by Min Jin Lee
Could you love such different people and marry only one? In his two primary love relationships, he found himself comparing what Casey had with what Keiko didn’t. This was unfair. He knew this. The two women also shared common qualities: They were both generous and exceedingly thoughtful about his happiness. How were you to merge all the loves and their good qualities into one person? And how were you to accept that this girl didn’t exist at all except on the throne of your imagination?
Then he saw her. Casey was standing about ten feet away in her usual pulled-back stance from Virginia and her Ivy crowd, appearing almost forlorn. She used to be afraid of going to parties by herself. He recalled how she’d have to talk herself into speaking to strangers at parties and pretend she was good at being social. Her performance was sufficiently convincing, so no one thought she was shy or insecure. But when she didn’t try, she was viewed as aloof. If they went to a party together, and if she disappeared, he’d find her on the roof of wherever they were and she’d be smoking a cigarette, staring up at the night sky. She never made him leave the parties; instead, she’d wait for him on the roof until he was ready to go, as if she knew he had to be social, but he had to understand that she had to be alone.
She looked pretty and young in her white linen shirt and white jeans. She’d gotten thinner than he’d remembered, and her hair was a little longer. She wore her silver cuffs still, and Jay had to smile. He felt the stirring in his heart, and he had to chide himself for being a romantic fool. Keiko was a wonderful person, he told himself, and far more compatible with the life he wanted. She was not ambivalent about success and living a good life. Also, Keiko wanted him, and Casey had not. Yet the terrible truth was that the girl who broke your heart would always have more power than you liked. But she didn’t look happy now, and Jay flattered himself a little by thinking that she was thinking about him, that she was sad because they weren’t together. He felt an urge to walk over to her and kiss her. Casey, I’m here, he’d say, as though he were picking her up at the roof, let’s go now. He was full of these irrational feelings for her. But he loved Keiko, too. You could love two people at the same time. It just wasn’t practical.
Keiko didn’t miss the alteration of her fiancé’s face at the sight of the tall Asian woman. She felt a pinch of jealousy, but she reminded herself that he had chosen her after all. Keiko believed in love at first sight; their love, she was convinced, was true. She had fallen for him the moment she’d met him in their organizational behavior class. And two weeks later, they had hooked up after their section mixer. Jay had given her her first orgasm.
“Is that her?”
“Who?” he asked blithely. He smiled at Keiko and kissed her on the lips.
“Casey Han,” Keiko said loudly. Jay was charming and occasionally full of it.
Casey turned around at hearing her name. It was him. It was really Jay Currie, and he was standing beside an Asian woman who must have been Keiko Uchida, his fiancée. Her name had been burned into her mind ever since she’d read Virginia’s letter. Unlike her, Keiko was petite, maybe five two or less. She had a very pretty face, with large eyes and a small nose. Keiko’s features were more delicate than hers, and she had thin limbs and narrow feet. She wore a black shirt dress cinched in the middle by an Hermès belt.
Casey walked over to him, and Jay met her partway.
“Hello there.” Casey smiled and kissed his cheek.
“Hi, Casey. Hi.” Jay smiled broadly, feeling a little crazy inside. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Me too.” Casey laughed. “I’d made a promise to—” She turned to look for Virginia, who was talking with great enthusiasm to Hank Loehman, a hot boy from Ivy—a senior when they were sophomores. She smiled at her friend’s vitality. “It’s good to see—”
Jay was happy to see her smile. “This. . . this is Keiko. My fiancée.”
“Yes, I’d heard. Congratulations to you.” Casey shook Keiko’s hand firmly. She was even prettier up close. Keiko had a lovely white throat. She wore large gray Tahitian pearls in her small ears. “Virginia told me that there was a big party for your engagement. I meant to call, but I didn’t know—”
“I moved.” He nodded, hoping she’d stay and talk for a bit. He could tell she was nervous in the way her jaw seemed fixed even as her eyes were animated. But he was nervous, too. “I’m at Starling Forster now.” He rummaged in his pockets for a business card. “Here. Or you can just send me a Bloomberg.”
“That’s great. Okay. . .” She smiled and turned to Keiko. “Congratulations. It’s lovely to meet you.” She looked like a kind person, and though this was hard to take, she felt happy for Jay. She wanted to believe that he’d be happy in the end.
“I heard wonderful things about you,” Keiko said. She stood confidently with her shoulders back. “Why don’t you guys catch up? I need to run to the lav—” She smiled and gave Jay and Casey a small wave. She walked away briskly, thinking it would be better if they talked now rather than later.
Jay swallowed. It was like Keiko not to be jealous or appear so. She was impressive to him in this regard. She was almost impossible to rattle, whereas Casey was far more fragile than she seemed. He felt happy suddenly at being with Casey alone in the midst of the crowd. It felt right that they got a chance to talk even for a little while.
“How are you?” Casey was the first to ask. She wanted to ask him a dozen things and hoped he would hold nothing back. Jay had always been more emotional than she was—one of the things she liked best about him. She wanted to ask: Are you happy with her? Are you happy with your life? Do you miss me? Do you love me still? Did our love matter? She didn’t want him back—it wasn’t that at all. But he was still attractive to her. It had been three years since they’d broken up. “You haven’t changed. Not even a little.”
“Neither have you.” She was still sexy as hell to him. They had always had that between them.
Casey took a deep breath into her lungs, and she could smell him—the vetiver of his aftershave. A flood of pictures came into her head. But there had never been an image of them being married, of living together forever. Wasn’t that why she’d ultimately said no? And she loved Unu, too, who was likely at Foxwoods right now. Last week, he’d turned down an analyst position at a small asset management company because it would have been a step down, he’d said. She looked carefully at Jay’s face, as though she wanted to engrave it, his speckled blue eyes, the high bridge of his nose. He had been her best friend in the world. He had taught her to be more affectionate and open—to smile at strangers. There had been bad moments, but she had loved him more than Virginia or Ella and felt closer to him than to her own sister. No one had been as intimate with her as Jay, and it occurred to her that it had been much easier when they had not seen each other. And as she was thinking these things, Jay was remembering what had crystallized the moment he had decided to ask her to marry him—that they were the kids who’d enlarged their lives beyond their circumstances through education, and for sure, no one would understand the other better. No matter where they were—at a McDonald’s or on his friend’s yacht sailing Nantucket Sound—everything had been interesting to them, because they were learning about the bigness of the world at the same time. Why weren’t they together anymore? Oh yes, he recalled painfully. She had not been able to see their future in some cockamamy vision in her mind. But he had. He had seen them growing older together, fucking their brains out till the very end. But she had not wanted him, and he had refused to be her friend. So there had been this three-year break. And here she was.
“My father died this year,” he said. Why had he told her this?
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry to hear that.” Casey wanted to hold him, and she touched his forearm.
“He was gay. He was living with his second cousin. They were lovers.”
“That’s why—”
“Mystery solved.”
“Oh, I wish I’d known about his death.”
&
nbsp; He ignored this.
“That’s why he checked out and never—” Jay’s voice broke. “Case closed.”
Casey held his forearm for a moment longer than she should have. She squeezed it, then let go.
“Anyway. . .” He sighed. “Crazy, huh?”
“Your mother—gosh, how is she?” Casey smiled at the thought of Mary Ellen.
Jay sniffled and wiped his nose. He looked away for a moment, then smiled at her as if everything were okay.
“She sold her book on ED. It’s out. She wanted to let you know, but I told her not to contact you, because—”
Casey nodded. “I’ll pick it up.”
“Because I couldn’t handle it, her asking about you. It was really hard when we—”
“It was hard for me, too, Jay. This is hard now.”
Jay crossed his arms. It wasn’t the same, he wanted to say, to be dumped like that. It was better to be the one who got to go. He got quiet.
“Keiko seems great.”
“Yeah. She’s great.”
“And she’s beautiful.”
“On the inside, too.”
Casey nodded. “You’re lucky, then. Everything worked out for the better.”
Jay nodded, unable to speak.
She could see the hurt in his face. “Can I say something that is very selfish?”
“Yes, please.”
“I missed you, Jay Currie. You were always a good friend to me. And I’m jealous. But I think you will be much happier with her.”
“It was selfish of you to say that. And grandiose.” He laughed and looked up at the bright sky.
“I’m going to go now. I promised. . .” Casey rubbed her arms as if she were cold.
“Ivy?” he asked.
“Yup. Terrace?” she asked.
“Yup.”
Jay opened his arms, and Casey hugged him.
“You want to come to the wedding?” he asked.
“No. But thank you. You always had a better nature than me. That hasn’t changed.”
Casey returned to Virginia, who had noticed them talking. She broke away from the guy, Hank Loehman, she’d been chatting with. He was not that interesting after all. She hugged Casey tight and kissed her on the cheek, and Casey smiled at her. Virginia could do things like that. No one else ever did. She loved you without holding back. Later, Casey would tell her everything, but for now they walked off Poe Field together, arms linked like schoolgirls, heading toward Prospect Avenue.
8 RETURN
PERHAPS IT WAS PREMATURE TO SAY, but Casey believed that she hated Karyn Glissam and Larry Chirtle, the senior associates who barraged her with assignments. In the past three weeks, on top of the demands of other senior associates, Karyn and Larry had asked Casey to locate the number of tractors in the southern region of China, make up a spreadsheet comparing that number against the number of tractors in Brazil in 1996, and calculate the GDP relationship among Peru, Ecuador, and Honduras relating to canned fruit exports. She had compiled data on soft drink production in India as well as oil wells in Alaska. She had become their go-to girl, because she got the job done, but unlike the brokers at the Asia sales desk, Karyn and Larry, the investment bankers, never said thank you or please. They never asked how she was doing. She told herself to focus on nailing the offer and that niceties shouldn’t matter, but they did. They mattered more to Casey than they should have. Maybe what she felt wasn’t hatred really, but contempt.
All twenty-one of the interns were housed in a corridorlike office tracked with parallel rows of rolltop desks, and Casey occupied the third desk in from the windowed wall. On the Thursday morning Casey had a visitor, her desk was trashed with research papers, reference books, government pamphlets of consumer data, and charts of LIBOR and the Fed funds rate. Casey had a book to make up for Karyn due that afternoon, and she was finishing up her index. She was now checking to see if she had organized the last two sections properly when she heard the rap against her desk.
“Hello there.”
It was only Hugh.
“God, this is just appalling how they have all these nice young people locked up this way.” Hugh Underhill scrutinized the room, and the other interns smiled at him, not knowing who he was. They goggled at the good-looking man, his arms crossed against his broad chest, his face expressing a mock dismay. He was far too relaxed not to be someone important. The interns had no clue as to who’d factor into their futures, so they had no choice but to always be on their best behavior. “And it’s a gorgeous day outside. Shouldn’t these children be playing in the sunshine? Instead of. . .” Hugh picked up a pamphlet on her desk and flipped through the charts, turning them upside down and right side up. He pretended to gag.
“Oh, it’s you,” Casey said. “Do they let brokers up on six? You know, there are no four-star restaurants here or wine bars.” She suppressed a smile.
His eyebrows lifted knowingly, and he raised his hand. She slapped him a high five. They both laughed.
“Hello, darling,” he said. His smile was headlights dazzling. Most of the interns were still staring at him, and he smiled at them graciously. “Do go back to your tasks, little ones.
“I need a favor, dear girl,” he whispered.
“Yes?” Casey eyed him coldly. “And how may I help you?”
“My, such a suspicious look for such a young girl. Hmm, then again, not that young.”
“Is this how you get people to grant you favors? I can’t imagine that it’s very effective.”
“Ah, yes. Casey, I need a fourth.”
“Pardon?”
“Crane Partners and Kellner Money Management. I’m taking them for a golf outing in Vermont for one of my idea roundtables, and I need a fourth. Walter has three already in his group, I have two, and Kevin is busy. You work for Kearn Davis, so why not? Everyone likes to see a girl golf. It’s an idea roundtable for new initiatives on—”
“A bullshit session?” Casey covered her mouth with her hand. “Oops, I mean, an idea roundtable?” She propped her chin in her hand, her elbow leaning on the desk. “You call yourself a worker?”
“No, darling, I am a genius. You are a common laborer. I am not a laborer. I run idea roundtables. My clients and I will talk about business while we golf. And it would be so very dear of you to join me in this endeavor in your journey to becoming a businesswoman, or should I say businessperson?” Hugh coughed. “Please, Casey. Shall I get on bended knee? Girls like that sort of thing.”
“So do boys.” She couldn’t resist.
“You naughty girl.” Hugh grinned and placed his hand on her shoulder lightly. His thumb rubbed across the sharp bit of bone.
Casey turned back to her index. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“This weekend? It’s Thursday.”
“Please.”
“I have to work. I had last Saturday off for the reunion.”
“I will ask Charlie for a special dispensation,” he said very quietly.
“You must owe Charlie quite a lot already,” she whispered back, but no one seemed to be listening as far as she could tell.
“No, not at all.” Hugh looked serious, and he scribbled on her legal pad in his flowing script: “He gave you the interview as a favor to me, but he wouldn’t have given you the spot unless he thought you were qualified. You had the best transcript in this room. Charlie said so.”
“You didn’t tell me that before,” she wrote back.
“Oh, did I not mention that?” Hugh wrote quickly.
“No,” she said, then wrote down, “Withholding bastard.”
Hugh laughed. “I like that one. That’s new.”
By then, Karyn had walked into the interns’ office and noticed Casey with a man. She approached Casey’s desk.
Casey saw her and tucked away the legal pad under her forearm.
Hugh smiled at Karyn. He didn’t know who she was, not that he cared. She was some single woman—out of habit, he’d checked her ring finger.
They shook hands.
“Karyn, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you. Charlie has said such nice things about. . . your work.” Hugh’s face looked composed, but his eyes were smiling, and Karyn couldn’t help noticing how attractive he was.
“Oh, are you a friend of Charlie’s?” she asked.
“Yes. Good friends.” He and Charlie had grown up together in New Canaan, had dated many of the girls in the same neighborhood. Their parents belonged to the same clubs in town and in Manhattan. They had played poker every other Tuesday night since they were in college. But there was no need for this Karyn woman, whom Charlie had actually never spoken of, to know any of this.
“Oh,” Karyn said. The senior associate had already figured out that Casey, the twenty-first summer intern to be given a spot in the twenty-student program, must have had an inside track, because Charlie Seedham, the senior banker in charge of the summer program, was almost pleasant to Casey Han. Charlie was customarily indifferent toward the summer kids. It couldn’t have been a sexual thing, Karyn reasoned, because Charlie screwed only blondes, and Casey was not pretty enough to get his attention. But now that she met Hugh, she understood the connection perfectly. But then, what was the relationship between this guy and Casey? she wondered. It didn’t look romantic. In fact, Karyn thought he was flirting with her instead—especially the way he looked at her in that bedroom way.
Karyn was ignoring Casey completely. Casey wondered if she should excuse herself so they could be alone. Poor Karyn was falling for Hugh the way virtually every naive woman fell for Hugh. On Wall Street, the women might have been savvy about profits and losses, but when it came to boys, they knew as much as middle school girls. It wasn’t just that he was handsome and tall and physically fit. He was incredibly attentive—the way he looked at you was exceptional. His focus was absolute. Casey thought it was despicable how he toyed with women. That kind of attention was addictive, and the need would inevitably grow bottomless if you let yourself get hooked. Casey wanted to punish him sometimes, and consequently, she was far meaner to him than he deserved. Although, oddly enough, he had always been very kind to her. He wasn’t a bad person—to say that would be unfair. Hugh was just too charming for his own good, and in a way, Casey thought that was irresponsible.