“Hey!” said Kelsey, as Angela pulled open the heavy glass doors with the Elpis logo emblazoned on both sides. “What’s up?”
Kelsey hugged Angela and Angela absorbed her perfume, a complicated smell that made Angela think of pine trees and rosebushes and maybe the ocean and definitely something metallic. Odiferous. SAT word.
“Not much,” said Angela. “I had a thing in the city for Student Sharing, so I thought I’d come by and see my dad.”
“Sit down,” said Kelsey. “Tell me everything, oh my God, I can’t believe you’re graduating next year; when I first started working here you were a freshman.” Kelsey’s breasts were big and soft and so completely on display that Angela couldn’t look away from them. Her smile was wide enough to fall into. In the very back of Kelsey’s mouth, sitting atop a molar, were the remains of Kelsey’s lunch, or maybe her afternoon snack. Elpis was famous for its snack room. Angela had known approximately five Kelseys since she’d started visiting her father at work: Veronica. Mabel. Juliette. Janie. And now the actual Kelsey. Each one replaced by the next, a revolving door of office assistants who organized activities for Take Your Child to Work Day and kept her father and the other Elpis partners on schedule and in line and then eventually aged out of the position.
Kelsey pointed to a square chair, too modern to be comfortable, and said, “Your dad’s in a meeting, but as soon as he’s out I’ll let him know you’re here. Is he expecting you?”
Angela shook her head and got ready to explain her presence when a commotion from down the hall distracted her and Kelsey. Two of the senior partners, Doug Maverick and somebody Angela thought was named Stuart, were arguing over a paper one of them held.
“That’s not what the data tells us,” said Doug. “You know it’s not, Stu, you can’t keep—”
“Actually,” said a young female voice, “I’m with Stu on this one. I think that is exactly what the data tells us.”
“Oh, God,” whispered Kelsey. “Here we go.” She rolled her eyes dramatically, impressively.
“Here we go what?” Angela gave in and sat on the modern chair.
“You’ll see,” said Kelsey. “Just hang on.”
Angela hung on long enough for the voice to turn into a person, a young woman, not much older than Angela, though dressed (Angela thought) like a forty-year-old attorney, with a gray stretch wool jacket and matching gray pants. “The intern,” whispered Kelsey, “who thinks she’s a senior partner.”
The gray suit grew closer and closer and finally its owner said, “Angela? I recognize you from the pictures in your dad’s office. Oh, I’m so happy to meet you. Finally! I’m Abby.” She extended a hand.
“I’m happy to meet you too,” said Angela, dutifully shaking, but inside she was bewildered and maybe even a little bit alarmed and also she was thinking, WTF?
“Your dad has told me so much about you,” said Abby. “I feel like I know you.” She claimed the chair opposite Angela’s, crossed her legs, and leaned in closely. “And I’m sure he’s mentioned what he and I have in common.”
“Um,” said Angela. Angela’s father had never mentioned this person to Angela at all (he wasn’t in the habit of talking about the interns at home), and while she was searching for a way not to say that—she had manners, after all!—Abby said, “Harvard, of course!” with a note of triumph, as though Angela had asked a question and Abby had produced the correct answer. “We both went to Harvard. And you’re headed there too.”
“I haven’t even—” said Angela, but before she could finish Abby fixed her with an odd, almost secretive look. (Conspiratorial. SAT.) And then she said, “Let’s get a snack.”
Angela was starving. They’d had an early practice that morning, a four-mile tempo run. Kelsey was at her desk, answering the phone, “Elpis Consulting!” and rolling her eyes at Angela, like somehow this was all a big joke. “Okay,” said Angela. She thought for a second that this Abby person was going to take her hand and lead her to the snack room as though she’d never been there before, but instead she walked in front of Angela and Angela followed along, like a serf.
In the snack room Angela surveyed the offerings. SunChips. Clif Bars. Gluten-free scones baked by somebody named Sunny in Half Moon Bay. A stash of Vitaminwaters and regular bottled water in the fridge with the clear doors. Abby plucked a bag of M&M’s out of the candy bowl and said, “My favorite.” Angela chose Twizzlers, as she did every time she came to the Elpis snack room, as she’d been doing for a dozen years, because there was nobody here who was going to remind her how badly chewy candy stuck to the teeth. Anyway, Cecily was the one who was getting braces. Angela was all done with the orthodontist.
“So,” said Abby, tearing into her M&M’s bag with her teeth (with her teeth!) and speaking as though she was continuing a conversation they’d begun earlier, “the next thing you need to know about Harvard is that everybody there is terrified. That’s your secret weapon, but it took me two years to figure it out.” She leaned against the counter and rooted through the M&M’s bag. Angela bit into a Twizzler. “Once you know that,” Abby said, “you’ll be amazed how well you can get along. I wish someone had told me early on, like I’m telling you.”
“But I don’t even—” Angela had been about to say that she didn’t even know if she’d get in, but Abby stomped on her words and said, “In other news, that rule applies everywhere. Now that I’m half a year out, I can see it. Everywhere. But especially where there are super-smart people trying to do a good job. People are scared everywhere.”
Angela was starting to feel a little scared herself. This Abby person was very intense. The way she stared at you when she talked. The way all that fire came out of eyes that were small and close together. There was something desperate there, something striving. Maybe even something indefatigable.
“When do the notices go out?” asked Abby.
“Not sure, exactly,” said Angela. “Middle of December.”
Abby laughed. “Yeah, isn’t that maddening? You don’t know exactly when it’s coming, and then—poof!—you get an email, and your whole world changes, one way or the other.” When she said poof she flicked her fingers like a magician. God, thought Angela. What a nut. But she was also sort of mesmerized.
It could have been the Twizzlers, but Angela felt something knot up and flip in her stomach. She took a Vitaminwater and studied the sensation for a moment. Okay, it was something like this.
Abby was six months out of Harvard.
Which meant that if she was out of college and this was how she acted, well, then, it didn’t end with college. The competing, the posturing. It didn’t even end with the end of college. The bullshit that Angela thought she was nearly done with—did it have a finish line? If it did, where the hell was it?
The snack room door swung open and Kelsey popped her head around the corner and said, “You guys cool here?” There was a purple streak in her hair Angela hadn’t noticed before. Kelsey was so badass. Angela bet she slept with all kinds of guys, and did it the right way, too (whatever that was, not that Angela would know). Kelsey looked like sex. Whatever sex looked like.
“We’re great,” said Abby, with a considerable amount of authority. Angela nodded along. “Just getting to know each other.”
Angela thought, We are?
On the other hand. There was something about this conversation (could she call it a conversation when she hadn’t actually gotten a full sentence out? Or was it more like a lecture…) that was the opposite of scary, that thrilled Angela for a reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on. An unfathomable reason.
“Soooooo,” said Abby, crumpling the M&M’s bag and tossing it toward the garbage. She missed, and got up with a little embarrassed smile to retrieve it. “What else do you want to know about Harvard?”
Then it hit Angela, why she’d felt a little frisson of excitement. Pretty simple, really. Her entire life people had been telling her how to get into Harvard: what to do, what not to do, how to think and write and run and be. Now here was someone who took her ability to be admitted for granted, and who was telling her what to do once she got there. The sensation was refreshing, like diving into a cold wave. A cold Atlantic wave, in Rhode Island.
“I heard I have a surprise visitor,” said a familiar voice. The door to the snack room swung open for a second time, and Angela said, “Dad!” Her father looked the same as he always did, a little tired, a little stressed, but with an underlying countenance that said that if you told a funny enough story about your day he’d give you his full attention and laugh and be sincere about it.
At almost the same time Angela said, “Dad!” Abby said, “Gabe!” and Angela’s father’s face took on a startled expression. He rarely flushed (that was her mother’s department), but now there was a spot of color high on each cheek. Weird.
“Gabe,” said Abby again, like nobody had heard her the first time. Angela chewed the inside of her lip. It was odd to hear her father addressed so familiarly by someone so close to Angela’s own age. Not just familiarly, but sort of, well…for lack of a better word (There’s always a better word, Ms. Simmons would say), intimately.
Intimately! She looked more carefully at Abby, at her father. Her father had a strange look on his face. Sphinxlike. He glanced at Abby, then back at Angela, and if Angela didn’t know much, much better, she’d think that he looked like a man who’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have done.
Your dad’s office.
I recognize you from the pictures.
Your dad has told me so much about you.
What he and I have in common.
“Angela,” he said. “What a surprise—”
Her father and the intern. Oh. My. Freaking. God. Gross. Grosser than gross. Whatever was in her stomach triple-flipped.
“I have to go,” she said to both of them. Finally! A complete sentence. She looked at her wrist for a watch that wasn’t there. “I forgot, I have—I have a thing. I have to go.” She turned out of the snack room, past a bewildered Kelsey, who half stood when Angela passed, and out toward the elevator.
Her father and the intern. It was such a cliché, they may as well slip on a couple of banana peels while they were at it. It was the plot of every bad movie and a bunch of books, both mediocre and not, and it was happening right now, right here, right in her very own life.
So what? she thought, turning out of the office building and melting away into the early-evening crowds. So what? She’d be out of the house by this time next year, so, really, so what.
But that wasn’t true; that wasn’t how she really felt. She would never let something crappy like that go on behind her mother’s back without telling her about it. After the Harvard application was in, she’d find time to investigate.
It wasn’t so what after all, not with this. It was so everything.