“Lana says that she’s afraid to come in to work,” Mr. Drew said, his freckles disappearing into angry lines around his eyes.
I wanted to say that I didn’t mean it, but I could see that my intentions didn’t matter, that a small woman like Lana would be afraid of a big sloppy mail clerk hovering over her and leaving notes and presents.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry doesn’t mean much when it’s gotten to this point. If it was up to me I’d send you home right now, today. But first Mr. Averill says that he wants to talk to you.”
“OK,” I said.
I sat there looking at him.
“Well?” he asked after a few moments.
“What?”
“Go back to the mail room and stay down there. Tell Ernie that I don’t want you in the halls. You’re supposed to meet Mr. Averill at one forty-five in his office. I’ve given him my recommendation to let you go. After something like this, there’s really no place for you. But he can still refer the matter to the police. Lana might want a restraining order.”
I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell him that a restraining order was ridiculous. Then I wanted to go to Lana and tell her the same thing. I wanted to tell her that I bought her roses because she wore rose toilet water, that I bought her the tree because the sun on her blotter could support a plant. I really liked her. But even while I was imagining what I could say, I knew that it didn’t matter what I saw or what I felt.
“Well?” Drew said. “Go.”
Ernie made busywork for us that morning. He told me that he was upset about what had happened, that he’d told Drew to go easy.
“But he just said that I better look after myself,” Ernie said. “Man forget he’s black ’fore you could say Jackie Robinson.”
“Hey, bro’,” Junior said to me at lunchtime. “Come on with me.”
Junior rarely talked to me, much less offered his company. This was an act of rare generosity, and so I took him up on it. The Lindas had ignored me completely. It was obvious that they knew about my troubles before I did but hadn’t seen fit to warn me.
“Where we goin’?” I asked Junior out on Broadway. It was a very crowded street at lunchtime.
“Coupla blocks.”
I got the feeling he was taking me somewhere special. I would have been excited, or at least asked him where we were going, but my mind kept going back to Lana. I wanted to explain to her, to tell her why I wasn’t harassing her.
“There it is,” Junior said.
We had reached the end of Broadway. There was a small concrete island with park benches in the middle of the street. There were lots of young people hanging out and talking there. On one bench, the one Junior was pointing at, sat a muscular ebony-colored man with a bald head wearing a dark blue, thin-strapped tank top. He was just leaning over to kiss a small woman, a white woman—Lana Donelli. I brought my hand to my mouth and made a sound. He pushed his tongue brutally into her mouth, and she brought her fingers to his head as if she were guiding the attack.
I turned away.
“Sorry, bro,” Junior said.
I felt his hand on my shoulder. I nodded and said, “I’m going back up.” I didn’t wait for him to reply; I just started walking.
Lancelot Averill’s office was on the forty-eighth floor of the Carter’s Home building. His secretary’s office was larger by far than Mr. Drew’s cubbyhole. The smiling blond secretary led me into Averill’s airy room. The wall behind him was a giant window looking out over Battery Park, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. I would have been impressed if my heart wasn’t broken.
Averill was on the phone when I was ushered in.
“Sorry, Nick,” he said into the receiver. “My one forty-five is here.”
He stood up, tall and thin. The medium-gray suit looked expensive. His white shirt was crisp and bright, but that was nothing compared to the rainbow of his tie. His hair was gray and combed back, and his mustache was sharp enough to cut bread, as my mother was known to say.
“Sit down, Mr. Coombs.”
He sat also. In front of him were two sheets of paper. At his left hand was the pink harassment form; at his right was a white form. Behind him the Budweiser blimp hovered next to Lady Liberty.
Averill brought his fingertips to just under his nose and gazed at a spot over my head.
“How’s Ernie?” he asked.
“He’s good,” I said. “He’s a great boss.”
“He’s a good man. He likes you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Averill looked down at his desk. “This does not compute.”
“What?”
He patted the white page. “This says that you’re a college graduate, magna cum laude, in political science, that you came here to be a professional trainee.” He patted the pink sheet. “This says that you’re an interoffice mail courier who harasses secretaries in the mortgage department.”
Averill’s hand reached into his vest pocket and came out with an open package of cigarettes. He offered me one, but I shook my head. He lit up and took a deep drag, holding the smoke in his lungs a long time before exhaling.
“Why are you in the interoffice mail room?” he asked.
“No PT positions were open when I applied,” I said.
“Nonsense. We don’t have a limit on PTs.”
“But Ms. Worth said—”
“Oh,” Averill held up his hand. “Reena. You know Ernie helped me out when I got here eighteen years ago. I was just a little older than you. They didn’t have the PT program back then, just a few guys like Ernie. He never even finished high school, but he showed me the ropes.”
Averill drummed the fingers of his free hand between the two forms that represented me.
“I know this Lana’s sister,” he said. “Always wearing those cocktail dresses in to work. Her boss is afraid to say anything, otherwise he might get a pink slip too.” He paused to ponder some more. “Twins, huh? They look alike?”
“They don’t dress the same,” I said, wanting somehow to protect Lana from the insinuations that I barely understood.
“How would you like to be a PT floater?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Bump you up to a grade seven and let you move around in the different departments until you find a fit.”
I was a grade 1B.
“I thought you were going to fire me.”