“What do you think’s up with your brother?” he said when he’d managed to get a few bites down.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s being kind of a jerk. Kind of immature. Don’t you think?”
“Don’t ask me. He’s
She continued to stare at her book. Her disdainful imperviousness was identical to that of the top-tier girls at Virginia. The only difference was that she was even more attractive to him than those girls, and that he was close enough to her now to smell her shampoo. Underneath the table, in his boxers, his half-mast boner was pointing at her like a Jaguar’s hood ornament.
“So what are you doing today?” he said.
She closed her book as if resigning herself to his continued presence. “Shopping,” she said. “And there’s a party in Brooklyn tonight. What about you?”
“Apparently nothing, since your brother doesn’t want to leave the apartment. I have an aunt who I’m supposed to see at four, but that’s it.”
“I think it’s harder for guys,” Jenna said. “Being at home. My dad is
“By watching TV for ten hours?”
She frowned and looked directly at Joey, possibly for the first time. “Do you even
“No definitely. He’s just been weird since Thursday night. Like, the way he was driving yesterday? I thought you might have some insight.”
“I think for him the biggest thing is wanting to be liked for his own sake. You know, and not because of who our dad is.”
“Right,” Joey said. And was inspired to add: “Or who his sister is.”
She blushed! A small amount. And shook her head. “I’m not anybody.”
“Ha ha ha,” he said, blushing as well.
“Well, I’m certainly not like my dad. I don’t have any big ideas, or any great ambition. I’m actually quite the selfish little person, when you get right down to it. A hundred acres in Connecticut, some horses and a full-time groom, and maybe a private jet, and I’ll be all set.”
Joey noted that it had taken no more than one allusion to her beauty to get her to open up and start talking about herself. And once the door had opened even just a millimeter, once he’d slipped through the crack in it, he knew what to do. How to listen and how to understand. It wasn’t fake listening or fake understanding, either. It was Joey in Womanland. Before long, in the dirty winter light of the kitchen, as he took instruction from Jenna on how to dress a bagel properly, with lox and onions and capers, he was feeling not greatly more uncomfortable than he would have felt talking with Connie, or his mom, or his grandmother, or Connie’s mom. Jenna’s beauty was no less dazzling than ever, but his boner entirely subsided. He offered her some nuggets about his family situation, and in return she admitted that her own family wasn’t too happy about her boyfriend.
“It’s pretty crazy,” she said. “I think that’s one reason Jonathan wanted to come here, and why he won’t leave the apartment. He thinks he’s somehow going to interfere with me and Nick. Like if he gets in the way, and hovers around, he can make it stop.”
“Why don’t they like Nick?”
“Well, for one thing, he’s Catholic. And he was varsity lacrosse. He’s superbright, but not bright in the way they approve of.” Jenna laughed. “I told him about my dad’s think tank once, and the next time his frat had a party they put a sign on the keg that said Think Tank. I thought it was pretty hilarious. But it gives you an idea.”
“Do you get drunk a lot?”
“No, I have the capacity of a flea. Nick stopped drinking, too, once he started working. He has like one Jack and Coke per week now. He’s totally focused on getting ahead. He was the first person in his family to go to a four-year college, total opposite of my family, where you’re an underachiever if you only have one PhD.”
“And he’s nice to you?”
She looked away with a shadow of something in her face. “I feel unbelievably safe with him. Like, I was thinking, if we’d been in the towers on September 11, even on a high floor, he would have found a way to get us out. He would have gotten us through, I just have that feeling.”
“There were a lot of guys like that at Cantor Fitzgerald,” Joey said. “Very tough traders. And they didn’t get out.”
“Well then they weren’t like Nick,” she said.
Seeing her close her mind like this, Joey wondered how hard he would have to make himself, and how much money he would have to earn, to even enter the running for the likes of her. His dick, in his boxers, bestirred itself again, as if to declare its upness for the challenge. But the softer parts of him, his heart and his brain, were awash in hopelessness at the enormity of it.
“I think I might go down to Wall Street and check it out today,” he said.
“Everything’s closed on Saturday.”
“I just want to see what it looks like, since I might end up working there.”
“No offense?” Jenna said, reopening her book. “You seem way too nice for that.”
