The Assistants(20)

“Well . . .” I found myself stuttering as I searched my brain for all those smart-sounding words I learned at NYU’s Women’s Center meetings. “The thing is, we, as in our generation, we’ve tried to do everything right but we’re still . . .”

Kevin was holding his wineglass suspended in midair, so rapt he was by my manifesto.

“. . . People say we’re lazy and entitled. But the truth is, the deal we were promised growing up, if we work hard and get a good education, it’s really not working out. The dream we were sold, and the job market we encountered . . .”

I was killing it and not in a good way, but Kevin didn’t seem to notice.

He was nodding his moppy head, eyes intense, locked with mine.

“. . . And what about the people who aren’t even fortunate enough to go to college? How are they supposed to . . . if we’re struggling this much, what about them? It’s like, like institutionalized classism.”

Aha. There we go. Good liberal-arts vocab word, institutional classism.

Kevin set down his wineglass and reached across the table for my hand. “I couldn’t agree more. We are absolutely living in the midst of a new Gilded Age.”

His hands were softer than mine, I’m not even kidding. And they smelled of . . . what was that? . . . Drakkar Noir? Hadn’t anyone ever told him that was the scent of every girl’s eighth-grade boyfriend?

“I’d love to get involved in some way,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do.”

I had him, I really did, pubescent cologne and all. But no, he could not get involved. (That dog won’t hunt, Robert would have said.)

I fiddled with my napkin.

“It’s sort of my and Emily’s thing right now,” I said.

“Of course.” Kevin’s eyebrows settled in disappointment and then rose again in eager-for-purpose anticipation. “Though, you may need legal advice sometime.”

God forbid, I thought, and then waved to the waiter for more wine.





8




I NEVER IMAGINED myself as someone who would be wined and dined by a man like Kevin Hanson. Then again, I never imagined myself as someone who could ever be blackmailed either, because didn’t you have to have a terrible guilty secret in order to be a blackmailee? Who would have thought I’d have something more shameful to hide than the renegade hairs that sprouted on my chin every few days, or the way my breath smelled when I woke up, or that I sometimes ate a bag of Doritos for dinner?

But here I was, siphoning money to Margie Fischer to keep from being outed, just like I’d done for Emily, who—let’s give credit where credit is due—was really the one to pop my blackmail cherry.

The process continued on in the same way: I would duplicate Robert’s expense receipts and file them twice, once for him, and a second time for me, plugging in my own account information in place of his. Emily would approve the false receipts and issue me a reimbursement check, which I would then cash and hand-deliver to Margie, concealed in an interoffice delivery envelope.

Again, the secret to our success was Emily doing the approving in lieu of Mr. Bow Tie. And now with Margie involved, we had one more layer of protection—though protection feels like the wrong word. Margie was like a mad dog that might turn on you at any moment, if you looked it in the eye the wrong way, or if you happened to smell like a rib-eye steak or whatever.

This was not a lifestyle that suited me. I am in no way an adrenaline-seeker. I’m much more of an irritable bowel syndrome kind of gal, really. And rest assured, my bowels were highly irritated by all the stress. They’d become like the Jerry Seinfeld or Larry David of bowels.

Emily and I didn’t know whose eighty thousand dollars of student-loan debt Margie was paying off, but we’d narrowed it down. Margie had three accounting assistants in her department: (1) a middle-aged woman with a penchant for flamingos (she had flamingo earrings, flamingo office supplies; her skin even emanated a pink Floridian hue), (2) a nerdy young Russian named Yevgeny, whom everyone lazily called Eugene, and (3) the Lean Cuisine Lady—the crackpot who sat alone in the cafeteria every day, tending to the separate sections of her plastic tray with such measured movements you could just tell she counted how many times she chewed each bite of baked chicken before swallowing it down.

Emily and I knew it had to be one of the women, and regardless of whether it was Flamingo or Lean Cuisine, we were sure she wouldn’t be told a thing about where the money came from. Margie would probably just surprise her one day with a big check, like Ed McMahon used to do for Publishers Clearing House. And then we’d all go our separate ways.

It was the Wednesday after my date with Kevin, just past noon, when I was in the D elevator on my way up to Margie’s office, clutching to my chest an interoffice-mail envelope full of hundred-dollar bills. Aside from a few texts, I hadn’t spoken to Kevin since he hailed me a cab outside Nougatine—after I’d declined his offer to have one more drink, and he leaned in (ostensibly to give me a kiss good night) and I instead shook his hand.

“Thanks for dinner,” I’d said. “See you Monday.”

I shook the man’s hand.

After relaying this story to Emily, she asked: “Do you have some sort of brain damage? Did your parents hit you in the head with a frying pan when you were little?”