“Did you sign it in your real name?”
“Yes.”
“Bad move.”
“I wanted my real name to be on the checks.”
“That’s true,” Doug says. “Well, I didn’t sign any agreement. You could slip me the documents.”
If I want to work on getting him to ask me out on a date, I could throatily add, “Well, you could slip me something, too.” But I’m not that desperate yet. There’s still the personals—placing one and responding to other people’s.
I laugh at my “slip me something” thought, and Doug asks, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
I’ve been laughing at my own secret jokes my whole life. Why stop now? I understand them better than anyone else.
“Come on,” he goads.
I have to lie because I know that Doug is one of those people who won’t give up. I say, “I was laughing because I just remembered a joke I heard two kids tell each other in the subway yesterday.”
“I’m waiting,” Doug says.
“Uh… Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupting co—”
“MOOOO!”
He laughs. “Not bad. It’s hard to find good jokes that are clean.”
“True.”
“I have a joke,” Doug says.
“Is it clean?”
“No. But there aren’t any bad words in it.”
“Okay.”
“What did Little Red Ridinghood say as she sat on Pinocchio’s face?”
“What?”
“Tell a lie! Tell a lie! Tell the truth! Tell the truth!”
The supervisor comes out. “Carrie? I have a job for you.”
The assignment takes an hour, and then things are quiet. I reach for the pile of magazines that apparently have already been ravaged by the full-time staff (the staff that has time to lambaste their sons-in-law and, judging from a gift that has been left on the desk, to create a little dog out of an eraser and five pushpins), and lying flat on top is a magazine article about Human Papillomavirus. I read about how the majority of women have it, how it’s spread by sexual contact, how it might be the cause of cervical cancer, and how even condoms can’t prevent it. I guess that’s God’s little joke—people actually started protecting themselves from AIDS, so now there’s something that’s spread by sex no matter what. I bet someday there’ll actually be a disease that can kill you just from having sex, and that people will decide to keep having sex anyway. Maybe there will have to be a ten-year sex moratorium in the country in order to eradicate it.
When it’s time for “lunch break” at 2:00 a.m., Doug invites me to eat in the kitchen with him. He looks tired—he keeps tugging at his shirtsleeves, and his short hair is a mess. The artificial fluorescent lights shine brightly above. Doug doesn’t eat, but he drinks coffee. It’s amazing how many people are addicted to coffee and won’t admit it. Some people are as obsessed with coffee as sex. But I guess an obsession doesn’t count as an obsession if everyone’s doing it. I guess it’s perfectly normal to say, “Oh, I just can’t put on my underwear until I’ve had my first cup of coffee.”
It’s funny—we all look down on China’s past addiction to opium, as if we’re above all that, but most of modern America has to be doped up on caffeine in the morning and plied with alcohol at night. I don’t know that we’re any better than the Chinese. Perhaps we need both substances to get through life. But if everyone needs these medications just to cope, isn’t something wrong?
Anyway, I’m ignoring the matter at hand: proving that I can go on a date. I keep sneaking looks at Doug in order to figure out if I could ever kiss him. He does have nice tufts of hair and a cute craggy chin. But I still don’t know him well enough to be attracted to him. Then again, it’s early. If it was just a first date, I wouldn’t have to kiss him right away.
I mention the papilloma article to Doug. “Can you imagine what it would be like,” I say, “if there was a disease that could kill everyone unless they stopped having sex?”
“Forget it,” Doug says. “I’d fucking die.”
“Or the converse.”
He sips his coffee. “Can men give each other the papilloma thing?”
“I guess.”
“Damn. Just when I was ready to accept condoms.”
Does that mean he’s gay?
I look at him. Yeah, come to think of it, he is. I feel stupid.
“Maybe that’s how the world ended the first time,” Doug says. “Maybe our civilization was as advanced as it is now, and then sex killed everyone. We can control nukes better than our sex drives…”
He keeps chattering and I pretend I’m listening, but I’m really just trying to take in the fact that he’s gay. I have to think of things like that over and over until the shock value wears off. There are a great many things that shock me even though they shouldn’t. Obviously someone being gay should not shock me. I wonder if I can go out to eat with him and still count it as a date. Can having dinner with a gay man count as a date? What makes a date a date? I guess there has to be a possibility of something romantic happening. So what’s it called if you have dinner with a gay man? A gayte.
Well, I can send in my personal ad next week.
At 4:00 a.m., my shift is over. The firm calls for a car service to drive me home. I wonder what would happen if I asked the driver to take me to Chicago. I wonder how far I could get him to go without his calling his supervisor. Maybe I’ll try each time from now on to get the driver to go a little farther. It would be worth being banned from temping. Maybe Atlantic City is the limit. Although the last place I want to go is somewhere where a bunch of seventy-year-olds make love to three slot machines at a time and shriek at you if you get too close.
One of the world’s greatest pleasures is sitting in the back of a hired car at night. From where I’m sitting, the city looks like a sleeping villain. The heat is blowing full force. The wheels coast evenly over the smooth road. There is no music on, owing, I think, to some old Giuliani Rule. Right now the world exists just for me and the few other people in the city who are up. It’s too early for even the delivery trucks and the most anxious commuters.
When I get back to my apartment and undress in my room, I notice that the light is on in the apartment of that couple across the street. Their window is big and boxy, revealing a table, stove, drapes and hanging plants. But I don’t see the couple. I guess they’re in another room. For just a second, I feel a connection to them. They are up at this odd hour, and so am I. I want them to come to the window, wave and smile, intrigued by the fact that we have something in common. We share a secret, a quiet time of the night.
I strip down to my underpants because I’ve left the heat on too high. My throat is dry, and I drink a cup of seltzer. Then, I crawl into bed and fall asleep. When I wake up hours later, the light in the couple’s apartment is off.
At nine o’clock, I’m too tired to get out of bed. I roll onto my back and pull my covers up to my chin. Beams of blue daylight stream in overhead. I decide that, for a while, I will simply lie here, listening carefully to the street sounds and seeing where my thoughts transport me. I’ve done this once or twice before, just lain here and listened to see what comes to mind. It’s amazing how many far-off