Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

After Dan orders, he asks how I like my job. I do not want to indicate that I am soon advancing, so I say, “It is enjoyable.”

He laughs. “Very diplomatic. You can admit it’s beneath you — I won’t rat you out.”

I get up and examine the sword so he reroutes the conversation. “I wouldn’t touch that,” Dan says. “It’s from the 18th century, and Jefferson has an aneurysm if anyone breathes on it.” He puts his fingers over the buttons on the remote control without pressing any of them. “He can be kind of a cocksucker sometimes.”

When the Japanese deliveryman with an earring in his left ear arrives, Dan and Jefferson do not let me pay for the food. I eat the sushi that is vegetarian, and it is flavorful, but too expensive if it’s mostly rice. I also drink three beers total and Dan and Jefferson drink more as we watch the movie. We leave before we can finish it, which disappoints me, because the soldier’s enemy has just stolen the magical sword from him and I am curious to see if he can recover it.

When I stand up my head feels filled with helium. Possibly it is because I just watched the Japanese soldier, but I also feel that I could defend myself against a team of attackers, and although of course I do not say it, that I am the cream of the cream programmer at Schrub and have won Mr. Schrub’s confidence after just three weeks.

We taxi again, even though the address is on 20th St. and 5th Ave. and the subway is probably faster. “You’re our guest, Karim. You should never have to touch your wallet,” Jefferson says when I try to pay. “It’s the Japanese way.” He asks for a receipt and winks at me. “Besides, we’ll expense it.”

We walk to a cathedral on the corner of the street, and when we turn the corner, many young people are on line behind a velvet rope to enter it. My clothing is not as sexy as anyone else’s and they will see that I do not belong here, and my body vibrates even though it is not very cold, but I am glad I am with Dan and especially Jefferson, who does look like he belongs, even though he is the shortest man on line. He bypasses the line and talks to the guard at the front, who is a very large black man in a green coat that looks like it is inflated with air, and points on a piece of paper the guard holds. In a minute he waves for us to join him.

Jefferson leads us inside the tall wood doors. It is a true former cathedral. I cannot see well and it is warm and smells like alcohol blended with perspiration and I do not know what song is playing, but it has a robust drumbeat that pains my ears. Next to the stained glass windows are paintings of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and attached to the wall in the back of the dance floor is a ten-foot cross with toggling lightbulbs around its edges.

Jefferson finds another man he knows approximately our age with blond hair spiked like an electrocardiogram. They both put out their right hands in a class of handshake and they touch the other person’s back with their left hands as if they are hugging slightly.

The man extends his hand to me like he did with Jefferson, and I do the same handshake/hug. “I am Karim,” I say. “Glad to meet you.”

“Andy Tweedy,” he says, although he is already looking at Jefferson. “What are you guys drinking?”

Jefferson says, “Screwdrivers.”

Andy stops a waitress who wears a minimal skirt in a green and red pattern with long socks that reveal her upper legs and a white shirt with a collar that reveals her stomach. “Set them up with a VIP table and bottles for ‘Nailed to the Cross,’” he says.

The waitress leads us through the main floor, which has bright blue lights and some people dancing, although not many yet. We ascend some steps, and many people observe us as we elevate above them. A muscular white guard in a priest’s costume detaches another rope for us. I have never accessed a highly privileged place like this before, and now I am vibrating not because I am nervous but because I am so stimulated.

On the second floor she takes us to a small table that overviews the dance floor and has a cushioned red bench around it. Most of the other tables on this small second floor are also occupied, usually with several men and sometimes a few females also with the men.

Before the waitress leaves she smiles at Jefferson, because he is the most handsome of us and looks like the chief member of our cluster, except that his ears angle out like satellites. We sit down, and Dan rests his legs on the barrier over the dance floor. “Congrats, Karim. You’re a Very Important Person now,” Dan says.

And I do feel VI.

Jefferson stands up and scans the floor. “I fucking detest this place,” he says. “Up to our ears in Maries and Joeys fresh off the LIRR.”

The waitress returns with a tray that has one bottle of vodka inside a bucket of ice, a bottle of orange juice, and three glasses. She angles over to pour the vodka in our glasses and displays her breasts, which are very tan and three-dimensional in a way I have seen exclusively on television or in pictures.

Jefferson asks her for extra glasses, and after she leaves Dan mixes us drinks and says, “She can get it, Smithy. You’re a machine.”

“Not my type. You can take her.”

“Out of my league.”

“Don’t talk that way, sweetheart. She’s just pumped full of silicone and teeth whitener. And that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at me. I’m a goddamn dwarf. But at the end of the day, it’s all about confidence. People are waiting for someone else to lead them.” Jefferson is also more confident in the office, and he makes a better impression on coworkers than Dan does, who often avoids looking people in the eye and shakes hands weakly and speaks quietly to anyone outside of our pod. “And so what if she rejects you? If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” He looks closely at Dan and decelerates his words and points his index finger on each syllable. “If you believe it, you can achieve it. Put that on your wall in the fucking pod.”

He raises his glass and says, “To Dan the ladies’ man,” and Dan says, “Don’t mock me, I’m not in the mood,” and Jefferson says, “I’m not mocking you. Women have wet dreams about rich guys your height,” and then we all crash our glasses and drink, and Jefferson and Dan guzzle theirs rapidly, so I guzzle mine, and then Jefferson kisses Dan on the cheek and calls him a “handsome bastard.” The drink is robust and difficult to swallow, but when I finish it Dan mixes me another one, which is easier to consume, and I again have a mental image of myself as the Japanese soldier.

They observe the dance floor and assign ratings to different females from 1 to 10. They say an overweight female is “the worst” and is “four 40s deep,” and rate her a 1, which means 1–10 is a poor scale, because it assigns a point even when someone is “the worst” and there exists only a 9-point total range.

A friend joins the overweight female, and she is additionally overweight, and Dan says she’s “even nastier” and also assigns her a 1, even though if she is in fact inferior, then she should receive less than 1 (or the first female’s rating should retroactively rise slightly). This is why the Y2K bug is happening: Humans usually do not anticipate what comes next after what initially seems to be the limit, so they programmed their computers to function up to the year 1999 and not 2000. Even Jefferson and Dan, who are resolving this problem nonstop, did not consider the maximum-limit issue in this context. But possibly it is because they have been drinking alcohol, and also they are not the most considerate people.

Then Jefferson stands at the railing and points to an Asian female on the floor he has just rated a 9.3. She looks and he holds up the vodka bottle. She shakes her head, but he takes the bottle downstairs with him and refills her glass and the glasses of her two friends who are also Asian. After they talk for a few minutes he leads them upstairs. He introduces them to Dan, who he says is a vice president at Schrub. He puts his arm around me. “And this is Karim. He’s from an oil family in Qatar, and is here on vacation.”