“I know!” Emily widened her eyes and shook her head. “It’s just weird. Though he’s always wanted her, right?”
Beth nodded. “I can’t believe Sadie didn’t tell me.” Beth suddenly felt the full force of her absence—they had all been living their lives without her, moving forward, falling in love, getting married, while she had largely stayed in place: another college town, another series of papers.
“Yeah.” Emily shrugged. “Apparently, they’re, like, picking out baby names. She hasn’t been home all week.”
“I guess,” said Beth, feeling that she needed to comfort Emily and herself without actually explicitly appearing to do so. There was something that bothered her about this. Everything changing just as she came back. And Sadie, who had always been so stridently alone—so unfettered—attaching herself to someone else, to Tal. But there was something else, something else that seemed faintly wrong, faintly disappointing: this vague feeling that Tal just seemed too easy for Sadie, too uncomplicated. It was not—Beth struggled to untangle her thoughts—that Tal himself wasn’t sufficiently complicated—he was—but that his worship of Sadie seemed destined to outweigh whatever feelings she might have for him. They’d always imagined Sadie with someone strange and mysterious, someone sleek and unfamiliar. “I guess you go to a wedding, it sort of makes you want to get married.”
“Yeah,” agreed Emily. “I wonder if she’s bringing him with her.”
In silence, they contemplated their eggs.
“So, what happened,” Beth finally asked, “to Will’s wife? They had a baby.”
“Right.” Emily speared a mushroom and sniffed it. “You should ask Lil to tell you the whole story. But I guess he left her. Then it turned out she was pregnant. And he went back.”
“But how did he know the baby was his? If he’d left? And if she was cheating on him?”
Emily shook her head and looked at Beth with something akin to pity. “That came later. And the dates worked out. Also, according to Lil, he looks exactly like Will. Have you met him? The kid? What’s his name?”
“Sam,” said Beth, cold with disappointment. “No. I haven’t met him.”
“Well, Lil says he’s great. And the mother is a nightmare. She’s an actress, of course. That’s why she wanted to come to New York. She actually managed to get a manager, which is more than I can say—”
“Is that like an agent?” asked Beth.
Emily shook her head. “Kind of, but not really. It’s a new thing, kind of like a middleman. A manager basically gets you an agent.”
“Oh,” said Beth. “That makes sense.”
Emily sighed. “Actually, it doesn’t. It’s completely stupid.”
“What happened to her?” If she was, somehow, famous now, Beth would not be able to cope.
“Nothing. She did a Wisk commercial a few years ago. Lil thought it was hilarious.”
“Did you see it?” Is she pretty? Beth wanted to ask.
“No. I don’t have a television.”
“How do you live?” Beth asked, laughing.
“It’s rough,” said Emily. “But I have a support group.”
Beth looked toward the door—no sign of Sadie. She did not, she decided, want to hear what Sadie—a giddy, happy Sadie—had to say about any of this. No. “So, how,” she asked Emily, “did it end? How did he leave her? With a baby?”
“He didn’t,” said Emily. “She left him.”
“No.”
“And the baby,” Emily added.
“And the baby?” Beth repeated.
Over the dregs of their coffee, Beth came to the point—the question she’d meant to pose right away, before she knew that Emily was in possession of a wealth of knowledge about Will. “Have you ever slept with a man who says he’s impotent?” she asked, briskly ignoring the various contradictions and impossibilities in this question.
“Well,” Emily began, fiddling with the collar of her shirt. “Yes. I have. I mean, I was with this guy for a while who couldn’t, you know . . .” Her voice trailed off. “You know about that whole thing.” Beth shook her head. “Really? I’m sure I mentioned that guy to you. Pellegrino Bongwater?”
“What?”
“Pellegrino Bongwater,” Emily said sardonically, but she was mocking herself as much as the guy in question. This was why Beth loved Emily. “He was a writer for Conan. Does this ring a bell?”
“Not yet,” said Beth. “Did I ever meet him?”
Emily chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe. He was very tan? And he wore, like, sweater vests?”
Beth shook her head again.
“Anyway, he was poached for some new audio-streaming television thing. They offered him like a million dollars or something.” She rolled her eyes, then peered at something behind Beth’s head and waved broadly.
“Hello, hello, hello,” cried Sadie, squeezing Beth’s shoulders from behind and planting a cool, soap-scented kiss on her cheek. “Can I pull up a chair? Do you think there’s room?” There wasn’t—the next table was uncomfortably close and its inhabitants looked annoyed at the prospect of Sadie encroaching on their territory—but the waitress grabbed a seat from across the room and gave Sadie a smile. “I’ll need to scoot behind you,” she warned.
“Of course,” Sadie told her, shrugging off her coat, a nubby tweed. “Thanks so much. Really. And I’d be so grateful for a cup of coffee when you have a chance.” She arched her narrow back against the bentwood chair, squared her shoulders, then looked from Emily to Beth and back again. “So,” she said, raising her dark brows, “have you guys talked to Lil?”
Emily and Beth shook their heads.
“She’s completely freaking out. Tuck’s magazine was sold to some big conglomerate.” She picked up the coffee that was placed in front of her and took a delicate sip, tendrils of steam rising in front of her nose. “Well, not big. But big-ish. She thinks they’re going to fire Tuck.”
“Why?” asked Beth.
“He’s the newest hire,” Sadie said, with a shrug. “And he’s not really a reporter.” She put down her coffee and smiled. “So what’s with Will Chase?”
“Um, nothing,” said Beth. “How did you know?” What’s with you and Tal? she wanted to ask, but somehow she didn’t ask such things of Sadie.
“Lillian Roth-Hayes told me.” Sadie smiled and shrugged.
“Nothing?” asked Emily.
“The famous Will Chase!” Sadie went on, undeterred, her smile widening to include her teeth. “Did he tell you his tale of woe?”
“Sadie’s not so keen on him,” said Emily, returning Sadie’s grin.
“Oh,” said Beth, at once relieved and mortified.
“He’s fine,” said Sadie primly, her smile turning into a little moue. Emily and Beth exchanged a glance. They knew there would be more. Sadie pressed her lips together and folded her long fingers in her lap. “He’s just such a know-it-all,” she said quickly. “And he just never asks about anything other than—” She stopped and smiled again, her lips tightly closed. It was, Beth thought, a pretty expression. “I’m going to shut up.” A pause. “I suppose, maybe, he seems like a jerk to me, because he doesn’t like me. He seems like the sort of guy who, if he’s interested in you, can be completely charming, right?” Emily and Beth nodded. “How was it? Was he nice?”
“He was great,” said Beth, looking into her coffee cup. “I had, just, a really wonderful time.”
“That’s great,” said Sadie. “And you heard about the wife and the little boy and all that.”
“Actually he didn’t talk much about it,” admitted Beth.
“Hmmm,” murmured Sadie, maddeningly.
“Em was just telling me the whole saga.”
“Oh?” Sadie brightened at the prospect of a story. “What part are you up to?”
“We’re done,” answered Emily. “We’ve moved on to”—she paused and gave Sadie a look of mock seriousness—“Pellegrino Bongwater.”
“Oh my God,” cried Sadie, clapping her h
ands with delight. “I’d forgotten all about him!” She turned to Beth. “You’ve missed so much! He was this ridiculous guy who was just always tan—”
“Like, George Hamilton tan,” Emily added.
“Where did he work, Emily? At some start-up?” Emily nodded. “And what was his story? All they did at his office was smoke pot. Out of this enormous bong, right?”
“Yep. An enormous cobra-shaped bong. And he was convinced that they would get cancer or something if they used tap water in it. That’s how much pot he’d smoked. He was permanently paranoid. So he insisted on filling it with Pellegrino water. The refrigerators at his office were, like, stocked with it, so what did he care? I mean he wasn’t paying for it.” Beth laughed. “And he could not,” Emily said, adopting a mock formal tone, “get. It. Up.”
Sadie turned to Emily, her mouth widened into an O. “I didn’t know that,” she said. Emily shrugged.
“Was it because of the pot?” asked Beth.
“I assume,” Emily told her. “But he was a fucked-up guy. And he was just kind of weird about women. I don’t know that he’d ever actually had sex.” She gave Beth a hard look. “But why do you ask? Is it Will? Because it sounds like he could be seriously messed up about women. I mean, considering . . .”
Sadie had swiveled around in her chair, searching for the waitress; discussions of sex made her uncomfortable. “Ask what?” she said, distracted. “What did Beth ask?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Beth, ignoring Sadie’s question. She’d lost track of how many times the waitress had refilled their cups, and her hands were beginning to shake from the caffeine.
“Because of what happened with his wife,” said Sadie sharply.
“I know,” said Beth. “She was just so awful to him.”
“Well, not just that,” said Emily, her voice also taking on an edge. She’s had too much coffee, Beth thought. “Because he had a wife. That wife. What kind of person marries someone he’s never even had dinner with, never spent any time alone with? Other than in bed?”
“A messed-up person,” said Beth, turning her eyes to the window. Dozens of people now waited for a table. They really should leave and give theirs up. It wasn’t fair to the waitress. They would have to leave a huge tip.
“No,” said Sadie. “No. A hopeless romantic.”
The next morning Beth awoke to find that the mild anxiety of the past few days had been supplanted by a feeling that could only be described as dread. It was Monday. All her friends were heading off to work or school, while she was alone in this large, silent, grown-up apartment, surrounded by the belongings of some stranger—his mod furniture, his shelves of Douglas Coupland books—in the middle of a neighborhood in which she knew no one, many train stops from everyone and everything she cared about. And it seemed to her now that there was something demoralizing about living in Queens, wasn’t there? As though one had given up on any semblance of hipness, as though one had simply relinquished all hopes of participating in the world of art and culture and commerce. She’d parted with most of her savings to live in this place, in New York, through May: the two months rent and the security deposit had come to more than two thousand dollars, a large percentage of her teaching stipend. And here she was, with nothing to do, nowhere to be, no one to see.
No one, that was, except Gail Bronfman. At nine o’clock, she swallowed the dregs of her coffee, put the cup in the sink, sat down at the desk in the bedroom—the notes for her dissertation, spread over five white legal pads, neatly piled in its left-hand corner—and dialed the woman’s number, thinking, She won’t be there at nine o’clock on a Monday. I’ll leave a message. Instead, she was greeted with a chirpy “Hello-oh.”
“Gail,” she replied, attempting to sound confident and cheerful though the name stuck in her mouth. “It’s Beth Bernstein.” She rushed on before the woman could say anything. “I just arrived in New York and thought I’d just, um, call and check in with you. I was thinking maybe I could come in and talk to you sometime this week. I just, you know, feel awful about, about what happened and I’d love to be able to make it up to you. And also to explain it all to you, because I don’t know if you ever got the whole story. It was just”—she paused here, feeling she was, perhaps, going off in the wrong direction, focusing on the past, rather than the brilliant, happy future, in which she and Gail Bronfman swapped war stories in the faculty lounge—“a ridiculous situation. I know, also, that you would be such a great resource for me, for my dissertation, that we have some overlapping interests, and I’d love to work with you while I’m here, in whatever way I can.”
The woman said nothing. “I mean,” Beth continued on, “I hate to think that this stupid mix-up with my credits has damaged what could—I mean, has ruined—”
“Beth,” Gail Bronfman said finally, in a sharp voice, hitting hard the final digraph, “from what I understand, from what you yourself told me last month, there was no mix-up. It’s your responsibility to keep track of your credits. And you didn’t.”
It was Beth’s turn to remain silent. In all her ruminations on the subject, this particular explanation had not occurred to her. She’d viewed herself as the incontrovertible victim of a stupid bureaucratic glitch. Or, no, maybe not. Maybe, perhaps, possibly, deep down she’d known it was her fault, but hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“Now,” the woman continued, “you’re a bright girl and, from what we’ve heard, an excellent teacher. And we were all quite taken with your chapters.” These were the first two chapters of her dissertation. Beth’s heart began to boom below her ribs. It was all going to be okay. All would be forgiven. “We’d love to have you join us in the spring, but I just don’t know if it’s going to be possible. You put us in a very difficult situation. We had to scramble to find someone to fill your place. And he had to scramble to prepare for classes, but he’s working out very nicely. And as you might expect, we offered him the same contract we offered you, which runs through the spring semester.”
Tears popped into Beth’s eyes and a thickness overtook her throat. She would not, she knew, be able to speak. Mercifully, Gail Bronfman had more to say.
“We might be able to take you on as an adjunct, though you’d be teaching intro classes and the pay would be considerably less. And you’d have no benefits. But we won’t know until January.”
“That would be great,” cried Beth in a strangled voice. “Really, that would be fine. That would be great.”
“Okay,” said Gail Bronfman, her tone softening. “Well, we’ll keep in touch. You might also be able to pick up a composition class. I can put you in touch with Bob Deangelis, in the English department.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Beth, with perhaps too much passion. “Thank you. That would be wonderful.”
She hung up the phone, thinking, That went well. Everything will be fine. But slowly, as she wandered restlessly through the three rooms of her borrowed apartment, the sick dread returned. Adjuncts were the lowest of the low. She didn’t want to be an adjunct. And once you started adjuncting there was no way out. You were stuck in the adjunct lane forever, unless you published a book or did something spectacular, which you didn’t do, because you didn’t have any time or connections, because you were an adjunct, and had to teach way too many classes to make a living. And she had to have benefits. Her inhalers alone would cost hundreds per month.
But she had no other options. It was October, obviously too late to apply for full-time teaching jobs for the current year, unless, by some chance, someone was going on sabbatical or maternity leave in the spring. But that was a long shot. All she could do was try for jobs for the following fall—do the interview circuit at the PCA in March, just as she’d done the previous year—and beg the other city schools for some spring classes. Or, of course, she could finish up her research in the next three months, find a sub-subletter for the apartment, and go back to Milwaukee in January, but that seemed, somehow, impossible, her life there already a distant dream. “How did this
happen,” she said aloud. “Oh my God.” Before her thoughts could go any further—toward self-pity or anxiety—she threw on her clothing from the day before, slipped her feet into her scuffed brown clogs, and ran down the four flights of stairs.
Breathless, she pushed through the lobby’s ornate glass door and walked around the corner to the closest commercial strip, a decrepit block consisting of a Laundromat, a wood-paneled pizzeria perpetually filled with teenage boys in puffy jackets, and a sporadically-in-business candy store, stocked with Necco Wafers, Mallo Cups, yellowed cellophane bags of circus peanuts, and assorted other off-brand sweets, all of which appeared to have been manufactured in some bygone era, before the advent of Hershey’s and M&M’s. Her friends had been right to warn her away from the neighborhood. Even the closest grocery store was blocks and blocks away, blocks that felt extraordinarily long when lugging home a half gallon of milk and a can of peeled plum tomatoes. She briefly contemplated the pizza place before settling on the candy store. Therein, she spent a happy few minutes poking at dusty cellophane packages of wax lips and thumbing through outdated copies of People, until a low, smoke-addled voice from the front of the shop interrupted her reverie. “Can I help you, miss?” Startled, Beth dropped her magazine back onto the rack and walked over to the counter, where a diminutive person—a dwarf, she realized, a dwarf—of indeterminate gender peered at her from behind thick corrective lenses. “Yes,” she found herself saying, “I’ll have a pack of Lucky Strike Lights,” though she didn’t smoke and never had, other than the occasional nervous puff at a party. And yet, as she walked the two blocks home she began confidently, instinctively, tapping the cigarette pack against her palm, before realizing why: Dave. She stopped dead at the corner of Forty-eighth Street and Thirtieth Avenue, where a fig tree had spilled overripe fruit over a row of parked cars. Fuck, she thought. Dave. For a few days now, she’d managed not to think about him in anything but abstract terms. Now, the full extent of his Dave-ness—the overwhelming reality of his existence, just miles away from her, in Brooklyn—hit her sickly. Would Emily or Sadie or Lil tell him that she’d gone out with Will? Possibly. Yes, very possibly, thinking that he should know that she wasn’t hung up on him, that she hadn’t come here because she was still in love with him, or, at least, that any lingering infatuation hadn’t contributed to her decision to move here, or that she hadn’t even been thinking, Hey, I’m moving to New York. Maybe Dave and I will get back together. But all of this, of course, was true, or sort of true. She didn’t know if she wanted him back, but she wanted him to want her back. And she wanted him to think of her as his and his alone, as the girl who’d loved him fully and purely four years earlier.
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