“I literally went to every single hardware store in the city to find the cones,” Jordan said.
“Your admin went,” Peter corrected.
“Whatever. I supervised via email, right?” Jordan laughed.
Matt flipped a coin up in the air. “Heads or tails?”
“Heads!” I shouted without thinking.
Matt checked the coin on his palm and threw the Ping-Pong balls over to me.
“My lucky charm,” Peter said and beamed, throwing his arm around my shoulder. Carmen glared at me, and I didn’t know if it was the competition over the office or the attention from a senior partner that had annoyed her, but her eyes threw darts at me as Peter handed me a Ping-Pong ball.
Peter and I each hit our first shots, and I hit the third when we got our balls back.
“Holy shit! This girl can play!” Peter yelled, finally missing and breaking our streak. We stood shoulder to shoulder, our sleeves touching, willing Jordan to miss his first shot, but he sunk it.
“That’s okay. We got this,” Peter said to me. He leaned into me as a pulse of electricity transferred from his arm to mine. The combination of the beer in my veins and the high school anthems ringing in my ears amplified what was just a regular work crush when we were down on the forty-first floor. I forced myself to speak so I could focus on anything besides the energy between us.
“This floor is huge. And it seems so much bigger with no walls dividing the offices.”
“This floor is five hundred square feet smaller than Gary Kaplan’s apartment,” Peter said. I looked up to him to confirm that he was serious. He raised one eyebrow to let me know he was.
Carmen’s face grew increasingly flushed, though I couldn’t determine if it was from frustration that she couldn’t hit a shot, or the fact that she couldn’t catch a break from drinking as we hit ours. I saw her teeth pressing down on her lower lip in a way that almost hurt to look at. She stared at my skirt, and I wondered if she felt any regret that she hadn’t let me embarrass myself. The game continued until Matt spilled a full beer on Jordan’s phone and the music cut out. I waited for the inevitable meltdown from Jordan, but he barely reacted, sinking one last shot before going to hook his old “spare phone” up to the music while Matt emailed tech support to have a new phone waiting on Jordan’s desk at 9:00 a.m. I picked up the cup Jordan’s ball had disappeared into, handing the ball in it to Peter, then looked up at him.
“There’s too much foam,” I whined before plunging my index finger into the beer and scooping up the white froth. I knew my tone was flirtier than was remotely professional. But Peter grinned back at me, encouraging me to continue. Our eyes collided, and I heard the Ping-Pong ball drop out of his hand and bounce behind us. I smiled devilishly as I went to chase after it, the beer sloshing in my stomach.
“I saw that!” Matt exclaimed. I whipped around to find him pointing at me. “You crossed the line.” He smirked. I couldn’t believe I’d been such an idiot. Flirting with a partner in public! A married partner! Then he pointed to my feet, and as I looked down, I realized I was past the cones. I picked up Peter’s ball, exhaled deeply, and took a large swig of beer.
As soon as the game ended, Matt and Peter started putting on their coats, both looking longingly at the scene they were about to leave. I noticed that each of them called a car home, even though I was fairly certain they lived in the same town in Westchester.
“Take company cars home,” Peter yelled at us over the music. “And clean up after yourselves.”
“And order some food, for god’s sake,” Matt added as they got into the elevator. With the partners gone, the bass got louder, the lights got softer, the senior associates began pulling tiny bags of white powder out of the breast pockets of their suits, and I started to feel sleepy. As Jordan politely formed a small line with his platinum Amex for Carmen on the Ping-Pong table, I noticed that she and I were the only women left—the two others had disappeared long before. She bent low to sniff it in and rose quickly, a contented look on her face.
“I should text Derrick,” I said, mostly to myself, taking out my phone.
“Do not invite him,” Jordan said, almost spitting the command. “I heard from litigation that he was beyond fucked up at a client dinner last night. Not a good look.”
I nodded. Not a good look at all. I’d call him in the morning instead.
“Want some?” the same associate who had offered me a beer asked me, as casually as boys used to offer me gum in middle school, holding out a baggie.
I shook my head. “How’d your call go?”
“It went. Want a beer?” he tried again. I shook my head again and looked at my phone in an effort to distract my brain from worrying about Derrick. I had a string of texts over the past two hours from Sam:
How’s work?
Are you okay?
You are either getting crushed or you fell asleep.
I miss you.
I’m going to bed.
I looked up from my phone. “Actually, sure,” I said to the associate. He shut his eyes and rubbed his finger on his upper gum.
I thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard me, but a full fifteen seconds later, he said “Here” and handed me a rolled dollar bill as he carefully formed me a line. I paused for a moment, wondering if I should tell him I had never done cocaine before, wondering if I needed specific instructions. But instead, embarrassed by my naïveté, I bent low and put the bill in one nostril, sealing the opposite one with a press of my finger, and inhaled sharply, trying to mimic Carmen’s glamorous motions. It stung for a moment before tingling. I was too drunk to know if what I was feeling was the cocaine, but I felt suddenly sharper, soberer, sexier. I leaned back and smiled at the numb euphoria spreading from my nose up to my brain and down to the base of my skull. I righted my head and locked eyes with Jordan, who gave me a small, approving grin.
“Let’s order Wolfgang’s! Steaks for everybody?” the associate who’d given me coke yelled.
“This is my mother’s basement! Let’s order Domino’s!” Jordan yelled, and was met with resounding cheers and applause. Jordan sauntered over to me as he placed the order, squinting to read the menu on his spare phone’s cracked screen. “Slumming it is the best. Only when it’s a choice, of course,” he added seriously.
Three hours later, I poured myself into one of the black Quality cars lined up for us on Fifth Avenue and spit my address out at the driver. My knees bounced in the back seat of the car as I grabbed for my phone and typed “Gray Kaplwe Sag Rider NYC apt” at record speed. Google politely asked me if I meant “Gary Kaplan Stag River NYC Apt.”
I scanned the hits before clicking on the second, entitled “Where to Live When Money Is No Object.” In third place behind Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s Bahamian island and Elton John’s Beverly Hills estate was Gary R. Kaplan’s $38.4 million Manhattan penthouse. I clicked through picture after picture of the dark wood floors and modern art on the walls before pausing on a shot of the building’s facade, where a relatively unassuming navy-blue awning with the street numbers blurred jutted out onto the sidewalk. Something on the side caught my eye, and I spread the picture apart with my thumb and index finger to zoom in on the sign reading “Starlight Diner” just east of the awning. I stared for a moment at it, trying to figure out how the fuzzy puzzle pieces in my mind fit together, before leaning my head back on the black leather seat as the car sped through the empty streets.