The Assistants

by Camille Perri

  “Can’t you just get one of these dumb guys to pay off your debt,” I asked, “so we don’t have to resort to grand larceny?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Emily finally gave in and reached for a Thin Mint.

  “I approved your first expense report today,” she said, changing the subject. “Ten Gs, not a bad start. I like how you got really creative in the notes section and threw all caution to the wind in terms of attaching receipts.”

  Remembering the money made my stomach lurch. Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (this was my mother’s voice in my head now, not Robert’s), how had I gotten myself into this? This was so not me. I didn’t even download music illegally. I’d never in my life ingested an illicit drug. I crossed the street only at crosswalks. And you know what else? It was true that I didn’t have many friends, as Emily so assiduously pointed out, but that was because I didn’t really like people all that much. Other people were usually more trouble than they were worth, so I preferred to be alone. Yet here I was having a slumber party with one of the stars of American Hustle. She was in my bed!

  Emily pointed her cookie up at the ceiling rain bubble. “Think it’ll pop?”

  Hell is other people.

  In my mind I recited a whiskey-infused poem: What happens to a rain bubble deferred? Does it just sag like a heavy load? Or does it explode?

  The tribulations of being a former English major.

  “I kind of hope it pops,” Emily said. “Even though it’ll make a huge nasty mess.”

  4

  IN THE WEEKS that passed from that first night Emily Johnson knocked on my door until the morning Margie Fischer cornered us, I learned a number of things. I learned how easy it is to acquire a calculating blond girl as your roommate, especially one who doesn’t pay rent and likes to boss you around. I learned that pretty blond girls don’t always wake up so pretty, and in the evenings they often have gas. And finally, I learned that Emily Johnson, the portrait of popularity, was secretly as friendless as I was—otherwise why else would she be spending so much time with me all of a sudden?

  The air mattress had just appeared on the floor one day, wedged between the radiator and my dresser, fully inflated, covered in pink sateen sheets and a white comforter. But I still woke up most mornings to find Emily sleeping beside me like a sneaky pet, her bony elbow or knee digging into my side.

  I was supposed to be an island. An island unto myself, like John Donne famously said, or was it Buddha? John Donne might have said no man is an island, but whatever, either way, I was not into having somebody else around all the time—somebody who tried to ride the train with me to work every morning and who interrupted me, without fail, every time I settled in at night to catch up on the latest episode of something on HBO GO. “Who’s that?” Emily would ask, commandeering my bowl of popcorn. “Why’s he so mad?” “What’s with all the bad wigs on this show?”

  “Shouldn’t we avoid showing up to work together?” I would argue. “Wouldn’t it be better to avoid being associated with each other in any way?”

  I even tried: “If you start watching this show now, you’re going to get a major spoiler.”

  But Emily wasn’t worried. I was the worried one.

  Emily wanted to talk about it constantly—what she adoringly referred to as our scheme, like it was our love child, like we were its baby mamas. She was all uses and wes, cooing googly-eyed at her rapidly dwindling student-loan balance.

  It occurred to me (probably much later than it should have) that it was highly unlikely that Emily would let me put a stop to the scheme even after the last of her debt was paid off.

  But it turned out not to matter, because Margie Fischer happened.

  The morning that Margie Fischer cornered us, Robert was really in a huff. Around eleven a.m. he screamed to me from his office in a tone of voice that could only be called desperate, while pantomiming a drinking motion with his hand. He pointed at red-faced Glen Wiles, who was seated across from him perched forward in his chair, poised to have a heart attack at any moment, and then at himself.

  “With lime,” he mouthed through the glass walls of his office.

  That meant tequila. Before noon. It was going to be a long day.

  A lesser man than Glen Wiles would have crumbled beneath the stress of such a meeting, but fortunately Wiles, like Robert, thrived on pressure, ambition, and cutthroat competition. On money, basically. So much money. Glen Wiles was a blundering brute, whereas Robert was a stickler for good manners, but aside from that, they were pretty much on the same page. Politically, they were two sides of the same coin, and that coin had better be free of government regulation of any kind.

  When I brought them their drinks Robert had been talking about the islands—which he abruptly stopped doing the moment I entered the room.

  “Thank you, Tina,” he said, and then waited for me to exit before finishing his sentence.

  I didn’t understand half of what upset Robert about the islands on a daily basis, but taxes were his only true archenemy—that much I understood. Reporters from the liberal papers were always criticizing Robert for his “offshore tax havens” and “abuse of tax loopholes,” so I knew not to discuss the Caymans or Bermuda with anyone. I’m pretty sure it was in my employment contract that just uttering the words Cayman Islands or Bermuda in a voice louder than a whisper could get me fired immediately.

  I returned to my desk, watching the tiny rainbow speckles in the carpet, imagining myself as one of those hear-no-evil monkeys with his nimble monkey thumbs lodged in his ear holes. A g-chat message from Emily was waiting for me when I sat down.

  I have to talk to you about Kevin Handsome, she’d written.

  And when I hadn’t written back, she’d added: Seriously.

  Almost immediately Kevin then g-chatted me. Hiya.

  Hiya, I wrote back, as I always did.

  Then Emily chatted again. I won’t be ignored.

  I blocked her because this was more social multitasking than a woman no longer in her twenties could handle, but a second later my phone started to ring.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I said aloud while reaching over to smack the silence button—but my fingers came to a halt. It wasn’t Emily. My caller ID informed me of the worst: it was Margie Fischer.

  Margie Fischer was the Titan Corporation’s long-suffering head of accounting. She controlled Titan’s purse strings. That was her job, watching the numbers, and everyone did their best to stay out of her way (even Robert, I was pretty sure). Margie was gruff and couldn’t have cared less what was appropriate in terms of social interaction, which made people very nervous. You could never be sure what would come out of her mouth, but more often than not, it would be a scolding of some sort. Once she’d caught me in the Titan cafeteria taking a whiff of the half-and-half before pouring it into my coffee and she boomed from behind me, “What are you sticking your nose in that for!”

  I stuttered an explanation of how I was only checking to make sure it was fresh, but Margie wasn’t having it.

  “You think anybody wants to use that now that you’ve stuck your face into it?” Her voice was like a cannon blast. Heads from as far away as the action station turned.

  Never one to think clearly under pressure, the best defense I could come up with in the moment was, “Nobody but me uses the half-and-half anyway. Everyone around here uses skim.”

  Margie’s face dropped.

  This was the absolute wrong thing to say for a slew of reasons, not the least of which was that Margie, who had in fact been waiting for the half-and-half, was on the heavy side. A less-polite person might describe her as very fat. I wouldn’t have dreamed of calling Margie fat to her face, or even behind her back—but I may as well have done just that with my half-and-half comment. She’d had it in for me ever since.

  And now she was calling me for no good reason I could think of.
>
  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I pressed my desk-phone’s mute button ever so gently and watched the accusatory red light above the keypad blink on and off like a soundless alarm. I must not have moved or breathed for a full minute after the blinking stopped because I was light-headed and seeing spots when my cell phone’s vibration snapped me back to reality.

  It was a text message from Emily: Margie Fischer from accounting jst called me. We’re fkd.

  I immediately texted back: What did she say?

  Emily wrote: I didn’t answr.

  So how do you know we’re fkd? I was about to write back, but of course we were. How could we not be? If there was anyone at Titan capable of figuring out our expense account scheme, it was Margie.

  Kevin’s chat momentarily averted my attention: Coffee break later today?

  Then a burly voice behind me said, “Knock knock.”

  My cell phone was still in my hand. Margie pointed at it with her thick, stubby pointer finger. “You must be texting with Emily,” she said. “Is that why neither of you could answer your desk phones?”

  I slipped my cell into my bag and glanced quickly at Robert, who was still busy barking at Wiles in his office, then swiveled my chair away from him to face Margie. “Hi there,” I said as cheerfully as I could while resisting my gag reflex. “What can I do for you?”

  I guessed Margie Fischer was probably in her sixties, but it was difficult to tell because she dressed like an old Jewish man from Long Island, which adds a decade no matter what your age.

  “I was calling to confirm our lunch date today at Michael’s,” she said. “Is one o’clock still good for you and Emily?”

  I swallowed hard. My cell phone kept vibrating inside my bag. I could only imagine all the WTFs Emily had written.

  Margie’s thick gray hair was pulled back in a low ponytail that was so tight, the skin of her face was pulled back with it. The way she was hovering over me now I couldn’t help but think of a sumo wrestler. A smiling Jewish sumo wrestler in high-waisted pleated khakis.

  “Lunch?” I asked.

  “Yeah, lunch. Unless you’d rather I speak to Robert directly about his T & E reports.”

  Still smiling.

  “Tina!” Robert called to me from his office. He held up his empty glass and shook it back and forth.

  I swiftly rose from my chair. “Emily and I will see you there at one.”

  —

  “KEEP IT TOGETHER, FONTANA,” Emily said. “We have to stick together; we have to deny everything.” We were marching down Sixth Avenue on our way to meet Margie for lunch. Emily was in a pink Stella McCartney dress and matching heels and I was in my usual pants from the Gap and a V-neck sweater over a button-down. I guess I shouldn’t hold it against anyone who mistakes me for a lesbian, or an adolescent boy wearing a Catholic-school uniform.

  “You could have at least changed into something less designer,” I said to Emily. “Didn’t you have anything from the Gap or Old Navy in your office closet?”

  “I’m wearing a pair of your underwear that I’m pretty sure are Hanes Her Way,” Emily said. “Does that count?”

  When we arrived, the avian-looking hostess eyed me up and down and I could tell she was trying to figure out if I was someone famous. Only a very famous person would show up at Michael’s in clothing so carelessly uncurated. I spotted Margie across a sea of power lunches, already working on some appetizers. She wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and waved us over.

  “Betty and Veronica,” she called out. “Over here.”

  We walked toward her with our heads down, sat, and waited.

  “Glad you could make it.” Margie gestured to the appetizer plate in front of her. “Oysters and littleneck clams on the half shell. Help yourself.”

  A waiter wearing a black tuxedo jacket approached us and leaned in closer to me than any waiter I’d ever known. He had obviously been given instructions by the hostess to figure out if I was anyone worth sneaking a photo of. Emily and I each ordered a glass of wine and a house salad without looking at our menus.

  Margie laughed and leaned back in her chair. “Would you believe I’ve eaten here only once before? Fancy place like this. Can’t afford it. But today’s a special occasion because I figure you’ll be expensing this meal. Both of you.”

  There it was. She knew everything.

  Her eyes bounced back and forth between Emily and me, eager for a reaction.

  I didn’t know what to say. But Emily as self-righteous WASP would not go down without a cornea-scratching, ponytail-pulling fight like those witnessed on field-hockey grounds across New England.

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Margie,” she said. “Do you care to tell us what this is all about?”

  “You’re not sure what I mean.” Margie cocked one eyebrow up and looked at me. “She’s not sure what I mean. Ha.” She slammed one massive hand down on the table, causing all the glassware to rattle. “I mean you girls are stupid! How stupid can you be? And you just kept going.”

  “We were about to stop,” I blurted out.

  Emily shot me a look that promised she would murder me in my sleep later that night.

  “We were just trying to pay off our student-loan debt,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Margie tilted her head.

  The waiter appeared with our wine and some more appetizers. Grilled asparagus and an avocado salad.

  Margie pulled both plates closer and dug in. “It’s partly the generation you were born into, I don’t envy you that. But you don’t expect me to just turn my head and pretend I don’t know what I know, do you?”

  Emily uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Okay, Margie, fine. What do you want then? You must want something or you wouldn’t have brought us here.”

  “Do you even know what I do for the company?” Margie asked, ignoring Emily and pointing at me with her fork. “Aside from the general accounting. Aside from keeping the books clean and making sure nobody’s stealing.”

  For a moment I thought Margie might spontaneously stab me in the face with her fork, and I was totally okay with it. I wanted her to, to take me out of this misery. What other way out was there?

  “I also oversee all of Titan’s charitable donations,” she said, and then paused to slurp an oyster. “For tax breaks, that kind of thing. I used to be a grant writer, back when I thought all it took to change the world was to get enough good people to do something good. My parents instilled that in me; they were career activists, so it goes without saying they retired frustrated and penniless.”

  I wondered where Margie was going with this. Emily was right that she must have wanted something, or else we would have already been dragged out in handcuffs.

  “Cut to the chase, Margie,” Emily said. “How much will your silence cost?”

  Margie cracked up laughing loud enough for a number of finely groomed heads to turn and stare. “This one watches too many cop shows.”

  She leaned back in her chair again, then rocked herself forward and brought her voice down to a mannish whisper. “I don’t want any money and you don’t have any to offer me, princess. All you’ve got to offer is access.”

  The salads arrived, and for Margie, the waiter set down a grilled lobster.

  “Ah, lobster,” Margie said. “They say they’re the cockroaches of the sea, but man-oh-Manischewitz are they delicious.”

  Emily and I left our salads untouched.

  “First things first,” Margie said. “I’m not part of this. I have enough hard evidence to put you both in jail tomorrow, so don’t fuck with me. Being pretty isn’t going to help you here. Understand?”

  For a split second I was actually distracted and flattered by the fact that she’d implied I was pretty.

  “You’re not part of what?” Emily asked.

  Margie smile
d wide. “There’s an assistant in Accounting, her name doesn’t matter. She’s the best kid I’ve ever known, smart as a whip. Works really, really hard, never had a break in her life. You’re going to help her pay off her debt just like you’ve helped yourselves.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Eighty thousand; a real bargain, considering she had no help from her parents. She’s been dutifully making payments since graduation.”

  Emily’s neck was speckling with hives as pink as her dress. “You’re insane. You think Robert Barlow isn’t going to notice all this money disappearing?”

  “You weren’t so concerned about that when it was for your own benefit,” Margie said.

  “I was.” I raised my hand. “That’s why we were about to stop. I think Emily’s right, this is going too far. And Robert doesn’t deserve this.”

  “Robert,” Margie said, “is a warmonger, neoconservative imperialist. He’s a bully with no interest in helping anyone but himself. And more than all that, he’s a thief. A bigger thief than any of us in a million lifetimes could ever be. Trust me, I know. I keep his books.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating just a bit,” I said, offended on Robert’s behalf.

  “Oh, you think so? You think I’m exaggerating?” Margie slid her plate in closer and cracked open her giant lobster. “Want to talk about his tax shelters?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so.” Margie was acting smug, but she was wrong. In spite of what Robert’s most vocal critics claimed, all of his island accounts were perfectly legal. He was just smarter than everyone else, and people resented him for it.

  “Do you honestly think a man like Robert would do something as dumb as cheat on his taxes?” I said. “With so many people watching him?”

  But Margie was finished with that argument. “Look,” she said. “This is the deal I’m offering you. You do this for me or I turn you in. It’s as simple as that.”