Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Of those who survived the roof in Baghdad, only Jamie required evacuation to Ramstein.
The transport that took him to the hospital in Germany was not a regular ambulance but rather resembled an American school bus with blacked-out windows that leaked strips of day along the borders.
Inside, Jamie lay next to a talkative marine who would end up losing his right arm, half of his left arm, and his right eye.
After two weeks Jamie was transferred to Balboa Hospital in San Diego. The navy physician examining Jamie’s leg said they needed photos of its damage.
“For our records,” the physician said. “So we can document progress. It would also be used for the disability claim.”
“No disability,” Jamie said, thinking of the marine.
The doctor regarded him with weary patience and handed him a packet.
Jamie brought it home and stuck it on top of his microwave, where he usually placed paperwork he thought might be of some importance but required no immediate action.
He would come across it months later, when he was moving out and tossing items into recycling.
At the top of the packet was a blue sheet with a list of questions.
Jamie first read the ones at the very bottom: Who were you before combat? Who do you believe you are now, after?
Even though he never answered, Jamie still thought these were valid questions—as it was only now, well outside of the navy, that he truly appreciated the resources previously expended into his believing his work had meaning: the training, the equipment, the ceremonies and medals.
At Atom, Jamie was part of the business group, where his job was to manage a software release that would soon be overridden by the next software release, one he did not manage and had no input in.
His desk was on the fourth floor, in a semi-open layout with low walls.
There was a chatty data scientist who would often visit, Sandy Chu.
“Coffee break?” Sandy would ask, her lips fresh with gloss, caramel highlighted hair swept over a shoulder.
“Lunch?” Jamie did not want to have coffee with Sandy but didn’t understand how to continually reject such requests and not be guilty of some form of reverse sexual harassment; when he saw Sandy approach, he would put on his headset and dial slowly until she passed.
Directly across from Jamie’s desk was a single bathroom that locked from the inside.
When Jamie first started work he’d been nervous to take even a half hour for lunch, so much did it feel as if he were stealing time from the company—but now he regularly ate ninety-minute lunches, and when there was an empty afternoon, would read a newspaper inside the little room.
One morning Jamie noticed that a key card reader had been installed outside the entrance.
He swiped, but the reader blinked red and the door remained locked.
That afternoon, a tall East Asian man with hair gathered in a bun at his neck stopped at the bathroom door.
He bent to swipe his badge. As he entered, Jamie saw a glimpse of his skirt; it was burgundy and flowing, longer in the back than the front.
“That’s Ellison,” Chloe informed him the next day.
Jamie’s ex-girlfriend had left Goldman two years after he had, to attend business school at Stanford, after which she’d joined Atom’s venture arm.
They’d been dating again for half a year, though they kept their relationship private.
Jamie wouldn’t have minded their relationship being less private, given Sandy’s drive-bys—but Chloe found Sandy’s overtures amusing.
Chloe was an extremely secure person in general.
“Why does Ellison have his own bathroom?”
“Don’t talk so loud ,” Chloe hissed. “I can see him.” They were in the cafeteria, seated a collegial distance apart. “Don’t look,” she said again.
“Why?”
“Because you’re so obvious. It’s probably people like you who made it so Ellison needs his own bathroom,” she added obliquely.
“Right,” Jamie said, though secretly he was annoyed by Chloe’s insinuation—as by “people like you,” he was fairly certain she meant veteran.
While in theory, Atom made an effort to hire veterans (for the past two years Jamie had been asked to record a video for the company’s diversity showcase), in actual practice the population was treated in a similar fashion to large dogs or small children: valuable to society in their own right, but prone to embarrassing outbursts.
Jamie compensated by behaving as benignly as possible; he avoided political discourse and did not volunteer his opinions on Afghanistan, the carried interest tax, or low-income housing.
Occasionally the fact that he’d been a SEAL seemed to garner some interest from executives.
Had he killed anyone? they would prod, and of course he couldn’t actually say, they understood, but the answer was yes, yes, yes —wasn’t it?
But, as with Jamie’s initial intake with human resources, such executives had no idea what to do with his experience; it didn’t seem to translate to real life.
At times Jamie felt people were embarrassed for him, that he had been in special operations, trained on a sniper rifle and explosives and interrogation techniques, and now had to make an ordinary living—it seemed to him they thought he might be embarrassed about his current state.
At such moments, Jamie would open one of his many spreadsheets, the financial projections he was asked to calculate, and make an edit: $4 million in estimated revenue became $40 million; fifty thousand users turned into five hundred thousand.
So far, the changes had gone unnoticed. Jamie theorized people cared only when the numbers became smaller — when they grew bigger, they simply believed their wishful thinking had come true.
As Jamie rarely left his desk, he became accustomed to seeing Ellison nearly every day when he visited the bathroom.
Sometimes Ellison was in a button-down and jeans, his black hair neatly parted to one side—in such moments Jamie thought Ellison looked nearly identical to the Asian bankers he’d worked with at Goldman, all the mathematically gifted Steve Kims and John Changs.
At other times Ellison would be wearing a skirt or wide-legged trousers, his height enhanced by sturdy heels.
It wasn’t until Jamie saw Ellison outside of Atom that he realized Ellison had left the company, and he knew that only because Ellison had started work as a host at the Satisfaction Café.
“He’s a nice man,” Joan said. “Originally from Singapore, but I have the feeling he doesn’t speak to his parents. I’m sure he has his reasons, and who knows what one’s parents are truly like? I should take their side, but I won’t. After all, Ellison is my employee.”
Jamie reached for a slice of scallion pancake. He was eating dinner with Joan since Lee was out that evening, with someone Joan hinted she found highly unsuitable. “Does he live near the café?”
“He lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood.” Joan tilted the dish and dumped the rest of the pancake on Jamie’s plate.
“Saratoga. He owns. I’m paying him more than he said he was making at your company.
I certainly hope you’re earning more. I would think it’d be irresponsible to live by yourself otherwise, instead of here with me.
Do you like the pancake, by the way? I’m thinking to serve it at the café. With a nice dipping sauce.”
“The pancake is fine. And I’m sure I earn more,” Jamie said, although he really wasn’t sure.
He hadn’t negotiated his offer from Atom at all.
He’d known he might be leaving some money on the table but assumed it would be unethical for the company to shortchange him simply because he didn’t care to argue (he’d since begun to suspect, from Chloe’s cutting remarks on the matter, that this assumption was incorrect).
“Or you could live with your girlfriend,” Joan said. “Although I would hope you’d introduce her to me first.”
“I haven’t brought her because I only want you to meet the serious ones.”
“Please don’t waste people’s time,” Joan grumbled. She rose and began to clear the table of dishes even though Jamie was still eating.
“I left Atom because I didn’t like the people,” Ellison told Jamie later. It was their first official introduction. Jamie had stopped by the café near closing and encountered Ellison in the break room.
“The stares and jokes were part of it,” Ellison went on.
He was drinking a mug of tea, and from the specific chrysanthemum flowers unfurling in the water, Jamie suspected Joan had brewed it for him, using her special blend from Hangzhou.
“But the worst was the lady from human resources. Did I understand the impact of my appearance on the employee population? she asked. Perhaps clarifying my gender would put colleagues at ease? Clarify what ? I asked. Because until I say otherwise, I am a man! But eventually the argument became too tiresome.”
“Right,” Jamie said. Ellison had already been talking for twenty minutes. He was one of those naturally chatty people, which Jamie assumed was part of why Joan had hired him.
“It isn’t as if I haven’t thought about becoming a woman,” Ellison said. “But I’d describe it as my laziest fantasy, the kind I’m not willing to do anything about at the moment in real life. Sort of like opening a pizza parlor or becoming a tennis pro.