Chapter 13
Wendi chan lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn—Williamsburg’s grittier, less gentrified younger sibling.
(It should be noted that given the warp speed of gentrification in present-day New York, Bushwick is already becoming a coveted neighborhood on par with the city-as-luxury-good at large—but trust me when I tell you that Wendi’s apartment building was an enduring, gentrification-resistant hellhole.)
No wonder she was so ornery. She worked all day in the creepy Titan basement surrounded by computer screens, doing god knows what with zeros and ones, and then she came home to here, the bowels of a broken building on Knickerbocker Avenue. I was surprised the doorbell worked when I pressed it.
She buzzed me in and I descended the stairwell, following the sounds of drums and screeching to the only apartment door that was propped open. I was free to let myself in to what I realized was band practice.
There were four of them, all Wendi look-alikes, set up in the middle of the living room. Honest to god, they could have passed for an Asian gothic version of Jem and the Holograms.
I stood awkwardly, straining not to cringe as the singer hit her high notes. Then Wendi called cut.
None of the girls acknowledged my presence before disappearing into one of the two bedrooms.
“You all live here together?” I asked as Wendi propped her bass up against the wall.
She nodded. “Four Chinese girls from Flushing living in a Bushwick basement.”
“That should be your band name,” I said.
Wendi made a sour face. “Our band name is I’m Not Chun-Li from Street Fighter but I’ll Still Fuck You Up.”
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s totally better.”
We each sat down on a vintage Marshall amp. Wendi reached into a red cooler filled with ice, pulled out a soaking can of Budweiser, and offered it to me. It was emblazoned with stars and stripes, a leftover from the Fourth of July.
“I love this American can, don’t you?” Wendi said in her gruff voice and slight Chinese accent. “Don’t you feel such freedom drinking from it?”
I cracked it open, causing a small volcano of foam to erupt onto the already sticky floor, and nodded.
Wendi tossed me an open bag of Lay’s Classic to go with my beer. “I didn’t think you would show.”
Neither did I, but now that I had a cold beer and salty chips, I would have stayed forever if she let me.
“I only came to tell you that whatever Lily Madsen told you, it isn’t true.” I crunched on my chips and avoided Wendi’s searing eye contact. “I don’t know anything about . . . about anything, really.”
“Stop embarrassing yourself,” Wendi said, cutting me off. “Have some dignity; don’t be a liar.”
I went silent and she stared at me hard. “Forget all that for a moment,” she said. “First, tell me your story, Tina Fontana.”
“My story?”
“You interest me,” she said. “The way Lily Madsen the Lean Cuisine Lady interests me.”
That could not be a compliment.
“I look at Lily and I know there’s a story,” Wendi explained. “I want to find out what it is.”
“Have you?” I asked.
Wendi shook her pink horns. “It’s not so easy getting into her little vacuum-packed world. You’re not so different. You have a certain quality, it’s difficult to describe. Like a stray cat that you can see is hungry, but if you reach to it, it’ll claw your hand off, you know?”
I did, actually.
“Maybe it’s those big sad eyes you have.” Wendi pulled a soft pack of Marlboros out of her cargo pants pocket. “You have, like, weepy Winona Ryder–from-the-nineties eyes. And she was no cat you could just pick up and take into your lap either.” She held the pack of cigarettes out to me. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
“Have you ever?” She Zippo’d her cigarette lit.
I shook my head.
“You always been a rule-follower?”
“I guess you can say that.”
“You’re a first-gen, aren’t you? That’s typical. Where are your parents from?”
“Sicily and Calabria,” I said. “What about you?”
“I was born in Beijing. Came here when I was six.”
“Have you always been a rule-breaker?” I asked.
“Did you not hear me? I said I was born in Beijing.”
She smiled, I think. So I smiled. Then she blew a cloud of smoke into my face. “So how did a rule-follower like you end up as Robert Barlow’s assistant?”
“I don’t really know.”
Wendi glared at me until I said more.
“I was an English major in college, managed a bookstore for a while, worked as a research assistant to a journalist—she’s the one who told me Robert was looking for an assistant. She recommended me.”
“So did you think you’d become a journalist?” Wendi flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette onto the floor. “By starting out as Robert’s assistant?”
“Maybe?” I wiped the potato chip grease from my fingers onto my jeans and went back to my beer.
“Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I thought if I could get an in somewhere, my foot in the door .
. . becoming a journalist sounded like it could be a solid choice, like an actual job.
But now it’s six years later and I’m still doing the same thing I was doing when I was twenty-four, with no chance of advancement and . . . I’m rambling.”
“You’re answering my question,” Wendi said. “You’re just taking the long way. Tell me about your student loans.”
I hesitated, but my hesitation was pointless. Wendi obviously knew everything and she wasn’t letting me off the hook.
“It all seems so stupid now,” I said, “graduating college with so much debt and no real career plan, but I didn’t have a whole lot of guidance.
My parents can’t even read English. Nobody explained to me what all those numbers meant when I signed for my loans.
It all just felt so possible, like I was doing the right thing by investing in myself. ”
Wendi shocked me by laughing a high-pitched laugh that was one part schoolgirl and two parts hyena.
“My parents don’t even speak English,” she said.
“But they guided me all right. They guided me through before-and-after-school study sessions, three hours of violin every day, a perfect score on my SATs. They guided me through a nice beating when I missed valedictorian by one-thousandth of a point.”
“You were salutatorian of your high school and you still have student-loan debt?”
There was that maniac laugh again. “I would if I went to Harvard like I was supposed to. Six-figure debt, for sure. But instead I rebelled.”
Wendi let the word hang in the smoky air between us for a moment. “That was my first broken rule,” she said. “I said fuck you to Harvard and went to Queens College instead, for free. My parents haven’t spoken to me since. I’m an orphan now, by disownment.”
“Wait.” I came to fuller attention. “Lily said you have debt. Isn’t that why you wanted me to come here?”
“That’s what I told her. But the truth is, I wanted to show you something.” Wendi nodded her horns at the laptop resting on the floor. “I’ve been working on a program that I think works well with . . . what you and Emily Johnson have been doing.”
“We’re not doing it anymore,” I said.
Wendi rolled her eyes, stubbed out her cigarette, flicked the filter across the room, and picked up her laptop. “I’ve created software that would enable you to systemize on a larger scale the base design you and Emily have generated.”
“I have no idea what any of those words mean,” I said.
“It means I don’t want anything from you.” Wendi pulled her amp closer to mine. “I’m presenting you with an opportunity. In plain English, I’ve designed a pay-it-forward network. Let me show you.”
She fingered the computer’s touchpad mouse with her purple-polished pointer finger.
“This program allows you to track all the money you and Emily move around. Checks can go in and checks can go out, and you control it all. So if you wanted to, you could subsidize whoever you approve—me, for example, or some other lowly Titan assistant drowning in student debt—and then allow them to contribute what they can if they choose to. But I see by your glazed eyes that I’ve lost you. ”
She’d lost me when she picked up her laptop.
“Look.” Wendi snapped her fingers to direct my attention to the screen.
“Here’s where people can submit their student-loan-debt statements.
And here’s where you or Emily, or anyone, can submit monetary contributions to the site’s account.
And here’s where you click to send people their e-checks. That’s pretty much it, very simple.”
“So it’s like a charity?” I asked.
“It’s not a charity.” Wendi reached into the cooler and pulled out another can of red, white, and blue Budweiser. “I like to think of it as a program to aid in the redistribution of wealth. Robert’s wealth.”
She let that statement float for a few seconds. “For example. I don’t have student-loan debt, but I do my boss’s expenses. So if I join the network, I can fudge his expense reports just like you and Emily have been doing, but now you can put those funds toward another network member’s debt.”
“So it’s an expense account scheme,” I said. “Plain and simple. That’s the brilliant idea you’re pitching?”
Wendi set her laptop down onto the floor, then put her boots up on the milk crate that served as her coffee table. “It’s not a scheme,” she said. “Think about the potential here, Tina. We’re not only the ninety-nine percent, we’re the assistants to the one percent. There’s power in that.”
I looked around Wendi’s cruddy basement apartment. At the cardboard-box bookshelves and repurposed lamps. The cracked claw-foot bathtub that served as a planter for what may or may not have been marijuana.
I had to ask: “Are you proposing this as a way to get rich?”
Wendi squealed with laughter like a poltergeist. “No. I don’t want to become rich, because then I would have to despise myself. I’m proposing this to make Robert a little less rich, but not enough that he notices.”
I considered this for a moment. To be honest, there was a Robin Hood–esque element to Wendi’s idea that I found tempting.
My college self would have jumped at it.
Actually, that’s a lie. My college self would have listened attentively with owl eyes while the more active activists at the Women’s Center jumped at this idea.
But philosophically I would have totally been on board.
While I was lost in this thought, Wendi tossed me another beer and I reflexively ducked out of its way, letting it drop to the floor.
“Sorry,” I said. “Habit.” I picked up the beer, opened it without thinking, and it exploded all over the two of us. “Sorry again,” I said, but Wendi hadn’t even flinched.
“So this program,” I said, thinking back to the dream boards currently being constructed in my kitchen. “It would allow me to prevent people from using the money for anything but student-loan debt. Right?”
Wendi nodded gravely. “Not everyone’s so honest as you.”
“You think I’m honest?”
“I think you’re okay, Tina,” she said. And from Wendi Chan that was saying a lot.
—
I returned home to find Emily pouting, knees to chest on the kitchen floor, which itself now looked like a haywire linoleum dream board, a sea of discarded, half-crumpled cutouts of luxury goods mottled by smears of glittering paste. Ginger was nowhere to be found.
“You came back!” Emily jumped up and ran to me for a hug. “I was afraid you’d gone for good.”
I kept my arms at my sides but allowed her embrace.
“Fine,” I said into the skin of her bare shoulder, which smelled like a gardenia—all she was wearing was a lace nightie. “I’m back in. But only if we do this my way.”
And my way meant no dream boards, no spending sprees that would land me in a cell.
“Whatever you want.” Emily squeezed me tighter. “I’m just so glad you’re home.”
“We’re going to use a computer program,” I said.
“I love that.”
“I said computer program. We’re going to use a computer program to pay off Ginger’s debt. And I’m in charge of it.”
I would control the money. Me and only me. Because if I couldn’t stop Emily and Ginger from going ahead with this, I could at least keep them on a leash.
Emily released me and went to the fridge to search for, most likely, a fresh bottle of Asti Spumante.
“Did you hear me?” I said. “I’m going to be in charge. And for fuck’s sake, don’t tell anyone else! And make sure Ginger doesn’t either.”
“Okay, okay,” Emily said. “I’m just happy you’re back.”