O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  “To be clear—we don’t, we’ve never had a relationship like that. It seems crazy to me that you think we do.” Elinor isn’t sure where she’s going with this. All she knows is that the momentum of her anger keeps pushing her forward. “And if you talk to any of your little friends…” She almost says “lemmings,” which is how she used to think of the women Kathryn surrounded herself with—women who probably would have been kind to Elinor, if only Kathryn had led them there. “Make sure you tell them not to call me either.”

  The baby is crying again, louder than it was before. “Take her,” she hears Kathryn say. “Just take her.” Elinor imagines someone—a nanny, probably—whisking the baby out of the room because the crying soon fades away. “I think there’s been some kind of misunderstand—”

  “No. I understand you perfectly. I always have. Now that I’m writing for the Standard, suddenly you can’t be nicer. Do you have any idea how sad that is? How you’re the absolute last person in the world I’d ever want to help?”

  Her questions hang in the air, suspended in years’ worth of hard feelings, kicked up like a cloud of dust slowly settling to the ground. Behind her, a driver honks, telling her to close the gap that’s formed between her car and the next. She lowers her window and holds up a defiant middle finger, emboldened by everything she just managed to get out. For once, she won’t be left with any regrets about what she did and didn’t say.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Kathryn stammers, and Elinor feels good for the first time today, hearing the tiny crack in her voice, knowing that she’s the one who put it there.

  “I wasn’t … I’m so sorry. But…”

  Her apology barely has a chance to land before the “but.” Elinor bristles at the thought of Kathryn trying to make excuses for herself. “But what?” she snaps. “What?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you for a favor. Not that one, at least. I didn’t even know you were writing for the Standard.”

  “So why do you keep calling then?”

  “I wanted to talk to you—about Richard.”

  30

  There’s a woman standing outside her window, yelling. Twice now, Elinor has waved her away, but the woman refuses to go.

  “I dare you!” She slaps the glass with her open palms, leaving behind large, smeary prints. “I dare you to get out of that car.”

  The woman’s eyes are bloodshot and buggy. She looks like she might be on drugs. Elinor shoos her off again, but this only seems to upset her more.

  “We’re suing him,” Kathryn says. “Me, Lauren Post, and Natalie Diaz—the three of us are suing him for sexual harassment.”

  The woman’s palms smack the window again. “Give me that middle finger one more time and I’ll break it in half.”

  Elinor covers her phone and rolls the window down an inch. “Will you go away? I’m trying to have a conversation.”

  “What the fuck did you flip me off for? You’re the one holding up traffic.”

  It’s no use trying to explain that she hadn’t fallen that far behind the next car. Maybe fifteen feet at the most, and what did it even matter? Traffic wasn’t moving then and it isn’t moving now. Honking never helps. A reasonable person might understand this, but the woman seems incapable of reason. Elinor wonders if she’s high on meth, or maybe paint thinner or bath salts, something that’s making her act erratic and aggressive. And then the hard, sharp point of what Kathryn said finally pierces through. She puts the phone back to her ear.

  “Elinor? Hello? Are you still there?”

  “You’re suing Richard?”

  “Are you alright? I hear shouting.”

  “You’re suing him?”

  “Yes, and the university too, for not following up properly on the complaints we filed. For keeping him employed, basically.”

  “Bitch! You are not just gonna sit there and ignore me.”

  She covers the phone again, her grip so tight, it feels like she might snap the thin aluminum case in half.

  “I’m not leaving till you say you’re sorry.” The woman leans over, barely inches away from the window, rapping on it with her knuckles as her breath fogs the glass. “Am I making it hard to hear?” She looks like she’s enjoying herself now. Her mouth splits open into a grin and then she raps even faster. “Am I? Am I?”

  Elinor throws her phone on the passenger seat and flings open her door, hitting the woman in the face. She stumbles backward, holding her forehead in both hands. Elinor gets out of the car and stands over her, the asphalt stretching her shadow out long. She’s younger and fitter than the woman, taller by at least a foot, things that probably weren’t as obvious to either of them until now.

  “You—you hit me,” she says, seemingly confused by the blow.

  “Go away,” Elinor tells her, not loudly or angrily, but in a tone steeped with threat. “I’m going to hurt you if you don’t go away.”

  The woman blinks and rubs her head. She looks around, but no one is coming to help her. She rubs her head again and takes a slow step back, and then another and another. As she opens the door to her truck, she shouts, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” but her question sounds more impotent than enraged.

  Kathryn is still on the line when Elinor returns to her car. “What’s happening over there? Who was that shouting?”

  “Tell me what you were going to say.”

  “But are you okay? Where are you right now?”

  “Nowhere.” Elinor turns her air conditioner on full blast, sweating from the few seconds she spent outside in the sun. “I’m nowhere. Please, just tell me why you called. Tell me everything.”

  One by one, Kathryn recounts how Richard pursued her and their classmates, dangled opportunities in front of them, and then graciously backed away when they declined his advances. But then the repercussions began, professional repercussions that they often couldn’t trace back to him until much later. Lauren learned that she lost a major fellowship because Richard failed to submit a letter of recommendation for her. Natalie, one of the standout students in their graduating class, had been a finalist for several staff writer positions, always coming close to landing the job but not close enough. When she called a woman she’d interviewed with and asked for advice that might improve her chances in the future, the woman suggested removing Richard from her list of references but refused to explain why. She also swore that she’d deny it if Natalie ever told anyone about their conversation.

  Of the three stories Elinor hears, Kathryn’s disturbs her the most, not because of the consequences to her career, which she’d put on hold after graduation to have a baby, but because of the pattern of events. Richard seemed to take an interest in mentoring her from early on. He encouraged her to drop by his office, where they had long conversations about her career goals and what she’d have to do in order to achieve them. Eventually, they started meeting in coffee shops and bars, and then at his home, where they jumped from school- and work-related topics to personal ones. Why was she so driven? When was the last time she’d gone on a date? What kind of men was she interested in? Kathryn’s voice began to falter when she alluded to past traumas in her life, traumas that he coaxed out of her with whiskey and weed and carefully worded affirmations about how hard it must be to be such a beautiful woman.

  The longer Elinor listens, the more she recognizes the similarities between Kathryn’s experiences and her own. Elinor once told Richard about a man she’d met at a bar and taken back to her apartment at the end of a long evening. The man seemed irritated when she sobered up during the walk home and changed her mind about inviting him in. Then he pleaded and cajoled and asked to use the bathroom, and she—not wanting to seem like a bitch—agreed to let him in. Despite saying no, despite trying to fight, the police said she didn’t have a case against him and discouraged her from filing one. Too many witnesses had seen them together at the bar, making out as they left. Although her father had passed away years earlier, Elinor couldn’t help but hear his voice, raging at her and
asking what did she expect, taking a man she’d just met back to her apartment? This is what you get.

  Richard, in contrast, said all the right things. He told her it wasn’t her fault and she had nothing to be ashamed of, a reaction that almost surprised her. There was such an ordinariness to her story, an utter lack of originality. It sounded like every other account she’d ever heard, which made her feel so much worse, the fact that she knew about the possibility of such violence in the world but didn’t see it coming until it was bearing down on her throat. Because she revered Richard and doubted herself, his reassurances were more comforting than her own. How stupid she was not to see it. The way he treated her and Kathryn—snake charming his way into their confidence—she realizes these weren’t genuine, independently thought-out acts. They were methods, reused and recycled from one woman to the next, no different from the man at the Depot who tried to pick her up by making her feel insecure.

  It sickens her to learn that even his first move was a ploy that he’d used on them both. After an elaborately expensive dinner that Richard referred to as a “meeting,” he brought Kathryn home to his apartment. As she stood on his balcony, peering down at Gramercy Park below, he touched the small of her back. Instead of letting his hand wander, she told him to stop. And when he reached under her shirt, she quickly collected her things and left. Afterward, everything he promised—letters, introductions, offers to recommend her for assignments that he’d passed on—evaporated. But he was smart and strategic about meting out his punishment. Kathryn continued to earn As in his classes, and his behavior toward her in public remained as complimentary as ever. Elinor even remembers feeling jealous of his admiration for Kathryn’s shrewd instincts, unaware that a rift had ever taken place between them. It was only after he shut her out that Kathryn realized how careful he’d been. He never put anything in writing to her, to anyone, that could be used against him. It was the women’s word against his.

  “That’s why we decided to reach out to you. We were wondering”—Kathryn hesitates—“hoping, really, that you might be able to help us with this. Maybe you have records of things that he sent you? Like text messages? Or emails? The two of you seemed, you know, friendly, for longer than any of us were. We thought maybe he lowered his guard after a while.”

  Despite the initial similarities, when their stories finally diverged, Elinor’s jumped the track. Whereas Kathryn and the others had rejected Richard’s advances, she’d opened herself up to them, accepting his romantic attentions willingly. At first, she did so because it was flattering that someone like him would take an interest in her. Then later, long after the patina of his affections had grown dull, when his eye would frequently wander and he was quick to anger or irritation or criticism, she stayed with him because she thought she was learning things about the business that she couldn’t pick up elsewhere.

  “Does he know?” she asks. “About the lawsuit? Does he know that you’re doing this?”

  “He was notified last month.”

  Elinor imagines a calendar, flipping the pages backward. “When last month?”

  “I don’t know the exact date. It was around mid-May though. Why?”

  They served him with papers and then he passed off the assignment to her. That was the order of events. Of course it was. He didn’t convince Lydia to give Elinor the article because he needed to have hip surgery, or because she grew up in North Dakota, or because she was right for the job. It was none of those things. He gave it to her because he wanted to keep her busy and beholden. Silent.

  Elinor covers her eyes. The air conditioner has been on high for several minutes, turning her fingertips cold and blue. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t help you. It wasn’t—it wasn’t like that with us.”

  Kathryn is quiet for a while, and then her tone takes on a familiar edge. “That’s what I told the others. But they kept insisting I get in touch.” She makes a noise, something that sounds like a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “I can’t believe he’s got you working on something for the Standard.”

  Elinor nods. She understands that there’s nothing she can say in her defense. She’s also preoccupied, connecting the dots scattered around her until she’s able to see what they’ve been pointing to all along. Unlike Kathryn, Lauren, and Natalie, Richard never enticed her with professional inducements, before or during their time together. He never praised Elinor’s work or complimented her in public like he did with the others. He never introduced her to his colleagues as one of his most talented and promising students. It was as if he knew no one would believe him.

  “This is why we all hated you, by the way,” Kathryn says.

  “Because I chose to be with him?”

  “Because women like you make it so much harder for the rest of us.”

  31

  Elinor doesn’t remember driving. One minute, she was sitting in traffic on the reservation. The next, she’s standing outside her room at the hotel, staring at a blinking red light on her door. She inserts and removes her key card, inserts and removes it again. Three more red blinks and still nothing. She takes a deep breath and wipes the card on her shirt, polishing the magnetic stripe until it’s free of dust and lint. Then she dips the card in with one smooth, deliberate motion, waiting for the door to unlock. When the light blinks red again, Elinor grabs the handle in her fists and shakes it, knowing this won’t help matters at all, but it feels good to shake the fuck out of something just because she can.

  Her neighbors are being noisier than usual. She hears coughing and deep voices and a snort of laughter right before their door flings open and a middle-aged man walks out, followed by two, three, four others, all dressed in similar uniforms of T-shirts, work boots, and jeans. She braces herself for a comment—something that will finally make her lose her mind at them in this narrow hallway—but the group simply nods or tips their baseball caps in greeting, seemingly startled to be living next door to a woman. Elinor glances at her watch. It’s nearing the 4 p.m. shift change. If their room is empty now and she could just get into her own, maybe she’ll finally be able to sleep. This is what her entire body wants to do, even though her mind understands the unlikeliness of it. The second she closes her eyes, her conversation with Kathryn will simply play and replay on a loop, the words worse than any noise that her neighbors could ever make.

  She slides down with her back against the door and sits cross-legged on the floor, too exhausted by the thought of sleep to return to the lobby. The sun is angling in through a nearby window, forming a warm square of light on the rough blue carpet. She runs her fingers back and forth across the square as she tries to figure out what to do—about her room key, about everything. Continuing with her work here as if nothing happened doesn’t seem like an option. But neither does quitting. She takes out her phone and examines the speed dial list. Richard used to occupy the first position, followed by her sister, her building manager, the bodega around the corner from her apartment, and Damon. Removing him from this order after their breakup—which had been presented as mutual but was in fact his idea—had seemed like such a loss.

  Elinor stares at the cracked screen, trying to understand what it is that she actually feels toward him before she dials. The sensation swells and pitches like anger, or maybe even outrage, but it can’t be. What is her actual grievance against him, after all? Richard had an eye for women; she always knew that. He could be ill-tempered and unkind. She knew that too. But like he said on the phone—now she understands why he said it—he never made her do anything that she didn’t want to do. And maybe that’s the part that bothers her most, the part that makes her feel so hopelessly taken in. Her classmates saw what she didn’t and ran, while Elinor stayed by his side for as long as he was willing to have her.

  Even now, she’s curious about Richard’s reaction to the lawsuit in a way that feels like a betrayal. To whom, she’s not sure, especially since she’d never been friendly with Kathryn and the others. She’s not about to invent some notion of s
isterly solidarity now. The longer she sits there, rubbing her hand across the carpet, the more obvious it is that her hesitation to call has nothing to do with Kathryn. It doesn’t even have anything to do with Richard. She’s simply ashamed of the questions she wants to ask. They’re all wrong. Instead of demanding to know what he did to her classmates, her immediate concern is the article. Did he actually think she could write it? Or was he just trying to buy some goodwill? Elinor always tried to deny it whenever Maren called her selfish, but she wonders if that’s not the very definition of her behavior in this moment. Shouldn’t she be furious at Richard for what he did to other women even though he didn’t do those things to her?

  She imagines being hauled into a roomful of lawyers to explain that her relationship with him had been consensual, that he never offered her anything before they started seeing each other, or during the year they were together. He didn’t need to. His attorney will ask what she used to do for a living, no doubt aware that her response will introduce a damaging question. If Richard was the type of man who could date socialites and successful businesswomen and even a former model, then why in the world would he sexually harass his students? She finds this deeply troubling, the idea of being a wild card kept in someone’s pocket and played when Richard needs a win. This is why we all hated you, she thinks.

  At the far end of the hall, she hears humming and the squeaky metal wheels of a rolling cart. Elinor jumps to her feet and walks toward the elevator where a cleaning woman is unspooling a large black bag out of a box. She lifts and lowers the bag like a parachute, letting it billow open with air, and then crouches next to the garbage can, which is stuffed full and surrounded by trash again. Elinor doesn’t understand how so many pizza boxes and empty beer bottles can accumulate like this. But at least twice a day, maybe more, some poor woman has to get on her hands and knees to clean up the mess.