The Assistants(32)

I went silent and she stared at me hard. “Forget all that for a moment,” she said. “First, tell me your story, Tina Fontana.”

“My story?”

“You interest me,” she said. “The way Lily Madsen the Lean Cuisine Lady interests me.”

That could not be a compliment.

“I look at Lily and I know there’s a story,” Wendi explained. “I want to find out what it is.”

“Have you?” I asked.

Wendi shook her pink horns. “It’s not so easy getting into her little vacuum-packed world. You’re not so different. You have a certain quality, it’s difficult to describe. Like a stray cat that you can see is hungry, but if you reach to it, it’ll claw your hand off, you know?”

I did, actually.

“Maybe it’s those big sad eyes you have.” Wendi pulled a soft pack of Marlboros out of her cargo pants pocket. “You have, like, weepy Winona Ryder–from-the-nineties eyes. And she was no cat you could just pick up and take into your lap either.” She held the pack of cigarettes out to me. “Smoke?”

“No, thanks.”

“Have you ever?” She Zippo’d her cigarette lit.

I shook my head.

“You always been a rule-follower?”

“I guess you can say that.”

“You’re a first-gen, aren’t you? That’s typical. Where are your parents from?”

“Sicily and Calabria,” I said. “What about you?”

“I was born in Beijing. Came here when I was six.”

“Have you always been a rule-breaker?” I asked.

“Did you not hear me? I said I was born in Beijing.”

She smiled, I think. So I smiled. Then she blew a cloud of smoke into my face. “So how did a rule-follower like you end up as Robert Barlow’s assistant?”

“I don’t really know.”

Wendi glared at me until I said more.

“I was an English major in college, managed a bookstore for a while, worked as a research assistant to a journalist—she’s the one who told me Robert was looking for an assistant. She recommended me.”

“So did you think you’d become a journalist?” Wendi flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette onto the floor. “By starting out as Robert’s assistant?”

“Maybe?” I wiped the potato chip grease from my fingers onto my jeans and went back to my beer. “Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I thought if I could get an in somewhere, my foot in the door . . . becoming a journalist sounded like it could be a solid choice, like an actual job. But now it’s six years later and I’m still doing the same thing I was doing when I was twenty-four, with no chance of advancement and . . . I’m rambling.”

“You’re answering my question,” Wendi said. “You’re just taking the long way. Tell me about your student loans.”

I hesitated, but my hesitation was pointless. Wendi obviously knew everything and she wasn’t letting me off the hook.

“It all seems so stupid now,” I said, “graduating college with so much debt and no real career plan, but I didn’t have a whole lot of guidance. My parents can’t even read English. Nobody explained to me what all those numbers meant when I signed for my loans. It all just felt so possible, like I was doing the right thing by investing in myself.”

Wendi shocked me by laughing a high-pitched laugh that was one part schoolgirl and two parts hyena. “My parents don’t even speak English,” she said. “But they guided me all right. They guided me through before-and-after-school study sessions, three hours of violin every day, a perfect score on my SATs. They guided me through a nice beating when I missed valedictorian by one-thousandth of a point.”

“You were salutatorian of your high school and you still have student-loan debt?”

There was that maniac laugh again. “I would if I went to Harvard like I was supposed to. Six-figure debt, for sure. But instead I rebelled.”

Wendi let the word hang in the smoky air between us for a moment. “That was my first broken rule,” she said. “I said f*ck you to Harvard and went to Queens College instead, for free. My parents haven’t spoken to me since. I’m an orphan now, by disownment.”

“Wait.” I came to fuller attention. “Lily said you have debt. Isn’t that why you wanted me to come here?”

“That’s what I told her. But the truth is, I wanted to show you something.” Wendi nodded her horns at the laptop resting on the floor. “I’ve been working on a program that I think works well with . . . what you and Emily Johnson have been doing.”

“We’re not doing it anymore,” I said.

Wendi rolled her eyes, stubbed out her cigarette, flicked the filter across the room, and picked up her laptop. “I’ve created software that would enable you to systemize on a larger scale the base design you and Emily have generated.”

“I have no idea what any of those words mean,” I said.

“It means I don’t want anything from you.” Wendi pulled her amp closer to mine. “I’m presenting you with an opportunity. In plain English, I’ve designed a pay-it-forward network. Let me show you.”

She fingered the computer’s touchpad mouse with her purple-polished pointer finger. “This program allows you to track all the money you and Emily move around. Checks can go in and checks can go out, and you control it all. So if you wanted to, you could subsidize whoever you approve—me, for example, or some other lowly Titan assistant drowning in student debt—and then allow them to contribute what they can if they choose to. But I see by your glazed eyes that I’ve lost you.”