Chapter Nine
NINE
“Why did you like this?” I asked Eunjin. We were studying together in the business school library the next day and I held up my phone to show her Laura’s post about the so-called scammer.
“Oh.” She shrugged. “I mean, the whole situation is super creepy. I don’t even remember liking it but probably in a show of support?”
“Since when do you follow Laura?”
“I mean, don’t you also follow Laura?”
“That’s irrelevant. When did you start following her?”
“I think she followed me when we were in Buddhism together last semester, so I followed her back.”
“She followed you first?!”
“Yeah.”
I was suddenly overcome with jealousy. I just didn’t know whether I was jealous of Eunjin or of Laura.
I looked around the library to distract myself, to shake off the prickling sensation in my chest. A group of business school students walked in and sat at the table next to ours, reminiscing about some trip they had just taken to Antarctica.
I hated that Eunjin followed Laura. I hated that she had liked Laura’s post. I hated these business school students with their affected corporate joviality and logo’d sweater vests.
I’d actually found it a little endearing before, how they all wanted to match with each other like a club sports team, but now found it utterly insufferable.
“Why do we still study here? The people suck,” I said, loud enough for the group next to me to hear. But they didn’t hear. They’d moved on to discussing when they’d be free to practice case study interviews with each other. “Casing,” as they liked to call it.
“Dude, why are you being weird?” Eunjin asked.
I ignored her question and chewed on my lip before speaking again.
“Can you be honest with me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
“Is she better than me?” I avoided meeting Eunjin’s eyes. It was embarrassing enough that I asked the question, but it was too late to take it back. I decided I might as well try to get an answer rather than pretend I’d never said it.
“Is who better than you?”
“Laura.”
“Oh.” Eunjin had a funny look on her face, as though trying to figure out whether I was joking or not. “We’re back to the subject of her post.”
“Yes.”
“Better than you? At what?”
“You know…at everything. Is she better? Objectively. Categorically. Holistically.”
“Wait, I don’t even know where to start with this. No one is better than anyone else categorically.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t actually believe that.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you?”
“I mean, you would obviously rather be you than some homeless person on the street,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean I think I’m categorically better than that person. That just means that I think I’m in a much more fortunate circumstance.”
“I’ll rephrase the question: wouldn’t you rather be Laura than be me?”
“You’re basically just asking me who is more privileged. But that’s still a separate question from who I would rather be, which I find to be a pointless hypothetical. And I don’t think she is better than you. I don’t think anyone is inherently better than anyone else.”
One of the business school students in a logo’d sweater vest tapped my shoulder to ask whether he could grab the chair next to me. I nodded and waited for him to leave before speaking again.
“Come on, you can just say it. I know she’s better. She’s prettier, and she has a better body, and her family is wealthier, and now she’s gotten into Harvard.”
“Oh, Elizabeth. Is this about the percentiles thing again? I told you that’s a terrible perspective of the world. You shouldn’t think of any human being as categorically better than another.”
“Maybe it’s a terrible perspective, but it’s just the truth. I’m just telling the truth about what everyone else is secretly thinking but no one will say out loud.”
“You may be telling the truth about what you’re thinking, but I definitely don’t think everyone else feels the same way. Except for maybe neo-Nazis.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m saying there are particular reasons that would make one person better than another. But race, religion, and gender are not any of those reasons.”
“You’re trading one prejudice for another.
Laura is not categorically better than you, just like how no one is categorically better than anyone else.
Anyway, I think I’ve said the word ‘categorically’ more in this conversation than I’ve said it at any other time in my life.
For the sake of my point, I’ll say it once more: your perspective is categorically wrong. ”
—
Despite my previous decision to never see David again, I found myself responding to his texts as though I were interested.
The week after I came back from winter break, we had gone on a couple more dates.
To be honest, I liked the attention. More practically speaking, I didn’t want his last impression of me to be of the role-play situation.
I didn’t think he would tell anyone about it, but for the sake of my own sanity I preferred we end things on a more normal note.
I decided to have sex with him a couple more times in an extremely vanilla way, so vanilla that he would forget about the weird stuff I’d asked for that one other time.
In early February, Eunjin was invited to perform at an anniversary party for some fancy couple who lived in Midtown.
The two had attended Arnold’s fundraising event and asked his assistant for her contact information.
The couple’s names were Annelise and Tom.
The night of the event, we met outside their building, which was located across the street from Carnegie Hall.
The doorman directed us to the elevator, which took us to the sixty-third floor, opening directly to a sprawling apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the southern half of Manhattan.
Strangers swarmed in the room like bees.
It reminded me of corporate networking events they’d sometimes host at school—everyone dressed up, everyone forming small circles of socialization, everyone laughing with that certain affect that wasn’t inauthentic but wasn’t completely real either.
Laura used to go to those, back when she stayed in her lane as a future investment banker rather than a future lawyer.
A woman walked up to us and introduced herself as Annelise.
She had deep-set eyes and an angular face with shiny, taut skin, her overall sharpness accentuated with a blunt bob cut.
Her individual features weren’t beautiful, but together, they formed the kind of face that you didn’t want to look away from, like maybe she had been beautiful when she was young.
Eunjin followed Annelise to the area where she was supposed to set up her violin, leaving me alone and unsure what to do with my hands.
I found an empty space in the corner, pretending to read important text messages when really I was just scrolling through my Instagram feed.
I didn’t need to use the restroom but I needed a break from the situation, which epitomized the worst type of isolation: being surrounded by people who you don’t know and don’t want to talk to, who all know each other and want to talk to each other, while you stand on the sidelines just waiting for it to be over, desperately wanting what everyone else in the room has.
I walked to the bathroom and breathed in the sage and cedarwood from the diffuser on the corner shelf.
Someone knocked on the door, and I panicked, flushing the unused toilet and washing my hands, even though I actually did need to pee now and would have to sneak back here in a few minutes.
I returned to the crowd. Annelise was weaving through the room to tell everyone to grab food, and a line formed at the kitchen island.
Meanwhile, a petite, dark-skinned woman was scrubbing wineglasses in the kitchen.
Every minute or so, she used her forearm to brush the hair that had escaped from her bun.
She never paused to retie it. Annelise approached the sink, her head still turned around to laugh at some comment a guest made, and when she turned it back to talk to the woman washing the dishes, her smile dropped like the curtain at a play’s intermission.
The woman nodded; she took some glasses out of the dishwasher and placed them in the sink.
Annelise patted the woman on the back and returned to the party.
I bounced back and forth between tagging along with Eunjin and standing in the corner on my phone, picking at the pot stickers and foie gras on my plate.
I only knew it was foie gras because I overheard someone saying, “Oh hey! I love foie gras.” I distracted myself by researching the origins of foie gras, arranging my face in a way that suggested I was attending to urgent business.