Recycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “Why not next semester?”

  “Um … let me think about that and get back to you.” I find the glassed-in human resources office and go stand outside of it. “I have to go, okay?”

  “Honey,” she says. “Just don’t break my heart by wasting your life. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Because all it takes is a few bad decisions here and there.”

  “Mom!” I peel away from the human resources office and hang back by the coffee vendor. “You know, you’re really making my Monday a lighthearted affair. I’m not going to pick up the next time you call.”

  “Yes you will.”

  She’s right. I can’t resist speaking to her in the morning. It’s a small connection to the old days when we used to chat over breakfast. I hate that she knows this.

  “Mom, listen. I’m not wasting my life. I’m trying to figure out how to live it. If anyone’s wasting his life, it’s Jack. All he ever does is eat pizza and have sex with Ramie. Why don’t you pester him?”

  “Oh God,” Mom says. “Please tell me he uses protection.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “Ramie insists on it.” I don’t tell my mother about all the condom wrappers I find around the apartment, because I doubt she’d appreciate the visuals.

  “Look,” I say. “My real job, for the time being anyway, is finding a way to coexist with Jack in a way that doesn’t drive us both nuts. Once I iron out those details, I will deeply go to college. I promise.”

  Mom takes her time sighing meaningfully, just to reiterate how concerned she is. Then she says, “I love you, honey,” in that surprisingly soft tone of voice she occasionally adopts. I swear she hauls that out just to keep me hooked.

  It works too.

  When we hang up, I get my assignment sheet and temporary ID from a woman in HR, then head for the elevator, happy to disappear into the anonymity of the crowd.

  All temp assignments are basically the same. You sit at a wood veneer desk outside a bank of window offices, answer the phone once in a while, and wait for people to give you stuff to enter into a computer. That’s it. Temping does not provide a window into a variety of fascinating careers, nor does it allow you to network with interesting and useful people. I admit, in my naïveté, I was hoping for both.

  What temping does provide, besides cold, hard cash, is a lot of downtime. The phone rings only so often and there are only so many spreadsheets to type up. The rest of the time I spend Net surfing and waiting around for texts from the increasingly mysterious Tommy Knutson.

  Tommy doesn’t e-mail. He doesn’t phone. He doesn’t send care packages or mini-bagel baskets. All he does is text. These are occasionally provocative and usually cryptic.

  Example:

  Arkansas midnite. 2 many stars. Where R U?

  How can there be too many stars? And where does he think I am? I’m in New York, where he left me.

  Once he texted:

  remember that wednesday?

  When I texted back:

  which wednesday?

  He waited two whole days, then texted:

  still no cat, I hope.

  Tommy has never texted:

  jill, I luv u more than words can say.

  Or

  I can’t believe I’m driving so far away from u when all I want is 2 come bck 2 Bkln and make luv 2 U.

  To be fair, neither have I.

  I’m not sure it would jibe with the Play It by Ear guidelines. Trying to figure out what the Play It by Ear guidelines are is another way I kill time as a temp.

  Ramie thinks I should cease all Tommy-related thought because it’s making me angsty. But given the soul-destroying tedium of my job, I think angst is my only bulwark against cynicism, for which I lack the proper cheekbones.

  Do you see the bind I’m in?

  So one Saturday morning I’m walking home from the supermarket with some Grape Nuts and milk while pondering how I might go about not angst-ing out over Tommy Knutson. There’s a crisp autumn chill in the air, a sensation that always brings to mind new beginnings—the first day of school, a new wardrobe, etc. But this is Brooklyn, New York, not Winterhead, Massachusetts, so there’s a delicious sense of unfamiliarity mixed in too. The biggest difference is the huge number of people walking around. You almost never see people walking in Winterhead. Here, it’s humanity as far as the eye can see.

  Inherent in New York’s sheer volume of humanity is its impressive quantity of cute guys. They’re everywhere! In fact, there’s one across the street sneaking glances at me while he’s waiting for the light to change. With his sly smile and his broad shoulders, he could easily distract me from Tommy Knutson for a few hours. Who knows, maybe even for a few weeks.

  To screw up my courage, I tell myself that smiling at cute strangers is almost certainly within the Play It by Ear guidelines and that Tommy Knutson is probably smiling at people all the time. Not to mention, being bi, he has twice the smiling options I have.

  When the light changes and the cute guy and I head toward each other to cross the street, I want so much to smile at him. But as soon as he looks at me, I avert my eyes and rush to the other side.

  As I stand on the corner and watch him walk away, I feel defeated and more than ever like a little girl. A little girl who’s not over Tommy Knutson yet. I don’t want to be this way. I want to be the kind of girl who’s so over Tommy Knutson that smiling at cute strangers is a piece of cake. But I’ve only ever smiled at boys who were vetted by the Winterhead public school system. I’m not sure how to smile at strangers. I was explicitly told not to do that.

  I shuffle homeward with my eyes on the sidewalk, cursing my stupid upbringing for making me overly cautious. At times like these, I suspect that I’m not ready for life on my own in the big city.

  When I get to my building, there is a young woman in her twenties sitting on my stoop, hunched over and nervously biting her fingernails. She has pale skin, jet-black hair, and she’s dressed in a bright blue trench coat with the collar up. I can’t tell if she’s hiding from someone or spying on someone, but she’s definitely blocking my way.

  “Excuse me,” I say.

  “Oh good,” she says. “Stand there.” She grabs my legs and moves me into position right in front of her. Then, using my body as a shield, she peers out at a black town car inching slowly across the intersection half a block away.

  “Can you believe this guy?” she mutters into my hip bone. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Um, no.”

  She squints at the town car. “Communicar. Number four seventy-eight. Remember that, okay? God, what a stalker.” She looks up at me. “Do you live here?”

  I nod.

  She looks me up and down. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” I say. “Do you live here?”

  She waves her hand to shut me up, then pulls me close and practically buries her face in my stomach. “Don’t move.”

  I sneak a peek over my shoulder and spot the town car heading slowly toward us, its windows black.

  “Oh, he did not!” She takes a deep breath, then stands up and pushes past me. “Hey Kevin!” She sneers the name. “Why don’t you grow a pair and get out of the car!”

  The car stops.

  “Oh no.” She turns around, pushes past me up the stairs, and fumbles her key into the lock. “Oh crap oh crap oh crap,” she says. Her keys clatter down the fake marble steps.

  The rear door of the town car opens a crack, revealing the pant leg of a gray suit.

  “Who is that?” I say. I head up the stairs with my own key and open the door for her.

  She picks up her keys, then grabs my hand and drags me up to the second floor. “Be my witness,” she says. She gets her door open with a shove, then drags me inside and over to the window.

  Down below, the car door opens all the way, and a chubby, balding guy gets out wearing a gray suit. It’s the same gray suit that all business guys wear.

  “That’s who you
’re afraid of?” I say.

  He looks like George Costanza.

  She hides next to the window and peers out through the curtain.

  The guy stands outside of the car looking up at the second-floor window for a few seconds. He sighs, then gets back into the car, and it drives off.

  The girl sighs in relief. “Okay,” she says. “You saw that. So if anything happens to me, that’s the guy. Kevin Jelivek. J-e-l-i-v-e-k. I trust you can spell Kevin on your own.” She heads to the kitchen.

  “What did he do?” I say.

  “Are you kidding? Thirty-six texts in twenty-four hours. That’s what.”

  “He looked old,” I say.

  She nods. “Thirty-two. Rich. Very liquid. I mean, I appreciate all the sushi, but I’m bored now.” She opens a can of diet cream soda and pours it into a jam jar with some ice. “I’m Natalie, by the way. When did you move in? Are you a trustafarian? Please say no. I’ve already met my quota of people I need to hate for the week.”

  “What’s a trustafarian?”

  She takes a sip, then scrunches up her face as she looks at me.

  Her apartment is laid out exactly like ours, with similar scavenged furniture. But there are a few framed photos and paintings on the wall and some cute pillows on the sofa. She’s made it into a home. She takes her bright blue trench coat off, revealing a double-breasted tartan jacket.

  “Wow,” I say. “Is that Vivienne Westwood?”

  She cocks her head at me. “Yeah, right,” she says. “Like I can afford that.”

  “It looks like Vivienne Westwood. Where’d you get it?”

  She smiles and has another sip.

  The next thing I know, Natalie is guiding me around the perils and pitfalls of Williamsburg’s abundant vintage clothing stores while regaling me with stories from her adventure-filled life. Vital stats? She’s twenty-three, recently graduated from New York University, and eking out a living editing a brand-new magazine called Life Before the Apocalypse, which is financed by a bunch of “know-nothing wankers.”

  (A trustafarian, by the way, is an “obnoxious rich kid living in an expensive apartment purchased by Mummy and Daddy.” Everyone hates them, except in the summer, when they tend to have beach houses with spare bedrooms.)

  Natalie is not afraid of smiling at cute strangers and, in fact, flirts with almost every guy she sees, because “you never know.”

  While we’re heading down North Eleventh Street, Natalie pulls me to a screeching stop and forces me to look at my reflection in a drugstore window.

  “Why are you so hostile to color?” she asks.

  “Well, my friend Ramie says that monochromatic is really big right now and that mixing shades of gray is—”

  “Your friend Ramie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Look. You blend right into the buildings. And these aren’t pretty buildings.”

  I have to admit, next to Natalie in her bright blue coat I do look drab.

  “You’re young,” she says. “You have that going for you. But do you have any idea how vastly we outnumber them in this city? You have to do more than look like jailbait. Come on.”

  She takes my hand and leads me away. I have to admit it’s pretty funny that Natalie just assumes my only goal in life is to pick up guys. I guess she assumes it’s every girl’s goal. It’s not, of course (well, it’s not my only goal), but I don’t mind going along for the ride. I’m here to learn, after all. I may as well learn from her.

  Natalie takes me to a big vintage store called Beacon’s Closet. Once inside, she scours the racks like a pro, choosing only the brightest clothes. After making me try on half the store, we decide (or I should say she decides) on one pouffy-shouldered red satin blouse plus one slouchy green leather bag.

  Total cost: seventeen dollars.

  Approving nod from new shopping buddy: priceless.

  Natalie makes me wear the blouse out the door and stuff my gray canvas backpack into the green bag as we make our way toward Bedford Avenue.

  “Twice as doable already,” she says. “Look.” She yanks me to a stop in front of that drugstore window again.

  “Red and green, though?” I say. “It’s not too Christmassy?”

  “Possibly,” she says. “Still, at least I can see you now. Before, you were like a lamppost or a piece of litter on the sidewalk. I was like, hello, wasn’t I walking down the street with someone? Oh yeah, there she is.”

  We get lunch at Dexter’s, where Natalie is able to convince Joel the bartender to serve me a beer despite the fact that he knows I’m underage. At Natalie’s insistence, I put on some of her bright red lipstick, using the back of a spoon for a mirror, while she explains the difference between a slut and a vamp.

  Slut: promiscuous girl with low self-esteem who uses sex to win men’s approval.

  Vamp: promiscuous woman who doesn’t give a shit.

  Guess which one Natalie is.

  While she’s talking, I can’t help but notice this hot guy over at the bar who keeps looking at me.

  Without even glancing back, Natalie says, “Describe him.”

  “Tall,” I say. “Thin. Dark hair.”

  Natalie nods. “Sort of distant-looking? Like he’s either philosophical or lost?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sounds like Ian.” She uses her own spoon to sneak a look at him. “Yup. Ian. You like them skinny, huh?”

  I shrug. I’m a little tipsy from the beer, so I’m tending to like everything. I’m hoping the beer will pickle my senses just enough to embolden me to smile at him, a move that is not only in the Play It by Ear Guidebook I’m mentally composing, but also an absolute requirement for an aspiring vamp.

  “Do you know him?” I ask.

  She takes a sip of her beer. “I know his friends. Total players. Do not ask me how I know this.”

  Natalie snaps her fingers at the bartender. “Barkeep,” she says. “Another round.”

  Joel shakes his head.

  “Oh, don’t be such a fascist,” she says. “I’m developing a future client.”

  Joel brings over one beer for Natalie. “I’m trying to keep my job,” he says. “Sorry, Jill. It’s not me. It’s the law.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. Then I whisper, “I’m already drunk.”

  “That’s excellent.” He glares at Natalie, then walks back to the bar.

  “Fine,” she says. “Be an agent of the police state. Whatever.” She takes a sip, then pushes her beer toward me.

  “I shouldn’t,” I say.

  Just then I notice that Ian, the cute guy at the bar, is walking toward us. “Here he comes,” I whisper. “Quick, what do I do?”

  “Use a condom,” she says. Then, smooth as silk, she kicks a vacant chair out from under the lip of our table. “Ian, right?” she says. “Meet Jill.” She stands up and heads to the ladies’ room. “Do not talk about me when I’m gone.”

  Ian watches her go, then sits at our table without saying anything. There’s something vaguely familiar about him, but that’s probably because he has what I’ve come to regard as the official Williamsburg guy look, which consists of disheveled hair, a few days’ growth of beard, and studiously sloppy but tight-fitting clothes. In my head, I start psyching myself up to smile at him, but he doesn’t smile at me right away, so I decide to hold it in reserve.

  “How old are you?” he says.

  I almost lie and tell him I’m twenty-three, like Natalie, but I’m not drunk enough to believe I can pull that off.

  “Eight—” I freeze. “Nineteen?” I say.

  “Eight-nineteen?” he says. “That’s not an age. That’s a time.”

  “I meant …” I pause, incapable of deciding whether to go with the lie or the truth. Is there any advantage to being nineteen over eighteen? If I lie about it now, will I have to keep lying for the rest of my life?

  “Eighteen,” I say. “I meant eighteen. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four,” he says.

  His eyes flick up t
o mine for a moment, then dart away.

  It’s weird, but it almost seems like I’m making him nervous.

  “Have we met before?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Maybe in a dream,” I say.

  He looks away and laughs. Then, a few seconds later, he looks right at me and smiles. This is it, I think. I’m either a grown woman or a little girl. What’s it going to be? It takes all of my strength to resist the temptation to look down nervously and pick at my fingers. But somehow (perhaps it’s the beer) I manage to look right into his eyes and smile back.

  That’s me, ladies and gentlemen. Uber-sophisticated New York City vamp wearing vintage clothes and bright red lipstick, drinking beer, and smiling brazenly at a cute stranger.

  What began as lunch stretches out to seven o’clock, during which time Ramie joins us, along with Ian’s friend Sasha, a guy who’s kind of chubby but nice in a nerdy way. Natalie has seen the bottom of four bottles of beer and is telling us about how her magazine is going to “change everything.”

  Ian thinks I’m hot. I can tell by the way he keeps looking at me. At one point, while Natalie’s telling us about how one of her investors broke up with her while she was going down on him, Ian leans over and touches his lips to my ear.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” he whispers.

  I pull away from him in shock. Actually, I’m in double shock, both by Ian’s forwardness and by Natalie’s disgusting story. I can almost feel my fledgling status as an uber-sophisticated New York City vamp evaporating into thin air. Thankfully, Ramie notices my situation and leans across the table to rub at my eyebrow with her thumb.

  “Makeup emergency,” she says. “Girls’ room. Now.”

  We leave Natalie and the boys behind and head to the bathroom. Once inside, Ramie shuts the door and makes sure we have the place to ourselves.

  “Mal,” Ramie says. “Natalie sure has some stories. Do you think they’re all true?”

  “Why would she lie?” I ask.