Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners

by Y. Euny Hong

  Tam is clearly very good at her job. She was born for sales; she is responsible for more than 25 percent of the magazine’s new clients, including the much sought-after Jaguar account, though I don’t see how midwestern teens are the target market for Jags. Tam said, “Brand loyalty starts in the cradle. Our audience is the only demographic that matters in the whole country. You might as well hang yourself when you get to be my age.” I feel I can learn much from her.

  Tam has a sign in her office that reads, SURPRISES ARE FOR BIRTHDAYS ONLY.

  “What does that mean?” I asked her, indicating the sign.

  “Isn’t that great? I got it from a sales seminar I attended last spring. It means, don’t surprise me. Got that, Judith? Don’t surprise me.”

  I put up a sign on my own desk that read, NO MOLESTAR.

  “You need to take that down,” she said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “It doesn’t mean ‘no molesting,’ I said plaintively. It means ‘no bothering.’”

  “Well, of course people have to bother you, honey. What do you think a secretary is for, anyway?”

  On Wednesday, she asked me, “Can you run these figures for me, honey? You know how to calculate a CPM?”

  “What’s a CPM?” I said.

  “It’s just a fancy word we like to use to show the advertisers how much bang they’re getting for the buck. It stands for cost per thousand, but I don’t know where the M comes in.”

  “It’s Latin,” I said. “M is one thousand in Latin.”

  “Well, aren’t you a smart little French fry! I’ll have to tell that to the clients. How do you pronounce that?”

  “How do you pronounce what?”

  “M in Latin. Is it ‘emmm’ or ‘ummm’?”

  Teengal forbids its sales staff to have computers. “Makes sense to me,” Tam said. “A saleswoman’s place is on the phone or on the road.” But assistants like me do get computers. This is truly a poor management decision; I do not think they realize how much power this places in the hands of us underlings.

  As a result of this Luddite anticomputer policy, Tam and I have the potential to form a genuine, old-fashioned boss-secretary bond to which I greatly look forward. One of my tasks is to take dictation. On Wednesday, Tam called me into her office to take down a letter to a prospective client of hers, a Mr. Cademartori. I said, “Isn’t that the name of a cheese-producing company? I think it’s near Lake Como.” I felt confident in this, as Madame Tartakov had made me study cheeses.

  “Lake Como? Is that in Korea?” Tam asked. She squinted at my scrawl. “Judith, I don’t think this is what I said at all. ‘Your Southerly Slattern, Tamara’?”

  TEENGAL MAGAZINE, WEEK OF FEBRUARY 22:

  I need a few more months to test this theory, but I think that everyone’s menstrual cycle in this office is not only synchronized but synchronized to coincide quite unfortunately with the closing week of each of the monthly issues. On Tuesday there was a lot of crying and slamming of doors.

  I am learning a great deal by working in an all-female office environment. In my checkered but fascinating work history, I have learned that every office has a different idea of what it considers an acceptable way for employees to use their downtime. At my investment-banking “analyst” job last year, bosses looked the other way when employees spent the whole day on their personal stock portfolio. And on Friday afternoons, most of the office stopped working altogether to participate in the weekly food bets. It was a bizarre macho tradition endemic to investment banking. One week the office held a habanero-pepper-eating contest. Once it was a milk-drinking contest; the most anyone could drink without throwing up was six quarts.

  Another week the traders on my floor planned an excursion to a Japanese restaurant for a blowfish-eating contest, to which I strenuously objected.

  “Bullshit,” said one of the traders. “You either live or you die. Big fucking deal.”

  “You are all amateurs,” I said. “I happened to grow up in a city with blowfish restaurants at every corner, and I can tell you with the certainty of experience that somewhere between death and life lies a vast gray area known as three-day cramping diarrhea.”

  My censure served only to make the bankers more excited still; they extended the bets to include stakes on who would get the runs, and for how long.

  At the bank, it was unthinkable that I should choose to do something else while the lads were engaged in these games. If I had brought my knitting to do on a Friday afternoon, for example, I would have been kicked to the curb, but if I’d been willing to drink six quarts of a known emetic, I’d have been queen for a day.

  At Teengal, a different standard applies. Here, it is considered perfectly acceptable to spend a great deal of office time on personal grooming. Most of the girls take time during the workday, and not even during their lunch hour, to get their nails done, eyebrows shaped, and hair coiffed. When I walk past the various offices of the ad saleswomen, I often see them applying layers of lacquer to their hair or nails, or to whatever part of their body requires shining.

  There was a scandal on Wednesday. Every February, the beauty department holds a sale to get rid of all the millions of free samples they received during the previous year. Cosmetic and fashion concerns will do anything to have their products recommended by Teengal editors, and they think nothing of sending a shearling stole or a jeweled wristwatch to the beauty department in the hope of an endorsement.

  Whatever is left over after the beauty editors have had their pick is sold for charity. No item is priced at more than three dollars. To avoid a stampede, each girl is given a number at random to determine the time slot during which she will be allowed to enter the sample sale. Though each shopper is permitted to purchase only thirty dollars’ worth of merchandise, that’s still enough to guarantee that the best items will be gone after the first twenty people have passed through. I myself was number eighty-seven, but I still made out quite satisfactorily, with an Origins pedicure set containing a large bumpy soap, salt rub, and exfoliant; a loofah mitt; two Chanel lipsticks; a pair of space-age eyebrow tweezers that snaps the hair out using spring technology; a Cosmopolitan makeover computer program in which you scan your photo and try on different looks before applying them to your face; and a box of lavender bath beads.

  But high corruption was afoot. When the saleswomen and their assistants went around one another’s offices to display their purchases, a commotion surrounded Tam’s desk.

  “Where was this foot massager at the sample sale?” a saleswoman named Jocelyn asked Tam.

  “I don’t remember,” said Tam.

  “What was your number in the draw?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Well, mine was sixteen, and I don’t remember seeing the foot massager. Or this four-ounce bottle of Shalimar. Or this Hermès scarf! I definitely would have remembered seeing a Hermès scarf!”

  “They were all there,” said Tam. “On the tables with all the other merchandise.”

  “You’re chummy with the beauty editor, aren’t you?”

  “We’re friends, yeah, is that a crime?”

  “Did she give you a sneak tour of the sample sale before it started?”

  “That is the foulest suggestion I ever heard in my life.” Tam’s voice was strident. She said, “Judith, come in here. Did I step away from my desk even once this morning?”

  “No, ma’am,” I lied. “Not even to use the toilet.” Jocelyn narrowed her eyes at me and stormed away angrily.

  Tam thanked me by slipping one of her purchases under my desk. It was a tube of body glitter.

  The job is turning out far better than I had anticipated. I find myself with a great deal more free time than I deserve. Tam asked me on Thursday morning to rewind some Teengal promotional videotapes for her. I looked at them and said, “These are rewound already.”

  She said, “You can’t tell just by looking.”

  I said, “The tape is all on the left reel, so that means they’re all rewoun
d.”

  She thrust the tapes into my solar plexus. “Just rewind them anyway,” she said. While pretending to be rewinding the tapes I managed to sneak a cigarette break and get some gossip in with the office manager.

  I am utterly grateful to have Tam as a boss. I spent all of Friday playing Tetris on the computer, while managing to convince her that I was compiling her entire client file into an elaborate database. “This will help you to no end when I have completed it,” I said. “You — or, I should say, I — will be able to look up any account by name, company, revenue, NYSE symbol, their purchasing history; anything you like.”

  I managed to shirk off numerous tasks by claiming to be hard at work on this database.

  “When do you think you’ll get it up and running?” Tam asked.

  “Not for a while yet. There’s a malfunction in the Perl coding I’m using, so I’m trying to convert everything over to Visual Basic.”

  “Okay, well, you know what’s best, my little prodigy.”

  I was in a bind on Wednesday because Yevgeny wanted to meet me at four-thirty. I asked him to reschedule; he refused. I called Jung, mistress of ruses.

  “Jude?” she said. “I can hardly hear you. Speak up.”

  “I’m at Teengal. I can’t really talk louder than this. I need to get out of here early today to meet Yevgeny. What do I do?”

  “Leave a decoy jacket on your chair, and an open can of soda by your desk. This deception has the additional benefit that it makes it unclear what time you arrive at the office the following morning. Go to the control panel on your computer and disable your screen saver, because it activates after a few minutes of inactivity and people will realize you’ve been away from your desk. These are rather primitive techniques, but from what you tell me of Tam, she should be totally snowed.”

  I followed her instructions, and also created a dummy page for the database, and password-protected the computer from curious browsing. I started using these techniques daily to arrange my early departure.

  I also found a way to smoke without having to take the elevator down fifty flights and exit the building. There was a fire exit on the far side of the kitchen, and I could conceal my pack and lighter there, as well as hide the butts in an obliging potted plant.

  TEENGAL MAGAZINE, WEEK OF MARCH 1:

  On Thursday, the fire alarm went off and everyone had to evacuate the building. The publisher was hopping mad because everyone lost an hour and a half of productive time and we’re right in the middle of the prom issue. Later, Tam called me into her office.

  “Honey, did you butt out a lit cigarette into the plant on the fire escape?”

  “Are you sure it was a cigarette? Maybe there was some combustive reaction between the competing spray cans.”

  “Honey, Jocelyn saw you sneakin’ off to the fire escape with a pack of cigarettes.”

  I was incredulous. “Jocelyn? You’d believe Jocelyn, who tried to poach your foot massager?”

  “Honey.” She folded her arms and gave me the hairy eyeball.

  “At any rate, topsoil doesn’t catch fire.”

  “That’s not a real plant, honey, it’s all plastic. You did three thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the fire escape.”

  “Shouldn’t a fire escape be fireproof?”

  “Honey.”

  “You’re letting me go, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. But, before you go, can you tell me where I can find that database you been working on? I want your replacement to finish it.”

  “Look under a file called Tetris.”

  “Tetris? Okay, honey.”

  “Tomorrow is my birthday,” I said pitifully. I should have anticipated her response.

  Pointing to the SURPRISES ARE FOR BIRTHDAYS ONLY sign in her office, she yelled, “Surprise!”

  The following evening, Joshua took me out for my birthday dinner, which also turned out to be a consolation dinner. We went to a new restaurant owned by a French Vietnamese restaurateur; the wine cellar of his Paris restaurant was featured in Wine Spectator some months ago. I was terribly excited, though the meal would cost Joshua a third of his student stipend for the month.

  As we ate, Joshua said, “How old are you today, Judith?”

  I shrugged.

  He said, “Always so secretive. You are Brünnhilde, surrounding yourself in a ring of fire to keep people out. I mean that literally, too, like the fire you started in your office.”

  I said, “Now do you see what I mean? Even when I try to do honest labor it doesn’t work out for me.”

  Joshua said, “I’m not saying you deliberately started a fire, but your resentment at having to earn a living comes out in everything you do.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Quit smoking. Save your pennies.”

  “What does smoking have to do with anything, Yevgeny?”

  Joshua put down his fork. “Yevgeny? Who’s Yevgeny?”

  Shit shit shit shit. “Yevgeny Onegin,” I said. “The, uh, Tchaikovsky opera.”

  “Oh,” said Joshua, brightening momentarily. “But no, what was that opera about again? I should know this; I practically memorized the Oxford Companion to Opera. Isn’t Yevgeny Onegin some jaded aristocrat? That’s right, he’s debonair and wickedly charming but has no feelings, and he rejects the woman who’s in love with him.” His brow furrowed. “I remind you of him?”

  Oh, well done, Judith. “Sorry, I must have it confused with another opera.”

  At that moment the restaurateur, whom I recognized from the photos in Wine Spectator, began making rounds at the tables, asking everyone whether they enjoyed their dinner. I began chatting with him animatedly in French, which made Joshua roll his eyes.

  The large-ish woman at the table next to me observed my French banter with interest. She wore a pink blazer, too small for her, and in the back it had ridden up high on her neck, almost like a hood. It gave her a slightly sinister appearance. I had rather assumed she was impressed with me, until she opened her mouth.

  “Can you ask the waiter in Vietnamese whether they take credit cards here?” she said.

  “He’s not a waiter; he’s the owner. I don’t speak Vietnamese,” I said, confused.

  “But what were you doing just now?”

  “That’s French,” I said incredulously.

  “French?” She had a wide-eyed look of extreme surprise and some embarrassment. As a remedy for losing face, she simply repeated her mistake. “It sounded like Vietnamese.” She turned to her husband. “Didn’t that sound like Vietnamese?”

  “All educated people speak French,” Joshua said. The woman’s lips fluttered. Her husband glared at me and Joshua. They got up and left. How surprised I was at Joshua’s sudden hauteur. How I loved Joshua at that moment.

  “I’m a bad influence on you,” I said. “The Joshua I met in front of Thor’s bathroom would never have said anything like that.”

  “Oh, no, please don’t cry,” he said, reaching across the table and stroking my face, knocking over the salt shaker in the process.

  “Do you see what I’m up against?” I said. “Why did my parents go through all the expense and bother to make me accomplished? Fucking French lessons and piano lessons and drawing lessons and tennis lessons and no one appreciates it.”

  “I appreciate it,” he said. “It wasn’t in vain. You’re the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met. Otherwise I wouldn’t put up with all your chazerei.” His words made me weep harder.

  “Let’s go home,” said Joshua, gesturing for the check. “This place sucks. Too many tourists.”

  “First throw salt over your left shoulder,” I said. “You spilled.”

  “I didn’t know you were so superstitious. I think we’ll be all right without it,” he said.

  Joshua really should have listened to me about the salt.

  17

  Maurice Hall

  “JUDE? Is that you?”

  It was April Fools’ Day, and I was standing at the lox
counter at Zabar’s. The speaker was a fellow lox customer, a short, devilishly handsome man with George Stephanopoulos hair, who I realized was none other than Boswell, Heike’s gay client.

  “Boswell!” We kissed on both cheeks.

  One of the lox cutters shouted, “Number 105.”

  An elderly man in a walker croaked, “I’m 105. I’m 105.”

  I said to the man, “You’re C105, I’m B105. That’s me they’re calling. Don’t pretend you don’t hear me, old man. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to yield. You’re not up for a long, long time.” I shoved my way up to the counter, producing my ticket.

  “Feh!” said C105, waving his hand contemptuously at me and shuffling to the side with his walker.

  “Eastern Nova, half a pound, paper-thin, please, and from the middle of the fish,” I said to Harry, the most skilled of the lox cutters.

  “You got it,” he said.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Boswell.

  “Not at all. A lox spot, once lost, is never recovered. How’ve you been? How’s the discreet bourgeoisie treating you these days?”

  “Funny you should ask. I have a favor to ask of you. It’s bourgeois, and I want you to be discreet.”

  “YOU’RE SOMETHING of a fag hag, aren’t you?” Boswell asked the following Wednesday over drinks in some wood-paneled midtown club building.

  I shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t go that far; I just find homophobia to be the pinnacle of poor taste.” I didn’t see the point of this; I thought we were there to discuss the possibility of his finding me a job.

  “So everything just boils down to bad manners? You really are an aesthete. Do you know much about gays in Britain during the early twentieth century?”

  I replied that I did not.

  “This was the world of Oscar Wilde, the underworld that E. M. Forster wrote about in secret. These gay, upper-class Englishmen would seduce scruffy cockney sailors and lounge around with them, the beautiful dirty youths not understanding a word of the conversation, in all likelihood. I see this type of class commingling happen often even now. Believe me, it’s far more common in the gay community than among breeders. I mean, heterosexuals, in your parlance.”