by Jason Starr
“Move in, please,” she said, in a bitchy, impatient tone she wouldn’t have recognized as her own before she moved to Manhattan.
The guy with the briefcase managed to move a couple of inches to his left and Katie had an opening. She backed partway into the car, wriggling her ass to try to create more room, getting groans from everyone around her, and one guy with a Spanish accent said, “Damn bitch.” Now Katie was preventing the door from closing. They closed against her arms a couple of times and Katie said, “Move in, please. Can you please move in?” The doors closed against Katie’s arms again and the conductor over the PA system ordered, “Stop blocking the doors!” Somebody told Katie to just get off the train and Katie found herself muttering, “Shut up,” as she continued to wriggle and twist her way farther into the car. Finally, she got far enough in that the doors could close, but she was pretty sandwiched between people, her face maybe a half inch away from the door.
Looking at her reflection in the dirty Plexiglas, she thought, God, I look like dogshit. She appeared bitter, worn, as if she’d aged five years since college. She used to be such a happy, positive person; she didn’t know how she’d turned into this.
At the next stop, Katie managed to maneuver her way farther into the car. She put in her ear buds, turned on her iPod, and closed her eyes, trying to block out the world. Coldplay was into “A Rush of Blood to the Head,” and she decided enough was enough with all this bullshit—today was a wake-up call; it was time to make some serious changes in her life. Last night, on the way to the movie theater, Andy had been talking about studying for the GMATs and applying to business schools, and she decided she was going to start studying for the GREs, maybe even take a course at Kaplan. Deadlines for next fall probably weren’t due till January and February, so she still had time to apply. She was going to start doing research online, to try to figure out where to apply and what she wanted to study. She knew she wanted to work with people, so maybe she’d go for a master’s in communication or education. She wasn’t sure how she’d pay for grad school, though. She already owed something like twenty thousand dollars in student loans, which she knew she wouldn’t be able to pay off for twenty years, unless she won the lottery or married a rich guy. But she figured she’d find some way to make it work—take out more loans, get some aid or a scholarship, do something. The key was that things would eventually change; this nightmare she was trapped in now couldn’t go on forever. She wasn’t going along some dark road that led to nowhere. There had to be a finish line ahead, a bright light at the end of the tunnel, even though she couldn’t see it right now.
She was jolted from her thoughts when the old, sickly guy next to her started having a coughing fit. As she turned away and started breathing through a tiny space in the left corner of her mouth because she was convinced the guy had TB or something deadly, she thought, I am so moving out of this city.
At Fifty-first Street, she got off the train, moving toward the exit in shuffle steps with the rest of the crowd. There were four sets of stairs leading up to the street and, as always, she took the one at the far right because it let her out practically right in front of the doughnut cart where she bought her coffee and raisin bagel every morning. She felt like a rat again, but this time she didn’t bitch about it out loud. Now that she knew her time as a New Yorker had an expiration date, she felt more removed from everything.
There were five people on line ahead of Katie at the cart. In Lenox, it might’ve taken ten minutes but in New York everyone moved quickly and in less than a minute it was her turn. The very-gross-looking-but-very-nice guy at the cart started pouring her coffee, knowing exactly how she took it, and said, “Hi, sweetheart, how’re you today?”
“Fine, thanks,” Katie said.
As she was digging into her purse, looking for money to give the guy, she looked up for a moment and saw a guy in a Yankees cap and dark sunglasses on the corner of Fifty-first and Lexington. He was about thirty yards away and she couldn’t see his face very clearly but he looked a lot like Peter Wells.
The guy at the cart plopped the bag with the bagel and the coffee onto the counter and Katie handed him the five. He gave her the change and said, “Have a good day,” and Katie said, “Thanks.” Then Katie looked toward the corner again, but the guy with the sunglasses was gone. Katie was usually good with faces and had thought the guy looked exactly like Peter, but it didn’t make sense that he’d be just standing there at nine in the morning. She figured she must’ve made a mistake.
“Excuse me,” the woman on line behind Katie said in a bitchy tone because Katie had blocked her from the cart for, like, two seconds.
Katie gave the woman a dirty look, then made an annoyed tsk sound and walked away.
Although Katie wasn’t late for the staff meeting—actually, she arrived a few minutes early—Mitchell, her boss, still found something to get on her case about. After the meeting he complained that she hadn’t e-mailed a press release to somebody-or-other at so-and-so, even though Katie was positive that Mitchell had never told her to send the stupid e-mail. Katie wanted to tell him to go to hell, but she’d worked at her job long enough to learn that arguing with her boss was pointless. It was much better to swallow her pride and spew all of the usual, Oh, I’m so sorry, my mistake crap, than to get into an argument and feel shitty about it for the rest of the day.
Katie didn’t know what Mitchell’s fucking problem was, why he seemed to have it in for her, but she thought it might’ve been because he was attracted to her. Although he was in his forties and married, he had definitely been flirting with her at the job interview. He hadn’t come on to her or anything, but she noticed him checking out her legs and breasts a few times, and he’d said, “It’ll be a lot of fun working together,” in a very suggestive way. Of course there was no way Katie would ever get involved with a married guy even if she was attracted to him, and she was not, in any way, attracted to Mitchell. He was old, and old guys always grossed her out. He also had a fake tan that was too dark and fake teeth that were too white. He looked like a sleazy game-show host.
The first few days at the job, he was very nice to her; then, probably when he started catching on that she wasn’t interested, he changed. He snapped at her a lot—not yelling or even raising his voice, but just acting irritated. He nitpicked her work to death, never satisfied with anything she did, always telling her she needed to do more of this or less of that. Sometimes he put her down in front of other people, embarrassing the hell out of her and making her feel like an idiot. She couldn’t believe he was acting like such an immature jerk. He was like a boy in grade school who likes a girl but, because she doesn’t like him back, he starts hitting her and treating her like crap.
Katie complained to her friends about the Mitchell situation all the time. Amanda told her to just ignore it, that things would get better. Katie tried to take the advice, but nothing seemed to change. She felt more like a gofer than an assistant. She’d wanted to work in PR to interact with people, to use her communication skills, but it seemed like all Mitchell did was have her run errands and do clerical work. And whenever he asked her to do something, it was always with that tone in his voice. Everything he told her to do was a command, with never a please or thank-you. It got to the point that Katie couldn’t even stand looking at him anymore. The tan, the teeth, the Rolex, the pinky ring—the guy was a total Mr. Smarmy. And his cologne! Katie didn’t know the name of it, but he must’ve used half a bottle of the stuff every day. The whole office reeked of it, even the women’s bathroom. Katie wondered if he wore all that cologne as some kind of sick power trip—he wanted people to smell him, like a cat that craps all over a house to mark its territory. One night at a bar, a guy came up to Katie, wearing the same cologne as Mitchell, and even though she thought the guy was kind of cute, she blew him off. She just couldn’t deal with any guy who smelled like her creep boss.
Things got so bad, Katie even tried to talk to her mother about it, but of course she didn’t h
ave any real advice. She just said, “If you’re unhappy, quit,” and then started talking about pruning the rosebushes or whatever. Katie was like, Gee, thanks for the great advice, Mom. Well, it was really great talking to you, too. Of course, Katie had been thinking about quitting. She would’ve loved to work someplace else, anyplace else, but she was afraid that leaving her first job out of college so soon would look bad on her résumé. She wanted to get at least a year in and then move on.
But now that she’d made the decision to go back to school, and knew that she’d be leaving her job by next September, it made it much easier to brush Mitchell’s comments aside, to not take the things he said so seriously.
She was going about her workday, having one of the better mornings she’d had in a long time. She managed to finish all her work without getting overly stressed or pissed off, and had some time to look into some grad schools on the Web. She requested applications from several schools, including Berkeley and the University of Washington.
Mitchell was in and out of meetings most of the morning and she barely even spoke to him. Then, around eleven thirty, Katie was getting a cup of coffee in the kitchen, making small talk with Rachel, an assistant, and JoAnne, an intern, when Mitchell came by and said, “You can stop talking about me now.”
“Sshh, everybody, Mitchell’s here; be quiet,” JoAnne said, playing along.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” Mitchell said, starting to pour himself a cup of coffee. “As long as it’s only good stuff.”
“Of course it’s good stuff,” JoAnne said. “Right, girls?”
“Yeah, it was all good,” Rachel said. “Definitely.”
They were beating the joke to death, but everyone was smiling anyway. Mitchell was smiling because he always seemed to be smiling, probably because he thought his choppers were so great and he wanted to show them off to the world. JoAnne and Rachel were doing major ass kissing. Rachel was up for a promotion, which Mitchell would have input in, and she’d been joking around with him, doing blatant brownnosing for weeks. JoAnne was trying to kiss up to Mitchell, too, trying to position herself for a possible full-time job at the company after graduation. Katie was smiling, not because she thought anything was funny or even amusing, but because she felt above it all, like she knew what was really going on and everyone else didn’t.
Then, maybe Mitchell saw Katie smiling and wanted to put her back in her usual, miserable place, because he said, “Katie, I meant to say something to you before, but I really like that outfit you’re wearing.”
Katie knew some zinger was coming. After all, Mitchell wasn’t exactly the type who dished out compliments, and straight guys didn’t normally comment on women’s clothing.
“Yeah, I love it, too,” JoAnne said, naturally agreeing with whatever Mitchell said. Why didn’t she just get it over with and blow him already?
“Me, too,” Rachel said, also sounding totally fake. “Where’d you get it?”
“Oh, Ann Taylor,” Katie said.
“It’s great,” Mitchell said, pouring it on, sounding like freaking Isaac Mizrahi. “But didn’t I see you in one just like it the other day?”
It was a typical passive-aggressive Mitchell comment. He had the uncanny ability to zero in on the thing Katie was the most sensitive about, the thing she was praying no one would notice. There was no reason for him to mention anything about her clothing except to be cruel and to embarrass the hell out of her. And, as usual, it worked. Katie’s face was burning up and she wanted to run out of the office and never come back. She could tell that JoAnne and Rachel knew what Mitchell had done to her, but they were too wimpy to come to her aid. Katie thought, Couldn’t one of them even, like, change the subject or something?
Then Katie realized everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to answer. It felt like a full minute had gone by but it had probably only been a few seconds. She could tell that Mitchell, that prick, was enjoying watching her squirm.
Finally, she heard herself say, “I have two of them.”
She knew the excuse sounded very lame, like an obvious cover-up.
“So you were wearing the other one the other day,” Mitchell said, as if he bought the explanation even though it was obvious he didn’t. “I get it now.”
Katie returned to her desk with her coffee. She felt, strangely, the way she had after having sex with Andy the other night. Then, in one of those weird moments of kismet that always made Katie think that there had to be a God, an e-mail from Andy arrived in her in-box.
Hey,
Just wanted to say, I had a great time Last
night. I’m realty Looking forward to seeing you
again. Will call you later!
XOXO Andy
The note upset Katie and she didn’t know if she had the right to feel upset about it, which made it even more upsetting. There was nothing really wrong with the message. If it weren’t for what had happened between them, she might have thought the note was sweet and thoughtful. Making things even weirder and more confusing, she’d had a pretty good time with Andy on their date last night. At first, when they’d met in front of the movie theater on First and Sixty-second, she’d regretted agreeing to go out with him. She felt uncomfortable and couldn’t even make eye contact. She kept replaying that night in bed, remembering how he’d pinned her arms down and forced himself on her. Although she kept reminding herself that he hadn’t actually pinned her down, that he hadn’t used any force at all, actually, it didn’t matter, because this was how she kept remembering it.
In the movie theater, during the previews, her whole body had tensed when he rested his hand on her knee for a couple of seconds. She shifted away but wanted to move to another seat or, better yet, leave. But then the movie started. It was okay, not great, but Andy laughed a lot, even at the jokes that weren’t very funny. Katie wasn’t sure, but she got the sense that Andy’s laughing was part of a strategy for getting laid, that he was trying to show her that he was a fun guy, that he could let loose. After the movie, Katie wanted to get into a cab alone and go home, but she didn’t want to be rude, so she walked with Andy uptown along First Avenue. He was acting very polite, asking her a lot of questions about high school and college. She hated admitting it, but he seemed as charming as he had on their first few dates, and she was starting to feel more comfortable around him.
When they reached American Trash, a bar near Seventy-sixth, Andy asked Katie if she wanted to have a drink and she said okay. He was the perfect gentleman, helping her on and off with her coat and even pushing the bar stool in for her after she sat down. He didn’t try to come on to her at all in the bar, maybe because he’d sensed the tension in the movie theater. But then he told her that he wanted to talk to her about something.
“What?” she asked, although she knew from his tone that it had to do with the night they had sex and the awkwardness afterward.
“I just want you to know,” he said. “I mean, I hope you know that…I mean…God, how do I say this?”
He sipped his beer. She thought it was cute, the way he seemed nervous, struggling to find the right words. He was showing a sensitive, vulnerable side to himself that he hadn’t let her see before.
“What I mean is, I like you a lot,” he said. “And I hope the other night was cool with you. I mean, the last thing I wanted to do was rush you or make you feel…I mean, I just want everything to be cool with us, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” She was relieved that he’d brought this up, put it out in the open.
He smiled, looking into her eyes, and said, “Cool. That’s very cool.”
They finished their drinks and walked back to her place. She was glad they’d talked and she felt a little better about everything. When they got to her building he was very polite and didn’t suggest going up to her place or anything like that. He was backing off, taking it slower. Then he kissed her good night and it was a nice kiss—not too long or with too much tongue. Later on, when she was alone in her apartment, she felt
very good about the way the date had gone and she was even looking forward to going out with him again.
But now, as she read the e-mail for the fifth or sixth time, she wasn’t so sure. She still couldn’t get Friday night completely out of her head, and she didn’t know if that was the real Andy or if last night was the real Andy. On the one hand, she felt like he was Jekyll-and-Hyde-ing her, playing head games, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to deal with that crap anymore. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure that he’d done anything wrong in the first place. Bottom line, she was very confused and didn’t know whether she should dump him or keep on dating him. In college, she never used to obsess this way, especially about guys. If a guy treated her like shit, she dumped him, and that was that, end of story. She’d had good judgment, too, what she liked to call “asshole radar.” Her friends used to be amazed by how quickly she could tell whether a guy was a jerk. She could tell just by looking at the way a guy dressed, or the way he smiled. But in New York she was clueless. There was no black or white in the city—everything was gray, blurry. When she met Andy she thought he was the greatest guy in the world, and she’d even thought Mitchell was okay. But now she knew Mitchell was a dick, and the jury was still out on Andy.