Free Food for Millionaires (12 page)

It had been nearly impossible for her to accept Ella’s charity, and even though she loved the beautiful clothes that she couldn’t afford, she couldn’t imagine a life where she was working only for money just so she could get more stuff—because she sensed that somehow it wouldn’t sustain her for very long. Working hard for good grades had made sense because she loved learning itself—the acquisition of new ways of seeing things and possessing new facts—but the good grades hadn’t sustained her, and for her, school wasn’t meant to be forever.

Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the likelihood of achieving your goals. She was in fact terribly hungry, but she’d pretended to be otherwise to be ladylike and had moved away from the table to be agreeable, and now she’d continue to be hungry.

Walter turned to wave back at a girl who was walking toward them. It was hard to tell her age. She might have been about ten years older than Casey but possessed the ideal figure of a twenty-year-old and dressed like one. She wore no stockings. Remarkable legs. Her plate held mostly vegetables and a large piece of bread.

“Hi, baby,” she said. The men on the floor craned their necks to check out her rear end as she passed them.

“Hello, Delia,” Walter said cheerfully.

She came to a full stop to talk to him. Delia wore a short blue linen skirt and a paler blue blouse with its shell buttons gaping slightly across her full bosom. Her eyes were also blue, the color of mint candy, and they shone beneath the waves of curly red blond hair. She had a soft Staten Island accent, almost unnoticeable—it showed up when she said “yeah” now and then. Her facial expression was alert, but it was easy to overlook the intelligence in her eyes because of her suggestive clothing and curvy figure. There was a lushness about her skin, a ripeness. Jay’s literary friends would have called her a fox and deemed her legs sonnet-worthy.

“And this is Delia Shannon. The brilliant and talented sales assistant on the European sales desk.”

“Walter, you’re brokering again.” Delia smiled at Casey warmly.

“Hi,” Casey said, feeling something sisterly about her.

“Casey Han is interviewing to be our sales assistant,” Walter said.

Delia felt sorry for the poor kid. Kevlar wasn’t a bad guy, but his wife should blow him now and then before he left for work. That’s what uptight men needed—Delia felt sure of this. She shook Casey’s hand. “Good luck.”

Casey withdrew from Delia’s weak and powdery handshake. Used to the firm, make-eye-contact masculine handshakes at Princeton, she found Delia’s grasp anachronistic and overly feminine.

“So we’re just going to tell Kevin that Casey’s a hire. It’s a no-brainer,” Walter said.

Delia smiled knowingly.

“Maybe you’ll help Casey out if she wants to take the job.”

“Yes, I’d love that. I mean, if everything works out,” Casey said.

Delia clasped Casey’s large hands with her small white ones, saying, “Anything for Kevin’s new victim. Anything at all.” There was no malice or cynicism in her tone. Casey liked her.

Walter put his index finger dramatically across his lips, and Delia winked at him.

“I don’t think you have to worry about Casey. Ted Kim tells me that Casey is as tough as anything,” he said.

Casey tried not to look surprised.

“Oh? Is she Ted’s friend?” Delia asked.

Walter nodded. “Well, I think she’s Ted’s fiancée’s friend. A family friend.”

Casey nodded, not thinking it necessary to explain. Delia winked again, then excused herself. She had to speak with someone in the mailroom about a package. The men nearby watched her stroll away. Delia’s backside, shaped like a small blue heart, twitched with each gingerly step.

Delia was a perma-assistant, Walter explained. Never having gone to college, she was stuck in what was supposed to be a two- or three-year job. But apparently Delia did not complain.

The way Walter confided in her made Casey feel that she might be getting the job. Why else would he tell her these things? When they returned to the desk, Kevin curled his hand toward him, and she went to sit.

“Two years. Minimum. You’re going to have to work out. I swear. You have to make hotel reservations, get airline tickets, arrange conferences, send out reports, make copies, pick up faxes and packages, and coordinate details. Perfectly. You have to pay attention to everything. Do you understand? Two years. Or else. You will not get a recommendation from me unless you fulfill that two-year mark. Get it?” Kevin was looking hard at her, making sure she understood.

Hugh put down his fork, amused by Kevin’s offer. “It’s hard to believe that he was once a stellar broker. A salesperson. His personal skills have deteriorated beyond recognition.” He held out his hand. “Casey, welcome to our desk.”

Casey shook his hand but looked directly at Kevin when she said, “Deal.”

“And don’t trust this guy,” Kevin said, widening his eyes. “No matter how much he was fighting for you to get the job.”

Hugh laughed, unfazed. “Yes, don’t trust me. I’m just awful.”

Walter said, “So you’ll come to work tomorrow?”

“Yes, of course,” Casey said.

“Two years,” Kevin said sternly.

“Enough, tough guy,” Hugh said. “Think of the Thirteenth Amendment.”

“I’m impressed,” Walter said. “I didn’t know I was working with an abolitionist.”

Hugh buffed his fingernails against his chest. “Anyway, can you imagine how Kevlar asked his wife to marry him?”

Walter shivered.

“Assholes. At least I got a woman to marry me.”

“The kindness and goodness of the fair sex can never be under-estimated,” Hugh said, beaming at Casey.

“Down, boy,” Walter said to Hugh, and Hugh made a halo over his head by joining his thumbs and middle fingers.

Kevin checked his screen. The chip maker had fallen by a basis point since lunch. He threw his pen at the monitor. “I knew it.”

Casey jolted up in her chair.

Kevin turned to the girl, remembering to finish up with her. “See you tomorrow at five forty-five.” He picked up the phone to call the analyst. His tone switched completely—earnest, questioning, and calm.

Walter noticed Casey’s confused expression. She would get it soon—you didn’t get to become the boss without having some versatility in style. Casey remained in her chair, not knowing if she was being dismissed. At once, the phones rang and both Walter and Hugh picked up calls. Walter motioned to Delia, who was back at her desk. He covered the receiver of his phone and whispered, “Go talk to her. Ask her to walk you to Human Resources.”

Casey went to her, and Delia took over.

10
OFFERING

E
LLA’S LONG DARK HAIR
was pinned up with a barrette, and she wore a lilac-colored linen dress reaching down to the middle of her slender calves. They were at home, so she had no shoes on her bare white feet. Ella tilted her oval-shaped face, peering into Casey’s like a hopeful girl before a party.

“Maybe you can come with us today?” she asked.

Casey fumbled through her bag. There were exactly six cigarettes left in the packet she’d accidentally filched from Mary Ellen. The first thing she intended to buy with her paycheck was a carton of Marlboro Lights.

“I forget,” Casey lied, knowing full well that church began at nine. “When do services start again?” It was already eight in the morning, and Casey had been awake, showered, and dressed for nearly two hours. Before starting her job at Kearn Davis, it had been her habit to rise well before Ella did, prepare coffee, tuck away the sofa bed, read the classifieds, and draft cover letters. She’d been working for a week now, and on this Sunday, she’d wanted to be by herself while Ella and Ted went to church and ate their brunch at Sarabeth’s at the Whitney.

Ella told her the service times, then invited her again. Her innocence and vulnerability had the effect of making Casey feel hard and wizened. Ella appeared so easy to hurt, and this made Casey careful around her.

“We never celebrated your job properly. . .” Ella tried again.

“You keep saying that, but there’s no need. Really.” Casey didn’t want any more kindness or charity from her. Without Casey’s asking, Ella had handed her carfare and lunch money to tide her over until she got paid, bought her hosiery, and loaned her dress shoes to wear to the office. Casey’s debts mounted like a heap of laundry.

“And I really want you to meet Unu. He promised he’d come today.”

Casey nodded. In the past week, Ella had been mentioning her cousin who’d just moved into a rental across the street. He’d been an electronics analyst at Pearson Crowell—a second-tier British investment bank. Ella, who had no guile, couldn’t hide her wish for Casey to like Unu and vice versa. Twenty-seven years old, raised in the suburbs of Dallas, St. Mark’s, Dartmouth, the son of a businessman and a doctor—the last of four children. He’d just returned from a four-year stint in Seoul with Pearson Crowell before switching to a boutique firm in New York; he was also fresh from a quick marriage to and a faster divorce from a girl in Korea who had treated him badly.

Casey sat on the bench near the front door to put on her black espadrilles. She was headed to the roof for her cigarette, and slipped under her arm was the real estate section of the paper. As soon as she’d put together the security deposit and first month’s rent, she’d move out. In anticipation of her departure, Ella had concocted a fantasy that Unu and Casey would fall in love and join her and Ted at church every Sunday. They’d both be couples and do things that couples do. Casey thought it was sweet but ultimately far-fetched. So when Ella got that gleam in her eye talking about Unu, Casey would answer politely, “Your cousin sounds nice.”

Her shoes now on, Casey picked up her set of house keys.

“You don’t like Ted,” Ella said.

“Pardon?”

“That’s why you won’t go to church,” Ella said. Casey would agree to do most anything with her on the weekends, mundane errands like grocery shopping or a trip to the dry cleaner, but when she invited her to do something, even fun things like movies or dinner, when Ted would be there, Casey declined. And Ella had not forgotten this from their confirmation class days: Despite Casey’s “too cool for Sunday school” affect, Casey was the student who’d consistently asked the singular questions about God.

Casey dropped a book of matches into her white shirt pocket, pretending not to have heard what Ella said. She placed her right hand on the doorknob.

“He’s not easy. I know that,” Ella said.

“What are you talking about?” Casey asked. Had her contempt been so obvious? “Your fiancé got me a great job.”

“It’ll be fun. Please say yes. Unu’s my favorite person. You’ll—”

The phone rang, and guessing accurately it was Ted, Casey walked out, saying, “Ella, you know I can’t make any big decisions without my morning cigarette.”

It was Ted, a fellow smoker, who’d told her about the roof on Ella’s building. Ella was allergic to smoke, and oddly enough, Ted and Casey were unrepentant. But they never smoked in her presence.

Unlike the roof at her parents’, this one was meant to be used by all the residents. There were pink and white geranium plants in terra-cotta pots and metal patio furniture painted a racing green color set up invitingly on the white gravel-covered roof. On summer weekends, young women sunbathed with their bikini strings undone and men in baseball hats and sweatpants plowed leisurely through their swollen
Times
es while drinking lukewarm coffee in mugs brought from home.

The residents who’d shared a light at some point said “hey” when they saw Casey. She wore a white dress shirt, her gray knife-pleated skirt, and no stockings, and in her rope-soled shoes, she stood out against the Sunday morning crowd with their bed hair and sleepy looks. The brightness of the day, the young singles relaxing, reminded her of school in the spring when at the first sight of the warm sun, everyone skipped classes to laze in the open greenery. Casey wanted to stay there, smoke the rest of the pack, read the paper, and plan out her life after her first paycheck.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like church. She enjoyed a good sermon as much as she adored a stirring lecture. Ella had spotted the issue accurately. Ted’s teasing felt aggressive and mean-spirited. Just last night, when Ella went downstairs to get her mail, he’d said to Casey, “Maybe I should tell Jay that his girlfriend works on two.” Casey had wondered if this unrelenting behavior was equivalent to a sixth-grade boy snapping the bra strap of a girl he liked, but it wasn’t that kind of retarded flirtation. Besides, Casey couldn’t imagine anyone preferring her over Ella. What Casey understood was that Ted was jealous. He thought they were competing for Ella, and consequently, he treated her as a rival, and from never having fought with a boy, Casey was astonished by the nature of his attacks, so unlike a girl’s—naked, persistent, and lethal. As nice was she was, Ella wasn’t worth this.

Also, Casey didn’t want to meet Ella’s cousin. She was still preoccupied with Jay. Her sister had told her that he’d tried to reach her several times. In the past week, Casey hadn’t bumped into him in the elevator or the cafeteria. The second and sixth floors remained separate, as if they were in different buildings.

As for her new job as a sales assistant, since Casey was by nature an organized person—adept at deadlines and details—except for learning some new software and eating both breakfast and lunch at her desk among several men, the nature of her work was not difficult. After her day ended, she walked home and reread
Middlemarch
or began another volume of Trollope borrowed from the neighborhood library. She studied an old millinery pattern book bought for a quarter from a homeless guy who sold magazines and outdated textbooks on First Avenue. In her spare time, she worried mostly about money and her future. Her salary minus a discretionary bonus and possible overtime (how much she’d get was hard to figure out at this point—though Delia said she might be able to get as much as half her base) was thirty-five thousand dollars per annum on a pretax basis. With her pay, she’d have to meet her credit card minimums, save up her rent deposit (nearly fifteen hundred dollars for two months’ rent for a cramped studio) with the possibility of having to fork over 15 percent of the annual rent for the broker’s fee, and furnish a new place, since she did not own even a buck-fifty drinking glass. Ella wouldn’t hear of taking money from her for rent or groceries despite Casey’s offers to pay her when she got her check.

Casey moved toward the edge of the roof. On its perimeter, there were boxes of white impatiens well tended to by the building’s gardening committee. Although it was the first week of August, she felt a mild breeze in the air. The view—its grid of unshaded windows wasn’t much different from the one in Elmhurst—was of small kitchens, dimpled glass obscuring bathrooms, L-shaped living rooms, and unmade beds in darkened chambers. It was peaceful to smoke here, leaning against the waist-high parapet. Jay used to joke that she liked roofs because that’s where she parked her Wonder Woman glass plane. Casey allowed herself another cigarette. She tried to light it, but the wind blew north; she cupped the flame of her paper match, and when she glanced up, she saw an Asian man at a window studying her.

He was thin, around her height, wearing a dark two-button suit, a white shirt, and a medium-width purple necktie. She could make out his face: rounded nose, high cheekbones, black eyes tapered sharply at the ends, and softly arched eyebrows. She stared back at him and he smiled at her; then, suddenly feeling shy, she turned to take another drag of smoke. When she looked for him again, he was gone. After the tobacco was spent, she stubbed out the light and went downstairs.

Casey told Ella she’d go to church after all.

“Are you sure?” Ella asked, not knowing what she should do now. Ted had just called her. It turned out that the night before, Jay Currie had been staffed on a deal Ted was working on, and when they were finally introduced, Ted had blurted out that he knew Casey Han. “Is she all right?” Jay had asked him anxiously. Ted had ended up telling him where she was staying. Just like that. Ella had scolded him, saying, “How could you?” But he’d replied, “At least I didn’t tell him that she works on two.” He’d laughed out loud—in her mind, she could still hear his chortle—and she’d had to resist the impulse to hang up on him. She’d never done that before, but at that moment, it had seemed more than appropriate.

Ted was now on his way to pick her up for church. Flustered, Ella put on her shoes.

“Maybe you’re tired after your first week of work. Would you prefer to go next Sunday?” Ella said.

“Nope. I’m all yours,” Casey replied. “Let’s go worship in the house of the Lord.” She laughed, then shouted, “Hallelujah!” She felt cheery all of a sudden.

Ella smiled perfunctorily, feeling guilty, as if somehow this were all her fault.

“You think Ted will buy me an expensive brunch?” Casey put her hands on her hips.

“Yes.” Ella nodded, head bobbing like a doll’s. “Anything you want.”

The doorman buzzed. Ted Kim was in the lobby.

When they got downstairs and met him, Ted kissed Ella’s stiffening cheeks and returned Casey’s surface pleasantries. They walked to church, not five blocks away, and Ella chattered about Unu to Casey. At the church entrance, Ted put his hand on Ella’s back and she moved away from his hand.

Ushers directed them upstairs to balcony seating because the main auditorium was full. The church leased a college hall for worship because it couldn’t handle the growing number of attendees. Ted was unimpressed by the shabby city college building. There were no pew hymnals or Bibles, and the service was printed on a flimsy staple-bound pamphlet. He would’ve preferred Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, which looked like a real church, but Ella was devoted to Dr. Benjamin, and even he, as a person who had hated Sunday school in Anchorage, had to admit that he paid attention to Benjamin’s intelligent sermons and on occasion found himself reflecting on them. Ted believed that church was a good idea for a well-governed society, and he didn’t trust anyone who didn’t believe in God.

Casey coming to church had surprised him. He’d pegged her as a textbook atheist—one of those know-it-alls who had the blind faith to explain the world according to scientific theories that were disproved every day yet were unable to believe in the things they weren’t smart enough to rationalize. Ted, who had no great faith in God or Jesus, could not believe in the randomness of chance, and he was arrogant enough to refuse fish or ape ancestors. If creationism sounded absurd, evolutionism insulted his intelligence, too. As much as Ted believed in hard work and self-determination, he also believed in a kind of guided order outside of man—an Adam Smith invisible hand kind of fate. But in general, he avoided discussions about religion. There was no way to win them anyway, he thought, why bother. Whichever side you fell on, you had to conclude with the statement “I believe. . .” rather than “I know.” The minister called them to say the prayer that Christ had taught them to say, and Ted heard Casey recite it from memory, and he could hear some feeling.

Casey meant it when she said, “Forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,” because they were for her the hardest words to live by, and by saying them, she hoped they’d become possible.

Like Ted, Casey would never discuss her ambivalent views on religion. She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite. Casey was keenly aware of her Christian failings: Routinely, she mumbled, “Jesus Christ,” when she stubbed her toe; for a young woman, she had slept with enough men she’d had no love for or intentions of marrying; she’d had an abortion without regret; she’d tried drugs (liked some very much and feared that she had an addictive personality, and for that reason alone, she did not seek them out); she enjoyed getting drunk and acting on her passionate impulses; she loved acquiring nice things, and it was an explicit goal for her to have them; every day, she envied someone else’s life; she adored gossip in any form; she’d stolen clothes from the return bin at Sabine’s; she disliked many Christians—finding them dull and intolerant; and nearly two months prior, she’d told her own parents to fuck off. Her commandment violations were numerous and sustaining. She would not win any white-leather Bibles at Sunday school camp. Her awareness of a God, quotidian Bible reading, and obscure verse scribbling made no sense to her. Nevertheless, Casey could not commit to no God, either.

Ella had no doubts. In plain sight, she rummaged through her leather satchel, pulling out a black leather zip-up Bible and a fabric-bound sketchbook. She held a Waterman pen with a gold nib at the ready. She flipped open her sketchbook, its pages packed with blue-black-inked script, to find a clean sheet. Cross-referencing the program, she quickly found the Scripture on which the sermon was based. She wrote down the verse citation beneath the sermon title, “What sustains you?” with the precision of a student taking notes for chemistry lab. Ella looked fierce in her attentiveness.