Chapter 2 #2
“I think it’s time someone alphabetized the CD shelf,” Heather says.
“Oh, that seems like a great use of her time,” Ben says. “Sorry, Assistant. Guess the office’s killjoy needs you.”
Susan is just glad to have an excuse to stop talking to Ben.
By the end of the day, most of the CDs on the shelf are organized by the names of bands and release dates. Susan went ahead and dusted them, too, for good measure.
Susan is still on her knees finishing up the last section when, on his way out, Ben says, “Wow, you really did it,” as though he hadn’t expected her to.
Heather follows close behind, bending down and speaking in a whisper. “You’ll tell me if he’s really bothering you, right?”
Susan nods. “Definitely, thank you so much.” The truth, though, is she doesn’t know if she would tell Heather. She’s not sure if it would be worth losing Ben’s trust.
Besides, Ben has already made her uncomfortable, and she lived.
When she leaves, Susan walks to the L, enjoying the golden hour light reflecting off the buildings and the infinite symphony of honking cars.
It’s Friday and she wonders where everyone else is off to.
She imagines first dates in candlelit bars, raucous birthday parties, sweaty punk shows. She’s always sad to leave Brooklyn.
Penn Station is a bustling nightmare, everybody trying to walk in a different direction at once, and Susan has to run to catch the train that’ll take her back to her parents’ house.
She gets there just before the doors close, settling into a window seat and pulling a stack of recently published magazines out of her backpack, SPIN and Rolling Stone and Nylon and Alternative Press, reading through them for any mentions of Rider or the label’s bands for the ongoing press clippings that Heather has her collect.
There are a few articles here and there, though mostly the features are about bigger artists, like M.I.A.
and Lady Gaga and even Andrew W.K., who has somehow transcended the DIY scene into the mainstream.
It’s better that Susan do this now; it’ll free up her Monday morning for the more urgent things that will undoubtedly fall to her, the coffee runs and hotel bookings and communicating with various music venues about what artist requires what kind of alcohol, or specifically no alcohol, backstage.
She is everyone’s assistant, which means her work touches all the facets of the label, and she feels this gives her an advantage: She is starting to really understand how the whole machine works.
On the train, Susan is too absorbed in the task to pay attention to the people around her, with their business suits and briefcases, or the drone of the voice announcing each stop: Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, Bethpage, the suburbs a green-and-gray blur out the dirty window.
She doesn’t even notice the guy in uniform who comes around to collect tickets, and he has to clear his throat a few times before she jumps, rummaging through her bag for the little piece of paper she’s already crumpled up.
She loves working in the music industry so much that she doesn’t mind the way this job spills over into her off-hours.
She’s grateful for it, too, as there was a moment, not too long ago, when she wasn’t sure she’d ever be employed at all: Graduation was approaching and she’d applied to more assistant jobs than she could count, never hearing back from a single one.
Everyone told her it was because of the recession.
There are simply fewer jobs than there used to be.
Even her parents’ steady work has been affected; her junior year of college, right after the stock market crash, her mother was laid off, her father forced into early retirement, and eventually part of her own measly paychecks from her weekend job at the mall’s jewelry kiosk had to be used for groceries for the three of them.
The job market she was graduating into was hard for everyone, but she also suspected that in her case, the problem might be her.
While she’d been commuting and working retail and going to parties with Katie that she didn’t even want to be at, her peers had been interning, networking, laying the groundwork for their postgrad careers.
It was only thanks to Jonny’s connections that this job had come through.
She doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to repay his kindness.
Now, on the train home, she eats a protein bar for dinner, chasing it down with a warm Diet Coke. It’s dark by the time the train pulls into the station, but still hot and muggy out.
The parking lot is full of vehicles both newer and larger than hers, though they lack the personality and history of the Volvo.
Susan’s car, squished between two luxury SUVs, wears memories: the scrape and dent on the corner of her bumper that she never got fixed, the floor on the passenger side still covered in CDs full of stolen rock songs, labeled in Sharpie.
She pops in an old mix for the drive home, tired from the week but feeling conflicted about its end. On weekdays, her life has become vibrant and exciting. But on weekends, she’s mostly just been hanging around her parents’ house.
She’s not sure she’s making enough money to move out.
She knows she could apply for a service job in the city to supplement her day job, probably even find a cheap room to rent somewhere, but though she longs for a life in the city, the truth is she also likes sleeping in the bed that’s always been hers.
She did it all through college, too, opting out of the financial strain of dorm life in favor of comfort.
She still doesn’t feel ready to give it up, even while she resents it.
She has only partially launched.
On Saturday, Susan sleeps until 11 AM, and then her parents drag her to a barbecue at the neighbors’ house.
A swimming pool glitters sapphire in the sunlight, and the wind rustles the maple trees while pop radio plays from a small speaker.
She politely answers questions about her new job while thinking about how everyone she knows in the city—Katie and Jake and her coworkers and the small circle of acquaintances she’s made over the years—must be having fun without her.
“Brooklyn, huh? You should meet my nephew,” one of the neighbors says to her while chewing a hot dog with her mouth open. “He’s perpetually single.”
So is Susan. Her love life is mostly fantasy.
In college Susan developed a never-ending series of crushes on girls in her classes, which sometimes culminated in a stilted date or a make-out at a party or, a few times, awkward one-night stands in various dorms around the city.
But she never really found her people. The other lesbians, who traveled in packs, didn’t seem to be taking in strays.
Susan had come out to Katie shortly after that fateful night she met Eliza, unable to contain herself.
Katie was supportive, though also so unsurprised it bordered on offensive.
When Katie pressed her for details, she’d told her all about what almost happened in the Volvo, including how it fell apart when she recognized Eliza from the photo Greg had been looking at, a revelation that shocked Katie as much as it had Susan.
Once they left for college, Katie sometimes tried to scout lesbians for Susan at NYU, but she had a habit of assuming anyone with an alternative haircut was gay and, beyond that, that anyone who was gay would be attractive to Susan.
The truth was Katie never managed to present Susan with anyone Susan was actually interested in, despite her best efforts.
Commuting from her parents’ house didn’t help, of course. Nor did the weekend job that kept Susan on Long Island instead of in the city with everyone else.
Because it was easier, she eventually tacked herself onto Katie’s life, sometimes sleeping in Katie’s dorm room and pretending to be interested in the endless parade of straight people Katie and Jake surrounded themselves with.
Their activities, too, struck Susan as distinctly boring, going to hookah lounges and bars that didn’t card.
As it turned out, college was kind of just like high school, in a different location.
Susan looks sideways at her mom, as though she needs permission to come out to this woman who has stacks of gold bangles on each freckled wrist and red lipstick bleeding out into the crepey skin around her mouth. Susan’s mom grimaces, clearly anticipating something awkward.
“I’m sure I have some straight friends I can introduce him to,” Susan says.
It’s the most reasonable response she could think of, but the woman seems stunned and walks away with her mouth still ajar.
“Susan,” her mom groans, shaking her head, but she’s laughing.
Her long gray hair is pulled back into a loose, frizzy braid, which makes her stand out among the neighbors and their dyed, styled coifs.
When she was younger, Susan used to wish her mom would put more effort into her appearance, but now it’s a point of pride.
She likes that her parents don’t fit in, because she doesn’t, either.
She’s only starting to realize this is where she gets it from.
Susan shrugs and grabs some watermelon. It’s fun, bringing a little shock value to the party. It’s not like she was trying to start something.
She puts her arm around her mom’s shoulders and starts to tell her a story about something that happened at work last week, but her mom cuts her off and says, “Did we tell you we need a new roof?”
“No.” Susan sighs, shelving the thrilling tale of how she had been on Bedford Avenue putting up posters for a band when the band itself walked by. “What’s wrong with the old one?”
On Sunday, Susan helps her parents clean out the garage. They’re turning it into something resembling a studio apartment that can be rented out.