metal green insides. The floor is white and dusty. It’s freezing in there. It must be the room they don’t let their clients see.
The other proofers are much older than me. I look at them, but unfortunately, none of them look like they’d make a good date. I will have to keep looking, and I’ll have to place that ad soon.
The four of us sit like bored students in study hall, waiting for work. The other proofers discuss a variety of topics: whether Walt Disney is really frozen, trying to name all of the ingredients in a V8, leaving a dog out and forgetting you left it out, kids drinking chocolate milk with their school lunch every day, Japanese cartoon characters that look American, bad television shows. A man and woman talk about their belief that today’s television is much worse than when they were kids. People always say that, but I guess they don’t realize that TV is always going to seem worse now than it did when you were twelve. Anyway, I happen to like TV. I’ve met people who will self-righteously declare that they don’t own a TV set, as if it makes them morally superior to everyone else, as if they are declaring they have never told a lie or broken the law. There is absolutely nothing immoral about television. It’s not even unhealthy. Vapid and stultifying, maybe. But we all need it sometimes. I know I do. My mind worked so hard for the first eighteen years of my life that it needs—and deserves—a virtual brain pillow to rest in.
Around 3:00 a.m., the room is silent. Everyone is reading newspapers. I’m starving. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Probably, I’m more bored than hungry. I get up, go to the kitchen, drop some coins into the snack machine and grab a bag of pretzels. I return to my seat and start eating. A few people turn around. I can’t help it. Pretzels crunch.
I start to feel like everyone is looking at me. I put the bag aside and sit quietly. But I see the pretzels there, their tiny knobs calling out to me. My mouth waters. I know it will water until every last pretzel is gone. The psychology behind that is interesting. When I can take it no more, I grab the bag, head into the kitchen and scarf down the pretzels. I hate peer pressure.
When I return to my seat, I decide I’ll write a draft of my personal ad for the Beacon.
I take out a pen and print:
PRODIGY SEEKS GENIUS—I’m 19, very smart, seeking nonsmoking nondrugdoing very very smart SM 18-25 to talk about philosophy and life. No hypocrites, religious freaks, macho men or psychos.
I can’t wait to see the responses I get. I pull out my pocket calendar and write on it, on a date next week, “E-mail personal ad to Beacon.” I’m giving myself a week to find a less-desperate way of meeting people. But if nothing else works out, I can place this ad and answer other people’s.
The next night, I’m scheduled to return to the firm where Douglas P. Winters works. I’m excited. I tell myself that I must dig in my heels and ignore his salacious comments, as he may be my only prospect for a date by New Year’s. But I hope that he doesn’t drop me before it happens because he realizes, as David did in college, that I still have morals.
David left me wondering for a long time if all men would be like him, making me do things that felt wrong, then immediately shutting me down coldly if I didn’t. And I hated the women who routinely gave in and made it easy for them to be that way. Nowadays, I don’t think every man is evil, but the good ones can also get a good-looking woman, so a woman who isn’t good-looking just has to lower and lower her standards until they’re down around her ankles. It’s not fair; it’s just life. I sometimes think that women are the most hypocritical beings around. They complain from nine to five about how men are pigs, and then they give them what they want from five to nine. But I can’t say they’re doing it out of any malice; it just comes from neediness. I’ve heard feminists say that women shouldn’t “need a man,” but it’s not that women need a man. It’s that most people need someone, and if they’re women and they happen to be heterosexual, their choice is limited to men. And if they’re not beautiful women who can pick and choose, their choice can be limited to self-centered men. All right, maybe it’s not so bleak, but it’d be less bleak if people actually had standards and tried to hold out, like I did by refusing David’s requests.
At night, when I push open the glass doors of Pankow, Hewitt and So & So, Douglas P. Winters looks happy. “I’ve got pistachios!” he announces, then breaks into an evil laugh. I tell him I can’t wait for him to give me one. Then I wend my way through clusters of desks to the supervisor and pick up a small document. All I have to do is make sure that the typist correctly inputted the proofreader’s corrections. Oldie is in a different cubicle, so I don’t have to deal with him.
As I read through the document, I gradually realize that it’s somewhat intriguing. It’s stamped Confidential. It’s about two major banks that are going to merge. I wonder if I can sell this information.
I finish it and turn it in. The supervisor says there’s no more work right now. So I head out to Doug.
Doug’s bangs are wet with sweat. He motions to a seat.
“Hot in here?” I ask.
“I have a cold,” Doug says.
“Didn’t you have a cold last time I saw you?”
“I’m allergic to work.”
“Go home.”
“I’m allergic to starving.”
“I just read a document about a bank mega-merger,” I tell him.
“Sounds like a page-turner.”
“I was wondering if the information’s worth anything.”
“Probably,” Doug says, “but that would be insider proofreading. A lotta guys went to jail in the eighties for that. Did you sign a confidentiality oath when you came to work here?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you sign it in your real name?”
“Yes.”
“Bad move.”
“I wanted my real name to be on the checks.”
“That’s true,” Doug says. “Well, I didn’t sign any agreement. You could slip me the documents.”
If I want to work on getting him to ask me out on a date, I could throatily add, “Well, you could slip me something, too.” But I’m not that desperate yet. There’s still the personals—placing one and responding to other people’s.
I laugh at my “slip me something” thought, and Doug asks, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
I’ve been laughing at my own secret jokes my whole life. Why stop now? I understand them better than anyone else.
“Come on,” he goads.
I have to lie because I know that Doug is one of those people who won’t give up. I say, “I was laughing because I just remembered a joke I heard two kids tell each other in the subway yesterday.”
“I’m waiting,” Doug says.
“Uh… Knock-knock.”
