Gertie joined our firm a year ago, an odd bird, she didn't fit into our cliquish ultra-sleek environment. in her ill-fitting garb from another era, she could have been thirty or sixty, anyone's guess. one gloomy Monday, as our glamour girls discussed their dates, double dates, pity dates, make-up sex, Gertie suddenly declared she too had a blind date once. he was nineteen, from Canada, they took the train to Central Park, he bounced off the walls and ceiling, climbed the poles like a stripper, hung off the handrails making grimaces and noises. she felt like she was on a date with a monkey. then he stuck his tongue in her ear, it felt surprisingly good. decades later, she saw Jim Carrey do it to Craig Ferguson on the show In Living Color, she recognized him right away, quick browse on Wikipedia confirmed that he was here that summer of ’81, auditioning for Saturday Night Live. stunned, we stood around Gertie like make-up artists at the Henri Bendel counter. by lunchtime the news had spread, from the mail room to the executive board, everyone was talking about Jim Carrey, rushing off to see Gertie's ear, everyone called her Gertrude now

Marina Rubin's first chapbook Ode to Hotels came out in 2002, followed by Once in  2004 and Logic in 2007. Her work had appeared in 13th Warrior,  Asheville Poetry Review, Dos Passos Review,  5AM; Coal  City, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jewish Currents, Lillith, Pearl, Poet Lore, Skidrow Penthouse, The Portland Review, The Worcester Review and many more. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. She is an associate editor of Mudfish, an arts and literary magazine in Tribeca. She lives in New York City where she works as a headhunter on Wall Street while writing her fourth book, a  collection of flash fiction stories. This is her website www.marinarubin.com