On the Rocks(90)

I grabbed her elbow and led her over to the couch, trying not to be surprised that she was here in the middle of the workweek or that she was able to drive down from Boston when she was such a wreck. Bobby, partially in an attempt to help his distraught friend and partially to keep himself busy so as to avoid the very girlie conversation that was about to take place, immediately poured vodka and a disproportionately small amount of club soda over ice and handed it to her. He slowly sat down on the edge of one of the wicker chairs adjacent to the couch, almost afraid to move.

“What happened?” I rubbed her back as she put her head between her knees in order to calm her breathing. Everyone had known it would end this way. Truthfully, I think she had known too.

“I did something really stupid.”

“You mean, like dating a married guy?” Bobby joked. I shot him a death stare. This was not the best time for sarcasm.

“I went to send him an email, telling him how much fun I had with him last night and how much I loved him.”

“What was last night?” I asked.

“He came over. We had dinner and watched a movie and talked about where we were going to live when we moved in together.” Grace had a sense of urgency in her voice I hadn’t heard in years. The last time she sounded this panicked was after she’d been thrown in the clink during college for having an open container of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the sidewalk. “Okay. Why’s that a problem?”

“I accidentally sent it to the entire team,” she said as she once again burst into sobs.

“Oh God. Please tell me it was a normal message and not some X-rated thing. You didn’t send him naked pictures, did you?” It seemed like a ridiculous question to have to ask, but “sexting,” as the kids were calling it these days, had become an ever-increasing phenomenon. It was one that I found profoundly stupid, but again, technology had changed courtship so much that it was as commonplace to shoot off inappropriate pictures to people as it was to ask about the weather. I really missed the old days, you know, when someone had to actually be in your presence in order to see you naked. I doubted that girls had sent nude Polaroids of themselves through the mail in the eighties. But the eighties had also been a crazy time, so maybe I’m naive.

“I really don’t think I want to know the answer to this,” Bobby said as he stood and headed for the door, deflecting my question regarding Grace’s potentially X-rated email. “I think I hear my mom calling me. I have to go.”

“Your mom lives in Florida,” I said.

“I know. She must be really mad.”

“Sit your ass down and shut up,” I said. He hung his head and returned to his seat on the wicker chair. If only boyfriends were so obedient.

“It wasn’t an X-rated message, but I went on and on about how much I loved him and how much I wanted to be with him. How could I make such a stupid mistake? I just announced to anyone with an IP address that I’m in love with a colleague. What the hell am I going to do?”

“How’d you manage to confuse his email address with a distribution list for your entire team? I don’t even know how that’s possible.” I felt horrible for Grace. This would cause her so much embarrassment at the office. She certainly wasn’t the first one to have a relationship blow up because of the Internet. In this room alone I knew for a fact she was at least the second, and there were only three of us present.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Can you recall it? Or pull the plug on the network? Or infect the place with some kind of virus?” My brain was spinning, trying to think of something to say to make this less of a disaster. It was pointless.

“No, Abby, believe it or not, I’m not technologically savvy enough to know how to crash the network of a major law firm. Thanks for that staggeringly helpful suggestion.”

“Okay,” I said, ignoring her sarcasm. “This is not the worst thing in the world. Do you know how many emails I ignore on a regular basis? I doubt that many people will even see it.”

“It gets worse,” she said, her entire upper body heaving.

Oh God. Grace backed into a corner was never a pretty sight.

“What did you do, Grace?” My question was met with silence. “Answer me.”

“The only thing I could do. He was out of the office at a client meeting, so I dug the spare key out of his secretary’s desk and broke into his office to delete it from his inbox.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding. Grace, you can be fired for breaking into your boss’s office and going through his emails! You can be fired for a lot of things you’re doing at that firm. Do you really need to add breaking and entering to your résumé?”

“This coming from the person who just suggested infecting the firm’s entire network with a virus!”

“I don’t think breaking into his office was a good alternative.”

“I figured I’d just pull up his email and delete it. No big deal.”

“Sorry to point out the obvious, but I’d bet he had his BlackBerry on him. Deleting something from his computer wasn’t really going to solve your problem.”

“That’s great, Abby. Freak me out even more than I already am.”

“Sorry. But for the record, these are problems girls didn’t have before email. I mean, how many people would accidentally address, stamp, and mail an envelope to the wrong person?”