The Assistants(55)

“Fontana, if you want to pull that cardboard Just Fired! box over your head and leave it there, be my guest. But we’re caught. There’s no other explanation.”

Emily unlatched her necklace, unclasped her bracelet, and slid off her rings. “You know I hate having to get real with you this way,” she said, speaking to me in her lower-class accent now. “But we’ve got to figure out our next move before it’s too late. You get me?”

I nodded.

“So the only remaining question,” she said, “is what do you think of Mexico?”

I stared at the pile of gold and jewels on the table. “Are you asking me to Thelma and Louise it with you?”

“The alternate version, where the car lands safely over the border?” Emily said. “Yes, I am.”

I tried to imagine what that would be like. Emily and me living the south-of-the-border fugitive life. Would it be all Coronas and avocados? Or would it be more like Montezuma’s revenge? And, from this point on, would I always frame my questions-to-self in the style of a Carrie Bradshaw column?

Emily pulled her hair back into a ponytail, which she tied in place using only the hair itself.

“There’s about four hundred fifty K on the site right now.” She watched my reaction closely. “We can take it and run. It’s enough to start a new life, and then we can, like, open a fruit stand or sell handmade bracelets or something.”

“You’re serious,” I said.

“Sí,” Emily answered. “Mucho.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m so pale, and I’ve never been good at crafts. I need to think.”

“Well think fast, Fontana. Because we’re just about out of time.”

I shut myself into my bedroom to do just that: think. If thinking mostly consisted of crying out to the ceiling rain bubble, “How did this happen? What am I supposed to do now?!” I’d never been great when it came to tragedy or decision-making, and this was both. This was like having your dog hit by a car and having to choose a paint color for your vestibule at the same time. I tried going over my options. Run away? Stay and confess? Take a Xanax and a long nap and hope for the best?

Later that night, I met Kevin at Diner in South Williamsburg because I refused to leave Brooklyn and he insisted on taking me out to dinner so we could “talk.” My true intention was to do as little talking as possible. Really I was only buying time till I figured out what to do next, and I figured I might as well have a decent meal in the interim.

Diner is in no way a diner. I want that to be clear. Like all things Williamsburg, it’s ironic and expensive and you’re either in on the joke or you’re not. After a forty-minute wait, we were finally seated.

“I still don’t understand,” Kevin said, squeezing into our tight booth.

“Neither do I. Why is this stupid place so crowded?”

“I was talking about Barlow firing you.”

“Oh.” I made a quick scan of the knitted hats and scruffy beards on either side of us to be sure no one was hiding a tape recorder. Then I remembered tape recorders were rendered obsolete in 1991, and with a minimum of two iPhones on each tabletop, my caution was pointless.

“Has anyone ever understood why Robert Barlow does the things he does?” I said.

“I thought you did,” Kevin said.

Suddenly, our waiter squeezed into our booth beside me, to tell us about the menu. There aren’t any menus at Diner because their food options are seasonal. If you insist on seeing a menu, or pretend to be deaf, they’ll belligerently scribble down the names of a few food items onto your paper tablecloth. This is intended to be authentic. Authentic what, I don’t know.

We had a short chat with our abundantly tattooed waiter about how organic and grass-fed everything was, and then he asked us what we wanted and I realized I hadn’t been listening to him at all. I’d completely zoned out on our verbal menu options.

Kevin ordered some kind of fish. He actually just said, “I’ll have the fish,” which signaled to me that he’d also zoned out and taken a shot in the dark.

“Soup?” I said.

“Soup’s out of season,” the waiter replied.

“Burger,” I said.

“And some beer,” Kevin added. “Whatever you recommend.”

This date was swiftly turning into the blooper reel of a Food Network reality show. Our craft beers arrived, and I immediately knocked mine over. Another thing about Diner is the tables aren’t level. Diner’s too artisanal for unslanted surfaces.

Our waiter dutifully brought me a new beer and I sipped it carefully with both hands.

“Do you think Robert fired you because of your website? Because he disagrees with it politically?” Kevin rubbed at the condensation on his glass. “You might have legal standing, if you think that’s the reason.”

I gazed around the restaurant’s interior, which resembled the inside of a zeppelin airship. “I spy three separate girls wearing tights for pants,” I said. “Can you find them?”

This effectively made it impossible for Kevin to rest his puppy eyes on mine. I couldn’t deal with puppy anything right now. My intestines ached and I felt like crying. All I really wanted was to go home and be by myself.

But Kevin persisted. “Tina, I can’t help you if you don’t let me into what you’re feeling right now.”