Lowering my gaze, I see that on the sidewalk, a punky guy with cropped dark hair and tight clothes is waiting for a girl who’s farther up the block. She has flaming-red, close-cut dyed hair, and skinny pants with horizontal pink and orange stripes. I’ve often wondered about girls who look like her. Most women work hard to look like supermodels these days, but then you have, at the other end of the spectrum, girls who go for the Olympic gold in trying to look bizarre, and they always seem to have boyfriends, too, even more often than the supermodels. It is true that their boyfriends always look as strange as they do, but you’d think that just because a man sticks pins in his lips, it doesn’t mean he’s attracted to a girl who does. I wonder how we’re supposed to figure out what anyone wants. I guess the idea is to be ourselves, even though it sure doesn’t seem that way sometimes.
I keep watching. My punk rocker friends have disappeared, and I see two guys with a pretty girl. The guys are wearing those thick “nerd” glasses that are popular among Village types. It’s unfair to those of us who were bona fide nerds throughout grade school and got picked on for it that once we got out, the popular people went so far as to actually swipe the trappings of our look, turning something we suffered from for years into something they flash like cosmetic dentistry. How come it’s only cool to be nerdy after it doesn’t matter anymore? I always hear famous people talking about how back when they were in school, they were the ugly duckling. If everyone claiming to have been unpopular in school really had been, there wouldn’t have been such a thing.
A few yards behind the nerd-glassed guys is a woman walking a Bernese mountain dog. The dog looks too big to possibly enjoy living in a New York apartment, and might be better off—oh, I don’t know—on a Bernese mountain. Next I see three people emerge from a building a few doors down, a building with a terrific revolving door. One of the people is a woman with a stroller, and there’s also a young woman and her boyfriend. The young woman is in a jogging getup and has her hair in a ponytail, and it’s swinging back and forth. A lot of the women on my block look like her.
Suddenly someone catches my eye. The Hat Guy, aka Cy, is walking directly below. Ronald did mention that Cy lives around here. He’s carrying a cup of coffee. He’s walking really slowly. It looks like he’s in sweat clothes. Some weird urge overtakes me. I want to run down and hug him. He must have been up all night rehearsing or something.
But I’m not dressed. By the time I could make myself look half attractive, he’d be gone.
This spurs me to get dressed anyway. I don’t see Cy in the subway when I head out.
Petrov looks disturbed today. He opens the office door for me, but then goes to his desk to sift through some books with a barely mumbled hello.
I sit in my usual chair.
He keeps sifting through the books.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ll be with you in a second.”
I look at Petrov’s clock, then at my watch. His clock is three minutes ahead as it is. That means he’ll end the session three minutes early. That works out to about six dollars he’s gypping my Dad out of. Excuse me, I can’t say gypping. But it’s such a good word. Gyp, gyp, gyp. It works so well in haiku.
Gyp gyp, gyp gyp gyp.
Gyp gyp gyp gyp gyp gyp gyp
Gyp, gyp, gyp, gyp, gyp
“Sorry about that, Carrie,” Petrov says, turning around. “I’ll give you the extra two minutes.” He sits down.
“You also have to set your clock back three minutes,” I say. “It’s ahead.”
“Ahead of what?”
“My watch.”
“And your watch is set to the national clock in Washington, D.C.?”
“No. I guess you’re right.” I know that conceding a point will startle him.
“Well,” Petrov says, “I set mine by 1010 WINS, and it’s pretty reliable. None of my other patients have complained.”
I just shrug, studying the carpet. It has a million colors in it. The main one is a pale yellow.
“You do understand?” Petrov says.
“Now it’s six minutes.”
“What’s six minutes?”
“You just wasted an extra minute on a silly argument that I put up no argument about. You were two minutes late, plus, your clock is three minutes ahead, and you just wasted a minute. That adds up to six.”
“But if you conceded the point, it’s really three minutes.”
“Now it’s seven.”
“Seven?”
“We’ll end at fifty minutes after. Let’s get started.”
He just stares, his face twitching in a netherworld between continuing the battle and deciding it’s not worth it.
“Eight,” I say.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I felt bitter when I woke up this morning,” I tell him, in the interest of moving things along.
“And why were you bitter this morning?”
“Because you weren’t next to me.”
He looks startled.
“Just kidding. I was bitter because I have an obligation tonight, a…party I have to go to.” I’m not going to tell him that I have dinner plans with Matt. “And I don’t really want to talk about the party. A vague acquaintance from college is having it.”
“If you don’t want to go, why are you going?”
“Because it’s part of your whole socialization plan to prove that I can. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to have any fun.”
“Hopefully, you’ll have a better time than you think. And if you don’t, at least you’ll know you tried.”
“I just wish I could have woken up today happy instead of miserable.”
“Well, you don’t have a lot of things you enjoy on a daily basis,” Petrov says, “so when the only thing you have on the horizon is something you’re dreading—”
“Exactly. Dread. I felt dread. A nameless dread.”
“You need more things to look forward to, to combat the dread,” he says. “You know, I read a book recently”—he looks toward his desk—“I don’t think I have it here, but it’s a self-help book, and it says that we should all have at least five things we’re looking forward to at any given time. They can be a meal, a trip, a celebration, a date… It says if you don’t have them, you should schedule some so that they’re on your mind to cheer you up. That’s a reason you have your top-ten list. To remind you there are things in life to get genuinely excited about. Not just intellectual things.”
“But some of the things on my list are hard,” I say. “I can’t sit around eating ice cream all day. That would make me feel fat and lumpy. And then I’d feel more miserable.”
“There are few pleasures without drawbacks.”
Love is one, I think. But you can’t buy it on the corner of Seventy-eighth and Lex.
“So, what if you can’t have your pleasures all the time?” I ask.
“Well,” Petrov says, “there are probably small pleasures you might enjoy that aren’t on your list. For example, yesterday morning, I took a shower, and I went into my room and put on a new pair of socks that my…friend had given me.”
“Girlfriend,” I say.
“My girlfriend. And it felt good to put them on. They fit well, they matched my outfit. And I thought to myself, You know, this is strange. It feels so good to put on a new pair of socks, yet I hardly ever buy them. I keep wearing the same old worn pairs. Why don’t I buy more socks? I can afford them. They’re not so expensive. But each day I rummage through my sock drawer scrounging for a pair of old faded socks that barely match. I could easily go to the store and buy twenty pairs of socks. No one in America buys twenty pairs of socks. We buy a bag of three pairs, and then we spend each morning pondering why we have a bouquet of socks with no matches, rather than just saying, ‘I’ll buy so many pairs that I’ll have a pair every morning, and then some.’”
Not that I’m one to talk, but this is a guy who’s giving me advice on how to have fun?
“The problem is, we psych ourselves out of happiness,” he says. “We don’t pay attention to the little things that make us happy. When’s the last time you bought a new outfit?”
I shrug. “Standing in a fitting room getting into and out of clothes all day gives me a headache.”
“But don’t you like wearing something new?”
“Yes. But it’s such an ordeal.”
“What about socks?”
“I haven’t bought socks in a long time.”
“Buy socks.”
“Okay.”
“Can you afford it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Underwear,” I add. “It feels even better to have new underwear.”
For a second, Petrov gives me a look I’ve never gotten from him before. It looks almost hungry. Is he wondering what kind of underwear I’m wearing?
“Right now I’m wearing black silky underpants, and they feel great. I bought them because they were on the table in a pile, so I knew I could grab them and run out. I don’t like to spend a lot of time looking at underwear because there are little kids walking around with their parents, and they stare at you. You could pick up this gauzy negligee with big, soft, full areas for your breasts, and lace all around it, and it’s kind of see-through, but what you see through it is little Timmy looking up at you.”
Petrov looks disturbed. I guess ever since I told him about Professor Harrison, he’s had to accept me as an adult, and now I’ve told him what kind of underwear I’m wearing. Even though I wouldn’t claim to be a supermodel, enough people, particularly older men, have liked the way I look. I’ve been told I look younger than I am, and I’m pretty young already.
I wear glasses, but I don’t have any weird features: no big nose, no pointy ears. My hair is dark and long, and I’m thin, and about five foot four. My only deformity is my desire for truth and justice.
“Carrie,” Petrov says, putting down his pen. “Is there a reason for the sudden detour into titillation during today’s session?”
“No,” I say. “It must be the late hour.”
“Okay,” he says. “Well, let’s go back to your goals list. How are you doing with it?”
“I’m about ready to join an organization and go on a genuine date,” I say. “Then I can move on to telling someone I care about them, and New Year’s.”
“The caring can’t be sarcastic,” Petrov reminds me.
“I remember.”
On the way home, I stop into the coffee shop. Ronald the Rice-Haired Milquetoast is doing something at the counter. On further inspection, I see that he’s stacking metal tumblers on top of each other, to see how high they can go.
“Hello,” he says, looking up. Then he smiles.
“Afraid I was someone else?” I ask.
“My boss,” he says.
“That’s a pretty high stack.”
“I went a level higher Thursday,” Ronald says. “I can’t seem to do it today.”
“It could be the ambient temperature. Maybe some item that was in the tumblers. Maybe they were washed in cold water and they expanded.”
“Nah, my fingers are just slippery.” He dries his hands. “Hey, look who’s here!”
Behind me, it’s Hat Guy, aka Cy.
We both speak at once.
“I’ve seen—” I start.
“You—” Cy says.
“Carrie lives around here,” Ronald tells Cy.
“I live around the corner,” Cy tells me.
“I’ve heard.”
We talk, and I find out we’re three brownstones down from each other. I can’t help but admire how clean he looks, in every way. His hair is neatly combed back. His eyes are a sparkling blue. They’re so deep that there must be a lot behind them. “You ever go out on your fire escape?” he asks.
“Not often. No one ever inspects fire escapes. I’m afraid if I stood out there it might collapse, and then what would I escape on?”
Ronald laughs. “And what if a fire started on it?” he says. “You’d need a fire escape escape.”
Ronald is a little slow. I bet I could meet the date requirement with him. But he’s just not that interesting.
“How would you throw out a garbage can?” I ask Ronald.
He laughs. “You’d need a can can.”
“What if your phone stopped working?” Cy asks Ronald. “How would you call the phone company?”
Ronald smiles. “From here.”
A real customer comes, so I bid the two of them farewell. But the minute I get outside, I feel stupid. Why didn’t I stay and talk to them? Because I was so scared about looking dumb that I quit while I was ahead. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is how I thwart myself.
Petrov is right: I do need practice being social. I was actually at the center of two men’s attention, and I couldn’t handle it.
I did like that Cy was able to talk to Ronald without appearing condescending. He actually seems sincere and sweet.
I turn to the window and look in. Ronald is talking to Cy, and Cy’s nodding pleasantly, a smile on his face.
Maybe I can think of an excuse to go back and talk to them more. I turn around again with my back to the window, and think.
I know. I’ll say I left something. A pen. I’ll say I left a pen.
I round the corner and walk back into the store. As I enter, Cy is picking something up, off the floor.
“Is this yours?” he asks, holding a pen.
Aack! That is freaky.
I stare at Cy, shocked, and he stares back at me, trying to figure out my shock. No way am I going to tell him.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
Ronald says, “It was on the floor.”
“Well,” I say, taking the pen. “Thanks.”
Now I’ve really run out of excuses. Darn. Why did there have to be a pen there? What are the odds?
“Cy knows my cousin,” Ronald tells me.
“Yeah,” Cy says. “I used to volunteer in a kids’ theater program, and it turns out his cousin went to it.”
“Does the cousin look like Ronald?” I ask.
“No such luck,” Cy says, and Ronald laughs.
“Yeah, he wishes he looked like me,” Ronald says.
Another customer comes, and I bid them farewell again, since I have to go home to prepare to meet Matt for dinner. I admire how Cy is able to make Ronald laugh. A genuinely cheerful guy.
When it’s time, I take the subway uptown and arrive in the Port Authority, then emerge and wander up Eighth Avenue, where I haven’t been in a while. As I pass 42nd Street, I’m reminded that they’ve replaced the porn shops with the largest movie theater, Mexican restaurant and Disney Store ever. The Mexican place is where I am to meet Matt, but I still have fifteen minutes to kill. I walk on and pass the guys who stand on boxes and preach some sort of African-American Jewishness that passers-by never make a good attempt to understand. Every time I have passed them, some tourist has been arguing with them, unaware that about 100 other tourists per day have stopped to do the same thing. I think the street preachers are probably a better tourist attraction than the Empire State Building, because all of these tourists think they’re so smart and brave to stop and debate them, and then they can run back to Shaker Heights, Ohio (home to three members of my freshman dorm), and boast to their friends, “Biff argued with these black guys in New York about religion.” Maybe the street preachers like being argued with, too, but I guess I already mentioned that religious folks often do.
I see a billboard that says, in black, “To be a supportive parent, you have to work,” and then under it, in white, it says, “To be a supportive parent, you have to stay home.” There’s a toll-free number in small print under it, too small for me to read. I suppose it’s the Parental Catch-22 Hotline. It would be more helpful if it was large enough for people to read.
Now I pass a troupe of guys playing “Soul Man” on overturned pots, pans and trash cans. Some of the stre
et musicians here are so talented that I’m surprised they can’t make money doing it professionally. Maybe they actually make more money in the street. I wonder if there’s ever been a homeless person who’s declared money he made on the street on his taxes. That would take quite an honest person. A saint. I wonder if there is someone out there who is that honest. It’s interesting to think about a world in which there are some things that are so honest you can’t imagine someone doing them. Even though I sometimes think the world is tough for me because I choose certain beliefs and stick by them, there are some levels of honesty that even I don’t reach. For instance, if I baby-sat, I probably wouldn’t put that on my taxes. I imagine that it would be hard to be honest in every single way possible. I wonder if it could actually be proved that there are cases where flat-out dishonesty is the right thing. That should not be possible, by definition, but is it? One could say that telling a dying woman she looks good is dishonest but necessary. Or saying someone’s too-short haircut looks nice. Or saying your mother-in-law’s borscht is delicious.
What about the lies that parents tell? There are all those parents who tell their kids about Santa Claus. Aren’t they lying and, in fact, committing a sin? And doesn’t that make ninety-nine percent of Christians sinners?
It is lying. It’s bearing false witness.
So Christian parents are sinners from the get-go.
I have to take a break from this. But I do want to come up with the most honest thing a person could do. I would say that listing change you found on the street on your taxes might be the most honest thing. Can you imagine someone doing that?
I can work that into a routine.
She is so honest.
How honest is she?
She is so honest that she reports change she finds on the sidewalk on her taxes. [Applause.]
I wonder if this is how Johnny Carson used to do it.
I double back and head toward the Mexican restaurant to meet Matt. I’m still a few minutes early. Killing time is hard, unless you’re avoiding work, in which case you can think of an infinite number of things you need to do. But maybe he’ll be early, too. I see that in front of the restaurant there are two women and a guy waiting for people. The guy has a soft black briefcase slung around his shoulder. He’s fairly short, but handsome. He’s got straight, dark hair. He looks my way, and I smile uncertainly, and he smiles back. He walks toward me, asking, “Heather?”
Carrie Pilby Page 12