As Seen On Tv. Sarah Mlynowski

smell like hot chocolate. Smells like good old will-deform-your-baby caffeine. That’s terrible. Doesn’t she know that she’s risking her baby’s health?

      She slides into a metal chair. “I’m going to stay here for a while and look over some notes.”

      Should I insist on sitting with her to make sure she doesn’t try to sneak a smoke, too? Maybe I should get a better sniff of what’s in that water bottle. Or maybe I’ve got to get somewhere and write down this number. “See you later, Liza.”

      Two-one-two-five-five-five-three…three times twelve…twelve? Damn.

      During my leftover pineapple pizza lunch, I respond to the first of two of my friend Millie’s e-mails:

      To: Millie

      Subject: Re: Where The Hell Are You?

      I just got back last night. He asked me to move in with him. I’m going. It’s insane.

      Her second e-mail, tagged with Fw: Purity Tampons Cause Cancer, is one of those health forwards. Millie, one of my closest friends, knows that I love spreading these millions-of-women-die-needlessly warnings. You never know, one day one of these e-mails could save someone’s life.

      I received this from a friend—please read and pass along. Have you heard that Purity includes asbestos in their tampons? Why? Because asbestos makes you bleed more, and if you bleed more, you are going to use more…

      I tried a Purity tampon once, but it felt as if I was trying to shove a cement brick up my vagina. I forward the e-mail to Liza because she loves chain letters, especially those feel-good chain letters that promise you instant death if you don’t forward immediately. I forward the Purity Tampons Cause Cancer e-mail to my older sister Dana, too. This way she knows that the reason I didn’t call her when I got home late night was not because my plane crashed, or was hijacked by terrorists, but because I am an extremely busy career woman who is also very concerned with women’s health. And who knows? Maybe she’ll get a story idea out of it. Dana does the nine o’clock news for the radio station WCMG Miami. She’s desperately trying to move to TV. She also sells feature articles to newspapers all over the country in an attempt to build up her portfolio.

      Six seconds after I hit Send, my extension rings.

      As always, I contemplate answering the phone with, “What?” But I don’t. “Sunny Langstein speaking.”

      “Why didn’t you call me when you got in? You know I worry about you.”

      “Sorry, Dana. I got in late and I didn’t want to wake you.”

      My sister snorts. “I told you to wake me. Did I not tell you to wake me? Did you have a good trip?”

      “Very nice trip, thanks.” Do I tell her? I have to tell her. “Hold on one sec,” I say. I put the phone on the desk and close my office door. I sit down in my swivel chair and take a deep breath. Liza hates when her staff’s doors are closed, always asks us to please leave them open so that the other departments don’t get the impression we’re unfriendly.

      Her door has been closed for about six months now.

      “He asked me to move in with him.”

      Silence.

      “Hello? You still there?”

      “I’m here,” she says. “He wants you to move to New York?”

      “Yes. What do you think?”

      “Do you care what I think?”

      “Maybe.”

      “Are you going to go?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’re just going to quit your job and leave everything behind? Isn’t that a bit irrational?”

      And the guilt begins. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her. Maybe I should have moved and called her from New York. “What’s new?” I could have asked. She would have rambled on for hours, and when she finally stopped for breath, I could have interjected, “Call me at this new number, ’kay?” And that would have been it. I should have banked on Dana’s tunnel vision—her ability to only see and hear what she wants to see and hear. It would have taken her months, maybe even years, before she realized that 212 wasn’t Fort Lauderdale’s area code.

      Case in point: after I graduated from college, she admitted she didn’t know that I had studied business at University of Florida.

      “What did you think I was studying?”

      She shrugged, straightening the neck of my gown. “Communications.”

      I laughed. “Why? Because you studied communications?”

      “No,” she answered, sounding insulted. “I thought that’s what you said. That you wanted to study communications.”

      I did. When I was eleven. When Dana wanted to be a star reporter like Barbara Walters and decided to major in communications, I said I wanted to be Barbara Walters and study communications. What do they teach you in communications anyway? How to talk? But then I decided that business was a little more practical. That’s what my father told me.

      And journalism isn’t the only way to make a difference in this world. I’m going to change the structure from within.

      One day, armed with all types of theorems, my business degree and women’s studies minor, I would break through the corporate glass ceiling.

      One day.

      Coming up with the next Snapple wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. The problem is, I haven’t found a ceiling really worth breaking. Panda recruited on campus and I dropped off my resume, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and then they called me in for an interview and then they offered me a job. I am quite talented at convincing people to do what I want, even when I’m not sure I want it.

      But I’m only twenty-four, still building the resume. One day I’ll do something real. Change the world. And in the meantime, unlike Dana, since the day I started college, my father hasn’t had to lend me a dime.

      A piece of pineapple is trapped behind my bottom teeth, in the wire that my orthodontist glued on after I got my braces off. “It’s not irrational,” I say, while digging for the stray piece of fruit.

      “I can’t understand you. You’re mumbling. Are you going to quit your job?”

      Spit or swallow? I spit the de-wedged pineapple into a tissue. “I thought of flying in every morning, but it’ll be difficult.”

      “Don’t be a smart-ass.”

      Dana breathes heavily in my ear, waiting. I don’t breathe that loudly, do I? Now that Steve and I will be permanently sleeping in the same bed, I’ll have to train myself to inhale and exhale through my nose so that I don’t kill him with my morning breath.

      I see Liza huff by through the two window panels by my door. They don’t let us lowly assistant managers have blinds for fear we’ll spend all day playing Tetris, downloading porn or write to the higher-ups that we’re secretly doing their jobs.

      “I’ll find a new job.”

      “Isn’t Panda considered one of the top five companies to work for in Florida? Aren’t you on the fast track over there?” Of course, that she remembers.

      “I won’t be promoted for another year.”

      “Why? Don’t you do all of your boss’s work?”

      True. “But I’m not ready to be a manager. I still need to have someone look over my stuff. And I’m only twenty-four. They don’t let twenty-four-year-olds be managers.”

      “You’re a mature twenty-four. You should have asked for a promotion by now. Don’t be such a pushover.”

      I bite my tongue to keep from telling her to take her own advice. First