You (You #1)(29)

He picks up Cup Three. “Salute,” he says, and somehow that’s the most offensive thing he’s ever said. He’s not Italian. What right does he have to say salute? He takes a sip and licks his lip and strokes his chin and paces around the cage.

“Well?”

“You know these aren’t ideal circumstances for a taste test.”

“Life isn’t always ideal, not for most people.”

“The air is dank. Musty.”

“Which cup was Home Soda? One. Two. Or Three.”

He clings to the bars and shakes his head and he’s crying. Again. I check your sent mail. It’s nine in the morning after our date and you are awake. I know this because you have just written to some dude in your class about how much you liked his story. I breathe. You have to do that kind of thing. That’s just about school.

“Benji. Which fucking cup?”

He lifts his head and backs away as if he’s gonna pass out—yeah right—and he wipes his eyes and crosses his arms and spits out, “None of ’em.”

“That’s your answer?”

He grabs at his shaggy blond hair that’s darker every day—sweat.

“Wait.”

“Either that’s your answer or it’s not.”

“They all tasted like shit. Okay? They all tasted like bottom of the barrel ninety-nine cent store chemically enhanced club fucking soda. You’re setting me up to fail. This is wrong. This is injustice.”

“Is that your answer?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, Benji,” I say and his lower lip shakes. “But you’re wrong. They’re all Home Soda.”

You get an e-mail. The asshole in your class:

Thanks, Beck. I’m reading you right now, this is your best yet, nice, very nice.

Benji flares. “No.”

And who is this pretentious asshole? I’m reading you. The fuck he is, Beck. Come on. Write to Chana. Write to Lynn. You had the best date ever and you’re gonna e-mail with some hack from class?

“Joe, there’s no way that those were mine.”

“Well, they were,” I say and now Benji isn’t just Benji, he’s everyone bad, all the educated liars. “It’s called quality control and if you knew anything about business, you’d know that if you don’t have quality control, you don’t have anything.”

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.”