Who Do You Love

by Jennifer Weiner

  How do you act when you’ve lost everything? he’d wondered, walking through the parking lot to the front door. He’d kept his medal, but all of the prizes were gone: the endorsement deals, the pricey restaurants, the fine wines and fancy friends, actors and politicians who liked to collect athletes the same way they collected vintage cars and Impressionist paintings. And Maisie, of course. Maisie used to laugh and roll her eyes at the phrase trophy girlfriend. So I’m just another one of your things, she would tease, usually while she was naked, lying on the bed, long, smooth legs stretched out on the duvet cover, hips angled just so. She would act offended, but Andy thought that she enjoyed being the female equivalent of a gold medal.

  He wondered what Maisie would make of his Brooklyn apartment, which could fit, in its entirety, into their Manhattan living room; what she’d say about his new clothes, not to mention his new body. He wondered, too, about Rachel—if she’d gotten married, if she was still doing social work, if she’d ever had kids. He’d wanted to see if she would call or write in the wake of the scandal—maybe to sympathize, maybe to gloat—but she hadn’t, and he’d never tried to find her, never hunted her down on Facebook or punched her name into Google. He imagined her husband, probably a guy with the right kind of background, upper-middle-class and Jewish, someone who’d make her parents happy. He thought that she would have had children and be good with them, her social-worker training combined with her good instincts and big heart. A happy, normal life. That’s what she deserved, and he hoped it was what she’d gotten.

  He’d walked into the manager’s office holding his résumé, sad thing that it was, trying not to sweat on the paper. In a perverse way, he was proud of it. The résumé was a triumph of creativity, the first fiction he’d ever written. Describing his years as a paperboy, Andy had promoted himself to an “employee of the distribution department of a major news organization.” He had written that he’d been “self-employed as an independent contractor working around the world” for the last ten years, without saying that he’d been a runner, and if the manager asked him about the years between losing that job and applying for this one, Andy would simply say that he’d been a freelance consultant and then shut his mouth and hope that the follow-up question wasn’t “Consulting about what?” He’d also have to hope that the manager wouldn’t instantly know who he was.

  Short answers, he’d told himself as he walked into the air-conditioning, down an aisle of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. If Andy was hired, he’d be working the midnight-to-eight shift. Night stocker. The thought made him smile, and think, as jokes sometimes did, of Rachel, who would have laughed.

  He found a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, pushed through it, found another door with a strip of plastic reading JACK KINCAID, STORE MANAGER, and knocked. A voice yelled, “Come on in!” Andy walked into the office and saw a man struggling to get up from an ergonomic desk chair. Jack Kincaid wore steel-rimmed glasses, a dark-blue shirt, pleated khaki pants, and work boots. A pocket protector held half a dozen ballpoint pens, and a cell phone was holstered to his brown leather belt. Toothpick legs floated inside of his pants; spindly arms poked out of the short sleeves of his shirt. Between them was what looked like a giant inflatable sphere, perfectly round and looking as hard as a basketball, bulging at the buttons of the shirt (the bottom two, Andy noted, were unbuttoned, the cloth gaping to reveal a white undershirt).

  Mr. Kincaid finally made it to his feet. “Andrew Landis?”

  Andy had offered his hand. Jack Kincaid shook it once, gripping hard as he looked at him more closely. Andy tensed his muscles and braced for the inevitable.

  “Not the Andy Landis, are you? Andy Landis the runner?”

  “Yessir,” he said. He hated the servility in his voice, the fresh sweat underneath his arms, the way his body was still wound tight, desperate for motion. “Andy Landis,” he said. “That’s me.”

  “Well,” said Jack Kincaid. “Well, well, well.” He rocked back on his heels. Given the belly, Andy half expected him to tip onto his back, but Mr. Kincaid, like a Weeble, wobbled but did not fall down. He took a seat, laced his fingers across that formidable gut, and looked Andy over, from the top of his head to his feet, encased in blameless brown loafers from the Hecht’s in Cherry Hill, where he’d taken Mr. Sills to buy clothes for his newest grandnephew.

  Andy waited for Lo, how the mighty have fallen. He waited for Crime doesn’t pay or Actions have consequences or Serves you right. He waited for the man to tell him to get the hell out of his office and never darken the door of a Wallen Home Goods ever again.

  Jack Kincaid finally spoke. “Need a job, huh?”

  Andy nodded and sweated.

  “Didn’t save any of that PowerUp money?”

  “I paid my sponsors back, as much as I could.”

  Jack Kincaid went quiet, pausing for what felt like forever. The office was small and airless, a concrete cube lit by fluorescent tubes, with a metal desk, cinder-block walls, and a plain office calendar thumbtacked to a bulletin board on one wall. On the desk, Andy saw family photographs—Jack Kincaid with his wife, adults who Andy supposed were his children, and little kids who had to be grandchildren.

  “You have a beautiful family,” Andy said.

  “Got any kids?” the other man asked.

  Andy shook his head.

  “You and your wife break up?”

  Another nod. No sense correcting the man, telling him that Maisie had never been his wife. The news of their split had appeared in People magazine. Maisie had posed for a picture, barefoot in a lacy white sundress. Running Free, read the headline. The piece had been a roundup about the wives and families of the Athens Nine. The quote that Maisie had given, printed in big letters, read, Andy Landis wasn’t the man I thought he was.

  Kincaid picked up Andy’s résumé and flapped it in the air a few times. “You’re overqualified.” He gave a dry, chuffing laugh. “Hell, probably a monkey would be overqualified for this. It’s midnight to eight in the morning. You’ll run a flat-loader and a forklift. Break down boxes, build endcaps, get contractors’ orders ready to go. Dust the stuff on the high shelves, dry-mop the floors, recycle the cardboard, clean the restrooms, make sure everything’s shipshape in the morning. No customers.” He considered, giving the hard mound of his belly an affectionate pat. “Probably that’s for the best. It’s minimum wage, and I can’t offer more, so don’t ask. You don’t have any injuries, do you? Back’s okay?”

  Andy shook his head. “No injuries.” His back was fine. He’d had three operations on his right knee, but that, too, was fine, at least for work like this.

  “We drug test, you know. Probably not for the stuff you were doing—we don’t have many clerks on steroids—but everything else. Booze, too. Don’t even think about showing up loaded.”

  “I don’t drink.” This was another part of the mythology that the publicists had cultivated: Andy Landis as a clean-cut, square-jawed, All-American boy who wouldn’t celebrate a victory with so much as a beer. That, of course, had only added to the irony when it turned out the all-American boy was a doper. Kincaid gave him a dubious look before folding the résumé in half, then in quarters, and setting it in the middle of the empty blotter at the center of his desk.

  “I believe in second chances,” he said. “Show up on time, do your work, don’t make any trouble.”

  “I can do all that,” said Andy, and backed out of the office before Jack Kincaid could change his mind.

  •••

  On his first night, Andy met the two men whom he’d go on to work with for years. There was Martin, a skinny black guy in his twenties who talked nonstop, and Arturo, who was middle-aged and Mexican and barely spoke at all. Martin had a carefully tended puff of an Afro and wore jeans that drooped low enough to display six inches of blinding-white boxer-briefs. Arturo wore jeans, too, only his were stiff and new-looking, cinched with a leather belt with a gi
ant buckle that, per its engraving, he’d won riding bulls.

  “Hey, man, welcome,” said Martin, and Arturo lifted a hand and gave a quiet “Hello.” Andy had introduced himself, and they’d gone right to work restocking the garden center, two hours of lifting fifty-pound sacks of mulch and peat moss. Martin plugged in his earbuds, bobbed his head, and chanted rap lyrics under his breath. Arturo, too, had an iPod, but he hadn’t turned the volume up enough so that Andy could hear what he was playing. They didn’t talk much, other than the necessary exchanges about when it was time to wheel over another pallet of bags, until 3:00 a.m., when they stopped to eat.

  There was, as Mr. Kincaid had promised, a break room in the back of the cavernous store, with a microwave, a machine that sold sodas and another that sold snacks, four round tables with folding chairs, and a refrigerator where they could keep what they’d brought from home. Martin went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic bag from 7-Eleven filled with half a dozen Slim Jims, a box of Nutter Butter cookies, a quart of Pepsi, and a bag of Funyuns, which Andy hadn’t seen since the 1980s and didn’t realize people were still eating. Arturo walked to the front of the store, unlocked the doors, and came back with a thermos full of steaming coffee and two cardboard trays loaded with enough food for half a dozen men. “Please,” he said, offering Andy the trays. Andy saw stacks of foil-wrapped tortillas, containers of beans and rice and garlicky pork and chicken in a rich-smelling brown sauce, guacamole and salsa with chunks of pineapple and cilantro. It all smelled amazing, but he had packed himself a pair of clumsy peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, a bag of baby carrots, an apple, and two bottles of PowerUp. “I’m okay,” he said.

  Arturo then offered the trays to Martin.

  “You know this stuff gonna give me the runs.” Martin shook his head, then selected a tortilla and layered on cheese and beans and spicy pork.

  Arturo didn’t seem to hear, or at least he didn’t respond as he took a seat. Martin ate the burrito he’d claimed not to want almost daintily, using a scrap of tortilla to scoop up every bit of cheese and sauce. Then he plugged some crumpled bills into the vending machine and came back with another bottle of Pepsi. He took a long swallow, belched, recapped the bottle, then said, “You ever notice that white people never drink Pepsi? Just Coke. No Pepsi.”

  Andy, who hadn’t noticed, shook his head. When Arturo offered the trays again, Andy helped himself to arroz con pollo, beans, and tortillas.

  “Arturo’s wife runs a food truck,” Martin said. Andy took a bite of the beans, piping hot and perfectly seasoned.

  “This is delicious. Thanks.”

  “What’s your deal?” asked Martin, pronouncing the word like dill, as in pickle. “Where’d you come from? How’d you end up here?”

  “I grew up near Philadelphia, but I’ve been living in New York for a while.”

  “What’d you do before this?”

  “I was a freelance consultant,” Andy answered. Over the years, he’d collected meaningless job descriptions—the woman at one of the parties Maisie had taken him to who’d said, “I’m in the art world” (“I bet that means she’s a seventh-grade art teacher,” Maisie had sniffed); a guy at a photo shoot who’d said he was a stylist, then looked at Andy like Andy had just crapped on the floor after he asked, “So, like, hair?”

  “I style everything,” the man had answered, and stalked off to join the rest of his whispering, black-clad crew. Worst of all was one of Mitch’s college friends, a guy Andy had met on a golf course in Florida, who’d said he was a freelance consultant, without telling them anything else. Freelance consultant, Andy had decided, was what he’d say if anyone had questions about his work that he didn’t want to answer . . . and if they kept asking, he’d just throw in the word finance.

  “So you went from ‘consulting’ ”—Martin hooked his fingers into air quotes—“to working the night shift here at Wallen.”

  “I’m taking some time to regroup,” Andy said. “I went through a pretty bad breakup.”

  “Ah-HAH,” said Martin. “Now we are getting somewhere.” He leaned toward Andy like a TV reporter who specialized in getting his subjects to cry. “What happened with you and the missus?” he asked. “Was she cheating? Were you cheating? You guys have any kids?”

  “Leave him alone,” Arturo said. Martin ignored him.

  “Things had run their course,” said Andy—another answer he’d prepared during his days on the couch. He got to his feet, dropped his paper plate in the trash, and pulled out the apple he’d packed for dessert.

  “Aw, no, man. No way. Give it up! If we’re going to spend forty hours a week together, I’m gonna need some actual information. Ran its course,” he repeated, giving the words a nasal white-guy-with-an-overbite rendering. “What does that mean? It means nothing. You feel me?” Feel sounded like fill.

  Andy shrugged, hoping the subject would stay changed. No such luck. “Lemme see a picture,” Martin demanded.

  “Don’t have one,” said Andy.

  “Now I know that’s not true,” Martin said. “You look like you’re pining over her. Piiiiining,” he repeated. “Plus, you got your phone.”

  Andy wondered what would happen if he did a Google search for images of Maisie. Maybe Martin would think he was kidding . . . and maybe that would be the end of it. Mentally crossing his fingers, he took his phone from his pocket, tapped her name into the search bar, then clicked on a picture of her in a bikini bottom, with her right arm crossed over her breasts and swimsuit top dangling coyly from her fingertips. “Here.”

  Martin looked, then grinned, shaking his head. “Oh, sure, man,” he said. “Ha fuckin’ ha. Who’s she, the number-one girl in your spank bank?”

  “We can all dream,” said Andy, and held his hand out for the phone. Instead of giving it back, though, Martin stared at the picture more closely. Then he looked up at Andy. Then down at the picture again.

  “Hold up, hold up,” he said, lifting one hand into the air.

  Andy’s stomach was churning. “Shouldn’t we get back to work?” he asked.

  “Fifteen more minutes,” said Arturo. His face was expressionless, but Andy had the distinct impression that he was enjoying this.

  “Aw, shit,” Martin said, and did a little leap of delight. “You’re that guy! You’re, you’re . . .” He snapped his fingers, then pointed at Andy. “The runner! Marathon man! With the drugs! And that’s your wife!”

  “Girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.” Andy looked at the clock. His anonymity had lasted less than three hours. “And it wasn’t the marathon, it was—”

  “You’re Andy Landis!” Martin said. “That’s your name! Holy shit! Is that why you’re here? Because Wallen hires ath-a-letes? Are you still a runner? You in training for something new?”

  “Retired,” Andy said. He threw out his apple and looked at Arturo. “What’s next?”

  “Ten minutes of break left,” said Arturo. No question at all, he was enjoying the show.

  “I got more questions!” said Martin.

  “No comment,” Andy said. He walked to the back of the store, hoping to find something to lift or stack or maybe even hit. Martin followed him, jabbering queries and opinions. “Damn, man. You gonna do drugs, why not do the ones that make you feel good? That crap you was on, you don’t even get high off it. Plus, it shrinks your nuts.” He gave his own crotch a check-in squeeze through jeans baggy enough to contain another person, then looked at Andy sideways. “Your nuts get shrunk?”

  Andy gave a single headshake. Martin’s cackles rose to the ceiling and seemed to gather volume as they echoed through the empty store. “Yeah, you say. But if your nuts were shrunk, would you really tell anyone?” Andy bent his head and grabbed three bags of mulch, hoping that work would end the chatter. No such luck. Martin picked up two bags of his own, talking about Maisie, about running, about his own skill on the basketball court and how he,
too, could have had a shot at the Olympics, could have been a contender.

  Feeling desperate, Andy tried to change the subject. “Do you like working here?”

  Martin made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “It ain’t bad. Kincaid a’ight. Long as the work gets done, we can use headsets, talk on the phone, whatever.” Martin plugged in his earbuds but didn’t start his music. “So she left you?”

  Andy nodded.

  Martin’s face grew comically somber. “She dump you ’cause of the dope?”

  “That’s right.” Andy didn’t feel like going into specifics. They made one trip to the greenhouse in silence, with Martin sneaking looks at Andy.

  “Must be rough,” Martin said as they set down their load. He didn’t say anything else on the subject, and Arturo, who’d been up on the ladder, restocking the shelves of plant food, hadn’t spoken, either, but the next night when they’d had their break Arturo had carried back three trays instead of two, and at the end of the night Martin had mentioned a Saturday-­morning pickup game on the high school basketball courts, open to anyone, including ex-marathon-running, gold-medal-winning pretty boys with shrunken testicles. Andy thought that was when he’d felt things start to turn, when he’d sensed the possibility that someday he could be reasonably happy again.

  On Saturday morning, Martin and his friends, who ranged in age from eighteen to forty, had more or less mopped the court with Andy, who discovered that he was disgustingly, terrifyingly out of shape, that he had no shot at all and no way to defend himself against the bigger, brawnier guys who’d come for him under the boards. Early the next morning, bruised in a dozen places and aching all over, he’d started driving toward Philadelphia . . . but then, instead of taking the exit that would have brought him to his mother’s house, he’d decided to keep going, over the Walt Whitman Bridge and onto the Atlantic City Expressway, following the signs reading BEACHES until he found a parking spot. It was just after seven in the morning. The sun was turning the sky the color of orange sherbet, glinting off the water, making each ripple shine. Lifeguards with zinc-coated noses were climbing up into their chairs; waves were spending themselves gently, leaving lacy foam on the sand; walkers and joggers were making their way along the boardwalk.