The forecast called for snow—up to ten inches in the city, the first blizzard of the season. A few flakes were starting to fall when I went out for lunch that Friday afternoon in December, for a chicken-salad sandwich and a Diet Coke from the deli around the corner, where the cashier had finally started to greet me as a regular.
Laurie had spent most of the day with her door shut. Was there something unusually tense in her mood, in her heavier footsteps and louder sighs? I didn’t notice it at the time. I was daydreaming about the weekend. Abby was throwing a holiday party on Saturday. I had Christmas shopping to do. For Adam, in particular. I’d saved a few hundred dollars during the previous months, bits and pieces from my paychecks. It was a good feeling, having money I had earned and could spend any way I wanted. It was the first time I could say that. I wouldn’t be able to impress Adam monetarily, but maybe I could impress him with a gift that proved just how well I knew him. Something small and perfect. More evidence that we were, in fact, meant to be together.
“Julia,” Laurie said, startling me from a consideration of whether I could afford one of the first-edition Updikes I’d seen in the window at Argosy. “Come in and talk to me.”
She shut the door and lowered herself into the chair behind her desk. This was bound to be something annoying. We weren’t just going to chitchat, that was for sure. I’d long since given up hope on that. Laurie only called me in to give dull, impersonal, demanding instructions. A new workflow procedure that needed enacting, a problem that needed fixing. I had forgotten to bring a pen and paper. Pay attention, I thought.
“So Julia,” she said, sweeping the papers on her desk into a neat stack, squaring the edges. “We have to let you go.”
I waited. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard her right.
Laurie cleared her throat, her eyes still fixed on her desk. “The donation promised to us by the Fletchers has fallen through at the last minute. It’s been a difficult year, you obviously know that, and with market circumstances changing so rapidly, the Fletchers didn’t feel they could follow through on their initial commitment. And so without that, we have to cut costs. We’re letting others go, too. I’m afraid today will be your last day.”
I blinked like a dumb animal. Say something, I thought. Don’t just sit here. But I couldn’t. My mouth was dry and hot and cottony. The room was too warm, the radiator groaning and clanking with steam. Laurie should open a window.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Laurie said. “Do you have any questions?”
I tried to think of something, anything, to say. This might be my only chance. “How many others?” I managed.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. You’re the first person we’ve told.”
She finally met my gaze. Didn’t she feel an ounce of pity for me, the person who had sat right outside her office for the past five months, answering her phone and making her coffee every goddamn morning? Didn’t she feel anything? I wanted her to explain it, to apologize, to lessen the blow somehow. To say something, anything. It’s not personal. We’re so sorry to do this. Why me? Why not somebody else? Questions? There were a hundred questions swirling through my mind, but I didn’t know how to articulate them. So when Laurie said, “Is that it? Do you have any other questions?” I just shook my head.
“You’ll be paid through the end of the month. You can leave as soon as you’ve gathered your things. And we’d appreciate your discretion for the time being. Please don’t say anything to the others just yet.”
The phone started ringing. “I should take this,” Laurie said, visibly relieved at the interruption. “Could you close the door on your way out?”
I sat down at my desk. I heard the printer humming, the phone ringing in the lobby. The office was unchanged from a few minutes earlier, except for the silent bomb going off in my brain. A half-written e-mail floated on my computer screen. It was a summary of Laurie’s expenses for the month of November, for accounting. A rote, routine e-mail. Anyone could do this after I left. But why not just finish it? All I had to do was attach the statement and click Send. I was numb.
It was as I started typing that it hit. My hands shook. I was aware of the smooth plastic keys against my fingertips, the too-loud clacking, the strange way the words emerged on the screen, like someone else was writing them. The last e-mail I’d ever write from this desk. Finally it exploded, flooding my mouth with a sickly iron-tinged flavor. I had just lost my job. I was unemployed. Unemployed. I turned off the computer, gathered my things—an extra pair of shoes, a coffee mug, a spare sweater, that was it—and waited for the elevator. Unemployed. Unemployed. It ran through my head like blinding ticker tape.
Outside, the snow was starting to thicken. Fat, lazy flakes drifted heavily through the air, coating the pavement in white. There was the sharp piney smell of Christmas trees for sale down the block. I tried calling Abby, but it went to voice mail. I tried my parents next, but they weren’t there. Then I called Adam. He picked up right away.
“They fired me,” I said, my voice splitting in half, tears springing unbidden.
I used to wonder, those months I lived in New York, about the women I saw crying in public. Usually they were on the phone, sobbing into the mouthpiece. It was always women. What was it? I wondered. What bad news were they delivering or receiving? It was so disturbing, one red crumpled face in a sea of blank expressions. Did they know something that the rest of us didn’t? Was this the first wave washing ashore with news of some global tragedy, something we’d all hear about in a matter of minutes? In this city, privacy was a luxury. You shared the sidewalks and subways with strangers, heard sirens through the windows, your neighbors through paper-thin plaster. What you did—what you had to do—was erect invisible walls to protect yourself. A stranger sobbing on the street, a dirty hand holding out a cup filled with change, an elbow digging into your back on a crowded train. The person in your bed whom you haven’t really talked to in months. Look forward, breathe in, shut your mouth, think about other places. Think about anything except what’s right in front of you. It’s a way of staying sane in an unreasonable place. But at that moment, I saw the downside of this careful indifference. Even in the cab I wasn’t alone, though I might as well have been. I hiccuped and cried, and the taxi driver kept his gaze straight ahead, the scratched plastic barrier between us.
Adam gave me the name of a hotel bar in midtown, said that he was on his way. I stopped in the bathroom to clean myself up. I looked awful. I splashed cold water on my face, dropped Visine into my eyes, reapplied lipstick and mascara. I missed Evan suddenly. He’d seen me like this before, crumpled and exhausted and freaked out: Our fights in college, the moments of bad news, the disappointments, the long four years. He never cared how I looked. And he wouldn’t try to stop it; he wouldn’t tell me to snap out of it or calm down. He was quiet and steady, always ready with just the right thing to say. This vanity was stupid. It didn’t matter how I looked. And yet there I was, fixing my hair and makeup like someone about to embark on a blind date.
Adam wasn’t there yet, so I found a seat at the bar with a view of the TV in the corner. The bartender came over, and I ordered a vodka soda with lime. The TV was tuned to CNN. A reporter in Kabul was describing a recent spate of fatalities. I knew I ought to feel lucky. I could have been born in war-torn Afghanistan, every day fearing for my life, and instead my biggest problem was losing a job I didn’t even like. I had no right to complain. This was my mother kicking in, her voice in my ear. Don’t be a brat, Julia. I finished my drink and waved to the bartender for another. I was glad that my parents hadn’t picked up the phone, actually. Their sympathy would be brief, and then they would immediately embark upon the project of Fixing My Life. But I wanted a few dark hours to dwell in my resentment. I wanted to get really, really drunk. I wanted Adam to fuck me and then hold me while I fell asleep. I didn’t want to go back to my shitty apartment on the Upper East Side, my shitty life.
I realize now: that should have been another clue. I had just lost my job—I hated the sound of those words—but I didn’t want the encouragement of my parents. I didn’t want the genuine sympathy of Abby. Even though part of me wanted to call Evan, I didn’t, I couldn’t—I couldn’t go back to that old life. I didn’t want anything useful from the people who’d known me the longest. What I wanted was Adam. He offered me an escape. A new situation entirely. I couldn’t see it at the time, but Adam was always the easiest way out.
When I was halfway through my second drink—where was he?—the CNN anchor switched to coverage of the Bernie Madoff scandal. Madoff had been arrested the day before. They interviewed one of his victims, a sad old man in Florida with eyes like a basset hound. I fiddled with my phone, wondering if I should call Adam. Abby had texted. Saw your call, what’s up? I had started typing out a reply when I heard my name.
He ran over. He ran. That’s how much he cared. I dissolved. “Oh, Julia,” Adam said, kissing my forehead. “Babe, babe. It’s okay. I’m here.” He was the only one who understood. He put his arm around me and steered me toward a booth in the corner. I hadn’t wanted to cry in front of him like this, but maybe it didn’t matter. If Adam and I were going to be together, really together, I had to trust that he wouldn’t care about a few tears. He went to the bar and returned with whiskey for him and a vodka soda for me, with a wedge of lime floating on top. A little part of me wondered whether he’d finally remembered my drink order or whether the bartender had corrected his mistake.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. He held his glass up, clinking it against mine. “Or should we just leave it at ‘Fuck them, they’re idiots’?”
He wanted me to laugh. I did, and he smiled.
When I told him what happened, I found that a story emerged. A narrative with a satisfying arc. It was so obvious when I traced it from beginning to end: I was the victim. I didn’t deserve this. So what if I’d hated the job? That wasn’t the point. The point was that it was unfair. I had worked hard, never made a mistake. I’d been fucked over, and I was angry about it. I had every right to be angry. It had taken the firing for me to see that. I was angry at Laurie and the Fletchers and Evan and everyone who had been treating me like shit for the previous six months. The floodgates were opening.
“So wait a second,” Adam said. “Laurie said that the Fletchers had to cancel their donation for financial reasons, right?”
“Yeah. Apparently they’re having a bad year.” I thought of my father, on the phone with Henry Fletcher every day over Thanksgiving weekend. It made sense. The Fletchers were running out of money.
“Did she say specifically that they were strapped for cash?”
“I don’t really remember. It happened so fast.” He was staring at me. “Why? What is it?”
“It doesn’t add up.” Adam pulled his phone out, typed something in, then handed it to me. “Look at this.”
“What?”
“It’s from today’s Journal. Just read the first paragraph.”
ForeCloser, a company that tracks upcoming foreclosure auctions within a given geographic range, announced today that it has raised $20 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Fletcher Partners and included founding investor Henry Fletcher. ForeCloser will use the financing to aggressively increase the scope of its geographic coverage, which is currently limited to California, Washington and Oregon. In the announcement, the company outlined a goal of covering all 50 states by the end of 2009.
I looked up at him.
“Do you see what this means?” he said. “The Fletchers are fine. They have plenty of money. Maybe they withdrew their donation, but it wasn’t because they didn’t have the cash for it.”
“So they still could have donated the—then what?”
“I’m sorry, babe. It isn’t right.”
Something turned. Darkened. “What the fuck, then? Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, Jules. These people play by a different set of rules. Henry Fletcher isn’t thinking about what’s fair or not. Maybe when things were flush, he was happy to toss a little aside to make his wife happy. You know, give her a charity to play with. But now that the market’s bucking, he has to stay lean. You see what he’s doing, don’t you?”
Adam finished his drink, held up two fingers at the bartender. His eyes were hard, shining, in pursuit of something. I’d never seen them like that. Or at least that’s what I thought, in the moment. I had seen that gleam before. I knew what it meant. But I’d suppressed that memory with remarkable success.
“I mean, look at this company he’s investing in. People want to snap up these foreclosures while they’re cheap, and Henry Fletcher is going to get rich by helping them do it faster. They’ll make money flipping these properties, and he’ll make money giving them access. These guys just drove the economy off a cliff, and now they’re trying to suck more money from the corpses. They’re actually profiting from all this. It’s more than unfair. They should go to jail, if you ask me.”
The alcohol made everything swirl together. Evan always at work. Tossing aside the manila envelope, like it was nothing. The arrogance, the indifference. Why did no one ever care about right or wrong? Why did no one ever care about me? Adam slid a new drink in front of me.
“It’s fucked up, right?” He held my hand tenderly. My mind was going fuzzy, the radio signal growing faint. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with these things. None of these guys should.”
The spark had been lit. I’d succeeded at one thing, at least: getting really, really drunk. I was aware, in a detached way, of the rising pitch of my voice, of my frustration releasing in a continuous vent. Everything came spilling out. Adam kept signaling to the bartender, never letting my glass sit empty. What was I saying? I lost my train of thought. He mentioned Evan’s name. I shook my head. I hated Evan; I hated everything that Evan made me feel. Evan, who reminded me of everything that had gone wrong, of every disappointment.
I felt myself curling in at the edges, growing blacker. Evan. It spun together into one theme: Fletcher, Spire, Madoff, all of it. I grasped at it through the vodka, the point I was trying to make to Adam. How had I never seen it before, the way the world worked? I described the strange identification I’d felt with Madoff’s sad, gray-haired victims on TV. We were casualties of the same greed-fueled catastrophe. Adam nodded vigorously. He understood. Don’t we have to do something about it? Don’t we have a responsibility to stop these things? He asked me about Evan again. What had I meant about Spire? What was going on there? You don’t have to protect him, Julia. You need to let these things out. You can’t carry this around by yourself.
The afternoon plunged into darkness.
At some point I got up to use the bathroom, wobbling in my heels. In the hotel lobby, people came and went. It was nighttime. My head spun as I sat down on the toilet. I propped myself up with one hand against the stall. Later, minutes later, hours later, in front of the bathroom mirror, I tried to fix my reflection in one place, but it danced and wavered no matter how hard I stared.
I spun around and stumbled back into the stall and threw up. The bile came in miserable waves. With one hand on the toilet, then one on the stall, I pushed myself up like a fever-weak patient. I rinsed my mouth in the sink and hunched over the basin, watching the water swirl around the white porcelain before vanishing down the drain, wishing I could follow it down there, away from all this.
* * *
In the time that has passed since that day, I’ve asked myself, over and over, whether I was aware of what I was doing. Aware of what I was setting in motion. Did I think it was the right thing to do? Did I know the impact it would have? I ask myself now: Is guilt determined by outcome or by intent?
I woke up the next morning in Adam’s bed, and I knew this wasn’t a regular hangover. The headache and dizziness and dry mouth were compounded by a nagging awareness. I had done something wrong the night before, something not on a continuum with the cheating and the white lies. But, amazingly, I got up and went about my normal routine. I drank two glasses of water, took a long shower, dressed. I pushed the previous night to the back of my mind and I walked out the door. I didn’t even say good-bye to Adam, who was sleeping soundly. Outside, the sidewalks were white from the blizzard. The doorman hailed me a cab, and we flew across the silent snowscape of Central Park. It was early, and the snow was pristine, unmarked by footprints and sled tracks. I had no idea—no conscious idea—of the turning point I had just passed. One chapter of my life over, another about to begin.
Time has made it worse. It isn’t just regret for that afternoon, for the things I shouldn’t have said to Adam. It’s the bigger realization that the entire thing was a mistake. Last year is like a movie starring somebody else. It’s a scene in time lapse, sped-up and frantic, everything moving too fast to grab hold of. That girl, the girl who existed from July to December—she wasn’t the person I had been before. She tricked herself, twisting the reality around her into something different. She was looking at it all wrong: like it was a plan finally coming together. She should have known better. The signs were always there. But there was something narcotic about the fantasy I was living, the idea of becoming someone else. No one had told me that doing these things could feel so good. They could feel so good that they blocked out everything else. They put to sleep the part of me that should have been watching.
* * *
The afternoon plunged into darkness.
“Jules, babe, it’s okay. Shh.”
I was crying again.
“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of him. He told me all this like it was my problem, too. He dumped it on me, and I’ve been carrying it around for weeks.”
“What is it? What did he tell you?”
“Spire. It’s this deal they’ve been working on. It’s messed up. It’s rigged. They’ve been lying about it the whole time.”
“Who has? People at Spire?”
“His boss, Michael. Evan is part of it, too. He went along with it.”
“Michael Casey, you mean? Shh, Julia, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
I was still crying, hot and angry tears.
“I’m so si-si—sick of him. He’s an asshole.”
“Tell me what Evan told you. How was the deal rigged?”
“It’s Michael. He knows people. Government officials in China. He bribed them to let them import from the Canadians, to get around the taxes.”
“How did he bribe them?”
Did I notice Adam reaching for the notepad in his pocket? Did I register his one-handed scribbles under the table? Did he even do this, or am I trying to rewrite the past, to insert a screaming siren for my former self, to make her sit up and notice what she was doing?
With his other hand he held mine, rubbing his thumb across my palm.
“Jules. Did Evan say how they bribed them?”
“Immigration. Canadian immigration paperwork. Spire and WestCorp helped the Chinese get their papers. That’s why they went to Vegas. I could kill him. He’s such an idiot.”
“They got papers for the Chinese, is that what you’re saying? In exchange for getting them visas, these officials are letting them export their lumber to China? Jules? That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“I hate him. Hate him.”
“Julia?”
* * *
Saturday, the day after. There was a feeling clinging to me that refused to be brushed away. A hammering in my heart. In the cab across Central Park, from Adam’s apartment to mine, I texted Abby. My phone buzzed with her reply a minute later. Oh, Jules, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Can you still make it tonight? I’m so sorry.
The cab let me out. I brushed the snow from our stoop and sat down. My dad picked up the phone. My mother was out, walking the dog. How was I? What was going on? I told him everything, including what Adam had said about Fletcher Partners’ investment in the new start-up. When I finished, he sighed heavily. I could picture him in his study, the leather-bound books and diplomas lining the walls. Leaning into his elbow on the desk, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses sat. Finally he said:
“Sweetheart, obviously I’m sorry to hear about this, but I hope you understand how complicated it is. The Fletchers have many factors to consider. It hasn’t been an easy year for them. I’m sure they were very unhappy to have to do this.”
He’d used this voice on me before. A voice with an unbearable weight to it. My father wasn’t someone to whom you talked back. His lawyerly gravity made you so painfully aware of your shortcomings: your irrational emotions, your unthinking reactions, your taking things personally when nothing was personal. The world wasn’t against you. Stop indulging yourself. Why had I expected this time to be any different? But part of me had hoped for that, for some rare tenderness from my father, and I felt a doubling of the heaviness. A deflating of that hope and an awareness that I should have known better than to harbor it. He was taking the side of his client over his daughter. It shouldn’t have surprised me.
An ache in my throat made it hard to swallow. “I know, Dad.”
We hung up. The sky was clear blue, and the sunlight reflected off the snow. It was still early for the weekend, and Evan would probably be home, not having left for work yet. I could have lingered longer at Adam’s, stayed for breakfast, but a voice in my head had propelled me out of his apartment. But now, at home, something kept me stuck to the stoop, just shy of the threshold. Evan probably wouldn’t ask where I had been, or care. He’d keep assuming whatever he’d been assuming all along. But he would notice the redness in my eyes and know that I’d been crying. Over the previous few months, I’d built such a careful distance between us. He went to his office, I went to mine; he had his life, I had mine. I had Adam. There was barely anything left. But Evan would ask what was wrong, and I would start crying again, and I knew, just knew, that he would comfort me like he used to. He would remind me that everything would be okay, like the good boyfriend he always was in times of crisis. That careful distance would disappear, and I didn’t know what would happen next. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to find out.
When the door behind me opened with a suctioning whoosh, I stared straight ahead, ready to avoid eye contact with whichever neighbor was coming out. It would be easy; I knew no one in our building.
“Yup, yup, I’m on my way in now. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” the familiar voice behind me said. I turned around.
“Julia.” Evan looked surprised. He bounced down the steps to the sidewalk, where he stood and faced me. “Hey. I was just on my way to the office.”
I had to shield my eyes to block the sun. It was too bright. “Hey.”
“That was Michael. He needs me to come in for something.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He seemed at a loss for words. “Hey, are you going to Abby’s party tonight?”
“I think so.”
We were a pair of strangers.
He looked closely at me. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, well…” I was so tired. I couldn’t keep doing this. My voice cracked. “It’s work. I got laid off yesterday.”
He stood perfectly still. “Shit. Julia. I’m sorry to hear that.”
My eyes hurt from the sun. I glanced down at the sidewalk for relief, at the snow and my salt-crusted boots, and then looked back up from under the hood of my palm. Evan was regarding me quietly, like a hunter watching a wild animal. Getting no closer than he had to. Eventually he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, leaving it there for a moment. That was all he would give me.
“I’m sorry,” I started to choke out, the tears returning to my eyes. And I was—all of a sudden, I was sorry for everything. I wanted to rewind to six months earlier, when we stood on this stoop in the June humidity with our boxes, when we opened the door for the first time, when we hadn’t yet started down this path.
But at that very same moment, he said, “I have to get to work.” I don’t know if he heard me. When he removed his hand, then removed himself and walked down the street toward an available cab, I felt the imprint of him linger on my skin, like a memory pressing itself to me one last time before it vanished forever.