The Assistants(53)

I felt like God, or what I sometimes imagined God to feel like when he was blowing off steam: scrolling through people’s lives on his iPad like an old lady at a Vegas slot machine. Cherries-orange-apple—you’ll get hit by a car today. Lemon-grapes-banana—sorry, that’s cancer. Triple sevens—jackpot; someone just paid off all your student-loan debt.

It felt good, playing the Almighty. Because like the Tibetan Buddhists who don’t even believe in Him claim (and who, by the way, threw awesome concerts with the Beastie Boys in the late nineties), real happiness just might come from putting others first.

Though the Buddhists would probably insist that the “real happiness” also be egoless—and this was definitely not that. No, this was a way more Americana type of happiness, steeped in pride and self-regard. Happy as a pig in shit, Robert might have called it. Or maybe that’s what I’m calling it, I don’t know. Because something about it was sort of shitty. Yeah, I was happy I was helping others. And I was happy I’d struck upon something I was good at, and even got applauded for. And I was happy to really feel like somebody for the first time in my life. But more than all that, I was happy that we’d gotten away with it.

Emily was right. It was like, who even remembered anymore what we took from Titan? But I remembered. And somehow seeing how all this was turning out—how at times I’d catch myself being genuinely excited and hopeful and optimistic about my future, and then remember—it was making me realize the person I could have become if only I hadn’t . . .

. . . what?

If only I hadn’t stolen? Broken? Made a bad choice? Made a dozen bad choices? But we’d gotten away with it, and I have to admit that I was really f*cking happy about that.





23




ARRIVING AT WORK on Monday morning, I was struck by how similar it felt to my first day at Titan. The tingling in my belly, the good nerves mingling with bad, the way I was thinking as I rode the escalator up to the elevator bank, Do I have time to run and grab a bagel at the café?

But unlike my first day, today there were people greeting me and smiling at me. Both in front of and behind me on the escalator there were girls craning their necks to catch my eye and wave. On the escalator parallel to mine, Gwendolyn Clark, a producer who was a known starf*cker, paused midsentence in her conversation with one of Titan’s most celebrated newscasters to acknowledge me. I’m not gonna lie, it felt pretty good, because attention, even the whorish kind, can seriously boost one’s endorphins.

In the elevator—elevator B—there were women who I was pretty sure had been instructed by the central kiosk to proceed to elevator A or C but filed into mine anyway. I didn’t even know what to do with all these women batting their extra-long eyelashes at me. Should I be aloof and check my phone? Pretend to look for something in my bag? And then it hit me: This was why people walked around wearing giant headphones all the time. Because when you’re popular, it’s the easiest way to ignore everyone who wants you to notice them. It wasn’t about the music at all, was it?

When I reached the fortieth floor, it was pretty much business as usual, but Robert wasn’t in yet. Which meant I could have totally run to the café for a bagel after all.

I settled in at my desk, logged on to everything I had to log on to, checked the phone messages, and then got to the real business of the day: opening the Assistance page and allocating the day’s checks to our five lucky winners.

When Robert walked up behind me, he didn’t make a sound.

“Tina.”

I jumped an inch from my chair.

“Robert!” I shouted.

“What’s that you’re looking at?”

“Nothing.” I X’d out every window on my screen like a game of computer Whack-A-Mole.

Robert took off his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. “Will you come into my office, please?”

I reached for my pen and notepad and didn’t feel the least bit nervous.

For months now, every time Robert had asked to speak to me I’d nearly lost control of my bowels. But not this time. This time I gave Robert the usual three-step head start, watched the carpet into his office, and closed the door behind me, thinking the whole time about getting back to my desk to send out those checks.

“Please sit,” he said.

I sat, anticipating great praise. Maybe a good ol’ boy’s smack on the back for a job well done. Perhaps a Man oh man, your site took off like a greased sow. Or a You’re as smart as a hooty owl, aren’t you?

Instead he leaned on his elbows with his hands enfolded in front of him. “Is there anything you feel you need to say to me?” he asked.

I was a master at deciphering Robert’s tone, but whatever it was I was hearing now was entirely new. It didn’t strike me as the falling timbre of disappointment. More the enfeebling tonic of sadness.

“No,” I said.

We sat staring at each other for a moment. From the outside, any stranger could have mistaken us for lovers, or, more appropriately, father and daughter when the daughter has done something wrong, but she isn’t sure which wrong thing the father knows about.

What did he want from me? Did I do something at the launch party that rubbed him the wrong way? Robert could be so impossible when it came to how much he relied on my knowing what he was thinking without his having to tell me.