Teddy Wayne: Kapitoil

I am relieved when it is our turn with the female vendor with pink hair. Rebecca orders a complex coffee, and I order a regular coffee without milk. The vendor informs us of the cost, which makes me question if it is worth buying premium coffee over receiving subpar coffee for free. Rebecca opens her purse.

I remove my wallet. “It is my gift.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rebecca says as she searches in the purse, which contains numerous objects and papers and even smaller purses.

“I am not being silly,” I say. “I want to purchase this.”

I hand the vendor a $50 bill, which is the only denomination I possess at the time, and Rebecca closes her purse and does not say anything.

We sit at a table as the song “Believe” by Cher plays. Its frequency is high in Doha as well.

Rebecca tells me this is her third year at Schrub, and it is her first job she acquired after college even though in university she studied history with minimal studies in economics and computer science.

“I’m competent, but I wasn’t really born to number-crunch or code,” Rebecca says.

“Would you prefer a job incorporating history rather than economics and computers?” I ask.

“I guess maybe teaching, someday.”

“Why do you not pursue it now?”

She raises and lowers her shoulders and drinks her coffee and scans the room.

“You should pursue what you want to pursue,” I say.

“Yeah, well, you can’t always get what you want.” She laughs, but to herself and quietly. “And if you try sometimes, you just might find you get fucked over even worse.” Then she consumes a long drink and says she should get back to the office.

I follow her, and outside she retrieves a cigarette pack from her purse and smokes. We do not talk at all as we reenter the WTC. I think she is upset with me because I sounded like I believe I am better at my job since it is closer to my career goals. I disagree with her statement, however. When people start believing they cannot get what they want, they trash their original goals and settle for smaller ones.

We pass the coffeepot in the office, and Rebecca refills her cup from Starbucks, removes a small purse from her bigger purse and extracts one quarter, two dimes, and one nickel as if she is performing surgery and removing tumors, and deposits them in the vending machine for a bag of potato chips, and I understand she is not upset because of my previous hypothesis, but because she thinks I am wealthy, because (1)I said Zahira does not have loans without explaining it is because tuition is discounted in Qatar; (2)I paid for our coffee with a $50 bill; (3)I said she should do whatever job she wants without considering the salaries; and also possibly because (4)Qatar has a high GDP per capita.

I feel so humiliated that I do not know how to apologize to Rebecca for it, and we spend the rest of the day laboring with minimal conversation and leave independently.

On Sunday morning I again do not know what to do, and I do not want to reencounter Rebecca at the office. I consider calling relatives of my family’s friends, but they will ask me about my job and I do not want to discuss it now.

I would like to go to a Broadway play or a classy restaurant, but I prefer to conserve money, and also I do not have anyone to partner with. So I take the subway to explore the neighborhoods downtown. In Chelsea I observe a few art galleries, although I do not enjoy the paintings in them as much as the ones in the Museum of Modern Art, probably because I do not understand them as well, and it is difficult to enjoy a system you are not competent in. In the early night I walk through Little Italy and then Chinatown.

It begins raining lightly, so I enter a restaurant and order vegetarian dumplings. As I wait for my food at a small square table next to the window, a Chinese family with one grandmother, two parents, and five children eats at a round table next to me. They slightly parallel the one quarter, two dimes, and one nickel Rebecca deposited in the vending machine. Their table is littered with steaming bowls and plates of noodles and vegetables and meats. They are all conversing with each other, and of course I cannot decipher what they are saying, but even if we spoke the same language I think I would not 100 % decipher it, because frequently families have their own mode of speaking, e.g., my father usually does not understand what Zahira and I are saying.

Out the window the blue and red lights mirror on the wet black street. In a few hours Zahira and my father will eat their breakfast of bread with labneh, olives, and yogurt.

When the waiter deposits the dumplings on my table, I ask him to contain them so I can consume at home.

In my apartment I watch the other New York baseball team, the Mets, play against the Atlanta Braves in a playoff game. I permit myself to microwave and eat one dumpling every 1.5 innings as I study the game’s internal logic. It enters overtime, and when I stretch my neck I see the Schrub monitor outside and a scrolling news item:

FRENCH EMBASSY BOMBED IN IRAN…NO CASUALTIES…SEVERAL INJURED…

I search other channels for additional data, but no one is discussing the bomb, not even the all-news channels. Finally I find a short report on the Internet that says a terrorist group in Iran “claimed responsibility.” This phrase intrigues me, as I know only the phrase “take responsibility.” I perform an Internet search: “terrorist” + “claimed responsibility” has six times more hits than “terrorist” + “took responsibility.” Possibly that is because when a person commits an error but confesses to it for forgiveness, he “takes” responsibility. When he is boastful of his actions, he “claims” responsibility.

I walk around my living room as the Mets game continues. Everyone in the stadium is anxious about the game, which now seems to me foolish, although I understand why it impacts them. The Mets win with a home run, and at 11:30 p.m. I make a telephone call.

Zahira picks up on the first ring and says she has a few minutes to talk before she leaves for school. I tell her I merely called to say hello.

“What happened with your computer program?” she asks.

I look at my laptop that I have not even booted up today. “It is turbulent now in the stock market, so I decided it is not a strategic time to present a new program to my higher-ups.”

“You sounded very optimistic about it before,” she says.

“Yes, but sometimes the risks are greater than the possible rewards, and you must certify that a new idea is 100 % foolproof before you launch it.” She does not say anything. “Anyway, I am doing very well at Schrub overall and am making a great amount of money and friends.”

“You have made friends at work?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Have you socialized with anyone yet?”

“I recently had coffee with one coworker. And two others told me they will invite me next time they go to a nightclub.”

She pauses. “That is good,” she says. “But you should call our friends’ relatives if you need to meet other people from the Middle East.”

“I will, but I am satisfied with my current social network,” I say.

I do not need to ask if she is making friends at university, because she emailed me that she has, and also she typically makes friends with ease. She has our mother’s skill set for that.

She says she will put me on with my father before he leaves for work. “Take care, Zahira,” I say.

I am uncertain if she hears me, because then my father is on the telephone. I ask him if he has heard the news about Iran yet. He has not, and I explain the situation and tell him that the news said a terrorist group in Iran has claimed responsibility. “You should not believe everything you hear on the news in the U.S.,” he says.