“Speaking of work . . .” The lenses of Maddy’s gold-rimmed reading glasses winked in the light, making it difficult to see her eyes. “How’s Lucy these days?”
“Great,” Rob replied, his tone noncommittal.
Lucy Bender was Rob’s office wife, but Maddy was convinced she had a crush on him—a crush she felt he encouraged. The first time she said this, Rob had been incredulous. For one thing, he was far too needy for a tough nut like Lucy, a word nerd who once broke up with a guy because he didn’t bring any books on vacation. (“Who doesn’t read? Plus, he kept wanting to talk. So selfish, right?”) For another, Rob craved physical affection, and was forever pawing at Maddy like a sex-starved adolescent. Unlike his real wife, Lucy would never stand for his bullshit.
Rob didn’t think Maddy was jealous, but he felt flattered all the same. For this reason and others—because his wife was a knockout, because she could’ve married someone with ambition and more hair but instead chose him—he was secretly plotting to buy her an apartment. Lured by Brooklyn’s public schools, he and Maddy had been renting a third-floor walk-up in Park Slope for years. Their place was too small, and the neighborhood far too expensive, but a down payment in a less desirable area still required cash they didn’t have. Even so, Rob’s father had drummed it into his head that only suckers and losers pay rent (“May as well set hundred-dollar bills on fire”); and now, for the first time in his life, Rob might have a chance to stop. He hadn’t told Maddy this—he hadn’t told anyone, not even Lucy—but the month before, when he and Rosa were at lunch, she’d offered to help him financially. Twenty grand, thirty, it didn’t matter; the money (within reason) was his. Rob had reported to Rosa for over a decade, so while they weren’t friends per se, they did share a certain closeness, or rather, familiarity. And despite her demands as a manager, she happened to be a very generous person. Three years back, when Lucy’s mother needed chemo, Rosa had given Lucy six weeks off with pay to take care of her. Occasionally, too, she offered her guest room to Peter Dreyfus, sparing him a long commute to Jersey. Thirty grand was more than a few extra sick days, however; that kind of money could change Rob’s life. But it could also further strain his and Rosa’s relationship, which was already suffering a crisis of confidence. This is why he was heading in early today; he wanted to discuss the situation with Rosa, candidly, before saying yes.
Maddy was loading his bowl into the dishwasher. An art historian, she ran a small, upscale gallery in Soho. Today she wore a form-fitting skirt, high-heeled boots, and sheer tights. To Rob, a guy lit up by visuals, she looked sophisticated but sexy, especially her silky red shirt, which was a half size too small and emphasized her big tits. Seeing him stare, Maddy tugged at the buttons. “I overdid it at Thanksgiving,” she said, sheepishly. “I have to lose weight, Robby.”
“You look amazing.” Rob slipped his fingers inside the blouse and stroked the rise of her breast in a circular motion. Watching her face soften, he rubbed her nipple until it became a hard nut. His erection strained the seams of his khakis.
“Don’t you have to meet Rosa?” Maddy glanced behind her, even though the apartment was empty. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Rosa can wait,” he said, willing his wife to strip off her boots and her tights, hike up her skirt, and then fall back with her legs spread so he could lick her and lick her until she exploded.
Maddy’s eyes were closed, her back arched, but just when Rob was sure he had her, she pushed him away. “Robby, stop. We can pick this up tonight.”
A tiny dart of rejection pierced his chest, but he remained undaunted. “I have a surprise for you,” he said brightly, arranging himself inside his pants. “So when I come home with something great, don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Maddy handed him the newspaper. “Better not be a dog.” She gestured to his head. “Where’s your hat? It’s freezing today.”
Rob moved to the foyer, where he shrugged on his puffy coat and lifted his bag. “I don’t need a hat,” he announced, stepping out of his home and into the world. “I’m a warrior.”
They both laughed as the door slammed behind him.
DOWN IN THE subway station, Rob stomped his feet to get warm. As usual, Maddy had been right about the hat. It was the first week of December and unseasonably cold. He thought of the warm bed he’d left behind. “Fuck,” he said aloud.
Peering into the tunnel, Rob spied a bogey in his peripheral vision. Cappy Cuomo! He jerked his head back, but felt exposed, a small animal of prey with nowhere to hide.
Gus “Cappy” Cuomo, formerly EVP of sales, had been axed nine months before. Though they lived only a few blocks apart, Rob hadn’t seen Cappy since he stormed out of the office last March, threatening to sue. As head of recruiting, Rob had bookended Cappy’s tenure at Ellery, poaching him from Nielsen when the economy was solid, then conducting his exit interview a few years later after everything went to shit. Normally these two events—onboarding and separation—would be their only points of extended contact, but in a stunning act of idiocy, after making the offer, Rob had invited Cappy into his home, a rare breach of the work/life firewall he regretted once the words left his mouth (“You’re so close, Gus. Bring the wife for dinner”). During the strained meal, Cappy zeroed in on Rob’s weak spots, questioning his ability to provide for his family (“You’re renting?”) and career decisions (“Jesus, eleven years at Ellery?”). Then, apparently interpreting Rob’s overture as subservience, once they were back in the office, Cappy began calling him with problems—his computer didn’t boot up fast enough, he needed staples, a toilet was clogged—as if Rob were the concierge of a luxury hotel and Cappy its sole occupant. Rob came to despise Cappy, who liked to peacock down the halls wearing European-cut suits and a tasseled beret (hence Cappy). Even more than Cappy’s colossal entitlement, Rob hated the guy’s stupid fucking hat.
Cappy, who’d spotted Rob and was lumbering over, still wore a stupid hat, this one a woolly trapper deal with enormous flaps that hung like tongues over his ears. “Hey, Rob! Hey!”
Seeing the train approach, Rob pretended not to hear. When it stopped, he elbowed his way inside and then ignored Cappy, who snagged a seat in the corner. At Fulton Street, the doors opened and more people got on. The crowd pushed Rob to the right, and he stopped directly in front of his ex-colleague, who was now tapping out e-mails.
Cappy looked up; Rob forced a smile. “You okay, Gus?” Being in the dominant position, i.e., gainfully employed, Rob infused his question with chords of feeling. Rough out there, isn’t it, buddy-boy? Times are tough, son. “You’re looking good.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Cappy boomed. The guy didn’t talk, he yelled. “I’m happy as fuck to be done with Ellery. That bitch Rosa tried to screw me out of vacation pay!”
Rob nodded, though this wasn’t true; in fact Rosa had managed to get Cappy, who’d been a few months shy of his vesting anniversary, more money than he was due by lobbying Rutherford to credit him for the full five years. (Rob had also benefited from Rosa’s largesse: when she found out he’d told Cappy about the layoff a few days prior, she could’ve canned him too but didn’t. “He lives near me,” Rob explained. “I see him all the time.” Having facilitated hundreds of separations, he understood that so much of the humiliation resided not in the job loss but in the sudden awareness that everyone but you knew what was coming.)
“Listen, Rob,” Cappy was saying. “I need a favor. My kid needs a job next summer. He’s still in school, but maybe he can work in consumer research—not at Ellery, obviously, but somewhere.”
“Grad school? Most researchers have doctorates or are working toward them.”
“High school. Kid’s a senior. What about HR? Can you call someone at Nielsen? I’d call myself, but I didn’t leave on such great terms—as you know.”
“High school? What could he possibly do in HR?”
“Whatever you do. Google people, make calls, fill out forms, file shit.”
Feel
ing stung, Rob was about to point out the lunacy of this statement when he realized that this was exactly what he did. He sourced and interviewed potential employees, processed in the ones they hired, and processed out the ones who left. As training manager, he also did other things, but interviewing and processing were his primary activities. So a high school senior could do his job. In fact, a gung ho kid might be a hell of a lot better at it. Even so—he glanced down at Cappy—fuck you, fucker. “Sorry, Gus, can’t help.”
Cappy replied with a grunt, and the two men settled into a tense, resentful silence. Fuck you, Rob thought again. Fuck this job, fuck this life.
When had he started feeling so miserable? Rob couldn’t say. But judging from the thousands of résumés clogging his in-box (for Ellery! A company in free fall), he’d likely be trapped for a while. This is why buying a home now made sense. First, the timing: prices were still at market lows. Second, his credit was decent (for the moment). Third, he’d build equity he could tap later for the girls’ college funds. Finally, he needed a positive diversion. Rob’s hope was to find a short sale or foreclosure. Not that he wanted to benefit from some poor schmuck’s misfortune, but who was he if not some poor schmuck, too?
The train was packed, and the collective body heat made Rob sweat inside his big coat. Standing over Cappy, he inched closer until their knees touched. When Cappy shifted, Rob pressed harder. The urge to hurt Cappy was unbearable: a kick in the balls, a charley horse, even hocking a loogie on the guy’s trapper hat would suffice. Although Rob was by nature a live-and-let-live kind of guy, the past twelve months had ripped something open inside. His salary was just on the wrong side of six figures, which meant raising two kids in New York wasn’t merely a slog, it was a testament to all his lousy life choices. Even so, before the downturn, Rob had begrudged no man his prosperity. To his mind, rich guys possessed a knack for making money, a specialized skill akin to woodworking or rewiring a home, one that, owing to the genetic lottery, he simply happened to lack. Indeed, because his own talents were limited to high scoring at Brick Breaker, Rob could appreciate the genius required to turn arcane concepts into cash, cash into wealth. But then the market crashed, and as one banker after another was revealed to be no more gifted than a career criminal who raped the weak and less fortunate, Rob suddenly found himself thirsting for blood.
Fourteenth Street was Rob’s stop. It also turned out to be Cappy’s, and as Rob disembarked, Cappy’s voice rang out behind him. “Hey, Rob. Hold up! I’ve been meaning to ask: You and Bender still a thing?”
Rob whirled around. “What about Lucy?”
“Just curious how it’s going.” Cappy’s grin was oily. His voice dropped. “Everyone knows about you two.”
Mortified, Rob opened his mouth to deny this, but the express train across the platform clattered into the station and cut off any sound.
3
Ellery Consumer Research was located on the ninth floor of a renovated building on Tenth Avenue that had once housed a commercial printer. The cavernous space had cathedral ceilings, enormous windows, and thin walls, so every sound was amplified. Ellery employed six hundred people; two-thirds were in New York and the rest divided between sister companies in Raleigh and Atlanta. The staff had expanded and contracted multiple times in the past decade, but today’s was the leanest yet. After the last bloodletting, Rosa had assured them HR was safe, which Rob opted to believe despite rumors to the contrary. Really, what choice did he have? When he considered his vulnerability, his thoughts spiraled. In some scenarios, Maddy (whose career, while rich in intellectual rewards, was lousy in earnings) left him for a well-dressed banker with good posture and a diversified portfolio. In others, he harvested his own organs to sell on the black market or cashed out his battered 401(k) and moved to a windswept prairie town. In all of them, his life came to the same bitter end: losing his wife and daughters and sharing his nephew’s bunk bed in his wealthy sister’s Park Avenue co-op.
It was ten after eight when Rob stepped off the elevator. He walked quickly through the empty reception area and down the long halls. It felt like a graveyard. There used to be an early crew here every morning: long-haired Max from Legal, shaved-head Max from IT, Yvonne with the scarves from Marketing, Drake, the mail guy from Soweto. They were all gone now, along with so many others. Christmas was only three weeks away, but you wouldn’t know it from the ninth floor. Rows of cubicles sat unoccupied, with orphaned computer parts and picked-over supplies scattered on desks. A doorless office served as a storage area for chairs, which were stacked haphazardly like a multicar pileup. Months before, a space heater caught fire, and while it was unrelated to the layoffs, the seared swath of floor and sooty streaks on the wall gave the place a dystopian, scorched-earth feeling. The holidays used to be the best time of year for HR. Rob recalled many an afternoon spent drinking martinis and wrapping presents. People brought in homemade banana bread while vendors like Cigna sent gift baskets loaded with expensive cheese and salami. But these days, no one was celebrating. Instead of a twinkling tree and festive poinsettias, there was an anemic cactus with a few strands of tinsel, a wax-encrusted menorah, and a Kwanzaa-inspired fruit bowl. Rob missed the days when he and Lucy would indulge in boozy lunches and then hike to Barneys to see the windows. Now he ate brown-bagged turkey sandwiches at his desk while googling old friends and swallowing his envy.
HR was in the rear of the building, along with Finance, Legal, and the other non-revenue-generating departments. Managers’ offices lined up according to length of service, with Peter Dreyfus beside Rosa’s large corner spot; Leo Smalls, Rob, and Lucy in the middle; and Kenny Verville, the new kid on the block, tacked on at the far end. A row of cubicles sat outside the offices; most were vacant. With only three assistants, most managers did their own grunt work, but Rob still had Courtney, who was already bent over her desk, typing away. He raised a gloved hand, but she didn’t look up, so he kept moving. Lucy had therapy on Wednesdays and wasn’t in yet; still, Rob rushed past her closed office door. Rosa’s loan was his private business, but it had come about so unexpectedly, he feared if he saw Lucy he might blurt out the story, and that was the last thing he needed: Lucy with her laser focus, drilling him for details.
THREE WEEKS BACK, Rob and Rosa had attended a corporate talent symposium at the Hilton. The networking breakfast was poorly attended, so they decided to stay for the keynote luncheon, but after taking note of the small crowd and dry chicken, Rosa offered to treat him to Mia Dona, her favorite restaurant. As they sat down, she observed that it had been a rough quarter and suggested wine—but only one glass, as she was needed in the office. (Rob, who had no such restrictions, planned to get ripped and skip out.) They ended up ordering a bottle of merlot, over which Rob shared his ideas for restaffing the Travel and Tourism unit, a problem she’d asked him to solve a few weeks before. When he paused—which was her cue to say Yes, yes, great plan—she quietly sipped her wine. “Of course,” he clarified, “this is just a first pass.”
Rosa’s head was tilted against the banquette, her eyes half-closed. In repose, her face appeared elastic, as though the skin had slid down and resettled into flimsy folds under her chin. She rarely relaxed, so seeing this pleased Rob. Of course, it would’ve pleased him more had she praised his ideas, but once he stopped talking, they lounged together in a collegial silence.
“Howard loved Mia Dona,” Rosa said eventually. “I like it too, but knowing how he felt makes this place extra special. We were newlyweds when I came to Ellery. Peter helped me settle in, and he and Howard hit it off, which I found so strange. Peter was just a facilities guy; Howard was a big muckety-muck attorney. Funny how that happens, right? Oddball pairs.”
Rob had heard the story of Peter and Howard many times. Still, he had an enormous reservoir of patience for women of a certain age, which included his late mother, whom he missed deeply, especially now, as the wine began to loosen him up.
“Howard passed away in November, so this is a tough month for
me. But”—she opened a compact and blotted her face—“no need to dwell.” She clicked the compact closed. “I’d love another drop,” she said, sliding her glass across the table.
Rob marveled at her composure. If Maddy died, he wouldn’t be able to function, even five years later. As other diners passed by, he saw an older man, then another, glance in Rosa’s direction. Was she attractive? Lucy believed so, but Rob was on the fence. He preferred a softer look, and Rosa was buttoned-up tight. Her fancy St. John knitwear and nude pantyhose belonged to a bygone era, when HR was called Personnel and run by women with beehives and big bosoms. Over the years, she’d grown heavier around the middle, but her clothing was perfectly tailored and she leveraged accessories to dramatic effect, favoring chunky gold jewelry, sensible pumps, and leather handle bags. “So, Robert,” she said. “The year is almost over. How do you feel? Anything you might have done differently?”
“I feel very good.” Rob took another gulp of wine. Truth be told, he was feeling very buzzed, having drunk most of the bottle himself. “It was a successful year.”
“Rob, have I told you about my mentor, Al? Alfred Moscowitz?”
“You may have mentioned him once or twice.” Rob settled in; a story was coming.
Rosa sipped her wine. “Where I grew up, no one went to college; most people didn’t finish high school. The boys got jobs, girls had babies. But not me. I wanted a fancy career in advertising; I wanted to work in a skyscraper and make TV commercials. I learned how to type, and became a secretary at an insurance company. Not my dream job—far from it—but my mother was sick and we needed money. Anyway, I was a go-getter, right from the start. Came in early, stayed late, went above and beyond. My boss noticed, and after a year—maybe two, I don’t remember—he offered to pay for college. At first, I refused. I was just a kid, but boy, I had pride. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t accept charity.’ Al was adamant. ‘Don’t be crazy, Rosie’—that’s what he called me, Rosie—‘It’s not a gift, it’s a loan. Consider it a down payment on your future.’ I had no idea what to do. In those days, we talked to our priest, but this was bigger than Father Joe, this went beyond the neighborhood. So I rode the subway—which I liked to do, even though it was dangerous—and had a good long think. In the end, I took the loan and went to night school. I got straight As, went to grad school, and now look at me. I’m chief. That’s the power of mentorship, Rob. A great one can change your life.” She paused. “I hope you consider me a mentor.”
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