Welcome to Envy Park

by Mina V. Esguerra

  Or it could just be this.

  "I think you’re great, and you’re really good-looking, and you seem to like food-tripping with me, which is a major plus," I said, "And that was a good kiss. But."

  He nodded. "Okay."

  "Yeah. But. We’re both on our way out from here. It just seems easier if we just get a fresh start wherever we end up."

  "Okay." Ethan looked disappointed. That was flattering. He probably didn’t intend for me to see it. If he did, bless him. "You’re fine with dinner, still, sometimes, right? I miss having friends here."

  I laughed. "You should be nicer to people."

  "It’s not easy."

  "Yes, we can still have dinner. But not tonight. I think we’ve talked enough for today."

  "Yes, of course. Well, good night." Before I knew it he had slid the rest of the gap between us on the bench and kissed me, again. To the credit of my lips and tongue and other relevant body parts, I accepted it with poise and grace, no awkwardness. It was like my body knew how to react around him now, when it shouldn’t have mattered, wouldn’t have mattered...

  Make friends. Make some money. The plan has not changed.

  Moment ove... wait.

  Just another...

  Okay, moment over.

  "Good night," I said. "We probably shouldn’t do that again."

  "I know," Ethan said. "I just...Yeah. Good night."

  Chapter 12

  My life did not screech to a halt once Ethan and I decided to not become something. In fact, things in my life moved along just fine even after. Two of my applications to the foreign employers got responses. One of them scheduled a phone interview for a vague period in the next three weeks ("when the boss comes back from London") and the other assured me that I was very qualified and asked me to formalize my application by creating an account in the NGO’s career portal. I would be getting calls soon. The Real Job was there, somewhere.

  In the meantime, my interview at Beckett, Ethan’s office, for a Not-Real Job was set a few days from now. I had time to prepare.

  So when my mom called to remind me to get a job and a water heater, I was actually able to say that I made progress in both areas.

  "Are you coming to see us this weekend?" she asked.

  "Well, not if you really want me to get this ugly heater installed now. Why?"

  "We’re thinking of going to Subic. Come along with us?"

  "No thank you," I said automatically. I honestly didn’t think about it and declined—it just came out. "I’d like to get some things done this weekend."

  "It’s like you’re still in another country, Moi. We never see you."

  "Hey, I moved back to the exact same city. You two moved away."

  "Is everything all right? Any reason why you don’t want to see us? Are you pregnant?"

  "You wish."

  "A little. Just in case you were hiding from shame, don’t. I had you when I was twenty-seven, you know."

  I did know, because she mentioned it maybe seven thousand times previously. My mom had a boyfriend since high school, someone my grandparents approved of, and wanted her to marry. Ten years later and this guy hadn’t proposed marriage, gave no indication of ever wanting to do it, so she dumped him, dated my dad, got pregnant, and was married to him all within a six-month period.

  Strangely enough, the moral of this story had always been that it was the best decision of her life. We may have had our differences but she was always supportive of all my efforts to change things up, and be somewhere else.

  She did wish I were pregnant, for sure. It would give her one less thing to plan on my behalf.

  "I’ve actually been working out more," I told her. "When you next see me, you’ll be disappointed at how fit I am."

  "Did you get my text about the job at Yoly’s?"

  "I did," I said, gritting my teeth through that answer because I had already deleted it. "I’ll get back to you on that."

  "Are you sure? Because she’ll be near NV Park on Sunday—"

  "I’ll be busy on Sunday, Mom, but I’ll let you know if I can meet her."

  Which was going to be never, unfortunately, but I had a feeling she knew that immediately too.

  Once the Beckett interview sked was set, Ethan made dinner plans with me for the night before, to help me prepare for it. I agreed cheerfully, but also decided not to make plans with him for any day or night in between. Didn’t want to appear all needy.

  What did I just say about closing doors and opening windows?

  On Tuesday, two days before the interview, one day before my next "date" with Just My Neighbor Ethan, I ran into JM at the mail room. He was picking up his stash, which looked mostly like the pile of snail mail spam I got (food delivery, massage, laundry service flyers), but he was doing it with such ease that I felt somewhat proud.

  "You’re an expert," I couldn’t help but say.

  He smiled and approached me, and I was suddenly aware of how small the space was. It was actually him, his body was larger than most, so imposing, and suddenly glaringly obvious to me now. I became aware of it exactly when Ethan became an impossibility. The body, clever, it adjusted based on need, never mind what the brain said.

  "You want to get lunch or something?"

  Not Shakespearean, but who was I to nitpick.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Great."

  He smelled great, I thought at the time. His breath didn’t seem like a smoker’s at all.

  -///-

  So JM was on a strange diet and could only eat meat for lunch. But he didn’t like any other preparation of meat that would usually require rice eaten with it, so we could only really eat at a burger place. But not just any kind of burger place, because the regular fast food joints didn’t serve big enough patties. It was a good thing we found the small gourmet burger place beside the frozen yogurt chain, because by then we had gone around the park twice and I was ready to eat my hand.

  "You should just say Do you want to get a giant burger with me? all the time when you invite people to eat with you," I said.

  "Sorry," he said. "Usually my meals are sent to me. But not today."

  "Why are your meals sent to you?"

  "So the portions are right."

  "Someone sends you big burgers every meal, every day?" It was like something from a dream, or at least one of the dreams I had as a child, before I learned about cardiac disease.

  I ordered a wasabi burger, and he ordered a plain giant Wagyu burger. No ketchup or any other seasoning. As he ate it without any discernible joy, he told me what the deal was—he was a TV host, for one of those lifestyle entertainment shows on cable, and he had to maintain a certain look. Beefy, I guessed.

  "I’m very new," JM said. "I haven’t actually started yet. We’re still in rehearsal and they just want me to focus on my upper body right now. It’s TV hosting, so the upper body’s really important."

  "Actual hosting is important too," I muttered into my own beef.

  "I was hoping you could help me with that, actually," JM said. "I notice that you speak really well. Did you host professionally before, or something?"

  "No, never," I said. "Thanks though. What do you mean, speak well?"

  "You kind of sound what they want us hosts to, except in real life. They keep telling me I sound like I’m reading something."

  I laughed. "Because you’re usually really reading something, right?"

  "Can you help me?"

  "With what?"

  "Help me sound like you."

  "But I don’t know what I sound like."

  "I think if I just keep talking to you, I’ll pick it up. Like foreign accents."

  Was he for real? He was by far the closest I’d come to knowing a pretty boy, and he was very nearly a celebrity, two types of people I knew nothing about. Was this code? How exactly did you get asked out by an almost-celebrity? Was this what they talked about?

  But then I could almost already hear Roxie yelling "Him him!" and I shrugge
d. "Sure," I said, figuring I had nothing to lose.

  Throughout our relatively short lunch I was aware that people kept stealing glances at him. A few openly gawked, pointed, smiled to their companions and nudged their heads in our direction. JM was doing his best with acting as if he didn’t see it happening, but that just meant he could look at an entire room and not look anyone in the eye. And ended up just looking at me the entire time, to be safe.

  He was nice to look at, though. A cutie. Twenty-three but could pass for a college student, with hair sculpted to stand up just so, muscles bulging in a shirt that would be a poncho on me. He was on the right side of bulky though—it was still hot, and not human growth hormone icky.

  The not-looking-people-in-the-eye thing was contagious; by the time I finished my burger I was doing it too. I started to assume that everyone in the small restaurant, from the occupants of the three other tables to the two people in line at the counter, were just looking at us (including me) and I tried not to look back.

  So my gaze went up and out, toward sidewalk and the tables outside, and I saw Ethan walking right by us. On his way from lunch? Probably. I just realized that we never hung out here in the daytime, and watching him in natural light was kind of nice.

  I waved. It seemed like the thing to do. The moving fingers caught his attention, and he saw me. Stopped and walked on over.

  "Hey," I said.

  He glanced from me to JM and back again. "I’m seeing you tomorrow, right?"

  "Yes. I’ll be ready. You can quiz me if you want. Oh, Ethan, this is JM. He lives in Tower 3 too."

  They shook hands. Ethan was nearly six feet and not exactly skinny, but next to JM he was a frail thing. I wondered what guys thought about when they shook hands with someone who was just more massive. Because my thing was lipstick; whenever I shook hands with a girl who was wearing the perfect shade of lipstick I always felt a stab of envy, but I would immediately convert it to a productive thing by complimenting her and asking her where she got it.

  I would ask Ethan about that, I thought.

  "See you tomorrow," I said, because they hadn’t said anything else.

  "I’ll pick you up," Ethan replied. "I have to go back to work."

  Chapter 13

  "...under, definitely."

  "Really?"

  "Most likely."

  "I can’t negotiate on the basis of international experience or something?"

  Ethan didn’t like his meal (curry at a Japanese fusion place) very much, so maybe that was why he was a bit off already. That was my official answer—deep down I wished he were a tiny bit jealous from seeing me hanging out with another neighbor.

  Because that was all we were, right? Neighbors.

  "They don’t need someone with international experience for the event support team, sorry. If you bring that up too much, they’re just going to move on to someone else."

  He was also basically telling me that the pay for this was going to be really low. Way below what I used to get in my last job, and lower than the kind of jobs I could get if I decided to make my career again here.

  "Okay, so I won’t mention it," I said. "But you think they’ll be okay with my resume? It’s all over the place."

  He nodded. "I saw it. You highlighted the right stuff. As long as they know you can do certain things, you’ll get it."

  I shrugged. "Better than nothing."

  Ethan was looking down at his food. He had been doing that the whole time, regarding it like a chore, like he was dreading the next spoonful and was psyching himself up for it. Then he looked up at me. "What other choices do you have right now?"

  "A few... my Hong Kong and Thailand applications are moving along."

  "So soon?"

  "They’re referrals by friends. It’s how I got my Singapore lead in the first place. It’s usually faster that way. How long did your California reassignment take?"

  He paused to think about it. "Three years of working with someone who was eventually assigned there, and wanted me in the team. And then eight months of working everything out, once they brought up the possibility."

  "Hmm."

  "Hmm what?"

  "Ashley told me that your ex only found out you were moving when you were really about to go."

  "She knew that I was being considered for a lot of things."

  "Yes, but." And then I shoved a deep fried tempura and tuna maki in my mouth before I could complete that thought.

  He wanted to go there, though. "But what?" he insisted, as I chewed.

  "It just didn’t seem like she had eight months to prepare for you leaving," I said.

  "It was complicated. I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to happen. And the US move wasn’t the only thing that was on the table."

  "What else was on the table?"

  "Same team but Manila-based, lower position. Same position but based in Shanghai. And a headhunter was trying to get me to move to a competitor. Eventually the best scenario won."

  "When did any of that become a sure thing?"

  "None of them were."

  "When did it feel like it anyway?"

  He poked at his dish again. "When I handed in my resignation to the local office and they accepted it. I had to do that to accept the transfer."

  "So the months of you filling out paperwork, submitting documents, getting the proper health checks and shots, none of that was a sure thing to you?"

  "I’m still here. Even my sure thing wasn’t a sure thing. Circumstances just changed, it happens."

  Was he getting tense at me, or his horrible dinner? I wasn’t sure. Because he was taking it out on the poor curry.

  "Do you regret breaking up with her then?" I had to ask. Since his appetite was ruined anyway. "Because you wouldn’t have done it if you weren’t planning to move, right?"

  "No." He said that quickly, with conviction. No? No regrets or no he wouldn’t have broken up with her?

  "No," he said again, almost to himself, and it was like he was articulating this for the first time. "No, I should have broken up with her even before."

  I tapped his arm, supportive, like a buddy. "I understand. Hindsight. What made you know that you wanted out?"

  "I’d rather not answer that."

  "You’re very polite. It’s nice. You remember my ex George?"

  "Yes."

  "I just woke up one morning and realized that it was going to be another weekend of asking him what his plans were. After two years. Shouldn’t I have been automatically part of his weekend plans at some point? But he never made me feel that. And it was over."

  He sullenly chewed. "Did you ever tell him that that’s what you wanted?"

  Ugh. I had a sudden flashback to that exact weekend, because George said something very similar.

  And I said, no I don’t have to ask, because I don’t want to be with someone who lives his own life and think I’m an optional accessory. Who the hell makes his girlfriend feel like this?

  And he said, So you’re calling yourself my girlfriend now? I thought you didn’t want that.

  And then I said, Get out of my flat.

  "No," I said, struggling to keep the tension out of my voice. "I don’t like begging for something that other people get free."

  He knew he struck a nerve, but he was in his own little bubble. "Anyway. Your interview tomorrow."

  "Yes."

  "I remembered the advice I wanted to give you. From that night when you had your other interview, but I didn’t want to tell you then, while you were still disappointed."

  "What is it then?"

  "Even though you want something temporary, and maybe they’re looking for something temporary, don’t give the impression that temporary is all you’re good for," Ethan said. "Show them that maybe, given the right circumstances, you can commit to something. That it’ll be up to them to make sure they keep you."

  It made sense. I really was rubbing my "get out of here" plans too much in other people’s faces.

  "Fine. W
ill do it your way for now. Will hide my intentions to bail, for as long as possible."

  "I didn’t hide my intentions—"

  "No, you prolonged making an actual decision even though you kind of already decided."

  His eyes turned sharp almost, and that was definitely not the curry. "I don’t rock the boat if it’s not worth rocking just yet. As opposed to what, declaring to the universe things that haven’t happened yet? I’m not like you."

  "What’s wrong with asking for it? It’s always worked for me."

  "I’m careful about what I ask for."

  That sounded vaguely insulting, but I pretended not to notice. "It’s easy for you to say, San Francisco. But I get why you don’t feel the need to ask the universe for things. You just take what you get, right?"

  Ethan shrugged, like the physical act would jolt this in another direction. "I’m just telling you what Kylene from HR would want to hear."

  "Noted," I told him. "I won’t declare my intentions to your HR friend so I get the job. But on that salary though? Why would I even want to stay longer? It’ll hold me down here way after Megan arrives, and the pay’s not enough to get me a place of my own."

  "You can’t live with your cousin for a few months?"

  "It’s a one-bedroom. It’s the same one you have. There won’t be any privacy. I don’t want to share it with a teenager."

  "If you want privacy, you go to the guy’s place. It’s why he has it."

  I coughed, taken aback. "Where did that come from? Maybe I just don’t want to share a bathroom and refrigerator space anymore, after doing that for five years."

  He shrugged.

  Now this I couldn’t just pretend to tune out. "But is it about the sex then? Is NV Park your bachelor sex pad now that you’ve dumped your clingy girlfriend?"

  "That’s not what I meant."

  "Oh don’t worry. You’re talking to me, not a sheltered schoolgirl. I am fully aware of what guys want to do when they move into a place like this. It’s okay to admit it."

  George flashback: What do you think happens when we’re not together, Moira?