Page 11 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“Oh my god, you seriously can’t say anything. Not that I’d care if they fired me at this point,” she says, checking her phone.

“Cone of silence,” I say. “Everything stays in this elevator…exceptus.Hopefully.”

There’s more banging and whirring above us. Voices yelling back and forth.

“Like the people I work with—thedudesI work with, because let’s face it, it’s dudes we’re talking about—they could not be more disdainful of the material. Basically I just try to do the minimum so that we both can say it happened. My firm gets paid…I don’t know why I’m venting. It’s just…not the job I envisioned when I did my training. I thought I’d help people, not be their hated punishment.”

I nod sympathetically. Did somebody on Mr. Blackberg’s leadership team get out of line?

“When they first sent me to do one-on-one coaching with a bigwig exec, I was so shocked. I mean, I have a psych degree and tons of coaching training, but no experience, and they’re sending me to coach this C-suite guy? They put me right in on the A-list? Turns out I was on the grunt list.”

“Is there nothing you enjoy about it?” I ask. “Maybe one nice thing?”

“No. You kind of have to be a self-starter, too. I think I picked the wrong job.” She sighs. “Do you like being a mailperson?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I love it.”

“That must feel so good,” she says. “To love what you do.”

“It does,” I say. “Having a job you love is amazing. And when life gets hard, having this one little area where you feel like you’re making a positive difference means everything.”

She looks at me longingly. “I wish I was making a positive difference.”

“Aren’t there other jobs you can get?” I ask.

“I feel like it’s too late.”

“Are you kidding? It’s never too late to change. I don’t care if you’re thirty or fifty or seventy,” I say. “What are you, twenty-six?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Puh-lease.” I tell her my story—how long I spent stuck in a rural town I hated, dreaming so hard of a different life, a better life, and never making it happen. Maybe it’s just because she’s a stranger in an elevator, but I even confess how my specific dream of having a clan of girlfriends in the Big Apple was inspired by reruns ofSex and the City.

I tell her how I’d look on Craigslist at roommate-wanted ads in New York and Brooklyn and dream of answering one of them. I’d even google the addresses and stare at the buildings, but I was so scared to make the move because I didn’t know anybody, and also I had an on-again off-again boyfriend and a mother back in Mapleton. Then my mom got cancer. I tell her how hard I’d fought the insurance companies to get the care that Mom deserved, this special treatment that I wanted her to have, but they refused. And she died.

“And your dad?” she asks.

“Sperm bank. My mom was super independent—she was amazing. There was nothing she couldn’t do. Until, you know…”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “The point is, it made me aware of how short life is. And even though I was scared, I went home after that funeral and I looked at the Craigslist ads. And there was this roommate-wanted ad. The ad mentioned gourmet popcorn and watching Bachelorette with women from down the hall, and I went for it. After all those years I spent looking at Craigslist roommate ads and never answering them, wasting all this time in a place I wanted to leave, it took my mother dying for me to make the leap. And I’m so glad I did.”

“I don’t know if I’m gutsy like that.”

“I’m not, either. Not at all! You just have to do it. Life is short, Stella.”

“I don’t think I can leave my job after investing so much time.”

“But you hate it,” I say. “And you said even if you get the good jobs, you don’t think you’re good at it.”

“True.” She picks at a sticker on her briefcase. “And I hate my bosses for sending me to coach these assholes. And I don’t even get insurance.”

“Seriously?” I scowl. “No insurance? You work full-time with no insurance?”

“I’m technically a contractor. A way for them to get out of paying benefits. God, it’s not a very good job, is it?”

“Tell me, Stella, if you could do anything, what would you want to do?”

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