by Dana Bate
The one upside to being kicked out of an apartment where I owned very little is that I brought with me only the stuff I care about: clothes, toiletries, books, and kitchen gear. I may not have a dresser, but my kitchen drawers are lined with measuring cups and mixing bowls, citrus zesters and Kugelhopf pans. Any other random crap I collected—the kind of stuff that gets shoved in a junk drawer and forgotten about—is Adam’s problem, not mine. I hope he enjoys his drawer of nonfunctional pens.
As I rub the sleep from my eyes, the Knight Rider theme song blares from beneath a pile of pants. My cell phone. I jump up and rummage through the stack of denim, wearing nothing but an old Cornell T-shirt with a large coffee stain down the front. For the first time, I appreciate my apartment’s few windows.
I glance at the screen on my cell phone and see a very long series of numbers. An international call. My parents.
“Hello?” I say, my voice scratchy with sleep.
“Hi, sweetie, it’s Mom. I got your e-mail. How are you?”
I sent my parents an e-mail a few days ago telling them Adam and I split up and sending them my new address. I didn’t want to bother them all the way in England over something as silly as a breakup, but I figured they’d want to know I moved. I also secretly hoped they’d send money. They didn’t.
“I’m okay. Settling into my new place and everything.”
“What happened? I thought things with you and Adam were going well.”
“Obviously not.” My tone is snarkier than I intended, but I’m tired of telling and retelling this story. The breakup has been hard enough without having to relive it twenty times. My mom never cared for Adam anyway. She was convinced he would always promote his own career at the expense of mine—that his intense ambition would inevitably stifle my own. I’m not in the mood to listen to her gloat.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. I know how you must feel. But you are beautiful and brilliant, and anyone who can’t see that must be an idiot.”
“I’m the idiot. Or at least the one who can’t keep her mouth shut.”
“Listen—any man who is looking for a submissive wallflower is living in the wrong era!” I pull the phone from my ear to keep from going deaf. “Do you think I became a prominent and tenured professor by not speaking my mind? You are a strong woman with something to say. Some man isn’t going to muzzle you—I don’t care who he is!”
If she knew my “something to say” was not about economic theory or civil rights, but about leg of lamb and beef satay, she might change her mind. My mother has always regarded my interest in food as a trivial hobby, an unfortunate pastime I picked up from her mother-in-law. If she’s said it once, she’s said it a hundred times: “My friends and I didn’t break down all these barriers so that you could end up back in a kitchen!” So, needless to say, cooking isn’t something over which we bond.
“I appreciate that, Mom. I’m doing okay. Don’t worry.”
“Well, just so you know, your father and I talked last night, and he’s going to wire a couple hundred dollars into your checking account to see you through the move.”
“Oh, Mom, you don’t have to do that …” My halfhearted protest doesn’t convince even me. I’ve already spent hundreds of dollars I don’t have on an air mattress and new bedding.
“It’s only two hundred dollars,” she says. “We insist. Anyway, how’s work going?”
Ugh, work. Let’s see. Between my intensive apartment search and looking for free furniture, I am massively behind schedule. I’ve barely done a thing about Mark’s December conference. I’ve also run into Millie almost every day since Adam and I broke up, where I’ve been forced to engage in stilted, awkward conversations that make it clear Millie still hasn’t forgiven me and possibly never will. So that’s been a treat.
“It’s been … a little exhausting lately.”
“I could put in a call to Mark. You know we have a good professional rapport.”
“No, Mom. Things are fine. Just busy.” The last thing I want is my mother running to Mark on my behalf, especially when the most intensive work I’ve done recently has involved monitoring Adam’s Facebook relationship status (for the record, he is still “single”).
“Well, before I let you go, I’ve been meaning to tell you about a wonderful fellowship opportunity I came across. Princeton is offering an economics fellowship perfect for someone your age.”
“Princeton?”
“Yes, sweetie, Princeton. I think you should apply. I know Mark would write you a good reference, and I have some connections there as well. I’ll send you the link.”
“You can send it, but I’m not making any promises,” I say.
“What do you mean by that?”
“That I’m not really fellowship material.”
“Of course you are. Why would you say that? Of course you’re fellowship material. They’d be lucky to have someone like you.”
“Assuming I’d want to apply to a fellowship like that. Which I don’t.”
“You haven’t even seen the description of the fellowship! Just read it over. Then decide.”
I have no interest whatsoever in applying for an economics fellowship, but this is how we work, my mother and I: she suggests an activity I should pursue, I push back, and she takes my resistance as further evidence I am too naïve and inexperienced to know what is in my best interest. The pattern persists, I suppose, because up to this point, I’ve done most of the things my parents wanted me to do—everything from bassoon lessons to SAT prep to a job at a Washington think tank. The main reason I pursued those activities was because I knew I could do them, and doing so would be an easy way to win my parents’ approval. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been chasing their approval my whole life.
That’s part of the reason I’ve stayed at NIRD so long. I don’t love the work, but I’m smart enough to do a better-than-average job, and working at NIRD is my way of holding my parents’ attention, of making the Professors Sugarman proud of their only child. The first time Mark listed me as a coauthor on one of his policy outlooks, my parents both wrote me enthusiastic and commendatory e-mails. Two Ivy League professors! Impressed! By me! For the first time, I felt as if I might be something other than a disappointment to them. But lately, I’m finding it harder and harder to pretend my job fulfills me when it doesn’t even come close. Signing up for an economics fellowship would take me further down a path I no longer have an interest in exploring.
My mom outlines the benefits of various fellowship programs but is interrupted by a knock at my front door. “Coming!” I shout, covering the phone with my hand. “Hey, Mom? I have to run. And anyway, this call is probably costing you a fortune. But thanks for checking on me. I love you.”
“I love you too, honey. We’ll be home in a few weeks. Oh, and let’s talk soon about Thanksgiving. Your father and I can’t decide what to do.”
“Thanksgiving is more than two months away.”
“I know, but your aunt Elena wants to reenact the first Thanks giving in upstate New York, and we’re trying to get out of it. It sounds like a total nightmare. I am not wearing a bonnet.” She sighs. “Anyway, take care of yourself, okay? And please read up on that fellowship.”
I hang up and rush to make myself presentable. As it stands, I have not brushed my teeth and am not wearing any pants.
“Just a sec!”
I quickly throw on a pair of sweatpants, gargle some Scope, and splash some water on my face. It’s no use. I look like a bag lady.
I hustle to the front door and open it to a gust of Blake’s woodsy aftershave.
“Good morning,” he says with a smile. He adjusts his blue-and-white-striped tie and fiddles with the buttons on his gray suit jacket. He looks nice—professional. I might even say dapper, if it weren’t for the blood-soaked hunk of tissue hanging off his jawline.
“You’re back,” I say, trying to mask the disappointment in my voice. I really enjoyed those two weeks of quiet. I was also really rooting for that eleph
ant. “I thought you’d be tanner after two weeks in Tampa.”
“With this skin? Are you kidding? If I didn’t wear SPF forty-five, I’d be red as a strawberry.” He rubs his jaw, and as he plucks off the piece of bloody tissue, his cheeks flush. “Or possibly as red as I am right now. Yikes.”
He tucks the piece of tissue into his pocket and shakes his head. “Anyway,” he says, “sorry to bother you so early, but I have a quick favor to ask.”
“What’s up?”
He holds out a set of three keys on a bright yellow plastic key chain. “Would you mind holding on to an extra set of keys for me?”
“If you want me to … sure.”
“Awesome. The immigration debate is going to get crazy this fall, so I’ll be traveling to the home district a bunch. I’d feel better knowing there was someone around to keep an eye on the place. ‘Manning the ship,’ if you will.” He smiles awkwardly as he makes air quotation marks.
More nautical references. Who is this guy, Jack fucking Sparrow?
“So … what, you want me to water your plants or something?”
He shakes his head. “No, no, nothing like that. Just, you know, if something were to happen to the house while I’m away—a pipe explodes or something—I want you to be able to let the repairman in to fix it.” He smiles. “And if you want to clean my oven, by all means …”
I smile awkwardly.
“Sorry,” he says. “Bad joke.”
I shrug, smiling for real this time. “I’ve heard worse. How long will you be away?”
“Not that long. Mostly just a few days at a time, over the fall recesses—the last two weekends of this month, and then over Columbus Day weekend next month. With any luck, we’ll adjourn October thirtieth, and that’ll be that.”
“Doesn’t the congressman have an office in Tampa? Why do you have to go back with him?”
He shrugs. “Hand-holding, mostly. As his communications director, it’s my responsibility to handle the press—interviews, questions, press releases, stuff like that. Given how heated the immigration debate is becoming, he wants me there to grease the wheels.”
I reach out and take the keys from Blake’s hand. “I’ll keep an eye on the place. Not a problem.”
“Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask you …” He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and a pen. “Now that you’re living in the neighborhood, would you mind signing my petition for the Dupont Circle ANC?”
“ANC?”
“Advisory Neighborhood Commission. They basically serve as the voice for the Dupont community. They’re having a special election this fall, and I’d like to run. It’s an unpaid position—something to do on the side—but I thought I’d give it a whirl.”
“Oh. Sure.”
I grab the pen from his hand and scrawl my signature on the page.
“Excellent,” he says. “Thanks.”
I hand the paper and pen back to him. “My pleasure.”
I expect him to jump in with one more sailing reference (something about “learning the ropes” or “getting my sea legs”), but mercifully he does not. Instead he gives a small salute, marches up the front steps, and heads down Church Street, disappearing from my line of sight.
I lock the door and amble back into my apartment, heading straight for the kitchen to deposit Blake’s keys in my take-out menu drawer. Before dropping them inside, I hold the key chain by its yellow plastic tag and dangle the three keys in front of me like a little wind chime, studying the notched grooves as they clang back and forth against each other. Then I shrug, drop the keys in the drawer, and slam it shut. Me and a set of my landlord’s keys. What’s the worst that could happen?
CHAPTER
eight
I rush down Church Street toward Eighteenth Street, stumbling across the cracks in the pavement as I try to avert yet another late arrival at the office. NIRD’s building sits along Dupont Circle’s southern border, only three blocks from my apartment, but its proximity has done nothing to abate my rampant tardiness. This morning I could blame my mother’s call or my landlord’s surprise visit, but really, I still had a good forty-five minutes to shower and throw myself together. And yet, somehow, I’ve managed to both run late and look disheveled. My mastery of wasting time should impress one and all.
As I hurry along Eighteenth Street, passing the glorious Andrew Mellon building with its ornate stone balusters and wrought iron balconies, I brush past other workers equally as rushed as I. Washington always bustles with energy the Tuesday after Labor Day as Congress returns and the city comes alive again after the hot, sleepy days of August. A grown-up “back-to-school” feeling permeates the city, and there is a renewed sense of hope and optimism. September heralds a fresh start. A blank page. An opportunity to set things right for the rest of the year.
Yes, I decide, September is when I will turn it all around. Things will get better from now on.
And then I enter the office and find Millie hovering over my desk, leafing through my papers in her tight black sleeveless turtleneck and gray pencil skirt. If this is the start of a better day, I haven’t bought nearly enough vodka.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
Millie throws one of my folders back into the pile on my desk—the folder, I suspect, that I use to hide all my recipes, so that it looks as if I’m reading about interest rate policy when I’m actually reading about the best way to cook a turkey or how to make homemade mozzarella.
“Well hello to you, too.” Millie stares at my white button-down top. I look down to see one of the small pearlescent buttons hanging by a thread, pulled to its limit thanks to a few too many batches of triple-fudge brownies and homemade Twix bars. Marvelous.
“Susan wants to know how you’re coming with the December conference,” she says. “I thought maybe I’d find some notes on your desk.”
Millie works for Susan Jenkins, who runs NIRD’s economics department and is, by default, Mark’s direct boss. Susan resembles Condoleezza Rice, if Condi wore skirts several inches shorter and heels several inches higher, and she is both a fierce gossip and a fearsome manager. A total ice queen, she once made a research assistant cry simply by staring him down in silence after he turned in a substandard report. She also fired an intern for lacking intellectual vigor, but we all suspect the real reason was because the intern was thinner and prettier than she was. And, according to an e-mail somewhere in my in-box, Susan is cohosting Mark’s economic recovery/financial risk conference—the event I am supposed to be helping with and for which I have done almost nothing.
“I’m still waiting for a confirmation from the last speaker,” I say.
This is true. What is also true is that Mark sent me a memo with a little more information on the conference, as well as what I should ultimately include in the handouts and on the PowerPoint slides, and that memo is still floating somewhere in my in-box, unread. I would have read it, but I had more pressing matters to attend to, such as cropping Adam out of all my Facebook photos.
Millie scowls. “Susan wants an update sooner rather than later, so you’d better hurry up.”
“Relax, I’m on it. The conference is three months away.”
Millie purses her lips and lingers behind my desk, tapping her fingernails against the surface, as if she is stroking the keys on a piano.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“How’s the new apartment? Adam has been sleeping at his place for a while now, so I assume you moved out.”
Hearing Adam’s name makes my stomach somersault, and if I thought my mood couldn’t get worse, it already has. “The new apartment is great,” I say. “Amazing, actually. A real find. I totally lucked out.”
“Glad to hear it.” She probes my eyes, as if she is expecting them to well up with tears. “Anyway, Susan wants to coordinate her slides with Mark, so you’d better hurry up with all the conference stuff. I turned in an outline to Susan a week ago.”
Well la-di-da. Does she want a prize
? “Will do,” I say. “Now, if you don’t mind?” I gesture toward Millie’s desk, and taking the hint, she stomps off in a huff.
I plop down in my chair and boot up my computer. I am taken through about eight security screens before I can check my e-mail, and when I finally do, I see I have sixty-five unread messages, several of them from Mark.
But before I can read any of Mark’s messages, the man himself emerges from his office and appears in front of my desk. He wears a rumpled tweed jacket and navy blue bow tie, this one studded with large yellow currency symbols, almost none of which I recognize. He is also barefoot.
“Ah, there you are,” he says. “Did you see my e-mail?”
“Um … yes,” I say, lying.
“Good. Because I really think we will need to talk about Greece come December.”
“Right. Greece.”
“Also, the dollar. The dollar will be very important.”
I pull out my pen and begin jotting on my notepad. “Greece … and the dollar. Got it.” Except that I don’t. “So … what would you like me to send you? About Greece … and the dollar.”
“I think I made that pretty clear in the e-mail.”
“Right. The e-mail.” That I haven’t read.
“Also, did you see the article I left you? I stuck it in one of your folders …” Mark reaches for my undercover recipe folder and lifts it from my desk.
“No!” I shout, snatching the folder from his hands. Mark recoils. “No, sorry, I haven’t seen it.”
“Well, you should find it and give it a quick read. Could be useful background for my presentation. Susan has been on my case since last week, so I need to send her a rough outline ASAP.”
“The event isn’t for like three months, right?” He frowns. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. “Don’t worry—I’m on it.”
