The Kissing Game (9 page)

We enter the elevator and Robert presses the
button for the lobby. As we ride down together, he leans against the railing,
and I stand there with my arms crossed and my backpack slung over my shoulder. A
sign on the elevator reads, “Respect patient confidentiality. Don’t discuss
patient cases in elevators.”

Once we step off the elevator, I say to Robert,
“I just need to stop by the restroom. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”

Robert nods and takes a right turn out of the
elevator, walking like a lost man toward the cafeteria sign. It’s a long, empty
carpeted hallway toward a room full of empty tables.

With a sense of obligation pinned like a knife
inside me, I slide into the ladies’ room and bend over, checking under the
stalls to make sure they’re empty. I yank my cell phone from my backpack and
press the “Henry” button on my contacts. It rings four times and goes to
voicemail.

“Henry,” I whisper. In the empty bathroom, my
voice sounds like remorse with a hint of panic. “It’s me, Caroline. Look,
you’ve got to intercept that tape before your boss gets it. It should be coming
in the mail tomorrow. I just can’t do it. I’m a chicken. It’s not right. And
what makes it worse is Robert’s dad is in the hospital right now. So you need
to grab the envelope when it comes in, before your boss gets it. Okay? And give
it back to me. Call me back to confirm you got this message.”

Hanging up, I look at myself in the mirror—I
mean, really look. A legion of horribleness sits behind my eyes. All that’s
missing is the bloodstained finery of animal skins, the animal bone hanging
from my neck, the battered spear in my hand, perhaps Robert’s severed head
clutched in my fingers.

Where did this person come from?

“Al desdichado hace consuelo tener compania en
su suerte y duelo.”

Two in distress makes sorrow less.

As if one phone call could change the course of
the Colorado River, I waltz out of the bathroom, fully confident that my
comrade in crime Henry will make sure to intercept the tape.

In the cafeteria, I find Robert, tall and
fabled-looking, despite his casual attire and messy hair. He stands in front of
the cashier, two sandwiches, two bags of chips, and two sodas in front of him
on the tray. He’s handing the woman wearing a hair net a twenty dollar bill.

“You like turkey, right?” he asks me as if he
already knows the answer.

“Yeah, thanks.”

With the tray in his hand, Robert looks at me
with his chin dipped, and I think of Dorian Gray—the classic novel about a man
so beautiful that an artist painted his portrait to capture that beauty before
it faded away.

“Why don’t we sit outside?” Robert suggests,
one index finger pointing the way toward the glass double-doors. I follow him
out of the excruciatingly lit cafeteria into the night, where a garden wraps
around concrete. Several round tables cluster in a half-circle. Lampposts emit
a fiery light. The long leaves of the fence-high bushes bow and spangle,
revealing night in tiny circles.

Robert chooses a table on the far right, and we
sit down. Taking his sandwich and drink, he pushes the tray over to me. After
peeling the white paper off his sandwich, he takes a bite, chewing slowly. He
doesn’t look at me, just at the lights twinkling in an apartment buildings
nearby. It seems as though we’re sitting at a corner café in Paris rather than
outside a hospital cafeteria.  

Having opened my sandwich, I take a bite. It’s
turkey with pesto and cranberries, the combination tasting like Thanksgiving in
my mouth. Looks as though Robert has the same sandwich. We don’t talk, just
eat, and I try not to stare at him because he’s my boss and I don’t like him.
I’m only here because of his dad, that nice man upstairs.

When Robert finishes his sandwich, he takes a
swig of his soda and leaves the chips untouched. He leans back in the plastic
chair and crosses his arms over his chest. After eating only half my sandwich, I
set it down and sip my soda.

I can’t help but wonder what Robert is thinking.
Certainly he’s thinking about his dad, but I wonder what he thinks about in
general. Like at night when he’s at home alone, what are his thoughts? Does he
think about work? Does he contemplate conquering the world and creating a
minion army of little devoted assistants? Does he watch videos of insects
suffering violent deaths? Or does he think about the starving in Africa, the genocides
of history, and feel pity? Maybe he thinks about a woman? Some girlfriend who
comes to his house late at night. I imagine her to be a skinny brunette with a
barbarous tongue. A tiny thing with sharp nails. She’d be spoiled and rich and
drive her daddy’s Porsche everywhere. Maybe she’d show up at his house late at
night, and when Robert lets her in, she’d stride through his entryway removing
her high heels, her tight pants, her slinky little top. Then she’d just
evaporate at sunrise as if she were a phantom.

In our silence, I feel the need to say
something but can’t think of what to say to Robert. We never just talk about
casual things. We only talk work, and I don’t want to talk work with him now. I’ve
had my full dose of work today.

“I might know someone you went to high school
with,” I say before I have a chance to contemplate whether I should. What can
it hurt?

“Who?” Robert looks at me, his arms still crossed
loosely in front of his chest, giving him more muscular biceps than usual. His
chair rattles a little as he loosely crosses his legs.

“His name is Enrique—he was a freshman when you
were a senior.”

Robert’s eyelashes seem to concentrate. He
shakes his head at me. “I don’t know him. It was a big high school. How do you
know him?”

“He’s a law school friend of my neighbor, Ted,”
I reply, swiping my hand in the air, as if my conversation doesn’t matter.

 “What’d Enrique say about me?”

 “Not much, just that you were smart. And that
you were a tough guy. That’s all.” I leave out most of the bad stuff
purposefully.

“Hmm.” Robert takes a swig of his soda. “Some people
have lively imaginations.”

“I guess.” I have no idea what he means.

“Like you, for instance,” he says as if he’s
pointing out the weather. The wind blows a tree nearby, causing twinkling apartment
lights to sprinkle light on Robert’s face. “You have a little bit of an overactive
imagination.” And his voice makes me think of the legion of horrible thoughts
that lurk inside his head. There’s just something about Robert that
occasionally makes me want to curl up on a floor somewhere and try not to be
sick. Just one statement from him has the power to unearth my darkest
insecurities, open up that mirrorglass of hell.

“How do mean?” I ask, even though I don’t
really want to know and yet I really do.

He smirks. “You don’t know you have an active
imagination?”

I shake my head.

 “Like, for instance,” he continues, “you’ve
often thought me a villain and assumed I’m a horrible person.” His face is
wardrobed in alternating light and shadows.

“No I haven’t.”

Instantly I rewind our work history together to
figure out how Robert has come to this conclusion. And more importantly, how
does he know I think he’s a villain? Does his negative prestige cause employees
to offer up free gossip? Has he overheard my conversations with Todd? Has he
heard me saying that I despise him? Have I indicated he’s a villain in our
interactions? Does he know about the tape? How could he know? A helmet of
concentration squeezes my head too tightly.

“I don’t think
that
,” I defend, nearly
choking on a small breadcrumb in my throat.

“No? What
do
you think of me then?” The wind
slaps leaves of the tree, sounding like rustling horsetails and making Robert’s
voice quiet in comparison.

 “What do
I
think of
you
?” I
repeat back to Robert. So moronic, obvious delay tactic.

He doesn’t nod or answer me. He just waits for
my response. The space between us clouds with a vapor that’s brimstone, a hot rattle
of conflict tottering in the air over the table. I have the urge to grab my
backpack and run, but I want to get back upstairs and see Mr. Spencer one more
time. He is why I came here, after all. Isn’t he?

And there’re a million answers to his question,
answers that become thoughts contemplating along the back of my brain, fully ready
to assail the garden-walled world we sit in. I choose the least offensive one.

“I think you’re smart,” I answer.

“Smart?” he asks, as if my response has just
been splashed cold across his face.

“Yeah,” I repeat. “Smart.”

“That’s what you think of me,” he says this
like a statement rather than a question, but I know it’s a question.

“Yes.” The wind circles around the table and
lifts my red hair. I have to pat it down.

“I don’t think that’s true. I think you think
I’m,” he pokes his lips out in thought, “
evil
,” he enunciates the word
too perfectly. The little vein in his temple pulses in the dim light.

“Why would you think that?” I’m in a
battlefield, arrows flying everywhere.

“Ah, I don’t know, the millions of times you’ve
looked at me as if you wished I’d be kidnapped by thugs and beaten to death in
some bad part of town.”

“I don’t look at you like that.”

“I should hold up a mirror sometime so you can
see yourself. But it’s more than that,” he stops entirely, exhaling to signify
he’s done. He leans back in the chair and looks toward the apartment complex. I
turn to see what he’s looking at. There’s a young couple in their small
apartment on the third floor. The orange glow of their kitchen light makes a
silhouette of their shoulders and heads as they eat at a table by the window. I
can’t see their faces, but watching their heads lean toward each other over the
small table makes me feel uncomfortable.

“So, is it true then?” I ask Robert, feeling
the need to change the topic.

“What?”

“That you were a tough guy in school. Did you
really lock some guy in the janitor’s closet because he stole your girlfriend?”
Discussing Robert’s bad boy days seems far less scary than discussing how I
really feel about him.

“Is that what they say about me?” He frowns and
smiles, and he’s so pretty that angels could cry. “Let’s see, you’ve worked for
me for over two years now—have you known me to ever lock someone in a janitor’s
closet?” He tilts his head.

I shrug, but while I’m shrugging I’m thinking that
his answer is a non-answer, a way of evading the question, which makes me think
he really did lock someone in a closet. But I know better than to press him.

“My dad always told me that I’m a leather
jacket on the outside and a flannel shirt on the inside. He likes you, you
know.”

“Does he?” I’m distracted enough to lose the
image of being locked in a janitor’s closet.

“Yep.” Robert nods slightly.

Unlike Robert, who has authority over me, I
can’t pressure him to tell me what else his father said about me, so I lean
back in my plastic chair and watch the couple in the apartment window. I can
feel Robert’s eyes on my face. The sensation is a knife-blade turned sideways
on my cheek. I try not to look back at him.

“He said he thought you were a delightful woman,”
Robert adds, his voice matter-of-fact, his torso rising slightly. Even now,
Robert looks at me as though he might lean over the table and seize my
shoulders, maybe snatch me from my chair, maybe rip off my head—I don’t know. “He
said you were a decent person, and decency is rare in people these days. He
thinks you have the smile of Rita Hayworth and the face of Olivia Hussey.”

Something clatters inside the cafeteria. A
dropped tray? I don’t look in that direction, although I can see through the tinted
glass if I want to. Instead, I eye Robert who wiggles a little in his chair.

“He’s a nice man, your father. You think he’ll
be alright?”

“I hope so.”

Just then, the double doors spring open behind
me and I glance back. Looking around for a place to sit, a lone man stands with
his tray in his hands. There are five empty tables around us, but the man looks
at Robert and me and mumbles “I’m sorry,” before turning around and heading
back inside the double doors.

When I turn back, I ask Robert, “Where did you
grow up?”

“Where I grew up isn’t that interesting.”

I imagine how many women would give up her
favorite pair of sweats to hear this story.

“I’m sure it is,” I answer.

So Robert tells me his brief history—about
living in different foster homes around the Bay Area, first with a family who
had six foster children to supplement their income, how they were always
hungry, then with a husband and wife that were both police officers who
constantly accused Robert of stealing. (Other than the occasional granola bar,
he was innocent.) Then he moved in with a family who had teenage girls. This
was his shortest stay because despite his tender age, the father locked the
girls’ doors at night for fear Robert might sneak into their rooms. But the
whole time he talks, I’m thinking in the back of my mind that I need to get the
tape back. I need to get the tape back.

“That sounds awful.”

“It was delightful. But it all worked out in
the end, just like it all worked out with you.” I’m not sure I’ve heard him
correctly. My face gives away my confusion, so he continues. “I didn’t think
I’d find an assistant who could put up with me, but here you are.” He gestures
towards me. “I had a few before you. They didn’t last more than weeks. The firm
usually makes sure that assistants are shared with more than one partner, but once
I hired you, I had the firm make an exception.” He pushes the tray aside and
leans forward, his elbows on the table. “You know, you do things for me that
you think I don’t recognize, that you think maybe I’m not appreciative about. Like
the way you determine, based on my mood, whether I want my office door left
open or closed when you leave. Not sure how, but you can always tell. Or the
way you know which messages to deliver to me even if I’m in a conference call.
You’re brave enough to enter my office and hand me that note because you know
I’ll want it. The way you know when to check in with me because I need something.
It’s like mental telepathy, of the legal assistant kind.”

I didn’t even realize I’d done these things,
but as he tells me, the memories settle.

“And the way you dress,” he smiles, as if he’s
enjoying some old joke. He points at my clothes and shakes his head. “Maybe
someday I’ll tell you the real reason why I make you dress that way.”  

“Tell me,” I demand. “I thought you made me
dress this way because of meetings with clients and stuff.”