a warm machine, calculating, formulating.
When she raised her arms over head to stretch the sleep from her muscles, she felt different. Better. The old ache in her right shoulder was gone.
She flung back the comforter and sprung from bed, not a creak from her finicky knee, not a joint in her body protesting.
Foregoing the coffee, Susan started the shower. As the water warmed, she examined her reflection in the vanity mirror. She noted the taut skin of her face and body, belying her 45 years. She stripped off her pajamas and let her hands run down her tight muscles and svelte physique. Her eyes were bright, as one who has been well rested for her entire life. Her hair hung in a charming tangle, a screen star’s bedhead, an intriguing streak of gray at her temple.
Susan was the Susan she had always been, she knew that much. Healthy, gorgeous, slim, smooth, pert. But that morning she couldn’t help but enjoy the sight she saw reflected back at her. She was looking at the best possible Susan.
On her morning commute, Susan enjoyed the stares of the other drivers, and the heads she turned on the walk between the parking garage and work. When the elevator door opened on the 5th floor occupied byEverman Industries, she felt the eyes of the other employees fall on her and linger. She walked purposefully to her desk, head high, acknowledging her coworkers’ greetings with a smile.
From the desk to her left, Rachel Winters sized her up with a blend of envy and contempt. She cleared her throat to get Susan’s attention.
“I just can’t figure it out.”
Susan swiveled her chair to face Rachel, and leaned back with her hands behind her head. “You can’t figure what out?”
“There’s something different about you. I can’t put my finger on it. Is it a new diet? More sleep?”
Susan let her hands fall to her lap and shrugged. “It’s all about what’s in here,” she said, tapping her temple. “You’ve got to believe you are your best self.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Oh. You mean like “The Secret.”
“‘Believe it’ by Dr. Gerald Meyer. Read it.” Susan turned away from Rachel, ending the conversation.
During lunch, Susan texted Bill and set up a date for drinks that evening.
At 6:30 she sauntered into Murphy’s bar, as spry and alluring as if she hadn’t just worked a nine hour day. The man she found waiting on a barstool wasn’t quite the man she remembered. He was at least five years her senior, and looked every year of it. His face was needlessly weathered, and she could discern the shine of his scalp through the thinning hair atop his head. As she approached, he stood to greet her, revealing that he was also much shorter than he should have been.
“Well, hello beautiful.”
“Bill,” she said tersely, extending a hand to block what was surely intended as a too-familiar greeting.
He waited until she sat before reseating himself on his stool. “I gotta say, I was surprised to hear from you soon. I’m surprised to hear from you at all. Actually, I’m still shocked that you asked me for my number.”
Susan smiled, hoping to hide the fact that she was shocked at the same thing.
“Well, we had such a nice conversation.” She waved at the bartender, and ordered a Grey Goose martini.
“And you are even lovelier than I remember.”
“Thank you,” she said diplomatically, and drained half her glass.
“So, how did the bagels go over? Was the pumpkin spice well received?”
Some deep, desperate part of her wanted to laugh, but new Susan was repelled by Bill’s attempt at humor using the one inside reference they shared.
“They were fine. Actually, Bill, I’m really tired. Maybe we could reschedule.”
Bill looked at the fresh beer the bartender had just set in front of him. “Um, sure, okay. When would be…”
“I’ll call you.” Susan pulled her wallet from her purse. “Let me get the drinks.”
Bill shooed her hand away. “No, no. I wouldn’t dream of it. Tell you what, you can get the next round.”
Susan nodded. “Bye, Bill.”
She could feel him watching as she walked away. In another life she would have looked back and waved. But in this one, she wasn’t likely to see Bill again. She strode out of Murphy’s, and called a Lyft to The Regency where she knew some of the higher-ups of Everman Industries were drinking that evening.
Ethan Everman’s office was one level up, and occupied one eighth of the floor. Light flooded in from each of the perpendicular windows and shone directly into Susan’s eyes. She refused to squint.
Susan hadn’t waited for an invitation. She seated herself in one of the cushioned chairs in front of Mr. Everman’s desk, which she couldn’t help but notice was slightly lower than his own.
Mr. Everman fell into his chair and began leafing through the papers in a file that lay open before him.
“Susan Doughty. I’ve been looking through your file.You’ve been with us for six years. Dependable. Creative thinker. Attractive. Brings bagels.” He stopped to chuckle. “Tell me, Susan, why haven’t we promoted you?”
“Stokes,” Susan said, without hesitation.
“Oh, Willy. I’ll tell ya, I’m not thrilled with how that one is panning out. A sycophant. I can’t stand brown nosers.” He closed the folder and looked her in the eye. “What’s your take on him?”
Susan felt a tugging at the back of her mind, an inkling of another kind of Susan. She would have been evasive in order to be nice. She would have played up Stokes’ strengths and only alluded to her dissatisfaction in the kindest way possible. A fleeting sneer swept across her mouth as she shoved the thought aside.
She told Mr. Everman all the true things about Stokes, with a smattering of exaggeration, a sprinkle of invention, and a peppering of self-promotion. When she had finished, Mr. Everman was questioning his own sense in ever hiring the boy.
“Ms. Doughty, you are something. A force to be reckoned with. Just what we need in this company.” As he rose from his chair, so did Susan. “Tell you what, let’s keep it quiet until the end of tomorrow. I’m going to talk to Stokes and explain the situation. I think some changes are in order.”
Susan extended her hand. “I’m glad for the opportunity. I think you’ve made the right decision.”
“And confident!” Mr. Everman shook her hand, surprised at the firmness of her grip. “I want you to enjoy your weekend, Susan. You’ll start in your new role on Monday.”
He stood there, smiling, waiting for her to say “thank you” and leave, but Susan didn’t move for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Is there something else?”
Susan smiled. “We never talked money.“
Friday had been overcast, constantly threatening to rain, but never delivering. By 4:30 the clouds had begun to break apart, revealing the robin’s egg blue sky behind, which suited Susan just fine. She had plans to kayak on the lake with a younger bodybuilder she had met at the gym the night before.
She was quickly packing the contents of her desk into a box in preparation for her move to her new office on Monday morning, when the elevator doors parted, and Stokes walked through.
He had a deflated look to him, a slouchiness in the shoulders that was very unbecoming. She noticed as he sulked toward what was to be her office that he wasn’t as handsome as she had thought before. His golden mane hung in lank, colorless strands. His fine Nordic nose seemed suddenly pointed and sniveling.
This was the guy they promoted over me? She stifled a laugh.
When Stokes reached the office door, he stopped and looked at Susan. The smirk or sneer he would have formerly worn had been replaced with dejection, and the quickest flash of hatred toward his vanquisher.
Catching his look, Susan placed the files she’d been packing on the desktop, and stood up straight, one hand on her hip, the other running through her magnificently coiffed hair, the corner of her mouth curling up, though it would be a stretch to call it a smile.
“See you Monday, Stokes,” she called across the office. “Meeting at 9 am sharp. Go ahead and grab some bagels on the way.”
IFFY FICTION 
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