Chapter Four
All in One Place
What I really needed was a drink. I needed a drink, and my work day was done—or my campus day, anyway, and any instructor who tells you they grade 100% sober 100% of the time is lying through their teeth—but I still had to get to my apartment. Even if I could afford a drink with proof high enough to make everything a little less painful, I couldn’t afford a DUI. So I headed for a coffee shop.
I had a local favorite. It wasn’t hip, but it was just out of walking distance from campus, which meant that it didn’t tend to become a student hangout. You had to want to go there. Granted, that meant I had to pay for gas to get there and back myself, but I was willing to pay to reduce the chance of running into someone I knew. This suburban Starbucks still got packed at all the usual rush times, but it was packed with engineers, not students, staff, and administrators.
In the parking lot, I scrounged through my trunk, holding an old faculty bulletin over my head in a mostly futile attempt to shield myself, until I found a beat up gray cardigan. Beat up, pilling, but blessedly dry. I peeled off wet layers down to my cami, then wrapped the wool around me. It scratched at my damp neck and elbows, but I was infinitely more comfortable.
Inside, the line was long, the waiting area thick with engineers. I buried my face in the soggy bulletin, attempting to look absorbed, but seeing nothing. I managed to hold it together long enough to charge a cappuccino and a slice of the sweetest, stickiest cake they had, but when I turned around and saw that there was absolutely nowhere to sit, I bit my lower lip, hard, to hold back tears. Every single table was surrounded by standard-issue Silicon Valley engineers, mostly youngish white and Asian men in company t-shirts, badges clipped to their pockets. They all looked happy. And satisfied. And well-fed, and gainfully employed, and capable of making rent payments on a non-shitty apartment while at the same time tossing around cash for things like lattes and scones, without considering their credit limit.
“Katie!” the barista called, and I elbowed my way over to the counter. “Katie, chocolate chip frappucino, sugar free, no whip!”
“That’s not—” I began.
“Mine!” a tall, willowy blonde said, winding one perfectly toned arm around me to claim her prize. Her hair fell in soft, perfect waves, golden-hued in exactly the shade that I would have dyed mine, if I could have stomached spending the money on it when I was still with Sam. He would have loved it, but I could never quite get past my own hang ups. Now, I’d have done it as a fuck-you in an instant if I could, but even broke, betrayed me wasn’t stupid; there’s nothing so bad as a bad blonde.
I watched the perfect Katie walk away, sipping her drink through pursed, raspberry-stained lips, the badge on her own hip glimmering with sunlight and belonging, and exhaustion ate deeper into my bones.
“Hey, other Katie!” a voice called from behind me.
I turned around slowly, trying to make the tear-wipe look like nothing more than a casual brow adjustment.
“Yeah, that Katie. You. Over here.”
A guy alone at a small round table, save for a paper cup and a napkin and an extra chair, was waving me over.
I walked over slowly, eyebrow raised, trying to figure out whether I knew him. Sometimes the weird ones took night English classes and wrote essays about video game plots, even though god knows they didn’t need to bother. But I would have remembered this one, I thought as I took a better look. Dark hair, hint of a curl, clean-shaven in a field of half-beards, glasses that were, for a change, completely unremarkable, easily at home in one of several decades. He had on a navy polo shirt that, as far as I could tell, had the actual polo logo on it, as in the tiny man riding the tiny horse, and not a company mascot.
I managed to refrain from snapping out an interrogative “do I know you,” opting instead for a slightly more neutral “have we met?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“Katie!” the barista called. “Cappuccino!”
“Bets on whether it’s you this time?” he asked, smiling.
I threw up my hands. “Who knows. But the way this all has been going, I’ll give you 2:1 odds that they completely forget the cake.”
“Chair here for you whenever it’s straightened out.”
Normally, I don’t make a habit of sitting down next to strange men who invite me over to their table; that so rarely ends well. But this person had at least one thing going for him, possibly two, if the distinct lack of profanity or overt sexual innuendo or just plain creepiness in his invitation counted: there were still no other empty seats in the place, and everyone else I could see looked like they were in it for the long haul.
“So are you just sharing this table out of the kindness of your heart?” I asked, as I sat down, with just my drink.
He shrugged. “I guess so. You don’t have to talk to me. I’m not trying to creep you out. You just look like you could use a seat. And maybe a drink.”
I tore open a sugar packet. “Well, I have one, finally. I’m pretty sure this one is mine.”
“I meant an actual drink. I know it’s not how you’re supposed to start a conversation with someone you don’t know, but it looks like it’s been a rough day, and since I can’t offer you a shot,” he paused and held up empty palms, “I thought I’d at least offer you a chair.”
“Oh god,” I said, leaning my forehead into my hand for a brief moment. “Is it that obvious?”
“Sorry to say that it is. But no shame in it. We all have days like that.”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. It was full on hysterics, trying to escape, and I wanted to squelch it out of existence, but though I could keep my mouth closed, my shoulders started shaking, and soon I was giggling, frantically, into my palm. “I’m so—” I tried to say. “I’m so sorry! I swear this isn’t normal.”
“No apology needed. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, no, no. I’m fine. It’s just.” I stopped, sat up straight again, wiped the faint tears of laughter from the corners of my eyes, and took a deep breath. “I work at the college down the road. My mentor died over the winter break, but I wasn’t checking email, so I only found out yesterday. And about twenty minutes ago, another woman had a medical emergency and collapsed practically in front of me and had to be taken away on a stretcher, and I have no idea whether she’s still alive. So now I can’t get the image of my dead mentor out of my mind, which makes absolutely no sense, since I never saw her that way in the first place, and everyone knew how important she was to me” (or how much my chances of any future on campus hinged on her, I added silently) “and won’t stop telling me how sorry they are, and I’m just trying to get through the fucking day. So that’s what’s going on, and no, I don’t usually have hysterical breaks in public, but that’s the kind of week that it’s been so far.”
He didn’t say anything; just handed me a napkin.
“Katie? Cake for Katie?”
He stood up before I could. “Just hang out. I’ll grab it. Bet someone back there even has a flask.”
“Ha. Don’t worry about it.”
“Your call. I worked food service for years. I know how it is.”
The cake was warmed and smelled of cinnamon, even though I could still taste the faint flavor of industrial plastic wrap, the first bite melted in my mouth. I closed my eyes and sighed, more audibly than I’d intended.
“It’s the little things,” the engineer said. “Those will keep you sane.”
“Maybe,” I said, taking another bite. The plastic taste was a bit more pronounced as the cake cooled. “I used to think that when they were easier to afford. Christ, I sound pathetic. This is all abnormal, I swear.”
“But you teach at the college?” he asked. “They don’t pay well?”
I managed to suppress my eye roll. “Better than most places for this kind of work,” I allowed, “but nothing like what you get over in tech.”
“You from here?”
“Nope. Is anyone?”
“I’ve met a few. They tend to look a little shell shocked.”
“So you’re a transplant too, then?”
“Still California, but way north. Beyond wine country, so no one’s ever heard of it.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I admitted.
“You’re not alone.”
I sipped my drink. The din of the coffee shop, the espresso machines, the corporate-approved soundtrack, and the tables of engineers melted together into a strange form of white noise. White noise was nice, nice and non-threatening, demanding nothing.
“Well, I need to run,” my tablemate said. “Meeting in ten minutes. Hope your day goes better from here.” He stood. The badge clipped to his pocket showed that he worked for the eponymously-named The Company, either the lifeblood or the downfall of our particular Valley town, depending on whom you asked. The circular logo on his badge was green; they came in different colors, I knew, from seeing other employees around town. I found myself wondering whether they got to pick.
“Thanks. I appreciate the table and you not fleeing at the first pity party.”
He shrugged and gave a half smile that tugged the corner of his mouth in a way that wasn’t unappealing. “I mean, it is one way to get a table all to yourself. But with the way your day has gone, it sounds like you can throw at least a few more parties before it’s overkill. If you want guests,” he paused to slide a card across the table, “let me know.”
I nodded, distracted for a moment by the logo on the card. This one was purple.
He left, winding his way through the crowd to the door, and it took me another few moments to realize that I’d just been asked out. I nearly left the card behind—the last thing I needed was another relationship to complicate things further—but in the end, however, I slipped it into my bag. He’d been a decent guy, even kind of cute. If I left it, someone else might find it and bug him. Maybe a journalist who wanted to hound engineers for information on the latest release, and he didn’t deserve that as his reward for stroking my ego.
I stayed at the table for nearly an hour, during which I actually managed to stay connected to the wifi long enough to finish my remaining start-of-semester administrative tasks. There was even enough time to review my application materials, with the fresh eyes of someone who had submitted it over two weeks ago, in another lifetime. It wasn’t bad. Another small, and very welcome, ego boost. And then my car and I struggled home through the rain and rush hour traffic.
The apartment courtyard lights were in a fight with the early evening gloom, and they were losing badly. I was on the bottom floor of a tightly packed courtyard, and my tiny concrete square of patio was almost completely dark. As I unlocked the door, the cat yowled from the back corner of the bedroom closet, his sulking spot, one he’d claimed as his own within minutes of moving in. Usually this was my cue to shake the treat bag, to lure him out for some bribed affection, but I ignored him. “You’re too late, cat!” I called. “There’s nothing left!”
He didn’t deign to respond to that. It was just as well.
I filled my one pot with water and put it on the stove to heat; once it was warm, I added half a spoonful from a tiny jar of honey and a hefty splash from my bottle of cheap bodega whiskey. It made for a poor woman’s hot toddy, and fortification for what I finally had to do: go through my work email backlog. While it would certainly be painful (see: all notifications of Maggie’s death), it might also be fruitful (see: invitations to interview for the full time position).
I directed my laptop to connect to my neighbor's patchy, but password-less, WIFI, hoping that tonight it would take. It sometimes didn't. When it failed, my second option was a tiny triangle of dirt between a couple of buildings on the other end of the courtyard where I could cram myself and my laptop and impinge on yet another inadvertently-generous neighbor. Rain made that option even less appealing, but when it was all there was, it was all there was.
The connection went through seamlessly, for once, and I had only a moment to be grateful before I scrolled back in time and found the note I knew had to be there:
“Subject: Unfortunate Announcement.” Sent by the dean.
Had I not already had a decent portion of my drink, in preparation, I might have hurled my laptop across the room. Who uses “Unfortunate Announcement” to refer to a death? State funding crisis, that I could see. A grant that didn’t come through. Maybe even news that the budget for copying was being tightened, yet again. But a death?
But there, sent just a day before the Unfortunate Announcement, was a note from Maggie herself.
TO: Thompson, Katie
FROM: Gerson, Magdalena
SUBJECT: That job thing.
Dear Katie,
We’re almost there. It looks like things will finally get moving during the next semester, and I want to make sure we get you ready. I’ll review your application materials as soon as you have them, and you’d better have them within a week of the announcement or I’ll have to back another horse.
Merry Christmas, if you do that kind of thing.
Maggie
I found myself, for the first time since I’d heard she was gone, smiling at the thought of her. Oh, Maggie. She loved to pretend to be cynical and jaded, and she was, in some ways, but at her core, she was optimistic to the end. I raised my mug to the screen and took a long, lovely—and scalding—sip in salute.
It took me a full half hour to do a perfunctory sort-and-delete of all the messages lingering from December. By the time I’d reached the present day, I had a nice buzz, albeit one that my poor hangover-prone self would likely regret in the morning. It was excellent timing, however, because the present day didn’t hold back.
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Zeilig, Harvey
SUBJECT: The Incident This Afternoon
Colleagues,
You may have heard that there was a health-related incident that took place in the departmental conference room today. A member of the hiring committee was taken suddenly and violently ill and had to be transferred to a nearby hospital. I have been informed that she has been admitted, and that her condition is currently critical. Unfortunately, what little other information I do have is rumor-based and therefore not reliable, nor would this be the place to disseminate it even if it were.
There will be a get-well card by the mailboxes in the office. Please leave your well wishes there. I will keep you updated on the situation.
Yours,
Harvey
*
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Fairfield, Sasha
RE: The Incident This Afternoon
Is a card really enough? Shouldn’t we be sending casseroles or something? Anyone know if she has a family to feed?
Wouldn’t the only decent thing to do be to push things back? The woman is still in the hospital. Hiring can happen a week or two later.
*
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Johnson, Marianne
RE: RE: The Incident This Afternoon
She wasn’t a department member. Why should our process be slowed down by someone who isn’t actually a member of the department at hand? Are you willing to carry extra load in order to make up for not having the new full time person in the fall, because I’m due for sabbatical and that’s been scheduled for two years at this point, so I’m out for taking on any emergency assignments.
*
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Anderson, John
RE: RE: RE: The Incident This Afternoon
I’m concerned about the entire position of the diversity representative on the hiring committee. The position assumes a particular definition of diversity that may not be what we agree is most important to emphasize as a faculty, and the representative herself did not come from within the department, as Ms. Johnson has so appropriately pointed out. How can we know that this type of representative will result in the right kind of hire for our department? With positions so few and far between, we must take this seriously. As a longstanding member of this department, I propose we take this up at the next meeting.
*
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Liu, Charles
RE: RE: RE: RE: The Incident This Afternoon
As a new hire who fits the definition of “diverse” as currently used, this conversation is borderline offensive. I’m happy to report that according to both my tenure committee and student evaluations, I am exceeding expectations, despite my diversity status.
*
I held up my mug for another virtual cheers to Charles at that one, and realized it was empty. I stood, stretched, clicked the burner back on,
I must have poured more whiskey in that second time than I realized, because when I sat back down, half of my second drink already gone in two gulps, all of the messages began to blend into each other, like a deranged Greek chorus:
It’s reasonable to assume that we are all invested in the success of the college. It’s reasonable to acknowledge the diversity of our student body and their diverse needs. I do question whether a specific person on any one specific hiring committee can appropriately represent those needs or even manage not to be a bit blinded by them to the merits of non-diverse candidates. However, I have long since given up attempting to get others to share this view, and a discussion at the meeting would be unproductive, in my opinion, as it is unlikely to result in any real change…
…can you reassure us that this was in fact a health crisis and not something more nefarious? Or should those of us who were in the building at the same time be concerned about legionnaire’s?…
…my partner is a nurse, and he says that there really are only a handful of explanations for why someone would collapse that suddenly, and most of them are things that our highly adequate health care plan should already be screening for on a routine basis. So I’m not sure what the ultimate cause will turn out to be, but I’d be very surprised if she’d been keeping up on her well checks…
…please don’t tell me that we’re going to start the same kind of draconian programs that are all over the tech companies in this godforsaken valley. The level of surveillance that we all live with in this day and age would horrify our grandparents. Hell, it would horrify us if we could find a time machine!…
…speaking of hiring, this is when I’d like to reiterate my call for someone with a resume at least slightly different than those we’ve had before. I’m not asking for a scholar of Lovecraftian metaphor or anything like that, but don’t you all just get bored with the same old course offerings, time and time again? Didn’t we all agree to explode the canon back in the ‘70s?…
…those of us who have no memory of the ‘70s have been asking for an update for years now, and Lovecraft, for what it’s worth, was a horrific racist who thought Italians were too swarthy for his beloved New York. Let’s be careful what it is we propose as an ideal…
…oh come on, you know I was exaggerating Does anyone in this department understand figures of speech any longer? Literary devices?
Had my future not been so intimately involved with the outcome of this particular process, I might have taken screenshots, then and there, and thrown the entire conversation on Twitter or Reddit or wherever things went in that moment to go viral. We were truly parodies of ourselves, both at our best and our worst.
But then there was an email that was actually addressed to me, and to me alone. I focused back in.
TO: Thompson, Katie
FROM: Liu, Charles
SUBJECT: Office space
Hey there,
Hope you’ve recovered after the oddly bumpy start to the semester. I know you used to use Maggie’s space for office hours sometimes. I’m not in my office all that much these days, so if you’d like to make use of it when it’s empty, feel free. Schedule’s posted on the door; any other point you’re free to take advantage. I keep the spare key on top of the door frame on the right-hand side.
Charles
*
Interesting, I thought. Interesting and definitely in line with this trend of people coming out of the woodwork to help me out. It was unclear why, in this particular case, Charles would be on my side, but I was in no place to turn down a convenient workspace.
And then there was another.
*
TO: Thompson, Katie
FROM: Fairfield, Sasha
SUBJECT: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum!
Dear Katie,
I’m on campus four days this semester, and while I’m a little under the weather, I know Maggie would have wanted me to give you all the help I can. Can you have lunch with me tomorrow at one? I’m trying this new diet, so I’m bringing all my food, but we can meet at the coffee kiosk near the cafeteria. I am allowed tea and black coffee. I hope you’re feeling ready to take on the powers that be!
*
This one, at least, I understood. Sasha was loyal, and I’d been Maggie’s particular project. I had no idea exactly how she was planning to help—Sasha had never gone in for departmental politics, at least as far as I’d ever seen—but I had more to lose by turning her down, even if I hated to commit the time to what would almost certainly be a mostly-teary heart-to-heart smack in the middle of the day.
And one more.
*
TO: KATIE
FROM: Alvarez, Lucy
SUBJECT: On campus tomorrow
I’ve reserved the conference room for us tomorrow at noon. Did it before the whole thing with Aurelia, but I ran into the dean today and asked him if it was still available, and he says it should be fine. The best thing to do after these sorts of things is get right back into the swing of things anyway. Bring the sorted list.
*
I had no idea what list she meant; however, this did not absolve me from finding out, and I stood up in frustration, too quickly, and paused to let my vision clear.
“Why does everyone suddenly want to be on my team?” I asked my apartment. “I didn’t even know I had a team! If they really wanted to help me get hired, they’d cover my classes and stay the fuck out of the way while I get the job done.”
Kierkegaard, out of the closet but clearly not yet recovered from the indignity of life, regarded me suspiciously from across the living room, the orange hair on his back raised slightly.
“What?” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be sympathetic? Isn’t this what pets are for?”
He narrowed his eyes at me and then turned and left, tail defiantly in the air, just as my computer dinged, again. I grabbed the final drops of the whiskey and sat back down.
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Zeilig, Harvey
SUBJECT: Open Section
Comrades, one more from me tonight. Due to the initial instance of unforeseen circumstances and not the one we’ve so recently been discussing, we are down one for this quarter, which means that there is now an open section of Lit 101 M/W 6:30-8:00 pm that needs to be covered. Anyone willing would be given the syllabus and class materials, as well as the freedom to ignore both and use your own. First respondent who does not reply all gets it.
*
One last vestige of Maggie. She always taught that section; she was the only one of the full timers who actually liked evening slots, so she routinely got them. As I was considering my own schedule, mentally weighing the pros of the extra money with my reluctance to take on extra work, I had nearly decided to say fuck it. One extra section wouldn’t change anything substantial when it came to whether I ultimately hung around, it would be an extra course to prep for, and it would take time away from the application process.
But then, just before I could close the browser, a Reply All appeared.
*
TO: Eng_Dept_Faculty
FROM: Alvarez, Lucy
RE: Open Section
I’d love it! I’m not quite sure though—let me check my schedule and get back to you ASAP. If you could hold it for just ten minutes…
—L
*
I took a moment to imagine just how flushed and sweaty Harvey’s forehead must be at this very moment. He never got vocally angry, never snapped at even the most ridiculous comments in the most ridiculous, interminable meeting, but his face would get redder and redder and redder, even as his voice remained at dentist-levels of enforced calm. Just before winter break he had sent an email promising $50 to everyone if no one hit reply all. Within five minutes, four people had responded to everyone, two to ask if he meant American dollars, one to tell him that this was an unethical experiment and poor use of department time, and the fourth to congratulate him on the most effective team building exercise we’d had in years.
And then something overtook me. Maybe it was the image of Lucy frantically flipping through her calendar, desperate to do yet another visible favor before applications were due. Maybe it was the Sympathetic Look that she’d given me by the fountain, or the cold, precise assessment of my chances now that Maggie was gone. I clicked “Reply.”
*
TO: Zeilig, Harvey
FROM: Thompson, Katie
RE: Open Section.
Harvey, I’ll take it. No conflicts here. Thanks.
*
I had confirmation within thirty seconds, addressed only to me. Even Lucy herself would have to admit: Maggie would have wanted me to have it.
Maggie could have wanted me to any number of things, but that didn’t mean they were going to be mine. My materials had looked competitive earlier in the day, but now, alone in my apartment save for cheap whiskey and a sulking cat, their banality stood stark against what I was certain was an amazing field of other applicants. There wasn’t much about me that stood out. I had a decent enough GPA from a decent enough small private school on the East Coast that had given me a mostly-full ride, but one that few people out here had even heard of. My MA wasn’t from the same place, but it might as well have been. I wrote my thesis on Middlemarch and the impact of male pseudonyms on nineteenth century women writers in general—not too shabby, but not exactly sexy either, and unavoidably Victorian. Not modernist. I was female myself, which was more or less okay, but then I was also white, which meant I couldn’t lay claim to any extra diversity boxes. Not that I was all that sure that demographic detail would have worked against me anyway, given our department’s historical propensity for white women, but that’s what people who were supposed to know always claimed. I'd gotten relatively involved in campus life, given a few presentations at a couple of conferences, but nothing really gripping. No superstar status in any way.
This was nothing new, however. Looking over my credentials always made me wonder, among other things, just what Maggie had seen in me, and if it hadn’t been for her faith in me, I wouldn’t have ever thought I had a chance. But she always told me I was a good teacher, that I related to students well, and that this was critical to the mission of a community college. Sometimes I even believed her. But that night, sitting alone in a 55 degree apartment because I couldn’t afford to turn on the heat, warming up with whiskey, I found myself hoping feverishly that she really had understood something I didn’t about how all of this worked and my role in it. Because from where I stood, it looked pretty damn pointless. It looked like the college and the department would be perfectly happy to continue doing what it had always done, taking anything and everything we could give on the strength of no more than a sixteen-week contract and the promise of help filling out unemployment paperwork for the time in between semesters.
That final thought was sour in my mouth, so I reached for my phone, pulled up Jess’s number, and applied myself to the buttons in a way that I hadn’t in years.
Hey. Is it always so dead at night in the valley?
It only took her about thirty seconds to respond.
Come downtown! I’m in my PJs already, but I can point you to the good places from my window…
I smiled, just a bit.
Thx, but I’ll pass. Had enough engineers for one lifetime.
I’d say your loss, but we both know that’s not true.
This was followed by a bizarre placeholder symbol that I guessed was intended to be an emoji. My phone wasn’t smart enough to know.
Jess and I chatted off and on for the next half hour. She was watching The Great British Bake Off. I was pretending that I was too hip to care about watching it myself instead of too drunk to figure out whether my neighbor’s WIFI could handle video. It wasn’t much social contact, but it eased me a bit closer to sleep. It was a strange kind of comfort very much of the way we live now, always connected, always alone.