here,” I said, trying to sound dreamy.
“You can’t live here,” she said. “There’s nothing here. No work.”
“I could telecommute.”
Silence from Erin.
“If you were here,” I started, then dropped the thought.
She gave me a fake smile. I soaked up every ounce of it.
When I met Erin I was working at a statistics-processing firm, a small shop founded by a one-time major league pitcher named Dean Denny. He was a side-armer, goofy and mustachioed. After retiring at thirty-two, he’d run for office, lost, spent ten years as a lobbyist for everyone from Exxon to Greenpeace, then started the American Institute for Statistical Studies. The firm was located in a converted Victorian in Alexandria, catering to the nonprofits in D.C., some federal agencies, and those who wanted influence at either or both. The other two staff members were Michael and Derek, Michael being Dean’s son and Derek being Michael’s old friend and the former personal assistant to Alan Simpson, senator of Wyoming.
Two months after meeting Erin I secured a job for her at the AISS. I was afraid she’d hate Michael and Derek, that they would drive her away. For their own amusement, they had recently removed one letter from the firm’s name and had made business cards with A.S.S. on them. They were chucklers, they were assholes. They called me The Turtle.
Then Turtle-man.
Then Yertle.
Then Yentl. Then Lentil.
Finally they went back to Turtle.
They were funny and loyal. They laughed about Dockers but then wore pants shockingly close to Dockers. Sometimes they’d wear baseball caps to work, the bill carefully bent in an upside-down grin, the edges frayed. Their footwear was always perfect—old Nike hiker’s low-tops in earth tones, or white bucks flawlessly faded and scuffed. They dressed the way certain Cape Coddish catalogs tried to dress their models, but these two were better at it, effortless about it, tucking one side of their shirts in just so, their clothes worn in but never threadbare—
It sounds as though I was paying attention to their wardrobe but I don’t remember it that way. You know these men. They’re fine people, they know right from wrong. I had a strong feeling that, in a pinch, they would do more for me than I would for them. It was more in their blood; they were not people who would think twice.
The American Institute for Statistical Studies was the only one of its kind on the East Coast and therefore we were the best at what we did. We were the people who took the statistics— how many people injured on the job each year, how many boys fondled by priests every decade, how many cats declawed in urban areas every week, anything—and, among other services, extrapolated those numbers into the frequency per day, per hour, minute, whatever seemed most grievous. We knew all the pertinent figures—525,600 minutes in a year, 31,536,000 seconds—and so could always figure out how to make whatever issue or trend seem as menacing as possible. Three million squirrels poisoned by processed food a year is one thing, but if the public knows that one such squirrel dies every twelve seconds, well then, the reasoning goes, you have a populace motivated to act.
Given our physical proximity, the four of us knew an inordinate amount about each other. We could hear, if we chose to listen, every word spoken by any of the others, on the phone or otherwise. We quickly became protective of one another but especially of Erin, who we pretended needed our shielding. She had been raised as an only child outside of Asheville—she had the faintest accent—and now she felt, she often said, as if she’d inherited three brothers. When she first said that, after we’d been working together for a few months, we three coveted it, being thought of as her brothers—it prompted Derek, at least, to start lifting weights. But it made anyone’s romantic pursuit of Erin seem against nature or God. We’d all had, before that point,
“You can’t live here,” she said. “There’s nothing here. No work.”
“I could telecommute.”
Silence from Erin.
“If you were here,” I started, then dropped the thought.
She gave me a fake smile. I soaked up every ounce of it.
When I met Erin I was working at a statistics-processing firm, a small shop founded by a one-time major league pitcher named Dean Denny. He was a side-armer, goofy and mustachioed. After retiring at thirty-two, he’d run for office, lost, spent ten years as a lobbyist for everyone from Exxon to Greenpeace, then started the American Institute for Statistical Studies. The firm was located in a converted Victorian in Alexandria, catering to the nonprofits in D.C., some federal agencies, and those who wanted influence at either or both. The other two staff members were Michael and Derek, Michael being Dean’s son and Derek being Michael’s old friend and the former personal assistant to Alan Simpson, senator of Wyoming.
Two months after meeting Erin I secured a job for her at the AISS. I was afraid she’d hate Michael and Derek, that they would drive her away. For their own amusement, they had recently removed one letter from the firm’s name and had made business cards with A.S.S. on them. They were chucklers, they were assholes. They called me The Turtle.
Then Turtle-man.
Then Yertle.
Then Yentl. Then Lentil.
Finally they went back to Turtle.
They were funny and loyal. They laughed about Dockers but then wore pants shockingly close to Dockers. Sometimes they’d wear baseball caps to work, the bill carefully bent in an upside-down grin, the edges frayed. Their footwear was always perfect—old Nike hiker’s low-tops in earth tones, or white bucks flawlessly faded and scuffed. They dressed the way certain Cape Coddish catalogs tried to dress their models, but these two were better at it, effortless about it, tucking one side of their shirts in just so, their clothes worn in but never threadbare—
It sounds as though I was paying attention to their wardrobe but I don’t remember it that way. You know these men. They’re fine people, they know right from wrong. I had a strong feeling that, in a pinch, they would do more for me than I would for them. It was more in their blood; they were not people who would think twice.
The American Institute for Statistical Studies was the only one of its kind on the East Coast and therefore we were the best at what we did. We were the people who took the statistics— how many people injured on the job each year, how many boys fondled by priests every decade, how many cats declawed in urban areas every week, anything—and, among other services, extrapolated those numbers into the frequency per day, per hour, minute, whatever seemed most grievous. We knew all the pertinent figures—525,600 minutes in a year, 31,536,000 seconds—and so could always figure out how to make whatever issue or trend seem as menacing as possible. Three million squirrels poisoned by processed food a year is one thing, but if the public knows that one such squirrel dies every twelve seconds, well then, the reasoning goes, you have a populace motivated to act.
Given our physical proximity, the four of us knew an inordinate amount about each other. We could hear, if we chose to listen, every word spoken by any of the others, on the phone or otherwise. We quickly became protective of one another but especially of Erin, who we pretended needed our shielding. She had been raised as an only child outside of Asheville—she had the faintest accent—and now she felt, she often said, as if she’d inherited three brothers. When she first said that, after we’d been working together for a few months, we three coveted it, being thought of as her brothers—it prompted Derek, at least, to start lifting weights. But it made anyone’s romantic pursuit of Erin seem against nature or God. We’d all had, before that point,
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