The Assistants(14)

“When the FBI comes for us, they won’t need to be buzzed in.” Emily topped off her glass.

The buzzer rang again and it seemed useless to fight anything at this point, so I got up to see who it was.

A uniformed FedEx deliverywoman shoved an envelope into my chest. Then she held out a digital notepad for me to sign with a pretend pen. I initialed an illegible scribble-scrabble and carried the envelope back to my bedroom.

“Special delivery,” I said, tearing it open. “No return address.”

“Is it anthrax?” Emily asked, not bothering to raise her head from my pillow.

It was not. The envelope contained a stack of crisp white papers—neatly collated and studiously stapled—photocopies of my and Emily’s fake expense reports. Every single one. On top of the stack was a yellow sticky note that read: In case you thought I might be bluffing.

The note was handwritten by Margie; I could tell by the heavy-pressed wide loops. A spasm shot through my gut. “We are so screwed,” I said. “We are so screwed!”

Emily tore the papers from my grasp, gave them a quick once-over, and set them aside. “Maybe not.” She handed me my mimosa. “Think about it for a minute. With Margie in on this now . . .”

“There is no this,” I said.

“I’m just saying, there’s not really anyone left to catch us at this point. Not if we’re careful. We could probably even—”

“No.” I set the glass down on my nightstand. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Yes I do. And the answer is no.”

“Consider the apartment we could get instead of this one.” Emily was up on her knees now, tugging on my pajama shirt. “Bigger, better, sans rats.” She banged on the wall with the palm of her hand and there was a claw-toed scurrying behind the drywall.

“We’re not really a we,” I said. “And this is my apartment.”

“That hurts my feelings, Fontana, it really does.”

“You don’t have feelings.”

Emily reached over me, apprehended my mimosa from the nightstand, and swallowed it down. “I would if I could afford psychotherapy. Or a weekly massage. Or a hot tub. I’d have lots of feelings then.”

Observing the change in my expression, Emily paused. “I’m kidding,” she said.

But I knew she wasn’t really. I moved to the other side of the bed, like Emily’s copious greed might be contagious.

“You got over seventy thousand dollars of student-loan debt to disappear,” I said. “Do you understand how long it would have taken you to pay that back? You’d have been in dentures and a housedress by the time you paid that back. Platform shoes would have gone in and out of style, like, six times by then. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“I don’t think you really want me to answer that.” Emily pointed her glass at the ceiling rain bubble.

I knew what she was up to. She took it for granted that with enough bullying and harassment, she could convince me of anything—but I wasn’t really as weak as I appeared. I am from the Bronx, after all. I hail from a neighborhood where the local library had a metal detector, and a household where the heat was never turned up higher than fifty-three degrees in winter. I was raised by parents whose approach to discipline relied heavily on the level swing of a wooden macaroni spoon. So I could handle a little pestering from doll-eyed Emily Johnson without losing my will.

Sure, the part of Bridgeport where Emily grew up was known for its high frequency of muggings, violent crimes, and easy accessibility to drugs. And her childhood home did get broken into by that meth head that one time. But she was still softer than I was.

“I’m just saying.” Emily adjusted her timbre—she was shooting for reasonableness now. “It wouldn’t take that much money to significantly raise us up, you know, to a position of real self-sufficiency.”

I reclaimed my empty crystal flute and held it out to Emily for a refill. “I have no intention of going to prison because you want to live like a Kardashian, so put it out of your mind. We’ll help Margie’s assistant, whoever she is. We’ll pay off her debt—it’ll take a few weeks, maybe a few months—and then this will all be over. For real this time.”

Emily smirked as she filled my glass to its brim. “We’ll see.”

“We’re stopping once we get Margie off our backs,” I said. “I’m serious.”

“We’ll see,” she said again.

But we would not see. I admit that Emily was growing on me, or maybe it was just that I’d gotten used to having her around, but I wasn’t going to budge on this. I wasn’t about to lose sight of the fact that as white college graduates living in New York, poor and disillusioned as we were with our negative net worth, we were still relatively high up on the socioeconomic food chain. If I learned anything of value at NYU, it was that. So, no, Emily would not convince me to keep this scam going so she could have a weekly massage and a hot tub. If I lost my new best/only friend over it, so be it. At least I’d still have what was left of my dignity.

Emily fluffed the pillows behind her and propped one at the back of her neck. “So what are you going to do if Kevin asks you out?” she asked.

“Do you think that’s a real possibility?” I inched a bit closer in from the small corner of the mattress that still belonged to me. “Should I be preparing for that?”