The Assistants(16)

“You okay?” Kevin asked. “You look a little confused.”

I nodded.

He started walking forward and I followed. “What do you think of burgers and shakes from Lucky’s?” he asked.

I think I’m in love, I thought.

We took our food order to go, in greasy paper bags, and walked across Columbus Circle to Central Park. He helped me up the giant prehistoric-looking rock just off the playground and shooed away some bratty kids having a water pistol fight. It was all too good to be true.

“Is this an occasion of some sort?” I asked, unfolding the waxy wrapping on my burger.

“No, not really.” He was already chewing his first massive bite. How did guys do that? I was no slouch when it came to rushing greasy meat into my mouth and he still had me beat by a solid thirty-five seconds.

“Not really?” I said.

“No, I just . . .”

Here it comes, I thought. The part where I find out what he wants from me.

“Emily Johnson,” he said. “She . . .”

I knew it. He was intimidated by Connecticut Barbie and was calling on fainthearted Skipper for assistance. I wanted to stand up on that brontosaurus rock, raise my fists, and scream out all the way to Sheep Meadow: I knew it, you predictable motherf*cker!

“She told me she’s been staying with you,” he said, staring down at his fries. “Which I found surprising because Emily can be kind of . . .”

He was fiddling with his food the way guys who are sexually frustrated peel at the labels of their beer bottles. I took this for a tell: he wanted to bone Emily.

“Well,” he said, fiddling on. “From my perspective, it wouldn’t seem like you two would be friends, but I guess I was wrong about that.”

“You wanted to sit down to lunch so you could unravel the mystery of my and Emily’s friendship?” I asked, sounding really bitchy.

“Ha.” His laugh was perfect, damn him. “No, I guess it just made me realize that I don’t know you that well.” He raised his eyes to mine. “But do I really need a reason to lure you out here into the fresh air and sunlight?”

I turned away for fear of being compelled, seductive vampire style. “We’re working on a project,” I said. It was the best lie I could come up with on the spot. “That’s why we’ve been spending so much time together.”

“Oh.” He pushed his soda straw in and out of its plastic lid, causing it to squeak like a slide whistle, and this was somehow not that annoying coming from him. “A project for work?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not. It’s a . . .”

I was scrambling. If it wasn’t a project for work, then what was it? A book group? A knitting circle?

“It’s sort of a . . .”

For the love of God, Tina. Think.

“It’s sort of a consciousness-raising project?” I said.

A little background: In college, like many freshmen venturing into the liberal arts for the first time, I was besotted by electives with titles like “Feminism and the Body,” “Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements,” and “Gentrification and Its Discontents.” A girl I met in “Gender, Race, and Class,” who wore a leather corset as a shirt, convinced me to join the Women’s Center. (Technically, it was the Womyn’s Center, but let’s not even.) There, flannel-clad girls with names like Andy and Grover introduced me to private-school-tuition-worthy terms like hegemony, social constructionism, and consciousness raising. Finally, this hard-earned education was paying off.

“Consciousness raising about what?” Kevin asked.

Robert’s new set of golf clubs popped into my mind.

“Inequality, mostly,” I said, like a true expert on the subject.

Kevin stared at me for a moment and I could almost see the preconceived notions he had of me shifting around in his beautiful brain.

“You okay? You look a little confused.” I was mimicking the crack he’d made at me in front of the Titan building, but I don’t think he got it.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “What sort of inequality are you focusing on?”

“All kinds.” I stuffed my mouth full of french fries.

“Is it a nonprofit?”

“Yup. Exactly.”

“You’re really keeping this close to the vest, aren’t you?” He said it lovingly, or I would have struck back at him with my scorpion claw.

“It’s still in the early stages,” I said, after swallowing my fries. “I guess I just don’t want to jinx it.” Which made no sense at all, but Kevin, well-bred as he was, politely replied, “I get that. That makes total sense.”

Brought up by animals as I was, I lunged at the chance to impolitely change the subject. “So what was it like growing up in Massachusetts? I bet your parents are really proud of you. Being a lawyer is second only to being a doctor, right? And you don’t have to be around germs.”

“Massachusetts?” Kevin appeared perplexed. “I’m from DC.”

A piece of hamburger bun caught in my throat. “Sorry, I must be mixing you up with someone else.” Like the Kennedys.

He kindly ignored the grotesque choking sound that escaped from my mouth. “To be honest, my parents don’t love that I’ve chosen to work for the Titan Corporation, and I don’t either. I’d much rather move out of the corporate world and into public service—I’d love to work for a nonprofit. But I’d have to take a significant pay cut, and that’s not really an option right now.”