A minute later those girls would come through the glass doors in their cashmere sweaters and leather booties to tip the Mexican delivery guy, and while I watched the delivery guy struggle to take their two dollars, his arms weighed down by a dozen other bags of gourmet salads, I would think: despite my B.A. Whereas I found my passion waning every day while I sat behind a reception desk at Putnam Commercial Real Estate, considering myself too good for the corporate world while working at the bottom of it, sending interoffice messages to beautifully dressed people, some girls my age, to let them know their gourmet salads were here. Every acting student dreamed of being beyond the classes, but the others grew more passionate with each one, addicted, the way Julie was addicted to her comic book. Because it was a little worrisome just how much I wanted time to hurry up. Only this daydream brought me little pleasure. What could I say to her? Come on, there had to be something, she couldn’t be perfect… And then I realized I had my answer: I was a person who gave mean-spirited compliments. That didn’t make her a bitch, but what the fuck? Was I so much more pathetic than her that I should evoke pity? I wanted Julie to experience getting a pity compliment. No, the truth was Julie probably gave me the fake compliment to be nice, to cheer me up. Though I had to give her some credit, didn’t I? For lending me a blouse she herself hadn’t yet worn, a blouse that cost more than a day’s wage at her hated temp job? Would I have been so generous? What if the real reason why I distrusted Julie’s compliments was because I was a person who gave mean-spirited compliments? Was that possible? God, I would hate myself if I did. Julie’s compliments, they always tasted like taffy apples spiked with razors. I took a sip of wine, thinking, Why didn’t she say “that blouse”? Was it because she wanted to conjure an image of her in the blue sleeveless silk? Her smooth, knobby shoulders, the loose satin draping from her pert breasts? My arms and boobs were a bit much for such flimsiness. In that final email, Julie had divulged the address of the apartment with a warning that I was only moving in *on probation*, that she would tell me at the end of the month if she thought we were “simpatico.” Rolled up in my clammy hands had been a printout of the last email in a long chain that began with a Craigslist ad: ROOMIE WANTED-M or F-FOR KILLER RR APT. In a flash, I felt again the fear I had sitting in the regional mini-jet, staring through the porthole at my mother, manically waving goodbye from the window of the county airport’s one building. How could anybody not love Julie? And not be proud if she loved you? As I laid my hands on her shoulders, I caught myself wondering, not for the first time: But why exactly did she like me so much? But then, as always, I shoved that thought away with an angry: Well, why the hell shouldn’t she? I was special too, right? Brave! She had moved here from Cincinnati, no New York City, but a lot more similar than 758-person Cold Lake.
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