The Futures(31)

“Hey.” I felt the guys staring as I walked over. “What are you doing here?”

She lifted up a plastic bag, a logo I recognized from a deli around the corner. I went there for lunch when I was too impatient for delivery. “I brought dinner. I thought we could eat together. Like the old days, you know.”

“Oh. That’s nice of you, Jules.”

“I got your favorite. Chicken cutlet with bacon and mozzarella.”

Which I’d ordered many times before. The bread was usually stale. The chicken cold and tough. That sandwich was always a last resort. Roger and the others were walking away without me. I just needed a break. The thought of it was unbearable, eating that terrible sandwich, forced to talk about my day, to fake it with Julia. I just wanted to be for one minute. With people who understood. I told her the truth, partially. “The thing is, I was going to get dinner with the guys. We’re going to this new Indian place on Ninth. You understand, right?”

She was quiet, the bag drooping from her wrist. But just because she could saunter out of her job whenever she liked didn’t mean that I could. I was annoyed. I was a little pissed, actually. She could have called ahead. Roger had made a reservation and everything. Her mopey silence was unfair. This didn’t seem like it could be my fault.

After I took the bag from her, promising I’d eat it for lunch the next day, but already planning to let it molder in the refrigerator until I was forced to throw it out, I thought of something. I’d meant to text her earlier.

“Oh,” I called as she walked away. “Guess whose byline I saw today?”

“Another round?” the waiter asked. The empty beer glasses were speckled with our greasy fingerprints from the paratha.

“Absolutely,” Roger said. I still had an inch of beer left, which Roger pointed at. “Keep up, Peck.”

We went out together a lot. Dinner, the bar after work almost every night, clubs on the weekends. In better moments, it reminded me of the hockey team. It was something even more comfortable than friendship. I drained my glass and handed it to the waiter.

“Who was that?” one of the other analysts asked me.

“Who was who?”

“That girl you were talking to back there.”

“Oh,” I said. I’d already forgotten. “Right. That was Julia. My girlfriend.”

“What was she doing here?”

Roger laughed, reaching for the last piece of paratha. “You didn’t know?” he said loudly. “Peck is completely whipped. Does whatever his girlfriend tells him to.”

I rolled my eyes. “She was just saying hi.”

“Hey, Roger,” one of the other analysts said. “So what happened to that chick from Saturday night?”

“Which one? Can’t keep track.”

“The blonde. The one from the club.”

“Her? She won’t stop calling.” He gestured at his phone. All of us kept our BlackBerrys faceup on the table, alert to the buzz of incoming e-mails through dinner. He tipped back in his chair. “She was all right. I’m worried she’s gonna be a clinger.”

The waiter delivered our entrées. Roger made another lewd crack about the girl he’d brought home on Saturday night. I ate my lamb curry and let myself dissolve into the banter. Something about that time of year had been making me homesick. Fall had always meant a turnover in routine, a new year of school, the beginning of the hockey season. I missed it, even the miserable parts: muscles that screamed in pain, bruises blackening under pads, sticks slamming into legs. Maybe homesick wasn’t the right word. It was more like a part of me had been put away in a dusty old box, and I missed it. But moments like this were a relief. Another beer, and another. In those moments, I’d forget.

At McGuigan’s later that Monday night, I slipped out of our booth while Roger was in the middle of a story, and waited at the bar for Maria to look up.

“Hey,” she said, finally. She smiled. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“Busy night?”

“You have no idea. Hang on a second.” She delivered a brimming tray of bourbons to a waiter, who carried it over to a table. Not our table, but it might as well have been. You could tell they were bankers from a mile away. Almost everyone in there was. Young guys in loosened ties, getting bombed with an end-of-the-world abandon.

“That’ll keep them busy for about five minutes,” she said. “The usual?”

After several weeks of going to McGuigan’s almost every night, I had befriended Maria. She felt like someone I’d known for a long time. In a strange way, even longer than Julia. Like someone from back home. I liked her company, especially when I’d had too much of my coworkers. One night she let me buy her a drink and told me her story. She was putting herself through law school at Fordham with loans and bartending wages. As a girl, she had dreamed of becoming a ballerina, of studying at Juilliard. Her teachers at home all said she had the talent, and she’d moved to the city for it. When I asked what happened, she shrugged. “Flat feet.” She was tall and gorgeous, had thought about modeling, she said, but realized that if her body could let her down once, it could do it twice.

“So why law school?”

“I want to be taken seriously, I guess. I find it interesting. Mostly I don’t want to end up like my mom.” She paused. “I sound like an asshole.”