eating at the chrome tables inside. Jane and I walked around to the rear of the restaurant and took a spot at the railing between two fishermen. It was black on the ocean, the night deeper and darker than it ever got inland, and I stared into the blackness, seeing only the lone bobbing light of a boat on the water. I put my arm around Jane and turned around to face the shore, leaning my back against the metal railing. Above Newport, the sky was orangish, a dome of illumination from the buildings and the cars that kept the real night away. The sound of the waves was muffled, a distant breaking.
In the movie
That was how I felt with Jane, on the pier.
Happy.
We stood there for a while, saying nothing, enjoying the night, enjoying just being together. Along the coast, we could see all the way to Laguna Beach.
“I’d like to live by the beach,” Jane said. “I love the sound of the water.”
“Which beach?”
“Laguna.”
I nodded. It was a pipe dream — there was no way in hell either of us would ever earn enough money to buy beachfront property in Southern California — but it was something to strive for.
Jane shivered, drawing closer to me.
“It’s getting cold,” I said, putting an arm around her. “You want to head back?”
She shook her head. “Let’s just stay here for a while. Like this.”
“Okay.” I pulled her closer, held her tight, and we stared into the night toward the twinkling lights of Laguna, beckoning to us across the water and the darkness.
Four
We were still living in our small apartment near UC Brea, but I wanted to move. We could afford it now, and I didn’t want to deal with the constant flood of drunken fraternity boys who paraded down our street on their way to or from this week’s keg party. But Jane said she wanted to stay. She liked our apartment, and it was convenient for her since it was close to both the campus and the Little Kiddie Day Care Center, where she worked.
“Besides,” she said, “what if you get laid off or something? We could still survive here. I could afford to pay the rent until you found another job.”
That was my opening. That was my chance. I should’ve told her then and there, I should’ve told her that I hated my job, that I’d made a mistake by taking it and wanted to quit and look for another position.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t say anything.
I don’t know why. It wasn’t like she would’ve jumped down my throat. She might have tried to argue me out of it, but ultimately she would’ve understood. I could have walked away clean, no harm, no foul, and everything would have been over and done with.
I couldn’t do it, though. I didn’t have any work-ethic phobia about quitting, I had no loyalty to some abstract ideal, but as much as I despised my job, as unqualified as I seemed to be for my position, as out of place as I felt among my coworkers, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was
And I said nothing.
Jane’s mom dropped by to see us on Saturday morning, and I tried to pretend that I was busy when she came over, hiding in the bedroom and tinkering with a broken sewing machine that had been given to Jane by one of her friends. I had never much liked Jane’s mom, and she had never liked me. We hadn’t seen her since I’d gotten my job, although Jane had told her about it, and while she pretended to be happy that I had finally found full-time work, I could tell she was secretly annoyed that there would be one less thing she could criticize me for and harp on Jane about.
Georgia — or George as she liked to be called — was part of a dying breed, one of the last of the martini moms, those hard and hard-drinking women who had been so prevalent in the suburbia of my childhood, those gravel-voiced, raucous women who always seemed to adopt the nicknames of men: Jimmy, Gerry, Willie, Phil. It frightened me a little to know that this was Jane’s mother, because I always thought that, in regard to women, you could tell how a daughter was going to turn out by looking at the mother. And I had to admit that I did see some of George in Jane. But there was no hardness in Jane. She was softer, kinder, prettier than her mother, and the differences between the two were pronounced enough that I knew history would not repeat itself.
I made a lot of noise, working on the sewing machine, purposely trying to drown out words that I knew I would not want to hear, but in between the pounding and scraping, I could still hear George’s alcohol-ravaged voice from the kitchen: “…he’s still a nobody…” and “…gutless nothing…” and “…loser…”
I did not come out of the bedroom until she was gone.
“Mom’s real excited about your job,” Jane said, taking my hand.
I nodded. “Yeah. I heard.”
She looked into my eyes, smiled. “Well, I am.”
I kissed her. “That’s good enough for me.”
At work, Stewart’s smug condescension gave way to a more direct disdain. Something had changed. I didn’t know what it was, whether I’d done something to piss him off or whether it was something that had happened in his personal life, but his attitude toward me became markedly different. The surface politeness was gone, and now there was only undisguised hostility.
Instead of calling me into his office each Monday to give me the week’s assignments, Stewart began leaving work on my desk, attaching notes that explained what I was supposed to do. Often, the notes were incomplete or cryptically vague, and though I could usually figure out the gist of the assignment, sometimes I had no idea what he wanted at all.
One morning, I found a batch of ancient computer manuals piled on my desk. As far as I could tell, the manuals explained how to utilize a type of keyboard and terminal that Automated Interface did not possess. Stewart’s Post-It note said only: “Revise.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to revise, so I picked up the top manual and the note and carried them over to Stewart’s office. He was not there, but I could hear his voice and I found him talking with Albert Connor, one of the programmers, about an action movie he’d seen over the weekend. I stood, waiting. Connor kept looking at me, obviously trying to hint to Stewart that I wanted to see him, but Stewart continued to describe the movie, slowly and in detail, purposely ignoring my presence.
Finally, I cleared my throat. It was a soft sound, polite, tentative, quiet, but the supervisor whirled on me as if I had just yelled an obscenity. “Will you stop interrupting me when I’m talking? For Christ’s sake, can’t you see I’m busy?”
I took a step backward. “I just needed — ”
“You just need to shut up. I’m tired of you, Jones. I’m tired of your shit. Your probation period’s not over yet, you know. You can be let go without cause.” He glared at me. “Do you understand?”
I understood what he was saying. But I also understood that he was bluffing. Neither he nor Banks had as much control over me as they wanted me to believe. If what they tried to make me believe was true, I would’ve been fired weeks ago. Or, more likely, I never would’ve been hired at all. Someone above them was calling the shots, and they were hamstrung. They could rant and rave and piss and moan, but when push came to shove, they couldn’t do diddly.
Maybe that was why Stewart had been riding me so hard lately.
I stood my ground. “I just wanted to know what I was supposed to revise. I couldn’t tell from the
