He sits down and crosses his legs and I can’t help but feel bad for the kid. The world failed him and didn’t prepare him for adulthood. Now he’s jammed up with a tear-stained shirt and a bellyful of club soda and cow milk. His blond hair and his vocabulary have finally let him down. He speaks. “So, what now?”
But he doesn’t deserve an answer. He failed his test. I shut off the lights and walk up the stairs and he rants about needing light and it’s obvious he’s hooked on King and you’re firing e-mails at this dude and all I want is a Coke in a can and a text from you. I turn around and give him his fucking light. He’s gonna read a whole book for once in his life.
12
THERE is this girl I fired a couple of years ago. Her name was Sare, which was irritating. Her birth name was Sarah but she wanted to be original and all that bullshit. Sare was a nightmare. She acted like she was doing us a favor by showing up. She suggested Meg Wolitzer books to everyone, even old Asian men. When she had to give change, she reluctantly offered a light fist of coins and made the customer reach over the counter to get it. People hated Sare. She ordered lattes extra hot and left at least three times a week to go back to Starbucks and complain even though an extra-hot latte is obviously not going to be extra hot after a ten-minute walk in the cold. She had dreadlocks even though she was white. She kept a book on the counter to make sure that everyone knew that she was reading Edwidge Danticat or whatever of-the-moment minority woman everyone was supposed to be so jazzed up about. And she read the New Yorker, which meant 98.9 percent of her small talk while cleaning up started with “Did you see that piece in the New Yorker . . .” She never flushed the toilet when she peed, claiming that her parents taught her to conserve. But her pee reeked because she was a vegetarian who lived mostly on asparagus. She wore bullshit eyeglasses and had a boyfriend in med school and when she was at the counter she always curled up and wrapped her body in a shapeless wool cardigan, which made customers feel that they were imposing on her.
When I fired her, I left her a note that her last check was in the bathroom. And I left her check in the toilet full of her asparagus-scented piss. She never came around again. She works for a nonprofit and married the doctor who must be the second-most annoying person on planet Earth simply because he married her. In terms of sheer annoyance, nobody I have ever known has compared to Sare Worthington, saver of the environment, native of Portland, Maine, forever wishing that she were from Portland, Oregon. Bitch should have just moved there.
But I envied her, I did. She was so cool, so unflappable. She was never impressed by anything. We’d get a signed James Joyce and she’d shrug. She made me too aware of myself. I hated that I wanted to impress her and I hated that I was so easily impressed, sniffing the dead ink on the James Joyce. I’m impressed right now, in this cab with you. I couldn’t believe it when you wanted to take me to a party at your friend’s house. It feels early for friends, but you insisted. And I’d be nervous no matter what because I’m not a party person, but I’m doubly anxious because we’re not just going to some random house. We’re riding uptown to your friend Peach Salinger’s house. The cab jostles us and we’re not used to cabbing together and I’m trying to relax but you’re not the girl from the Corner Bistro. I’m also damn proud of my work with Benji (Mr. Mooney and Curtis have no idea!) and I don’t want to accidentally start bragging about what a good manager I am. So I gush, like some starry-eyed loser. “Salinger. That’s something.”
“Yeah,” you say, too cool. “She’s related to him. It’s like that.”
Sare wouldn’t be nervous about going to a Salinger party, but I’m rattled with nerves. I can’t believe I’m about to meet one of J. D. Salinger’s relatives, on our second date, no less. When I called you to set up a second date, I planned on whisking you uptown to the planetarium where we’d make out in the back row. But you cut me off. “I have a party,” you said. “Want to come?”
I said yes. I’d go anywhere with you. But the closer we get, the more nervous I am. I’m scared everyone will hate me and you are scared everyone will hate me. I can tell, Beck. You’re fidgeting. A lot. And when I’m nervous, I get nasty. It’s a problem.
“So is J. D. her uncle?”
“Nobody calls him that,” you say. When you are nervous you get nasty too.
“So how are they related?”
“It’s just a known thing.” You sigh. “We don’t ask. He was so private.”
I breathe and I have to remember how you described me in an e-mail to this Peach today:
Different. Hot.
You invited me to a party because I’m
Different. Hot.
But what if I fuck it all up? I feel more insecure with every passing block. We are going to Woody Allen land, where I’ve always wanted to live. I sell Salinger and your friend is Salinger and you are still putting on makeup even though I have already seen you. You’ve been smearing black shit under your eyes since Fourteenth Street and I’m the one who should be gearing up for a battle. I have a tough time with college people, let alone “Brown people.” You scowl at the driver. “I said Upper West Side not Upper East Side.”
You have a Prada bag and a glare and I feel like I picked up the wrong Beck. You must be psychic because you blush, defensive. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound bitchy. I’m just nervous.”
Phew. I tease you. “Me too. I’m worried your friends won’t like you.”
You get a kick out of me and you give up on whatever it was you were searching for in your purse and start talking to me. You don’t just tell a story, you live it. When you tell me about your favorite birthday party ever, which was when your dad let you and two friends take the ferry to the mainland to see Love Actually and you met a guy, I learn that I am capable of envying a thirteen-year-old boy. Talking to you is like traveling through time and you sigh. “He meant a lot to me.”
“You still know him?”
You smile at me. “I was referring to Hugh Grant.”
I’ll fucking kill Hugh Grant. “Ah.”
“You know, Joe. Hugh Grant works in a bookstore in one of his movies.”
“No shit?” I say and I won’t kill Hugh Grant. We’re about to kiss, I can feel it, but your phone buzzes with a text.
“It’s Peach,” you say. “If I don’t respond right away, she freaks out.”
“Is she as crazy as Uncle J. D.?”
You don’t laugh at my joke and Peach better know how lucky she is to have you. Now she’s calling, as if you had time to respond to her text. “We’re almost there,” you tell her and then I hear her scream into the phone, “You are not a we, Beck.”
You get off the phone and our vibe is off. You don’t laugh when I say that J. D.’s niece seems like a piece of work. No, Joe. She’s not his niece. I don’t like the way you say my name and I should shut up but I don’t; my instinctive hatred of Peach is winning. “I just don’t get it. You’re such good friends and she doesn’t tell you how she’s related to one of the most famous writers in the world?”
“It’s a boundaries thing.”
You’re pushing me away on our second date even though I’m
Different. Hot.
You’re afraid of love and it’s sad and I don’t want to walk into a roomful of strangers. But we are here and I am your escort. The doorman opens the cab door and you let him help you out. I wanted to do that. “Come on,” you say. “I don’t want to be late.”
If Peach hadn’t called, you would have said, we don’t want to be late.
THE elevator is like a reset button and we agree that it smells like lavender. The walls are papered with flowers. Violets, I think. It’s an old elevator and there’s a small bench and we stand side by side and watch the buttons light up as we pass each floor.
“Penthouse, huh?”
“Yeah,” you say and you shift your Prada to your right shoulder, between us. “I’m so happy I remembered to switch bags. Peach gave me this bag for my birthday last year. I would have felt terrible if I forgot to bring it.”