What We Know Is True, page 11
“Did you buy any of Jerrica’s merchandise?”
“Yikes! No, of course not.” I paused, unsure of his feelings toward her. “I mean, I’m sure it was very nice…”
“No, it was all terrible crap. I used to feel sorry for the people buying it, all the people sitting at home watching us have fun and see the world rather than doing it themselves.” He looked up from his monitor. “I don’t mean you. I know you wouldn’t have liked to do what we were doing.”
For some reason, that statement made me feel odd. Upset, and a little angry. “I might have,” I defended myself. “I might have liked it.”
“If there was nothing too high, or too cold, or dangerous in any way, and there was plain white bread and peanut butter to eat.” He smiled and I knew he was joking but it made me feel even more upset, almost as if I would cry.
I stood up quickly. “I’ll go get lunch,” I said, shoving my hands into my coat. I was tapping out the digits of pi as quickly as I could with my fingers. “It’s noon.”
“Karis. Wait a minute.”
“I’ll get you something weird and disgusting,” I promised, trying to smile. I walked down the hall to the elevator.
There were footsteps behind me, and once again, Reid put his hand on my shoulder. “I was teasing you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re right. I never, never in a million years would have done what you two did. I had a hard enough time moving every year or two, let alone every forty-eight hours. I’m a picky eater and I’m not adventurous, not at all.”
The elevator doors opened and the phone on his desk rang. Reid looked back at it.
“Go get it,” I said, and he turned away. He was right, I wasn’t like Jerrica, not in the least. I wished that I were. I wished to be something other than vanilla Karis, the same old, plain old Karis Brown who everyone knew would want to stay at home and play on a calculator rather than do something exciting and take risks. I frowned at my wavy—and short—reflection in the back of the scratched elevator doors.
I came back with sandwiches, which were just turkey and also not adventurous at all, and we went back to work and spent the rest of the day happily engaged with that. I started to feel like I was really going to enjoy this new job but towards the end of the day I had to switch gears, out of work mode and into relationship mode. I needed to fix my outfit so I went to the ladies’ room, and when I came out, I ran into Reid. Literally, but he didn’t let me fall. “Where are you rushing off to?” he asked me, setting me back up on my feet.
I ran my hand over my hair to make sure it wasn’t mushroom-like. “I have a date,” I said, but I mumbled and he didn’t hear. “A date,” I announced more clearly.
“The same guy as before? The insurance guy?”
I nodded and checked my hair again. Reid looked me up and down, a little frown on his lips. I had taken off my cardigan for my date-night look but I felt that had missed the mark again, fashion-wise. It had taken me about an hour that morning to piece together an outfit that would be work-appropriate/cool and date-appropriate/sexy and I had mostly ended up with neither. Just black pants and a plain white shirt buttoned up high under my beige cardigan. I looked like a waitress again once I took the sweater off. “See what I mean about my style issues?” I said, gesturing at my clothes. “I could really use the lady’s maid. I can’t figure out if my collar is supposed to go up or down.” I flipped it up to gauge his reaction.
He winced and looked pained. Back down it went.
“About the lady’s maid thing…” He hesitated. “You know, let’s just talk about it tomorrow.”
“No, if there’s something about my outfit, I want you to tell me now. It’s better to let me know so I don’t repeat Friday night, when you and Ione let me walk around that party with a hair balloon on my head.”
“I thought it looked kind of nice, the dimension,” he offered, holding his hands away from his head to indicate the size that my hair had been. Enormous. “No, there’s nothing wrong with how you look. You look…very nice. Businesslike. We can talk tomorrow about the other thing.” He appraised me again. “Second date. It sounds promising.”
“I guess.” I felt very shy. “I don’t know, I guess I’ll see tonight how promising it is.” We said goodbye.
And it was another fine evening with Daniel. We had a long conversation about the actuarial exams and how he studied for them. We talked about insurance products, too, which I found very interesting. When we said goodbye at the door of the restaurant, he kissed my cheek as well as shaking my hand, so I felt like things were progressing nicely. It was very pleasant.
If everything went according to the timeline I had worked out, barring illnesses and natural disasters, I felt sure that I would accomplish my secret New Year’s goal by May first: I would have sex with Daniel. I gripped the steering wheel of my car, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of dread as I thought about it. No, no, that was wrong, there was no reason to act like a lunatic. I was going to accomplish the goal I had set out for myself and Daniel was my conduit to success.
∞
“So?”
I organized some of Reid’s papers, which had drifted onto my side of the big desk. “Hm?”
“So, how was the date? You didn’t say anything about it.” He was watching me over the top of his coffee cup, which I had carried in that morning without dropping. Apparently my problem with dropping tableware only occurred with glass and ceramics.
“My date was fine. Enjoyable.”
“Pleasant, even?” Reid asked.
“That’s funny, that’s exactly the word I thought of when I left him!” I looked at Reid. “What is that face for?”
“Nothing at all. I’m glad it was pleasant. I would not feel pleasant myself if that was your—or any woman’s—prevailing emotion after spending time with me.”
“Why? I thought that it was a completely satisfactory date.”
He groaned slightly and shook his head. “Exactly. Pleasant and satisfactory. Have you ever heard of Alexander Pope? Damning something with faint praise?”
“Ok, well, how would you want me, or any woman, to feel after going out with you?” I challenged him.
“Thrilled. Intrigued. Titillated. Breathless.” His blue eyes locked on mine.
Yes, that was how I had felt at Augusta’s wedding, that was how I often felt when I was with Reid. In fact, I was having a little trouble breathing at that exact moment.
I counted to five as I silently exhaled. “Well, that’s asking a lot of yourself and your date. I’m satisfied with a guy who doesn’t talk about Ione the entire time, like all the people she set me up with. Daniel is very interesting.”
“You said that before, too. Tell me what makes him interesting to you.”
“Not him, per say,” I hedged. He actually didn’t seem to do very much besides work. “I like our topics of discussion. They’re things I’m interested in, too.”
“Ok, so tell me what you talked about,” Reid said, leaning back in his chair. I did: Daniel’s job and the work he did, his studies and the classes he had taken. “You learned a lot about this guy,” he noted. “What did you tell him about yourself?”
“About myself?” I thought. “I told him…I told him I started a new job yesterday.”
“Did you tell him where? What you were doing?”
“That didn’t really come up.” I went back to straightening papers. “You’re a messy person to share a desk with, Reid. I may have to put a piece of tape down the middle to delineate our areas.”
“Why don’t you like talking about yourself?” he asked me. He was still watching me with his bright eyes.
“I don’t mind talking about myself.”
“Really? None of the things you mentioned from your conversation last night had anything to do with you. It was all about him. Was the problem that this guy Daniel is rude and never asked you any questions?”
I thought back. Maybe it was a combination of things. “He’s not rude. He’s just focused.”
“On himself. You don’t share information very easily, Prudence. Almost everything I know about you is from Augusta and her parents, and a few hints you’ve dropped about foreign food.”
“What do you know about me from Augusta?” My face felt hot. She knew a lot…
“She said that you work so hard and worry so much because you’re supporting your parents. You mentioned, too, that that they depend on you.”
“My mom works,” I defended her. Then I sighed. “But it isn’t enough. They do need me to help out.” Professors weren’t rolling in dough, and moving around between schools so much, my dad had usually started at or near the bottom rung for salary and not advanced very far. Also, most of the schools where he’d ended up, especially at the end of his career, weren’t exactly the top tier. They payed accordingly.
“No savings?”
“Debts,” I heard myself admit. “A lot of debts, credit card and otherwise. My dad needed to fund his research, to travel to complete it, things like that, and he rarely got money from his universities because he never established himself anywhere long enough to get grants. Now my parents don’t have anything to show for the effort he made and all the money he spent, except their debt, and his books. And I think you’re the only one currently buying them, so thank you.”
Reid was nodding slowly. “You said that your dad has dementia. Caretaking is usually expensive.”
“My mom and I live together. To save. My dad is in a residential facility.” Saying it made me bite my lip and start tapping, a lot. I hoped my mom had changed her mind about letting him stay there.
Sitting across from Reid, with his eyes measuring me, I felt so uncomfortable. Maybe I didn’t like to talk about myself very much. “I need to get to work,” I said shortly, and he nodded again, and left me alone.
We didn’t say much for the rest of the day, and I got immersed in what I was doing, as I usually did. I was startled when Reid stood up and stretched, and I realized that it had grown darker outside the big windows. I stretched too and thought that I needed to go for a run.
“Now what’s your face for?” he asked me. He mimicked me, looking like an angry weasel.
“I was thinking about running.”
He grinned a little. “The way you just said it clued me in on how excited you are about it.”
“I’m trying to get up to four miles but I can’t quite make it. Like Sisyphus.”
“Where are you going to run?” he asked, the weasel face relaxing into a quirked lip.
I glanced outside. I didn’t want to go in the dark, not at all. “I’m not sure.”
“Come to the track near my house. I’ll run, too. I could use it.” He stretched again. “I’m not used to all this sitting.”
That was how I ended up nervously tightening my ponytail as we started going around the indoor track. “I go very slowly,” I warned Reid. “And I turn very red. And I wheeze. And say bad words.”
“Such as?”
I was already wheezing a little. “I only say them when I get tired and want to quit.”
“I guess I’ll have to wait for it.” He grinned at me.
A guy whizzed by me, practically sprinting, and I jumped.
“I won’t let the other runners get you,” Reid said. “Tell me more about where you’ve lived.”
“I don’t know if I can talk and run.”
“Azerbaijan?” he prompted, and I started to tell him, going back as far as I could remember. Two different cities in China, then Tuzla.
“Bosnia?”
I nodded, wiping my forehead with my sleeve. “Am I going too slow for you?”
“Not at all. Where else?”
I kept going, naming every place I could remember in chronological order. “Ten different cities that I can think of right now.” I paused to breathe. “Eight countries.” Pause. “I think there was somewhere else too.” Pant. “When I really small. Maybe Nigeria.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Coming from you,” I tried to control my breath, “that means something.”
He glanced down at me. “You ok? That’s one mile.”
I knew that. I was counting everything on my fingers.
“Why did your dad move schools so often? Did your parents have wanderlust too?” Reid asked. He wasn’t even breathing hard at all.
On the other hand, I thought my lungs were going to come out of my panting mouth at any moment. “My dad. Needed. To leave.” Pant pant. “A lot.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t. Get a. Long. With people,” I finished in a rush. “You talk.”
“You went to a lot of schools, then,” he said. I gestured for more. I needed more time to breathe. “I’m assuming that was difficult, given what you’ve said about socializing.”
I shook my head. “No. No schools. Home schooled.”
“Like an online school?”
I shook my head again. “Mom. Made up. Curric. Ulum. Not online.”
“Really? That’s…” He stopped.
There were a lot of things to say about it, but I couldn’t at the moment due to a pressing need for oxygen. It had been fun to be with my mom all the time, and we were as close as we were because of it. But it had been difficult to never know anyone besides adults, like my dad’s colleague and their spouses. Sometimes they had kids, but I had never seemed to get the knack of how to meet people, to be easy and open with them, and therefore to make friends. And there were issues with what I had studied. The curriculum had been pretty narrow, mostly what my father had been interested in. He’d had a heavy influence on my mom’s planning.
“Was it hard to get into college with that as your background? Your mom’s school rather than somewhere, uh, accredited?”
I shook my head. No. I hadn’t ever actually graduated from high school. I didn’t even have a GED, but it had worked out in the end.
“Dad did it,” I explained.
Just after his diagnosis, my dad had called in probably the only favor he ever had outstanding. I had a hard time imagining him doing something for someone else so that person would be in his debt, but nevertheless, he had somehow gotten me into my university. Not the one I would have chosen, or the major I would have picked, either, but I was in. Once I was there, living apart from them, I had quietly and secretly switched from classical studies to applied mathematics, and I had finally felt at home. I worked hard to prove to everyone there that I deserved the chance, and to show that they had been wrong to fire my father so many years ago. That part was for my mom.
“You weren’t kidding about what happens to you when you run.” Reid was staring at me. “Are you really all right?”
I was at the cursing stage. “Crap on a cracker. Yes. Sugar. Fudge.”
Reid stopped, leaned down, and started laughing. He waved at me to keep running so I did, glancing back at him every few tortured steps. He was bent at the waist, holding onto the edge of his shorts, shaking with laughter. I kept going, looking back at him over my shoulder as I rounded the corner of the track, until I collided with something large.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized to the man I had bumped as he did a hamstring stretch in lane four, sending him stumbling across the track. Reid sprinted and caught up. “Are you. Ok?” I tried to catch my breath and speak normally.
The man turned on me angrily. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m very sorry. I didn’t see you,” I explained.
“You need to watch where you’re going, the track doesn’t belong to you!” the man ranted at me. “You could have broken my watch.” He held up his wrist with a very large, expensive-looking sporty watch on it.
“She said she was sorry. You shouldn’t have been stretching in the middle of the track,” Reid said.
“I may have hurt my back or my neck. Whiplash—”
“You’re fine,” Reid told him, his expression turning a little scary. “Move on.”
The man stared at him for just a second before he backed down. “I guess I am fine.” He ran off.
Reid took my elbow. “Only another half mile. Let’s go. Keep it up.”
“I didn’t see him at all!”
“That’s why you should look where you’re going when you run. No, don’t go apologize to him again,” he said as I started to veer into the man’s lane as we passed him. He put his hand on my back and steered me away. “Leave it alone. Everyone’s fine.”
After my short rest while the man yelled, I had my breath back under control a bit more. Just a bit. “You surprised me,” I told Reid. “I hadn’t heard it in a while. You laughing.”
“You know, Prudence, it surprised me, too.”
∞
It was making me a little cross-eyed. I looked out the windows and refocused for a moment. Earnings reports were out for most public companies, including all our competitors, and I was trying to teach myself to read them and pick through for the most significant information. I was also learning all the acronyms, examining all the DAUs and APBUs and every other letter grouping. I was starting to get a little NUTS.
“Let’s take a break.”
I looked up to see Reid observing me. At the end of week one of my employment with him, I still wasn’t used to seeing his handsome face every time I lifted my head. I had realized that I was watching him a lot, and he caught me frequently, too, which was very embarrassing. “I could use a break,” I admitted. “Hey, I overheard in the lobby coffee shop that you can get up on the roof of this building. One lady said she could see as far as Ohio, but I don’t think that’s possible due to...” There was no need to get into it. “Do you want to go look? As long as you promise to stay right next to me and not try to jump to the next building over.” I smiled, but Reid didn’t.
“Sure,” he answered.
One thing about sitting directly across from him for hours each day was that I was learning to read him, his expressions and his tone. But anyone would have noticed that he wasn’t very enthusiastic at the moment. “We don’t—”
He stood. “Let’s go.”
As we waited for the elevator and on the ride up, we discussed the earnings reports, surprises that Reid had seen and other things that he questioned. When I opened the door to the stairs to the roof, he cleared his throat, and I turned to look up at him. That was his uncomfortable sound, I had figured out. But all he said was, “After you.”
