He came into her office and stood behind her so that she couldn’t breathe. When she got up to go get a piece of paper from the other side of the room, she turned and was facing him, their mouths close. And then they were kissing, and she tasted the curry he’d eaten that day. It made her dizzy, but it al seemed a little unreal, like walking outside in pajamas.
When she got home, it was hard to remember if it had happened or not. She barely slept, and when her alarm went off she was happy to get up.
She laughed in the shower as she got ready; giddy and tired, she lathered her hair and laughed.
She didn’t see Brian al day. He wasn’t on the roof that night, and she knew something was wrong. Two more days passed and the only time she saw him was from down the hal as he went into a meeting. She was such an idiot. He was her boss. This was not something she would ever do, and she decided that she would clear it up as soon as she got the chance.
A few nights later, she was in her office and he walked by. Before she knew it, she was cal ing out his name. He looked surprised, but just raised his eyebrows and stepped inside. “Yes?” he said.
“Hi,” Mary said. “So, I just wanted to apologize for the other night. It wasn’t professional, and I regret it.”
“Okay,” Brian said.
“Okay,” Mary said. He looked like he was going to leave, but Mary wanted to say more. “I mean, if there were different circumstances, maybe. But you’re my boss, and we work together.”
“That’s the least of it,” Brian said.
“What?” Mary asked. “What do you mean?”
“Mary,” Brian said, “I’m engaged. You knew that.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mary said. “How could I have known that?”
Brian laughed. He sounded a little evil. “You knew,” he said.
“I didn’t know,” Mary said. Her voice sounded like she wasn’t sure if she believed herself or not.
“Of course you knew,” Brian said. He sounded impatient. “Remember the week after you started when everyone had cake in the big conference room? It was for my engagement. Carla arranged it.” Mary vaguely remembered standing with plastic plates, eating white frosted cake that wasn’t good but was better than sitting at her desk.
“No,” she said. She shook her head. “No, I don’t remember.”
Brian laughed meanly again, and Mary realized that he was maybe the kind of guy who contained the potential to be very cruel, the kind of guy who believed the lies he told. “Look,” he said. “Whatever you need to tel yourself. Just don’t repeat it around here.”
“I wouldn’t tel anyone. Don’t you tel anyone.” This came out sounding stupid, like a child deflecting an insult by repeating it.
Brian just nodded. “Okay,” he said. He turned and walked out of her office.
Mary sat at her desk for a while, not knowing what to do. She’d never done anything this bad in her life. She’d never cheated on anyone, never stolen a friend’s boyfriend, never kissed a guy who was taken. Engaged. The word was weighted.
Had she known? She didn’t think so, but maybe she was just trying to make herself feel better. She considered going to confession and then decided against it. She’d always hated confession, ever since the first time she went, when she told the priest that she was afraid of the albino janitor who cleaned the school.
“I’m afraid of Andy the janitor,” she’d said. “Because he’s an albino.”
“That’s not a sin, Mary,” Father Kel y had said. He’d sounded annoyed, like she didn’t understand what it was she was supposed to tel him. But Father Kel y was wrong. Mary knew that it was a sin to be afraid of Andy the albino. She didn’t want to look down when she saw him, didn’t want to go to the other side of the hal when they passed each other. He always smiled at her, like he understood, and that made the whole thing worse.
She wanted to cry when he did that. She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but she couldn’t help it and it made her feel awful, like she was the worst person in the world. And no matter what Father Kel y said, it was a sin. She knew that much.
Mary turned back to her computer as if she was going to do more work, and then she decided against it. She had to get out of the office. She walked al the way home, even though it was so cold that she couldn’t feel her toes after the first block. She didn’t want to stop for anything, didn’t want to wait for the train to come. She just wanted to keep moving, and so she did. She walked forty blocks to her apartment, and by the time she got there, her nose was running and her eyes were watering, spil ing down her face. She wasn’t crying, though she wished she were. It was just the cold.
She went up to her apartment and started running a bath, which she’d never done the whole time she’d lived there. She had trouble unbuttoning her blouse because her fingers were numb, but she managed, and got into the bath, which was so hot it burned her skin for the first few minutes.
Mary stayed in the bath for over an hour. Whenever the water started to cool, Mary drained a little bit and added more hot water. When she was sure she could feel her fingers again, she got out and put on her most comfortable pajamas, thin flannel pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt that was worn and soft. She curled up on her couch underneath the blanket. She wanted a cigarette. But she wouldn’t let herself have one. Not tonight and not ever again. She sat there for a moment, and then she got up and started lighting al of the candles in her apartment. This would have made her mother very nervous. “You’l fal asleep and burn the place down,” she would have said. But Mary was wide awake and not afraid of starting a fire.
She turned off the lights and sat on the couch, watching al of the flames light up the room. She breathed in and out until she didn’t want a cigarette anymore. She sat there for a while, and then she leaned over to the candle closest to her and blew, softly at first, and then harder, so that the flame vanished. She got up and walked around to each candle, blowing them out, watching as the flames turned into long winding tails of smoke, and she watched them curl and twist, up in the air, until they were gone. And then she went to bed.
H is name was Harrison, but no one ever caled him Harry. Isabela learned that right away.
Isabel a was drunk. It was happy hour and her friends had ignored her requests to go somewhere that served food. She’d ended up sitting on a bar stool in her rumpled work clothes, plotting to stop for pizza on the way home, when Harrison approached her and introduced himself. And because she could think of nothing better to say, she asked, “Do people cal you Harry?”
“No,” he answered. He looked as though she’d asked if people cal ed him Bob or Walter.
“Oh,” she said. She shouldn’t have had the third dirty martini. She could hear her voice from somewhere deep inside her head. And from in there she sounded retarded.
Isabel a was tired. It was already almost eight o’clock and it would be a lot of work to talk to someone new. She had to be at the office early the next day. She contemplated excusing herself, getting up, and leaving. She could be home in her pajamas with pizza in thirty minutes.
But then her plan seemed too hard to carry out and so she let herself sit there. And after a few minutes, she leaned forward on the stool in a wobbly way and kissed Harrison in a crowded bar.
And that was how Harrison and Isabel a met.
Her friends cal ed him handsome, but what he was, was pretty. He had high cheekbones, delicate features, and flawless coloring—porcelain skin and cheeks that flushed natural y when he was excited. His shirts were never wrinkled. Even untucked at the end of a day, with his tie pul ed loose, he looked staged, like somebody had gotten him a wardrobe for “end of the workday.”