The Wild Woman's Guide to Traveling the World Read online

  “Sophie, sweetie, please. You’re too smart for this nonsense. You’ve come so far and accomplished so much in your life. Don’t let some man make a mess of it.”

  “I would never do that,” I said. When I looked around, though, I couldn’t help but notice the mess I was currently in. Piles of laundry, an unmade bed, and a tote bag full of tissues I’d used to wipe away my tears on that long, weepy trip back home. When men get too close, they make a mess of things. It was a lesson Grandma taught me years ago, a mantra I’d repeated in my head over and over a thousand times. So when I met Carson, why had I chosen to ignore it?

  “Don’t let anyone distract you from your plans, Sophie.”

  “I know, Gram.”

  “Will I see you on Sunday?”

  “If I’m in town. I’m not sure if I’ll be traveling next weekend. I haven’t checked my e-mail yet.”

  “Well, let me know. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I hung up the phone, dejected and feeling like a fool. Even though I was reluctant to admit it, Grandma was right. After spending only a week together, Carson and I didn’t really know each other. He thought I was wild, after all, and nothing could be further from the truth. I was disciplined, sensible, and practical. And what did I know of him? Not all that much. He liked to draw. He had a trust fund. He refused to make plans for his future. Essentially, he was bobbing around the open seas without a compass or an anchor. I could never do that. I needed a state-of-the-art GPS. And I needed a destination.

  Carson was a dreamer, and I was a planner. I had fun playing make-believe inside our little bubble of romance, when I had unplugged from the rest of the world and decided to live in the moment. Now the bubble had burst, because I’d plugged myself back in, and in real life, we would never work. For me, real life wasn’t about living in the moment; it was about moving up, moving forward, moving on. And that’s exactly what I had to do. Move on.

  I peered at my phone and pulled up my e-mail. There were a little over a hundred new messages. Not too bad for a week away from the office. I scrolled through them, expecting to find some information about my next assignment. But there was no project plan, no schedule, no travel itinerary. Only a bunch of mass e-mails on which I’d been blind-copied and about two dozen increasingly urgent messages from Elizabeth. Her subject lines read things like, Please provide status update, and Martin Chu has been waiting for you all morning, and Where are you? The very latest one had a timestamp of six o’clock this morning. Elizabeth had been working way before I’d even opened my eyes.

  To: Sophie Bruno

  From: Elizabeth Fischman

  Subject: Status

  I thought you were returning from Hong Kong yesterday. I have not heard from you in six days. Please send me notice as soon as you read this.

  Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth had been less than thrilled with my decision to unplug from work for the week. I tapped the REPLY button and jotted off a hasty response.

  To: Elizabeth Fischman

  From: Sophie Bruno

  Subject: re: Status

  I’m back. Sorry I’ve been out of contact; I had some technical difficulties with my phone. Do you know where my next assignment will be? I haven’t heard from the travel desk yet.

  I hit SEND and continued to scroll through my inbox, where I noticed a number of messages from Elena. Yet another person who was eager for me to get in touch with her as soon as I was back in town. After dealing with my grandmother and Elizabeth, though, I wasn’t sure if I could handle another discussion in which I had to apologize for being out of reach or defend any of my choices. I knew I had to respond to Elena, but now was not the time.

  Instead, I leaned over to empty out the last items from my suitcase. Underneath my black ballet flats, I noticed a tear in the polyester lining of my bag.

  “Shit,” I said, thinking there’d be no time to repair it before I had to pack again. Inspecting the ripped fabric, I briefly considered whipping out my travel sewing kit to perform a little impromptu surgery, when I saw something had fallen underneath it, trapped between the lining and the outer plastic case. I reached inside, pulled it out, and was surprised to find my long forgotten guidebook. The front cover was bent back and the spine was torn, a victim of my neglect. I flipped through it, looking at all the dog-eared pages, the sights I never saw, the itinerary I never followed. They were the best plans I ever abandoned.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the blue light on my phone flashing. An e-mail had arrived. Looked like Elizabeth was still hard at work.

  To: Sophie Bruno

  From: Elizabeth Fischman

  Subject: re: Status

  Please be in my office at 8AM tomorrow. We have a lot to discuss.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next morning, before the sun rose, I walked from my apartment on 44th and 10th to McKinley headquarters on 42nd and 6th. At dawn, Broadway was shuttered and Times Square was eerily subdued. The empty streets were slick with the remnants of an overnight rainfall, and I stepped carefully to avoid puddles, the rubber soles of my sensible pumps thudding lightly against the damp pavement. Most of the city was just rolling out of bed, but I was wide awake and wired. Because after reading that e-mail from Elizabeth, I hadn’t slept all night. All I did was toss and turn, scolding myself for my irresponsible behavior. When my phone died in Hong Kong, I should’ve run out to the nearest electronics store and bought a replacement charger. I should’ve stuck to my original plan of visiting Martin Chu. And I definitely should’ve kept in touch with Elizabeth the whole time. What did I do instead? I locked my phone away in the hotel room safe and jumped back into bed with Carson.

  I’d always been proud of my ability to shut down the outside world and zero in on my work with single-minded vision, like I was looking through the crosshairs of a rifle. But in Hong Kong, I’d let my target get away from me, lost in a daydream, preoccupied with a silly fantasy. Really, that’s all my relationship with Carson was: a silly fantasy. It wasn’t love. How could it have been? Like Grandma said, we barely knew each other. And what I knew of him was completely wrong for me.

  So anytime my thoughts wandered thousands of miles away—anytime I found myself picturing Carson’s eyes, his hair, the tattoo on his chest—I quickly swept them out of my mind. My job was at risk and my head was a mess, all because I’d allowed myself to fall for someone who I knew from the start would never work out. Someone who distracted me from my plans.

  I pushed through the revolving glass doors at One Bryant Park and strode through the cavernous lobby toward the second row of elevator banks, where I swiped my badge at the turnstile and pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor. McKinley occupied three entire floors of the building, and rumor had it they were in the process of acquiring a fourth. It was a period of explosive growth for the firm, having been ranked by Forbes as the nation’s third most prestigious consulting group three years in a row. In certain circles, a business card with the McKinley logo was a status symbol. Even after three years on the job, I still felt a rush when I handed someone that little blue and gold rectangle.

  There were no assigned cubicles in the office for traveling consultants, only a neat row of white desks with ergonomic black chairs, available for temporary visitors and transients waiting for their next assignments. At this hour of the morning, there were a few stray employees scattered around the workspace, none of whom I recognized. McKinley employed hundreds of people across the globe, all of them traveling from office to office, wherever their skill set was needed most. I’d often be partnered with someone on a project for weeks, sit next to them at conference room tables for fourteen hours a day, and then once our assignment came to an end, I’d never see them again. Such was the nature of the traveling consultant. Getting close and then saying good-bye.

  Sitting at a desk next to a window overlooking the park, I popped my laptop out of my bag, plugged it in, and fired it up. There were no new messages in my work inbox. No itinera
ries from the travel desk, no schedules for the upcoming week. I should’ve already known the details of my next assignment by now. That I had no hint of where I’d be going was troublesome, to say the least.

  I took a deep breath and skimmed the headlines of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Concentration was futile, though, because I kept thinking about the impending meeting with Elizabeth. In my head, I ran through all the excuses I could think of to justify why I’d spent the past week ignoring all her e-mails. I didn’t have my phone charger. I was on vacation. We all need some time to unplug and unwind, right?

  Finally, at ten to eight, I yanked the power cord from the side of my laptop, packed my bag, and gripped the handles tightly in one fist. With my chin in the air and my shoulders pushed back, I walked down the hall to Elizabeth’s office, exuding all the false confidence I could muster. When I knocked on the door, her muffled voice beckoned me inside, and I ducked my head around the door frame to find her slouching behind her mahogany desk, scowling down at her computer screen while her fingers flew across the keyboard at full speed.

  Without looking up, she snapped, “Why have you been out of contact for the last six days?”

  Good morning to you, too.

  I lowered myself into the leather guest chair, trying to recall all the lines I’d been inwardly rehearsing all morning. “I accidentally left my phone charger at home.”

  “You couldn’t purchase a replacement charger in Hong Kong?”

  “W-well,” I stuttered, “you see, I wasn’t exactly intending for Hong Kong to be a business trip. It was more of a pleasure trip.”

  The clacking of keys halted abruptly as she turned to face me. “A pleasure trip.” She tested the words out on her tongue, like she was repeating a foreign phrase.

  “Yes. A vacation.”

  When I saw Elizabeth’s sour expression—the puckered lips and flared nostrils—I knew I had made a grave error in my choice of words.

  “You are expected to remain accessible at all times. Furthermore, when I approved this time off, I made it clear you were to check in with Martin Chu in the Hong Kong office while you were overseas.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know he’d be waiting for me all morning. I didn’t realize it was a required meeting. Since it was technically my ‘time off.’”

  By now, I was pretty sure I saw thin wisps of smoke escape from her ears. I knew damn well I was expected to work while I was in Hong Kong; I’d simply chosen not to. And Elizabeth was fully aware that my declaration of ignorance was a bold-faced lie.

  “Do you know how lucky you are to have this job, Sophie? Do you know how many people would kill to be in your place?”

  “I—”

  “The correct answer is two thousand five hundred and sixty. That’s how many applicants we had for a single open junior analyst position last month.”

  I gripped the armrests and kept my lips tightly sealed. Obviously, Elizabeth had no interest in what I had to say on the matter. This was a one-sided conversation, in which she lectured and I listened.

  “You showed great promise when you were first hired, but frankly, I’m beginning to question your dedication to this organization. So if you don’t want to work at McKinley, then there’s a long line of bright, young, talented prospects just waiting to scoop up your position.”

  Suddenly, I envisioned myself being forced to surrender my smartphone and laptop at the front desk. Jeanette, our receptionist, would give me a pitying look, and security would escort me through the lobby of the building until I was safely out on the sidewalk. Word of my poor performance would spread rapidly throughout the industry, and as a result, I’d be blacklisted from ever attaining another job as an IT consultant. Without my generous salary, I would no longer be able to afford my fancy Manhattan digs, and thus I’d have no other choice but to pack up all my belongings and move to a run-down hovel in the farthest reaches of Queens—or heaven forbid, back to my old bedroom in New Jersey with Grandma, who would never let me forget about the miserable failure my life had become, all because I’d decided to screw around with some guy.

  At times like these, there was nothing left to do but grovel. “I swear I won’t disappoint you on my next assignment.” I sat so far forward on the edge of my seat that I almost fell off. “Wherever you choose to send me next, I will give a hundred and ten percent of my efforts.”

  Elizabeth turned back to her computer. For the next few moments, she clicked her mouse, while we sat there in palpable silence. Her pale face glowed green in the light of her widescreen monitor. Finally, she said, “I think an in-house job might be best for you at the moment.”

  What should have been an overwhelming sense of relief at having preserved my employment was quickly eclipsed by a wave of distress. In-house jobs were arguably a fate worse than New Jersey. I knew I’d be assigned to a project with a partner who was either fresh out of college or completely incompetent, meaning I’d be bearing the brunt of the work. It was an open secret that in-house jobs were reserved for the lowest people on the totem pole, people who couldn’t be trusted to work unsupervised. As expected, I had a lot of in-house jobs when I first started out at McKinley, but after six months of diligent service within the New York office, I learned the ropes pretty thoroughly and was finally given the green light to begin working all around the globe. Up until this point, I’d only ever returned to the New York office for two reasons: biannual performance reviews and McKinley’s yearly over-the-top holiday party. So the fact that I was now assigned to an in-house project did not bode well for my status at the company.

  Not to mention, for me, the sole redeeming quality of this increasingly miserable job was the perk of traveling the world. I wasn’t sure if I could tolerate being stuck at home for weeks on end. Especially if I’d be spending lots of one-on-one time with Elizabeth, like this, sitting in a state of catlike readiness while she glowered at me from the other side of her desk.

  “Are you sure you don’t need me to join up with the team working on Crawford Capital over in London?” I suggested, desperation seeping from my pores. “Or maybe send me to Asia? I really enjoyed my time in Hong Kong. I’d love to go back, if I could be of any use on a project over there.”

  “Ha!” It was the first time I think I’d ever heard Elizabeth laugh. “After the way you blew off your meeting with Martin Chu, I don’t think anyone in the entire Asia division is eager to work with you.”

  Great. Looks like news of my bad reputation has already started to spread.

  “No,” she said. “We have internal IT audits coming up in four weeks. So you’ll be working on gathering the data necessary for our auditors to facilitate their expedient implementation. And you’ll be partnered with Seth Ramsey.”

  I discreetly inspected the corners of the room for hidden cameras. At this point, I was convinced that Elizabeth must be playing some sort of cruel prank on me. But no, it turned out she was completely serious about assigning me to a shitty internal audit with the notoriously lazy and inept son of John Ramsey, one of the partners who’d founded McKinley thirty years prior. Seth was a few years older than me but graduated from college—without honors—eighteen months after I did. Once the job market chewed him up and spat him back out, he went running to Daddy for employment. So his father hired him on as a junior analyst—apparently, he didn’t have to wait in line with the other two thousand five hundred and sixty candidates—but Seth quickly proved himself useless and was relegated to a position as a permanent in-house staffer. Oblivious to his own total lack of skill or smarts, he’d convinced himself he was the hottest guy to ever walk the halls of One Bryant Park.

  I’d also made the terrible mistake of having sex with him.

  Really, really bad sex.

  It only happened once, at the last McKinley holiday party. I place the blame squarely on Jeanette, for mixing up such delicious eggnog that I couldn’t stop refilling my cup. After my fourth—or possibly fifth—visit to the punch bowl, Se
th’s smarmy pickup lines started to seem less oily and more charming, and I followed him back to his office on the thirty-third floor for what I thought would be an exciting romp. Three minutes later, I was bent over the spare desk with my skirt hiked above my hips, and Seth was already collapsed in a postorgasmic heap. It was, quite possibly, the most disappointing sexual encounter I’d ever had.

  Thinking back on it, I wasn’t really attracted to him, per se. Sure, he was good-looking—if you’re into run-of-the-mill ivory-skinned preppy boys—but what turned me on more than anything else was his invincibility. The idea that he could do whatever he wanted around this company and he’d never lose his job. He had what every other McKinley employee craved: power, influence, and the ability to get John Ramsey on the phone with a snap of his fingers.

  Of course, after that unsatisfying quickie, the allure of his power promptly disappeared. I hadn’t seen him since, and I assumed I could successfully avoid him for the remainder of my tenure at McKinley. I hadn’t planned on ever sinking so low as to be assigned to another in-house project. Or being partnered with the firm’s most unqualified staff member, the guy who put in zero effort but would never be fired, merely because of his last name.

  If I’d had the slightest bit of courage or self-respect, I would have told Elizabeth to go to hell and quit on the spot. Instead, I whimpered a feeble, “Okay,” and sat there while she dictated a three-page to-do list.

  “That just about covers what we’ll need completed by Friday,” she said.

  “This Friday?”

  “We’re on a very tight timeline, Sophie.” She turned back to her computer. “You can get started right away. Seth’s office is on the thirty-third floor. He’s got an extra desk in there you can use.”

  I’m familiar with that office. And that extra desk.

  I excused myself and made a beeline for the stairwell, where I could hyperventilate in private. Elizabeth said I’d started this job with such promise. But now it was clear my career was on a vertiginous nosedive, and I was having a hard time pinpointing exactly when things began to head south. It was easy to say Carson had distracted me from my plans, but truthfully, I’d started slacking off before I’d even packed my bags for Hong Kong. If my head had really been in the game, I never would’ve forgotten to put my phone charger in my suitcase. What’s more, as soon as I discovered it was missing, I would’ve run out and bought a replacement. I wouldn’t have slowly allowed the battery to drain as it sat untouched in the hotel room safe. The fact is, I wanted to forget about work, long before Carson ever entered the picture.