When I reach the top, I stop. I stand there and feel a hole in my stomach. All Bobby did was say, “Hey, beautiful.” And he’s old; maybe saying it brought him joy. Why was I so mean? What if he really does think I’m beautiful? What if, as far as he was concerned, he was just being nice?
No one else consistently tells me I’m beautiful.
I stand there and feel sickness wash over myself.
Then, the feeling goes away, like it usually does.
That night, I get called for legal proofreading. It turns out to be even more monotonous than the last assignment. I sit with three other proofers in a room that’s almost completely barren. The desks look like they were swiped from an elementary school: manila tops, metal green insides. The floor is white and dusty. It’s freezing in there. It must be the room they don’t let their clients see.
The other proofers are much older than me. I look at them, but unfortunately, none of them look like they’d make a good date. I will have to keep looking, and I’ll have to place that ad soon.
The four of us sit like bored students in study hall, waiting for work. The other proofers discuss a variety of topics: whether Walt Disney is really frozen, trying to name all of the ingredients in a V8, leaving a dog out and forgetting you left it out, kids drinking chocolate milk with their school lunch every day, Japanese cartoon characters that look American, bad television shows. A man and woman talk about their belief that today’s television is much worse than when they were kids. People always say that, but I guess they don’t realize that TV is always going to seem worse now than it did when you were twelve. Anyway, I happen to like TV. I’ve met people who will self-righteously declare that they don’t own a TV set, as if it makes them morally superior to everyone else, as if they are declaring they have never told a lie or broken the law. There is absolutely nothing immoral about television. It’s not even unhealthy. Vapid and stultifying, maybe. But we all need it sometimes. I know I do. My mind worked so hard for the first eighteen years of my life that it needs—and deserves—a virtual brain pillow to rest in.
Around 3:00 a.m., the room is silent. Everyone is reading newspapers. I’m starving. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Probably, I’m more bored than hungry. I get up, go to the kitchen, drop some coins into the snack machine and grab a bag of pretzels. I return to my seat and start eating. A few people turn around. I can’t help it. Pretzels crunch.
I start to feel like everyone is looking at me. I put the bag aside and sit quietly. But I see the pretzels there, their tiny knobs calling out to me. My mouth waters. I know it will water until every last pretzel is gone. The psychology behind that is interesting. When I can take it no more, I grab the bag, head into the kitchen and scarf down the pretzels. I hate peer pressure.
When I return to my seat, I decide I’ll write a draft of my personal ad for the Beacon.
I take out a pen and print:
PRODIGY SEEKS GENIUS—I’m 19, very smart, seeking nonsmoking nondrugdoing very very smart SM 18-25 to talk about philosophy and life. No hypocrites, religious freaks, macho men or psychos.
I can’t wait to see the responses I get. I pull out my pocket calendar and write on it, on a date next week, “E-mail personal ad to Beacon.” I’m giving myself a week to find a less-desperate way of meeting people. But if nothing else works out, I can place this ad and answer other people’s.
The next night, I’m scheduled to return to the firm where Douglas P. Winters works. I’m excited. I tell myself that I must dig in my heels and ignore his salacious comments, as he may be my only prospect for a date by New Year’s. But I hope that he doesn’t drop me before it happens because he realizes, as David did in college, that I still have morals.
David left me wondering for a long time if all men would be like him, making me do things that felt wrong, then immediately shutting me down coldly if I didn’t. And I hated the women who routinely gave in and made it easy for them to be that way. Nowadays, I don’t think every man is evil, but the good ones can also get a good-looking woman, so a woman who isn’t good-looking just has to lower and lower her standards until they’re down around her ankles. It’s not fair; it’s just life. I sometimes think that women are the most hypocritical beings around. They complain from nine to five about how men are pigs, and then they give them what they want from five to nine. But I can’t say they’re doing it out of any malice; it just comes from neediness. I’ve heard feminists say that women shouldn’t “need a man,” but it’s not that women need a man. It’s that most people need someone, and if they’re women and they happen to be heterosexual, their choice is limited to men. And if they’re not beautiful women who can pick and choose, their choice can be limited to self-centered men. All right, maybe it’s not so bleak, but it’d be less bleak if people actually had standards and tried to hold out, like I did by refusing David’s requests.
At night, when I push open the glass doors of Pankow, Hewitt and So & So, Douglas P. Winters looks happy. “I’ve got pistachios!” he announces, then breaks into an evil laugh. I tell him I can’t wait for him to give me one. Then I wend my way through clusters of desks to the supervisor and pick up a small document. All I have to do is make sure that the typist correctly inputted the proofreader’s corrections. Oldie is in a different cubicle, so I don’t have to deal with him.
As I read through the document, I gradually realize that it’s somewhat intriguing. It’s stamped Confidential. It’s about two major banks that are going to merge. I wonder if I can sell this information.
I finish it and turn it in. The supervisor says there’s no more work right now. So I head out to Doug.
Doug’s bangs are wet with sweat. He motions to a seat.
“Hot in here?” I ask.
“I have a cold,” Doug says.
“Didn’t you have a cold last time I saw you?”
“I’m allergic to work.”
“Go home.”
“I’m allergic to starving.”
“I just read a document about a bank mega-merger,” I tell him.
“Sounds like a page-turner.”
“I was wondering if the information’s worth anything.”
“Probably,” Doug says, “but that would be insider proofreading. A lotta guys went to jail in the eighties for that. Did you sign a confidentiality oath when you came to work here?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you sign it in your real name?”
“Yes.”
“Bad move.”
“I wanted my real name to be on the checks.”
“That’s true,” Doug says. “Well, I didn’t sign any agreement. You could slip me the documents.”
If I want to work on getting him to ask me out on a date, I could throatily add, “Well, you could slip me something, too.” But I’m not that desperate yet. There’s still the personals—placing one and responding to other people’s.
I laugh at my “slip me something” thought, and Doug asks, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
I’ve been laughing at my own secret jokes my whole life. Why stop now? I understand them better than anyone else.
“Come on,” he goads.
I have to lie because I know that Doug is one of those people who won’t give up. I say, “I was laughing because I just remembered a joke I heard two kids tell each other in the subway yesterday.”
“I’m waiting,” Doug says.
“Uh… Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupting co—”
“MOOOO!”
He laughs. “Not bad. It’s hard to find good jokes that are clean.”
“True.”
“I have a joke,” Doug says.
“Is it clean?”
“No. But there aren’t any bad words in it.”
“Okay.”
“What did Little Red Ridinghood say as she sat on Pinocchio’s fa
ce?”
“What?”
“Tell a lie! Tell a lie! Tell the truth! Tell the truth!”
The supervisor comes out. “Carrie? I have a job for you.”
The assignment takes an hour, and then things are quiet. I reach for the pile of magazines that apparently have already been ravaged by the full-time staff (the staff that has time to lambaste their sons-in-law and, judging from a gift that has been left on the desk, to create a little dog out of an eraser and five pushpins), and lying flat on top is a magazine article about Human Papillomavirus. I read about how the majority of women have it, how it’s spread by sexual contact, how it might be the cause of cervical cancer, and how even condoms can’t prevent it. I guess that’s God’s little joke—people actually started protecting themselves from AIDS, so now there’s something that’s spread by sex no matter what. I bet someday there’ll actually be a disease that can kill you just from having sex, and that people will decide to keep having sex anyway. Maybe there will have to be a ten-year sex moratorium in the country in order to eradicate it.
When it’s time for “lunch break” at 2:00 a.m., Doug invites me to eat in the kitchen with him. He looks tired—he keeps tugging at his shirtsleeves, and his short hair is a mess. The artificial fluorescent lights shine brightly above. Doug doesn’t eat, but he drinks coffee. It’s amazing how many people are addicted to coffee and won’t admit it. Some people are as obsessed with coffee as sex. But I guess an obsession doesn’t count as an obsession if everyone’s doing it. I guess it’s perfectly normal to say, “Oh, I just can’t put on my underwear until I’ve had my first cup of coffee.”
It’s funny—we all look down on China’s past addiction to opium, as if we’re above all that, but most of modern America has to be doped up on caffeine in the morning and plied with alcohol at night. I don’t know that we’re any better than the Chinese. Perhaps we need both substances to get through life. But if everyone needs these medications just to cope, isn’t something wrong?
Anyway, I’m ignoring the matter at hand: proving that I can go on a date. I keep sneaking looks at Doug in order to figure out if I could ever kiss him. He does have nice tufts of hair and a cute craggy chin. But I still don’t know him well enough to be attracted to him. Then again, it’s early. If it was just a first date, I wouldn’t have to kiss him right away.
I mention the papilloma article to Doug. “Can you imagine what it would be like,” I say, “if there was a disease that could kill everyone unless they stopped having sex?”
“Forget it,” Doug says. “I’d fucking die.”
“Or the converse.”
He sips his coffee. “Can men give each other the papilloma thing?”
“I guess.”
“Damn. Just when I was ready to accept condoms.”
Does that mean he’s gay?
I look at him. Yeah, come to think of it, he is. I feel stupid.
“Maybe that’s how the world ended the first time,” Doug says. “Maybe our civilization was as advanced as it is now, and then sex killed everyone. We can control nukes better than our sex drives…”
He keeps chattering and I pretend I’m listening, but I’m really just trying to take in the fact that he’s gay. I have to think of things like that over and over until the shock value wears off. There are a great many things that shock me even though they shouldn’t. Obviously someone being gay should not shock me. I wonder if I can go out to eat with him and still count it as a date. Can having dinner with a gay man count as a date? What makes a date a date? I guess there has to be a possibility of something romantic happening. So what’s it called if you have dinner with a gay man? A gayte.
Well, I can send in my personal ad next week.
At 4:00 a.m., my shift is over. The firm calls for a car service to drive me home. I wonder what would happen if I asked the driver to take me to Chicago. I wonder how far I could get him to go without his calling his supervisor. Maybe I’ll try each time from now on to get the driver to go a little farther. It would be worth being banned from temping. Maybe Atlantic City is the limit. Although the last place I want to go is somewhere where a bunch of seventy-year-olds make love to three slot machines at a time and shriek at you if you get too close.
One of the world’s greatest pleasures is sitting in the back of a hired car at night. From where I’m sitting, the city looks like a sleeping villain. The heat is blowing full force. The wheels coast evenly over the smooth road. There is no music on, owing, I think, to some old Giuliani Rule. Right now the world exists just for me and the few other people in the city who are up. It’s too early for even the delivery trucks and the most anxious commuters.
When I get back to my apartment and undress in my room, I notice that the light is on in the apartment of that couple across the street. Their window is big and boxy, revealing a table, stove, drapes and hanging plants. But I don’t see the couple. I guess they’re in another room. For just a second, I feel a connection to them. They are up at this odd hour, and so am I. I want them to come to the window, wave and smile, intrigued by the fact that we have something in common. We share a secret, a quiet time of the night.
I strip down to my underpants because I’ve left the heat on too high. My throat is dry, and I drink a cup of seltzer. Then, I crawl into bed and fall asleep. When I wake up hours later, the light in the couple’s apartment is off.
At nine o’clock, I’m too tired to get out of bed. I roll onto my back and pull my covers up to my chin. Beams of blue daylight stream in overhead. I decide that, for a while, I will simply lie here, listening carefully to the street sounds and seeing where my thoughts transport me. I’ve done this once or twice before, just lain here and listened to see what comes to mind. It’s amazing how many far-off sounds and unusual noises you can isolate if you concentrate.
Lately, vague stimuli have been provoking obscure childhood flashbacks. I think maybe the reason that so many of my recent memories have come from early childhood is that I’m at an age where I can’t be considered a kid anymore, yet I don’t have kids of my own, so the only way to experience childlike enthusiasm is to fantasize and remember. I’m sure Petrov would have an explanation.
I relax as much as possible and close my eyes. All is silent.
Then, I start to hear birds chirping. There are two of them, exchanging their high-pitched staccato reports. It reminds me of when I was three and my grandfather and grandmother walked me around the shady grounds of their apartment in London, and we came upon a cracked robin’s egg lying among the tufts of grass and knotted roots. It was such a pale and beautiful shade of blue that I almost cried. They encouraged me to lift it up. Inside, there was nothing except whiteness, the purest white I’d ever seen. Each time I visited them after that, I looked for more eggs, but couldn’t find any.
I was fascinated at that age with so many things: revolving doors, mirrors, clocks, trains, fans, elevators, hydrants. I soon wanted to know how all of these worked—same with eggs and animals—and this led to a house full of science books that I devoured and spat out like so much gum. To balance that were all of the novels—I don’t even remember reading kids’ books when I was two, like my father tells me I did, but I must have quickly graduated to more advanced stuff.
The air outside is still, save for the distant rumbles of buses. Now I hear glass breaking. Someone must be setting down a trash bag full of recyclables. The sound reminds me of the wind chimes one of our neighbors had on her back porch when I was younger, and how, one day when there was a hurricane, they whirled around fiercely the entire day, jingling and spinning like a carousel out of control. I was glued that afternoon to the TV. I lay on my stomach charting the storm, using the wind direction and velocity to figure out when it would hit land and how long it would stay. In the evening, the power went out, and my father lit a candle and we sat in the kitchen for an hour and talked in the darkness. The rain pummeled the windows and the wind blasted the roof, but we were safe inside. I talked about school starting
up again; Dad talked about what it was like when he was in school. We talked about the first apartment we lived in in New York when I was two and a half, right after we moved out of London. I think it was the longest talk I had with my father, and one of the few I’ve had with anyone. I haven’t thought about that day in a long time.
I lie back, my eyes still closed. The next sound I hear is a fire truck, well in the distance. When I was little, every year, Santa Claus used to come squealing down my street on a fire engine. I used to gaze out at all the kids running after him with a mixture of pity and disgust. I never believed in Santa Claus, not even when I was two and a half. That was when my father tried to tell me about him and I gave him a dozen reasons why it was impossible. My father has since told me that that’s when he knew I was smart. But I wonder if it would have been more fun if I hadn’t been smart. It might have been nice to believe in Santa for a little while. If only I could have given up a few IQ points for some ignorant bliss. But I guess I don’t really want that. Not yet.
Outside, all is quiet again. The street is mine. Everyone else is at work.
People who don’t do this, just lie still and allow their thoughts to transport them to different places, are missing life. I can’t imagine that most people who go to work each day do it. They would never have the time.
But ultimately, is there a point to all of this thinking? I’ve always thought that my thoughts would someday serve a great purpose in the world, but the more days that pass, the more unlikely it seems. I’ve considered starting a log of my thoughts and ideas, but I fear if I do, I’ll feel obligated to run to the log and write down every thought I have, and it will become an obsession. Maybe I can limit it to ten brilliant thoughts per day.
Carrie Pilby Page 7