Don't You Cry(22)

Esther is trying to replace me.

My mind considers for one split second a world without Esther, and it makes me feel sad.

“Bad day?” a voice asks then, and I peer up from my paper cut to see Ben in the doorway, standing arms akimbo (that, too, is a thing also discovered on a random internet search, meaning: standing with hands on hips), as he spies the driblets of blood on my hand and says to me, “Here, let me help.”

Ben wears a pair of slim cotton chinos, taupe, and a piqué polo shirt the color of peacock feathers. He’s impeccably dressed and looks amazing, though chances are he rode his bike to work as he so often does, a Schwinn hybrid that he locks to the galvanized steel bike rack outside the building. He’s got a runner’s build, lank but muscular, always adorned in tight-fitting clothes—tailored tops and skinny bottoms—so you can see each and every one of the gluteal and abdominal muscles. Or so I imagine you can see them.

It’s no secret I have a crush on Ben. I’m pretty sure everyone in the world knows but him.

Ben grabs a tissue from a box and presses it firmly to my hand. His hands are warm, his movements decisive. He holds my hand in his, inches above my heart. He smiles as he tugs on my arm and raises it higher. “It’s supposed to help slow the bleeding,” he says, and for the first time in a while I smile, too, since we both know good and well no one ever bled out from a paper cut. The only thing it will do is leave a mess on these stupid financial documents—nothing a little Wite-Out can’t fix—but I’ll be just fine.

“Sorry I missed your call last night,” he says to me, then, “What’s up?” He carries with him my note: We need to talk. ASAP.

I have this urge to unload on Ben right here and right now, to tell him everything: Esther, the fire escape, the bizarre letter to My Dearest and more. There’s so much to tell Ben, but I don’t. Not yet, anyway, not here. I don’t want to talk here. Gossip in this place spreads like wildfire, and the last thing I need is the nosy PA down the hall telling the rest of the firm about what a shoddy roommate I am or how Esther has renounced me.

Ben, Esther and I are like the three stooges, the three musketeers. It was me who brought us together. I knew Ben from work—we started working at the firm on the same day, and together sat through eight painful hours of filling out mounds of human resource forms, watching mindless videos, surviving orientation. I was bored beyond belief when two hours in Ben turned to me in our swivel chairs at some fancy-schmancy conference room table and parodied the HR lady for what was clearly a surfeit of Botox injections. Her face was frozen stiff; she couldn’t smile.

I laughed so hard I was pretty sure coffee shot up my nose.

We’ve been friends ever since, sharing lunch together almost every day, an extravagance of coffee breaks, rumors about the firm’s attorneys.

And then came the day when I moved in with Esther, about two weeks before Ben and my twosome became a threesome. Esther suggested we host a party to celebrate my arrival. She put up decorations; she made hors d’oeuvres galore. Of course she did; she’s Esther. That’s the kind of thing Esther does. She invited a whole slew of people she knew: people from the bookstore, from grad school, from the building and around the neighborhood; Cole, the physical therapist from the first floor; Noah and Patty from down the street.

I invited Ben.

Everyone else came and went, but by the end of the night it was just me and Esther and Ben, rattling on and on about nothing until morning came and Priya called him home, interrupting our fun. He went, grudgingly, and then the next weekend when Priya was too busy studying for a midterm exam to hang out with Ben, he came back.

You like him, don’t you? Esther had asked knowingly once Ben was gone.

It’s that apparent? I’d asked of her, and then, stating the obvious, It’s not like it matters, anyway. He has a girlfriend, as she and I sat on the sofa side by side, staring at a blackened TV screen.

Well, said Esther in that unselfish way that was all Esther, he’s missing out on something really great. You do know that, don’t you, Quinn? And I said yes, though of course I didn’t know. His loss, Esther told me, and she made me repeat it so that in time I’d start to believe.

The next weekend, Ben was back, chilling with Esther and me.

If there’s anybody in the world who can help me find Esther, it’s Ben.

And so there in my tiny little cube when Ben asks, “What’s up?” I ask instead, clutching that tissue to my hand to clot the nearly nonexistent blood, “Want to go to lunch?” and though it’s not even eleven o’clock, Ben doesn’t balk.

“Let’s go,” he says, and I rise from my chair and together we leave.

We go to Subway, as always, and as always I have the same thing to eat: roast beef on wheat while he has the chopped chicken salad. And it’s there as we slide into the booth beside the windows, watching the city life pass by on the street, that I admit to Ben, “Esther didn’t come home last night,” adding on quietly and penitently, my voice just above a whisper, “Esther didn’t come home Saturday night, either.”

There’s construction on Wabash and so things are loud: jackhammers, saws, sanders and such. I try to block out the noise, all of it, inside and out. The construction noise outside. The dozen or so patrons inside the restaurant beside us, hovering in a long, mushrooming line, impatient, hungry, talking on their phones. The so-called sandwich artist asking the same question over and over again like words on a scratched CD: White or wheat? White or wheat? I pretend for one nanosecond that it’s only Ben and me in the room, that we aren’t being inundated by the scent of veggies or cheese or fresh baked bread, that we’re someplace romantic, say Trattoria No. 10 on Dearborn, or Everest, up on top of the Chicago Stock Exchange (a place I’ll likely never get to go), dining on rack of lamb or loin of venison while staring out at the Loop from the fortieth floor. Waiters and waitresses who refer to us as sir and ma’am, who deliver champagne followed by a single sorbet for us to share with two spoons—cutlery that I probably couldn’t even afford. Now that would be romantic. I imagine the force of Ben’s knee pressing against me beneath the bistro table, an unswerving hand traveling across the starched white tablecloth to find mine as I admit to him sadly, Esther didn’t come home Saturday night, either.