Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
Paulina
As Paulina made her way through downtown San Francisco, she noticed the sea of men in puffer vests with badges hanging from lanyards around their neck. They all looked the same, and her eyes glazed over everyone, even though everyone fought for her to look at them. But Paulina was perpetually bored, bored of mindless workers, bored of the grind culture, and bored of the stories that people made up about her in their minds. The only thing that caught her eye was a young mother in the distance, holding the hand of a small child, their retreating backs to Paulina.
She watched them from a safe distance as the mother protected her child against the crowd, traffic, and the bustle of corporate greed around them, and Paulina felt a sadness wash over her until they disappeared around the corner.
But as Paulina entered the giant office building, which seemed almost phallic, piercing the sky, and made her way up to the sixtieth floor, she immediately forgot about the young mother and her daughter. There was no point in letting sadness win; otherwise she’d end up like her mother.
And that was the last thing she ever wanted.
“Knock knock,” Paulina said, rapping her hand against Oliver’s office door. Oliver looked up from behind his monitor, visibly shocked. It was a dreary Monday morning in downtown San Francisco, and yet Paulina was on corporate grounds, modestly dressed in a long pleated skirt, cashmere sweater, and a casual logo-less bag dangling off her wrist. Unlike Oliver, who was responsible for over two hundred employees, Paulina didn’t seem to have any worry or responsibility, or a wrinkle on her face.
Who was Paulina Tr?n responsible for, other than herself?
Oliver’s office was in a cloister with a few other cookie-cutter tech companies, and she stuck out like a weed in a sea of tech-branded backpacks. Lumped together, the companies were indiscernible to anyone who didn’t work in the field. Shapeless logos of start-ups and other tech companies at varying seed stages, all holding empty promises of carving out a utopia one day. But in reality, they were a house of cards whose only pool of money came from bloated valuations and even more bloated egos. Paulina knew a thing or two about a house of cards, especially after having grown up in one.
Corporate America had always made her want to gag. She was certain there was a smell to it. It wasn’t just a regular office smell of floor wax and sanitized air; it reeked of depression—like old wet laundry that had mildewed because one had forgotten about it and didn’t put the load in the dryer in time. It smelled like no one had any control of their lives.
But Paulina always stuck out, no matter where she was.
She was satisfied watching Oliver’s wide eyes, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. He couldn’t deny her presence.
“Pauly,” Oliver finally said, a warning in his voice, as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned far back in his Herman Miller chair. His face was now blank. His office was freezing in a subtle way that only women could pick up on, so Paulina crossed her arms, mirroring Oliver. “What on earth are you doing here? Also, is this the first time you’ve ever been inside a real office?”
“Oliver,” she responded in a mocking, singsong voice. “What are you doing here? A mausoleum has more charisma than this open-floor office plan.”
“I believe a mausoleum also has an open-floor plan, but for different reasons,” he said sternly. “But you really shouldn’t be here. I’m slammed with meetings. How did you get past my assistant? Actually, come to think of it, where is my assistant—”
“I’ve come to hunt you down,” she interrupted him. “You’ve been ignoring and avoiding me. Don’t pretend you haven’t.”
Oliver stared incredulously at Paulina. “I’ve sent over all the robots, equipment, engineers, and installers necessary to put everything together at your store. What more do you possibly need from me? You have everything you need to set you up for success. Just turn the ‘on’ switch ‘on.’?”
“You don’t understand, Oliver, I need to win this. I need you there—”
“Win what ? I still don’t understand what you’re winning here. And frankly, I’m concerned your father is doing this as some sort of embezzlement scheme or tax evasion—”
“Oh, get off your high horse. Why do you assume everyone is evading taxes? Is it ’cause we’re Vietnamese—”
“Also, it’s a sandwich shop. No offense, but this isn’t exactly dire on my list. And don’t take this the wrong way, but shouldn’t you be in the kitchen or something? I mean that literally, not figuratively, by the way.”
Before either of them could stop themselves, the bickering escalated, as it always did. It always started off softly, even childlike, then it quickly turned into a tornado, an onslaught, and a graveyard for all those in their way. Oliver and Paulina immediately fell back into their old ways, as they had three years ago.
Falling between the nebulous cracks of miscommunication and being misunderstood, but most of all, just missing each other. But neither of them could find the strength to admit it to the other, that perhaps all this pain and hurt boiled down to grief, grief of a different kind—grief knowing that your person is alive and well, but unwilling to reach out first.
Oliver’s assistant stuck her head in apologetically for a brief second, murmuring how she had no idea how Paulina got past security, and just as quickly disappeared, just as a few rounds of curse words began to be mounted at one another.
There was a sudden buzzing on Oliver’s desk, briefly interrupting their argument. Paulina’s heart fell, and she knew who it was before he picked up. Call it a woman’s intuition or perhaps being a Virgo, but on the other side of the call was Esther. Esther. The name that had haunted her ever since she landed in the Bay Area. Oliver quickly grabbed his phone, read the text, and responded immediately. She hated her jealousy; it was icky, Judas-esque, and irrelevant. She remembered how quickly Oliver got up the last time she saw him and left immediately, all at Esther’s beck and call. Who was Esther? But more important, who was Esther to Oliver Chen? Her Oliver?
It pained her to see that Oliver was immune to her now, when three years ago, he’d have dropped everything to be with her. He’d have even quit his job on the spot if she had asked. Had she been nothing more than an experiment? A guinea pig for men to test out, to see if they were capable of commitment?
Paulina, I wish I had fought for your mother more.
Duc’s words seared through her. Should she have fought for Oliver more back then? But Paulina at twenty-five was obstinate, unable to listen to anyone but herself. However, Paulina at twenty-eight was starting to feel the weight of time on her, and she was beginning to yearn for something more. Twenty-eight was also the year her mother was pregnant with Paulina. Perhaps that yearning was always ingrained in her, since inception.
“Just so you know,” Paulina said as she managed to pull herself together, her jealousy replaced with bitterness as she careened toward self-sabotage. “ You’re the one who left me. You stopped returning my calls a year ago. Don’t blame me now for showing up out of nowhere.”
Oliver groaned and rubbed his eyes, then his temples. “You really want to do this now? Right now? ”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t willing to change your lifestyle, Paulina. You were just flitting across the world. Hong Kong to Taipei to Berlin. You didn’t care. You didn’t care about me or my needs. You just expected me to keep up with you forever—”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“People have responsibilities—”
“I have responsibilities—”
“You just care about surface-level—”
“ Surface-level? Fuck you, Chen—”
“That’s not what I meant—”
The slight crack of a door. Oliver’s assistant poked her head in again, sheepishly apologized once more for interrupting, and quickly announced that it was time for school. Oliver shut his laptop, got up, and slipped on his coat. He gave Paulina a pointed look that it was time to leave.
“School?” Paulina repeated. As she looked through the glass door, she saw all of Oliver’s coworkers, peers, and direct reports walk past his glass office, openly gawking at the two of them post-argument. Their coffee mugs curling steam out of them, their eyes half-awake on a Monday morning, jaws on the ground. Two men almost collided with each other going in opposite directions, too busy being enthralled by Paulina. Her face turned beet red.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Oliver said quickly, as he began to shove her out of his office. “I have to go do something. Let’s finish this discussion later.”
“Who the hell is Esther?” Paulina blurted out. “Are you seeing someone?”
“How do you know about Esther?” he shot back, his eyes worried.
“I saw her name pop up on your phone last time we met up, at the bar,” she said. “Then you ran out of there with your tail between your legs. Who is Esther?”
He paused, sucked in his breath, his hands turned into fists. She could feel his knuckles behind her shoulders as he steered her out the door. She turned to see the veins expanding on his temples, revealing a side of him she’d never seen before, and she was conflicted on what to do. She was torn between hugging him or continuing to twist the proverbial knife in him even more, left and right.
He sighed. “Pauly, you are so goddamn frustrating. She’s none of your business.”
“Well, she sounds Korean, and very hot,” Paulina sniped back. She felt like being petty for the sake of being petty.
“Well, you’re half right, she is Korean, but more half-Korean,” he said carefully, eyes cast downward. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t call my five-year-old daughter hot.” Paulina’s face turned pale as she tried to find the words to string together. Daughter?
“Yes, I have a daughter,” he said, responding to her thoughts. “And don’t worry, it’s not yours.” The joke fell completely flat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take her to preschool.”
“Five?” Paulina repeated hollowly as life began to click together. “She’s five years old?”
Suddenly, the timeline of everything, and what could have been between them, disappeared in front of her. Before Paulina could ask any more questions, she was thrown into the arms of Oliver’s assistant, who held firmly on to her, escorting her out of the building, flanked on both sides by two security guards. Paulina went limp between them as she was suddenly thrown out into the brisk San Francisco fog.
She watched, dumbfounded, as she saw a black car pick up Oliver on the corner, and as he climbed in, she heard the delighted shrieks of a young girl from the inside, greeting her father, and Oliver’s smile revealed something she’d never seen before: fulfillment. The car door slammed, and she watched the car pull away, moving toward a future she couldn’t comprehend.
She’d never felt more heartbroken—no, grief-stricken—for an alternate life in which she’d be delighted to see her father take her to school, or even for her father to want to take her to school. Paulina pulled the sweater tighter around her shoulders and in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, filled with middle-aged men, badged employees, transplants, transients, and disgruntled strangers, she allowed herself to cry for the first time in years.
Back at the Duc’s Sandwiches storefront in San Jose, Paulina stood amazed and shell-shocked. A daughter? A daughter. Though she was surrounded by mountains of crates and a swarming team of taskers and engineers, assembling all the new equipment for her store, Paulina felt alone. The sound of a thousand drills and hammers, like the crackling of broken headphones, seemed to evaporate into the ether, somehow going nowhere and everywhere at once.
The front door opened, causing the tiny bell to go off.
The nearly twenty-year-old bell, unchanging in an ever-changing enclave, was a symbol of the third Duc’s Sandwiches store that had opened. A third pawn in Duc’s endless thirst to conquer the chessboard of businesses. Paulina remembered the famous black-and-white newspaper photo of her mother, standing on a stool, hanging up the bell on opening day. It was the first photo she had seen with just her mother in it. It was the one photo where there wasn’t Duc or Mr. Ng? crowding it—it was just simply Evelyn. Her mother had framed that newspaper clipping, and hung it up next to her vanity mirror for years. Anytime her mother would spritz herself with perfume or apply red lipstick, her eyes would gaze longingly at that photo. Even long after her mother had stopped spraying perfume or putting on lipstick, or even taking care of herself properly, Paulina still caught her staring at the newspaper clipping from time to time.
Yes, Paulina remembered the photo well.
In walked an elderly woman, pushing a metal rolling cart. A bit wobbly, and still in a fugue state, Paulina stood up and greeted the woman with her best manners.
“Sorry,” she said, politely shooing the woman out. “We’re closed for renovation. Come back next month.”
Confused, the woman looked around, observed all the men in hard hats running around, and gave a wary look at the lone woman at the center of all the commotion. Ignoring Paulina’s warning, she steadfastly approached, her cart wheeling faster toward Paulina. “I just want to buy a few loaves. I always buy my bread here. I stock up, you know.”
Perturbed, Paulina went up to the woman, firmly grabbed her cart from her, and steered her back toward the door. “I’m sorry, but like I said, we’re closed. Come back next month.”
“You don’t understand, I’ve been coming here for twenty years—”
Before Paulina could really shove the woman out, the bell dinged again, notifying her of another customer coming in. The bell was Paulina’s Pavlov’s theory—anytime it rang, it triggered an angry response. This time, an unassuming elderly man came in whistling, with a few newspapers tucked under his arm. He looked as if he was ready to park himself in the shop and not move for the rest of the day.
Paulina could feel her temple twitching. She still couldn’t get the morning’s memory out of her. Oliver. Esther. Daughter. His daughter? Is that why he left her? Who was the mother? A million questions began to swirl, and just as she was about to tell the old man the same thing she told the woman, the bell went off again, and this time, a horde of elderly women came tumbling in, each of their voices trying to outshine the others. Trying to keep up the pace, Paulina rallied the crowd together, assuring them that the shop was just temporarily closed, and to come back next month. That things will be better, more efficient. Wouldn’t that make their lives easier? She was doing them a favor!
Meanwhile, the first woman was still going around, asking all the engineers and workers where she could buy her loaves for the week. From behind her, she could hear the lead tech engineer advising her to not have all these people in the shop during construction, while other voices began to escalate, asking what happened to Duc’s Sandwiches and where was everything as it always had been? What was with all the changes? Why couldn’t they just maintain their routines, and get on with their days? Before she could respond, the bell went off again as more regulars flooded in, and this time, Paulina couldn’t hold it in anymore. All she could picture in her mind was Oliver and Esther, and the last three years of her losing sleep over him.
The coffee and the everything bagel she had earlier came up before she could stop it. She turned around and slammed into the lead engineer. In the mad rush of it all, she vomited up everything onto him. Specks and flecks of her breakfast could be seen in its chunks. Horrified, Paulina couldn’t find a way to apologize. She just watched as her vomit slid off the man’s clipboard and down his puffer vest. She silently thanked her mother’s beauty for helping her get this far in life. The man gave her a napkin to wipe up her vomit.
For all the unkind moments Paulina had experienced in her life, her mother’s beauty was the one privilege that she desperately held on to. But the day in which she couldn’t rely on looks anymore was coming faster than she had expected, and more and more she looked in the mirror and saw her mother’s face staring back at her: tired, lonely, and misunderstood.
“I said, where’s the damn bread?” the first elderly woman repeated, echoing over and over again, frustrated, as she slammed her metal cart. “Where is Ch? Mai? She always makes the bread. She’s been making bread for twenty years.”
“I let her go. I let all of them go. The overhead was too much,” Paulina managed to say as she wiped her mouth with the napkin. “It’s all going to be automated soon. The bread isn’t even that good anyway. This will make it better. More modern. More efficient. Isn’t that a good thing? Wouldn’t that make your lives easier?”
“You fired Ch? Mai?” the old woman said, aghast, ignoring everything else that Paulina had pitched. Promises of a better tomorrow ran in and out of the woman’s ear. The woman had learned early on that tomorrow was never guaranteed, but that the only thing that could get her through the days were her routines, and knowing exactly where everything was. But she wasn’t the only one who appeared shell-shocked. All the regulars who had come in promptly on Monday morning, and on every Monday for the past two decades, stopped arguing, stopped moving, and looked at Paulina as if she were nothing but a plague that had descended upon their city to disrupt their lives.
Duc’s Sandwiches may not have been the best in the city, or particularly very good, but it was their constant. Buying bread was an easy win for them, when life hadn’t been a series of wins, but constant chaos, churn, and heartbreak. Buying their daily bread had represented something to them, more than just a bastardized, colonial example of war and fusion, but resilience and hope. That they had turned something so French into something so Vietnamese—it was their pride.
Even if Duc’s bread was shit.
And Paulina had yanked it all away from them without a thought or care.