“But this is ridiculous. This is less than half our budget from last year. Do you expect me to cook the food myself? There’s no way this is going to work.”
This conversation kept repeating itself. Each week, Eleanor secured a few more dollars for the November gala. Then she turned right back around and cajoled Laurie for more. And, strangely, Laurie never lost her patience with Eleanor. It was clear that the crash was creating a strain. Laurie had taken to sighing a lot and rubbing her temple. She grew brittle with the rest of us. But never once did she shout back at Eleanor. It baffled me, but then again, almost everything about Laurie baffled me. I answered her phone and kept her schedule, but I had no insight into what she was thinking. Her remove seemed deliberate. She must have seen me as just one more link in a chain—another assistant, another year. I wondered if I could ever prove I was different. But then what? I didn’t want to work there. I didn’t want to be Eleanor in five years. Eleanor, who breezed in and out of the office when she felt like it, who threw temper tantrums, who’d barely spoken to me since our lunch over the summer.
In late October, Eleanor declared that she would be leaving town to “recharge” before the gala. She would be unreachable for the next five days, on some tropical island. The following day, a Thursday, Laurie told me to get Henry Fletcher on the phone. His secretary said he wasn’t available, but she could pass along a message. “I don’t want to leave a message,” Laurie yelled from inside her office. “I’ll try him this afternoon.”
He remained unavailable that afternoon, and Friday morning, and Friday afternoon. Laurie swirled around her office, slamming file drawers, throwing out papers, rearranging furniture. I wanted to help—it was distressing to witness—but I wasn’t going to put myself directly in her line of fire. She seemed ready to snap at any moment. And as much as I disliked the job, it was still the only job I had.
I wonder. Could I see it at the time? My life crystallizing into a new pattern. Evan and I drifting, each of us caught in different currents. Adam and I had grown closer, and I contemplated what I had ever done without him. I was never good at skepticism, at questioning what was happening to me. And besides, nothing had even happened—nothing that couldn’t be explained away in innocence. Until one specific night, the weekend at the end of October. When imagination hardened into reality.
Abby called me that Saturday afternoon. “Come to this party with me,” she said. “I’m schlepping all the way to Brooklyn. I need a buddy for the subway.”
The party was in the garden-level apartment of a brownstone near Prospect Park, hosted by a girl from college, someone Abby knew better than I did. She and her roommate both worked in publishing. We picked up a bottle of wine on the way over, and when I set it down on the kitchen counter, I saw that someone else had brought the same bottle of wine, down to the identical $8.99 price sticker on the neck.
Tall bookshelves, track lighting, dusty Oriental rugs. It was a nice party. Lively, not too crowded, the conversation earnest and serious. A lot of the parties Abby and I went to that year felt like an ardent imitation of college: twenty-two-year-olds spending their salaries on light beer, blasting hip-hop, puking out the cab door. This pulled in the other direction: people acting older than they really were. It surprised me how rarely those two worlds ever overlapped. There wasn’t any middle ground.
“So Jake’s coming by,” Abby said as we helped ourselves to the wine. “Later. Is that weird? I’m not sure he’s ever been to Brooklyn before.”
“Wow. So are you—”
“Kind of. I don’t know. It’s nothing serious yet.”
“But you like him?”
“I like him enough to sleep with him.” She shrugged. But she was blushing a little.
I finished my wine and had another, then another, drifting from conversation to conversation. The night passed easily, without friction. After a while, Jake arrived. I saw Abby kiss him and lead him to the kitchen. I turned back to my companion, who was critiquing a recent article in the New York Review of Books. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jake slip his arm around Abby’s waist and draw her in.
Stop it, I thought. I had no right to be jealous. In fact, I should have been happy for them. That would be definitive proof of just how meaningless my own encounter with Jake had been.
The drunk crashed over me like a wave, stronger than it had been a minute earlier. It was past midnight, and the group I was standing with was gone. The party had thinned, and the music was louder without the muffling of voices. Jake was kissing Abby, pulling back to whisper in her ear, making her laugh. I had to admit he was cute. And Abby looked so happy. He tugged her closer. I could tell they were having great sex, probably twice a day.