“Thanks.”
“I really appreciate everything,” Greer said. “Today would’ve been so much harder. Just getting set up. I mean, you are the best, Zee. You always are. I just want to say that.” She felt the potential for tears now, with a mixed cause. Friendship; fear.
“It’s nothing,” said Zee. They sat together a little longer, neither of them wanting to end the day. “Well, I should catch Metro-North back,” Zee finally said. “Judge Wendy says she’s making a special lasagna tonight, and my presence at the table is requested. I’m sure you want to be alone here anyway.”
Greer wanted to say, Don’t leave yet. She hadn’t meant to live alone. She couldn’t stop thinking that Cory was supposed to be there, the two of them setting up house in a sweet early-twenties way that was so hopeful. Zee took off, and later that night, lonely but also excited, Greer brought in a boxed and bagged dinner from a place several blocks away called Yum Cottage Thai. This will be my neighborhood place, she thought, and then she realized: I have a neighborhood place. Greer stood over the small kitchen sink eating vegetable pad thai with efficient, feral automaticity. She smacked her lips loudly, just because she was alone and could, and wiped orange oil and a trace of peanut dust from her face with the side of her arm.
Later, when she was getting ready for bed, thumps and clicks emanated from the apartment upstairs, and a sound of something being dragged. She had no idea what any of those sounds were, but she imagined that if Cory lived with her they would be discussing it right now. “It’s like they’re bowling up there,” she would say to him, and together in bed they would fashion a scenario that involved the upstairs neighbors and their in-home bowling alley. “What’s the name of their league?” she would ask him. Cory would come up with something quickly, like, “The Gentrifickettes.” And then, of course, Greer and Cory would make their own various private sounds.
Work would start in three days. When she’d first gotten the job at Loci, he’d asked her, “Did you look into everything about ShraderCapital, and Shrader himself?”
“To a certain extent,” she said.
“You should read up. It’s what anyone would do.”
She saw that a great deal had been published about Emmett Shrader; some of it focused on morally problematic companies he’d been involved with, and some of it focused on his philanthropy. Because Greer knew nothing about venture capital—“VC,” people sometimes called it—or what the business dealings of a billionaire might be like, she couldn’t make too much sense of it except to understand that he had a mixed record, which didn’t seem unusual. But Faith liked Shrader and had described him as “an old friend,” and that was obviously significant.
On the night before Greer’s job was to begin, Zee met her for a drink in Brooklyn. She too had work in the morning, having begun a paralegal job at the law firm of Schenck, DeVillers. They sat on unsteady stools drinking beers and crunching wasabi peas in the low, honeyed light. “So it’s all starting for you,” said Zee. “Remember this moment. Take a snapshot of it in your brain.”
“What moment is that?”
“The moment before it all begins. The moment before you start, you know, your life.”
“I don’t know if it’ll be my life. Maybe I won’t even be good at it.”
“You’ll learn to be good. You’re good at a lot of things, Greer. Writing. Reading literature. Love.”
“That is a weird skill set to mention.”
“You are amazingly competent,” said Zee. “You got hired by Faith fucking Frank’s foundation. A peck of pickled peppers. I bow down before you.”
“And I bow down before you,” said Greer. “You got me to Faith Frank. You made me go to that lecture. I probably would’ve stayed in my dorm room with my note cards. And then none of this would be happening.” She paused. “You get me to do a lot. Or at least to think about things differently.”
“Awww.”
“Anyway, we have Ryland College to thank for our friendship. We will leave them all our money.”
“They aren’t getting a cent,” Zee said. “When I see the alumni magazine I’m like, really? Why would I want to read this? Stupidy Stupid, class of ’81, now works in strategic planning.”
“Along with his wife, Sally Stupid,” said Greer.
“But they could write about you in the class notes,” Zee said. “Greer Kadetsky, class of 2010, now works for Faith Frank.”
“That does sound good,” said Greer. Then, suddenly realizing the conversation was only about her, she said, “Things will fall into place for you too, Zee. I’m sure they will.”
“Listen,” Zee said, more quietly now. “I have something.”
She reached into her jacket pocket, and Greer imagined that she was going to take out a small, sentimental gift, beautifully wrapped. Inside would be some sort of amulet that Greer could carry or wear around her neck as she began her first real job.
But Zee had no gift box in her hand, no charm on a chain. Instead, she had an envelope. Was it an emotional letter about how much their friendship meant to her? That would be very touching. Women were allowed to tell each other what they felt without holding back. Women could now say, “I love you,” without any hesitation or discomfort or a sense that there were sexual overtones between them, even if one of them was gay.
“Oh,” said Greer, reaching out to take it. “Thank you, Zee.”
“It’s for Faith, actually.”
Now the letter was an uncertain object, something Greer wasn’t sure she wanted. It was as if she’d been tricked, cleverly served a summons without knowing it. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Zee, “last night in my bedroom in my parents’ house, I stayed up really late and made one of those lists in my head that you’re supposed to make so that you know what you should do with your life.”
“That’s what this is? A list?”
“No, no, wait. Anyway, for this list, first you’re supposed to think of the things you definitely don’t want your life to include. And I realized how much I don’t want to be a paralegal—it doesn’t excite me—and I know how much I don’t want to be a lawyer, at least not the corporate kind. I see these young associates, the ones who work really late and do corporate law, and they’re on call like doctors, except their work isn’t in the service of humanity, unless it’s the pro bono stuff they’re allowed to do once in a while. I mean, they’re like the opposite of Doctors Without Borders. Lawyers Without Souls, I think of them. But the firm gives them a great salary, and in the beginning, to excite them and kind of confuse them, they take them out to baseball games and dinner, and they give them tickets to see Cirque du Soleil—which in my opinion is a punishment, not a gift—all those people in tights, with diamond shapes painted on their faces. Is there anything worse than a harlequin? But it all takes too much away from you, and doesn’t give you fortification. Or a good feeling. Or a sense that you’re actually doing something decent during your two seconds on earth. And you know what? I don’t want it.”
“So what do you want instead?”
“Well, actually, I’d love to work for Faith Frank’s foundation too,” Zee said gently. “If she’ll hire me.”
Greer couldn’t think of what to say, but she was shocked.
Zee traced her finger in worried little swirls on the bar. “I know you’re surprised that I’m suddenly saying this. Because I’ve never said it before. My parents have really pushed me to do something that could be a career. But what you’re doing—it actually could be a career. And I thought maybe I’d be an asset to Faith. I’ve been an activist, sort of. I always thought that in my fantasy I would work somewhere young and radical. This isn’t that. But Faith has been this big figure in the feminist movement, and I think I could learn a lot from her. Anyway, it was just a thought.”