The Assistants(17)
What was this? Was Kevin Handsome snowing me to make himself appear more human? My cell phone vibrated in my bag before I could decide.
It was Robert. “Barlow can’t find me anywhere,” I said, reading his text. “He’s not used to me leaving the building. I should get back.”
“Doesn’t someone cover for you when you’re out?” Kevin asked.
“An intern. But she’s not me.” I said this with the utmost pride, because when you’re the second-most-pecked chicken in the coop, you have to take pride where you can find it.
This was a common Barlowism, by the way, explaining social hierarchy and laws of dominance in terms of farm animals, namely fowl.
Kevin stood up and gathered our trash. “Maybe we can have dinner sometime.”
I wasn’t certain I’d heard him right. He’d been bending down to grab a napkin that had caught in the breeze, but just in case, I said, “Sure.”
Back at the office, it turned out all Robert needed was for me to remind him of the name of the restaurant “with the good view, on top of that hotel.”
It was Asiate, at the Mandarin Oriental, and he asked me this at least once a week. If only my useless fill-in (dumb as a prairie dog, Robert might say) could have gotten it together and remembered such critical information, I wouldn’t have had to cut short my lunch with Kevin. Fortunately, I’d brought my leftovers back to the office with me.
I reached into the now fully-greased-over paper bag for a cold french fry. It was just as well that lunch got abbreviated, I thought. It could have only gone downhill from there.
—
LATER THAT NIGHT, I was sitting on my bed, eating pad thai out of the carton with chopsticks from the Chinese restaurant (my favorite Thai place never gave out chopsticks; apparently real Thai people don’t use them) and flipping through the pile of mail that had accumulated on my nightstand, a paper mountain of bills and useless notifications, when I came across an envelope from my old friend Sallie—Sallie Mae, the former title holder of my student-loan debt. Who knew how long this letter had been there, buried between various credit card offers and multiple supplications from the World Wildlife Fund.
I was alone in the apartment—Emily was out on a date—but I still set my chopsticks down like a secret I didn’t want anyone to hear before slitting the envelope open.
It was a letter of congratulations, informing me that my debt had been paid in full. It boldfaced my final statement balance: double zeros.
Well I’ll be damned, Sallie Mae.
I released a shocking and spontaneous orgasmic breath. It wasn’t right, how thrilled I was at the sight of those zeros. The sensation that washed over me was like nothing I’d ever felt before, except maybe, appropriately, when I found out I’d gotten into NYU.
I returned the letter to its envelope and set it down onto my nightstand, then inexplicably stashed it beneath my pillow.
It was done. I had a clean slate. A new start, like I was eighteen and hopeful again, but this time I was smarter—too smart to sign my life away to a school I knew nothing about.
The only reference I’d had for NYU when I decided I had to go there was that Theo Huxtable went there in season five of The Cosby Show. I could have chosen a cheaper school, like my parents wanted me to. But cost was no issue, my Doc Marten–boot–stomping self insisted. This was my college education we were talking about! I wanted to go to the best school I could get into, the school I’d seen on television.
Not since then had I been this free.
Emily’s key rattled in the front-door lock, so I returned to my dinner and tried to appear normal, or at least regular. My mouth was full of noodles when she appeared in the bedroom doorway, kicked off her high heels, and said, “I brought you a hamburger.”
I glanced down at my mostly eaten pad thai and attempted an instant calculation of how disgusting it would be to eat both. Then I recalled the hamburger I’d already eaten for lunch and had to recalculate.
“My date sucked,” Emily said, crossing the room. “And I have no intention of ever seeing that jerk again, so when he went to pee, I told the waitress to give me a burger to go.”
Emily dropped a plastic satchel that looked more like a swag bag from the Oscars than a restaurant’s to-go carton onto my nightstand. “It’s actually quality meat, so you’ll probably think it tastes weird.”
She sat beside me and started removing her jewelry, piece by shiny piece. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re hiding something, or like you just had sex. What are you hiding?”
How did she already know me so well? I pushed my Thai food aside and allowed myself one nibble of burger, seeing as it was still warm. “I got a letter confirming the untimely death of my student loan.”
Emily’s doll eyes popped. “Let me see it. I bet I’ll be getting one of those too, soon. When I do, we should frame them side by side and hang them on the wall like diplomas.”
I retrieved the letter from beneath my pillow to show her. “My diploma is buried under a dozen rolls of wrapping paper in the bottom drawer of my parents’ china closet.”
Emily put her hand on my shoulder, squeezing as she scanned the letter from top to bottom. “This is way better than a diploma anyway,” she said. “I’ll get the champagne.”
“Hang on a sec.” I caught her by the wrist. “You’ve still never told me, where did you go to college?”