Page 3 of Desperately Seeking Mr. Darcy

I turn around, butt toward the door, and look both ways down the hallway before quickly taking care of the situation.

“Come in,” I hear Christine Choi, the program director and my boss, say.

Opening the door, I see her sitting behind her cluttered desk, her nearly black hair pulled up into a bun with a number two yellow pencil holding it in place. She’s wearing circular, rimmed glasses that are perched at the edge of her nose. Very schoolmarm. Except she’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that saysExit, Pursued by a Bear—a famously odd stage direction from Shakespeare inThe Winter’s Tale.

We like to get creative with arts-themed shirts at Horizons Creative Arts Center in the posh, smallish town of El Dorado Hills, California, where I’ve worked for the past four years. We invested in our own heat press machine so we can make all the shirts our little hearts desire, just so long as we buy the plain T-shirts ourselves, because there’s no room in the budget for that.

Today I’m sporting a graphic tee that saysI’d rather be at Pemberley, with a little illustration of an English manor, and yes, I made it myself. I didn’t realize when I put it on this morning that I would, in fact, love to be visiting Pemberley rightnow—I’d even settle for a less desirable place like, say the DMV on a Tuesday morning, rather than here.

Yes, I’d rather sit in that crowded room—waiting for my number to be called, the smell of stale coffee, lingering cigarette smoke from when people used to smoke indoors (how was that ever a thing?), and the unmistakable tang of human impatience in the air—than be here right now.

Why? Because I have to do the thing I hate the most: assert myself. I’d much rather be the peacemaking chameleon that I’ve always been. I’ve done it for so long, it’s my comfort zone.

But not today, Satan. No comfort zone for me.

“Um, hi,” I say to my boss, like a moron. Like I haven’t worked for her as an administrative assistant these past four years. Like I don’t know how she takes her coffee or that she has a fear of staplers stemming from an unfortunate incident as a child where she stapled a paper to her finger and will now only use binder clips, even if it’s just two sheets of paper.

If we were to go paperless, it would probably help Christine immensely—and me as her assistant (because I do an awful lot of stapling for my job). But alas, we don’t have the budget.

Around here, our shoestring budget goes to programs, not paychecks. As a nonprofit, we rely on grants and donors, which means we’re all underpaid. We do it for the love of the job: building a creative community for all ages. The paycheck may be light, but at least our souls are well fed.

It would just be nice to feed my body as well. One cannot subsist on ramen alone. Sometimes I wonder if an OnlyFans account for my feet—which are mediocre at best—could be in my future.

“Macey,” Christine says, giving me a closed-mouth smile. “How can I help you?”

Her subtle encouragement gives me the nudge I need to say the words I’d been rehearsing. I tuck a strand of red hair behindmy ear and remind myself to breathe as I take a seat in one of the eighties-style teal chairs facing her desk. Actually, they aren’t eighties-style—they’re literally from the eighties. Please see previous remarks about budgets.

“Um,” I start, but then stop, my nerves getting the best of me.

“Yes?” she prods.

“Right,” I say and then clear my throat, my face feeling heated. “Um ... It’s not a big deal or anything ... I know you’re super busy, so no worries if it slipped through the cracks, but I was just kind of wondering if you happened to see that program I sent you?”

A surge of adrenaline courses through me as I finally say what I came here to say, even if it’s a little rambling and sounded mostly like an apology of sorts. Why am I being like this? Put me onstage with a script and I’ll nail it—no hesitation. But speaking up for myself? That’s ... hard.

Christine’s eyes brighten at this. “I did,” she says. “It’s wonderful, Macey. I loved it so much.”

“Oh, really?” I say, little excited butterflies fluttering in my stomach. “It’s just something I threw together.”

That isn’t true, actually—I spent a lot of my free time on it. The program blends theater, visual arts, and storytelling, allowing children to create their own short plays, design props, and perform their scripts. It’s an idea I mulled over for a long time before finally finding the courage to write it and, after months of hesitation, submit it to Christine. I hoped it would be my chance to move from administrative assistant to program coordinator and finally use my fine arts degree from Sacramento State—a degree where only half of graduates actually work in the field. I could be making that stat up, but I swear I read it somewhere.

“I showed it to Jackie, and we’ve added it to the roster for next spring,” Christine says.

She showed it to the executive director? I think I’m glowing, possibly enough to be seen from space.

The idea for the program wasn’t the result of a random brainstorm—it was a piece of me. As a kid, community art centers like Horizons were my sanctuary. They let me escape the empty apartment, the unopened bills stacked on the counter, and the many bottles hidden in kitchen cabinets. This program felt like a chance to create that same haven for someone else—a place where their imagination could run wild, just like mine once did.

Now I need to psych myself up for the next part of this conversation. In my head, this talk I’ve initiated always ended with Christine saying the program was decent and handing me a stack of papers to staple. I hadn’t planned for her to actually love it or want to implement it. Guess I’ll have to wing it. I’ll think of it as improv. One of my skills that, like my feet, is mediocre.

I swallow. “So, then . . .”

“Yes?” she prompts.

“So ... since I wrote the program ... do ... I, um, get to run it?” I let out a breath because that was difficult.

Christine’s brows pinch, and she frowns.

“Oh, Macey ... I’ve already assigned it to Verity,” she says.

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