Page 50

50

The Paper Pusher

Jake

It’s the same little old lady with her pull cart. I slip into the building behind her.

“Excuse me—” she says.

I try to press past her, but she steps into me.

“I’m going to report you to the building manager for waltzing in like this! I recognize you, too. I’m going to tell them I saw you sneak in like this the other night—”

“And I’ll tell them I saw you at one a.m. on December twenty-fifth pulling that exact cart, except it weighed about fifty pounds that night, and I heard something clanking inside,” I blurt out over my shoulder before I’ve had a chance to hear myself think. Dodi’s true crime paranoia has ruined me.

I stop in my tracks. Hopefully I’m going to be coming here a lot, for a while yet, unless Cat and Dodi want to move in right away—my thoughts are all over the place. I turn around to apologize to my new neighbor, but her face has gone hard. She stands taller and straighter than a second ago, her hand firm and strong on the pull handle. Her other hand shoots out to smooth the little blanket draped over the top of her pull cart, concealing the contents, and she swirls on the spot and marches quickly away, the bumbling limp from a moment ago gone.

Definitely a serial killer , Dodi’s voice drawls in my ear as I watch her go. They’ll be moving in right away.

Dodi’s not in her apartment. I bang on her door until a girl steps out from the elevator with a Chihuahua in a Christmas sweater in her arms. “I saw them up on the roof,” she says, flustered. “I’m calling the cops.”

“What?”

But she doesn’t answer. She bolts down the hall and disappears.

The elevator takes me to the roof and spits me out into a little vestibule with a metal door. On the other side is a miserable patch of Astroturf living its worst life, a few passive-aggressive signs about leashing and pickup, and across the way—

Chaos.

Screaming, yelling, a man and a woman flailing at each other, a small dog running in frantic circles, his yapping echoing off nearby buildings—

“Get your hands off her, you son of a bitch !” A figure in a puffy purple coat lunges at a man, who lurches backward—Andrew, I realize with a jolt. I reflexively search out Laura—there, cowering behind Dodi, who has her arms spread wide and a ferocious expression on her face. Andrew dodges, and Purple Coat stumbles and catches herself on the low parapet, and when she turns, I see it’s… Cynthia ?

“Cat!” Dodi shrieks as the little red peacoat bolts from behind Laura to grab Princess.

Andrew lunges for the dog at the same moment. “He’s mine !” he snarls, red-faced, explosive. Behind him Cynthia reclaims her footing, and she’s just as deranged. This cool, inhuman HR robot with the icicle eyes lunges and flails at him from behind, hammering his arms with her fists, her chunky homemade scarf swinging madly.

I’m across the soggy Astroturf in a moment to tug Cat back as Andrew snatches Princess from her arms.

“He took my puppy!” Cat yowls venomously.

Cynthia hollers, “Give back that little girl’s dog, or so help me god—”

“He’s my dog!” Andrew shouts, twisting in disgust as Princess licks his face frantically, joyously. He’s never received this much attention from Andrew in his life.

I swing Cat over to Dodi and she crumples with relief around her daughter. Her hair is mussed and the shoulder seam of her coat is ripped. I look at Laura, and the side of her face is red. My stomach twists in half. I missed something very terrible. Laura shakes like a leaf behind Dodi, and I realize I’m shaking too. It’s finally happening. The volcano is finally blowing.

“You’ve always been like this!” Cynthia shrieks at Andrew. “Always taking what you want! And as soon as you get it, you discard it! People too! Throwing away people like they’re garbage!”

“You’re a meddling shrew, Cynthia! An HR busybody! Always sticking your nose in, thinking you have everyone’s number. You don’t know a damn thing! This is none of your business! It’s never any of your business! This is my dog!”

“This isn’t about the fucking dog!” Cynthia rages. “You always were a creep, Andrew! You were my formative creep—everyone in Human Resources has a formative creep! ‘Never again,’ we say to ourselves.” Cynthia finally notices me. “There!” she yells. “There’s another one! Another formative creep! Your formative creep, Dolores. Right? Jacob Ripper! He’s just like you, Andrew. I saw that the moment I laid eyes on him—a handsy, narcissistic egomaniac on a power trip, manipulating vulnerable women—the very spit of his father!” she cries, and a drop of spit flies out with her words.

For a second I wonder how she knows anything about Jacob, Bill’s son, my mistaken father with the glasses and the hazel eyes and the kind smile. How does she know I’m the spit of my father? And then I realize she’s not talking about him, of course. She’s talking about my real father—Andrew. She knows. She knows this thing about me that only two other people know.

Of course she does.

Cynthia fucking Cutts. I didn’t cross paths with her at one of my temp jobs. I realize now why she’s always looked down at me like some disgusting, misbehaving child. I was a child when I met her. She was someone my mom knew, someone from her years teaching in the Catholic school system. She used to come around and drink coffee at my mom’s kitchen table, speaking in euphemisms and spelling words out letter by letter to make sure I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Mom used to watch her warily, wearily, and then sag with relief when her rants about bullies and revenge and playing the long game came to an end. She’d close the door behind Cynthia, serve me a giant bowl of ice cream, and remind me, apropos of nothing, that I was the best thing that ever happened to her. Jacob Ripper ? Cynthia had asked that day back in the annex, on the prowl for workplace harassment. Jacob fucking Ripper? Spit of his father. She must have been there when it happened, the workplace affair that led to me.

“He’s a monster just like you!” Cynthia continues, jabbing her finger in my direction.

“No!” Dodi shouts, her face horrified. “Not Jake! We really are in a relationship!”

“Really?” Laura murmurs with absurd hope. Dodi presses Cat into Laura’s arms and bolts to me.

“Jake, listen to me—” She pulls my arm, but wild horses and all that.

“Keeping your pecker in your pants these days, at least?” Cynthia says, prowling menacingly side to side as Andrew backs away, step by step, until his back is against the low wall. “Not messing around with any young, naive schoolteachers rendered vulnerable in the midst of personal crisis? You swooped in so fast after Jacob left. Definitely not fathering little babies, either, and getting the mothers stealth-fired for having a child out of wedlock—oh, my pearls!” Cynthia snarls, reaching for an imaginary necklace. “What about Catholic values in Catholic schools? The institution of marriage? Blah fucking blah, you fucking hypocrite! I still have copies of the letters from my Catholic school board days—everyone’s statements, including Beth’s. The times have changed and people actually give a shit about how women are treated in the workplace now! I can bring them out anytime!”

I’m finally getting the whole story after all these fucking years. My origin story, hollered from the rooftops. Andrew looks at me with poison in his eyes. A vein throbs in his forehead and his expression turns violent. He’s a monster backed into a corner, ready to lash out and take us all down with him for our part in his humiliation—this public viewing of his nasty little secret, cracked open, wind whistling through its innards, all of us peering in.

“How dare you!” Andrew snarls at Cynthia. Princess yips excitedly and his legs run tractionless on the air in front of him.

“Did you know I went out on my own and started my own consulting business, Andrew?” Cynthia continues. “HR departments hire me to push out assholes and creeps and bullies , and now I’ve found someone to mentor, someone to pass the torch to—”

Dodi’s arms tighten around my waist from behind. “Don’t go near her,” she says in my ear. “Jake, are you listening to me?”

I’m not. I’m listening to Cynthia, who’s sounding more and more like my twisted fairy godmother with every word falling out of her mouth.

There are different ways to handle bullies. Unplug, block, gray-rock, smile blandly. Be the most unsatisfying bear to poke. Fawn, if you can stomach it, if it’s something you have to do to survive. Slink away in the night if you can manage it. Do what you have to do to get on with your life, your job, your social circle, your godawful family. Your escape is to lie awake at night fantasizing about the retribution you would dole out if only you could. Because my lived experience has taught me there’s no beating bullies like my uncle. They operate by a different rulebook. They’ll always be willing to go further than you, break more rules than you, suffer more social sanctions than you. They’ll hurt the people you care about if you try to make them think they can’t hurt you. Your righteous anger will give them life and fuel their self-victimization. They will always have the last word. There’s no winning. I’ve always had to pinch my nose and eat shit.

But the thing is, if I’ve got another fifty or sixty years, that’s an awfully long time to be eating shit.

I glance at my aunt’s scared face—my stepmother , I realize for the first time. Laura, who always picked me—how could I think otherwise—

There’s Dodi, behind me—that rip in her shoulder—

And Cat, wriggling out of Laura’s arms, grunting about her dog, watching and learning how to deal with bullies in real time—

They’re my people, my ragtag family. Not this creep who fathered me. He doesn’t get to terrorize them. And for some reason, it feels easier to stand up for them than it ever did to stand up for myself.

“Give me that fucking dog!”

Cynthia stops midmonologue and Andrew’s mouth falls open like he sat on his balls. He’s never heard me raise my voice.

I lunge at him, dragging Dodi in my wake, her fingers digging into my sides like some tree-climbing marsupial while she hisses a whisper in my ear about Cynthia being dangerous, a paper pusher who’s going to come after me, which is ridiculous, because I don’t even work there anymore.

Laura shrieks “Cat!” as she breaks from her grip, and Cynthia rounds on Andrew with renewed demands to turn over Princess—powerful, snarling, menacing as a pit bull—

Andrew retreats, his back against the low wall, and Cynthia lifts one hand—to admonish him? To hit him? To… push him?

And now I’m level with them both, and Cynthia’s hand is reaching to me instead—

“He made the list, Cynthia!” Dodi shrieks. “Get away from the wall, Jake!”

I don’t listen. I reach out to grab Princess from Andrew’s arms—

And then the world buckles—or at least this small part of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The earth rumbles and movement comes from the left, like someone has picked up the roof by one corner and shaken it, sending a broad, shallow ripple across the whole thing, like they’re trying to flick sand off a beach towel. The ripple reaches us, and Dodi topples into me, sending me forward like a domino. My hand collides with Andrew’s chest and the wall catches him about three inches below his center of gravity, sending him backward in slow motion, the only sound to break the horrified silence on the roof coming from Princess, still yipping joyfully in his arms—

“Tinkerballs!” Cat shrieks, running to the wall.

“Cat!” Dodi cries.

I don’t even think. I intercept Cat before she hurls herself over the edge. I hoist her up into my arms and safety, but she shoves one hand right in my face for leverage so she can crane backward and peer over the edge.

“He’s all right!” she hollers. “Look! He’s all right!”

I shake her hand out of my face and glance over. Andrew is emphatically not all right. If Laura wants to do an open casket, she has her work cut out for her. But Princess landed on a squishy body, and he’s fine. He twirls in a tight circle, panting, tongue hanging out, ass wagging, wondering where on earth we all disappeared to.

When I turn around, Laura stands frozen by the parapet, her hands clasped over her mouth. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. Dodi is on all fours on the Astroturf behind me, dog urine and thawed snow seeping into the knees of her pants. And Cynthia stands still as a column, her eyes on me.

We’re all silent for a minute, our breath ragged, our hearts beating in our ears. Shaky, wild-eyed, shell-shocked. I stare at my hand. I spy a murder weapon.

In the distance a siren wails, and I see a flash of police officers, handcuffs, courtrooms. Voluntary manslaughter, Grant’s idiotic voice chirps excitedly in my ear. But there was an altercation beforehand. I’d been screaming at him—I’d backed him up against the parapet. Third degree murder— Second, depending on witness testimony , Grant says again, and I stare at Cynthia. This woman who looks at me like I’m the worst sort of monster—it comes down to what she has to say.

And I watch as Cynthia and Laura and Dodi exchange long glances, and there’s something there…a space, a silence, an understanding between three women on a roof after a close call with a dangerous psycho, the sort of psycho women have to deal with all the time—at home, at work—by smiling and turning the other cheek, or fleeing, or—if you’re fierce and strong like Dodi and Cynthia—standing your ground, taking matters into your own hands, pushing back— pushing —

Dodi called her a paper pusher. But no, she didn’t say a paper pusher—

I realize something awful about Cynthia, the same moment she sees something redeeming in me.

“What a horrible accident,” Cynthia says without inflection.

I’m like a parade inflatable snagged on a lamppost. I deflate, go limp. Cat wriggles from my lax arms, and Dodi takes her, mutely, clumsily. She squeezes Cat so tight I hear joints pop. I drop to my knees and reach out for Laura, who falls to the turf next to us, and I put my arms around them all.