personal conversation on the phone for twenty minutes when you were supposed to be doing your proofreading. Isn’t this a little hypocritical?”
There is nothing more fulfilling than watching people get caught in the thick, coarse gossamer of their own hypocrisy.
Oldie is stunned. “We’re entitled to breaks,” he says, but his voice is quavering.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Oldie sniffs, “I don’t see why it’s any of your business,” and returns to his assignment.
There are no new assignments, so I rest my eyes and sit back in my chair. I hear a fax machine whirr behind me, and the choppy sounds of someone’s discordant clock radio. Soon a young guy with dark, tufty hair pokes his head into the room. He looks around but apparently doesn’t see whom he had hoped to. He’s ready to retreat, but then he notices me. “Oh,” he says. “Hi. You a student?”
“No,” I say. “I graduated. I’m a temp.” I’m barely able to hide my elation at the diversion. Oldie gives us both a sneer.
“You just in for tonight?”
“Far as I know.”
He extends his hand. “Douglas P. Winters. Front desk dude.” He sniffs and wipes his nose with his arm. There’s something appealing about ending your sentences with a snort. I also get the feeling he’s smart and slumming. I can spot an underemployed lazy intellectual anywhere.
“Carrie Pilby,” I say.
“You here till morning?”
“I guess so.”
“So you said you graduated. Where’d you go to school?”
This is always a dilemma. Everyone who went to Harvard has it. The problem is, if you say Harvard, it either sounds like you’re bragging, or conversely, people think you’re making a joke. A lot of Harvard graduates say “Boston,” and then when the other person asks where specifically, they say, “Cambridge,” and finally, if pressed again, they admit where they went.
I decide to get it over with. “Harvard.”
“For real?”
I nod.
“Say something smart.”
This is another disincentive. It’s like finding out someone’s part Puerto Rican and saying, “Say something in Spanish.” Just because I went to a top college doesn’t mean I have a complex mathematical axiom on the tip of my tongue. I mean, I do, but it’s not because of where I went to college.
But I decide to play along. “I think that the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption.”
Doug stands there for a second. “Wow.”
I don’t tell him that I stole the whole thing from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which I read one day when I had three hours to kill.
Oldie looks back at both of us. “You two gonna do any work tonight?”
“Why don’t you call 60 Minutes and rat out your son-in-law?” I ask. He sniffs and goes back to his work.
“Come outside,” Doug says. “I’m out front.”
I assume this means that if I get in trouble, I can blame him. I follow him through the glass doors into the waiting room, which has plush chairs and golden letters on the walls bearing the name of the firm. Fancy-schmancy. Doug motions to an armchair next to the security desk, and I sit by his side. “Are you looking for a regular job?”
“Someday.” This conversation has gone on long enough without my knowing what’s important. “Where did you go to school?”
“Hempstead State,” he says. Oh well. I guess he’s not so smart after all. Then again, maybe I’m judging too quickly. At least, Petrov thinks I do. “I didn’t feel like going to Harvard,” he adds, opening a bag of pistachios and pouring a few onto the table.
“Right.”
“You got a boyfriend?”
I wonder if he’s asking because he likes me, or he’s just making fun of me because he knows no one would want to be my boyfriend. “No,” I say.
He cracks a pistachio on the table, then opens it like a tulip. “You just kind of play the field?”
“Mostly, I sleep.”
Doug laughs. “If I could, I would. Any time in bed is time well spent.”
We’re silent for a minute while he swallows his pistachio nut. Then he cracks another against the desk. “Did you know that pistachio nuts are like orgasms?”
That is so disgusting! I turn away and look at the paintings on the wall. I think they’re Edward Hopper.
Doug pinches the green meat from inside the shell and pops it into his mouth. He chews, swallows and posits: “One nut will taste all salty, but the next one will taste almost buttery. The third one will be shriveled and brown with a weird kind of tartness. They’re like sexual climaxes. Each one is completely different in its own way, but they’re all great.”
“Fascinating.” I look away.
“Did I embarrass yew?” He laughs. “Here, I’m sorry. Have one.”
I put my hand out.
“No. An orgasm.”
I look up.
“Just kidding. Here.” He hands me a nut. I can’t believe he talks about something so intimate like it’s as routine as brushing your teeth. I mumble a thank-you and return to my seat.
I spend the rest of the night reading Black’s Law Dictionary until I can barely see straight. Now at least I can pepper my conversations with ex aequo et bono and de minimus non curat lex.
The shift ends when the first rays of dawn filter through the office’s tinted windows, which I imagine were created to remove the only joy of working there—the view. There is a commotion as a group of workers leaves and another arrives. With all the gossiping, peeking at the newspaper headlines and getting coffee, this takes a half hour. I may have underestimated the amount of fakery that goes on in the workplace.
When one has been up all night, one gets a filmy taste in one’s mouth and a bleariness in one’s eyes. I wipe my lips and stand straight up, stretching. My bones ache.
I throw my backpack across my shoulder and head out into the carpeted lobby. Doug and I shake hands, and I stretch some more. I guess I’ll see him again if I return to the firm.
In the elevator, there’s a guy holding a metal cart bursting with donuts. They smell delicious. Some are topped with a thick cairn of chocolate cream, some are glazed, some are powdered and jelly-filled, and some have a slab of strawberry frosting and sprinkles. Eating one would get rid of this taste in my
