Pug Hill (19 page)

It’s no use. I sit back and instead of focusing on the Rothko, I think about this new element of competition in our workplace. I look up suspiciously at Elliot, then over at Sergei. Both Sergei and Elliot could be given May’s job while she is gone. Sergei’s been here longer than I have, and even though Elliot hasn’t even been here for a year, he used to be Head Restorer at the Brooklyn Museum. And also, to get a promotion after only being here for, what, five months: such is the way of Elliot.

I think of May, the nicest boss I think anyone has ever had.

She’s always fostered an environment so free of competition and office politics—not that paintings restoration is such a hotbed of office politics or anything—that this new feeling of competition in the workplace is very strange, very foreign indeed. I think a bit dramatically, even for me, that everyone is the enemy. But then, of course, they’re really not, because May is so great to work for, and learn from, and the whole earth-mama-flowy-dress-dangly-earring look really appears so much more genuine on her, like it’s the way it should be, than it does on someone like Beth Anne who, dressed all flowy like that, in my mind, winds up looking somewhat fraudulent. And Sergei is not really the enemy because he is, well, he’s just lovely. And Elliot isn’t the enemy because, as I might have mentioned, I love him.

I put my paintbrush away and look over at Elliot.

“Did you know that May might be leaving?” I say across the room to Elliot. He pauses, stares at his canvas for a moment, making some sort of conscientious Elliot-type mental note before looking up and squinting at me.

“Of course I knew,” he says, and the way he says it, it’s just so matter-of-factly that you could almost miss the slight condescending tone. But I choose not to, and I think, in this case, that’s a good thing.

“Whatever happens though,” he continues and the “whatever,” it sounds so ominous to me, “the good news is that we’ll get another restorer in here, someone with more time to actually restore than May has. We might even catch up one day.” He nods in the direction of the paintings lining the eastern wall of the room. I think it is a very good thing he didn’t just nod in the direction of the Rothko.

Suddenly, Elliot doesn’t look quite as perfect, quite as ideal, quite as, “Let’s you and me babe run off into the sunset and leave this crazy Conservation Studio behind us” hot as he usually does. This is, I realize, because he’s over there, so studious, intense, and dedicated not only because of his inherent
Elliotness
but because he is bucking for a promotion. Elliot is bucking for what could very well be
my
promotion. I lean back, as much as you can lean back in a stool, and I wait for something to happen, for something to change. Nothing happens.

Then I think something dreadful, something horrid, something that goes against every effort I’ve ever made to have a successful career. Something that goes against every hope I’ve ever had of being an independent, career-minded, successful woman. I think that if Elliot gets the promotion, I’ll be really pissed off, I’ll be really bitter, and because of all that, because he has a promotion, even if it is just for a year, that could have been mine, I won’t pine away for him anymore. As I pull my magnifying visor down over my eyes, I think that if Elliot gets the promotion, it’ll be the one thing I can think of that will set me free.

“Are you sure you’re not mad?” Pamela asks again.

“Really, I’m sure. I’m not mad,” I tell her again. There’s a pause; I wait. I have an idea what is coming next, now that I am not mad: a pep talk. Even though historically it hasn’t worked out well with Pamela and I when she administers her form of a pep talk, I feel a bit this morning like maybe I could use one. I just hope the phrase “
eHarmony.com
” doesn’t factor into it.

“I just think that you could have more fun than you actually aspire to have,” she begins, “you know, like at ’Cesca. It doesn’t have to be a bummer being single.”

“I’m not bummed about being single, I swear, I’m not. I don’t think it’s a bad thing and to tell you the truth, after Evan, it’s kind of nice.”

“Right.”

“Look,” I say, and I try to think how to say this, try to think how to put into words that being like Pamela, being gregarious, and outgoing, and extremely confident about everything (and not to mention long-limbed and completely fatless) makes for a far different experience being single at places like ’Cesca, a trendy pickup place. And, come to think of it, everywhere else. I take a deep breath and try.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to have fun on Friday at ’Cesca,” I explain, “it’s just not my ideal environment.”

“Nothing is an ideal environment, Hope. And also, and don’t get mad, no one is an ideal guy.” I think that also not everyone is a Sprocket, but I don’t say that because Pamela, I hate to admit, has a point.

“I know,” I say.

“Sometimes I’m not so sure if you do.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, the beginnings of annoyance sprouting up inside of me.

“I just think, and really, don’t take this the wrong way, that you might be a little too quick to make judgments about people, and that sometimes those judgments are, uh, innacurate.”

“I think that you make judgments that are inaccurate, too,” I say, trying my best not to bring up the whole shunning of my Judaism, because to tell you the truth I am pretty far from being over that one.

“Maybe I do, but we’re not talking about me right now. Look, I’m just saying this because I care about you,” Pamela explains, and actually, at the end of the day, I know that she does.

“I know you do,” I tell her and then, I feel again like I want to explain, even though it’s hard to explain things you don’t really understand yourself, and also aren’t entirely sure you believe. I decide to go for it anyway.

“It’s just, you know, it’s very different for me, I’m much more of a solitary person than you. I’m not so sure being single is something I want to run away from.”

“Oh, please, Hope,” she scoffs, “being single is something
everyone
wants to run away from.” And at this point, I think I am completely and utterly confused.

“But you’re the one always saying to embrace it!”

“The only reason to embrace being single is so that you don’t have to be it anymore,” she explains.

I wonder if she might be right about this, and if maybe, I want her to be.

“Yeah,” I say, deflecting any invitation for further debate. Happily, Pamela seems to have said all she needs to say on the now vastly confusing topic of how being single is so great that everyone on earth wants to run away from it, and she moves on.

“Well, what are you doing today? Do you want to go to lunch?” I look outside, at the two chairs on my balcony, sitting side by side, looking out onto a late Sunday morning. There’s something else I want to do much more than have lunch with Pamela.

“How about coffee at, like, four? Want to meet a Café Edgar?”

“What are you doing until then?”

“Um, I just want to work on this assignment I have for the public speaking class,” I lie.

“You want to go to Pug Hill, don’t you?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, “actually I do,” and hope that she doesn’t want to come. Probably she doesn’t. Kara and Chloe see the beauty of Pug Hill and they come with me sometimes.

Chloe loves the pugs, even though admittedly I don’t think the pugs love it when she screeches and runs after them. Pamela is not as interested in Pug Hill, mostly I think because she thinks only married guys and dorky guys actually own pugs. I think of the Tretorn guy, and of how I have to learn that footwear is unimportant.

“Okay, four o’clock. Café Edgar,” she announces, and that’s good. “Hope?” she asks, “if you like pugs so much, why don’t you just get one?” Pamela again has a point.

“Not right now,” I say, “not just yet.” “Yeah,” she says, “that’s probably good. I think having a dog would make dating harder.”

“Absolutely,” I agree, even though I really don’t.

I walk across the park, down a hill, up another incline, and I’m almost there. I don’t really expect there to be many pugs because it’s not all that warm out. I mean it’s not like I expect there to be no pugs like
that
day, it is Sunday, after all. Can you imagine no pugs at Pug Hill on a Sunday of all days, a day I believe to be the day of all days for pugs coming to Pug Hill? Saturdays are up there, too, but
the
day for coming to Pug Hill, if you are in fact a pug, or, like me, just an admirer of pugs, is Sunday. I step through the row of benches and across the cement path. I’m here.

There aren’t too many pugs, but there are actually more than I thought there would be. That’s one of the benefits of being cautiously optimistic rather than just brazenly optimistic: you get disappointed a lot less than if you were brazen. I look around at the pugs who are here, and they all seem especially jaunty and proud. The way they march around, spinning, snorting, darting off at nothing in particular (definitely not at a thrown object of any sort) makes me sure that these pugs know just as well as I do, maybe more, that Pug Hill is the place to be.

I take a seat on the bench. The ground by the tree that I like, the ground anywhere actually, is looking a little too cold and uninviting. I glance hopefully toward the pine tree, but unfortunately, Kermit is not waiting for me there. Actually, I don’t recognize so many of the pugs today. They’re all bundled up in their coats and sweaters, and it’s hard to know them as well when they’re all so bundled up. I lean back on the bench and take in all the pugs, pugs that I don’t quite recognize but still adore, all prancing around like so many secret agents.

“Eustice!” someone yells from a few feet to my right. An extremely, let’s say, girthy pug, in a gray turtleneck sweater, comes bounding up the hill. His tongue hangs out to the side, the way so many tongues of so many pugs seem to like to do, and he’s panting very loudly; I can hear the panting, accompanied by some intermittent snorting even before he gets close, even before he heads in a beeline right past his owner and right toward me.

“Well, hello, Eustice,” I say very encouragingly and very enthusiastically at his arrival. He looks up at me, and very politely hoists his tongue up and licks the foam from his pug nose. And the way he does it, everything about him, makes me smile so completely. I say next what makes the most sense, “Thank you, Eustice.” With a jerking motion, he moves his whole body to the side, throws back his head and turns around, and just like that, he’s off. He runs toward his owner and I feel, for right now at least, that everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be just fine.

I settle back into the bench and look out in front of me to see who else is out there. Over there, by the tree, there’s another fawn pug. He’s very tall for a pug, rather spindly actually, and he’s dressed in what looks like less of a sweater and more of a green Mexican blanket with a belt. The spindly pug is hovering over a much smaller and rounder pug, who isn’t wearing any pug accoutrement at all. I lean forward a little bit because the spindly Mexican-blanketed pug really does seem to be breathing down the little unadorned one’s neck. But then it seems that the Mexican-blanketed spindly pug bores easily; he trots off. A woman comes over to put a red harness on the little pug. He snorts up at her and reaches out his tongue to kiss her. I wonder if she has any idea how lucky she is, how much I envy her.

I stare out at the frolicking pugs, there must be ten of them here. Each one to me is love, each one is unconditional friendship, each one is happiness and each one is freedom.

“Is this seat taken?” says a British accent from above me. Startled, I look up and I see that attached to the British accent is a very cute guy, who, I kid you not, looks exactly like David Duchovny. Maybe, I think, just for a second, it is David Duchovny. That is if David Duchovny had a British accent.

“No, please,” I say, gesturing to the rest of the bench, and I’m pretty sure as he sits down, that he’s not actually David Duchovny, but,
still.
He leans back against the bench and looks out with me at the pugs spread out all around the hill in front of us.

“Which one is yours?”

“I don’t have one,” I answer. I feel him turn toward me. I look over at him and he’s looking at me quizzically.

“I just like to see them,” I say by way of explanation.

“Oh, a pug voyeur then? A bit like myself today ...” he says, trailing off, his eyes following as a pug in a hot pink jacket with a bright green hood charges past us.

“You don’t have a pug, either?” I ask, stunned.

“No, can’t say I do.” He says
can’t
like
cahnt,
and it occurs to me that I just might have read one too many chick-lit novels in my day. I have, somewhere along the way, lost the ability to hear an English accent and not think that it so surely implies that somewhere within earshot is the man with whom I am to live happily ever after.