by Tom Rachman
that's
great."
"You?"
"Good, good. Heading to Atlanta--obviously. I have this meeting with the Ott board. Our annual reckoning."
"You're the one who has to do that?"
"Afraid so. Our benighted publisher refuses."
"So the mud pie lands on your plate."
"Yup, yup. That's my plate all right. Though I must admit," she says, "it is interesting going to headquarters. We all have this tendency in Rome to think we're the center of the Ott world. Then when I go to Atlanta it really puts everything in perspective.
Just how small we are."
"Not 'we' anymore," he says good-naturedly. "Not for me, anyhow."
"Yes, yes, right. Sorry."
"There was no movement at the paper, so I figured it was time to leave."
He must not realize that she knows the truth. More important, he must not realize her role in his dismissal. "That sounds wise," she says, filling the silence. "What's that you're reading?"
He retrieves the paperback from under his behind and shows the cover.
"Oh wow," she says. "I'm a huge Jane Austen fan."
"Oh
yeah?"
"I haven't read Persuasion," she says. "But Pride and Prejudice is probably--no, definitely--my favorite book of all time. I'm trying to get my girls to read it, but I think they're a bit young still."
"What
age?"
"Ten and eleven."
"I hadn't read anything by her till a couple of months ago," he says. "But now I'm on, like, a kind of mission to read everything she ever did. Which is not all that much.
This is the last on my list." He studies the cover. "This wasn't her title for it--she died before it came out. The publisher called it Persuasion."
"Great title, though."
"It is, isn't it."
"What's your favorite of hers?" she asks.
"Mansfield Park, maybe. Maybe Pride. The only one that didn't do it for me was Sense and Sensibility."
"I've actually only read Pride and Prejudice."
"I thought she was your favorite writer."
"I know, I know. But I'm a terrible reader. Three kids. The job."
"Three kids?" He makes a face.
"What's
that
mean?"
"No, I'm impressed. You seem young to have three."
"I guess. Though I'm not that young. Anyway. Sorry, I should let you get back to your book."
"No prob, seriously--it's good getting a chance to talk. Nobody talks at that office.
You notice that? Weirdest thing when I started there--I was, like, is there some kind of clique out here or do I have a real bad odor or something? It's like a veil of silence in there."
"That's the paper all right."
"You practically feel like everybody hates you."
"That's how I feel all the time there." Her colleagues don't even have the respect to use her name, referring to her as "Accounts Payable." She hates the nickname. They can't accept that she's young and a woman and above them in the food chain. But she's the one keeping them employed. Those guys--glorified stenographers, pontificating about prerogatives of the press--as if the paper were anything more than a business. Not when we're losing this kind of money. And that champion of pontificators, the insufferable Herman Cohen, constantly forwarding her articles like "How Bean Counters Are Ruining the Media." As if she were running the place into the ground. It's he who blocked the paper from starting a website. In this day and age, we still have no Web presence! But those who call her Accounts Payable don't think about this stuff. They don't think about how much money the paper drops each time they're late in closing the edition (forty-three thousand euros so far this annum). Or how much she battled against layoffs. (She got the Ott board down from sixteen to nine, with just one coming from editorial.) Without her, the staff would be on the streets in a month. And they slag her off.
"That is so sad," she continues. "It takes an intercontinental flight to actually exchange words with someone in the office."
"Although we did talk once, when I started."
"Right, my welcome-aboard chat. Was I a total cow?"
"Not
a
total one."
"Oh no! Really?"
"I'm kidding. No, you just seemed real busy."
"I am. So, so busy. The board won't pay for an assistant. And why would they, quite frankly? They're getting three employees' work out of me. It's my own fault. Sorry, I shouldn't vent. And a retroactive sorry if I was a bit of a you-know-what back at work.
Just a strange atmosphere at the paper sometimes, as you know." She angles herself toward him. "So you like to read?"
He ruffles the pages of his book. "When I can." He rests the paperback facedown on his thigh.
"You shouldn't spread it out like that."
"Like
what?"
"Bending your book. You're gonna break the spine."
"I don't mind."
"Sorry. I'm being bossy. I should let you read."
"Don't worry about it."
"I should probably do some work myself." She opens the tray table but hesitates.
Is there anything in her files that mentions Dave? Anything he shouldn't see? She opens her binder a crack and extracts a few innocuous pages but is furtively studying him. He turns a page of his book. He seems engrossed and not remotely curious to peek at her tedious charts. What page is he on? Eighty-three. She makes a fake shuffle of her papers, a meaningless check mark, but in fact she is reading Persuasion over his shoulder. He turns the page. He goes faster than she does. That's sort of annoying. But it's to be expected--he already knows what's going on in the story. She makes a few more spurious shifts of her papers. He turns another page and, after perceptibly holding his breath, spreads the book wider, for both of them to see. She has been caught again. Ears burning, she turns back to her work.
"Addictive,
isn't
it,"
he says graciously.
"That's a terrible habit of mine. Sorry."
"Don't be nuts. Here. Please." He opens the book between them on the armrest.
"Want me to explain what's happening?"
"No, no--it's fine, really. I should do my work."
"See, that's why they fired me," he jokes. "Everybody else is working while I'm reading damn Jane Austen!"
Fired him? That's not how he characterized it before.
"Well, you certainly have a good sense of humor about it."
"Easier when you've got a new job."
"You do? Oh, that's so good to hear."
"Thanks. Yeah, the day after I got canned I was talking to this Italian buddy of mine and he told me about this position. Guess I'm lucky."
She wonders how old Dave Belling is. Roughly her age? Older by a bit?
"Hey, look," he says, "it's lunch number one coming down the aisle."
"Lunch number one?"
"Yeah, we get two lunches on this flight because of the time difference."
"Oh,
hurrah."
"Seriously."
They eat their plastic chicken and rubber carrots and a pink confection, and make sardonic remarks about it all, as people will when faced with grim airplane food that they nonetheless consume to the crumbs.
"So why are you headed to Atlanta?" she asks.
"Just wanted to see my folks before I start the new job."
"You're from the area, then?"
"From Georgia, yeah. A little town called Ocilla."
"Nice
place?"
"It's all right. Couldn't live there again. Grew up there, and that's enough for a lifetime. And you? Where you from?"
"Rochester,
New
York,
originally."
"So you're an 'originally,' too. That means there's been a whole bunch of stops after originally."
"Not that many. I went to college in Bingham
ton, did a year abroad in Milan, which is where I met my husband. Not currently my husband. My ex. Though he wasn't that then. I never know how to say that."
"Allow my copydesk expertise to intervene: your then-pre-husband, later-to-be-
post-husband in his prior-to-ex-husband status."
She laughs. "Is that how you'd phrase it in the paper?"
"Now you see why they fired me."
She smiles. "So anyway, yeah, I got involved with my whatever-he-is in Milan.
He's from there. It was my first really significant romance, and I was--" She pauses.
"You were what?"
"I don't know. Stupid. Twenty-three."
"You can't complain--you got three kids out of the bargain."
"That's true. That's what I tell myself."
"I don't have any," he says. "Wanted them. But my wife--my then wife--didn't. No matter what I said, she wasn't having it. But listen to this: we get divorced in, like, '96, and she meets some guy and they go and have four kids! Guess it wasn't that she didn't want kids. She didn't want them with me! "
Abbey doesn't respond.
"What?"
he
asks.
"No, nothing. Nothing. I was just thinking," she says. "You seem very strong about that. Very, like you don't have self-pity. I have a lot of admiration for that."
He smiles abashedly. "Not really."
"No,
seriously."
He picks at his cuticle. "I'm sure you're the same about your divorce."
"You only say that because you haven't heard me mouthing off about my poor ex!
Not that he's poor in any sense of the word. Kind of a rich jerk-off, actually. Excuse my language."
"Why's he a jerk-off?"
She twitches her head as if swooped by a bee. "Just is. I don't know. We had this passionate love affair--I thought. Now I suspect he just wanted to improve his English."
"Nah."
"I'm not entirely kidding. He's this terrible Anglophile. He insisted we give our kids these traditional British names, or names he thought were traditional."
"Like
what?"
"Henry, Edith, and Hilda."
"That's like something from Victorian England."
She covers her face. "I know, I know. I'm so embarrassed. He forced them on me!
I swear. I was young and dumb. Keep in mind that these names are also impossible for Italians to pronounce. So their own grandparents in Milan--really good people, I have to say--can't even say their own grandkids' names. It's ridiculous."
"So where's the ex-husband now?"
"London. He was so in love with it, he moved there. Supposedly to find a place big enough for all of us. I even gave in my resignation--I was an assistant in accounts back then, before I did my MBA. Then he sends me this letter about how he has 'nervous problems,' whatever that means. There was a slow, ugly end. Never told me directly about his girlfriend. He lives there now. In London. With her."
"Some proper English girl, I guess."
"Actually, to my great amusement she's from Naples."
"Well," Dave says, laughing, "if that ain't a kick in the pants."
She smiles at this funny expression. "I certainly thought so," she continues. "Ah well. How old are you, Dave, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Forty-five.
You?"
"Forty. Just turned forty."
"Seriously?" he says. "You're younger than I thought."
"Oh gee, thanks a lot."
"No, no, I don't mean it that way. I mean you're young to have such an important job. And three kids and all that. Puts me to shame."
The conversation falters. She is facing him and can't inconspicuously turn away.
"Shall we read a bit?" he suggests, opening the book to where they were.
"That's nice of you, but you go ahead. I should do some work."
She glances at him now and then. They smile at each other and he waggles the book, saying, "Not tempted?"
After a stretch of work, she turns to make a joke. But he is asleep, the book flat on his chest. Jane Austen, she thinks, what guy reads Jane Austen? He's not gay, is he?
Doesn't seem gay. She hasn't known many Southerners. That twang and aw-shucks about him--it's sort of exotic. Very natural.
What if he wakes and catches her scrutinizing him? So she studies him from the corner of her eye. He's not especially tall, though it's hard to tell seated. Sweatshirt, jeans, hiking shoes. A relaxed, outdoorsy look. His hand on the book is small, but angular and strong, fingernails bitten, cuticles mismanaged. More to him than meets the eye. His divorce obviously still hurts. He's private, though--not a guy to bleed his life over you.
He shifts in his sleep and his arm hops up onto the rest between them, touching her elbow. She holds still, decides to allow the contact, resumes breathing.
An hour later, he yawns and blinks to wakefulness. "Sorry about that."
"About what?" she whispers.
"Think I fell asleep for a minute," he replies softly. "Hey, how come we're whispering?"
"Maybe because the lights are off." She points toward the toilets. "Sorry, I need to go up there for a minute."
"Oh man," he says, unbuckling his seat belt and leaping to his feet. "Did I have you trapped in here?"
"Not at all. Not at all." She sucks in her tummy and squeezes out into the aisle, retrieves her handbag from the overhead bin, and heads for the bathroom. Safely inside, she studies herself, hardly flattered by the lighting. "I look fucking terrible." She takes the roll-on deodorant from her bag, stripes it across her underarm. She unpacks refreshing towelettes, wipes her face and hands, swabs on foundation to conceal her blotchiness, adds a trace of eyeliner, a stroke of lipstick. Or not. She kisses it off onto a paper towel, considers the scratched metal reflection one last time, plucks an eyelash from her cheek.
She adjusts her underwire, which was pinching, glances down her shirt: a tattered black bra. She peeks down her trousers: blue granny panties. Nice combo: funeral lace on top and parachute material on bottom. Don't be stupid--who cares. One more refreshing towelette. Done.
She stops at their row. "Hey."
He jumps to his feet. "Hey there."
She inhales and slides back into place.
"You take a shower in there?"
"Why? Because I took so long?"
"Because you look, like, so awake and stuff. I don't know how you girls manage that. When I travel, I look like a pair of old boots."
"We ladies have our secrets," she declares with pride.
"Well," he responds enthusiastically, "I'm all for that."
Not gay, she thinks. "Listen, it's only plane travel," she says, touching his arm.
"Nobody expects anyone to look their best."
"You're sure doing pretty good," he says, voice subsiding at the baldness of the compliment. "Anyhow," he picks up, "I reckon I'll go freshen up a bit myself. Even if I'm not working with so much."
"Oh stop it."
He returns, slapping damp hands against his cheeks. "Better." He drops into his seat. "Better."
"So," she says. "Anyway."
A moment of silence.
"So," she attempts again, "do you like living in Rome? Do you have millions of friends and everything?"
"Sort of. I mean not millions. I didn't speak any Italian at the get-go, which held me back."
"Still, I bet you had tons of girls chasing you, right? The single American journalist and all that."
"Not so much. For a while, I dated this girl from New Zealand that worked at this pub near my place."
"And where's that?"
"My place? In Monti. Via dei Serpenti."
"Cool
area."
"Small apartment, but yeah. You know, one thing I learned in Rome is that the Italians are real friendly and stuff, but they got their cliques. You know? They hang out their whole lives with the same people they met in first grade. And if you weren't at that school, we
ll, you're never getting a dinner invite. You know what I mean?"
"Absolutely. That's so Italian."
"Kind of hard to break into. For an American. Easier, I guess, for girls. Those slick Italian guys and so forth."
"You haven't bought into that Latin-lover myth, have you? Let me tell you a secret: Italian guys--and I know, I married one--are prima donnas, not studs. And I refuse to fall for a guy whose wardrobe is better than mine. A lot of these Italians, they're like little boys. My son, Henry, is way more mature and he's thirteen. A lot of them are still having Mama do their laundry, turn up their jeans, fix them mortadella sandwiches for lunch. They never quite get over it." She wiggles her nose. "What, me bitter? Sorry--no more tirades, I swear."