Carrie Pilby (10 page)

“True.”

Something odd is happening. His body seems a little straighter.
And it seems like he's talking to me as if I'm an adult instead of a kid. It's astounding, but actually I think he respects me now. And why? Because I've had sex?

Amazing how having had sex makes someone respect you more. Like you know their secrets; you've sampled their universe; you've shared an experience, and there's nothing more they need to know about you. It really is ridiculous. I think having gone to war or having overcome child abuse or even having witnessed a car accident gives you more knowledge of the human condition.

 

I stir around at home for a while, annoyed because I have a legal proofreading assignment for tonight. Night jobs are lousy because you spend the whole day thinking about them, and then you have to
go
to them. It's like working the whole day
and
night.

The subway is quiet. Sitting across from me on the train is a tired-looking woman with a head of black, curly hair and a huge, bulging pocketbook. The size of a woman's pocketbook is inversely related to her wealth. The poorer a woman is, the bigger her pocketbook, and the wealthier she is, the smaller her pocketbook. You'd think it would be the opposite, but money doesn't take up a lot of room: one's clothes, papers and life's accumulations do.

The woman gets off a stop before me and I lean back against the hard seat, feeling the rumble of the train as it takes off again.

I emerge from the bowels of the city several blocks from my assignment, in a seedy area near the waterfront. I walk past an empty, fenced-in lot, and then I see an old brick building that says on it
First Prophets' Church, Joseph Natto, Pastor.

I remember the yellow flyer that I took from Tonsure-Head. I want to peek into the church, but the windows are too high.
Still, I look down and notice a gray ridged outcropping at the base of the building where I can get some footing.

I step onto it and peer in through a small window with bars. The gauzy pink curtains are mostly closed, but I can make out a minifridge with magnets all over it. One is holding a flyer that says, “Sermon, Sundays, 10:30.”

I decide I'll go to the church soon. I'll sit in the back row and keep an eye on things. I should be appointed Religious Fraud Commissioner of the Borough of Manhattan. They might as well have one. It's no stranger a job title than Public Advocate.

As I get closer to the middle of town, a shimmering marble building comes into view. The law firm takes up all nine floors. Now, that's money. I recognize the name of one of the partners as being a former city councilman.

I step off the empty elevator on the sixth floor, and there's a reception area with no one in it. There's a plate of fruit and cookies on a coffee table. I imagine the food is left over from a meeting. I want to grab a cookie, but I'm worried they'll say they're not for me. I wait a minute. No one comes in. I tap my fingers on the counter. I wait another minute. I reach for a cookie.

“Hello?” a woman says, coming into the room. I jump. “Sorry,” she says.

A supervisor tells me there's no work yet, and walks me to a small windowless room with a white rug and just two desks.

I've brought a backpack full of magazines and mail. I sit down at a desk that's facing a wall, and I look behind me at the other desk. That desk is a mess, with documents scattered everywhere. Some are pinched in black Acco clips large enough to choke a ferret, and some are snug in serrated brown folders. Even the wastebasket is a mess.

I sift through my junk mail and get to a red postcard that says, “Harvard Club young alumni mixer.” The Harvard Club:
Something I haven't thought about joining and probably should. They have a clubhouse in midtown Manhattan. Maybe I should have joined as soon as I graduated, instead of looking everywhere and anywhere for intelligent people. If there are any to be found, they'd surely be at the Harvard Club. Right? And joining an organization is on my list. This organization might be better suited to me than Joseph Natto's church.

I pull Petrov's goals list out of my bag and peruse it.

1. Do things from list of 10 things you love
   
2. Join an org./club
   
3. Go on date
   
4. Tell someone you care
   
5. Celebrate New Yr's
   

At least my personal ad will be in the
Beacon
this week. I have to get at least one decent response. As for
in
decent responses, I still haven't heard back yet from Matt the Cheater. But I have a feeling I will.

Suddenly someone appears in the doorway. She looks about my age. She has long, sleek hair, a kind smile and bright eyes. I feel disarmed and somehow, instantly calmed.

“Hi,” she says. “Are you temping?”

“Supposed to be.”

She leans against the door. “I work down the hall. I was bored.”

I say, “Are you temping, too?”

“Well, I am a temp,” she says, “but I'm here every day. I've been ‘temping' for four months. They don't want to hire me full-time because they'd have to pay the agency $6,000.”

“It's actually not $6,000,” I say, “but it's close. It's based on the rate of pay times the 300 work hours the firm says it loses by giving you up. It's like $5,850.”

“
Like
$5,850,” she says. “As if you haven't done the math.”

“I guess I have.” I don't know why I feel so nervous.

“I'm Kara,” she says. She shakes my hand. Her fingers are long and sleek, like her hair. She looks down at my desk. “What's that?”

“A list,” I say, and I turn it over quickly.

“Looks interesting.”

“Just personal.”

“Maybe you'll tell me eventually.”

“Maybe.”

There's a silence.

“They called three of us in for word processing tonight,” Kara says, “even though there's practically no work for us to do.”

“Why do they do that?”

“They don't want to send us home early because if something comes in and no one's here to work on it, the fit hits the shan.” She looks at the empty swivel chair near the other desk. “Mind if I sit?”

“No.”

She pulls the chair next to my desk and sits. “Why they called in extra proofreaders, I don't know. But more money for you.”

“Mo' money, mo' better.”

She laughs, and her hair falls in front of her shoulders. I can tell she's one of those people whom everyone likes to be around because she's always laughing. She's also tall and pretty and probably quite popular with the opposite sex.

“So what's your name?” she asks.

“Carrie. Pilby.”

“Ah,” she says. “Do you live around here?”

“The Village.”

She seems excited by this. “My ex-boyfriend lives there. On Jones Street. He has a new girlfriend, but she's sooo not his type.”

I don't know what to say to this, but it's certainly more interesting than my mail. “Do you ever see him?”

“Unfortunately, no, but he's playing CBGB this weekend,” she says. I'm amazed that she considers me worthwhile enough to tell details of her life to. “I'm trying to get someone to go with me, but my friends are sick of hearing about him. I'll go alone if I have to. I'm going to spend two hours tomorrow in the gym and two hours Friday.”

Poor girl. She really thinks this will help. Even if the combined four hours in the gym would make her lose an ounce or make her look better in any way, which they won't, they still wouldn't make a difference as to whether her boyfriend wants her back. Even though I know next to nothing about men, I know that whether they're attracted to you doesn't change based on a weight loss of five pounds.

“What's his name?”

“Mark,” she says. When she says it, her lips part in a neat way. “He is soooo…amazing.” She leans closer. “You know how when you're so into someone, there's absolutely nothing they can do in bed that's wrong?”

I assume it's a rhetorical question.

“Well, I wouldn't have cared what he did, but he knew what he was doing. But I don't care. Women know my body a lot better than men do.”

So not only has she just told me about her ex-boyfriend's bedroom habits, but that she's bisexual, too. I wonder what she'll tell me next—maybe that her uterus is backward.

“You have a boyfriend?”

“No,” I say.

She looks at me for an explanation. As if I have to apologize for it.

“I…I know this is weird, but I only like…”

I want to say
guys who are smart,
but I can't say the word
guys.
It's a word that makes people sound stupid and teenager-ish. Even though, technically, I
am
a teenager. On the other hand, I can't say “men,” either. That makes me sound forty.

“I only like men…who are smart,” I finish. “It's just a weird thing.”

“That's probably because
you're
smart,” she says.

I shrug.

“I like smart guys, too,” she says. “Mark is smart. He's not book-smart, but he's street-smart. Bands don't just end up at CBGB. But maybe I won't go. He's self-centered, like all musicians.”

“Are you going to get in trouble for being in here?”

“Nah. They know I'm around if they need me. Besides, it's clear we need to work together on finding you a smart boyfriend. Or girlfriend. I don't mean to assume you're straight.”

“I am,” I say, “But I really haven't…well, dated anyone…since my English professor.”

I've never told anyone about it, and now I've told two people in one day. But I know it'll impress her. Maybe even put me on even ground, which nothing else would.

“All right!” she says, and holds out her hand. I give it a hesitant slap. “Are you in school?”

“I graduated last year.”

“You look so young,” she says. She keeps staring at me.

It makes me uneasy, so I look away. “I graduated early for my age.”

She smiles. “You're smart. That's why you like smart guys. Where'd you go?”

“Harvard. For real.”

She laughs. “Do people think you're lying when you tell them?”

“Sometimes they think I'm joking.”

“That's because they don't have brains. A lot of people haven't heard of my school, even though it's famous.”

“Where'd you go?”

“Smith?”

I nod.

“I don't know what I was thinking, going somewhere with all girls. It would have been better to have some variety.”

“Yeah.”

“My mom went there, so I went. But I only went for two years. Then I left. I wasn't dumb or anything…I was bored. I just had other things to learn about, not for credit. What's that list you have?”

I shrug. “Nothing.”

“You didn't think I was going to give up, did you?” Her eyes really are dark. “I'm not easily eluded. Quick—what's on the list?”

“Nothing.”

She teases me by suddenly pretending to reach for it. I get up to try to pull it out of the way, and for a second, her arm grazes my breast. She sits back.

“Well,” she says, “in the time we've spent blabbing, we've both just earned five dollars. Isn't that amazing?”

I like the way she thinks. I wonder if I should share with her my theories about work. Then maybe some of my other theories. Maybe I'd lose her as a friend if she knew about my moral crusades. Maybe I should keep thoughts like that to myself. But isn't that like lying? Why should I wait to share things that are an important part of me?

Petrov says I should just find moderation. I'll stick with this one: “I think everyone cheats in their job,” I say. “It's so much a part of the system that it's expected. I haven't seen a workplace yet where people didn't spend as much time as possible getting coffee and reading the
Post.
”

“No kidding,” Kara says. “It's like a fucking job requirement to not do your job. Especially around here.”

She puts her elbows on my desk and leans over. She's practically in my face. “Okay, so tell me what I really want to know. How was Mr. Professor? Tell me every single detail, beginning to end. I want the
whole
story.”

I wonder if she would have felt it worthwhile to talk to me if I
hadn't
had that experience.

I tell her the story from beginning to end. I even apologize for the fact that I did this with my
English
professor—I've come to realize how trite it was, since no one ever has an affair with their math professor. I guess the things math professors say in class aren't very seductive. Except when they talk about how line AB slides gracefully past the Y intercept.

I slow down a little when I get to the reason David and I broke up.

“I just felt like it wouldn't be me if I said that,” I say.

“So too bad,” Kara says. “Screw him. There's a movie where someone's asked if sex is dirty, and he says, ‘Only if you do it right.' Well, there's really nothing that's dirty unless you're being forced to do it. There shouldn't be any rules for sex except the rule that you should feel comfortable with what you're doing. If you don't, it doesn't matter what anyone else does. If you're not a person who feels comfortable saying ‘boo,' then you shouldn't have to say boo.”

I nod.

“Although I'm sure it hurt to break up with him,” she says. “College gets lonely if you don't have a boyfriend. Or girlfriend.”

“True.”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

“Uh…no.”

“I have a female friend who kissed a girl and then kept swearing over and over that it only happened because she was drunk. But ninety-nine percent of the time, alcohol is just an excuse to do what you really wanted to do anyway.”