Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “Hey,” Casey said.

  “Shopping?” Ella said, her voice breaking. Casey’s face looked worse than it had from a distance.

  “Seems that way.”

  “That’s pretty.” Ella pointed to the suit on top of Casey’s hold pile.

  “Yeah,” Casey replied. She drew a quick breath. If it were a bar, she would have lit a cigarette. “What are you doing here?” she asked curtly.

  “I. . .” Ella hesitated. How was she supposed to talk to Casey, the girl she’d most wanted to befriend at church? “I. . . just ordered my wedding dress.” She cast her eyes down, not knowing what Casey’s reaction would be. Her fiancé, Ted, had convinced her that they should get married after her graduation, and she’d been swept up in his enthusiasm for their future. He was very convincing, and Ella loved him. She had never loved anyone else. Her father wasn’t against it but appeared annoyed—a look flickered across his eyes—whenever Ted expressed his ambition and well-laid plans. Ted had already written up a draft of their announcement to submit to The New York Times and to his alumni magazines at Exeter and Harvard.

  “You’re getting married?” Casey sighed. “With whom, may I ask?” She smiled as if Ella were a customer.

  “Ted Kim.” Ella shrugged. “I don’t think you’d know him. He’s from Alaska.”

  “Alaska?” Casey exclaimed.

  “Uh-huh.” Ella nodded.

  “And where did he go to school?” It was prying and vulgar to ask, but Casey couldn’t help herself.

  “Harvard,” Ella said nervously. “I mean, he’s not our age. He finished business school a couple of years ago.”

  “Where?” Casey said.

  “Harvard.”

  “Right.” Casey nodded. “How old is. . . ?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Of course.” It was no way to behave. Casey ordinarily prided herself on her manners.

  Ella looked down at her sandals. “Everyone’s invited. Your parents, you. . . I mean. . . if you want to come. It’s at the church. You know, like the other weddings.”

  “God almighty. You’re having it at the church. You are amazing, Ella.” Casey had vowed never to have the typical Korean church wedding with about five hundred guests who showed up without having been invited, the reception with a groaning buffet of Korean food served by a team of lady volunteers in the church basement, no alcohol in sight.

  Ella heard Casey’s contempt and concealed her hurt feelings. She had come down the escalator and spotted Casey’s bruised face beneath the khaki beach hat and had taken it as a kind of sign. She had forced herself to see if Casey was all right and if there was something she could do for her. Ella bit her lower lip, trying to figure out how to leave, sensing Casey wanted her to go away.

  Casey saw the pain she’d caused and felt crummy. She smiled. “Ella, I’m in a shitty mood. Nothing related to you. I’m sorry if I sounded like a bitch. Congratulations on your wedding. Really.”

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m fine. You didn’t do anything,” Ella said.

  “Well. . .” Casey glanced at her drugstore Timex. “I’m sure he’s wonderful. Ted, right? Lucky bastard. We should celebrate sometime. Do lunch. Something.” She felt sickened by her words. She despised lying.

  Maud stood patiently watching this curious exchange between the two Asian women. At a pause, she asked Casey to spell out her name for the hold ticket.

  “Never mind,” Casey said.

  Maud didn’t understand.

  “I want to take them. Here.” Casey opened her wallet and handed Maud her credit card.

  Maud keyed in the SKU numbers for the clothes, then swiped the card.

  The total was forty-three hundred plus change. The hotel room would be four hundred or so. She had managed to max out her first credit card in one day. Maud handed her the receipt, and Casey signed it. She was now a Wilma.

  Ella made no move to leave Casey’s side. In all their years, they had never been alone in this way. She stared at Casey’s lost expression.

  “Are you free now?” Ella asked. “For lunch?”

  Casey checked the girl’s face, unable to believe Ella’s relentlessness.

  She gave Ella a brief, discouraged nod, and without missing a beat, Ella asked her the question her father asked her whenever she met him at his office after work: “Tell me, what would you like to eat?”

  Their steaks and creamed spinach arrived right away, and the girls ate quietly. Casey wasn’t hungry, but the idea of going to a dark steakhouse had made sense to her somehow. Thankfully, Ella didn’t pry about her face. She just kept smiling, and Casey felt bad for having such a rotten attitude. She asked about Ella’s work.

  Ella was the associate development director of an all-boys’ private school on the Upper East Side, where she also lived. “I believe in education. So I can raise money for that. You know, for scholarships and the endowment,” Ella said, parroting her young boss, David Greene. “To help children who couldn’t otherwise—” She stopped herself, feeling stupid suddenly. No doubt Casey had been a scholarship student. David would have known not to say that. He was natural at talking to different kinds of people and always thoughtful about a person’s background. “Anyway. It’s a very pleasant job. I love going to the office. And I have a great boss. He’s a good friend, really.”

  Casey observed Ella’s retreat. She wouldn’t take the rich girl’s philanthropic comments personally. After all, she had been the grateful recipient of Princeton’s largesse. Someone with these lofty ideals had passed the hat on her behalf. She and Jay had been the equivalents of amusing and tolerated peasants whose enrollment reflected the university’s noblesse oblige. She asked Ella about the wedding. The idea of marrying at the age of twenty-one seemed nutty to Casey.

  “I don’t get it,” Casey said. “Why now?”

  Ella stated Ted’s refrain: “When you love someone, you make a commitment.”

  “Forever?” Casey raised her eyebrows.

  “Uh-huh,” Ella answered.

  Ted had forced something of a gentle ultimatum with Ella. The primary gist of his campaign was: “If you love me, you will marry me.” He’d employed the same tactics about their having sex. He’d said to Ella, “I love you, and I want to be closer to you. If we make love, we will know each other even better. I want to know you completely, Ella. Don’t you want that, too? Don’t you want to know me?” What could the girl say? He wanted, so Ella gave.

  “I guess he makes you happy, then.” Casey nodded, trying to sound as though she believed this might be a good thing.

  “Yes,” Ella said, searching Casey’s face, wondering why she was so cynical about love.

  Casey saw the question in Ella’s face. “I just found my college boyfriend in bed with two girls.”

  “What?” Ella said.

  The shock value alone of saying such a thing made the humiliation almost worthwhile.

  “They were great-looking girls,” Casey admitted. They really were. She couldn’t let go of just how pretty they were. “Never mind.” Somehow, it wasn’t funny anymore.

  Ella refrained from asking anything but kept nodding. She was still aghast that such a thing could happen.

  “You’re looking at my bruises,” Casey said.

  “It must hurt.”

  “I had a fight with my father.” Casey laughed. “You should see how he looks.”

  Ella smiled painfully. It was impossible to think of her father ever striking her. “Are you really staying at the Carlyle?”

  “Does that surprise you? Because my parents manage a dry cleaner?”

  Ella shook her head. “No. No. That isn’t what I meant. Casey, that’s not fair.”

  “You’re right. My inner bitch is just having a field day with you.” The brown liquid around the sirloin congealed—streaks of white fat marbled the plate.

  “You have found me at the wrong time, Ella. And to be honest, you’re like the last person I want to look this pathetic in front of.”

&nb
sp; “Why?” Ella was surprised by this.

  “Because. Forget it.” Casey picked up her fork and knife and cut into the meat. She wanted Tabasco.

  “I’m sure you have lots of money and. . . ,” Ella said, feeling exasperated by Casey’s persistent hostility.

  “No, I don’t, actually. I just maxed out my credit card because I was so pissed at you.”

  “Me?”

  “No. Not you.” Casey checked herself. “Me.”

  Ella looked confused.

  “I’m a failure. And you’re like a goddamn success parade. God. I hate myself.” Casey started to cry. “I’m sorry. As you can see, I’m not very good company. I better get going.” She looked at her watch and picked up her things. “Thanks for lunch.”

  “Where? Where are you going? You can’t go back home. I mean. . .” Ella didn’t know how to say that right. She didn’t actually know if Casey could go home or not.

  Casey sighed and looked up at the tin ceiling painted a verdigris color. How did this happen to her? Then she knew: She made it happen. It was her own fault.

  “And you have no money. Can I give you money? Do you have another place to stay? I mean. . . may I call someone for you? Can you—”

  “Stop with the questions. I’ll figure something out. This isn’t your problem. I don’t want your help.”

  “What did I ever do to you?” Ella raised her voice.

  “Nothing. You’ve done nothing. I’m just a very small person.” Casey smiled. “Trapped in a very big frame.”

  “You could stay with me. I have an extra bedroom. Until you sort things out.”

  “You have an extra bedroom?”

  “Yes, you can hate me for that, too,” Ella said, laughing. “All right?”

  Ella was making a joke, Casey thought. Ella Shim could be sarcastic. Who knew? She smiled, then color rushed to her face and her eyes stung. “Please don’t be nice to me. It’s really. . .” She took a deep breath.

  “I don’t want anything from you, Casey. I want to help.” Ella tried to think of a new way to explain this to Casey, who obviously didn’t trust anyone at all. Ted was like this. He always thought everyone had an ulterior motive—that there could never be pure altruism.

  “Maybe if I were in your situation, I could ask you for the same,” Ella said. She reasoned that if Casey were like Ted—an argument based on exchange principles might be persuasive.

  “You’d never be in this situation, Ella.”

  Ella narrowed her eyes, confounded by Casey’s reply. “You are so arrogant, Casey. Anyone could be in your situation.” She said this calmly. “Anyone at all.”

  Casey examined Ella’s fine and rare features. There was a strength there she hadn’t noticed before. It was the way she held her head erect, as if she had eyes in the back of her head as well and those eyes looked straight out to the other side of the steakhouse. Casey had been wrong about her. And she’d been envious of a good person who’d wished her well.

  “After lunch,” Ella said, “we can go and check you out of the hotel. You can come stay with me. I would love that.” Ella borrowed Ted’s assurance and the finality of his gestures—his convincing use of charisma and simple words.

  Casey nodded. Today, she would have followed Maud the salesperson home.

  Ella asked for the bill and paid it.

  5 BOND

  ADOZEN YEARS OF BALLET LESSONS had given Ella Shim ideal posture. She was seated on a deeply cushioned sofa in her bright living room—her back pin-straight, her head bent slightly as she reviewed a recipe for lamb. There were four cookbooks tabbed with rack of lamb recipes on top of the coffee table and a thick one spread open on her lap. The following week was Ted’s thirty-first birthday, and she wanted to re-create the dish that Ted had liked so much at Bouley, but she didn’t have the exact recipe.

  Ella was an accomplished cook. She loved to read cookbooks and food magazines. In high school, she’d enjoyed planning special menus for her father, who encouraged her interest by buying her Mauviel copper pots and installing wooden dowels in the kitchen walls so she could dry her hand-cut pasta. When church guests visited the Shim household in Forest Hills, Ella offered them her dense orange-flavored pound cake, candied rhubarb scones with Irish butter procured from Dean & DeLuca, or Dr. Shim’s favorite: pâte à choux cream puffs with hong cha. At Wellesley, Ella had missed her windowed kitchen in Queens. Her current two-bedroom Upper East Side apartment, which her father had purchased for her after graduation and where she and Ted intended to live after they got married, had a nice-size kitchen with enough counter space to roll pie crust and to put up kimchi.

  At the moment, she was absorbed in the taste memory of the lamb she’d eaten with Ted at the French restaurant on Duane Street. She felt she could create a dish close to it.

  Seated near her on the wing chair upholstered with crewelwork, Ted was checking the movie schedule in the Times. He was annoyed at having agreed to see a foreign film that Ella’s houseguest had recommended. From the living room, they could hear the sound of running water from the guest bathroom. It was Friday night, and Casey was getting ready to meet friends at the Princeton Club for Virginia’s send-off to Italy.

  Ella drafted a list of ingredients and cooking instructions in her loopy girls’ school cursive. She was also trying to figure out how to convince Ted to help Casey get a job. His buddies from HBS dispensed favors for one another all the time.

  “Ted, can’t you help her?” Ella didn’t look up from the orange-and-white-checkered cookbook.

  Ted snapped the newspaper shut. But the sight of his pretty fiancée bent over her cookbooks made him smile. He was smitten with her delicacy.

  “My dear Ella,” he said, making his face stern, “your friend. . .” He paused. Ella had never mentioned Casey until she’d moved in. And now this so-called friend who had quite a mouth on her had been camping out at Ella’s place for four weeks. “Casey isn’t the least bit interested in finance,” Ted continued. “I doubt she knows the difference between debt and equity.”

  “But. . . Ted, you didn’t always know the difference, either.” Ella looked earnestly at him. “People have to learn things. And they have to be taught. Right?”

  “Your friend already interviewed on campus with the Kearn Davis investment banking program in the spring,” he said.

  “And?”

  “And she was dinged.” Ted rolled his eyes. “What was she thinking? Your friend applied to one firm. What balls.”

  He’d applied to eight banks in his senior year at Harvard and was invited to join seven. After working for four years at Pearson Crowell, a bulge bracket investment bank, as an analyst and later as senior associate, he got into Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Then he chose Kearn Davis, the sole securities firm that had rejected him as an undergraduate. In four years, Ted was made an executive director, and he was slated for managing director in January. He was two years ahead of his own plan.

  Ella looked at him and inhaled before saying, “You have no reason to dislike her.”

  “I don’t dislike her,” he said. “I’m merely being rational, Ella. Applying to just one program shows nerve and a sense of overentitlement. These Ivy League girls,” he muttered. “And it shows a lack of seriousness.” He folded the newspaper lengthwise, then stared her down, half smiling. He was impressed by Ella’s insistence. Normally she gave up fairly quickly, but Ted preferred challenges.

  “Listen, sweetheart. . .” His voice dropped a pitch, and he sounded sincere. “I know you’re trying to help. But, you know, I’ve worked hard for my good name. You can’t expect me to risk my reputation by giving my word on an individual I don’t know well and who seems to me preternaturally unable to stick it out.”

  Ella tilted her head and exhaled through her thin nostrils. Ted didn’t believe in yielding any advantage unless he had to. Two years ago, he’d spotted her at the Au Bon Pain near the Citicorp building in midtown and had pursued her single-mindedly. His colle
agues and HBS friends treated her as though she were a coveted prize, and she felt afraid to speak to them.

  But what Ted didn’t understand was that Ella had been pursued and flattered before. She loved him because he was a boy, anxious and hungry, running from Alaska. He was the son of immigrant cannery workers and had an older brother working as a mailman in Anchorage. His sister was a former professional bodybuilder who taught aerobics, and she was raising two sons as a single mother. Ella would have loved Ted if he’d had nothing but his desire. She was attracted to him because he was so clear and because he was so unflappable. But beneath all that, she saw the self-doubts that he could not concede to her or to himself—his terrors drove him. She liked all of that, too.

  Ted and Ella heard the pipes shutting down as Casey’s shower ended, and Ella lowered her voice. She appealed to him again, because she felt he, more than anyone else, ought to understand Casey’s situation.

  “She’s been sending out résumés all month, and she hasn’t heard a thing.”

  “The economy, Ella. I know you feel sorry for your friend. . .”

  “Her father hits her. She can’t go back home. You have to help her. She has no money, and she won’t take any from me.”

  “You offered her money?” Ted made a face of incomprehension. “What is it with you, princess? You think the stuff grows on trees?”

  “Ted. . .” Ella shut her cookbook.

  “Tell her to get any job.”

  “That’s what she’s trying to do.”

  “Any job. Sell lipsticks or gloves, or whatever it is that she used to do in college.”

  “She might. But it’s one thing to work in retail while you’re in college, and another thing to do it full-time after.” She stopped herself. “Her parents don’t have any money, and her sister’s applying to med school next year. Her boyfriend cheated on her.”

  Ted snorted. “That’s what you get for dating white guys.”

  Ella ignored this. “But her family can’t help her. And what’s the point of succeeding, Ted, if you can’t help others with your power?”