Chapter 23 #2
“There’s about four hundred fifty K on the site right now.” She watched my reaction closely. “We can take it and run. It’s enough to start a new life, and then we can, like, open a fruit stand or sell handmade bracelets or something.”
“You’re serious,” I said.
“Sí,” Emily answered. “Mucho.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m so pale, and I’ve never been good at crafts. I need to think.”
“Well think fast, Fontana. Because we’re just about out of time.”
I shut myself into my bedroom to do just that: think.
If thinking mostly consisted of crying out to the ceiling rain bubble, “How did this happen? What am I supposed to do now?!” I’d never been great when it came to tragedy or decision-making, and this was both.
This was like having your dog hit by a car and having to choose a paint color for your vestibule at the same time.
I tried going over my options. Run away?
Stay and confess? Take a Xanax and a long nap and hope for the best?
Later that night, I met Kevin at Diner in South Williamsburg because I refused to leave Brooklyn and he insisted on taking me out to dinner so we could “talk.” My true intention was to do as little talking as possible.
Really I was only buying time till I figured out what to do next, and I figured I might as well have a decent meal in the interim.
Diner is in no way a diner. I want that to be clear. Like all things Williamsburg, it’s ironic and expensive and you’re either in on the joke or you’re not. After a forty-minute wait, we were finally seated.
“I still don’t understand,” Kevin said, squeezing into our tight booth.
“Neither do I. Why is this stupid place so crowded?”
“I was talking about Barlow firing you.”
“Oh.” I made a quick scan of the knitted hats and scruffy beards on either side of us to be sure no one was hiding a tape recorder. Then I remembered tape recorders were rendered obsolete in 1991, and with a minimum of two iPhones on each tabletop, my caution was pointless.
“Has anyone ever understood why Robert Barlow does the things he does?” I said.
“I thought you did,” Kevin said.
Suddenly, our waiter squeezed into our booth beside me, to tell us about the menu.
There aren’t any menus at Diner because their food options are seasonal.
If you insist on seeing a menu, or pretend to be deaf, they’ll belligerently scribble down the names of a few food items onto your paper tablecloth.
This is intended to be authentic. Authentic what, I don’t know.
We had a short chat with our abundantly tattooed waiter about how organic and grass-fed everything was, and then he asked us what we wanted and I realized I hadn’t been listening to him at all. I’d completely zoned out on our verbal menu options.
Kevin ordered some kind of fish. He actually just said, “I’ll have the fish,” which signaled to me that he’d also zoned out and taken a shot in the dark.
“Soup?” I said.
“Soup’s out of season,” the waiter replied.
“Burger,” I said.
“And some beer,” Kevin added. “Whatever you recommend.”
This date was swiftly turning into the blooper reel of a Food Network reality show. Our craft beers arrived, and I immediately knocked mine over. Another thing about Diner is the tables aren’t level. Diner’s too artisanal for unslanted surfaces.
Our waiter dutifully brought me a new beer and I sipped it carefully with both hands.
“Do you think Robert fired you because of your website? Because he disagrees with it politically?” Kevin rubbed at the condensation on his glass. “You might have legal standing, if you think that’s the reason.”
I gazed around the restaurant’s interior, which resembled the inside of a zeppelin airship. “I spy three separate girls wearing tights for pants,” I said. “Can you find them?”
This effectively made it impossible for Kevin to rest his puppy eyes on mine. I couldn’t deal with puppy anything right now. My intestines ached and I felt like crying. All I really wanted was to go home and be by myself.
But Kevin persisted. “Tina, I can’t help you if you don’t let me into what you’re feeling right now.”
Jesus.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” I said as honestly as I could. “Robert didn’t fire me exactly. It’s more like he gave me a nudge out of the nest.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Kevin said. “Was it your decision to leave?”
“Ultimately, yes,” I lied. “I got a generous severance package, and now I can focus all my attention on the site.”
“But the way you were escorted out, he made it look like you were some sort of criminal—”
I nearly spilled my second beer at the word. “That’s what they do when people who are close to Robert leave the company,” I said, which sounded plausible even to me. “It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if a crowd hadn’t formed to see me out.”
“So you quit.” Kevin’s puppy brows were crinkled in that way that suggested he didn’t fully believe me. “But everyone’s saying you were fired.”
“I didn’t want to be an assistant anymore,” I said. “Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Kevin drew back like I’d spit in his face. I hadn’t spit, I don’t think. I was pretty sure it was his sensitivity that made him draw back like that. It was a constant struggle for me to keep my Bronx in check and not steamroll over Kevin’s gentleness at any given moment.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. The truth is, I’m feeling a lot of different things right now. This is a big change for me, and I’m not great with change.”
I impressed even myself with this one.
Our food came, finally, and Kevin, recalibrated to his former balance, held a perfect forkful of his entrée up to my mouth. “Do you want to try this? I think it might be trout. Possibly in truffle oil?”
“I hate truffle oil,” I said.
“Yeah, fuck truffle oil.” He threw his fork down onto his plate, smiling wide.
He was trying so hard to be a good sport.
But I was barely keeping it together.
There were suddenly so many variables, everything that felt like a given only yesterday now had to be called into question.
Even my relationship with Kevin. If Robert had caught on to anything, or if my being fired wasn’t the end of this, or if I was going to Thelma and Louise it with Emily before the week was through, I should maybe, like, give Kevin a clue that things weren’t kosher.
That everything wasn’t coming up roses. Or whatever other idiomatic cliché existed as shorthand for saying things had in fact become totally fucked.
What would such a clue be? I didn’t know, but blatant avoidance of meaningful conversation and random tantrum throwing appeared to be my current course of action till I came up with something better.
When dessert came, the flourless chocolate cake we ordered had walnuts hidden inside it. I wasn’t allergic—but, come on, walnuts?
“The flourless chocolate cake is a classic,” I shouted, loud enough for the entire airship to hear. “Why do this?”
Maybe our waiter had mentioned the walnuts during our chat and we’d missed it, but still.
Kevin called for the check.
We didn’t talk the entire walk back to my apartment, which was only about twelve minutes, yet a lot of time for silence. And when we reached my front door, I didn’t invite him inside. Instead I just stood there like a moron.
“Listen, Kevin,” I started to say—fully prepared to let him off the hook and break up with him right there—before he leaned in and kissed me.
I drifted backward, momentarily dazed. In spite of my hysteria, of behaving suspiciously and dodgily all night, of refusing to eat my dessert on principle—he still wanted to kiss me good night.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.” And he kissed me again.
The sensation of his lips on mine made the taut muscles of my jaw relax. My shoulders settled and the knot in my gut loosened just so. But I knew I had to go inside alone.
You’re likely to be wearing an orange jumpsuit by next week, Emily had said. What if she turned out to be right? And what if starting over in Mexico with a new identity, subsisting on empanadas or whatever, was better than finding out?
“Thank you for dinner.” I closed the door in Kevin’s sweet face, and it felt like I was closing the door on my entire life.
If you love someone set them free, I told myself. Before they’re brought in on accessory charges.