Chapter Five
D
ora had first realized that she had a crush on Gary the third day they worked together. She wasn’t sure what had triggered it: A bad joke? His puppy-dog look? Or was her resistance to flirting so low that one of his single entendres burst through her meager defenses? One minute he was her goofy boss, and the next minute he was her goofy boss and a crush of heroic proportions.
After that, Dora’s summer fell into a kind of swoon. She’d get up every day, fortify herself with some Grape-Nuts, and think about Gary. What he would say. What she would say about what he said. Whether he’d wear that one particular pair of jeans that made something—she deliberately was not going to call it desire—rise in her chest. Then she’d head to the coffee shop, where she’d spend all day, every day, with him. It was like there was no one else in the world. Her friends were all elsewhere. Dora tried to convince herself that it was just a job, Gary just a co-worker, that she didn’t think about him all the time, didn’t replay their conversations over and over in her head, didn’t wonder what, if anything, he thought about her.
Sometimes after a long day at work, Gary would hug her goodbye. Was that significant? Or, if Dora had the momentary upper hand in their banter, he’d squirt her with the sink sprayer. What did that mean, if anything? And what about the one time Dora had caught him peering down the V-neck of her T-shirt as she stooped to move a box of napkins in the storeroom? She had pretended she hadn’t noticed, but had she really seen him blush? Everything was part of the absorbing puzzle that was Gary, but none of it added up to the actual relationship she craved.
Today they were painting. Dora had almost finished the first coat on her wall. She stepped back.
“Nice job, Rembrandt.” Gary grinned. “Hold still—you’ve got a bit of paint on your cheek.” He wiped it off with the wet rag he held. His hand was gentle. Dora held very still.
Gary grinned. “Hard to get that paint off, if you let it dry. I bet I’ll have to take a scrub brush into the shower before my date tonight.”
Dora dropped her roller in the tray. “You have a date?”
“Try not to sound so surprised, please. It wreaks havoc on my fragile male ego. Yeah, I met this woman in the library, she’s amazing, she plays the cello and is studying the role of music in French novels of the nineteenth century. Really interesting stuff. And she’s a grad student! There are so few of us at Lymond, it really narrows the dating options. I may have to turn to the law school soon.” He gave a mock shudder.
“I suppose undergrads just don’t meet your impossibly high standards?”
“Undergrads are off limits, one hundred percent. Best possible way to get yourself in a heap of flaming trouble: date an undergrad. You can get in trouble just looking sidewise at an undergrad.” Gary mimed looking sidewise at Dora.
“Stop that, you’ll get in trouble.” Dora didn’t remember pulling a muscle while painting, but suddenly she ached all over. “What are you going to do? On your date.”
“We’re going to have coffee, and maybe see that movie later.”
“Oh, the one we talked about?”
“Yeah. If it’s good, I’ll tell you, okay?”
“Great.” Dora picked up the trays and took them to the sink. She started washing out the rollers. The water was too hot, but the scalding felt appropriate.
“Hey, you okay?” Gary was putting the lids back on the paint cans.
“Yeah. Yeah, just tired. I think I’ll go home and go to sleep.”
Dora turned off the water and dried her hands on the completely ineffectual Chix towel before wiping them on her pants. Gary had gone to switch off the back lights.
“I’m going to get going,” she called out.
“Hey, wait up, I’ll walk with you. . . .”
Dora wanted to flee but stood rooted by the door as Gary approached; they both reached for the handle at the same time.
“No, after you.” Gary pulled the door open with a flourish.
“Do that tonight and you’ll do well,” Dora said brightly.
“No, really, do girls—I mean,
women
, of course—your age still like the doors-opening stuff?”
“You mean, do we appreciate gestures of courtesy, in this benighted age? Occasionally.”
“So it’s not insulting?”
“Not unless you preface it by stating, ‘I know you are too dumb to open a door; therefore, let me demonstrate to you the correct procedure.’”
“I thought chivalry was dead.”
“Only the parts where women were property. The parts about performing little kindnesses for fellow human beings . . . Okay, that’s mostly dead, too. But anyone who gets huffy about having the door opened for her should probably take herself less seriously.”
“What about splitting the check?”
“The person who asks, pays, is the rule. If the decision to do something occurred to both of you simultaneously, split it. And if you’re being the kind of jerkwad who thinks that paying for a pizza and a couple beers entails the automatic delivery of sexual favors, then you probably should expect her to offer to split the check. Or leave to use the bathroom and never come back.”
“Pizza and beer entails sexual favors?”
“No. And if you think they do, you’re an asshole.”
“Okay. No sexual favors.”
“No, it’s ‘no sexual favors as creepy weird “payment” for a dinner out.’”
“So there might be sexual favors?”
Dora looked away. “That’s not up to me, now, is it?”
Gary looked as if he might be on the verge of saying something clueful, but his attention wavered. “Hey!” he shouted.
Dora looked. The quad was nearly empty, just a lone woman cutting across the grass in front of the library.
“Hey! Allison!” Gary shouted.
The woman turned and paused, then waved.
Gary started walking towards her. “That’s her!” he whispered to Dora.
“Unless you think she has super-hearing, you don’t have to whisper. She barely heard you shout.”
“I want you to meet her.” Gary’s stride lengthened. Dora thought he might even break into a run. She half trotted to catch up, hating herself for doing so.
“Allison!”
“Hey, Gary.” Allison was wearing a jean miniskirt and a black tank top. Despite being so casual, they were obviously expensive. Her flip-flops were thin leather, not rubber, and she wore a diamond pendant on a thin silver chain, large enough that Mimi would have pronounced it vulgar. Dora was sure she’d seen Allison’s slouchy black leather shoulder bag in
Vogue
, maybe even in the editorial. Her dark-blond hair was pushed back on top of her head by her sunglasses.
“Allison, this is Dora.”
“Hi,” said Dora. She extended her hand. Allison shook it as if shaking hands was a quaint custom, something on the order of the curtsy.
“Dora is working with me to get the coffee shop ready.”
“Oh.” A faint flicker of recognition played across Allison’s face. Gary chased it.
“We got a lot of painting done today. . . . I’m on my way to get cleaned up before we go out tonight.”
“Oh.” Allison put her hand on Gary’s arm. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was about to call you; I can’t do tonight.” She didn’t offer any explanation.
Gary’s face dropped. “That’s okay,” he said, unconvincingly. “I’m pretty wiped out—probably wouldn’t be very good company.”
“Another time?” Allison said. She didn’t even try to sound as if she meant it. “Call me, okay?” She walked away toward the library.
Gary waited until she was out of earshot.
“Fuckity, fuckity, fuck,
fuck
,” he muttered. He looked at Dora. “Sorry.”
“Okay,” Dora said. “But was it just me, or was she being a total bitch?”
“Total bitch,” Gary said. “One-hundred-percent Grade A USDA Prime bitch.”
“Why on earth would she agree to go out with you tonight and then bail?”
“Two words: ‘ex-’ and ‘boyfriend.’ I am an ex-boyfriend activator. I merely need to speak to an attractive woman and all her ex-boyfriends, every jerk and cad she’s ever known, they just
feel
my vibrations or something and come out of the woodwork to try to date her again. Or at least sleep with her again.”
“Really? That always happens?”
“Totally. Constantly. Infuriatingly. I bet she’s going to meet some jerk right now. I bet he even owes her money.”
Dora laughed. Gary looked angry; then he laughed, too.
“You’re a lot of fun, you know that, Dora?” He looked at her, consideringly. “Too bad
you’re
not a grad student.”
“Give me time,” Dora said. Surely Gary wasn’t suggesting . . .
“Hurry up, why don’t you?” Gary paused. Dora hesitated, holding her breath. “All right. Time to go home and listen to my housemate make fun of me for being stood up. See you tomorrow.”
“See you,” Dora said. Gary strode off, not noticeably downcast. Dora’s heart lifted, too. “Hurry up and be a grad student, Dora,” she said to herself.
The next morning, Dora felt her usual anticipation as she locked her bike to the rack outside the shop and headed for the door. But the door was locked, the shop was dark. Gary wasn’t there.
One of the tasks on Gary’s list was to get Dora her own set of keys, but he hadn’t done it yet. The university changed the locks at the end of every year—much easier than trying to get all the keys back from the student workers, and cheaper in the long run, Gary had explained.
Dora decided to go outside and sit in the sunshine, instead of sitting in the musty hall. She was scrounging for a leftover student newspaper that she hadn’t already read when she heard the heavy door at the end of the hall open.
“Gary?”
“Hey, Dora—am I late?”
He came through the door, but held it for a moment—long enough for Allison to pass through.
She was dressed just as casually and just as expensively as she had been the night before; this morning her miniskirt was white, and her tank a deep cobalt blue. She had the same sandals and bag, and her hair was pushed back with the same sunglasses, which had probably cost more than all the clothes in Dora’s closet put together. Her white leather watchband looked like a stripe of paint against her tanned wrist. The diamond pendant, if anything, was more vulgar in the morning.
“You remember Allison, right? I met her on my way in and we stopped for coffee—ironic, I know, considering that I run a coffee shop, but we’re a little understocked right now, as we undergo renovations. . . .”
Allison’s gaze flicked over Dora. Dora flushed, thinking of her raggedy painting clothes, contrasted with Allison’s boutiquey elegance.
He tossed Dora the keys. “Why don’t you open up and we can give Allison a tour?” He took Allison’s arm ostentatiously and swept through the door as Dora held it open, dumbly.
“This,” he said, gesturing to the stacked tables and chairs, all pushed against the wall, “is our seating area. Arena. And this,” as he gestured to the counter, “is our gastronomic coliseum.”
Allison was obviously bored. “Nice,” she said. She pulled her arm from Gary’s and swapped her shoulder bag to the other side, letting it hang between them. She didn’t look at Dora.
Gary seemed to realize he was losing his audience. He looked over at Dora, still standing by the door. “Hey, Dora, could you start pulling out the paint?” Dora trudged over to the storeroom, almost tripping over the drop cloth on the floor. She carefully closed the storeroom door behind her. She didn’t want to hear their conversation.
She had a can open and the paint mixed, and was just about to pour it into the roller tray when Gary opened the storeroom door.
“Hey, sorry I was late this morning—I ran into Allison on my way in, and she apologized for blowing me off last night. It seems her sister came into town, and they don’t really get along, but they had to get together. So that’s why she was so bitchy about it.”
“That’s goo—”
Gary cut her off.
“She said she’d make it up to me. So we’re going to that movie tonight. Maybe my ex-boyfriend karma is all worked off, what do you think?”
Dora said nothing. She concentrated on pouring the paint into the roller tray.
“I’m going to go grab the rollers. You want to bring out the trays?” Gary left the storeroom without waiting for her answer.
Dora stared at the wall, all scarred cinder block, marred with the sticky-tape marks where the previous manager’s signs had once hung. A flyblown piece of paper with “
FANTA AND ROOT BEER
” written on it in careful capitals lay on the floor by Dora’s feet; she picked it up and crumpled it carefully, then threw it full force against the wall. It was unsatisfying.
I. Will. Not. Cry
, Dora thought. She imagined her tear ducts turning to concrete, like the walls, or filling with sand. Her eyes felt hot, and she imagined her eyeballs freezing solid. She took eleven deep breaths, one for every letter of her name. It almost worked. One tear escaped. Dora wiped it angrily away, and went to set up the roller trays on the scaffolding.
She spent the rest of the day painting next to Gary. His iPod was jacked into the store’s stereo, and she tried to hate every song it played. She didn’t even complain about the weird dissonant modern pieces he liked, the way she had last week. She tried to hate his sloppy painting; she tried to concentrate on the fact that his hair was
definitely
thinning a bit on top. She tried to convince herself that his shoes were dorky and his gut was a bit flabby and that he made funny wheezing, whistling sounds as he stretched to reach the top of the wall.
It didn’t work. She was all too aware of him, how he moved, how he smelled, how he hummed under his breath. Dora felt lightheaded, and told herself that it was just because she had skipped breakfast.
Gary, for his part, seemed to have soaked himself in oblivious before coming into the shop—or maybe it was the high of having had coffee with cool, elegant Allison. He chatted away, telling stories: crazy undergraduates he’d taught, like the student who brought in a note from a psychic excusing her from a midterm on the grounds that bad luck would befall her if she touched wood on that particular date, which the student had broadly interpreted to mean “pencils”; the guys who wanted to know if playing a kazoo would count as instrumental performance for their performance requirement; the mother who called him every day for a week after he’d given her son a B. “And it really should have a been a C, when you come right down to it, but it’s hard to give a C these days. Grade inflation.”