Carrie Pilby Read online

  But I decide to play along. “I think that the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption.”

  Doug stands there for a second. “Wow.”

  I don’t tell him that I stole the whole thing from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which I read one day when I had three hours to kill.

  Oldie looks back at both of us. “You two gonna do any work tonight?”

  “Why don’t you call 60 Minutes and rat out your son-in-law?” I ask. He sniffs and goes back to his work.

  “Come outside,” Doug says. “I’m out front.”

  I assume this means that if I get in trouble, I can blame him. I follow him through the glass doors into the waiting room, which has plush chairs and golden letters on the walls bearing the name of the firm. Fancy-schmancy. Doug motions to an armchair next to the security desk, and I sit by his side. “Are you looking for a regular job?”

  “Someday.” This conversation has gone on long enough without my knowing what’s important. “Where did you go to school?”

  “Hempstead State,” he says. Oh well. I guess he’s not so smart after all. Then again, maybe I’m judging too quickly. At least, Petrov thinks I do. “I didn’t feel like going to Harvard,” he adds, opening a bag of pistachios and pouring a few onto the table.

  “Right.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  I wonder if he’s asking because he likes me, or he’s just making fun of me because he knows no one would want to be my boyfriend. “No,” I say.

  He cracks a pistachio on the table, then opens it like a tulip. “You just kind of play the field?”

  “Mostly, I sleep.”

  Doug laughs. “If I could, I would. Any time in bed is time well spent.”

  We’re silent for a minute while he swallows his pistachio nut. Then he cracks another against the desk. “Did you know that pistachio nuts are like orgasms?”

  That is so disgusting! I turn away and look at the paintings on the wall. I think they’re Edward Hopper.

  Doug pinches the green meat from inside the shell and pops it into his mouth. He chews, swallows and posits: “One nut will taste all salty, but the next one will taste almost buttery. The third one will be shriveled and brown with a weird kind of tartness. They’re like sexual climaxes. Each one is completely different in its own way, but they’re all great.”

  “Fascinating.” I look away.

  “Did I embarrass yew?” He laughs. “Here, I’m sorry. Have one.”

  I put my hand out.

  “No. An orgasm.”

  I look up.

  “Just kidding. Here.” He hands me a nut. I can’t believe he talks about something so intimate like it’s as routine as brushing your teeth. I mumble a thank-you and return to my seat.

  I spend the rest of the night reading Black’s Law Dictionary until I can barely see straight. Now at least I can pepper my conversations with ex aequo et bono and de minimus non curat lex.

  The shift ends when the first rays of dawn filter through the office’s tinted windows, which I imagine were created to remove the only joy of working there—the view. There is a commotion as a group of workers leaves and another arrives. With all the gossiping, peeking at the newspaper headlines and getting coffee, this takes a half hour. I may have underestimated the amount of fakery that goes on in the workplace.

  When one has been up all night, one gets a filmy taste in one’s mouth and a bleariness in one’s eyes. I wipe my lips and stand straight up, stretching. My bones ache.

  I throw my backpack across my shoulder and head out into the carpeted lobby. Doug and I shake hands, and I stretch some more. I guess I’ll see him again if I return to the firm.

  In the elevator, there’s a guy holding a metal cart bursting with donuts. They smell delicious. Some are topped with a thick cairn of chocolate cream, some are glazed, some are powdered and jelly-filled, and some have a slab of strawberry frosting and sprinkles. Eating one would get rid of this taste in my mouth. But the donut guy gets off on the third floor. I continue to the bottom and step out into the sunshine.

  It looks like today will be nicer than the last few. In the park, homeless people are emerging from boxes pushed together like trains. Cardboard condos. I wend my way past intricate metal stairways and under mélanges of scaffolding and torn advertisements for magazines, and sunlight bounces off glistening marble statues and embeds itself in glass doors. Hordes of commuters flood the streets in their gray and navy-blue uniforms, all of them walking—as is often the case—in the opposite direction of me.

  On a corner, a balding, timid-looking guy is handing out something and yelling. Everyone brushes past him. He keeps trying to give them a yellow flyer, and they keep turning their heads away. I vow to take the flyer when he hands it to me. It must be awful to stand there all day being rejected. However, he only gives me a cursory glance and then hands a flyer to the person next to me.

  I stand there, waiting.

  Finally, he shyly says, “Oh,” and thrusts one in my hand.

  The First Prophets’ Church, it says at the top, and there’s a long explanation of how Joseph Natto, an Episcopalian minister, had a vision way back in 1998 that his preachings about the church were lacking in something. A list of ten rules suddenly appeared in his mind.

  This is a real original story.

  I look up, and Tonsure-Head is talking s-l-o-w-l-y to a Spanish woman who is staring at him wide-eyed as if the more she opens her eyes, the more she’ll understand English. I’ve noticed that religious nuts always prey on foreigners. Anyone else would be too smart to fall for their fabrications. I’m tempted to go up and ask the guy why he only talks to people who don’t have a good command of English. Lately, my life has been about saying exactly what’s on my mind, particularly to people who need to change. Unfortunately, religious nuts are the one phylum that loves that. When they’re challenged, a dreamy smile crosses their faces like a trail of footprints and they give an answer like, “Oh, you have to have faith, and once you accept [insert name of savior here] into your heart, you will understand.” Then they’ll surely tell you some story about how once, they were just like you, until they had their moment of inspiration and it changed their life forever.

  The key to all religions is simply believing whatever they tell you and not allowing a scintilla of rational doubt to enter your mind. None of us was around 2,000 or 5,700 years ago (or 173.5 years if you’re a Mormon—sorry, Mormons) to know what really happened, so people decide whose story to choose, and which steadfast principles to select, based upon such important criteria as what their parents forced them to believe growing up and what other relatives forced them to believe growing up. At least Mormons hold off on baptizing their kids until they’re eight, but is an eight-year-old going to be any more resistant than a baby?

  I keep watching Tonsure-Head speaking mas des-pac-i-o to the Spanish woman and I wait around to see if he’ll try to convert me, too. That wouldn’t be so bad, if he can give me good answers to my questions about religion. If he does that, I’ll give him a chance. That’s a big if.

  Suddenly, a strange feeling wells up in me that I get once in a while. It feels hollow and icy, and it’s right in my gut. It makes me want to warm myself up inside. I look at him and wonder if this religion is all he has. Who am I to make fun of it? Maybe it’s something he loves. Maybe he’s lonely.

  Something else makes me sad, but I can’t put my finger on it.

  Then, the feeling goes away in a few seconds. Good.

  I keep waiting for Tonsure-Head to talk to me, but he ignores me. I wonder if he realizes that because he himself is not a minority, he himself would not be one of the people he would have reached out to on the street. How hypocritical.

  I give up, take the flyer home, and tape it to the side of my protruding closet. It’s got an address for the church on the bottom.

  It’s an organi
zation, so if I join it, I can fulfill the second goal on Dr. Petrov’s list. But if I go to one of their services, my real goal will be to infiltrate this organization and expose it as a cult. I don’t want it taking advantage of people. I’ll protect the gullible.

  Several days later, I finally have the pleasure of bringing my top-ten list to Petrov. Even though it’s really a top-eight list.

  Before I can discuss it, though, Petrov asks me again if I’ve made any new friends. I tell him that I haven’t, but to please him, I mention my conversation with Douglas P. Winters.

  “Sounds like he might have been flirting with you,” Petrov says.

  “Eh.”

  “Are you interested?”

  “He seemed a little…sex-obsessed.”

  Petrov sits back. “I know you think that most people are sex-obsessed,” he says. “While I have no doubt that it’s true in many cases, I would gather that if you were older, and if you had more sexual experience, it wouldn’t seem as glaring.”

  Of course. Petrov thinks I’m a virgin. Everyone assumes that if you think the world is sex-obsessed, you must not have had sex. As if sex is so all-consuming that once you have it, you can completely justify the fact that it’s scrolling through everyone’s brain twenty-four hours a day. Plus, people think that, in general, if you express perfectly logical criticisms of the way society works, it means you’re “uptight” and “need to get laid.” As if sex is a cure for everything.

  I haven’t ever told Petrov about my experiences with Professor Harrison.

  I guess it’s true that, because of confidentiality rules, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell my father, which is a plus. But I don’t see why he has to know anyway. At least, not yet. I spent years in college not telling people about Harrison. I’m good at it.

  “How do you know I’m not sexually experienced?” I ask.

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t see how it’s relevant to a discussion of whether other people are sex-obsessed. I can have opinions regardless of whether I, myself, have had sex.”

  “True,” he says. “But it’s hard to comment on what it’s like to take a plane if you’ve never been off the ground. However, if you have had sexual experiences, and you want to discuss them…”

  “Nope,” I say. I decide that I’d better change the subject quickly—this time, anyway. “I thought about joining an organization last week.”

  “Really?” he says, interested.

  I tell him about Tonsure-Head and the church, and how it might be a cult that should be exposed.

  Petrov says, “You would have taken the flyer anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even if you didn’t want to expose the church as a cult, you would have taken the religious flyer anyway. You would have taken the flyer for the same reason you keep coming to see me even though you say you don’t need to.”

  Oh, won’t he please enlighten me about my very own secret motivations for every single thing I do, which I’m sure he has a brilliant theory to explain? “I come here to get my father’s money’s worth,” I say.

  Petrov says, “You come here to talk to me. I’m paid to listen. Maybe you’re insecure and think other people won’t listen to you. But I do. If you really wanted to stop coming here, you’d refuse to. But you come, just like you took the religious flyer. What are you doing?”

  “Looking at your clock,” I say. “I never noticed it before. You have it strategically placed up on the shelf behind my head, so that when you look at it to see how much time we have left, I’ll think you’re looking at me. And it’s a big clock. I guess you wouldn’t want people to go a second over.”

  “It’s not entirely selfish,” he says. “If a patient runs over the time, it backs up all my other patients.”

  “I always kind of wondered what you do if someone’s in the middle of a big important story about himself, and his time’s up,” I say. “Do you suddenly say, ‘Hold that suicidal thought until next week?’”

  “I try not to get into anything too heavy in the last few minutes of the session.”

  “Oh, well, that’s cheating. If only forty minutes of a forty-five-minute session can be dedicated to serious talk, you’re gypping people out of five minutes.”

  “Carrie,” Petrov says, “we’re here to talk about you.”

  “Well, if I talk about you, it brings me out of my shell.”

  “Ah,” Petrov says. “It does?”

  “No. I just figured you’d like that. Some self-analysis. Deflecting things to you helps me. I thought you’d like the hypothesis.”

  Petrov sighs. “Did you bring your list of ten things you love?”

  I pull it out and hand it to him. “Yes, but it’s a top-eight list.”

  “You always have to be the contrarian.”

  “No, I don’t. Ha ha. Get it?”

  Cherry soda

  Street sounds

  My bed

  The green-blue hue of an indoor pool

  Starfish

  The Victorians

  Rainbow sprinkles

  Rain during the day (makes it easier to sleep)

  “Tell me,” he says. “When’s the last time you had a cherry soda?”

  I think. “Not since I was little.”

  “What about rainbow sprinkles? When was the last time you had them?”

  By the shore, maybe. Dad and I used to get vanilla soft-serve ice cream in those airy flat-bottomed beige cones. “Not since I was a kid, again.”

  “But they’re in your top eight favorite things.”

  “I guess I just haven’t made them a priority.”

  “I think,” Petrov says, “that part of the reason for your depression is that you deny yourself things, or you don’t seek out the things that make you truly happy. Not everything has to have analysis behind it. Why not just enjoy yourself without thinking sometimes?”

  “So when did we decide that I was depressed? Neither of us has ever mentioned the term. We’ve talked about how the world is full of hypocrites, how a lot of people aren’t that smart or don’t talk about things that actually matter, and last time, you said you understood that I was younger than everyone else in college and that might have made things harder for me. But now all of a sudden I’m depressed. Did your friend Eli Lilly just ship you a free eight ball of Prozac?”

  He looks beaten. “I shouldn’t be so quick to label. But I think you’d be happier, and more at peace with the world, if you sought out things you enjoyed. Sitting home all the time can’t make you too happy. When you were in school, you moved ahead by taking tests and getting good grades, and you certainly could feel yourself progressing that way. But now that you’re out of school, I think you’re in a bit of a holding pattern. If you did more activities related to things you loved, you probably would meet like-minded people and move forward with meaningful friendships and relationships. That’s why I thought it would be good for you to join an organization.”

  “Should I go find a cherry-soda club?”

  “Let’s add a Part B to the first part of your assignment,” Petrov says. “The first part was to write a list of things you love. Now, for 1B, go out and do some of them. Get an ice-cream cone with rainbow sprinkles. Go to the store and buy cherry soda.”

  “Okay.”

  He looks at my list again.

  “You also mention sleep, and you mention rain.”

  “Sleeping in the rain,” I say. “I’ll get on that right away.”

  “Good.”

  He is so oblivious.

  When I get home, my hand immediately shoots into my mailbox, which I love almost as much as my bed. I subscribe to fourteen magazines, and just seeing the cavalcade of colors in my box fills me with joy. But what’s more, each day brings the potential for new surprises. This is the kind of hope that keeps me going when nothing else does. Maybe the MacArthur Genius Grant notice will come in the mail.

  But today there’s only something white and thin inside.

&n
bsp; It’s an actual letter—rare these days, in our e-mail driven society. It’s in a fine white wove envelope, and my name and address are typed neatly in 10 pica that looks like it came from a typewriter and not a printer. It’s from the dean’s office at Harvard. I’ve finally gotten him to respond to my request, the rogue.

  Dear Carrie:

  Hope this finds you well and I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your letter. As always, I appreciate your concerns. However, as I mentioned during our conversation at your father’s function last year, I don’t see, as I didn’t see then, a need for an honors program at Harvard. Even though you maintained in your letter that it is important to allow “the best of the best” at our school to interact, we believe that every student at Harvard is already the best of the best….

  Bull. That’s what I had thought before I’d arrived there. I thought everyone would be a genius and wouldn’t look at me funny when, for example, I wanted to talk about philosophy or current events at a party or in the dorm lounge. Some of the kids were okay, but some would go “whoosh” and cut their hands above their heads when I said something they deemed too intellectual. I also met people whose test scores were much lower than mine, and some of them had rich alumni parents or played lacrosse or dived really well and that’s probably why they got in. There were also plenty of beer-chuggers and bubbleheads and people who talked nonstop about sex, which one would think is odd for a school that everyone had to study like hell to get into, but I guess that’s why their gonads exploded as soon as they got fifty miles from home. I thought that by having an honors program, the students at Harvard who were actually smart could be together.

  On rare occasions, I did encounter smart people in school. Once in a while, I’d end up at a mixer with the other prodigies, and we’d discuss the difficulties of being fifteen in a sea of twenty-one-year-old drinkers and Lotharios. I felt a kinship with the others, but they soon grew to love seeing how much they could get away with, while I didn’t.