Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

She said, “Uh-huh.”

“Let us see if we can’t resolve this problem,” I said.

“What exactly is your problem?” Rebecca asked.

I hoped she would already understand, but I said, “It is difficult to explain.”

“I can handle it,” she said. “You don’t want to see me anymore.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, ‘No, that is false,’ not ‘No, I don’t want to see you.’” I find the usage of “no” as a prefix confusing because it’s not always clear what the negative applies to. Then I told her my recent thoughts about Ramadan.

“Uh-huh,” she said again, and I could tell she was uncomfortable, but she asked me more about Ramadan and how I felt about it, and how I felt about being with her during it and in general.

I said I didn’t feel good about it but I enjoyed being with her. It was difficult both to decipher my feelings and to state them initially, but the more I did it, the easier it was. “Possibly I should learn not to view my values as a series of binaries and instead find a compromise,” I said.

“That’s what relationships are about, right?” she said. “According to my last issue of Cosmo .”

“Do you classify this as a relationship?” I asked.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “It’s just been a couple of weeks.”

“We are not in Kansas anymore,” I said.

“What?”

“I have not been in a relationship previously,” I said, “so I do not know the appropriate amount of time before it is technically considered one.” When I said it, I realized it was the class of statement that someone like Angela from Cathedral would reject me for, but I hoped Rebecca would be careless.

“I’m no expert, either. But this is pretty quick,” she said, and my heart slightly plummeted, but then she added, “Though we could keep seeing how it works. And I’m joking. I don’t read Cosmo .”

“I do not even know what Cosmo is,” I said.

We made plans to see each other after work on Wednesday night, and for a little while I forgot about Mr. Schrub and Kapitoil, but only a little while.

big for one’s britches = lacking humility with a higher-up

bougie = bourgeois; middle-class or materialistic

chef = used without an article, the term for a chef at a classy restaurant

Cosmo = Cosmopolitan , a magazine for females that frequently analyzes romantic relationships

exploiter = someone who leverages; this is a word

lady friend = either female friend or romantic partner

philistine = someone ignorant of quality culture

phonies = false people

stab someone’s back = practice deception

steel-trap mind = a brain that does not forget many things

Mr. Ray replied and told me that Mr. Schrub would be very busy over the next week but he would contact me when he was free.

I should have said I was ready to sign the contract but that I wanted to meet with Mr. Schrub directly first. Now they knew I had reservations about the contract, and they were forcing me to wait so that I might reconsider. My father frequently negotiated with suppliers who used similar tactics, and I have read several business manuals on negotiating, although this was the first time I had ever had a real-world negotiating opportunity, which was why I made an error.

Of course I could simply write my proposal and try to publish it in an academic paper without telling Mr. Schrub, but he would fire me instantly for being too big for my britches and I would never have a chance to work for him again. Possibly if I waited and got him to see the idea from my POV, we could compromise.

I was relieved that Rebecca planned our date for Wednesday, which was to see her friend’s rock-and-roll band’s concert on the Lower East Side. The friend was the man from her party with long hair named James. He sang and played guitar, and although the crowd was not very bottlenecked in the dark room, several females stood in the front and watched him nonstop. People danced merely by rotating back and forth on an axis over their feet and not truly moving, so I didn’t have to worry about dancing poorly and looking foolish. I asked if Rebecca wanted a beer. She said, “Sure, but you don’t need to buy it for me,” and I said I would purchase this first set and she could purchase the second set. “It’s called ‘buying a round,’” she said.

By the time we were on Rebecca’s round, James’s band was done. After they put away their equipment, he located us at the bar and hugged Rebecca. “Thanks for coming, Becks,” he said. “Looks like you’re the only one who made it.”

She nodded at the females. “You’ve got plenty of groupies.”

“They’re a pale mimesis of you,” he said as he compressed her around the shoulders with his arm.

Rebecca retracted very slightly, just a few inches. “You remember Karim from my party, right?”

“No, nice to meet you,” James said, and shook my hand with great force. It was very loud in the bar, and I heard him say, “You a fan of Indian rock?”

“I am not Indian,” I said. “I am from Qatar.”

James’s upper lip rotated to the left when he laughed via his nose, but Rebecca didn’t and she said, “No, ‘indie rock’—it’s short for independent. Music not released on big record labels.”

“In that case, yours is the first band I have heard that is in that class, and I did enjoy your music,” I said, even though I didn’t truly enjoy his music and thought his voice was impure, unlike that of Leonard Cohen or John Lennon or even Bob Dylan, whose voice is impure but intriguing.

James said he could obtain free alcohol for us, and soon he had three small glasses of whiskey and three cans of a beer that tasted mostly like water, and we drank the whiskey and then the beer to reduce the burning, and after we finished the beers he produced a second round and we repeated our actions.

I was slightly dizzy, but Rebecca was very unstable, and when she almost became imbalanced James held her and her body became fragile in his arms, and he said, “Your hair always smells so fucking good, like strawberries,” which doubly angered me because it smells in fact like watermelons, and then he slowly danced with her even though the band was playing a fast song.

I wanted to leave so I wouldn’t have to see what was happening, but I was afraid that if I left James would attempt even more. So I stood by the bar and watched them dance in the middle of the room and felt my body heat up like a microwave at James every time he whispered something in her ear and also at Rebecca for frequently laughing at what he said and for acting like this directly in front of me while we were on a romantic date.

When James lighted a cigarette for himself and let Rebecca inhale from it as well, I decided that if this was what she wanted to do, then it was her choice, and I left.

Outside the wind burned my ears as I determined the location of the subway. Before I walked away, Rebecca exited the bar and almost fell. “Wait,” she said.

I rotated but didn’t speak. “Why are you leaving?” she asked. Some of her words blended together.

“You do not seem to require my presence,” I said.

She leaned against the wall of the bar. “I don’t normally act this way,” she said.

“Then why are you doing it now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. For attention,” she said. “Sometimes. When I drink. Even from sleazeballs like James.”

“But why do you want attention from James when I am already paying it to you?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, and she decelerated her words. “I really like you.”

I leaned against the wall next to her. “Then those are not logical actions,” I said.