Virginia Slim
I had just finished my first year teaching Spanish at a private Catholic school, a job that paid less than a livable wage and came with more incense than instruction. Before accepting this role as an educator, I’d never actually thought about a career. My whole life leading up to college had been a single-minded march toward “getting a degree,” as if the diploma itself would unlock some secret door to adulthood. Once I had the diploma in hand, I realized I needed to find suitable work. But what was I suited to? That’s the trouble with a Liberal Arts degree, I suppose.
Teaching seemed like the logical next step. I was married to a teacher, after all. I entertained romantic visions of us grading papers by the hearth, sipping Wisconsin Old Fashioneds with a record spinning something jazzy in the background. We'd spend summers basking blithely on state park beaches, our skin golden in the sun and our minds free of worry. None of these things came to pass. Instead, I spent a year being paid below the poverty line to teach nine different grades with no curriculum, no textbooks, and no mercy. The details of that year are so absurd we won’t even begin to dwell on them now. After a year of daily prayer, weekly mass, and monthly seminars with St. Thomas Aquinas, I learned a thing or two about Catholicism—namely, that the teachers’ lounge is just as filthy as any secular water cooler, only with more catechisms and passive aggression. After that first year of teaching the subjunctive case to a group of endearing, if occasionally entitled, students on a $16,900 annual contract, I decided it wasn’t the career path for me.
I sought wise counsel. My father, his lady, and I sat down over pancakes and coffee to draft a list of career requirements. I couldn’t be a housewife—I was married to a teacher, remember—and I had no interest in entrepreneurship, having grown up watching my parents chase character-building business ventures with hopeful, if dubious, beginnings and noble, if inevitable, ends.
We whittled the list down to three tenets:
Flexibility – I wanted to control my hours and maintain a semblance of work-life balance.
Scalability – I needed room to grow, preferably without having to sell any more plasma.
Demand – The industry had to be stable, like plumbing or death.
Finance emerged as the unlikely frontrunner. I began calling anyone I knew who worked in the industry, asking probing questions like, “Have you ever cried at work?” and “How often do you feel like quitting?” One such friend of a friend of a friend introduced me to a woman we’ll call Virginia Slim.
Now, of course, her name wasn’t Virginia. But for the sake of her privacy—and because she smoked Virginia Slims with the dedication of a monk at vespers—we’ll refer to her thus.
On a misty morning, I steamed my nicest blazer and slipped into my nude heels. I walked into the bank I’d passed my whole life but never entered. It was spotless and orderly. The air was dry, the chatter low and constant, like bees in a distant field. The vaulted ceilings soared, and the windows stretched from floor to sky. I loved it immediately.
Virginia’s office was a study in polish. Her platinum blonde hair was freshly dyed, her nails long and lacquered in a shade of pink that could only be described as “divorced and thriving.” Her desk was immaculate, her gestures warm and inviting. I sat across from her and stated my business. I was there to interview her about her job in mortgage lending. She, by far, was the most engaging interviewee I had interrogated.
Not long after, I found myself employed at this bank. A position working alongside her, tackling the western territory in the state from Rusk to Eau Claire and Dunn to Clark County. My training involved long hours shadowing Virginia, which was less like shadowing and more like being swept up by a tornado.
On my first day, I learned that part of the pristine nature of her office was because she used it only on rare occasions. The territory being what it was, she mostly worked out of her car as she traveled to other offices to close each deal. After offering some lessons in soft skill, interrupted by the frequent chirping of her mobile, she stepped out of the office for a few minutes and returned smelling like menthols and peppermint gum. It was nearing lunch time and she offered to treat me to chimichangas at her favorite Mexican restaurant nearby. We walked to her car, and when I opened the passenger door, a stack of unopened mail, wadded fast-food wrappers, and empty diet coke vessels tumbled onto the blacktop. She laughed and said, “Oh! Just put all that in the backseat. I’ll move it later.”
After foraging through hockey waivers, LLPA rate charts, and old expense receipts, I found the seat cushion. Once I wiped the sticky residue from my fingers after having finally buckled in, she asked, “You don’t mind if I smoke, do ya?” I said I didn’t. She rolled down the front windows exactly one inch and lit up a Virginia Slim.
Despite the ventilation, the cab filled with the distinct scent —a heady blend of scorched paper and the lingering regret of every woman who dated a synth player in an underground pop band in the '80s. By the time we left the Mexican restaurant, I was marinated in what would become my onboarding perfume.
Obvious chaos notwithstanding, Virginia was peculiarly carefree. She groomed herself thoroughly, but more on a weekly basis than daily. Her schedule was rigorous—a divorced hockey mom, demanding sex life, and a sales job that spiked cortisol levels on par with hostage negotiation and lion taming. Mortgage originating is a high-stakes game where everyone’s stressed and no one understands the fine print, even if they were to read it. Virginia handled it all with a lackadaisical whimsy that shook me until my anxiety started absorbing her responsibilities along with my own.
I worried on her behalf. How could she know if her water bill was paid when I last saw it stuck to the inside of her passenger door? How could she take the realtor from the RANWW gala to an “afterparty” without knowing what he said to me earlier that evening? More mindbogglingly, how did she consistently close more deals each month and stay on track to win Top Producer?
Then came the Builders Association 5K Fun Run. Virginia registered us both. I was skeptical. This was a woman who smoked two packs a day and considered walking from her car to the office a cardio workout. Half a mile into the race, she leaned over in her busty yoga top and husked, “Follow me.” She ducked into the back door of Ray’s Place—the best dive bar on Water Street—and ordered us PBRs and hot beefs with the “special” mustard.
I was melting into my bones with anxiety. I worried about our race times, our reputations, our cholesterol. Virginia waved it all away. “Relax,” she said. “You’re too uptight.” And in walked the President of the Builders Association.
Virginia didn’t worry. That’s not to say she didn’t experience disappointment or difficulty—she did—but she simply refused to let it take up residence in her life. She was a woman of contradictions: chaotic yet composed, disorganized yet wildly successful. She taught me more about life than any seminar or textbook ever could.
We went to endless events. We filmed a local commercial for the bank together. She once told me, while applying lip gloss in the rearview mirror, “You gotta look polished enough to earn their trust, but not so polished they think you’re selling more than a mortgage.”
Virginia was a force of nature. She smoked like a chimney, could rock an animal print, drove with the distracted grace of someone juggling electronic signatures and a mascara wand, and closed deals like a Wall Street shark. She was my mentor, my friend, and the reason I survived my first year in the industry.
And every time I see a slim, I smile. Because somewhere out there, Virginia is lighting up, ignoring the essentials, and sealing another deal with the kind of effortless flair that made her unforgettable.