Friendship (4 page)

The only bad thing about standing in the break room was that other people came into the room too, and some of them seemed to feel it necessary to acknowledge her in some way. “How’s it going?” they asked as they reached into the fridge for bottled water, Diet Snapple, and string cheese (all of which Bev was in charge of restocking when they ran low, a duty that had been explained to her with grave seriousness during her first hour in the office). After experimenting with a too-blasé “It’s going” and a very slightly sarcastic “Awesome!” Bev had mostly settled on a cheery, noncommittal “So far, so good.”

“How’s it going?” asked a swarthy, shortish guy in a pink shirt. Bev dimly remembered having been introduced to him during the perfunctory tour around the office she’d been given first thing that morning. Though she couldn’t say for sure, she thought maybe it was the guy to whom she had apologized earlier for dropping his call. She decided to think of him as “Steve.”

“So far, so good!” Bev said.

Steve lingered in the break room, and Bev realized he was filling a paper cup from the hot water dispenser. Was he actually going to stand there, a foot behind her turned back, while his tea steeped? He was, of course.

“So, have you been temping long?”

Temp here often?
“No. Actually this is my first time temping in a while. I mean, since right after I graduated from college.”

“So you just graduated?” Steve was stirring his tea, only half listening.

In spite of herself, Bev was flattered, and she should have just said yes and let the conversation end there—except it wouldn’t have, probably; it would have continued on into the realms of “from where” and “with a degree in what,” and Bev would have had to make up all kinds of lies on the spot, which she was terrible at doing. So she told the truth. “No. I’m just doing this for the moment.”

“What do you really do?”

“Oh, all kinds of stuff.” The silence expanded and became awkward, and Bev suddenly sensed that Steve was imagining something illicit, so she hastened to say, “I was in grad school for writing. I want to be a writer. I mean I am one, I guess.”

“That’s so great! I mean, I just push numbers around all day.”

“Well, there’s a lot to be said for that!”

“I guess. It’s boring as hell,” said Steve. “So, what’s the ultimate goal?”

“What?”

“Your ultimate goal. What is it?”

Bev turned the crank of the binding machine. She’d made it at least a decade without being asked this question, and now twice in one week? Existential angst was far, far above her pay grade. The binding machine crunched through a sheaf of papers with a satisfying loud noise. Her
ultimate goal
.
You’re looking at it!
she was tempted to say.

“Um, I dunno. Write a book, I guess.”

“Whoa, you’re writing a book? That’s awesome!”

“Ha-ha, nooo, I didn’t say that. God, these days I can barely
read
a book. Much less write one.” This wasn’t strictly true—Bev was always reading at least three books at any given time—but it was something to say.

“
Dude
, I’m relieved to hear you say that. I keep trying to read this book Bill—you know, Bill, the CEO?—recommended to us.
Outliners
or something? And I just cannot fucking concentrate on it for the life of me. Excuse my French. It’s like, at the end of the day, how are you supposed to sit down and read a
book
?” Steve looked overjoyed as he said all this, and Bev realized that this conversation was probably the highlight of his day, then realized it was almost certainly the highlight of hers. She felt embarrassed for both of them.

“Maybe it’s the book, not you,” she said.

“You’re probably right. But, sorry, we were talking about the book you’re going to write.”

“Ha, no, that’s boring. Hey, so—what’s
your
ultimate goal?”

“Ha-ha. Uh, that’s kind of personal,” Steve said. He twiddled the stirrer stick in his Styrofoam teacup. “Damn, you know? I should get back to my desk. Speaking of goals. See you later, Beth.”

He left the break room. Bev slid a spiral clip onto the back of the machine and slipped the stack of papers into its grip, then crunched it closed again. She had a momentary flash of wanting to smash something made of flesh, her own hand or someone else’s. Crunching the papers satisfied the urge, almost. The edges of the packet were a little bit ragged, and she spent some time smoothing them until they were perfect.

Toward the end of the day Steve came over and stood by her desk. There was a bowl of gum and candy there that Bev had been told to continually replenish. Steve was pretending to be sifting through it, but really he was waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. She kept her eyes trained on the screen, as though there were something important to see there, for as long as she plausibly could, but eventually she looked up.

“Are we out of your favorite flavor? I can order some more.”

“Could you? That’d be great. Bubblemint. Thanks, Beth.”

“It’s Bev.”

“Oh, fuck me. I mean, heh! Oh man. Please don’t sue.”

Bev bit her inner cheek to quash her automatic impulse to simultaneously gratify and tacitly excuse him by laughing. “No worries. Anything else I can help you with right now?”

Steve furrowed his brow. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let me make it up to you.” With a practiced gesture, he held out his hand to her; a business card protruded from between his pointer and middle fingers, and because there was no other possible course of action, Bev reached out her hand. She snatched the card quickly so that no one would witness the handoff.

Steve smiled. “Okay then. See ya. Bev.”

“See ya,” she said, already turning back to her screen. Then the phone rang, and she answered and transferred the call with a practiced gesture, feeling the tiny thrill of having learned a tiny skill. She didn’t do anything with the card until she could see via her peripheral vision that no one was anywhere near her desk, and then she took out her phone and entered the numbers into it, saving the contact as “Steve” because she’d never remember, otherwise, whose number it was. (Steve’s actual name was Matt, but who cared.) She ran a ragged fingernail over the embossed words “Executive Vice President” before crumpling the heavy little square of paper and slipping it into the trash can under her desk next to a pair of someone else’s comfortable slip-on flats.

5

Standing on the sidewalk outside and looking up at the brownstone where she lived still gave Amy a frisson of pleasure, even though it didn’t belong to her and none of the little details that made it so nice—the window boxes, the clean-swept stoop—were any of her doing.

She’d never understood what some people found appealing about the boxy concrete high-rises going up all over Brooklyn, with their office-parkish floor-to-ceiling windows and their sad, skinny balconies just big enough to balance a bike. This building had history and character and old, wide floorboards. It also had mice and bad plumbing and was pervaded constantly by the smell of her landlord’s Black and Milds, but those things were a small price to pay for charm. The light that poured in through its thick windows was honeyed and fiery at sunset; her block had been planned at a time when builders still paid attention to such details as the angle of sunlight. No glassy high-rises cut off this flow of light—yet. Eventually they would, but Amy would probably have to move out before then. The rent had increased by almost half during her tenancy because the boxy buildings were making her once-liminal neighborhood newly desirable, and now the rent was cripplingly, insanely high, almost twice what someone with Amy’s salary could realistically afford. Other people might have let this bare fact penetrate their minds and affect their decisions, but Amy had so far refused to allow it to do so.

“Hello?” she called as she opened the door to her apartment, in case Sam had spent the day there. But there was no answer, and Amy felt a pang of mild disappointment. It was nice to come home to Sam; on the days he didn’t have to teach at the art college, he usually spent the whole day sketching at her kitchen table. It seemed like a waste of the rent on his studio, but Amy wasn’t in a position to criticize. She looked forward to seeing his day’s doodles; she liked to imagine the paintings they would become.

Sam’s thing was painting ordinary objects in unstinting detail. He wasn’t a star, but he had fans and a gallery and seemed to be gaining traction in the fluctuating, irrational art market. An eighteen-foot rendering of Amy’s KitchenAid stand mixer had sold at auction last year for the price of a small luxury car; he’d given most of the money to his parents, who’d emigrated from Moscow when he was seven and gone from being professors to operating a small, bad restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. Some people might have taken a small part of that check and used it to buy new shoes, but Sam didn’t see any problem with his old ones. Maybe when they got a hole, he said, then he’d consider it, but they’d served him so well for four years that replacing them seemed disloyal, insulting. Amy had rolled her eyes and dropped the subject. She could stand to be a bit more like Sam, of course. She hoped they might eventually find a happy medium, mutually rubbing off on each other.

He’d left a note, as usual, on the kitchen table: a deft little sketch of Amy’s cat, Waffles, with a cartoon text bubble coming out of his cat mouth. “Buy me more cat food, Amy!” cartoon Waffles was saying. Real Waffles snaked around Amy’s ankles, then made an attempt to climb her left calf. She told him to chill out and went to the cupboard, but Sam was right; she was completely out of cat food.

It was annoying to have to go right back out; she’d already taken off her shoes and everything, was thinking through the steps of the dinner she’d planned and hungry for its results, but Waffles would only get more annoying the longer he had to wait for his dinner. She lay down on the floor for a moment and played with him, stroking his seal-sleek back and letting him climb over her legs. He headbutted her face affectionately, as insistently needy as a dog. Waffles loved or at least depended on Amy, which for cats probably amounted to the same thing. For her part, Amy loved Waffles with a passionate ferocity that she felt a little bit guilty about not being able to feel, most of the time, for humans. It probably helped that he was constantly doing cute shit and couldn’t speak.

She slipped her shoes back on and was unlocking the front door, still preoccupied with thoughts of dinner, when she noticed the certified letter lying just inside the door on the welcome mat. Her landlord had slipped it under the front door sometime after she’d arrived home.

This kind of weirdness was par for the course; even though Amy was one of the building’s two tenants, her landlord, whom she saw almost daily, pruning his roses or sweeping the same square foot of concrete front yard repeatedly, had a habit of behaving like the distant administrator of a vast and impersonal business enterprise. And maybe the tactic was designed to take the sting out of moments like this one—the letter, addressed to “all tenants of 99 Emerson Apartment 2,” rather than to Amy, announced another rent increase “effective immediately.”

“Well, that’s just
illegal
,” Amy grumbled aloud. She had no idea whether it actually was. She crumpled the letter and shoved it into the catchall drawer in the kitchen under a layer of plastic utensils and rubber bands, then paused, removed the letter, uncrumpled it, and put it on the kitchen table where Sam would see it. She’d been living in the apartment for five years. She should think about moving out, or at the very least emptily threaten to move out so Mr. Horton would reconsider the increase. She and Sam had been dating for about half of that time. Maybe they should move in together; maybe the letter was a sign.

Amy clomped down the stairs, hoping Mr. Horton was home and would be irritated; then, halfway down, she remembered that she should try to stay on his good side until she was sure she couldn’t get out of the rent hike, so she tiptoed down the remaining steps and past the parlor-floor entrance. But she wasn’t quiet enough.

“Miss Schein. How are you today,” Mr. Horton said.

“I’m fine, Mr. Horton, but I’m just wondering … about the letter?”

“Please respond in writing if you intend to re-sign your lease at the new rent.”

“But I don’t think … I mean, I’m not sure you’re allowed to just raise the rent like that?”

Mr. Horton raised one graying eyebrow. “Please address any questions you may have to my lawyer.”

“Look, Mr. Horton, I’ve been here five years—I’m right above you, I’m a good tenant, I’m sure you don’t want to have to go looking for another. The only people who are going to be able to afford to live here at that rent are college kids whose parents are paying, or couples.”

“That rent is what the apartment is worth in today’s marketplace. Please let me know promptly if you intend to leave.” He smiled without moving any of his facial muscles besides the ones that lifted the corners of his mouth; really it was more of a flinch. “Have a pleasant evening.”

Amy opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, he’d closed his door.

During the entire trip to get cat food Amy was consumed with blind rage, which abated only somewhat when she realized that the pet food store was right next to the nice wine shop and it would be silly if she didn’t take the opportunity to go in and get a bottle of something. The cute label that leaped out at her was on a nineteen-dollar bottle, a little bit more than she usually liked to spend, but it had been a hard day and she deserved a treat. She opened the wine as soon as she got home, and by the time Sam walked in the door, just as Amy was putting the plates of pasta on the table, she’d already had a couple of glasses. Maybe three glasses.

“Hi, baby! What’s that green stuff?” Sam unshouldered his heavy gym bag and pressed his sweaty face to Amy’s for a salty kiss. “Mmm, you taste like booze. I’m just going to hop in the shower.”

“Baby, something terrible happened!”

“Oh, no! What?”

Amy opened her mouth but then realized she didn’t know how she wanted to talk to Sam about the rent increase—whether she was launching a campaign to move in together, or asking for advice about how to manipulate Mr. Horton, or just looking for sympathy. “Oh, just some stuff. Nothing really
terrible
terrible. I’ll tell you when you’re out of the shower.”