Purity by Jonathan Franzen Page B

you’re hostile.” He seemed pleased with his explanation, pleased with his own good nature, not to mention his good looks. “You could have California’s Most Hostile Employee of the Year Award.”
    â€œSo it was never going to be anything but flirting.”
    â€œOf course not. I’m happily married, this is an office, there are rules.”
    â€œSo in other words I’m nothing to you except your worst employee.”
    â€œWe can talk about a new position for you in the morning.”
    She saw that all she’d done by confronting him was ruin the long-running game with him, the game that had made her work here halfway bearable. Earlier in the day, she’d thought she couldn’t feel more alone than she already did, but now she saw that she could.
    â€œThis is going to sound crazy,” she said, with a catch in her throat. “But could you possibly ask your wife to go to the game tonight? Could you possibly take me to dinner and give me some advice?”
    â€œOrdinarily, yes. But my wife has other plans. I’m already late. Why don’t you go home and come back in the morning?”
    She shook her head. “I really, really, really need a friend right now.”
    â€œI’m so sorry. But I can’t help you.”
    â€œClearly.”
    â€œI don’t know what happened to you, but maybe you should go home and see your mother for a few days. Come back on Monday and we’ll talk.”
    Igor’s phone rang, and while he took the call she sat with her head bowed, envying the wife to whom he was apologizing for being late. When he was finished, she could feel him hesitating behind her shoulder, as if weighing whether to lay a hand on it. He apparently decided against it.
    When he was gone, she returned to her cubicle and typed out a letter of resignation. She checked her texts and emails, but there was nothing from either Stephen or Andreas Wolf, and so she dialed her mother’s number and left a message, telling her that she was coming to Felton a day early.
    THURSDAY
    The Oakland bus station was a mile-and-a-half walk from her friend Samantha’s apartment. By the time Pip got there, wearing her knapsack and carrying, in a roller-skate box that she’d borrowed from Samantha, the vegan olallieberry cake that she’d spent the morning making, she needed to pee. The door to the ladies’ room was blocked, however, by a cornrowed girl her own age, an addict and/or prostitute and/or crazy person, who shook her head emphatically when Pip tried to get past her.
    â€œCan’t I quickly pee?”
    â€œYou just gonna have to wait.”
    â€œLike, how long, though?”
    â€œLong as it takes.”
    â€œTakes for what? I won’t look at anything. I just want to pee.”
    â€œWhat’s in the box?” the girl demanded. “Those skates?”
    Pip boarded the Santa Cruz bus with a full bladder. It went without saying that the bathroom at the back was out of order. Apparently it was not enough that her entire life was in crisis: all the way to San Jose, if not to Santa Cruz, she would have to worry about wetting herself.
    Control pee , she told herself. Control-P . As a teenager, when she was living in Felton and going to school in Santa Cruz, all her friends had owned Apple computers, but the laptop her mother had bought her was a cheap, generic PC from OfficeMax, and what she’d typed on it, when she needed to print, was Control-P. Printing, like peeing, was evidently a thing you needed to do. “I need to print,” the people at Renewable Solutions were always saying. This exact, strange phrase: I need to print. Need to P. Need to control pee  … The thought struck her as good; she prided herself on having thoughts like this; and yet it went around in circles without leading anywhere. At the end of the day (people at Renewable Solutions were always saying “at the end of the day”), she still