Enlightenment Will Come to All

1985 ~ Washington, DC

The interviewer leans in, whispers: “It’s a difficult job.” She drags all her fingers through fluffy blond bangs, and again. She’s nervous.

“I thought it was typing,” I say. “Answering phones. Filing. I’m confident I’ll excel in those tasks.” I point to my resumé, triple-proofed for typos, xeroxed onto crisp ivory paper. Forty-six more copies are in a folder. Under the heading “special skills” I’ve listed my typing speed at 80 WPM, a fudge, but not by much.

The interviewer—whose name I’ve forgotten, which is bad; she’s not important enough to have a placard on her desk spelling it out, also bad—leans impossibly close, the top of her stomach pressing the edge of her desk. I smell fruity shampoo. She whispers slowly, “You’re not hearing me. It’s a difficult job, not because of typing. Because of who you’re typing for.”

“For whom will I be typing for?” I ask. Speak as if you have the job, the university placement office advised in their career workshops.

“Shhhh,” she hisses. She glances around the room and peers into the hallway behind me. In this silence between us, phones ring, faxes churn, copiers click, and I hear someone shouting about the letter to Dick. No one—no one—could be listening to this conversation. The career workshops didn’t mention workplace paranoia.

The woman—Dana! I remember—grabs a pad of paper and a pen off her desk and writes. She tilts the pad to show me the name she’s printed in childlike block letters: andrew whitt. I extend my hand, wait for her to tear off this piece of paper so I can hold something tangible, and turn this job into mine. There’s a logo of the organization, from the desk of dana jones. I jealously want my own “from the desk of” pad. She shakes her head minutely at my outstretched hand as she tugs free the top sheet of paper, which she tears into about ten crisscross shreds. She digs an envelope out of her trash and shoves half the pieces into that envelope. The other half she centers in a piece of copy paper that she crumples into a ball. Both the wadded paper and the envelope go into the trash can, one burrowed at the bottom, the other up top. “Now you know,” she says.

I’m twenty-three, certain I know everything. Also, I know rent at my new group house is due in two days, and this navy blue interview suit I’m wearing came from Garfinckel’s and cost enough money to come with a free wooden hanger. Andrew Whitt means nothing to me. Anyway, I’ve never met a man—or anyone—I can’t handle. I’m in Washington, DC, to do great things. I don’t think Ronald Reagan is god because I don’t think anyone is god, and it’s easy letting people assume I believe in what they believe in. I’ve sent fifty-four resumes to fifty-four different political groups on Capitol Hill, which means I paid for fifty-four stamps. Never look desperate, I think. So I say, “I want this job. But I need three thousand more a year to make it work.”

Dana says, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ll say you wanted four.”

▴ ▴ ▴

That night, my housemates take me out for happy hour at a dive bar on Capitol Hill to celebrate my new job. I keep my mouth shut about the pieces of paper, about Andrew Whitt, my new boss. When I’d asked the housemates where to apply, they said Republicans had all the money and were doing all the hiring these days, if I could stomach it. I could: I want letters and connections to get me into Yale Law. Or Harvard, it hardly matters which. It’s my habit to keep secrets, to say only what needs to be said. But I do say this: “Count on me to work my way up fast. The woman who hired me was a real dope.” We laugh, we raise heavy beer mugs, we order another two-dollar pitcher one minute before happy hour prices end because we’re kind of jerks. Eventually, I understand the dope was me.

▴ ▴ ▴

Andrew Whitt’s job is to raise money, and my job is to help him. He’s very good at his job. I read in a business book in the placement office library that the two avenues for success in the corporate business world are being either people who make the product or people who sell the product. A grassroots nonprofit 501(c)3 foundation and (c)4 political organization are not corporate businesses, but it’s immediately clear that money is a product here.

Andrew Whitt has many unpleasant habits; he smokes cigars at his desk, the only one allowed to. He keeps one of his three Rolodexes in a locked drawer, meaning if he calls me from a pay phone needing someone’s number, maybe I can’t get it for him which sets him on a vibrant cursing jag. He likes expensive things—suits, shoes, belts, briefcases, Scotch—and judges people who like cheap things or—worse—people who don’t know the difference. He calls women “girls.” He calls me “his girl.”

On my first day, within forty-five minutes, I’m told a “girl” should never be alone with him in a room with a closed door. Never accept a ride home, no matter how awful the downpour. Don’t pick up pens from his office floor when he’s sitting at his desk because he’ll throw more and leer at you bending over. Never let him buy you a drink at any office happy hour at the Hawk ‘n’ Dove. These instructions—and more—are murmured into my ear when Dana shows me the ladies room. “Don’t let him see you cry,” she says. “Never let anyone see you cry, not even me. Don’t be that weak girly girl making it worse for the rest of us.”

I say, “I haven’t cried since I was twelve.” I feel Dana examining me, trying to decide what I add up to. I stare at her face in the mirror, a direct eye-into-eye gaze. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I want to fit in here.” Her mirrored image turns away, and she reminds me to fill out the health insurance forms by the end of the day.

Andrew Whitt immediately starts calling me Holls, not my name, Holly, as if we have some special bond that I don’t think we do, and eventually other people in the office are confused about who I am; my memos are addressed to Halsey, Halston, Hallway. (Hoping that one’s a joke?)

On the first day he tells me: “Keep your own counsel, and we’ll get along.” He also says, “If I need advice, I’ll ask.” I never once hear him ask anyone for advice, not even his boss who’s the big boss; nor does he give advice, not to me or anyone. He simply acts. Whatever he does ends up being right. “Assume I’m right,” he says. “Quicker that way.”

I’m afraid of him. Everyone is. But he raises so much money. Our budget’s gigantic with lots of zeroes, and everyone on the Hill knows it, which means we’re important. There’s enough money so everyone who works here gets “from the desk of” pads, packs of ten at once. The millionaires who fund our group worship Andrew Whitt, slap his back, buy him lunch at Duke Zeibert’s and dinner at the Palm, send over boxes of Cuban cigars, cases of French wine, and sturdy bottles of Islay whisky. He keeps straight the names of wives and children and mistresses, he birdies at Congressional when he’s the ringer in the foursome, he keeps a close eye on which bars are discreet, and he knows a secret about everyone in DC, probably even low-level people like me.

I thought our organization was at least a little liberal. The photos in the glossy brochure of cheerful elderly people fooled me. Apparently, the smiles are because they’re hopeful about getting tax cuts, a balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits, and because Ronald Reagan is their god. “No, dummy,” I whisper at my desk, dialing the number Andrew Whitt instructed me to dial, “they’re smiling because they’re models, paid to smile.” The career book said: A job is not your family, a job is only your job.

Our focus is economic stuff: the group wants a sound economy. Who hates “soundness”? Not me, not right now anyway. But lots of people who work here are into grand social issues on their own time, and their secret language is dotted with Moral Majority, Concerned Women for America, Right to Life, that whole laundry list of busybody lunacy. Probably should have asked my housemates some questions or sent out a dozen more resumés. But my “from the desk of” pads come in next week. And everyone starts somewhere. Even Andrew Whitt brags about starting his Hill career at age sixteen as a Senate page, and here comes his snarly laugh full blast, before he howls, “Get this; I was sponsored by a Democrat!” I must have a question on my face because he says, “Enlightenment will come to all. Even a misguided, naughty little girl like you, Holls.” I’m the only assistant without a picture of Reagan pinned to my bulletin board. I feel secretly aligned with Andrew Whitt after I overhear him on the phone talking about the group who meets twice a week in the big conference room for “prayer circle lunch.” He says, “More Bible-humping and less Bible-thumping would fix up those Frigidaires.”

Still. I don’t tell him—or anyone—I had an abortion last year that was no big deal. I mean, getting up the money was a big deal because there wasn’t a boyfriend to help, just a guy from a bar. And cramming into a waiting room of tense women and girls was a little bit of a big deal, but a problematic pregnancy disappearing in one morning? What’s not to like about that? I used my middle name on the clinic paperwork. Paid cash. That sort of know-how maybe could impress Andrew Whitt, that sort of outlaw attitude.

Instead, I keep my counsel and my secret. Andrew Whitt’s office is bare of personal effects—no family photos, no diplomas, no framed Monet prints, no spider plants. Just one wall of photos where he’s next to President Reagan, cabinet members, senators, congressmen, a grid of men wearing the same bland suit. When he’s out of the office, which he is a lot, I stand at that wall, memorizing these faces that Andrew Whitt considers important. These phone numbers must hide in the secret Rolodex.

When I drop a neat stack of his mail into a special wire basket on his credenza, I see the Yale Law Journal and know I’m in the right place.

He leers down and through my blouse and up my skirt, compliments anything too tight or too short, says he’ll pay me eleven hundred bucks of tax-free money for “one fast fuck here and now,” which he says is a hundred more than he usually offers. But he laughs when I kick the pens on the floor over to where he lolls in his monster leather chair, laughs when I say, “You don’t intimidate me.”

“Holls,” he says at least twice a day, “you’re great. We’re never letting you go,” and I nod, flattered but unsure: who’s we?

▴ ▴ ▴

Here’s how I remember what happened:

My desk is a cube within a cube, with half walls separating me from three other “girls” who are assistants to three other men. Because Andrew Whitt is Executive Vice President not merely Vice President, I’m an Executive Assistant and my cube’s two feet wider. (We measured one night, while waiting for the corrections to the board book we needed to input.) My rolling chair is leather, not cloth, higher backed than theirs, with plastic arms theirs don’t have. I like reminding them how Andrew Whitt snagged this good chair for me when someone else’s executive assistant quit. “We can do that?” I remember asking him. “Steal chairs?” And he said, “I can do anything I want around here.” “That’s disturbing,” one of the girls said, but I like that my chair’s better than everyone else’s.

We four assistants are known around the office as The Pride, because the other three girls are from Texas and the South with massive manes of hair they’re forever flipping—like lions, I guess. Most of what’s said around the office teeters this way between clever and stupid.

The Pride eats lunch together—salads and carrot sticks from home Monday through Thursday, and Chinese food downstairs on Fridays. Today’s Friday, and we’re seated at the good, semicircular booth in the back, with our good waiter who sneaks us extra steamed dumplings. We like stabbing the dumplings with a single chopstick and nibbling around the edges. One day someone brings a camera, and our waiter snaps a picture of us, our impaled dumplings upraised like Lady Liberty’s torch. We think we’re so funny. The first part of Friday lunch is always us lovingly reciting the drink menu—Mai Tai, Singapore Sling, Zombie, Painkiller, Flaming Scorpion Bowl—but no one’s got the guts to order one, so we chug cups of hot tea instead. Friday afternoons are filled with caffeine jitters and too many trips to the ladies room.

Today, we’ve just finished ordering our usual dishes, and AnnemariefromDallas—this single word is what everyone calls her—the only name I remember—touches her bleached blond hair with two fingers, as if making sure it’s still there, then whispers, “You guys. Andrew Whitt’s gay.”

There couldn’t be a bigger bomb.

Such a flurry of “no ways” and “what abouts”: what about him gawking at asses, what about him saying don’t wear “fuck-me shoes” to work if you don’t want to get fucked, what about that Christmas party where he… The office overflows with these stories. That’s why the executive assistant before me quit, why the assistant whose chair I now sit in quit. That’s why I’m almost the highest paid executive assistant, second to the big boss chairman’s assistant who’s highest because the chairman’s always first. I should keep my counsel, so I pour more tea for everyone. Our waiter claims it’s unlucky to pour tea for yourself, but I do anyway. Then I wrap my cold fingers around the blistering hot cup, keep them pressed against the heat until I can’t stand it.

“Knowing something like this changes everything,” AnnemariefromDallas says. “Right?” Her voice is ominous, gleeful, hell-bent, eager to burn something down. “This is big,” she says. “No, huge.”

My mind sees my chair. The Yale Law Journal. Be a team player, the career office preached, without explaining how to know which team you’re on. In this moment, I’m afraid she’ll never stop talking and everything will get decided, so I leap in to say the only thing that’s a bigger bomb: “You guys, fuck it. I’m ordering a Flaming Scorpion Bowl, and you can share it, or I can drink it all. Also, no way we’re going back this afternoon. What, they’ll fire us all?”

Silence. They hate when I swear. I hold my breath.

Then AnnemariefromDallas says, “Yeah, what are they going to do, fire us all?”

Titters and nervous laughter as we eye each other, and our waiter applauds when I place the order. “You girls are finally getting real,” he says. “Happens always, eventually.”

As we wait for our gigantic drink, AnnemariefromDallas preens importantly, slicking on lipstick before she tells us what she knows, what she heard, from a reliable source who was in New York at the same time Andrew Whitt was meeting one of his millionaires there.

“So they have these places called gay bathhouses in New York where men secretly meet, and now because of AIDS, they’ve gone underground—”

“DC has bathhouses,” I say.

“How do you know?” someone asks.

I know because I’ve seen the Washington Blade in Metro trash cans, and I’ve walked by Lambda Rising bookstore in Dupont Circle. Because I pay attention, I want to scream, because I’m not locked into your teeny-tiny world.

AnnemariefromDallas glares at all of us. Never interrupt her. She thinks she excels at pacing. “Anyway,” she continues. “A bathhouse is where men, you know, do it, and—”

“How?” one of the others asks, the brunette. “Haven’t you always wondered?”

“Never once have I wondered,” AnnemariefromDallas says. “Never once. Don’t be gross.”

Our waiter arrives, cupping an ornate bowl embossed with palm trees, hammocks, and topless hula girls. It’s as wide as a Frisbee, at least six inches high. We silently watch him center the bowl on our table, the pale orange liquid rippling like water in a pond. Smack in the middle is a round trough, filled with alcohol that he clicks his lighter at. Immediately, primitive blue and orange flames dance. We cheer garishly, and short-sleeved bureaucrats at nearby tables clap and laugh. Two women toast us with their teas. I sense their smoldering jealousy of our juicy secrets and our lion hair and our short skirts and fuck-me shoes. Even so, I understand I have no idea what it means, this tinderbox secret AnnemariefromDallas exploded. If only I could ask one of those dull bureaucrats for their dull and thoughtful advice, but suddenly I figure out they’re laughing at us, not with us.

Our waiter hands each of us a brightly colored, eighteen-inch plastic straw and disappears.

We’re holding our straws like idiots, so I point to the flames and say, “No guts, no glory. They won’t fire us all.” We slurp the sugary drink and stare into the flames as the level in the bowl sinks.

There’s annoying talk about bathhouses and rude questions to suffer through. AnnemariefromDallas imagines herself some expert on gay men, because her reliable source is a college friend who works for a libertarian think tank, whose boss is a media relations guy who’s gay, with a for-real boyfriend he brings to policy summits and everything. “You know by the mustache,” AnnemariefromDallas says, and I say, “Andrew Whitt doesn’t have a mustache,” and she slurs, “Exactly,” because we’re three-quarters through our formerly-Flaming Scorpion Bowl with another on the way, ordered by the brunette. She’s a daddy’s-credit-card girl, which we appreciate. Our food’s on the table, ignored and congealing.

“The point is,” AnnemariefromDallas says in an abruptly lucid moment, “the point is, my friend’s boss spotted Andrew Whitt in an underground secret s-e-x club in a room waiting for you-know-what. And then the two of them”—she lowers her voice to a whisper, so low we can’t hear and have to lean in, so close our fluffed up bangs touch—“f-u-c-k-e-d.”

“Oh my gosh,” they all breathe all at once, including AnnemariefromDallas who’s probably getting off on spelling fucked. “Oh my god,” I say.

“That guy’s not outing him, according to my friend,” AnnemariefromDallas says. “But nothing means we can’t. Talk about power in our hands.” She flips her palms open in a disturbingly Jesus-like gesture.

“Wow,” the brunette says. “Classic repression and overcompensation and denial and self-loathing.” She’s a cum laude psych grad from Vanderbilt, always bugged when we read the Chinese horoscope placemats and claim they describe us perfectly.

I say, “What he did isn’t against the law.”

AnnemariefromDallas nods. “There are laws, technically. But really, how can anyone who cares about the conservative movement take a gay man seriously? How will he raise another penny?”

They love spouting out “the movement” like we’re one great big herd thundering across the same landscape.

I know I look too-something because AnnemariefromDallas says snootily, “You know, Holly, when you screw up one tiny way, he’ll fire you. Without breaking a sweat. He wants you to think you’re special, but you’re not.”

“We’re telling on Andrew Whitt?” the fourth girl asks, the girl always snapping a rubber band on her wrist so she’ll stop biting her fingernails, the girl AnnemariefromDallas suspects is bulimic. “Her breath reeks,” she whispers to me in our cube.

“The guy fucked him,” AnnemariefromDallas said. “Andrew Whitt let himself get fucked by a libertarian. That’s worse than a Democrat.”

The second bowl of booze arrives. This time our waiter snaps his lighter six times before the fire connects, and now I know for sure that flaming drinks are pathetic.

It’s almost three o’clock, and the only people left are us and the professional drunks who materialize when the doors open at eleven. I picture what’s going on back at the office: men roaming the halls brandishing unsent faxes, their meaty fingers aimlessly jabbing buttons on a phone, a paper jam no one can fix. Dana’s scattering herself, trying to fill in for all of us, as she does when someone calls in sick. My mind’s misty and my hair no longer feels attached to my head. The brunette’s caught in a wild-hyena laugh, and I laugh in perfect imitation, and we all laugh like hyenas, even our waiter.

“Let’s give him a big tip,” I say to the brunette. We laugh more because our waiter’s right there and hears, and he laughs.

AnnemariefromDallas says, “You guys. It’s our chance to get Andrew Whitt, to really get him. Don’t everyone waste it because we got drunk instead.”

“Get him how?” someone asks, maybe me.

“Anonymous letter,” the brunette says.

“Anonymous phone call.”

“Hog-tie him like in the movie 9 to 5.”

“No, really get him,” AnnemariefromDallas says. “Finish him off for good. He’s a miserable creep, right? We all hate him?”

I don’t know why they all look at me. I hate him, don’t I?

“Not Holly,” the brunette says.

“She’s special,” AnnemariefromDallas says. “Thinks she’s better than us.”

“Five Keys to Dealing with Conflict” was a career workshop I skipped because the sign-up sheet said it was for alums on the CEO track. So I just say what’s true: “Remember how much money he raises? They won’t care if maybe every now and then he’s gay in New York, or f-u-c-ks libertarians or whoever. I mean, they sure don’t care what he says to us around the office, right, and we’re official employees. He makes money. He’s important.”

They recoil in a ripple.

“Oh my gosh,” the rubber band girl howls. “Holly’s right. She’s right,” and she explodes into messy tears. “No one cares about us!” she wails. There’s cooing and hand patting, but I remember Dana warning me never to cry because the minute I see that girl’s tears, I know I’ll win.

“Stop crying,” I say. I struggle to maintain a kindly tone. “Don’t be weak. Andrew Whitt can seem hateful. But being gay isn’t a crime. Fucking a libertarian isn’t a crime. Nothing’s going to happen to a man who raises that much money. It’s a simple equation. You know I’m right.” It’s like telling a child the dirty truth about Santa.

“But homosexuality’s a sin,” the brunette says.

AnnemariefromDallas nods. “Look at AIDS. That’s God’s punishment,” she says, an ugly, triumphant note to her voice that I’d like to smear away.

“I don’t believe in god,” I say. “I fuck whoever I want to just like Andrew Whitt does. And I had an abortion.” These girls are prey, Andrew Whitt’s sad, vulnerable prey, not lions. I feel so sorry for them, and their helpless understanding of how the world is.

“Maybe we’ll get you fired too,” AnnemariefromDallas says.

I smirk. “Just try.”

“You think he likes you that much? You think he cares?”

“He doesn’t like me, he respects me,” I say. “Sorry you don’t understand the difference. All it takes is standing up to him. He’ll back down like any bully does.” I tell them about kicking the pens at him, about informing him his “bank account” isn’t “big enough” to satisfy me. How when he says, “Nice ass,” I bounce it right back with, “Yours too.” I explain that it’s managing a man like that, “not taking things personally. And being strong.” I’m on the verge of telling them I overheard him bragging about me to the chairman, saying, “She’s cool; she’s like a man but she’s got a pussy,” but something stops me, and before I can figure out what that is, I barrel to my finish: “You three girls do something if you want, but nothing’s changing—trust me—not as long as he’s raising all that money.”

“Nice lecture,” AnnemariefromDallas says. She’s always an ugly drunk, but no one remembers that till it’s too late. “Thanks a lot. All we’re trying to do is something good for the good of everyone. For sure I thought you’d be with us.” She starts sliding out of the booth, nudging the rubber band girl to move too. “Since you’re the perfect Andrew Whitt wrangler, Holls, you get till the end of the day to tell him what we know. You tell him unless he apologizes and starts treating us nice, we’re taking it to the top, and then he’ll be sorry.”

All three have maneuvered themselves out of the booth, leaving me alone in the middle of the semicircle, like I’m the empty island of flames in the scorpion bowl. They loom above me, and I’m disoriented. With me sitting and them standing, they’re tall, solid, unified—and my mind lurches about uncomfortably. I reel it in, slowly, then fast, saying, “Don’t you dare threaten us.”

With a collective humph, they march off in lockstep. It’s my credit card paying for everything, me racing out fast because for me, this money’s real, and I leave our good waiter only ten percent, and I can’t even afford that.

▴ ▴ ▴

Obviously, I don’t tell Andrew Whitt anything. His door’s closed, which means leave him alone. I can’t sit at my desk like nothing happened, and a hangover’s hovering behind my eyes, so I join the lowly interns in the conference room for envelope stuffing. They talk about music I don’t know, movies I’ve never seen, and I float out of reach. The hours until five thirty pass simply, me folding a thousand letters that I shove into a thousand envelopes that I pass over to the girl with the rolls of flag stamps, because—I’ve learned working here—people open mail that comes with real stamps, especially flag stamps, especially when each stamp is applied crookedly which she’s been instructed to do, which she’s doing perfectly. Good girl.

▴ ▴ ▴

On Monday, I’m panicky about sitting in my cube with the rest of The Pride and about following through on what I’ve spent all weekend thinking about, which is asking—no, demanding—that Andrew Whitt get me my very own cube. “You’re almost top on the org chart,” I’ll flatter him. “Your own girl in her own cube, just like the chairman’s. That befits you.” I look up befits in the dictionary to double-check I’m using it correctly, and I practice saying the word until it glides out. It befits you; it befits me.

The brunette and the rubber band girl are faintly pleasant, but we don’t gossip about our weekends like usual. It’s not typical for AnnemariefromDallas to be late because her boss drives in from Herndon crack-of-dawn early to beat traffic and practically tackles her at the door with projects and folders needing immediate attention. “Where is she?” he fumes today, galloping down the hall, shouting for Dana to help him. The brunette calls the apartment but only gets a roommate who has no idea where AnnemariefromDallas might be because she just got off the red eye from LAX and hasn’t been around for two weeks. The rubber band girl says, “Should we worry?” Dana fills in, but screws up stuff we have to fix, though our own bosses are nonstop shoving folders and paper our way. It’s the busiest day I remember, way too busy to think about anything except getting through. Andrew Whitt gets called to the chairman’s office and needs a bunch of copies, so I push a pale girl off her less urgent xerox job.

During lunch, the brunette calls other numbers: people who know AnnemariefromDallas, people who know people who know AnnemariefromDallas. At four o’clock, she looks in the Rolodex for numbers in Texas but there aren’t any. “You guys, I’m worried,” the rubber band girl says.

Dana says, “Don’t worry. I can get us a new girl like that,” and she snaps her fingers. “I’ve got stacks of resumés.”

At the end of the day, Andrew Whitt buzzes me in at exactly five thirty, quitting time—which he knows. The other girls are packing up tote bags and swapping heels for sneakers.

I sit in the farthest chair possible, at his small conference table that goes unused because he prefers looming behind or on his desk or at the head of a massive conference table.

“Holls,” he says. “It’s time for a raise and a new setup. Get you out of that henhouse with those cacklers. How about a real office? With a door? And how about four thousand more?”

My mouth drops open. “That befits—no, nothing. Wow. Thank you. Yes.”

He flicks a crumb from the edge of his sleeve. I’m sure it’s imaginary because Andrew Whitt doesn’t tolerate crumbs. I’ve heard he makes waiters scrape clean the tablecloth after dinner with a special tool.

“You’re doing good work,” he says. “We are doing good work.”

“This is great,” I say. “Thank you.” I’m not sure if I should stand because it doesn’t feel like we’re finished, but I don’t know what to say except more thank yous which I utter. He half-listens, then raises one hand, and I shut up.

“I hear there’s an opening,” he says. “Maybe you have a friend who’ll apply? A down-to-earth girl who gets it, someone who doesn’t let herself get worked up. Like you. Someone good. Man-with-a-pussy kind of girl, know what I mean?”

I know this is what four thousand buys. But only now do I also understand this is what I’ve sold for four thousand. “What happened to AnnemariefromDallas?” I ask.

“We need people who understand how things around here get done,” he says. “Like you. Like me. We’re not that different, are we?”

He seems to expect an answer: “No. We’re not.”

Now his eyes flick down at his desk, wanting me gone. But I say, “Someone might tell you I had an abortion.”

He shifts. His chair never squeaks, as if afraid to. “I heard,” he says.

I ponder what “I heard” means. She told him? He snitched my health insurance forms I should’ve lied on? He truly knows everything?

He says, “It’s my business to know what’s important and what’s meaningless. Big picture. Who gets it, who doesn’t. Who’s in, who’s out. Metaphorically…literally.” He taps his Mont Blanc pen on his massive desk (this pen never hits the floor, only cheap Bics I bring from the supply closet). “It’s lonely at the top, Holls. Trust no one.”

“Are you giving me advice?”

“Are you taking advice?” he counters. “That’s dangerous. Act, don’t ask.”

So I act. I say, “I don’t care what you do in New York.”

“Pitching to donors,” he says. “I’m relieved you approve.”

I’m reckless, but I’ve got to win something. Four thousand isn’t enough. I say, “Are you married? Do you think you’ll get married? Do you want to be? Have a couple of kids? White picket fence?”

He’s perfectly still, studying my face. I feel like my body’s sweating torrents underneath my skin. Then he laughs his snarly laugh. “Cute. One woman’ll never be enough for this succulent tenderloin.” He rubs his crotch. “Finally ready, you bad girl?”

“What’ll you do about it if I am?”

“Act,” he says. “Don’t ask.” He half-stands, leaning on his desk. He’d do it. He really would.

“Oh my god,” I say, “you’re so sad.” I say it as a joke, but it’s not, but he laughs anyway, awkwardly, and so do I. For once, we’re both uncomfortable. Then—finally—he waves me away. We’re done.

▴ ▴ ▴

We never see AnnemariefromDallas again. The brunette calls and calls, but no one seems to have word of her. The rubber band girl quits, and later we hear she lands in an eating disorder clinic.

It can’t be true—can it—that none of us—not one of us—ever hears from that girl again? Can it? What deep and pervasive darkness is this, that a girl disappears after one power-drunk, drunken lunch? That people like me continue showing up for work as if nothing happened? That there are two disposable girls in this story whose names I don’t bother to remember? Yet I remember depositing those paychecks into Riggs Bank every two weeks, my signature all swoops and swirls.

The new girl works out beautifully, a sweet, drawling redhead from Mississippi. She takes my job when I leave ten months later, when I’ve had enough of Andrew Whitt, and—in a move he’d appreciate if he noticed—shortly after my acceptance to Yale. I want to say he begged me to stay, but all he did was offer more and more money, like bidding in a cattle auction. “No, thank you,” I said each time, politely, like a good girl.

I’ll add this: What I last heard about Andrew Whitt is that he died of AIDS. I found out when I happened upon his name on that quilt that came around to DC in 1996, filling up the Mall with loss and sorrow. Nice to see that someone loved him, maybe all along.