Very Nice

by Marcy Dermansky

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “I am not jealous,” Kristi said.

  “No,” I said. “Of course you aren’t.”

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s what I just said.” I took another sip of coffee. “Look, I really have to go.”

  “She is really there?” Kristi giggled. “Jane. Your heart’s desire.”

  I nodded.

  “Go,” Kristi said. “Call me later. Tell me details.”

  “As if.”

  The problem was, I might.

  * * *

  —

  Jane was awake, already dressed even, looking inside Zahid’s closet. I was disappointed. I did not see how I could get her to take her clothes back off. Morning sex was out. Damn, Kristi. It was like she had a sixth sense, like she knew something good was happening in my life and she had to mess it up.

  Of course, this situation was not unfixable. I did not need to panic. We would go to brunch and then come back, make love. That could work. What else could we do? Go to Coney Island. Jane, I was sure, would want to go to Coney Island. She could take a canvas bag full of books. We could make out on the beach, go to Nathan’s, ride the Ferris wheel. A perfect day. We would have a perfect day.

  “I made coffee.”

  “Great,” Jane said. “I need to get going soon.”

  I closed my eyes. Again I reminded myself that I was not going to panic. Jane knew that I loved her, and so, she would not treat me shabbily. She was better than that. The day was not lost. She would not look at me and say, This was a mistake. I had heard that speech too many times before. Jenny Meyers at tennis camp. My academic adviser at college. The married headhunter who tried to recruit me for another investment firm. Women who denied their homosexuality. Women who denied me because I did not look homosexual. A black woman who said I was not black enough. I had laughed at that one. She had been serious, too. I had been rejected for too many reasons, big and small.

  “I’ll get you coffee,” I said. “One second.”

  I went into the kitchen. It was good coffee, and that would slow her down. And I had good granola I could give Jane for breakfast if she claimed she did not have time for brunch. I could make this work. I was not going to panic. I was not going to panic.

  “He has so many pairs of shoes,” Jane said.

  I walked over to Zahid’s closet. I looked at Zahid’s shoes. I handed her the mug of coffee.

  She drank from it.

  “This is good,” she said.

  I nodded.

  I touched Jane’s cheek.

  I was going to slow this morning down.

  I turned her face to me and I kissed her. Slowly. I put my hands on her waist. It was a good kiss. I was a good kisser.

  “Khloe,” she said.

  Of course, Jane was not one to allow herself to be happy. She thought life should be twisted and complicated like a literary novel. She thought that I was a drunken mistake, but we had not been that drunk. The alcohol had simply allowed her to give in to the inevitable.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Whatever you are going to say, just don’t say it, okay?”

  Jane nodded.

  I was right. I knew Jane too well and had for so long. She was going to say it was a mistake when of course it wasn’t a mistake. She was going to mess everything up.

  “You don’t have to say anything at all. Seriously. Just don’t say anything.”

  We were standing there, in front of Zahid’s open closet. The asshole hadn’t cleared it out for me. I had a lot of clothes, but I’d managed to make room. Jane was going to give me that “it was a mistake” speech but I had cut her off.

  “Look at all of those linen shirts,” Jane said.

  Zahid had six blue linen shirts. It was like a uniform. The dressed-down writer. The more I knew about Zahid Azzam, the less I liked him. His student. I wished I did not know about that.

  “He’s in Iowa,” I told Jane. “Interviewing for a teaching position.”

  Jane looked at me. I had her attention again. I was useful to her. I decided at that moment that I would stay in his apartment. I would suffer indignities beneath me. For now. I would play it casual. I was not done with Jane and she was not done with me.

  “That was my sister on the phone.”

  “How is Kristi?” Jane asked.

  Jane had babysat for Kristi, too, of course. She had actually helped Kristi find her agent.

  “She said that Zahid interviewed for a job there,” I said, grateful that I had something to hold her attention. “They are going to give it to him.”

  Jane bit her lip. “He needs to be writing,” she told me.

  “Maybe he needs the money.”

  “After the advance he got?”

  I shrugged.

  “Wasn’t that a long time ago?”

  “It’s a lot of shoes,” Jane said.

  There were six pairs of Italian leather loafers on the floor of his closet. Four pairs of white Converse high-tops. He had probably spent his advance long ago.

  “I have a lot of work to do today,” she said. “Shit. I really drank too much last night.”

  Still, she had not said it was a mistake. She had not made a beeline for the door. Sunlight streamed in through the window. All I wanted was for us to spend the day together, but I would take the morning. The afternoon.

  I tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

  Rachel

  Ian Thornton came to get Amelia at the end of day camp.

  The pickup line was all stay-at-home mothers and nannies in expensive cars. But Ian had walked. He was wearing his boating shoes. A white T-shirt and a pair of swim trunks. I blushed, looking at him. His hair was so blond. His eyes that icy blue. It occurred to me that maybe he had come to see me.

  “You!” he said, surprise in his voice, and I understood that of course I was wrong. He had come to pick up his little sister.

  “We’re going swimming,” he said. “You should come with us.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Did he or didn’t he? Like me. It was not as if I could ask him.

  “Rachel is coming!” Amelia screamed, jumping up and down. “Rachel is coming!”

  Ian stared at me, making it clear that we were both aware of the alternate meaning that could be applied to that sentence. I wanted to disappear. Amelia grabbed my hand.

  “Hooray,” she said. “For Rachel.”

  It was unnerving, how attached this little girl was to me. It was not mutual. I liked her fine, but not more than the other kids in my group. In fact, she seemed a little strange. She liked me too much, for one thing, and now, after having been to her home, I understood. She was a witness to grown-up behavior she should not have to see. But she seemed happy now, with me and her brother.

  And so, like an idiot, I went.

  I changed into my bathing suit and left the day camp with them, to go swimming out on the Sound.

  “Rachel is coming. Rachel is coming,” Ian said, as we walked to the beach.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  We were out in the water, at the small public beach in town, having what I thought was a good time, when Ian held my head under the water. It was a perfect day. Hot sun, clear sky, late in the afternoon. Ian, Amelia and I were the only people on the beach. The lifeguard was mysteriously absent. Held underwater, I started to count, not sure of what to do, not wanting to panic, not wanting to assume that I was, in fact, being drowned.

  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, all the way up to sixteen, underwater, caught in Ian’s firm grip, his fingers holding on to my scalp, and then, right before I would have started to kick and flail, he let go.

  I came up for air.

  I was not completely out of breath. I was not close to actually drowning. It wasn’t sca
ry scary. I had never smoked, my lung capacity was good. But it seemed that Ian fake-drowning me could only be considered a bad thing. Maybe not as bad as his brother holding a gun to my mother, but not good all the same. When I came up for air, he started to laugh.

  “Scared ya,” he said.

  Amelia laughed, too.

  And then, it was weird, I started laughing, too.

  * * *

  —

  I texted my dad. How R U?

  My mother was driving me crazy. Zahid was still ignoring me. It turned out I actually missed my father. Did he know what was going on in his house?

  A little lonely, he wrote back. I was glad that he had started texting. I miss you, kiddo. Don’t use abbreviations. Please. OK?

  Lonely. Miss you.

  My poor dad. It was not what I was supposed to hear from my father. Who was always upbeat. Who was in control of his universe. Who played tennis and racquetball and went running. Who made tons of money. Wore expensive suits. Even now, in his new life, he had seemed good to me. Happy with Mandy, his blond pilot. She seemed smart enough. She seemed nice. She was not completely inappropriate. She was too young, but that was what men did. They had sex with younger women.

  I thought about Zahid, how he might think that I was too young. I wasn’t. I was old enough. I had blown it somehow. He had moved into my house and I had played it too cool. I thought it was obvious, how much I wanted him. Sometimes, I could not breathe in his presence. I could not formulate a coherent sentence, while my mother went on and on. I wanted to go back in time. Why hadn’t I slipped into his room that first night? Or even the night after? I had had so many chances. Day after day, I’d blown it. Every day, it got harder.

  Mandy, at least, looked at my dad with affection. It was weird, but it was almost nice. My mother could be cold. Indifferent.

  Why was my dad lonely? Maybe it wasn’t going so well with his pilot after all. Why wasn’t I surprised? Why was it that I didn’t respect my parents for making changes in their lives? Why was Zahid in my house and we still hadn’t gotten it on? I knew that he liked me. We had fucked. Of course, he liked me. He was just afraid. That was all. On the Fourth of July, we had all gone to see the fireworks, and it was surreal. I watched my mother, afraid she would say something dumb, but she barely said anything at all. We went home early, my mother worried about Princess, alone and possibly afraid, and it was a relief. It was weird, the three of us out in the world; it was as if I were their kid or something.

  My father and I made plans to meet for dinner. I would take the train into the city straight from day camp. I would pick him up at his office. I brought a change of clothes with me.

  I thought about texting my mom to let her know my plans, and then I didn’t. I’d let her worry. Zahid had gone out of town that morning and she would have to realize that I was not there.

  I couldn’t bear the idea of eating dinner alone with my mother. This was sort of funny to me, since I couldn’t bear the idea of eating one more meal with Zahid and my mother, either. She was flirting with him. There was nothing else to call it. It was disgusting. My mom might look okay, but she was old. There was no way of getting around that fact. It seemed like, if anything, Zahid wanted a mother.

  For weeks now, he had been polite, almost indifferent to me. I had been telling myself that he had been hiding his feelings for me, but it occurred to me for the first time that maybe Zahid really and truly was indifferent.

  But that wasn’t possible. Was it?

  It had been so good between us. I was young but I knew what good sex was. I had only had bad sex before that. And that had to be why he was there, in my house, in Connecticut, when he could be anywhere. He was waiting. Waiting for the right time. It would be soon. It would have to be soon or my head might explode.

  I would go see my dad.

  I would be his little girl.

  There was something nice, comforting about that.

  * * *

  —

  For the second day in a row, Ian Thornton came to the pickup line for Amelia. “You’re coming swimming with us?” he said. “Right?”

  I shook my head, glad to have a reason to say no.

  “I’m having dinner with my dad in New York,” I said.

  “You have a dad,” he said.

  “Everyone has a dad!” Amelia screamed.

  I shrugged. I did not want to see Ian again. Not after what happened the last time I saw him. I was not going to have sex with him, that was for sure.

  “We’ll walk you to the train,” Ian said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  Ian and Amelia walked me to the train.

  I was grateful they didn’t wait with me. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Ian, with his blond hair and his perfectly chiseled jaw. Or I thought of something but it seemed stupid and I did not say it. I wanted to ask Ian what was going on. Why was he messing with my head? Did he like me? More likely, he was bored. Like me, he probably had no friends in town. This, however, did not seem like a reason to mess with my head. My head, it felt like, had already been properly messed with.

  * * *

  —

  It had been a long time since I had been to my dad’s office. I always felt out of place there. Underdressed. Female. Young. Everything in his building was gleaming and fancy. His firm was on the eighty-sixth floor. There were gorgeous views of the Hudson River and the East River. I could see the Statue of Liberty from his office.

  My dad used to work in the twin towers. He had been inside the second tower when the plane hit. He had walked down all of those stairs, with all of those people. He was one of the people who did not die. He walked straight to the train station and somehow caught the last train to Connecticut. I was just a kid then.

  There was a good-looking woman standing with my father at his desk. She was wearing high heels, a short skirt, a creamy white silk tank top. She had short hair, big gold hoop earrings. She looked like a model or an actress hired to play a female employee in my dad’s firm.

  I stared. This must be the employee my dad had said reminded him of me, the woman who was black except she didn’t look black. She was nothing like me. I felt upset that my dad had compared me to her. I felt shy coming into his office.

  My dad waved me in. He looked pale, his skin chalky, almost flaky even. He looked thinner. He looked bad.

  “Rachel,” he said.

  He came over and gave me a hug. He smelled different, too, like laundry detergent.

  “This is such a nice surprise.”

  “You’re still working,” I said.

  It came out sounding angry. I supposed that I was angry. It was over ninety degrees outside. I had taken the train and then I’d had to wait for the subway. I was late and still he was making me wait.

  “Something came up. A client had some big issues. The issues. Jesus Christ. Clients are an awful lot like children. It turns out it’s going to be a late night. I’m sorry, sweetheart. But give me a couple more minutes and we can grab a quick bite. I need a break.”

  I looked at my father blankly.

  Did he not understand that I came into New York to eat dinner with him? I could have gone swimming with Ian and Amelia. I would have gone, I realized, if I did not have other plans.

  At that moment, I didn’t want to have dinner with my father anyway. What had I been thinking, after all? What a chore it would have been to have dinner with him. We would have to make conversation. He would ask me if I had given any more thought to my major. All my life, it had seemed like my mother was the only parent who mattered. But I had been the one who’d texted him. That had been my mistake.

  “It’s not going to take long. I promise.” My father was back at his desk, frowning at the computer screen, next to his gorgeous employee.

  I sat down in a chair across from his desk.
I would go to the movies. It didn’t matter. There was a movie playing in New York that I wanted to see. He had better give me some money. I pulled out my phone to look up show times.

  “Wait a second. Jonathan, aren’t you going to introduce me to your daughter?” the woman at his desk said.

  “I didn’t introduce you?” my dad said.

  It was weird, actually. There was something seriously off about him. He looked sick.

  “Forgive my bad manners. This day went to hell. This is Khloe,” my father said. “My best junior analyst. I think I told you about her.”

  Khloe looked at me. She looked strangely familiar.

  “Khloe,” my father said, “this is my daughter, Rachel.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, Rachel,” Khloe said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  I felt like a dingbat.

  I was always underdressed in my father’s office, but before I had been a kid. It had never mattered.

  “I’m sorry you have to wait a little bit. But we had a bit of a crisis,” my father said.

  “A financial crisis,” I said.

  Like a news headline.

  But I was taking the summer off from the news. I was trying as hard as I could to stay off the Internet. I did not want to hear about the amazing summers my former friends were having. Their amazing jobs. Their amazing boyfriends, parties and vacations and internships. I didn’t want to keep up to date with everything political and awful. I did not want to know. I did not have to feel guilty. I was taking care of kids. If anything, I realized, I should have been getting stoned.

  “Is the market falling?” I asked.

  I thought of Chicken Little.

  Khloe laughed.

  She was so gorgeous. It really was too much, all of these ridiculously beautiful people. Mandy. Ian. Zahid. Zahid swimming in my swimming pool in a pair of purple swim trunks.

  I had started another short story. In it, Zahir meets Amanda, the airline attendant, on a flight to Los Angeles. She invites him to go with her to her hotel. She had tried to reform, to stop with the men and the sex, but there had been turbulence on the flight. She wanted a man. Zahir hesitates, unsure why. He wants a younger woman, not the older woman he was been dating, but he is resisting temptation. He wants to be a good person. The airline attendant was a hottie. What was the problem?