“Patrick, nice to see you. Did you enjoy your trip?” Ashulm asks. I haven’t talked to Ashulm in a while.
“You weren’t on the Global Heads call today?”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“Let’s talk, in my office.”
The door closes and my stomach falls.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about your promotion in person. We just let go 15% of Operations. You can understand that we had to be discrete.” His mouth stretches slightly into a grimace. [The Ashulm trope should be about economy of motion]
Boom.
“Aside from the fact that Shiva doesn’t invite me to her meetings? No.”
“She is the Quality Team.”
I want to ask him about Project Chop Shop. This may be my only chance to get him to break his cover and reveal what he really thinks of the project. His answer will teach me so much about him.
I begin to speak and stop. I’ve forgotten what the project’s real name is. Its some cute Quality Team invention.
“Are you trying to say something, Coffey?”
“Uh kind of. Y’know I spent some time working in retail banking in Canada, and uh … this Borealis deal seems … what do you think?”
“What do you think?”
“Its a chop shop. We buy mortgages and package them up and resell them. Mortgage markets shouldn’t be like that Why not stick around milk the asset? Its worked out fabulously for the Canadian Banks.”
He gestures for me to get up and leave. As I do, he pats me on the back – very friendly – and says, “I retire in two years. I’m very happy for Ms. Shivdasani to take the lead on Borealis.”
[And I’m nobody. The realization doesn’t hit too hard. Which is part of the reason we’re here now. I don’t give a damn about the Quality Team – they’re talentless, arrogant Oxbridge f*cks. And I don’t give two figs for Project Chop Shop. ]
o
Ska’s long dyed dread locks are knotted together like so many bundles of rust and purple tumble-weeds. Her crazy hair reflects her vibrancy. She’s singing “Work” by Bob Marley and grazing in the bulk food area at Healthy Pleasures.
“Hey I know you.” Which of course she’s does – we’ve hung out a half dozen times via her connection with Magdalene. The sad implication is that she’s reminding herself she knows me, because she’s forgotten.
Ska leans over and kisses me. A waft of patchouli scented air massages my nostrils in her wake.
“Peter, right?”
“Patrick.”
“Hola.” She doesn’t care that she got my name wrong.
As she says this she smiles and slowly takes her hand out of a bin of walnuts. Then she just strikes a pose, not an attitude pose, but straight and loose, slightly swaying. She looks like something thrown together by the wind.
“What are you up to?”
“Just getting some lunch. Then going home – I live over there. ”
“I was just grabbing lunch too.”
“Want to join me?”
“Sure.”
Ska tips egregiously at checkout – for the food “I’ve scarfed”.
On our way to her place we pass through Tompkins Square Park. Some IKON dancers are singing Hare Krishna – very melodically – and assorted freaks and drunks lie around us. Junkies, Kojak and Columbo are ghosts.
On our way to her place we pass through Washington Square Park. Some IKON dancers are singing Hare Krishna – very melodically. Otherwise, the scene is more or less GAP ad – a rainbow coalition of NYU students from around the world.
[The days when this park was owned by junkies and crack ho’s are long gone.]
[Ska comfortably sits down on the bench in a position that would snap my spine should I attempt it.]
Her apartment is a studio that has been converted into a two bedroom. The “bedrooms” are closets; the living-room is carved out of what was once a fair-sized kitchen for a far larger apartment. The floors are strips of oak, recently sanded and varnished. Every item that could be made of plastic or metal is made of wood.
The room is bathed in soft yellow light.
Ska says, “You’re not from here. Can’t quite place your accent. You sound a little bit English but … ”
“Canada. Toronto.”
“Of course. I’ve been there. I’m from Arizona.”
“Sedona?”
“Close. Jerome.”
“Way up on Mingus Mountain.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful. Family still there?”
“My mom has a Bed & Breakfast there, right beside the old mine, but everyone else has moved…. So what do you do?”
“I work for an investment bank. Computers.”
“What do you think of working on Wall St.? Does capitalism look better from the inside?” Her chill manner belies the weight of her question. I realize that she’s interviewing me.
“Capitalism looks about the way you’d expect from the inside. What capitalists tell the world is very close to what they think.”
“Greed is good.”
“Yep. They don’t talk that way, though. My peers get by, but with decent incomes.”
“And no time.”
“None. Less than none.”
“They steal your sleep, don’t they.”
“I average 100 hours a week for all of work-lift balance month.”
“Regrets? Time is precious.”
“Yah” I say hesitantly. “Yes” I add more affirmatively. “Initially it was a lot of fun, seeing how the world works.”
“Scary.”
“For sure. I don’t want to be a financial product.”
“Huh.” I read it as a self-consciously ego-less, “I’m not surprised”.
“I’m just confirming your biases, aren’t I?”
“Yah”. She smiles mischievously.
“I’d guess from your decor that you’re a Capricorn.” I’m being a secret pissant. I don’t believe in astrology at all BUT I know all about it. Everything about this apartment says Earth sign, but the giveaway is a birthday greeting written on a winter holiday card.
“How did you know?” I’ve got her attention. She pulls her legs up onto the couch and turns to face me, her knee just barely touching mine. She laughs and says, “You’re a Virgo, aren’t you?”
I laugh.
She continues, “I bet you can see auras but just don’t know it. I can. That’s how I knew you were a Virgo. I can see your aura.”
“What color is my aura?”
“Its not like that, its more like a vibe than sight, through your sixth sense.” She points to the tiny red dot on her forehead between her eyes.
“I was once told my aura was forest green.”
“That was synesthesia. Not surprising though. If I had to assign a color to your aura I’d go with earth tones. You’re such a Virgo. You prefer hiking to swimming, don’t you?”
“I nod.”
She grabs my hands. I want to view the gesture as flirtation, but I don’t think it is. More like engagement. “Let’s share a little bit. I’ll go first, I’m obsessive-compulsive. That’s why I became a yoga teacher. To cope. The vinyasas tucker out my obsessions while placating them.” She lightly squeezes my hands and continues, “”
“Virgos always have some extreme relationship with numbers, adding …”
“I estimate that your bill at Healthy Pleasures was $16.40 from the four items you bought.”
She bills the receipt out of her pocket and says, “Close enough. What’s your weirdest Virgo trait?”
“I have this former roommate. He claims to be an aristocrat but he’s a … never mind that. This fellow always sponges off me. I’ve kept a ledger in my head. Its accurate to within five dollars.”
“How much does he owe you, 30 dollars?
“Fifteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I shrug. Its an entertainment tax. He’s a lot of fun. Takes me to interesting places I would never go to myself.”
My hands have lost circulation so even though I’d rather not let go of Ska’s hands, I do. I shrug, “I wouldn’t do it again. The parties weren’t that much fun. He’s cut off now so its all in the past.”
My own words make me think back to Ska’s New Year’s sermon during tree pose – how we waver between the past and present and can only find equilibrium in the now.
With circulation back, I take her hands in mine.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m enjoying this moment, I want it to last all day, but all I can think about is the past and the future, how Earl shook me down for money I may really need; how my future is certain because my job may be outsourced. When I think of the present I cringe my visa has made me like fly in a web, trapped by my visa in one job, waiting to be outsourced.”
“Let’s come back to this present.” She takes my hand and leads me into her bedroom. It is decorated into earth tones. Her futon bed takes up most of the space; however the window is as broad and abuts out, so that a Ska-sized person can curl up and read in the sunshine. We sit down together, the sides of our bodies mostly touching. Above our heads, a potos curls through an iron trellis. We are surrounded on all sides by flowering orchids and and iris. I say, “Your flowers are beautiful”.
She smiles and replies, “They waited for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I landed this amazing gig in Taos last week, just when they were ready to bloom. When they do its one of the highlights of my year. Before I left I asked them to wait one more week, just for me.” As she says this she leans over and kisses the blue petals of an iris. “Even though I think that my plants really like me, and I take good care of them, I was certain that they would have bloomed by the time I returned. They already had buds when I left.”
[I watch her closely as she speaks, charmed by the absence of guile.]
“When I returned yesterday I expected to see dead flowers strewn everywhere. I saw none and thought something was wrong.” She squeezes my hands and continues, “But nothing was wrong. I took a nap here in the sun and when I awoke they had all bloomed.”
I spend the afternoon and evening under the serene gaze of Ska’s patient flowers.
o
Outtake
“So what are you going to do when your boss throws you away like a broken doll? Or when you get so sick of your job that you have to leave?”
“Depends on whether that happens when I’m 40, when I’m 60 or when I’m dead.”
“Say it happens tomorrow. Say your boss realizes that your job is on the wrong side of the bottom line and fires you.”
“I dunno. Probably grow my hair down to my ass and bum around Asia.”
“Any plans to grow up?”
“Maybe.”
“Have kids?”
“Maybe. With the right person.”
She catches me with her eyes as I look at her. We just look at each other. I smile at her and it works – she smiles back.
“Where do you live?
“Downtown. Beside the World Trade Center.”
“Really. It’s a bit dead down there at nights.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mind it. I walk to work. Where do you live?”
“I live right there.” She points to an apartment at the intersection of Avenue B and 6th St. “Why don’t you come up for tea?”
I’ve been here before so I know where these next steps can lead. After the terrible ending of my last relationship I’d been thinking what it would be like to come around to this place again; I wondered whether I’d hesitate; or even if I’d ever cross the line again. But decisions are tricky things because they don’t happen in theory, they become real only when they change our actions. In the event my decision requires no more effort than to go to where I want to go. I nod assent to Ska’s invitation and smile.
“Let me escort you then.” She slips her left arm through my right and guides us across Avenue B to her home.
It’s late afternoon by the time we arrive. She begins to light candles [, flames from which illuminate the evening gloom]. I look around and don’t see any electric lights. Her apartment is painted in bright earth tones; even though it is early spring, it is warm and sunny; the air is moist and flowers are blooming everywhere.
“Nice flowers. Its amazing to see so many blooms at one time.”
“They are beautiful aren’t they?” She lays out a bowl of fruits and nuts, which she hands to me as I sit down on her futon bed, which is in a couch position. This afternoon’s interrogation has exhausted me. She continues to stand, watering and doting over her plants. “Just before I left for California they were ready to bloom and I asked them to wait just one more week for me because I really had to go visit my family.” As she says this she leans over and kisses the blue petals of an iris. “Even though I think that my plants really like me, and I take good care of them, I was certain that they would have bloomed by the time I returned.” I watch her closely as she speaks, charmed by the complete absence of guile in her manner. “But they didn’t! They still hadn’t bloomed when I returned! I was so tired from my trip that – even though I arrived home at noon from Cali – I immediately had a nap.”
“BUT! When I awoke there were flowers everywhere!”
It’s impossible not to smile at the image. “Not only are your plants are very patient, they have a sense of fun.”
“They are wonderful. I love them.” I imagine I hear them reply, as they rustle in the breeze created by her desktop fan.
Ska plops down beside me on her futon and puts her right arm around me as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it is. “What would you like to do? Let’s watch a movie.”
We watch a DVD of Casablanca on her laptop computer and slowly get drunk on wine. Then we sleep with each other. In fact we make love and it is beautiful. In the morning I awaken before her and watch her breath animate the curves of her body, her face a picture of serenity in the muted tones of the early morning light. How could her flowers not have waited to bloom?