Free The Night I Got Lucky by Laura Caldwell

might not have enough money to execute the campaign properly. By the time 4:00 rol ed around, my head was aching and my eyes were exhausted from crunching numbers.
    Inside the Institute, I flashed my annual pass at the ticket taker and wandered the cool marble hal ways. I gazed at the Etruscan pitchers made of bronze and the metal armor that seemed too tiny to hold a knight. I stared at the Cassatt and strol ed through a Manet exhibition.
    Meandering through the Art Institute was an old trick of mine, something I’d discovered when I first started working. I loved the unhurried reverence of the place. And by taking in the beauty and the antiquity, it reminded me how smal my purported troubles were, how insignificant. I was able to laugh (or at least chuckle grudgingly) at my so-cal ed problems and forget what ailed me.
    But it wasn’t working today. There was no way to overlook what had happened—the massive shift in al facets of my life that had occurred with no transition, no official proclamations and very little recognition of the change by anyone. It was almost like being a car accident victim, someone who had glanced down to switch the dashboard radio station and looked back up to find a tractor-trailer stal ed in their path. Life can change in an instant—we al know that—but in my case, I seemed to be the only one to know the change had happened.
    Final y, staring at a miniature portrait of a woman with ruby-red lips, I decided to just get on with it. Embrace the new life, the new job.
    And so I slipped my silver cel phone from my purse and cal ed Evan, stil at his desk, and asked him if he’d discuss budgeting with me over a cup of coffee. I couldn’t talk to him in the office, for fear that someone would overhear us and I’d look il -suited for the job.
    “No coffee,” Evan said. “I need a beer. Sounds like you do, too.”
    “Fine. Wrightwood Tap, I presume.”
    “Baby, I love how you know me.” It wasn’t hard to guess that Evan would want to go to Wrightwood Tap, a DePaul University hangout. Evan had attended DePaul for his undergrad degree, and the Tap was stil his favorite watering hole. It probably didn’t hurt that the place was always ful of female coeds, sipping beers and hiking up their very low-waisted jeans.
    At five o’clock, I met him at the bar, and we found a tal open table by the front windows. The place had a center rectangular bar, scarred wood floors and laminated menus boasting the usual bar fare.
    We ordered beers—a Corona for me, Old Style for Evan. Despite being a VP and living in a slick, north side condo, Evan was stil very south side in his beer tastes. “It’s in the genes,”
    he always said. Personal y, I felt that Evan was holding tight to something that would make him similar, in some smal way, to his father. Tommy O’Reil y, Evan’s dad, was a career plumber who wanted his only son to learn the business and eventual y take it over. Instead, Evan got a scholarship to DePaul and went into PR. He endured constant barbs from his father about how he must be a “fairy” to do such a job, but Evan stil went back to the south side on Sundays to watch footbal or basebal with his dad. And he stil drank Old Style.
    “So what’s happening, hot stuff ?” Evan asked as our beers were delivered.
    “It’s the budgeting. I don’t know how to do it. I mean, math has never been my forte, and now I’m crunching numbers al the time. I never know if the numbers I’m throwing out there are legit or if they’re total y off. And how do you decide on an initial figure? It’s so random. And—”
    “Whoa, whoa, slow down. It’s no big deal. You’l get the hang of it.”
    “It is a big deal.”
    “Why?”
    “Hel o? Because I’l get fired if I can’t do this job correctly.”
    “So, you’re afraid someone wil do to you what you did to Alexa?”
    I silently fiddled with the label of my beer bottle. I’d been trying not to think about Alexa al day. I’d avoided her now