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“Fine,” she eventually says. “New topic of conversation. Have you given any thought to where you’re going to live next year?”
“I still don’t know where I’m going to have a job.”
She rolls her eyes. “Come on, Maria. We both know the chances that you’ll move away from your grandmother are basically nil.”
“True.” Especially since I haven’t heard from the one New York firm where I interviewed.
“Especially if Gabe gets that job at San Jose State.”
Last I heard, he’d gone down for an interview with the provost, one of two candidates. I’m crossing everything for him.
“True.” I sigh. I don’t want to think about my job search. I don’t want to think about this semester ending and going on to the one boring job I have on tap. I haven’t even decided how to let my blog go. Deciding where I’m going to live on my tiny salary is low on my priority list.
“And I’m either going to UCSF or I’m taking this position at bioLogica.” She makes a face. “But I’m in San Francisco either way. Have you thought about getting a place together?”
I look over at her again to see if she’s joking.
She isn’t. I had hoped to avoid this conversation. I love Tina. I like Blake. I agreed to share a house with them because I assumed Blake would leave.
But this whole we-might-break-up thing? I’m not buying it for another year. Third-wheeling it makes sense when one of those wheels is unsteady. It completely sucks when everything’s great.
“Tina, do you really want that?”
She shrugs. “I mean, Blake’s probably skipping out on school after this year and moving back with his dad.”
I look at her skeptically.
“He’ll be around when he can. And when I have time.”
It’s one thing to share a six-bedroom, four-thousand-square-foot house with Blake and his occasional visiting father. I calculate the meager starting salary I have been offered. I subtract student loan payments. Prescription copays, if I’m lucky enough to have insurance that covers my HRT. What’s left is enough, if I’m lucky, for a birdhouse in a bad part of town.
Sharing my prospective birdhouse with Tina and her incredibly messy boyfriend? That sounds pretty awful.
“This is kinda premature,” I say. “You don’t know where you’re going to be. I don’t know where I’m going to be. I did apply for that job in New York.”
“I thought you weren’t excited about the New York job.”
“And you know me,” I bull on. “It’s not like I could conduct a housing search without a spreadsheet. How can I make a spreadsheet when we have no parameters?”
“Fine,” Tina says. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I nod. With any luck, before later comes, Tina will come to her senses.
* * *
Two weeks later
What are you doing? It’s two in the afternoon when Jay’s message comes through, and I can’t keep from smiling and pouncing on my phone.
Never mind that we’ve spent nearly twelve days together. Never mind that we met for lunch—and dinner—and that I’ve rarely gone home in that time. He’s in Boston at the moment. It’s been twenty-seven hours since I last saw him, and stupidly, I miss him.
Some part of me is aware that throwing myself headlong into this relationship is not a good idea. The other part of me wishes he were here.
How was your talk? I ask.
Oh, you know, he says. Couldn’t get the projector to work. I eschewed PowerPoint and did all the equations by hand, old-school style. I should do this all the time. But I’ll be home tomorrow.
I grin.
And you didn’t answer my question. What have you been doing in my absence?
I bite my lip. Are you in private?
Yes.
I waggle one eyebrow, even though he can’t see it. Because this is the kind of risqué sexy talk you don’t want to risk others reading over your shoulder.
Is that so? he writes. Good thing I went back to my hotel before dinner.
I let him have it. I am making a spreadsheet to evaluate job offers, which are now officially plural.
There is a pause. I can imagine him laughing.
Ooh, he writes. Congratulations on the plural. But also—spreadsheet. You need a spreadsheet to evaluate two job offers?
Honestly. It’s like he doesn’t even know me. I write quickly. You have it completely backward. I *want* a spreadsheet to evaluate my two job offers.
In some ways, it feels like old times. Bantering about…well, I can’t call the entirety of my economic future precisely nothing, can I? Still.
Oh dear, he says. Clearly I’ve been decision-making incorrectly all my life.
Clearly you have, I respond sternly, settling into my pillows. How else would you account for the cost (and opportunity-cost) of commuter time, various benefit levels, likelihood of advancement, etc?
His answer is on point. Um. With my brain?
Just as I’m about to respond, my phone rings. I glance at the number—unknown caller—and almost don’t pick up. But because I’m interviewing for jobs, I can’t afford to miss calls.
“Hello, Ms. Lopez?” The woman on the other end sounds vaguely familiar. “It’s Emily Lucas from Harding and Wilkins.”
I inhale and look at my spreadsheet. Harding and Wilkins is a consulting firm in New York. I had an interview there a month ago, and had assumed that the passage of this many weeks was equivalent to a no.
“Everyone loved you,” she says. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to respond. We’ll be sending you a formal offer letter, but until then…”
I scarcely hear her. My fingers move of their own accord. Harding and Wilkins, I type in my spreadsheet in a cell to the far left.
She’s rattling off numbers now. It’s good that I have my spreadsheet open; there’s no way I’d believe them if I weren’t writing them down as she said them. I type a number three times larger than the next closest amount in the offered salary bar.
Yes, it’s New York. Yes, money will go fast. But I upgrade my potential housing from birdhouse to studio. It’s not like the Bay Area’s cheap.
I’m in shock. “Thank you,” I say. “This is my dream job.” This is true, for some very limited values of dream.
“We’re looking forward to having you.”
I don’t accept. Instead, I fret internally while she talks, folding my pillow in two. I try to reduce the details she gives me to an equation. I fail. I have two main problems, and I don’t know how to fit them on my spreadsheet.
One: I wish I were excited about anything other than the salary. The hours will be long, and while eventually I’ll advance enough to get some interesting work, it will take years of slogging to get there.
It’s my dream job. Or at least it will be somewhat close, if I work at it long enough.
But the salary. On that salary, I could afford an actual vegetable to put in my ramen, and based on my graduating friends’ experience, I know how ridiculously rare this outcome is.
The rest of the conversation passes in a daze.
When we’re finished, I set my phone down and stare blankly ahead.
I would pinch myself, but I’m not even sure I’d feel it. I should be screaming for joy. Instead…
My phone flashes, and I realize that Jay’s been messaging me through the entire call. Um. Okay. It doesn’t have to be dinner. Or the day after is fine, if that works better.
Two: It’s in New York. My grandmother is here. My friends are here. My brother might be here. New York is cold and dirty. The Mexican food is subtly wrong. The pizza is so wrong, it barely even qualifies as pizza in my mind. Expressing either of those thoughts to a New Yorker would likely get me shanked, and I don’t want to die.
I nod at this bit of morbid fantasy. This irrationally premature obituary is easier for me to acknowledge than the other thought that flits through my mind. That is this: Jay is here.
After twelve days togethe
r, I’m aware it would be stupid to make a decision this massive on the basis of Jay.
If I told him, I know what he’d say. It’s your dream job. Take it. Or maybe: It’s your life. It’s your decision. He wouldn’t push me.
Still, I don’t want to tell him.
I pick up my phone. No, you dork. I got a phone call.
I scroll back through the messages I missed. I think about telling him about the job. We’ve known each other forever and he knows so much about me. Just…not everything. In one sense, this is the most intimate relationship I’ve had. I’ve told him things I haven’t told anyone. I let him close before I knew who he was.
It’s also the most lonely. He’s only realized my name for a handful of weeks, and all the things we would otherwise know about each other—favorite colors, food preferences—got skipped over. He knows everything and nothing, all at once.
I find his original message. So do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow when I’m back? I was planning on making food native to my peoples.
In the end, I smile helplessly. Decisions can wait; he’ll be back tomorrow.
Which people? Thai? Chinese? American?
His response is so swift that I know he set me up. None of the above. I am, of course, referring to beans on toast.
I grin as I’m typing. Oh, well. In that case… Sure.
