Then
‘Here you go, Atlas. You look like you need it.’ Jefferson placed a cup of coffee on the desk and smiled down at Ruby like some sort of benevolent, golden-haired god. She blinked at the motto stretched across the blue paper cup and thought, At last! Something that’s happy to serve me rather than the other way around.
‘Thanks,’ she said nervously. Jefferson always made her nervous. It didn’t seem to matter that he was the only person in the company who acknowledged that she was an actual person rather than an enormous filing cabinet/coffee percolator. Or maybe that was precisely why he made her nervous: she had become so used to being viewed as another piece of beige office furniture that she found it genuinely unnerving to be addressed as a human. Well, that and the fact that he was very handsome and always called her by her last name, which felt sexually charged in some unknowable, amorphous way.
Ruby took a sip of the coffee. It was scalding hot and she felt her tongue go numb as it burned, but she refused to wince. That was the first thing she had learned on the job: never wince. Even if she was enduring a horribly humiliating and possibly painful experience in front of a group of peers and elders whom she was desperate to impress, she must never, ever show it. They were like vampires here, feeding off misery and guzzling down human tears, and the only way to survive was not to express weakness. Not even around Jefferson, with his wolfish grin and his free coffee and his calling-her-Atlas. In fact, especially not around Jefferson.
Ruby waited for him to leave – willing him to, in fact, so she could drink her coffee and concentrate on returning her blood pressure to a safe level – but he perched on the edge of her desk and said, ‘Did you see what Martin is wearing today?’
‘No,’ she lied. Of course she had seen what Martin was wearing. It had been physically impossible not to see what Martin was wearing. Right now, from a space station orbiting Earth, they could see what Martin was wearing. He had stridden in earlier that morning wearing a deep purple suede trench coat and a pair of Chelsea boots, his hair combed flat to his forehead and pouffed alarmingly at the crown. He looked like a rooster in a Willy Wonka costume.
‘Come on,’ he said, leaning down conspiratorially, ‘I know you saw him. Why do you think he’s all dressed up? Mod convention? Swingers evening? Perverts anonymous meeting?’ Ruby laughed in spite of herself, and he continued, encouraged. ‘Seriously, though. Who wears that stuff? He looks like he fell out of an Echo and the Bunnymen video.’ She didn’t know who Echo and the Bunnymen were, but she knew enough to know that it was an extremely clever and funny thing to say.
‘Date!’ she blurted out. ‘It’s a date!’ Ruby knew this because she had booked the restaurant – a pricey Italian place in Tribeca – and picked up his dry-cleaning the day before, including the offending purple trench coat.
‘Son of a gun,’ Jefferson said, ‘I can’t believe he actually persuaded someone to go out with him. I wonder how he managed it. What do you think? Blind date? One of those weird online chat room things? There’s no way he could have just picked someone up in a bar, or on the street. Not even if she’d fallen down in front of him.’
Ruby shrugged, not wanting to get drawn in further in case it was an elaborate set-up that would lead to her immediate dismissal. Just last week, one of the copywriters had been fired for doodling a stick figure during a meeting. The MD had clocked it peeking out of his notebook and decided that the copywriter was making fun of him (there was some resemblance in the fleshiness of the chin). He was fired on the spot. Caution was the watchword around this place for everyone. Well, everyone except Jefferson, who was too talented for Paul to fire, and who, she had heard Tara/Melanie whisper in the corridor, was responsible for at least three-quarters of the business that came through the door. But Ruby had considerably less sway, and lived in constant fear of being chucked out the front door without so much as a reference.
‘Well, good for old Martin,’ he said, pressing on regardless, ‘I hope he gets a little action. God knows he needs it.’ Jefferson produced an apple from his jacket pocket and began polishing it on his trouser leg. ‘So, what wonders await you this weekend?’ he asked. ‘What do kids get up to in the big city these days?’ He took a bite out of the apple and gazed at her contemplatively as he crunched.
She still had no idea what people her age did in the city at the weekend – Adderall and horse tranquilizers, if Jessica’s stories were to be believed – but for once she knew what she would be doing. ‘My boyfriend is coming to visit,’ she said, a touch of pride creeping into her voice. She hadn’t mentioned Ethan at work before – mainly because no one had asked – so she felt of flutter of excitement in mentioning him. Sure, she might be a pathetic coffee-monkey here, but someone in the outside world actually wanted her, actually thought she was pretty damn great. The corners of her mouth winched up just thinking about it, as though pulled by two invisible bits of string.
‘Is that right?’ he said, in a tone she couldn’t quite read. ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend, Atlas! I always knew you were a dark horse. What’s the lucky guy’s name?’
‘Ethan,’ she said, slightly too defensively. ‘Ethan Bailey.’
He mulled this over as he chewed through another bite of apple. ‘So what does this Ethan Bailey do?’
‘He’s a designer.’
‘Oh yeah? Who does he work for? We’ve got most of them on the books.’
‘He doesn’t actually work for anyone.’
‘So he’s freelance? What sort of stuff does he work on?’
‘He kind of just works on his own stuff,’ Ruby mumbled. She pretended to study the to-do list that had been steadily stretching down the length of her notebook since earlier that morning, willing the tips of her ears to return to a normal temperature. ‘He’s a really amazing artist,’ she said. ‘He can draw almost anything. He bartends, too.’
‘A real Renaissance man,’ he said, and now she heard a new, unwelcome tone in his voice. ‘Where does he bartend? Somewhere I’d know?’
‘Just at the local bar back home in Massachusetts,’ she said, now fully miserable.
There was a long pause as they both considered this. It was finally interrupted by Jefferson taking a last bite of apple and chucking it into the bin under her desk with a clang. ‘Well, I hope you guys have fun,’ he said. ‘Make sure you show him all the sights our fair city has to offer: the vastly overpaid investment bankers, the displaced immigrants, the subway perverts, the hordes of gawking tourists. You know, the deluxe version.’
‘The displaced immigrants are my landlords, actually, and I seem to have a knack for attracting subway perverts, so those two shouldn’t be too hard.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ he said, giving her an odd little salute before sauntering away. Ruby watched his retreating back with a sense of deep unrest. He hadn’t said anything outright rude about Ethan, and she hadn’t said anything untrue or mean about him, but it had still felt as though they were complicit in some kind of crime against him, a besmirching of his character. Jefferson had set Ethan a test in his questions, and it was clear that he’d failed. And now, in her eyes, Ethan seemed slightly diminished, and the excitement of his upcoming visit had been punctured.
She took another sip of coffee and tossed the still-full cup in the bin, splashing the mottled gray carpet in the process. She already felt wired, and any more caffeine would see her buzzing around the office like a hummingbird.
‘I hope you’re going to clean that up,’ Tara/Melanie said on her way past. ‘Martin goes mental if the carpets get stained.’
Ruby spent the rest of the day oscillating between frenzied work-based productivity and frenzied New York tourism-based research, consulting the Shecky’s bar guide she had picked up on the way to work and making notes on possible cool bars that she could pretend to frequent. She was determined to show Ethan that she had mastered the bright lights of the big city. She would navigate the subway with ease, order a slice of pizza without feeling an undercurrent of paranoia, walk down the street without speculating on how she probably stuck out like a sore, poorly dressed thumb. She was determined that, for one weekend, she would somehow become one of those New York women: effortlessly cool, impossibly leggy, a look of hardcore badassery affixed to her face. For one weekend, she would not be Ruby Atlas, Terrified Rube. She would be Ruby Atlas, Urban Warrior.
In short, she would pretend to be Jessica.
At ten past seven, having narrowly survived being gassed by Martin’s pungent aftershave as he wafted out the door, she made a break for it herself. Getting out of the office proved problematic: Tara/Melanie had caught her shakily applying eyeliner in the bathroom and snarked about it – ‘Big night?’ they had asked, giggling – and then proceeded to drop 175 envelopes on her desk just as she’d shut down her computer – ‘They really need to be stuffed tonight, okay?’ – but eventually, she made it out to reception, where she found Jefferson nursing a bottle of beer with one of the other creatives. ‘Off to meet your boyfriend?’ he’d asked in a slightly odd, strained voice. She nodded furiously, a manic grin plastered across her face, and charged out of the door. Freedom at last.
Of course, she got lost on her way to Chinatown, but for once she didn’t dwell on it, because none of it mattered when the door whooshed open and Ethan stepped off the bus and onto the sidewalk and, in one graceful swoop, bundled her into his arms and kissed her. And then an ancient Chinese man hacked up an enormous gob of spit and launched it dangerously close to her left foot, but she didn’t dwell on that, either. Instead, she dwelled on the exact green-gold shade of Ethan’s eyes under the street lamp, and the smell of him – somehow undiminished after four hours on a discount bus – when she buried her face in his neck. She dwelled on the way he smiled when he saw her, like she was made of a million tiny stars, and the way all of the anxiety that had built up in her shoulders suddenly lifted. She dwelled on that, even as the ancient Chinese man took another shot, and this time made contact with the tip of her new shoe.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Ethan said, throwing his ancient duffel bag over his shoulder and taking her hand. She led him up Canal Street and down to the R train, a route she had checked and double-checked before coming to pick him up. She handed him a pre-loaded MetroCard and swiped herself through, feeling quietly proud of the fact that it was a monthly card rather than cash. She was a local, after all, and locals had monthly MetroCards and could navigate Canal Street and didn’t blink when an old man spat on their shoe. So far, she was doing so good.
She held onto the pole with one hand and him with the other as they rumbled past Rector, Whitehall, Court Street – places she only knew subterraneously, having never worked up the courage to venture above-ground and explore. ‘This is where Junior’s Cheesecake is,’ she said as they screeched into DeKalb.
‘Really?’ he said, looking impressed. ‘Have you been?’
‘Yeah, a couple of times,’ she lied.
At Prospect, they emerged, blinking, into a cacophony of noise filling the streets. It was cold out, the first night where there was a real chill in the air, and their breath emerged in pleasing puffs of fog.
‘Hello, sweetheart!’ the bodega owner called as they passed. ‘What do you need? More wine? I’m just finishing my smoke but I can come back in now if you want to buy? One moment, one moment,’ he said, fumbling to put out his cigarette.
‘No, it’s fine, it’s fine,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘We’re just heading home.’
‘Who’s this?’ he asked, eyes lighting up. ‘You have a friend? I didn’t know you have a friend!’
‘Yes!’ Ruby cried, suddenly eager. ‘This is my boyfriend, Ethan. Ethan, this is . . .’
‘Roberto!’ he said, taking Ethan’s hand and pumping it up and down. ‘Any friend of Ruby’s is a friend of mine. She is my best customer, you know. Every night she comes in and asks for the same thing. Every night! She is a very reliable woman.’
‘Thanks, Roberto,’ Ruby muttered.
‘Every night, huh?’ Ethan smiled and raised an eyebrow.
‘He’s exaggerating.’
‘Every night!’ Roberto called from inside the shop, where he was frantically tidying the already tidy shelves.
Ruby pulled Ethan away from the doorway. ‘Let’s get back to the apartment,’ she said. ‘I have big plans for us tonight, and we need to get started.’
‘Is that right?’ Ethan said, waggling his eyebrows in mock-lasciviousness. ‘Well, in that case, lead the way.’
They waved goodbye to Roberto, who reiterated his shock at her not buying ‘the usual’ two bottles of wine and pack of falafels from him once more, and then headed down Third Avenue to Ruby’s apartment block.
‘Is this where you live?’ he asked, looking around warily. ‘It seems a little . . . rough.’
‘It’s actually totally safe,’ she said, and as she said it she felt herself believe it for the first time. She looked up at the red-brick building, took in the wisps of trash clinging to the branches of the leafless shrubbery in front of it, and was suddenly, immeasurably proud. ‘This is us,’ she said, opening the front door with a flourish.
Ethan took a cautious step into the communal hallway. ‘It’s kind of dark, isn’t it?’ The lightbulb had blown weeks ago, but no one from maintenance had come to replace it, and Kim had started to leave angry notes around the flat about it. Neither Ruby nor Jess were sure what she wanted them to do about it – they didn’t own a ladder, and besides, wasn’t it the landlord’s responsibility? – but Kim was adamant that it be done. Thankfully, to them, Kim was just a ghost who paid a share of the rent and left passive aggressive Post-it notes all over the place, so they were able to ignore her easily.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Ruby said, gesturing towards the broken light, even though she had been coming home every night from work paralyzed with terror at the thought of what might be waiting for her in that darkened hallway. She fitted the key into the door to the apartment and did the usual three shimmies and a shake needed to get it open. ‘Home sweet home!’ she trilled.
‘So this is it, huh?’ Ruby watched Ethan take in the tiny galley kitchen, the living room with its pockmarked floorboards and enormous, tattered orange sofa beached along the back wall. There was a pile of glossy magazines stacked on the heavy wooden coffee table, whose surface was dented and covered in ancient water stains. In the middle of the floor, there was a pile of clothing, state of cleanliness unknown, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and roaches. When she had left for work that morning, Jess hadn’t yet got back home from her night out – it looked like she’d decided to take the party home with her.
‘This is it! Do you want a drink?’ She walked into the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the refrigerator without waiting for a response. She felt the soles of her shoes pull and stick on the linoleum floor. ‘Sorry, it’s not usually this messy,’ she said, which wasn’t quite a lie. She had cleaned the other weekend, or had at least started to before she had drunk a bottle and a half of wine and passed out in front of The Hills.
‘Don’t worry, I know girls are always dirty.’ He took the beer from her hand and took a long, grateful sip before putting it down. ‘Speaking of dirty,’ he said, wrapping his hands around her waist, ‘I’ve been going out of my mind thinking about you.’
‘Me too,’ she said, slipping away from him, ‘but there’s no time right now! I’ve made us a reservation at Hothouse, which according to Jess is the hottest restaurant in Park Slope. It’s some kind of fusion thing – Thai and Chilean? Italian and Indian? I can’t remember. Anyway, it’s meant to be amazing and we have to leave, like, now.’
‘But I only just got here!’ He made another grab for her, but she dodged it.
‘I know, but there’s a six-month waiting list at this place! Jess pulled in a favor to get us a table. I wanted to take you somewhere special on your first night. Somewhere New York.’
Ethan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘Rubes, I don’t care about the hottest restaurant in Park Slope, wherever that is.’
‘It’s basically the new Williamsburg,’ she said knowingly.
‘Whatever. Look, I’m exhausted. I worked a late shift last night, and then I was on that disgusting bus surrounded by people who smelled like stale cabbage for hours.’ He pulled her into him again and she resisted slightly at first, and then gave in. It felt good to let herself fall, even just for a second. ‘Let’s just veg out on the couch and watch TV and get take-out. Just a normal night, okay?’
‘There are no normal nights in New York,’ she said, feeling witty and urbane as the words came out of her mouth. ‘Come on. It’s going to be amazing, I promise.’
He sighed, then pulled off his T-shirt. ‘Give me five minutes to shower, okay? But I expect to be repaid in sexual favors, just so we’re clear.’
‘Deal.’