The Futures(11)

But a month later, he told me he’d gotten called back for several interviews. We had just had sex, and we were spooned together in bed. He mentioned it in the same tone he might remark about the weather, but beneath that was evidence of a certain pride. Validation at being selected to interview. The thrill of success, even if it wasn’t permanent yet.

“That’s, um, great.” I hoped I sounded normal.

“Jules, I’m really excited. I think this might be what I’m meant to do.”

“When’s the interview?”

“And you know the best part?” He hadn’t heard my question, or didn’t care. “A job like this could get me the visa I’d need to stay after graduation. Wouldn’t that be great? To know that I could stay and not have to worry about it?”

In January, he had an interview with Spire Management, the famous hedge fund in New York. Even I had heard of Spire. Evan kept insisting it was a long shot, it was too competitive. People killed for jobs at Spire. But he got the offer in March. Suddenly he had an answer to that question everyone was asking: What are you doing next? Evan, working in finance in New York City. I don’t know what I’d imagined for him, exactly, but it wasn’t this. Evan, who was so old-fashioned in his decency, who was so patient and kind. Maybe he’d be a teacher, or a hockey coach in some small town. Or he’d start a company, or he’d go to grad school—but this? It almost gave me whiplash, but I seemed to be alone in this reaction. Evan was happy. Our friends were happy for him. I was the only one who struggled to adjust to this new idea of him.

“Julia,” Abby said a few days later. We were sitting around watching reruns of reality TV. “You know what? We should throw a party. For Evan. Tonight.”

“Don’t you have that essay due?”

A long bleep obscured a string of cursing from the real housewife on screen. Abby shrugged. “The class is pass-fail.”

“Okay. I’m in,” I said. “What else do we have to do tonight?”

But as we lugged cheap booze back from the liquor store, a nasty voice in my head, dormant for so long, started to resurface. What are you doing, Julia? What do you want? Why don’t you make up your mind? I had made absolutely no plans for the future, and that seemed okay, as long as I wasn’t alone. But as I looked around the party, I realized that I was the only person left. The only one without a job. Abby was going to be a teacher. Evan’s roommate Arthur was working for the Obama campaign. And Evan had secured one of the most competitive jobs in finance. Only then did I see it clearly: everyone was figuring it out. Everyone except me. I had no passion, no plan, nothing that made me stand out from the crowd. I had absolutely no idea what kind of job I was supposed to get.

Later that night, at the party, I overheard Evan talking to a friend of ours, Patrick, a tall guy from Connecticut who rowed crew. The guy Abby had slept with, freshman year, expressly to give me and Evan the room. Patrick still pined after Abby, but she had long ago moved on. She never kept a guy longer than a few weeks.

“You followed the news about Bear over spring break?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah,” Evan said.

I was standing several feet away, but they didn’t notice me.

“That was nuts. Feel bad for all those guys who got their offers rescinded.”

“I know. Jesus. What a mess.”

“Close call, too. My dad works at a hedge fund, and he was jumpy as hell. You know I was interviewing with Bear back in the fall? I’m so glad I didn’t go with them. Shit. Can you imagine?”

“Seriously. You’re going to Goldman, right?”

“Yup. By the way, congrats, man. You must be stoked about Spire.”

Evan’s eyes suddenly lit with anticipation. “So stoked.”

That expression on his face: a huge, satisfied grin. He didn’t know I could see it from where I stood. He had big plans for the future. He was going places. The system had deemed him exceptional. Why shouldn’t he feel a little cocky? When he told me about the offer earlier that week, he had insisted it was just a job like any other. “The main thing,” he said, “is that now I’ll be able to stay. Isn’t that great?” He didn’t want me to feel bad. And I didn’t. I didn’t really care. It hadn’t sunk in that there was something I had forgotten to do.

But when I saw that expression on his face, talking with Patrick about their jobs and the money and the city and the future, I realized that the way he was looking at me was different from the way I was looking at myself. Evan saw someone who wasn’t keeping up. Someone he had to tiptoe around. I felt a shift that night, when I overheard their conversation. It was also the first time I was aware that Evan had concealed something from me, that he had been anything less than totally honest.

A week later, he asked me to move in with him.

*

We didn’t bring much with us when we moved to New York: clothes, books, lamps, my futon and coffee table. It all fit into a handful of boxes and suitcases. We unpacked everything that first day. I even managed to hang our meager art—a few prints I’d gotten in Paris, my favorite Rothko poster from MoMA—strategically covering up the cracks and stains that showed through the landlord’s cheap paint job.

“Wow,” Evan said, grinning as he surveyed our tiny apartment, our new home. “This is awesome. I can’t believe we’re unpacked.”