Carrie Pilby (17 page)

I am going to pick myself up and walk out of this bathroom with my head held high. So what if the automatons here don't want to know me? It only proves I was right to spend so much time inside my apartment in the first place.

I ascend, and I dance through assailing elbows until I'm out the door.

 

Times Square is awash in lights of every color imaginable: purple, orange, blue. I wonder what it's like to work there, with pink or green light constantly splashing all over your desk. I descend into the subway and return to my apartment. It feels good to be away from the crowds and noise and smoke.

I climb outside onto the fire escape, taking my journal. The air smells like burning leaves. I inhale deeply.

I sit down on the frozen metal. The moon is out. I have always liked my view from the back. It's only a view of the rear ends of other apartment buildings, but it doesn't matter. Here, nothing is spruced up or renovated—it's tangled jungles of metal and concrete and brick and stone, just like a hundred years ago. A lot of the fire escapes have painted-over placards saying there's a fine for putting anything there that obstructs mobility. I would like to know if this has ever been enforced.

A rich tomato smell wafts under my nose. Someone must be downstairs stirring sauce. I take a good whiff. I wonder if I can find this person and knock on her door. I wonder if she'd invite me in to eat. Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe I would find out she was my long-lost aunt and we would gab for hours, making up for years of lost time.

I could write about this proposition in my journal. I could even make up a short story about it. I've never written a com
plete short story, even in college. But my fingers are too cold to write. I park my journal between my feet and decide to sit and think.

The Harvard party was supposed to be my avenue to meet smart people. I feel like a failure. But the difference is all one person. If there had been one person at Harvard who'd thought I was great for four years, I would have been okay. We would have been two happy, comfortable people and then drawn others to us by extension. If I'd known one person at this party who'd been committed to staying by me the whole night, we could have joined other groups easily.

But I didn't know one person.

The episode with the guy in the bathroom reminds me of a similar embarrassment during my freshman year. There was a study break at one of the lounges. I walked across campus to attend. The room was very Ivy Leagueish, with dark wooden faux columns in the walls and long windows with longer white drapes. Some people were sitting at tables, and the rest were milling about or hanging out by the snack table. It seemed as if not one person was at the event alone. I didn't see anyone who looked familiar. I decided that I would plant myself at a small empty table that was not far from where the food was. That way, maybe someone would sit down next to me.

I sat at my table looking out at people, my chin in my hands, purposely trying to appear ready to talk. There was a table about forty-five degrees to my elbow that had three guys and a girl at it. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that once in a while, the guy sitting closest to me would look at me instead of listening to his friends. I pretended I didn't notice and kept looking straight ahead, but I was aware of him.

He looked at me again. I kept my eyes on the buffet table.

He looked again.

I thought about how I should act. I moved my hair from
behind my ear, because my hair looks better when it's not tucked back. I made sure my feet were under the table, since I was wearing ratty old shoes (I won't walk blocks in high heels. I'm sorry).

I kept my eyes on the buffet table.

Finally the guy tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he said.

I smiled.

“Can we steal your chair?”

He took a chair from the table I was at and dragged it over so some girl could sit down.

I felt miserable.

I wondered: When am I going to be the one whom someone steals a chair for? Will I always be the donor of the chair?

I still wonder this, today.

I can't possibly be the only one in this city who feels like this, can I?

Everyone has to start somewhere. There must be people who move to New York and know no one. How do they meet people? Or maybe everyone else knows the secret to making new friends. They must have learned it in one of those grades I skipped.

Maybe I'm just not doing this enough, going out. Maybe Petrov's right. Maybe I have to keep forcing myself to attend social events for practice, which I hardly ever did in college. Okay, so this party attracted all Yuppie types, but perhaps the next one will bring out people who are shy and alone like me. I can't give up this easily. There will be more parties, more events. And all it takes is striking up a conversation with one friendly person who might lead to more.

But the very thought of doing this again makes my blood freeze.

Why does the idea of going to more of these events scare me? It has nothing to do with my moral issues. I do find a lot of peo
ple morally weak, but that's not the reason I have trouble meeting them in the first place.

Maybe I fear going to parties because it's risky.

That's it, isn't it? I have no advantage in these situations. In school, teachers liked me. I always felt the most comfortable in the presence of adults. They found me smart. They got to know me through the work I was assigned. All I had to do was sit home at a desk and work hard on my homework to gain their affection. I had
control
over it.

Maybe that's why I act like grades and test scores are so important. They were. They help me make progress.

Now no one cares. In a bar or at a mixer, I am just me. And no one gets to know me unless they talk to me. And I don't know how to make that happen.

Maybe I should start listening to Petrov. He has ideas.

I don't have to admit to him that his ideas are right. I just have to use them in my own life.

It's so hard to push myself, though. And what if my worst fears are true—what if I'm
never
able to connect with anyone?

But then, sitting on the frozen fire escape, a buoyancy overtakes me. Because I think of something.

I did talk to the guy by the bathroom.

So okay, he had a girlfriend, and it turned out to be humiliating. But I
am
capable of talking to strangers.

I will do that more. I will talk to people. It's got to work out sooner or later.

I stand up. It's cold out. I look around for Cy. He seemed like a nice guy—with a certain sweetness rather than speciousness. He's not out on his fire escape tonight. But I have a feeling I will see him eventually.

There's no rhyme or reason to this belief, but I've still got it. I guess if you don't do drugs, and you don't gorge yourself constantly, and you're not in love, the one thing that's left is hope. Hope that something more is out there. If you don't have hope, that's when the antidepressants come in.

 

That night, I get a call from Matt and we make a date for dinner the next night. I'm excited as heck. I want to dance around the room. But why? I can't have a relationship with him. Obviously, it would be wrong. I am taking his attention away from Shauna, on whom he should be focusing it.

I should do what I said I would in the first place—find Shauna and tell her what Matt's doing. Or at the very least, I should meet with Matt again just to tell him off. But I admit that I like him a little. I had a good time with him. Why should I be the one to give up a good time? Nobody else does. Why should it be
my
responsibility to change people like him?

Maybe I
should
cheat. Shauna is the lucky one. She won't ever have to go to a party and stand in the corner contemplating her ATM receipt. She won't ever have psychologists writing up lists of ways for her to socialize. She won't sit home alone on Thanksgiving because her family only consists of one person, and that person's in Luxembourg. Because she happened to go to the right high school, she has a normal life. All of the pieces fell into place. She won the great vacation, the new car and the fabulous prizes. I have nothing. I can't help it. I was good for nineteen years and it didn't work out. Sorry.

That's stupid, though. I have at least ten years before I have to worry about these things. Why am I giving up already? Because the most normal guy who was in the
Beacon
personal ads is engaged.

Well, I will figure out the right thing to do. I have a little time, I guess.

Just to see if there's an alternative to Matt, I pull out the phone numbers for Michael and Adam, the guys who answered my personal ad, again. I call both of them, but neither is home. This time, I leave messages on their answering machines.

 

Around eleven that night, I get a call to do legal proofreading at a firm I've never been to. Because it's late, they send me a car. At the firm, they put me and an older woman at a table in the middle of a silent, well-heated law library. For two hours, we stare across the table at each other and listen to the distant hum of some refrigerator or copy machine. I do a twenty-minute assignment and they send us both home.

In the back of another hired car, at two in the morning, I gaze up at the lights on in the apartments. Again, I am part of the small and secret community of people who are up at this hour. I don't see the actual people, though, just their lights. Some of the windows have potted plants on their sills; some have tiny gates; some have decorations or cleaning products; but they all have the same silent somnolent glow.

I think that this is a beautiful world. You just have to find the small things in it to love.

 

Matt looks nervous as he comes into Pellerico's at seven. He doesn't see me waiting at a table. He stands at the front, near the register, then looks at himself in the metal panel on the wall and pushes his hair back. Suddenly he notices me. He looks sheepish.

After we both get our menus, he says to me, “I know I don't drink, but are you sure you don't want anything?”

“I guess I could go for a glass of wine,” I say.

“White wine,” he says to the waiter and I can tell he actually knows less about alcohol than I do, which is definitely strange. “So,” he says. “How was work today?”

“Kind of slow.” He doesn't know how true that is.

“No one making mistakes?” Matt smiles. “Is that considered bad for you, when no one makes mistakes? Do you get nervous?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It's terrible to admit, but I do feel happy when I catch a mistake. If there aren't any, I get nervous that I'm doing a bad proofreading job.”

“I hear ya,” he says. I hate it when people say, “I hear ya.” They only say it if they have zip to add, or when they didn't get a joke. Then, Matt begins pronouncing the dishes on the menu to himself. How irritating. Maybe it's best that I don't have a boyfriend. How can you stand to spend so much time with another person when everyone has so many little things that drive you crazy? Maybe I have less tolerance than other people.

“What're you getting?” Matt asks me.

I hate when people base their order on what the other person's getting. “What are
you
getting?”

“You first.”

“You.”

“You.”

“You.”

“You.”

“You.”

He puts his hands over his ears and says, “You you you you you!” and I laugh, and I like him again.

The waiter appears. “Need more time?”

“No, he's ready,” I say. “Go ahead, darling.” I smile at him sweetly.

“Ah, you go,” he says. “I insist.”

“I'm going to decide after
him,
” I say.

Matt sighs, beaten. “I'll have the…peenie a la vodka. Is it real strong vodka?”

Oh brother. One of the nice things growing up with a traveling father did for me was enable me to eat out a lot. Matt apparently missed all of that.

“You can't taste it much,” the waiter says. “It's in the sauce.”

“Fine.”

“I'll have the portobello-mozzarella sandwich,” I say.

“Mooosssarel,” Matt says, imitating me.

“I can't help if I can pronounce Italian,” I say, as the waiter leaves. “And it's not peenie, it's penne.”

“Guess my mind's in the gutter,” Matt says.

“Maybe that's where it should be,” I say.

“At least, in about an hour,” he says.

I'm kind of frozen. His eyes are gleaming. The waiter brings us a basket of bread, and we both reach for it. I think we're nervous, because we go through a loaf and a half before our meals arrive. We also use up two little white porcelain cups of a spread that's not quite butter but not quite cream cheese.

“Would you like another glass of wine?” the waiter asks me, as he sets down our dinners.

“Yes, sure,” I say.

“I'm practically full already,” Matt says, looking at his plate.

“I'll help.”

“You'll eat my peenie for me?”

“You should drink,” I say. “Then you'd have an excuse to say dumb things like that.”

“I don't need an excuse,” he says, and he reaches under the table and squeezes my knee. I look around to see if anyone notices, but all of them are busy with their own discussions or lustful thoughts or whatever they're doing.

Then I realize something. I just told him he should drink. There's something wrong with me. I'm becoming the peer pressurer instead of the conscientious objector. I am doing, at nineteen, just what everyone else at college did when
they
were nineteen. Maybe my problem all along was just that I hadn't gotten to the age at which I became a moron yet. Maybe at twelve, you develop breasts, at thirteen, you get your period, and at nineteen, your mind turns to mush and doesn't recover until you're thirty-one. That can't be. I am right. I mean, I was right. Before
I came to dinner tonight. I miss the old me. I can't betray the old me. No one else was good to her. She must stay true and defy the corrupting forces all around. But why do I have to be the only one in this world who suffers? Being the old me hasn't gotten me anywhere. The only exciting times I've had in the past three years have been doing risky things: with my professor, with Kara, and now Matt. Yes, I do like safe activities like reading and looking through the dictionary and philosophizing and sleeping. Especially sleeping. But Matt is interesting. Am I going to give up spending time with him? He's not even married yet. This is not a departure from anything.