The Assistants

by Camille Perri

  Silence.

  Wendi stared at me hard, pulled her cigarette out from behind her ear, and contemplated it. Then she stood up, shook her horns, muttered something in Chinese, and headed for the door.

  The others waited patiently for me to say something.

  “Are we all clear?” I asked.

  I found myself gripping my tequila too tightly. Robert’s drink of choice. Herradura Añejo on the rocks with a little lime. I wondered how many limes I had cut into triangular wedges in the past six years. Eight hundred? Nine hundred? A thousand?

  It didn’t matter. The lime cutter was officially gone, replaced by this woman sitting here now.

  15

  THE MOMENT I stepped into the office I knew something was wrong because Robert’s door was closed and all his electronic shades were in the down position. Motherfucker, I thought. I’d been hoping for a laid-back morning. I had just set my bagel and coffee down silently onto my desk and gently lowered myself into my chair when my phone rang.

  It was him.

  How in the world . . . ? Could he just sense me through the shades? Were they designed like a one-way surveillance mirror or something?

  “Good morning, Robert,” I said as normally as possible.

  “You’re here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you come into my office?”

  Shit.

  “Of course,” I said.

  It was only three steps from my desk to his office door, a five-second walk at most, but in that time I was able to imagine in detail just how I would cover my face with my hands, throw myself down on his feet, and beg for forgiveness. I was being blackmailed, I would tell him. I’m still being blackmailed, I would lie. I’ll get all the money back for you, I’d promise impossibly. I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you, not after all you’ve done for me.

  It was the longest five-second walk of my life, the aching in my chest and the metallic taste of fear in my mouth assuring me of what I was truly terrified of, more than going to jail—letting Robert down.

  He believed in me and I had proved him wrong.

  I flashed back to my first week on the job at Titan—me in the backseat of a chauffeured Crown Victoria, returning to the building from an errand: picking up Robert’s Derby Day party suit from the Zegna store. I’d just been wined and dined at the store by a staff of salesmen I was sure would have tried to escort me out if I’d been browsing on my own behalf. But since I was there for Robert it was all, “Can we offer you a cup of coffee while you wait, Ms. Fontana? Some Danishes? Complimentary cunnilingus?” They nodded agreeably when I made a breezy suggestion of how they could improve: “You should really start selling androgynous suits for smaller-framed women without many curves.” I pointed side to side at my own chest. “No darts here. You know what I mean?” They assured me they would relay my idea to Milan . . . So I was in the backseat of the Crown Victoria on my way back to the office with Robert’s suit beside me, and I was feeling utterly abundant. It was such a beautiful day, sunny and cool, and pulling up to the glossy Titan building with its sparkling LEED gold-standard revolving doors, I thought: I’ve made it. Even though I was only fetching a suit that cost more than my monthly rent, for a party I’d never see or even understand (what the hell is Derby Day anyway?), from where I had started, I’d made it so far.

  And look at where I was now. Jesus H. Christ. I’d been caught; I could just feel it.

  I placed my hand on the leverlike door handle to Robert’s office, pushed it open, and stepped inside. Even with all my visualizations, I was in no way prepared for what I saw.

  Robert was sitting at his desk wrapped in the throw blanket from his office couch. Only his face was visible, pale as a shriveled white onion.

  “I’m so cold,” he said.

  It was then that I realized how warm he’d made it within the barricade of his glass cube. He must have not only turned the air-conditioning off but turned the heat on.

  He was shivering.

  Robert was often a frightening man, solid and robust to the untrained eye. But I knew that beneath his broad shoulders and husky bravado, he had the constitution of a sickly Victorian child—allergies, weak lungs, a finicky stomach.

  “I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” he said.

  The man had the flu. But I knew saying so would only upset him.

  “I think you should go home,” I whispered.

  “I can’t!” he shouted in frustration—more at himself than at me. “I have to meet with Wiles in fifteen minutes. And then we’ve got the board meeting. And today’s the day we’re going over the new budget. People are expecting me. I can’t not be there!” He paused. “Oh god, I’m really not feeling well.”

  Robert was going to puke. It was plain to see.

  I should mention here that the only real relationship I’d ever had (before Kevin) ended over my fear of vomit. It was in college. We’d been together six months—my all-time record—and he caught a stomach bug. “Will you come over and take care of me?” he asked. A self-preserver above all else (the mark of neglected children everywhere), I replied, “Hell no. What good would it do to have us both hurling all over the place?” Truth be told, it’s the vulnerability of vomiting I can’t handle, the ultimate lack of control, but I didn’t need to get into all that. “Suck on an ice cube, to keep from dehydrating,” I’d told him. The next day he broke up with me, citing my “selfishness” and “complete and utter lack of heart.”

  Robert dry-heaved once, twice, and then ran to his bathroom.

  I covered my ears, a childish move that thankfully no one could see because of the downed shades.

  “Tina!” he cried to me.

  Oh god.

  “Will you bring me the glass of water on my desk?”

  I could have left right then. Made like I was giving him the privacy I thought he’d want. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t abandon the poor man.

  I approached his water glass and picked it up, careful to not touch anywhere his mouth may have, and then, holding my breath, I pushed it through the crack in the bathroom doorway. I shuddered when the cold clamminess of Robert’s hand brushed against mine.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  A minute later he emerged, no longer white but green.

  It was clear that this was only the beginning.

  “You’re going home,” I said, pulling my cell phone from my pocket. “I’m calling your car around.” I grabbed his coat from his closet and threw it over his shoulders, then took his sunglasses from his shelf. “Put these on.”

  He did as I said.

  “I’ll tell everyone you had an emergency to attend to on the West Coast.” I barked instructions into my phone, to have Robert’s car pick him up at the building’s side exit. “I’ll take care of everything.” I nudged him toward the door. “You just concentrate on getting better.”

  He burped and I jumped back.

  “I’m really fine,” he said. “I just ate something that isn’t agreeing with me.”

  “I know.” I helped him get one arm and then the other into his coat. “But no one else needs to know that. It’s none of their business.”

  He smiled. “God bless you. What would I do without you?”

  I tried to radiate his affection back at him, but the shame wouldn’t let it come. After I got Robert safely out of the building, I went to the restroom to scrub my hands and then douse them with sanitizer.

  I allowed myself a breath, but the shame continued to spread.

  When I settled back down at my desk, I saw that I had a text message from Kevin: Can I cook you dinner this weekend?

  And when I hadn’t answered right away, he’d sent another: At my place?

  His place. That meant his apartment. What says “It’s about time we did the deed” more than inviting a gir
l over to your apartment to cook her dinner?

  But it would be a terrible time for me to have sex with Kevin. Especially now that my so-called project had expanded to include his boss’s assistant, Ginger Lloyd. Kevin and Ginger worked side by side, which I did not love for a slew of other reasons besides the fear of being caught—mainly, two cantaloupe-size reasons. But that’s another story.

  Could I really say no to Kevin at this point? The Oprah Magazine would argue that it’s always a woman’s choice to say no. But I wasn’t so sure. It was time to shit or get off the pot, as Robert would say. (Though in light of that day’s circumstances, he may have opted for a less gastrointestinal colloquialism.)

  The bottom line was, I had to either break it off with Kevin or stop worrying about how close he was to the truth.

  So which was it going to be?

  —

  I GOT DRESSED, mentally preparing to not have sex with Kevin at his Upper East Side apartment that night. In fact, I decided I would even ask him for a little space, for just a little while, until things with work and my “project” settled down a bit. It would be better to put off sleeping together until I didn’t have so much on my mind. My Oprah Magazine–encouraged (OME) five-point plan was simple: Go. Act normal! Eat. No sex! Break up? I visualized its acronym. GAnENsBu.

  Upon entering Kevin’s apartment, I immediately praised myself for succeeding in the first point in my plan. Acting normal came a little harder on account of Kevin’s decorative tastes, which veered toward the mildly suburban: taupe walls adorned with unimaginative prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Pier 1 Imports sofa, and throw pillows with embroidered hunting dogs on them. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe more of a bachelor pad? Not embroidered hunting dogs—that much I was sure of. In the corner of the room there was an acoustic guitar propped up on a stand, which I deeply hoped was only for show.

  If you can learn everything you need to know about a person by scrutinizing their apartment, what new insight was I gleaning here? That Kevin was even softer than I’d originally thought? Guys I’d dated in the past had used old car parts as furniture—the backseat of a 1980 Cutlass Supreme makes for a surprisingly comfortable couch, in case you were wondering—that was the level of comfort and toughness I was accustomed to.

  GAnENsBu, I told myself. GAnENsBu!

  Kevin had cooked us a beautiful meal of lemon chicken and roasted red potatoes. We chewed politely and sipped fine wine over pewter Calvin Klein plates. But our plates were on our laps because his apartment was too small for a proper table.

  “You know,” I said between forkfuls, “if you were willing to move to Brooklyn, or even below Fourteenth Street, you’d have a lot more space.”

  The more I considered my surroundings, the less they made sense to me. This prestige neighborhood, this stuffy furniture, the predictable prints on the walls—none of it appeared to be the likely choice of the man I’d regularly watched wolfing down greasy street meat during lunch.

  “Are you finished?” Kevin reached for my plate and tossed it along with his into the kitchen sink—barely needing to take two steps away to do so.

  “Is it to impress the corporate law guys at Titan?” I asked. “To tell them you live here? Would you be ashamed of Brooklyn?”

  “Tina.”

  “Don’t get mad,” I said. “I’m only trying to understand.”

  I craned my neck to get a better look at Kevin’s bedroom, separated from the living room by only a bookcase. It appeared tidy and filled with framed photographs. Visible on his dresser was a picture of him and his mom and dad wearing swimsuits. They looked like regular people. The kind of regular people who come preset with the frame from Kodak or whoever, as an example of what you and your family should aspire to.

  “It’s my parents, okay?” Kevin walked two quick steps to the window and looked out.

  I stayed put on the couch. “You live on the Upper East Side to impress your parents?”

  “No.” When he turned back around to face me I could see the shame he’d been trying to conceal. “This apartment belongs to my parents. They bought it as a sort of pied-à-terre and now I’m living in it.” He looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  I went to him, finally, now that I’d successfully emasculated him. “You don’t have to apologize for that,” I said. “That makes a whole lot more sense.” I rubbed his back halfheartedly. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “You are?” He was so easily pacified. Too easily—especially because I was totally lying. His parents paid for his apartment?

  “It’s only temporary,” he said, leading me the short distance back to the couch. “Until I can buy my own place. But fuck, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid.” Kevin was distressed—I could tell by the way his eyebrows were furrowed like two crinkle-cut french fries. “I really like you, Tina. And I don’t want you to think less of me just because I come from . . . this. I want to make my own way in the world. To be my own man. I need you to know that.”

  I think he was expecting me to say, I do know that, but when I said nothing, he took my hands into his and squeezed them. “You’ve got your project with Emily and you’re trying to fight inequality, and here I am . . . what? Living in my parents’ apartment and working for the Titan Corporation. I wouldn’t blame you if you broke up with me right now.”

  “I’m not going to break up with you,” I said. “I’d have to be crazy to break up with you.”

  Shit. There went the Bu in GAnENsBu, right out the pied-à-terre window.

  Kevin exhaled long and slow. “Well, it’s a relief to hear you say that. It’s like I’ve been living with this secret, and it’s been terrible, not knowing how you’d react when you found out, if you would lose all respect for me.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “I feel so much better, now that it’s out in the open.”

  “Good,” I said, longing for such relief.

  “Are you still hungry enough for dessert?” Kevin bounced up from the sofa and disappeared to the kitchen nook. He returned carrying a stainless steel electric fondue pot, which he set up upon the floor.

  (I hoped the fondue pot also belonged to his parents.)

  “So,” he said. “What’s the latest with your project anyway? How’s it going?”

  He handed me a skewer and uncovered a plate of bananas and strawberries that he must have spent half the day slicing into equal-size geometric shapes.

  I tried to think. What had I last told him? “It’s going really well,” I said. “We’re, um, getting a lot more organized. More focused.”

  Kevin stirred the pot of chocolate with a wooden spoon, waiting for me to say more.

  “We’re focusing just on student-loan debt now,” I said. “Did I already tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t.” He paused his stirring. “That’s awesome. Can I get in on this? Law school left me about two hundred K in the hole.”

  “Ha,” I said. “No. It’s going to be just for women, I think. Women who are underpaid. Assistants, like.”

  “Oh, that’s understandable.” He nodded feministically. “You know, my mother would love this idea.”

  “Please don’t mention this to your mother, Kevin. Seriously.”

  He resumed his stirring of the chocolate. “I won’t. I’ll wait to let you tell her about it yourself, when you meet her.”

  I just let that one lie.

  “So do you have a website up and running?” Kevin dipped his pinky into the pot for a taste.

  “Yes, actually,” I said, and then, “No. Not publicly. Not like that you can see.”

  “Still in the beta stages?” he asked.

  “Yup,” I said, whatever that meant.

  “But you’ve got a mission statement and everything?”

  “Oh yeah, totally. We have a total mission statement.”

&n
bsp; Kevin let go of his spoon, but he remained kneeling down catcher-style, hovering over the fondue. “Well, when you’re ready to take it public,” he said, “I’ve got a few contacts I’d really like to introduce you to. Some friends who work for media companies that are a little more liberal than Titan. They’d be all over this.”

  I had to put an end to this conversation immediately. The lie was becoming too detailed—but how did I stop it?

  I leaned over and kissed him.

  He pulled back, surprised. “You like that idea, huh?”

  Jesus.

  I shoved my tongue into his mouth, harder this time. New five-point plan:

  Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. (STSTSTSTST.)

  I tried to get closer to him, to really go for it. I got down onto the floor, where he was, and wrapped my arms around him—this was going to work like a charm—but that damn fondue pot! It toppled over with a crash, splashing chocolate all over Kevin’s parents’ CB2 area rug.

  “Oh my god,” I said.

  “It’s okay.” Kevin tried to take my hands, but they were busy covering my face. “Seriously, Tina, don’t worry about it, I hate that fucking rug. Look.”

  I did look, just as Kevin kicked the remaining setup of fruit he’d so meticulously prepared for our dessert square across the room.

  His parents’ chocolate-covered rug was now polka-dotted with strawberries. Sliced banana stuck to the sides of their fawn-colored storage ottoman. He kissed me on the mouth before I could laugh.

  I grabbed his face and kissed him back, pulling him in closer.

  He directed me toward the bedroom, but we’d made it only as far as the bookcase when he pushed me up against the wall. I fiddled with his zipper and he pulled off my shirt. We were naked in seconds.

  And that’s how good I was at not having sex with Kevin at his Upper East Side apartment that night.