Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “No,” Leah found herself saying quietly, thinking it would be a better deed for her to clean the house and fix dinner for the choir director than to wait at the hospital. “I’ll keep working. I really prefer it. I was feeling bad that I’m not helping Tina. Anyway. . .” She made a long face, looking ashamed of herself. She was surprised by her own admission.

  “But Cecilia could probably come tomorrow.”

  “Has she had chicken pox?” Leah asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, thinking he should have thought of that.

  “I’ll stay. He’s asleep, and I’ll make up the bed and finish up. Please don’t worry.”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  Leah nodded reassuringly. The resemblance to his sister when she smiled like that was uncanny, and he had to shake it off. Douglas wrote down his beeper number and left her in the kitchen.

  Two hours passed, but Douglas had not returned. Charles was still asleep. The kitchen was nearly clean, and Leah had drawn up a list using a small brown bag of all the things the house needed, like paper towels, laundry soap, lightbulbs, and basic food items like milk, juice, and coffee. He had a tablespoon of cooking oil left in the bottle and no white sugar or tea. From the moldy take-out containers in the refrigerator, it looked as if he had been ordering in; otherwise, he’d been eating out of cans or boxes. Perhaps he ate out all the time, but she had no way of knowing. Leah washed the inside and outside of the Japanese rice cooker with hot water and soap, and she opened the new bag of rice found in the corner of the pantry and made a fresh pot. She felt happier than she had in a long while. What she was doing really mattered. She carried up the clean pile of sheets and went to Charles’s bedroom and discovered the mess Elder Shim had already witnessed.

  She made up the bed and diligently carried down load after load of wash and sorted the piles by colors. It was six in the evening, and she hadn’t heard from the elder yet. Leah didn’t know where she was exactly or where the nearest subway station was located. There were no taxis outside the window, and she didn’t know whom to call. The cooker beeped three times when the rice was done, and she opened the lid and fluffed the steamed grains. She was hungry herself. It would have been nice to have a cracker or an apple, but there wasn’t anything like that in the house. She knew because she’d already looked. There were four cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup and three tins of tuna in oil. Leah picked up the broom, dustpan, and rags and went upstairs.

  After she picked up the books and scores from the floor and stacked them on the chest of drawers, she moved the scattered pairs of shoes left in his unused fireplace into his closet, then cleaned the floors as her mother had taught her to do—first sweep carefully, then wipe with a wet rag, and then last, a dry one.

  “What are you doing?” Charles asked her, leaning uneasily against the doorjamb of his bedroom.

  “Huh,” Leah said, startled. She touched her heart with her hand. Concentrating on her work, she’d almost forgotten about him.

  “Who let you up here?” he asked, his voice quiet and dazed. He wasn’t angry, but he was annoyed at himself, because he couldn’t honestly recall how the soloist had gotten into his house. He rubbed his upper arms, feeling the chill of the bedroom.

  Leah had opened the windows to air the room. She’d heard somewhere that rooms with sick people should be aired often.

  Charles marveled at the cleanliness of the room. The floors gleamed with the original polish, reminding him of the way the house had looked initially when he and his father had come by with the real estate broker.

  “I came with Elder Shim,” she said. Didn’t he remember? “But he got called to the hospital. And I was cleaning up. I’m sorry. I was trying to help—”

  “No. I mean, okay. I. . . I—” Charles closed his eyes, feeling dizzy.

  “Are you all right?”

  Charles clenched his teeth, trying to focus.

  “Have you eaten today?” she asked.

  “Where is Elder Shim?”

  “I—he was paged, and he’s coming back soon.” Hadn’t he heard what she’d said only a moment ago? she wondered. “I’ll leave as soon as he comes. I just wanted to finish the laundry.”

  Charles noticed then that all the clothes on the floor were gone.

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Leah said, worried that he would faint. She stood up from the floor and went to him.

  Charles moved toward the bed, and on his third step, he nearly crashed into her. She stayed close to him, trying to balance herself in case she needed to break his fall. He weaved a bit, and Leah slipped her hand beneath his arm to prop him up. He smelled like cigarettes and sweat.

  “It’s late. Shouldn’t you be home?” he asked as she put the covers over his legs.

  “If you can call a taxi for me, I can go, but Elder Shim is coming back to—”

  “I’m not asking you to leave, I just thought your husband—”

  “He’s in California.”

  “Oh.” Charles didn’t ask any further.

  “I think you should eat something. Wait here.” In his weakness, Leah permitted herself to possess greater authority in her voice.

  It took two trips to bring his soup, fish, and rice up the stairs. He drank two cans of juice and ate his food silently in steady bites. He finished his dinner, and Leah felt pleased at his appetite. When he was done, she took the dishes downstairs and began to clean the living room. Now, wide awake and fed, Charles sat up in bed, wondering what to say to her. The doorbell chimed, and Leah rushed to get it.

  Douglas was breathless. The patient’s infection had been serious, and the consults with the neurologist and cardiologist had taken longer than he’d expected. After the patient had settled, he had left right away, but there was traffic on the bridge. He explained himself to the deaconess, but she didn’t seem to have minded the wait. The house was nearly unrecognizable.

  “You did so much work,” he said, amazed by her progress. He removed his overcoat, and Leah took it from him. They were still standing in the foyer.

  “I wasn’t saving anyone’s life.” She smiled.

  Douglas laughed, privately pleased with what she’d said.

  “Is our patient awake?” He addressed her as if she were a nurse.

  Leah nodded. She told him how he’d nearly fainted, but he’d managed to drink the orange juice and eat his dinner. There was a lilt of pride in her voice.

  Douglas looked up when he heard the footsteps on the staircase. Charles had changed from his sweater into a clean dress shirt. “I didn’t realize I had gotten so disgusting,” he said, holding the old sweater in his hand. “Thank you so much for everything,” he said, looking in Leah’s direction, but she couldn’t look back at him. “I’m sorry about the house.”

  “You were sick and alone. There was nothing you could do,” Douglas said, studying the way the choir director was observing the deaconess. He felt oddly possessive of her.

  Charles walked down the last few steps, holding on to the wood banister. “Can I offer you anything?” Was there any tea or coffee in the house? He had absolutely no idea.

  Leah refused, smiling. She checked her watch and rushed to the laundry room to bring over the basket of folded clothes. “I’ll take these upstairs.”

  Charles reached over to take it from her, but Leah wouldn’t let him, worried that he might fall. “It’s all right,” she said. “I like to work, to finish things.” She went to put the clothes away.

  “You should go back to sleep,” Douglas said. “And maybe we can pray for you when the deaconess comes back down.”

  Charles nodded, thinking he would let them do this.

  When Leah returned, they all sat in the living room and prayed for Charles’s health and well-being. Douglas asked God to bring about a rapid recovery to the choir director so the church could soon bring greater praise to Him. “To Him be the glory,” Douglas said, ending his prayer.

  “Ah-men,” Leah said, joining the elder’s amen. “Ah
-men,” Charles mumbled softly.

  The hospitality committee put on their coats and left the choir director’s house. When Charles stood by the open door, Douglas told him to go inside so he wouldn’t get cold. For May, it was a brisk evening.

  Charles closed the door, and from his front window, he watched the green station wagon drive away. He’d been rescued, but in Deaconess Cho’s departure, he felt more alone than he had felt in a long time. He noticed that he was still clutching the dingy sweater. He folded it and saw that it needed badly to be cleaned.

  3 DESIGN

  A FEDERAL EXPRESS PACKAGE WITH SAMPLES from a high-end T-shirt manufacturer in Mississippi had been delivered to the store that morning. Although Sabine usually came by on Saturdays, she’d stayed home because of a migraine. Sabine was calling Casey at the hat counter from her salmon-colored bedroom.

  “Can you bring them by? Sweet-ie, please?” Sabine took a sip of her frothy macha.

  “How are you feeling?” Casey asked, trying to sound sympathetic. Lately, Sabine was having headaches more frequently. She hadn’t come into the office for two Saturdays in a row.

  “Oh, you know. I turn down the shades, and the power naps help. Casey, can’t you bring the box over, baby girl?”

  Casey could sense from Sabine’s petulance that she was bored more than anything else. Her boss wanted amusement. That’s why she couldn’t just send a messenger to get the package.

  “And it would be so nice to see you. You can have dinner here. And Isaac would love to see you, too. I feel so sorry for him when I get these headaches. I’m no fun to be with.”

  Judith was on break, and Casey was alone at her station. In her salesperson voice, low and courteous, she said to no one, “Yes, miss. May I help you?”

  Sabine raised her voice a notch. “Honey, do you want me to call you back?”

  It had been a stupid idea. Unless Sabine got her answer, she’d definitely call her back in ten minutes flat.

  “Hang on, Sabine.” Casey rested the phone on the counter. She leaned her hip against the glass cabinet, her back arching with tension. On the top shelf of the display case, a white camellia hat pin was out of line with its row, and Casey straightened it. Earlier that morning, two English sisters had come by searching for smart New York hats for a wedding in Canterbury. The elder of the two had asked to see the pin. The younger one, about forty years old, had bought a brown cocktail hat with a dotted veil that Casey had made, and her elder sister, the one with a more modern sensibility, picked up a greenish black feathered pillbox. Her commission for the two sales had come to a hundred and eighty dollars. Casey felt guilty at the thought of it, and she put her hand on the phone. If Sabine didn’t let her consign her pieces and allow her to keep the full profits, her normal commission would have been sixty bucks.

  Casey drew her hand away from the phone. Sabine hadn’t invited Unu to dinner. What was he to do on a Saturday night? They were supposed to have spaghetti and rent a video. Poor Unu was still out of work and, as to be expected, not feeling so terrific. But Sabine thought he was a loser and had told Casey as much on more than one occasion. Unu had never once been asked to dinner at Sabine’s apartment. Sometimes Casey thought Sabine hated Korean men.

  “Casey?. . . Oh, Casey?”

  Casey picked up the receiver. “Hi, sorry about that. A customer.”

  “No sale?”

  “Nope.”

  “What time is it, honey?” Sabine asked.

  Casey looked at her watch. The Rolex stared back at her. “Eleven-twelve.”

  “Do you have a lot of homework this weekend?”

  “I do.” An ugly accounting project was due on Tuesday.

  “Maybe you can do some during your lunch break. You can use my office.”

  Casey closed her eyes.

  “Dinner won’t take long, baby girl. Tell Sabine what you’d like to eat.”

  And that was that. Casey phoned home, but Unu wasn’t there. She left a message on the machine saying she had to go to Sabine’s for dinner. Financially, things were rotten for her and Unu. As usual, Casey was perennially in hock, and Unu, who’d spent his severance, was looking for work, trading occasionally on his own account, and mostly gambling to pay the bills. Her mother had taught her that a woman should never make a man feel bad about money. In her experience as a salesgirl, she’d also observed that men across the board were vulnerable about two issues: money and hair loss. Unu was in a bad way at the moment, and she believed that if she said anything about their money situation or his gambling, he’d disintegrate from the shame. She could imagine him vaporizing like a figure in a science fiction movie—Unu breaking up into a billion particles. Whoosh. She also had no right to talk when it came to personal finances. Zero.

  To cut expenses, she’d stopped taking her classes at FIT. The tuition was negligible compared with what she’d paid at Princeton and NYU Stern, but it was still a month’s worth of groceries. She’d also calculated how much it cost to see her friends after class for drinks. Beer and bar snacks added up, not to mention carfare when it got late. The brown cocktail hat was the last one she’d made to sell. At night when she lay in bed with the down comforter pulled up to her chin, Casey found herself praying for one thing—that she hadn’t made another incredibly expensive mistake with her life by going back to school. The spot on the summer associate program was, she hoped, the answer to her doubts.

  At school, outside of classes, all she ever heard was this distillation of the truth: The whole point of business school for those specializing in finance was to get a summer associate position at an investment bank; at the end of the summer, you were supposed to score an offer to return to the Wall Street firm after graduation; in the beginning of your second year, you could even try to leverage your permanent offer into an upgrade if you were gutsy enough; if all went well, you started the big fat job upon graduation. With those jumbo bonus checks you earned postgraduation, you were supposed to pay off your student loans in two years—the same number it took you to incur the aforesaid debt. Obviously, the only jobs that could help you reduce your debit line with this kind of speed were top investment banks in the only street that mattered. Of all the areas of specialty at Stern, Casey had chosen finance—where the top money went.

  Four years had passed since Casey had graduated from college, and this was what she had figured out: She did not want to fail anymore either privately or publicly. More than any other woman Casey had ever known, she admired Sabine, a self-made woman and pioneer in her field. When Casey chose NYU Stern without asking her and Isaac for help to get off the waiting list at Columbia (not that there was any guarantee of her admission, as Sabine periodically implied, merely because Isaac was a trustee or because his help had in fact gotten Jay Currie into Columbia), and when she refused Sabine’s offer to pay for school, Casey had bought a kind of autonomy that had a possibly titanic downside—an ocean of humiliation if she didn’t land a premium job on her own. And as for her parents, when she deferred away Columbia Law and moved in with a divorced guy who had no intention of marrying her, there was hardly any room for redemption. Her younger sister was married to a nice Korean doctor-to-be and had given birth to a son. No contest. Only this month, she had violated her own sense of propriety and asked Hugh Underhill for help, and now, if she failed to get a permanent offer from the banking program after the summer ended, she would look colossally stupid in front of her friend. She was up to nearly two packs a day and drank a lot of Diet Cokes. She had trouble sleeping at night.

  So Casey did what she knew how to do when she woke up involuntarily at three in the morning: She studied. The irony, she had learned, was that there was no point to her lovely transcript if the fancy banks thought so little of NYU Stern and shopped for students only at Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and even less so, Columbia. In the end, she’d had to call Hugh—a man whose penis she had touched in the backseat of a taxi.

  When she had been a student at Princeton, she and her friends were ta
ught that to consider Ivy League schools as being better than non-Ivies was elitist and vulgar. You would never say a Princetonian was superior to a Queens College graduate. Going to NYU (a top ten business school, but not top five) had taught Casey what her father had insisted all along: Designer labels mattered. The very banks that had refused to recruit at Stern had come to interview twenty-year-olds at Princeton for their undergraduate analyst program. When Casey had been turned down by Kearn Davis her senior year in college, she had not understood then that it was because she had been unwilling to play along (the crazy yellow suit, the Nancy Reagan jokes, and her conceit to apply to only one bank—accurately pointed out by Ted Kim), but at least the firm had come by to take a look. She’d had a door open where she could fail or succeed. There had been a door.

  Naive. Casey had been that. She had not appreciated the blinding privilege and protections of an Ivy League degree until she went to a school without the cooling shade of its green leaves and silky tendrils. If she had gone to Columbia Law School, she might have been a first-year associate already, and perhaps a third of her loans could have been gone.

  When Judith returned, she told Casey to take her lunch break. Casey went to Sabine’s office and pulled out her accounting homework, but before she started, she found the FedEx box and dropped it in her tote bag.

  Isaac Gottesman opened the door of the penthouse and waited for Casey to come up.

  The girl stepped off the elevator with her bare head cast downward, carrying her brown fedora in one hand and a Federal Express package in the other. Casey wore a white schoolboy blouse cinched in the waist with a wide brown belt, a short tweed necktie, wool trousers, and men’s-style oxford shoes. Her clothing was comically attention getting, but her expression was dejected.