Curved (4 page)

Chapter 4

What would the club say if they knew I was going to Joseph Videl’s place at night? I could hear the peanut gallery already. A chorus of voices clamoring at the table we sat around for meetings. Oh, you’re just in this for the money and prestige. You’re trying to set yourself up as the next Bill Gates. You have two different and competing goals in life. You can’t be an investment banker and philanthropic. There’s no way.

Zena at the head of the table. Her friend next to her, Ricarda, yelling at me. Ophelia, you’re such a hypocrite. Ophelia, how can you call yourself president? Ophelia, you’re a fraud. A disgrace to Columbia University.

I shook my head as I entered the elevator. Because it was so late now, no one was around. Only probably me and a couple of other interns from various departments and divisions. Accounting, primarily.

Angela was waiting for me in our workstation room, still fiddling with some spreadsheets on her laptop. Her shoes were off, her hair back. “Jesus Christ,” she said, closing up her laptop, “finally. I have an excuse to stop.”

“I would rather be you right now,” I said, pressing my hands against my face. The embarrassment throbbed over my body, in every crevice and hole. My pores oozed ddisbelief and anxiety. Angela only had to smell me to tell that I was ruined.

“What happened to you?” Angela said. “You look like you fought someone.”

“I spilled ink on Joseph,” I said. “On his suit. And then he told me I work has errors. He found a bunch of them. And he wants to be over at his house—apartment or whatever he lives in. He wants me over.”

Angela crouched low near me. She stared into my eyes, her thumbs twisting together and pulling at her skin nervously. It seemed that my fear was rubbing off on her. “So,” she said, “you’re telling me that he wants you over at his house?”

“Exactly that,” I said. I explained the situation with the pens and ink to her again. “I’m so embarrassed, like, so, so, so embarrassed. You should’ve seen his face.” I actually couldn’t remember it because of how quickly the scene rolled out. “I practically bolted the moment it happened.”

“That’s no good,” Angela said.

“You think?” I said. “Of course it’s not good. The man probably thinks I’m crazy now. A big ball of bundles who can’t even do basic math right. I mean seriously, I was getting cells mixed up, and all of the risk free rates confused. Shit, girl, I fucked up.”

Angela combed my hair with her fingers, sitting next to me. She pressed her shoulder against my own, rubbing up and down with her bodyweight. “Look,” she said, “no one’s perfect.”

“This is more than just a minor thing though,” I said. “This is going to influence how he sees me forevermore. He’ll know me as the girl he invited to his apartment because she couldn’t handle the workplace. Maybe I’m not cut out for banking?”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Angela said. “You have had a goal now since time immemorial. Hone in on that passion. Don’t let it escape you because of one or two mistakes. Three or four.”

Sniffling, I wiped my nose. “Okay, but he knows that I messed up badly.”

“And this is your chance to… I don’t know, charm him? Get up close to him, show him what you can do,” Angela said. She placed her hands on my hips, jerking them side to side. “You know what I mean?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I can’t seduce him. You know me. I’m not… Attractive.”

“That’s just false,” Angela said. “Remember in high school when the football team asked you out together for prom? Yeah. They literally all wanted you.”

“It was a joke,” I said, shaking my head.

Looking back at high school, those football players couldn’t actually have been truly after my heart. Most of them were dumb jocks who made fun of me behind my back. They made cruel jokes about my parents not being able to afford well-crafted clothes.

“I knew those guys,” Angela said. “You’re not seeing things straight.”

“So, some of those guys wanted me for my body. Great,” I admitted. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean they respected me.”

“You’ve built up walls around yourself,” Angela said. “Give Joseph a chance. He’s risen to the top of his industry because he knows how to cultivate talent. Talent like us.”

“Well,” I said, looking at my friend. This was my best friend, after all. “I mean, we did take a test before applying.”

“Yeah, there we go,” Angela said. “Calculus one. Calculus two. Calculus three. Differential equations. What else?”

“There was… Linear algebra. And then basic accounting, economics, both macro and micro. Also intermediate accounting, and then coursework for finance, of course.”

“Right,” Angela said. “We took those tests and proved ourselves worthy of being here. Joseph knows that you have value.”

“Okay,” I said. “I should just… Sleep and come back at this fully rested.”

“We have a meeting tomorrow anyway,” Angela said. “It’s really important that you’re at full capacity, otherwise the mean girls are going to rip you apart.”

Zena. And her friend, Ricarda. Plus the rest of them who never stuck up for me when they came for blood. Thankfully, the silent majority voted team Ophelia during election season. But for how long could I stick around? My momentum would peter out if I didn’t keep up.

“If you cry anymore I’ll feel bad,” Angela said. “C’mon, let’s get you up. How about a yogurt on me?”

“All right,” I said, standing unsteadily on my heels. There would be few places open, but Angela knew a couple spots being the connoisseur that she was. “I’m such a wuss.”

Angela shrugged. “We all have the things that make us cry in life,” she said. “It’s a matter of handling them properly. Just like radioactive waste.”

I laughed. “I’m glad you see my problems like that,” I said.

“Hey,” Angela said, “I never said that you were radioactive waste. Just your… Yeah, your problems.”

Chapter 5

The Lower East Side had much of the suit-and-tie style businesses cramped in and around the area. No wonder many of the stores were just closing up. So many investment bankers still hung around in the streets, looking at their phones, a dull glow of blue in their eyes.

Angela pointed out a yogurt shop glimmering in the darkness. We hobbled over there, stepping through a pair of steel gates, ringing up the front counter. A Chinese man greeted us, asking what we wanted. I got myself mango, Angela cherry. The yogurts were frozen, topped with vanilla icing and strawberries.

Then afterwards we went walking around the pier, looking at the stars above us, a gentle but nascent summer’s wind blowing on against faces.

“You know something,” I said, pulling my spoon to my lips. The mango tasted delicious, saturating every one of my tastebuds. I pushed aside my hair, collecting my thoughts together. “You know something, Joseph reads really young. He doesn’t look like he’s older than even twenty-five.”

“Which is why he’s such a catch,” Angela said. She sung in between sentences, pop music and rap beats. “He’s really nice to both of us. I can only imagine what he’s like in the bedroom.”

I remembered his hands on my own. Strong and powerful hands.

“He touched me,” I said. “Just briefly.” I detailed the scene to her, with Joseph opposite of me, his warmth emanating into my body.

“Oh, girl,” Angela said, scooping some of her yogurt into my bowl. “Try this. Oh, girl, I’m telling you, he likes you.”

“It can’t be that,” I said. “Besides, there’s no way I could be with a man like him. An investment banker? Would I really bring a guy like him home?”

I had gone through a hippie phase in high school. My parents thought it would pass, and it did, but I always clutched onto the idea of advocating for those who couldn’t on their own. I had seen the entire corporate finance world as monstrous but necessary.

“It’s not so black and white,” I said, which I had learned in high school, obviously, if I was now majoring in finance. “But, I am saying, I’m not sure if our values totally will line up.”

“How so? You’re already interning for the biggest investment bank in all of the world,” Angela said. “You must have something in common. Something.”

“Like what?”

Angela was grasping at straws. There could be no potential between me and Joseph. None whatsoever.

Also, the electricity in the air whenever I looked at him, the warmth, the passion in my cunt—it all pointed to a godly romp under the sheets.

“It’s only lust,” I said. “He and I only have lust.”

We came to the edge of a stone wall which cordoned off the Lower East Side. There were usually homeless people around these parts but it was still too cold for them, I guess, or maybe they weren’t out that particular evening. The waves slushed on the shoreline far away, hitting the wall up and crashing over to the asphalt below.

“You’re both visionaries,” Angela said, finally. “You both have that intensity and drive to go pursue goals. Most people aren’t like that. Joseph also supports a bunch of pro-homeless groups too—haven’t you seen his donation box lately?”

He was matching some of the biggest names in philanthropy. I mean, international names, huge household names.

“I never said he wasn’t kind.”

Angela threw away her yogurt in a nearby garbage can. She squatted low on the ground, her head facing the moon. “You can’t discount him yet,” she said. “he might have something planned for you.”

His hands on my own.

His eyes boring into me.

His breath raking my skin.

I crushed my yogurt cup, throwing it out as well. Squatting next to Angela, I shrugged my shoulders. “If he’s anything like me, then I hope he has the courtesy to be honest with me. Just lay everything out in the open.”

Angela giggled. “You expect too much out of people,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice: you’re expecting perfection.”

“No,” I said, annoyed, “only honesty.”

“When you haven’t been yourself?”

“Huh?”

“Those programs of yours?”

Damn. She knew. “Angela, about those…”

“Were you ever going to let me in on them?”

“How?”

“I knew from just looking over your shoulder, girl. So, is that why he called you up?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, abashed. “Yeah, that’s why. I had problems with my code. I have to clean it up for him. He wants to show me how.”

Angela stood. Her fingers casted long shadows like nails on the ground. “I don’t blame you for keeping secrets,” she said. “But this is exactly what I mean.”

She started off, and I followed behind.

We rode home on the subway train in silence.

Chapter 6

Lindsay slumped in the hallway ahead of me. I walked sluggishly, so I wouldn’t catch up with her, but she slowed down enough so that I had no choice but to overtake her, lest I linger forever and not go to sleep. The first thing out of her mouth was, “I saw you.”

“Where?” I said. “Lindsay, I’m not in the mood.”

“You and your friend out for late-night snacks?”

“Stalking me now?” I said. “Yeah, so?”

“I was working,” she said, hissing the last syllable. I dug my hands into my purse, frustrated with her. “I’m always there, at Alpha Suites. And then I see you outside, just wandering around, doing whatever you want.”

“It’s definitely not like that,” I said. “I can’t just do whatever I want. You think I got my job doing that? Whenever I want?”

“Maybe,” Lindsay said, fishing keys from her wallet before I could. “You make a good stripper anyway, so I can kind of see it happening.”

I sighed. “See what happening?”

“Both of you together,” Lindsay said. “Ophelia and Joseph. Ophelia Videl. I guess it rolls off the tongue.”

Lindsay plugged her key into the hole, letting only herself in first. She clutched the edge of the door, her eyes peering off sides. “How did you get your internship with Placarm Rhodes?”

“Lindsay.”

“Tell me.”

“Lindsay!”

She opened the door more. I stepped through.

I could’ve dormed with Angela instead of Lindsay, but I had always read that it was a bad idea to share living spaces with friends. It could complicate things, at least that’s what the Internet said. I preferred having my own space away from Angela, just so we had breathing room, but Lindsay was an entirely different story.

“I’m not even competing with you,” I said, walking to my side of our apartment cubicle. One bathroom. A “kitchenette,” which really functioned as a second bathroom. There wasn’t even an oven or stove. Walking to my bed, I placed my purse and laptop down, stretching out my feet. “I don’t know why you’re so caught up with prestige. It doesn’t even matter.”

“Not to you,” Lindsay said. “You’re the homeless girl. Of course it doesn’t to you. Everyone is the same. You’re probably socialist. Or worse. Communist, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m brushing my teeth,” I said, pulling my side of divider drapes closed. Of course, there wasn’t any privacy here. I could still listen to Lindsay rummaging around for her toiletries, make up, or schoolbooks. Worse, she walked around as if there were iron weights attached to her ankles.

“Try not to snore tonight,” Lindsay said, groping around in the dark for her blunts. I held my nose, turning over in bed once I pulled the sheets up to my chin. Normally, I kept my face totally submerged in cottony goodness, but because the weather was warming up, I had no choice but to suffocate on her fumes.

“Good night,” I said, “Lindsay.”

***

In my dreams, I had only the voices of my past haunting me. The kids on the playground taunting me for my “poor-people” lunches. The kids who would snap their fingers as they passed by me, an ode to my SNAP meals. Girls who pulled on my hair in class and told me I was ugly for not wearing the right shade of lip-liner, as if I even had time to catch up on latest trends and hot picks.

My life at home meant work. Real work. I scrubbed toilets. I prepared the meals when my parents were away. Whenever I had opportunity to study, I did. I researched as best as I could about how to get into top-tier colleges, which wasn’t easy, given my background in impoverished straits.

Even my family gave me shit though. My mother would make comments about me wanting to be “above my class,” and as I dreamt, her leery eyes appeared over my head and snapped shut as a single observant orb in midair.

“Above your class,” the eyes whispered.

Then my father, who worked at a local retail store, would try to be supportive, but his family wasn’t even middle-class growing up. “Americans think themselves all equal,” he would say, “but we’re not and me and your mother are scared about where you’re going. Not from here anymore but up there.”

The Ivy League.

Investment banking.

Prestige.

A higher class not meant for here.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and Joseph’s face crept up close to me, kissing distance. I stretched out my lips but he placed his finger on the center ridge of my mouth.

“No,” he whispered. “Not yet. Too soon.”

Then he vanished and so did my parents and the kids and I only had the voices swirling around me, this medley of pumped sounds in my ears.

I woke up scared and dripping with sweat.

***

“And you say I stink,” Lindsay said, when I rolled out of bed. I curled up on the ground. My legs were shaking. Lindsay stepped over me, since my bed was up against the bathroom door of our shared room.

When we first moved in, I thought it would be a great idea: I’d always have the draft for the summer and the heat in the winter, since the vents were closest to the bathroom.

Now I saw what a headache it was to have Lindsay hovering so damned close to me every time she needed to shit.

“Jesus, Opheliat,” I said. “You could wait before going.”

“Nah,” Lindsay said. “I might piss on you if I did, then you’d whine.”

I slipped my pajamas up my legs and took a leak. Then I meandered around the fishbowl of a kitchen, stewing coffee while I blocked out Opheliat with some music.

I would have plenty more of Lindsay anyway in class. Ugh. I hated the fact that we shared multiple ones together, but that was how shit went down for me. Could’ve been worse, I guess.

“Have you done any of the homework?” Lindsay said. She grabbed her belongings, stole some of my coffee in an imitation Starbucks mug. This chick was all about status. “I haven’t even started.”

“Dude, you had all week last week. What happened?”

We were rushing now, pulling on our clothes, since we would have to catch the train together. Both of us squeezed out the door, running down the hall, coffee across our fingers.

“Well,” Lindsay said, “I got busy. I have a life, you know.”

“Yeah, stalking me and my friend at night.”

“You were just there, making the view bad, by the way.”

“Whatever.”

We hopped on the train for class. Stats. Fun.

Because we were late, we had to sit ourselves way in the back where everyone did shit all. Pretty much the back of class was for: slackers, gossipers, and hitmen. Like, seriously, it felt like high school 2.0 sitting next to random dudes who popped in and out of class every once in a while.

No matter the case, I tried to make the best of my situation.

“Which graph is Gaussian?” the professor droned. “A or B?”

I kept my head down on my notebook, boredom filling up my brain instead of the lecture itself. Why couldn’t I focus?

“Yes,” the professor said. “That is correct.”

Adjusting my eyes, I listened more carefully to what was being said. Then again, what was the point? My grades were slipping anyway.

“Hey,” Lindsay said. “Yo.”

I opened my eyes. What the… Had I fallen asleep?

“You’re with me,” Lindsay said. She slid her chair next to mine, opening up her laptop. “Well?”

Rising from my seat, I shook the weariness from my body. There must’ve been bricks strapped to my back, because I could hardly even move. “What are we doing?”

“The prof asked us to work on, you know, the graphs. Damn, you look like a murdered bitch.”

I scowled, pushing aside Lindsay’s laptop. “Okay, violent jokes aside, I need to catch up. I was napping.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I might as well get a new partner.”

Being that she was Lindsay, no one else wanted to work with her. She sponged off answers from others anyway, never contributing to group work or associated tasks. There was a project where she simply sat painting her nails, and in tacky acrylics, too.

“Here it is,” Lindsay said, her screen blinking in front of me. I hauled my laptop from my purse, onto my desk, cursing.

“Great,” I said, sarcastically. “Just lay it on me then.”

So we had these images. And we had to discern whether or not they were correlating properly to a data set; then we had to write a report on any misleading pieces of information we were given; and then, we had to collaborate and create new graphs that corrected any previous problems. By the time I understood the directions though, our class was almost over.

“This is a quiz grade,” Lindsay said.

“I know that,” I said, pointing at the bold letters at the top of our assignment. In big print: 3% of your grade.

“Just do it right,” Lindsay said. “After all, aren’t you the Placarm Rhodes girl?”

“Why do you have to be such a bitch?” I said, typing loudly so I wouldn’t have to hear her response. “Anyway, if you could just help me out with the report, since you like to talk so much.”

Lindsay mumbled something, but I didn’t care. Once she got started on the paper, we went along smoothly to the finish line.

Okay, so Lindsay wasn’t completely useless. She could be manageable, if you got over her offputting behavior. We emailed in our answers, checking once to make sure neither of us had strayed too far from what we originally proposed in our thesis statement.

“Everything’s looking good,” I said, tapping my laptop. The light caught my nails. Sheesh. Now these were looking nasty and disgusting. I slid my hands into my jean pockets, hoping Lindsay hadn’t seen.

“Can I ask you something?” Lindsay said, as we stood up, gathering our things. “Since you’re the homeless president, I have to know—what do you get out of it? Are they giving you kickbacks? You know, special rewards behind the scenes?”

“I do it out of the goodness of my heart, Lindsay,” I said. “Not exactly your schtick, but it’s mine.”

“So you’re doing it for the fuzzy feelings?” By now, we had made it out of the auditorium. Why was she stalking me again? Did I interest her so much? Was my internship with Placarm Rhodes such an accomplishment? I mean, my face was plastered in a recent newspaper article back home in my small town, but Lindsay didn’t even grow up where I did. She was one rich, spoiled girl.

Maybe a poor woman usurping her spot caused her jitters at night, tormented her.

I licked my lips at the thought.

Delicious.

“You can make me sound selfish if you want,” I said. “Whether or not it’s because of how helping others makes me feel, at the end of the day, I want to do right by humanity. I want to help people.”

“You should join the Peace Corps,” Lindsay purred. “Stay out of finance, yeah?”

She walked ahead of me, taking her afternoon break. Christ, women like Lindsay made me lose faith in my gender.

Luckily enough, I had no more classes with her. The rest of my day went nicely, and the sun peeked out the clouds, and there was plenty of food when I went down to get some at the court.

Because my life had so much crammed into it, I didn’t have many friends. Occasionally, someone might call out to me from across the road I was crossing, but most of my campus classmates were strangers to me.