Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

Of you, Oliver had said, last Christmas. Stella is jealous of you.

You couldn’t beat Stella Bradley at her own game. So I had found a separate game, one where we wouldn’t compete with each other.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Stella could look at my life—the long hours, the grunt work—and actually feel something like envy. But that was my own stupidity. Everyone wants what they don’t have. Everyone wants more.

STELLA STARTED AS an intern at KCN in the new year. When she got her first paycheck in January, she came over to my desk and said, “Am I supposed to do something with this?”

“You’re supposed to deposit it,” I said.

She furrowed her forehead. “But what are all these things? Social Security? Does this look normal to you?” She thrust the check toward me. When I registered the dollar amount, there was the momentary satisfaction of seeing how much bigger my salary was than hers. I had to take my victories where I could get them.

“Perfectly normal,” I said. My phone started ringing, but as I moved to answer it, Stella said, “Can I ask you something else?”

“I have to take this call.”

“Please, Violet? I need your help.”

“Fine.” I watched the call go to voice mail, imagined my source annoyed at having to leave a message, the apologizing I’d have to do when I called back. “What is it?”

She led me to the copy room, where a red light was flashing on the copy machine. There was a crumpled, ink-stained piece of paper jammed into the feeder. With wide eyes, Stella said, “I think I broke it.”

“ This is what you need help with? Why didn’t you ask another intern?”

She frowned. “Because you’re my friend.”

“I’m also a producer, and in case you can’t tell, I’m a little busy. Ask one of the interns or assistants.” Walking away, I added, “I haven’t even used that machine in months.”

“You look pissed,” Jamie said, when I returned. “What is it this time?”

I sighed and dropped into my chair. “The copy machine is jammed.”

“Have a little sympathy for her. She’s still new.”

“You want to take a turn helping her? Be my guest.”

Jamie had been witness to my bad mood all month. I could sense him hesitating, holding back advice that, honestly, I could have used: get over yourself, or you’re wasting energy on being mad. But Jamie was practiced in the art of self-preservation, and knew better than to get between us.

When Stella applied to KCN, there were two internship openings: one on the morning show, and one on Frontline . “Well, obviously I’m choosing Frontline, ” she’d said. “Waking up at 3 a.m.? No thank you.” At first, I’d held out hope that Stella might lose interest. This was grinding, grueling work. How long could she possibly last?

It had taken me months to feel secure in the newsroom, to stop automatically reminding people of my name, to stop apologizing reflexively when they didn’t remember it—like it was my fault. Being a young intern or assistant, it was safer to assume that people saw you as an interchangeable part in the machine. Because, in fact, that’s what you were. But from day one, Stella assumed that people knew her name.

And the thing is, they did. Her haplessness only enhanced her charm, especially among men. Right away, she was the most popular intern in the newsroom.

On Sunday morning of that week, Stella called me.

“Can you come uptown?” she said. “I don’t have my wallet.”

“Isn’t your lover picking up the bill?” I said. Stella called him that as a joke, but it stuck. Her lover, the older man, married but getting a divorce. “Can’t you just borrow money from him?”

“He had to go to the emergency room. His kid broke his arm.”

I sighed, turning off the kettle that I’d just started for tea. “I’ll get on the subway now.”

Stella was waiting in the hotel lobby when I arrived thirty minutes later. “Thank God,” she said, springing to her feet. “The concierge has been giving me the weirdest looks.”

She turned around and smiled at the serious man behind the ornate wooden desk. She waved her monogrammed wallet and said loudly, “See? Nothing to worry about. I told you I wasn’t going to run out on the bill.”

“Unlike lover man,” I said. “I’m surprised he stuck you with this.”

“He’s weirdly cheap,” she said, as she slid her credit card across the desk. “He always talks about how hard he works for his money. Whereas I’m just a spoiled princess. Born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

“He says that?”

She laughed. “He doesn’t have to.”

The hotel where they met on weekends was on Madison Avenue in the seventies, chosen for luxury and relative distance from the man’s family, who lived downtown. He was a hedge fund type, a loft in Tribeca and a house in East Hampton, three kids in rapid succession, crazy rich but still covetous: next he wanted a ski house, a Gulfstream. He’d do anything to close the deal—flowers, jewelry, whatever it took—but he grew neglectful once the ink dried. Recently, his wife had looked at her prenup and decided the payout was better than a life of obedience to this man. But she was still his wife, and the mother of his children, and when one of his children broke a bone on the playground, it was his paternal duty to rush downtown and, in a harried-rich-man way, question the competence of the doctors.

Stella had met him the year before, when she was working in fashion. They saw each other a few times a week. When I asked her why she liked him, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Something about him, it’s a turn-on. The sex is great.” He was worldly and successful, and handsome. He often promised to make her wife number two, not that Stella would ever agree to it. But the relationship was mutually exciting. She got to act like a sexy spy, sneaking in and out of luxury hotels. He got to fantasize about a hot new wife.

“I’m hungry,” Stella said, after she signed the bill. “Let’s get food. I’ll treat.”

Across Madison Avenue from the hotel was an Italian restaurant, the type of place where young women like Stella flocked. Wide windows, flattering golden light, dramatic floral arrangements, an overpriced menu. After Stella ordered the omelet and I ordered the spaghetti carbonara, I shook my head and said, “How many times have we done this?”

“Done what?” she said.

“The morning after,” I said. “Your wild night on the town, and my quiet night at home, and then I come get you when something goes wrong.”

She smiled. “You know how much I love you, right?”

“Sure.”

“I need you,” she said. “You know that.”

Even after years of friendship, even after the countless times Stella had purchased my patience and forgiveness with those words, and cheapened them in the process, they still meant something to me. I was loved, I was needed. Isn’t that all anyone wants?

“Okay,” I said. “I have to ask the inevitable. When are you going to end it with this guy?”

She sipped her cappuccino. “If I wanted to, I could marry him and retire tomorrow.”

I laughed. “One whole month of work. You must be exhausted.”

“I know,” she said. “But still. Sometimes I think about it.”

“You’d lose your mind,” I said. “You’d be so bored.”

Her smile turned into a frown as she stared at the milky foam of her cappuccino gradually dissolving into the tan liquid. “I’m not sure people at KCN like me,” she said.

“That’s not true,” I said, startled. Glimpsing the softer side of Stella was rare enough that, sometimes, I forgot that part existed. “Of course people like you.”