The Assistants

by Camille Perri

  Kevin held up the tickets as I walked toward him, and when I reached him, he tapped a finger on his silver wristwatch. “You’re right on time,” he said.

  I beamed like a person with impeccable timing.

  Then he laughed and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “I have to confess. I saw you circling the block.”

  “Damn it!”

  He drew me in tighter, not allowing me to escape the humiliation. “I appreciate the gesture,” he said. “Lots of other girls would have just stood there watching the clock, making me feel bad for being late.”

  “But you’re fifteen minutes early,” I said.

  “I meant late according to Tina Fontana time,” he said, smiling.

  We made our way inside, and Kevin let me break free from his hold at the refreshments counter. “Popcorn or candy?” he asked.

  Was this a trick question?

  It was our first time at the movies together, which was no simple ordeal for me. I had very specific needs when attending the cinema. Get stuck midrow, up too close to the screen, or too far back, and it was over for me. I may as well have just headed home. I preferred—no, required—a centrally situated aisle seat, the most coveted location among the anxious and weak-bladdered.

  “How about popcorn and candy?” Kevin grabbed for his wallet.

  Good man.

  “Surprise me,” I said, trying to sound spontaneous and nonchalant. “I’ll go save us seats.”

  Which I did, but the theater had already filled up—the only aisle seat available was a single—so I settled for two midrow seats, closer to the screen than was comfortable, and tried to not be a little bitch about it. The theater went dark a few seconds before Kevin appeared, looking around like a retriever pup when you pretend to toss his ball but keep it in your hand. He hugged one arm around the most gigantic vat of popcorn I’d ever seen, and the other around a soda so enormous it would have sent former mayor of New York Mike Bloomberg into instant diabetic shock. I waved him over.

  Somehow he managed not to douse anyone as he climbed over the knees separating us, or if he did, they just let it slide because look at this sweet Labrador of a man so eager to please his female guest.

  He handed me the twenty-pound-bucket of popcorn, sat, and whispered, “God, I hate sitting in the middle of a row, but that’s all on me; next time I’ll make sure to arrive earlier.”

  Then he pulled two supersize boxes of candy from I don’t even know where because they couldn’t have possibly fit in the pockets of his crisp jeans. “I wasn’t sure if you’d prefer Butterfinger Bites or Twizzlers, so I got both,” he said. “Also, I got Cherry Coke. I hope that’s okay. I never drink Cherry Coke, except—”

  “Except at the movies, with popcorn,” I said, finishing his sentence, which was actually my sentence.

  “For the salty and sweet,” he said, tilting his head and smiling so bright his teeth sparkled white even in the darkness.

  This shit might actually work out, I thought.

  The trailers charged ahead, one after the next, “In a world . . .” and all that, and Kevin reached for my hand.

  I looked at him, and right then he went in and touched my lips with his. Just like that. It was a kiss so soft and sweet, and salty, too, that I didn’t even have the chance to think: Do people on dates still kiss in the movies? Especially a first kiss. Nope. By the time my brain had the capacity for critical thinking, the kiss had already happened and the movie had started.

  We both turned to watch the screen, but I couldn’t focus on anything but my panic.

  This was a bad idea—as I’d been repeating to myself every time Kevin made some obvious, yet still unbelievable, gesture toward liking me. Bad, bad, bad. Now wasn’t the time to let anyone get close. Especially someone so connected to the situation. I’d spent so much of my life alone, loveless, sexless, under my bedspread binge-watching away my loneliness. And now—now?—I strike upon a potential boyfriend? A man who isn’t certifiably insane, or an active alcoholic, or an unemployed drummer in a noise band—a man who recognizes the intense synergistic effect Cherry Coke has with movie popcorn? WTF, as they say.

  Kevin moved his hand to my knee. He gently, almost imperceptibly, stroked a soft circle up my thigh.

  Not smart, Fontana. Bad, bad, bad. But, goddamn, it felt good.

  11

  AT LAST, on an overcast day in late July, we finished paying off Margie’s blackmail debt. Kevin and I had been dating for reals for about three weeks. There was never a conversation like, Are we boyfriend and girlfriend now? But after our movie date it became obvious to me that we were soul mates—as long as he never found out about, you know, the embezzlement thing.

  During the days and weeks that followed, we went to fancy Upper East Side restaurants and took in the pretension. We went to Lower East Side dive bars and took in the hipsterdom. We went to the Guggenheim and took in the art. When we stayed in, we took in each other—though not literally, to Emily’s horror. Kevin and I had not yet slept together, but like the popular girls in my high school used to say, we’d done everything but.

  The truth is, I was still testing him. I had a natural inclination to mistrust people who had a lot of money—people who grew up with money—because how could anyone who’s never suffered be depended upon to suffer through me? I am not a low-maintenance girlfriend. I’m more like a fixer-upper in a dicey neighborhood.

  Kevin came from money, but the weeks of testing were conclusive that he didn’t act like it—and he didn’t seem to care that I didn’t. In fact, the more time we spent together, the more it dawned on me that Kevin liked that I didn’t come from money. I hadn’t told him much about my immigrant parents or the tiny Bronx apartment I hailed from, but whenever I’d slip and forget myself—like the time I lost my r’s and g’s saying, Aw you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? when a car cut us off in front of a crosswalk—Kevin would throw his head back and laugh. He’d pull me in and smack my low-rent cheek with a kiss. It was all kind of perfect . . . too perfect.

  I kept waiting for the moment when teenage Freddie Prinze Jr. and the rest of the cast from She’s All That would jump out from the shadows, pointing and laughing, revealing this was all a cruel joke. But it never came.

  Kevin and I shared a mutual appreciation for Freddie Prinze Jr. movies—I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Scooby-Doo Knows What You Did Last Summer—and anything and everything by John Hughes. We once acted out the entire first half of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We once acted out the post-prom kiss from Pretty in Pink. I knew we would sleep together soon. Kevin had managed to gradually wear me down, to get me to let go of who I thought I was supposed to be and instead just be who I am. So doing the nasty had to be the next step.

  But on this particular overcast day in late July, I did everything in my power to push Kevin out of my mind as I rode the elevator up to Margie’s office with her final payment—the last bundle of cash stuffed in an envelope, stuffed in a bigger envelope. Dear God, please let this really be the end, I prayed while squeezing the envelope close to my thumping bunny-rabbit heart. That I was in no position to be asking God for jack shit didn’t stop me from trying anyway.

  The elevator doors opened and I marched, head down, to Margie’s office, handed her the envelope, and recited my line: “Robert would like you to look at these documents right away.”

  Margie picked her head up and fastened her eyes to mine, and it occurred to me that no one else was around. The bespectacled accounting underlings who usually buzzed around Margie’s desk were nowhere to be found. Had she arranged that? If this were a movie from the late nineties, now would be the moment when some ambient, concern-inducing Radiohead music would start to play.

  Margie rested her meaty hands flat upon the envelope.

  “Okay?” I said.

  She blinked her round eyes a few times but said nothing.<
br />
  “So we’re good?” I said.

  Margie leaned back in her chair, and it squeaked formidably. As much as I knew this was supposed to be the end, part of me never believed it. Whether I was conscious of it before this moment or not, I’d been afraid all along that Margie wouldn’t let us go.

  “You and Emily had your fill?” she asked. “You had enough?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, out of nowhere morphing into an obedient Southerner, because maybe it made me sound more sorry?

  Margie erupted with a full-belly laugh. “You’ve been spending too much time with that redneck boss of yours.” She gave a nod to the door. “Get the hell out of here; I’ve got work to do.”

  I flooded with relief and bolted before she could change her mind—the music would now change to some buoyant, joy-inducing Radiohead song, whatever that would sound like.

  In the elevator, I began to see spots. My hearing went underwatery and my head spun. But I was safe.

  It was done.

  My body felt floppy all of a sudden, loose, like a balloon let go to deflate and swirl around. And by the time I was back at my desk, I’d already begun considering possibilities for myself in a way that I hadn’t since college. I remained debt-free, after all—through all of this, that hadn’t been taken away from me. So what would I do now? How could I be a positive force in the world? What was my true life purpose? I was suddenly thinking in Oprah-speak now that I was no longer hyperventilating.

  At lunchtime, Emily insisted we go to the bar down the street with the booze-lunch special to celebrate. Have you ever made a new friend who’s a vegetarian and found yourself eating more vegetables? I was beginning to wonder if Emily was an actual alcoholic and if I was gradually becoming one by proxy, so my first reaction was to suggest we put off the celebration till after the sun began to set. But Robert had a twelve p.m. lunch meeting at Marea, followed by a two p.m. lunch meeting at La Grenouille, which meant he’d be out of the office till at least four, so there was really no good reason for me to decline Emily’s offer. Even my useless fill-in could hold down the fort in a Robert-less office.

  Emily and I ordered two-for-one dirty-pickle martinis with blue cheese–filled olives off the lunch-special menu, which almost qualified as real food, and hunkered into a shadowy booth in the bar’s corner.

  I raised my glass. “To the end,” I said. “To this nightmare finally being over.”

  Emily ignored my heartfelt toast and got right to drinking. There was something on her mind. I could tell by the way she kept glancing left and right all shifty, like she was peeking through a newspaper with eyeholes cut out.

  “I heard it’s got bulletproof glass,” she said. “And a rocket-detection system. To keep him safe from all the people who want to murder him.”

  I set down my cloudy glass of lunch. Emily was referring to the luxury yacht Robert had just purchased. His fifth. Because four wasn’t enough.

  “I heard it’s got a helipad and a swimming pool. And an aquarium.” Emily shook her head. “An aquarium. On a boat!”

  “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” I asked.

  She brought her face in close to mine. “I want a boat with an aquarium,” she whispered, as if it were a secret. “Or, at the very least, a house with an inground, temperature-controlled, saltwater swimming pool. Don’t you?”

  “I thought we came here to celebrate,” I said.

  Emily leaned in even closer. “I do have something to tell you. Don’t be mad.”

  Just then I noticed a tall redhead approaching our table, and I knew I’d been tricked.

  I recognized this bombshell of a woman from the Titan building. She always wore bold-colored skirt suits and six-inch heels, even on dress-down Fridays, which made me despise her a little. Okay, a lot.

  “This is Ginger Lloyd,” Emily said. “She’s Glen Wiles’s assistant.”

  “Huh,” I said, because Glen Wiles’s assistant and I e-mailed each other, like, fifty times a day. But I’d never matched the woman to the name.

  Of course her name was Ginger. How did the parents of all the Gingers of the world know their little ones wouldn’t grow up to be blondes or brunettes? Or was the name itself so powerful it actually oxidized the hair follicles over time, to match the name by adulthood?

  Ginger strong-armed me into a firm handshake. “We finally meet face-to-face.”

  “After Robert, Glen Wiles is the company’s highest-paid executive,” Emily said, and I could see the inground, temperature-controlled, saltwater swimming pool in her eyes. “After Robert, Glen Wiles has the company’s highest-allowance expense account, and what does he even need an expense account for? Lawyers shouldn’t need expense accounts.”

  I had a feeling I knew where this was headed.

  I stood up to go, but Emily grabbed me by my shirtsleeve, pulling me back down. “Just hear her out. She wants to join us, and she has a lot to offer.”

  “No, I’m not doing this.” I shook my sleeve free. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you told!”

  If there had been anyone else in the bar drinking their lunch, they would have turned to look to see which adult woman was throwing the tantrum.

  Ginger sat down beside Emily and made herself comfortable. She removed the silk scarf that had been modestly wrapped around her ample chest, and for a split second I felt my eyes bulge out like Bugs Bunny’s.

  “I heard one of the fish in Robert’s yacht aquarium cost eighty thousand dollars,” Ginger said with a devious calm. “One fish. I heard he had it flown in from Singapore.”

  That was true. I’d overseen the flying in of the fish myself.

  “I owe one hundred sixty K,” Ginger said. “The equivalent of two fish.”

  There wasn’t a hint of desperation to Ginger’s tone. She hadn’t come to beg.

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said. “Is it all in student loans?”

  “I went to Brown.” Ginger tied her silk scarf to the strap of her purse with an elegant knot. “Then Columbia Law School.”

  “Shouldn’t you be a lawyer, then?” I asked. “Instead of a lawyer’s assistant?”

  “I dropped out of law school,” Ginger replied matter-of-factly. “It was all wrong for me, not that where I’ve ended up is any better, working for Glen Wiles of all people. No one is worse than he is. No one. Except Robert.” Ginger had a glint of crazy in her eye that made me nervous. “Nobody deserves to make that much money,” she said. “That’s why I want to join you and Emily. Imagine what the three of us could accomplish if we joined forces.”

  I turned to look at Emily and she was good as gone. Her mind was off planning a stable for her pet horse.

  Ginger leaned back, crossed her long legs, and the emerald in her crazy eyes glistened into something more pointed. “Glen Wiles is in the pool of executives who make so much money they buy West Village mansions just to house their art collections.”

  Emily moaned at the word pool.

  “That’s a true story,” Ginger said.

  It was. I’d read about that sale in the Times. Wiles needed the mansion for his new Picasso.

  Emily waved to the bartender and ordered us a bottle of chilled champagne with three glasses.

  “We’re not doing this,” I said, for Emily’s benefit as much as Ginger’s.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Emily said.

  “No, I’m really not doing this,” I said. “I’m going back to work.”

  Emily retaliated with a lockjawed severity I hadn’t heard since that first morning up on the forty-third floor. “Not for anything, Fontana, but what makes you think we can’t just go ahead without you?”

  I’d already stood up to go, to storm out brandishing my self-importance like a flag. What made me freeze in place? Was I really shocked that Emily would be so quick to disregard our weeks of collusion an
d bonding, the bottles upon bottles of Asti Spumante we’d shared—that she’d drop me in a second for an upgrade to a shinier partner in crime? Since when did I believe in friendship?

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Bye then,” Ginger said.

  Emily called to my back, “I want you with us, Fontana; that’s why I set up this meeting. But if you’re not with us, I’m certainly not going to let you stop us.”

  I kept walking, without turning around, all the way back to the office.

  12

  I MUST NOT BE cut out for genuine alcoholism because a liquid lunch just did not do it for me. So before returning to my desk, I beelined to the cafeteria’s sandwich station to grab a BLT.

  One might wonder how I could eat at a time like this, but I needed to eat because I needed to think. Fucking Emily Johnson. We’d done it, we had crossed the finish line, and she had to go and screw it all up by telling someone. Ginger Lloyd, who was obviously terrible.

  This was what I got for letting my guard down, for thinking Emily was my friend. And for believing, even for an instant, that anything could go right, ever.

  I ordered my BLT as usual—heavy on the B, light on the L and T—then scanned the table area for the standard sights: the four sharp corners of suited power lunches, the anxious outer perimeter of interns unpacking brown-bag PB&Js, the showy center of look-at-me fashionistas picking nuts and berries off plates of lettuce, and off to the side, in her no-man’s-land table for one, sat the Lean Cuisine Lady, who always ate alone.

  It was by accident that our eyes met. Or so I thought.

  Then a light came on behind her thick, pink-tinted grandma glasses (which I had the sense to understand were not intended to be ironic) and she raised her fingers.

  Was she waving? I checked behind me, saw that my BLT was ready, took it in hand, said thank you, and when I turned back around, she still had her fingers raised.

  The Lean Cuisine Lady was waving me over. The plastic-tray-loving crackpot who assisted Margie Fischer in accounting. But what could I do but make my way to her table? Allowing her to continue waving from across the crowded cafeteria, even if I pretended not to see her, would only draw more attention.