Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  But first, I turned my apron over and dumped its contents onto the bed. I’d been too wiped out to count my tips after checkout, a state I hadn’t even known existed. I stared blankly at the loose pile of bills, then separated it mechanically into stacks of twenties, tens, fives, and ones. I counted the stacks.

  That couldn’t be right.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, opened them. I counted again.

  Eight hundred and eighty-four dollars.

  I’d made almost nine hundred dollars in a single shift—​well, two shifts back-to-back, about twelve hours total. Still. Nine hundred dollars was my share of the rent. I’d made rent in a single day. The Sunday double was the answer to my prayers. If I could pull a double every week, I’d be making twice as much as I needed to live on—​at least. I could send half my money home and still put enough in the bank to build up a cushion for emergencies. I could buy one of those cashmere sweaters or a pair of designer jeans from the “denim bar” Connor had told me about on the north side of town. I could throw away my flimsy boots, which were so obviously plastic, and replace them with riding boots of thick, horsey leather. I could treat Gwen for once. The possibilities were endless.

  I folded the stack with the singles on the outside and stuck it in the back of my top drawer, next to the Friday and Saturday rolls. It made them look pitifully small, like burgers from a fast-food joint after you’ve eaten one at a place like Nona.

  On a strange impulse, I pulled out the Sunday stack again, still folded in half, and opened my mouth wide. Keeping my lips curled back, I shut my eyes and closed my teeth delicately around the outermost bills. The smell of cash, distinct and indescribable, paper and ink and millions of dirty fingerprints, filled my nostrils; its acrid breath stung the back of my throat. I slowly closed my jaw, feeling the delicious, springy give of the paper between my teeth, until the bills were fully compressed into a solid mass of pure possibility.

  There was a knock at the door, and I leaned forward, dropping the mess of rapidly unfolding bills back into the drawer and slamming it shut so fast, I almost smashed my finger.

  “Hey,” Gwen said. She was leaning on my doorframe, eyes barely open, in her flannel pajamas and robe.

  “You’re still up?”

  “I wanted to say hi before you went to bed.” She smiled sleepily. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “I had to work a double today.”

  “Yeah, I know. You work all the time.” She yawned. “I don’t know how you do it. You must be exhausted.”

  “I had a hangover. It sucked.”

  “Connor told me you guys were looking for me.”

  “Yeah. Where were you?”

  “Was it around midnight?” She fiddled with the drawstring of her pajama pants. “I ran out for more liquor around then. Maybe we just missed each other.”

  “I guess we must’ve.”

  “So, how’d it go today?”

  “Pretty good. I made bank.” I flashed mentally through all of today’s milestones—​the puking, the rolling of silver, Bethany. At least they’d left me a fifty-dollar tip. “So, um, is Rocky, like, one of your advisers now?”

  “Oh.” Gwen frowned slowly, as if trying to remember what I could be referring to. “Yeah. He wants to work with me. He liked my paper for Futures—​you know, the one I showed you? He thinks it could be part of a larger project. Of course, he wants my focus to be on his virtual museum stuff, and I’m not really sure that’s what I want to work on, so . . .” She trailed off.

  “So?”

  “So, I’m not sure,” she repeated. “Why?”

  “Oh, it’s just the weirdest thing. I waited on him and Bethany tonight, of all people.” It came back to me, and I almost laughed. “She invited me to dinner.”

  “Why?” Gwen said.

  A hot surge of acid scorched the back of my throat. “You mean, because I’m not anyone important? Don’t worry, you’re invited, too. I guess we’re a package deal.”

  Her eyes snapped open, as if she were awake for the first time. “No, come on, Mac, no. I just mean—​ You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “It is weird, though, right? I’m not even in her class.” This would have been the time to tell Gwen I had met with Bethany, and I had intended to, but something perverse in me rose up and blocked it. Maybe I was hurt that she hadn’t told me about Rocky. I wondered what their meetings were like, whether Rocky wore his flirtatious grin when they were alone. “I guess they just felt sorry for me because I was serving them.”

  “I don’t think anyone feels—”

  “Just like you feel sorry for me, don’t you?” It came out like a cough, the thought I’d shoved down plenty of times pushed to the surface somehow by the private sessions with Bethany, the money in the drawer. “For my mom and Lily and my deadbeat dad.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, Mac,” Gwen said. “You feel sorry enough for yourself.” She swiveled and walked away. I could hear her sock feet padding down the hall over the creaky boards and back into her bedroom. A door closed, and there was a squeak of bedsprings followed by silence.

  In the new quiet, I noticed a few twenties had fluttered to the floor when I slammed my dresser shut. I stooped to pick them up, opened my top drawer, and started straightening the chaotic heap of bills again.

  One of the singles had teeth marks. I buried it in the center of the stack.

  * * *

  The formal invitation came the next day.

  From: Bethany Ladd

  Subject: Dinner!

  To: Gwendolyn Whitney , Mackenzie Woods

  cc: Pyotr Semyonovich

  November 14, 2011, at 2:15 a.m.

  Dearest Gwen and Mac,

  Please join Rocky and me for dinner on Saturday, Nov. 26, at 8 p.m. I assume neither of you are going home for the holiday, none of the first-years do. Consider it an enlightened alternative to Thanksgiving dinner. Mac knows the building. Perhaps you don’t know that it was named the Libertorium in honor of the freedmen who built it—​the height of hypocrisy, much like Thanksgiving itself. Rocky prefers to call it the Libertine-ium. We’re in #1914. Please don’t bring anything, Rocky is a wonderful cook and we have all the wine we want or need.

  Cheers,

  Bethany

  I saw the email first thing in the morning and decided not to respond until Gwen and I had talked things over and I’d come clean about the class with Bethany. But before I got a chance, I saw her reply-all on our behalf:

  From: Gwendolyn Whitney

  Subject: Re: Dinner!

  To: Bethany Ladd , Mackenzie Woods

  cc: Pyotr Semyonovich

  November 14, 2011, at 10:11 a.m.

  Dear Bethany,

  We’re delighted to accept. Thanks so much for the invitation! See you in class.

  All best,

  Gwen

  So that was that. I replied, “Looking forward to it!” and got on with my week. Now that I was back on track in the mornings, things were starting to feel much less dire than they had the week before. Against all odds, my independent study with Bethany had not, so far, added to my workload. The second meeting came and went without any assigned readings. She lectured, and I took notes. The only trouble was, I had no real idea what the class was about.

  “Radical negation is not the logical extension of ethical negation. In fact, it is the negation of ethical negation, which we must use radical negational dialectics to see.”

  I nodded, as if I had figured this out ages ago and was happy to hear it confirmed.

  “Where the Hegelian dialectic rolls forward through history, from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, lurching along—”

  Like a broken thermos, I thought hazily.

  “—the dialectics of radical
negation obliterate thesis entirely. Instead of working for a permanent revolution, imagine playing at an ephemeral anti-revolution.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “Questions?”

  I could never think of any. Bethany in lecture mode was passionate and funny and engaging, and her words had a forcefulness that disabled me, somehow. Sitting so close to her in the cramped office, I found myself nodding to the rhythm of her arguments instead of listening to them, watching the play of sunlight through the ivy as it dappled her cheek. Occasionally a stray beam fell directly into her mouth, lighting it from the inside so that her words seemed to glow. If I felt too close to understand them, I was also too close to mistake their meaning; instead, I simply lived with them in the tiny room, accepting their truth as I accepted that of the carefully chosen objects on the shelves. It all seemed so real in the moment. But when I looked back at my notes later and tried to re-create the ideas from her lectures, I was embarrassed to find that I couldn’t make heads or tails of them. No matter how fast I wrote, how hard I tried to copy down her tortuous sentences word for word, so as not to miss her frequent reversals—​which were, I was given to believe, very much the point—​without her vivid presence, the tangled sentences seemed—​I knew they weren’t, but they seemed—​like nonsense.

  When it was over, I found Bird waiting on the bench in the hall outside. He registered my dazzled expression and nodded sagely.

  “Hot tip.” He held up his phone. “Record it.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me. I’ve been doing it for years.”

  I recalled just how long Bird had been in the Program and paused to decide if that made his advice more valuable or less. “She won’t mind?”

  “Oh, don’t tell her!” He looked shocked. “Don’t ever do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Just then Bethany’s voice called, “Come in.” Bird tapped a button on his phone and pocketed it with a wry grin as he opened the door.

  When I got back to the apartment, I tried one more time to read Bethany’s book. Then I downloaded a recording app. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

  * * *

  Without a hangover, my second Sunday double went far more smoothly. The shifts weren’t as busy, but at the end of them I still had enough money folded up in my sock drawer to launch me into the week ahead feeling safe and secure. I moved another $600 to my mom’s bank account without waiting for her to ask and had the satisfaction of seeing no further calls or texts from her.

  The following Wednesday, I hovered outside Bethany’s office, debating internally whether to take Bird’s advice. I had begun to get a feel for Bethany’s personality, and even flattered myself that I was beginning to see through her intimidating facade. I remembered how haughty and spastic she’d been on the first day of class and deduced that standing in front of a classroom full of students was difficult for her. Years with Lily had taught me something about hypersensitivity to stimuli. Maybe Bethany was something of an empath, and those knee-high boots, that woolen cape—​even her haircut, with its blockade of bangs—​were the armor that protected her from a world that worked on her like a raw, exposed nerve. Or perhaps it was simpler than that, and her grand, sinister motive for offering independent studies to Tess and me had been that she was shy. She was at her most relaxed and expansive in our one-on-one sessions, but even in her office, the intensity that sometimes vibrated between us could vanish with no warning and the doors to her inner world slam shut. To keep them open, I had to make her feel secure.

  At the same time, I also had to learn from her. The underlying purpose of the independent study, she had all but told me on our first meeting, was to develop a project for the Joyner application that was due at the end of the semester. My proposal was supposed to grow out of these sessions, informed and inspired by her theory of radical negation—​which, as she often told me, I was helping her to work out, though I had no idea how. Since she had given me no assignments or even readings so far, I assumed my final grade would be based on my Joyner proposal. And so far, I had nothing.

  I opened the app, pressed record, slipped my phone into my bag, and walked in.

  The session proceeded as usual, and I soon relaxed and forgot about the phone. Then, midway through one of her long, tortuous sentences, Bethany interrupted herself to say, “Mac.”

  It took me a moment to realize she required a response, it was such a rare circumstance. I laid down my pen and looked up.

  “There’s something different about you today.”

  I went red. Did the recording app screen glow through the fabric of my bag? “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, it’s good. What is it, your hair?”

  I raised a hand reflexively to my shoulders and remembered that I’d tied my hair back. “I don’t usually wear it this way.”

  “Oh, I know. Your earrings! Those are really quite beautiful. I suppose with your hair back, I can see them.”

  I fingered the diamond studs, which I had taken to wearing on Wednesdays for good luck. “My mom gave them to me. They were an engagement present from my father.” I warmed to my theme. “He has wonderful taste.”

  “Indeed. They’re so subtle.” She leaned forward, rising halfway out of her chair and reaching her hand toward my face so fluidly, I didn’t even flinch when I felt her cold, dry fingers on my earlobes. She drew closer to inspect the studs, her dark red hair filling my vision, and I breathed in her caustic, floral scent. In a low voice a few inches from my ear, she said, “They make you sparkle, little star.”

  Then it was over, and she was sitting back in her slightly oversize office chair, several feet away. “I hope you wear them Saturday,” she said, as if she had confidence that I would do the right thing. Then she returned to her lecture.

  * * *

  I hadn’t planned to buy something new, but after my Saturday shift, with hours to kill before the dinner, I was seized with the urge to go shopping.

  For the first time, I drove to the north side of town, far from the smokestacks by DHU. Here, the ancient brownstones had been renovated into single-family dwellings instead of six-flats, and the central boulevard was lined with boutiques and cafés under twinkle lights. Even the sidewalks were beautiful: mellow red brick in a zigzag pattern, immaculately shoveled. Strolling past shop-window displays of lizard handbags and statement necklaces, I felt palpably lifted by my unusually high bank account balance, as if little wads of cash were strapped to my feet. I bypassed the preppy cashmere scarves and sweaters in colorful stripes, whose quality seemed suddenly both obvious and commonplace—​Bethany would never wear something like that—​and soon settled on a black ballet-neck dress in a heavy, expensive knit. Not too dressy, not too plain. Subtle.

  On my way to the car, I passed a shop window displaying an exhilarating pair of stack-heeled riding boots in rich caramel leather. Emboldened by my easy success, telling myself I was only looking, I went in and tried them on. They cost twice as much as the dress; they would take the number in my bank account almost down to the double digits. But I had another Sunday double tomorrow. I took them to the counter in sock feet and paid for them before I could change my mind.

  All the way home, I felt like I had gotten away with something. So, this was what it was like, spending money. You wanted a thing, and you didn’t have to ask for it, or wait for it to go on sale, or talk yourself out of it. There was no sneaking, no stealing, no looking the other way while someone else paid. You just handed the money over, and you could have anything you wanted.

  When I walked into the apartment, Gwen was sitting on the couch waiting for me. Her face was pinched and pale, and she hugged her arms tightly at the elbows.

  She stood immediately. “Mac, I’m so sorry.”

  Full of love for my new clothes, I hugged her.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said, as Gwen wiped a few stray tears from her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have been such a bitch about this dinner.”

  “No—​you wer
e right. I shouldn’t have acted like it was weird that Bethany invited you.” She sighed and shook her head a little, laughing at herself in disbelief. “It’s going to sound awful, but maybe I was—​a little jealous?”

  I took a deep breath. “Gwen, I’ve been doing an independent study with Bethany. It’s on Wednesdays. That’s why I stopped coming to trivia.” I waited for the expression of surprise, but it didn’t come.

  “I know. I mean, I didn’t know the details. But I knew it had to be something like that. I got wind of it the night of the party.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That Bird guy probably spread it around.”

  “This place is so gossipy.”

  “It’s like being back in middle school.”

  “I know.”

  There was a brief pause, and I remembered that Gwen had gone to a private middle school in Manhattan, while I spent those years sitting alone on the bus in jeans two inches too short for me.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I’ve been kind of working on Bethany to be my adviser—​you know, trying to talk a lot in class, going to office hours, that kind of thing—​hoping she’d offer to work with me. And she hasn’t. So, when I asked why she invited you—​I was kind of fishing for information. I should have just asked.”

  I shook my head. “No, I should have told you. It was on the tip of my tongue, and then I got mad and clammed up.”

  “I don’t blame you.” She took a deep breath. “Mac, I know something must be going on back home. Is it Lily?”

  Unbidden, my mom’s voice came into my head—​some people’s lives—​but I ignored it.