February 6

2/6

I was depressed two nights ago. I won't tell you why I was depressed, except that it involved men with whom I was not in love. When I am depressed, talking to Christopher is the only thing that can make me feel any better. So I called him.

I told him why I was depressed. He helped me see the whole situation as the farce it was, and we laughed. Then I asked him what he had done that day, and he said he was getting ready to move to Chicago on Monday.

I have never been punched in the solar plexus but I don't think it would feel much different that how I felt in that moment. When I had my breath back, I managed to say, “Wow! Great! So sudden!" He had told me he was going to Chicago to attend his best friend's wedding in the spring, but he never hinted he would leave so soon.

“Yeah, it's the most sudden move of my life,” he said, with some pride.

We talked about stuff and things for a few hours and then at one the conversation came around to Chicago again. My throat didn't feel like it would let me talk much longer, so I tried to street the conversation to a close.

“Well, I'd say I'll miss you, but it'll be just the same in the end,” I said. I meant that we'd still be hours and hours apart, unable to see each other beyond pixelated buffering versions on a screen, unable to touch each other's hands or feel each other's skin. We'd have exactly the same amount of contact.

“Say it anyway,” he said. But I couldn't. “I'll miss you,” he said.

“What is there to miss?”

“Why do you have to ask that?”

“I don't think I'll ever see you again,” I said.

“We can still Skype.”

“No, I don't want to Skype you anymore. It'll just make me sad.”

“Don't say that. We'll see each other again.”

“In ten years, right?” I remembered what he said about settling down. “You'll have long hair down your back. And you'll finally be able to grow a beard.”

He laughed his open laugh and I don't remember what nonsense we said after that but I remember that my throat was so tight by the end of it that I could barely say goodbye when I hung up. I thought I would never be able to fall asleep, but bodies always surprise you and I woke up to the red sun over Prospect Hill as usual. And moving was difficult but I washed and dressed and studied Mary Barton until it was time to go to class.

“Write me a postcard from Chicago,” I texted him afterward.

“You'll hate my handwriting. I write like a right-handed ten year old writing with his left hand.”

“I wouldn't hate anything from you.”

“Ok, but I warned you.” When I finished bundling up to face 

Massachusetts winter he sent another: “You're making me regret leaving New York. I can't wait ten years!” And another: “But if I have to, I will, for you.”

Wax-sealed parchment envelopes, delicate notepaper scented with rosewater – they are overrated. I don't think any expensive stationery could have made me feel more than those green rounded boxes on my screen did. “Just know that I waited 20 years to meet you and if I live another 20 I can wait that long again,” I wrote.

“First, I want to talk to you tonight,” he responded. “Second, I'm going into the subway right now, so I won't be able to text for 30 minutes." 30 minutes later: “Third, I can't write anything sufficient to what I feel, but yes – 10, 20 years I can wait but if I had full control over when I can see you next, it would be in 2 seconds.”

I had to see him. I had to touch him. I had to run my cold anemic fingers over the gnarled pneumonia surgery scars on his ribcage. But I knew I couldn't, so I had to call him instead. I asked him when he was free.

“For you?” he wrote. “Always.”

end of field book 1

February 1

In the end my bad wifi here in the boondocks of the campus made streaming the movie pretty impossible, so instead we talked. And we've talked every night since then, deeper and deeper into the morning. Last night we didn't stop until two, by which point I had learned that he fell into a bad place after his parents' divorce and almost got involved with a Chicano gang but chickened out of their initiation rite, which involved beating someone up and fucking a girl. He was eleven years old. And he had got me to admit that all my goals are about escape. He drank white wine this time.

Now that I know him better I understand that these conversations are just his way. He has no more interest in me than he does in any other thinking human being, and that's fine. But I dreamed about him after I finally fell asleep last night, the first time I've dreamed about a real person since I was little. I dreamed he helped me pack up my things and move out of this room I haven't left in three days.  

January 28

1/28

Tonight Filipina Club met in the “lounge” - an unused club office crammed with discarded plush furniture and bookshelves. There was a new member, a really pretty half-Filipino sophomore named Bella, so Chair Casey had us go around and say our names and “one good thing that happened that day.” I couldn't think of anything, so Tania nudged me and said, “You got a text, didn't you?”

I had. Christopher had acquired a copy of Spike Jonze's movie Her, which is still in theaters, in some mildly sketchy way. He asked me if I wanted to watch it with him via Livestream. The only Spike Jonze movie I've ever seen is Where the Wild Things Are, which gave me the impression that his stuff is hipster conceit and not much else, but I said I would. We set the date for tomorrow. “Our first movie,” he wrote.

I live a strange life.

January 27

1/27

I asked Rosa to brunch today because I had to talk to someone about the conversations I've been having with Christopher, because I've never talked to anyone like that before. But when I brought him up it was clear she didn't really want to hear about him, so we discussed classes and women in the workforce for an hour while I worked through an enormous plate of pineapple and cottage cheese.

In the evening Christopher sent me a picture of a pretty outdoor skating rink somewhere in Brooklyn. “If it's still cold and I'm still here when you come down from college, I'll take you skating,” he said. If he's still there. This is what it feels like to be one of those forlorn farmer's daughters in cowboy TV shows - “When will I see you again, [hero's name]?” But if she's just an extra, far from the payscale that would allow for multiple-episode appearances. Oh, well.

January 26

1/26

We Skyped again tonight, this time for more than three hours. The topic of the evening was transience. Christopher insisted that he'd ask the questions this time. I rebuffed some of them, but answered most, and it was strange to hear myself telling him thoughts I've never admitted to anyone but these notebooks.

Still I managed to keep him talking the majority of the time. Right before going to college and taking on the backbreaking loans that will cripple me for the rest of my life, I convinced myself that the untethered lifestyle I've always wanted was just a teenage fantasy, immature and impossible. I wanted to know what it was like to have proven that it is possible. It sounded something like a sickness.

“I can't stay in one place for more than eight months,” he said. “I think that's my limit. Eight months and I start getting to this really low place. That's how long I could work at the country club. And I'm coming up to that limit here in New York.”

I calculated and realized that the limit would be over before my spring break. “Where are you headed next?” I asked casually, although I felt like I was sinking.

“Denver,” he said. He didn't have to think that time. He was going to the University of Colorado to do his Master's in Engineering.

“Denver? Why would you want to go from New York to Denver? I heard it's really boring.”

“I heard it's great.”

“You know, there's one thing about your style of transience I don't like,” I said. “My desire for transience comes from a desire to avoid close relationships. But you, you have this desire to get deeply involved with everyone you meet. You get people attached to you, tied to you. And when you pull away, those ties break. And that hurts people.”

“I'm just not an exclusive person. I have like a million best friends. I don't want to hurt people.”

“You may not want to, but you do. What you're doing, really, is collecting people, like Pokemon cards.” I remembered the fan of business cards at Goldman-Sachs. I felt collected.

“I don't know. Maybe you're right. Do I really make meaningful connections with any of those people?” He sipped thoughtfully. 

“You know, your questions … you make me think about myself like I've never thought about myself before.”

“Yeah, you do the same for me.”

"As long as I make you feel something," he said.

January 25

1/25

This evening, after dinner in town with my increasingly-distant former roommate, I went to my room and painted my face for the camera – i.e. whorishly as possible. Eyeshadow, two kinds of mascara, contouring, the works. It brought back memories. I spent much of the last year I was jailbait scamming shady Tunisians on Bazoocam, so I'm probably more confident in front of a webcam than I am anywhere else.

I worked on my Doctor Faustus notes until Christopher came online. He asked me if I wanted to do video or voice call. My heart was racing illogically and I could have opted out right then, but I wasn't going to waste my mascara. He is just another Tunisian out to see minou, I told myself. So, “Here goes,” he messaged, and a second later his face spread across my screen, only slightly worse for the buffering.

“Now tell me about Barcelona,” I said. “I have an hour before I have to go out.”

So he poured some dark red wine into a coffee mug, and then he told me. He told me about the discotheques where he danced in clouds of smoke until escaping bleary-headed to the street in full daylight (on good nights) or waking up in a pool of vomit in an alley full of prostitutes (on worse ones). He told me about taking trains with his friends everywhere they could think of: France, Italy, Germany, so much traveling he became jaded with the concept.

“I don't want to travel,” he said. “You know, see the sights, eat the food, all that. That's not real. What I want to do is live. I want to experience everything every place has to offer, the underground, the dirt, get to know it in a way you can't from a package tour deal.”

“Yes,” I kept saying, “that's exactly what I've always thought.” But my favorite story was the one he told me about the castells at the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy in September.

The castells are human castles, he said, stories-high piles of people standing on each other's shoulders. Each neighborhood has their own team, and they compete to see who can build the highest tower. Of course, you need a good base to hold up that structure, said Christian the architect, so everyone in the crowd gets involved. They press up together, one solid mass of flesh, and help each team in turn as they build their tower. “Everyone was so emotionally involved,” he said, “like a hive mind. It was one of the best experiences of my life.”

I had set the hour limit at Marie Claire's advice, but an hour passed before I noticed, and then another. He tried to get some stories from me, and I told him a few from my graduation trip in Paris, but for the most part I asked questions. He always thought before he answered, sipping at the wine in his mug, and then gave me long, difficult responses, decorated with gestures of his beautiful hands.

Almost three hours had passed before I decided my imaginary task really could not wait any longer and I said I had to sign off.

“But we didn't even start talking about transience,” he said, “and it was just me talking the whole time. I feel like you know a lot more about me than I know about you now.”

I asked him for some final thoughts, like they taught me in tenth-grade Journalism. He thought as usual, then said, “Take every opportunity you can get, and never have regrets, and don't try to be too happy.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Until next time.”

“Yes. Until next time,” he repeated, with an emphasis that made the stock phrase seem meaningful and important.

Then I went to bed.

January 24

1/24

Last night I had the idea that Christopher wouldn't contact me for a while because our conversation got too deep last night. But just like clockwork he sent me a text a few minutes past nine today. I'm part of his schedule now – he drinks cheap wine and chats with me while browsing Facebook because he has no friends in Queens. I'm just like a “Talk to a Virtual Co-Ed” Smartphone app. Except I have feelings.

Christopher is a normal healthy human male who enjoys making friends and being social – the complete opposite of my experience. Trying to deal with him with nothing but Marie Claire for help is like being stuck in a foreign country with no knowledge of the language except a page torn from a WWI phrasebook. The page about something archaic and useless, like sending telegrams.

Anyway, we're set to Skype tomorrow. He said he wouldn't tell his Barcelona stories via text.

January 23

1/23

Today is the first day of my twenty-something life. My last few days of teenagedom were pretty good. No spring transfers were tempted by my eccentric roommate agreement, so I still have my big beautiful double all to myself. And every night Christopher texts me between nine thirty and eleven. I make sure never to text him first and to wait at least twenty minutes to reply and to be the one to end the conversation, just as that one article in Marie Claire advised.

One thing I got wrong: classes do not help distract me from thoughts of him. I'm sure I would be done reading Mary Barton by now if my mind didn't wander in his direction every time the story gets mildly romantic. Not that I need a romantic background to think of him – nowhere am I more distracted than in Hydrology class, talking about groundwater and pipes.

And all this for a guy who is, in the end, probably gay. I looked through all 800-odd of his Facebook pictures like the psycho I am trying to find any hint of a girlfriend (or a boyfriend, as the case may be). I didn't find anything, but I did find out that the quiet cool-guy image I originally had of him is totally wrong. His Facebook page is six years of crossdressing and crazy parties and unfortunate mustaches. Even that couldn't shake him from my mind, as much as I wanted it to. If that stupid chicken suit from Halloween 2008 starts figuring into my sexual fantasies I'm going to have to strangle something.

This evening, after spending the afternoon trying to get through Mary Barton and Seneca's Oedipus without letting my mind wander to certain other fictions, I went to the Wilder common room to have dinner with Filipina Club. When I arrived they were laying out plastic trays of Chinese delivery on the coffee table, and everything looked so much like the night I first saw Christopher that I half expected him to see him come through the door carrying a Dutch oven of peanut-free kare-kare.

I was glad to see them all again, especially Rosa, because I like her best but also because she's the only other person on this campus who knows Christopher. In return for the chocolate ganache cake I had bought for her birthday last semester, Rosa had brought me an intensely rich chocolate cheesecake. They sang Happy Birthday to me and I made a wish and pretended there were candles on top to blow out. Then Rosa gave me two packages prettily wrapped in cream-colored tissue paper and twine. Inside was a leaf-printed notebook and a set of colored pencils. 

While everyone who wasn't on a diet worked on crumbly slices of cheesecake, I decided I was close enough to Rosa now to ask her a personal question.

“Camille,” I said, “Is Christian gay?”

She didn't miss a beat before saying “I have no idea. I think he's just Southern.”

Of course everyone else had to know what was going on then. I tried to tell them the whole story but it came out all wrong, and there wasn't much to tell anyway. I was so nervous my shaking hands almost sloshed my Diet Coke into my lap.

I was feeling pretty lame by the time I got back to my room. I collapsed into bed and lay there for a while, staring at the yellow circles the streetlamps cast on snow-covered Prospect Hill, until it was nine-thirty and Christopher texted me as usual.

I've never had a stranger text conversation, or a longer one – it lasted over four hours. Christopher had drunk half a bottle of malbec and woken up in a dreaming mood. He asked me about silly things first, cooking and birthday presents, but as the night deepened the subjects did too. He started talking about how he wants to spend his life, about jobs and settling down.

“Would you rather spend the rest of your life a transient?” I asked him. “Personally, I would.” That was true, although it was the first time I had admitted it since starting my trudging path towards a career in geologic consulting last year.

“Yes,” he said. “That's what I really want to do.” And we kept writing about that back and forth and each of his messages was like my own soul echoing back.

At half-past one he wrote “This conversation has gone too far for phones. Do you have video chat?”

Then I was forced back into the reality of my body, of my unmade face and undone hair, and I lied and said I didn't and that I had to go to bed. “Then I'll save it for later,” he wrote, and although it went against Marie Claire I said I was looking forward to it. He wished me good night, which was the first time that happened – usually I just fall asleep in the middle of a conversation and his last text is some question. 

January 17

1/17

I remember now why I decided to go to a women's college. Heterosexual infatuation is a crippling, consuming disease. No matter what I do, I can't get Christian out of my head. I've tried everything. Last night I even tried asking him out, sort of.

When Teresa visited Radcliffe in December, she spent most of the time talking not about charity and the struggle of rural Filipinos but about dating. Tania and Jessica were really into that topic, but I mostly tuned it out and ate as many slices of novelty sushi rolls as I could fit into my stomach. There is one thing Teresa said that I remember, though: “If you see someone you're interested in across a room, you have to go up to him and tell him. You'll never find out where that could go unless you try.” So I did.

I looked at the Met's season calendar and saw that Jonas Kaufmann, their curliest-haired tenor, would be starring in Werther while I'm home for spring break. I texted Christopher to ask him if he'd be interested in “taking advantage of my student discount” to see it.

Two minutes later I got a response: “Pardon my French, but hell yeah! I would love to see that with you!” Then we had a strange conversation about opera and passion until I fell asleep quite pleased with myself.

That was fun, but it really didn't help. I still can't get him out of my head. At least I'll be heading back to school in a few days so I'll have classes to distract me. 

January 14

1/14

I didn't go to work yesterday. I stayed up all night trying to finish my homework (I woke up two hours after finishing that last entry) and getting sidetracked by this stupid thought I can't get out of my head. I felt terrible in the morning, but I thought I might go to work anyway - until I tried to pull on what used to be my loosest pair of jeans and found I couldn't get them over my ass. That was the real reason I didn't go to work, not the sleepiness. I felt disgusting. I spent nearly a year maintaining my goal weight and living a lifestyle where no one ever got to look at me, and then I have to gain it all back right before I'm thrown into a room with the most attractive person I've ever met and no competition except those infinite mirrors reflecting my own fat face (and Teresa, but that's different).

Anyway, I spent a lot of the day finishing my assignments. I drew some very pretty diagrams in Photoshop, with gradients and textures and all those tacky things Teresa likes. And I wrote her an email saying I was very sorry but that I had gone into anaphylaxis after a dinner out with my parents and I wasn't even well enough to talk on the phone. That kind of BS only works once, so I may as well have used it.

The rest of the time I lay in bed and thought about Christopher. I didn't know I was capable of wanting someone as much as I wanted him. Especially not a man - a Filipino man. Two years in exclusively female society at Radcliffe had almost convinced me I could settle for the same sex.

While I was in the throes of one of these sick dozes, trying to think about anything other than him, my phone vibrated with a text. Of course it was Christopher, asking if I was feeling ok. I put my phone on silent and my pillow over my head.

All throughout my commute today I couldn't stop thinking about Christopher and what I would do when I saw him. I had longer to think than usual because the thaw had caused a water main break that was causing delays and cancellations all over the subway system, and I arrived at the apartment more than half an hour late. He opened the door for me.

“Hey,” he said. “You're back!”

To my surprise I had no trouble smiling at him and saying “It's good to be back.”

I was also surprised to see how genuinely concerned everyone seemed about my well-being. Teresa said she worried that I'd been hospitalized. Christopher was especially sympathetic because he's allergic to peanuts and asthmatic, too – and I wouldn't have learned that if I hadn't pulled that ruse, so there!

For lunch Teresa handed me her card again and sent me to the gourmet grocery on the corner with an order for soup, salad, and as many of those free packets of muscovado sugar from the coffee station as I could fit into a Ziploc bag she gave me. It was my first traditional intern errand. “If anyone gives you trouble, just say Growing Capiz – they know me,” she said.

The grocery was packed with a regiment of girls from the nearby private high school, buying expensive sandwiches in plaid skirts rolled high and knee socks rolled low. I somehow managed to maneuver two cups of soup, a large ready-made salad, a dish of roast broccolini, and a very large and very hot coffee to the register along with the bulging Ziploc of muscovado without making too much of a fool of myself.

“Big lunch, huh, Jane?” said the doorman as he opened the door for me on my way back.

Lunch that day was a feast of all the leftovers in the refrigerator because Teresa was leaving for the Philippines that very evening. It was my job to heat the dozens of dishes and lay them out neatly on the marble-protecting placemats. Christopher tried to help, but whenever he got up Teresa called, “Don't talk to her! Don't look at her! Do your work!” I'm pretty experienced at microwaving, though, and by the end of the meal everyone was beyond satisfied.

“Are we going to take a walk today, too?” asked Christopher.

“Yes, you are,” said Teresa.

“By myself?” he said, dismayed.

Turns out she was sending him on a diplomacy mission to meet some people who were donating expensive portable chargers to the GC cause. He brought along a Christmas present for someone's daughter, a stuffed monkey and a book which he wrapped hurriedly in a discarded gift bag he found under Teresa's dried-out Christmas tree. Then he left, and I missed his presence for several hours.

He returned with five of the bright-colored chargers plus some muslin for the green roof experiments I designed. I had the best camera among us, so Teresa had me take pictures of Christopher packing up the chargers for the GC Facebook page. So now I have some pictures of him that are my property and no one else's.

By then it was past five and we realized that we had just two hours to get everything done before Teresa had to leave for her flight. She called Anna, the head of the architectural firm we're partnered with, to make sure she was ready to go. As it turned out, Sarah had put the wrong date on her schedule and thought she was supposed to leave tomorrow. “Holy fucking shit, Teresa,” she said on the phone, sweetly. Luckily she was all packed so it wasn't that much of an issue.

While Teresa bustled around her apartment finishing her packing, Christopher and I could finally talk freely.

“So about those student-rush opera tickets,” he said, “are you planning to see a show anytime soon?”

“If there's anything good while I'm here.”

“Tell me if you do. You can get two tickets with one student id, right?”

I had a vision of being pressed next to him in a Lincoln Center orchestra seat for three and a half hours of German wailing, having to make small talk all through not one but two twenty-minute intermissions.

“Sure,” I said. “I don't even have to be in town. Just ask me if you want to see something and I'll let you buy the ticket through the student rush website.”

“It would be better if you were in town.”

I laughed uselessly and thought that I'd better head home soon.

Before I did, Teresa sat me down on the firm sofa again and gave me a goodbye speech. She told me that I was a good worker, quick and productive. She said I had a “good spirit.”

“And,” she said, shrugging, “I like you. That's all there is to it. I want to keep working with you.” She said I should apply for a grant from Radcliffe that could pay for interning with her again in the summer, and maybe even a trip to the build sites in the Philippines.

I thanked her again and again and then got up to put on my shoes and leave. She hugged me just before I opened the door. Over her shoulder I could see Christopher getting up to secure his own hug. Panic rose up my esophagus. I took a few clacking steps backward. He hugged me anyway, although I kept the fake Dooney&Bourke carefully between us.

As I clacked across the icy park I realized that I'd never see him again unless I did something about it. As I waited for my train in Penn Station I realized that I cared. All the way down the Montclair-Boonton line I thought about what I could do to sit beside him at that mirror-lined table again.

For the first time in my life I wasn't shying away from making serious plans about my future. And for the first time that I can remember the future seemed like something to look forward to.

January 13

1/13

I always amaze myself with how unproductive I can be when there's no one watching me "work." I got less done in the entire weekend than in a single hour of work at "HQ" (Teresa's twee name for her apartment). Somehow I managed to cobble together something presentable for Teresa this morning - drafts of presentations on bioswales, green roofs, and the weather science workshops. Today was mostly spent amending those, and also making lugaw.

The doorman was sick, but no one could take his place, so he had to come in to work. Not the one who was there on my first day, and who knew my face and name by the second, but another, who is determined to bring back old-fashioned servantly deference. He calls people "ma'am" and "miss" and "sir", and not in the natural Southern way Christian has but something more forced, like an imitation of a butler from a sitcom.

Anyway, I made him lugaw (or arroz caldo, as people of Teresa's class call it) in one of Teresa's Staub Dutch ovens from the rock-hard leftover rice in the takeout containers in her fridge. She didn't have any meat with bones so I had to use vegetable bouillon for the stock, but with plenty of garlic and ginger it tasted just fine. Then I took a boiled egg which had been sitting around for a while, sliced it, and spread the spices in a fan on the bowl Teresa ladeled out for the doorman. Add a garnish of toasted garlic and it should make you feel better just from looking at it.

We didn't have the lugaw for lunch, though - Teresa has a palate which craves variety. She told that to Christopher, who was on lunch duty today. For the following half hour our work was punctuated with exclamations of "Italian!" and "Vietnamese!" and "Thai!" etc. Finally he decided on a Domincan place in East Harlem and ordered ox tail stew, garlic mofongo, chuletas, and extra plantains and avocado. The ox tail was awesome, and even Christopher with his stylishly birdlike appetite tucked away a huge chunk of fat and cartilage.

After that hearty meal Teresa decided we were all too sleepy to work anymore. I felt ok, but I put on my tall pleather boots and followed her out to Central Park anyway. We walked along the reservoir, which had been left gray gravelly soup by the recent thaw. To avoid my heels sinking down into the muck I walked on the concrete base of the fence, where I could look down and see all the ducks huddling at the edge of the reservoir. Teresa and Christopher were curious about the colors so I explained to them that the green-headed ones were male and the brown ones were female. They were amused to see that they were all in mated pairs, lined up in boy-girl order.

We passed the Guggenheim and a big church and I realized I'd never been in this part of the city before. It felt new and exciting and mysterious, like a scene in a dream.

When we were satisfactorily woken up we went back to the apartment. The lugaw bowl and spoon, washed clean, sat outside the door. I put them away and then we all went back to work.

At six I got a text from Dad saying Abigail wanted to go to Palisades Park to eat Korean food that night. I managed to extract myself from HQ in time to take the bus to meet them there at eight thirty. We had a seriously extravagant night on the town. First course was bananas foster honey toast, red bean porridge, sweet potato cappuccinos, and waffles with matcha gelato at Caffe Bene. Second was two huge bowls of comforting rice porridge (a lot better than what I made the doorman) at a porridge-only restaurant. Third and final (only because all the restaurants were closing then) was jajjangmyeon at the oldest Chinese-Korean restaurant in town. Now I feel myself slipping straight into a food coma and I've got to get to bed.

January 9

1/9

Up I got this morning. Stuffed myself into the gray tweed skirt I've had since sixth grade (and which never really fit even then). I cut off the floppy hip bow because I decided my childbearing assets made it flop a little too much.

I arrived at Teresa's apartment just on time. When the doorman saw me, he said "Jane, right?"

"Right," I said, and he let pass without calling.

"8B, if you forgot," he called as I waited for the elevator.

"I remember," I said, and went up.

Teresa opened the door with wet hair and a striped sweater and said she'd be heading out. So I was stuck unchaperoned again, but maybe because it was full daylight it wasn't as weird as last night. Christian served the same muddy coffee, but it tasted better this time. I started to write a report on bioswales.

Then an old lady showed up. Her name is Ellen and she is Teresa's aunt, but she and Christopher call her Nene. She is exactly like all the other pleasant high-class old ladies I met in the Philippines except that she knows her way around a computer better than most of them. She was there to help with the audit.

Teresa returned around ten-thirty, and about an hour after that she handed me a credit card emblazoned with "Growing Capiz" where the name should be and said I was responsible for lunch. I wasn't sure if I was ready for the responsibility.

As usual, I would have preferred to cook something than spend money. I looked in the refrigerator for idea, but there was nothing there but restaurant leftovers, some greens, a very old Tupperware of cranberry sauce, and lots of designer condiments. The rice among the leftovers was rock-hard and I thought I might cook some fresh. There was a tupperware of rice in a drawer, labeled Riviera Farms.

"Don't open that!" cried Teresa. She ran over and patted at its plastic top. I noticed that it was held on with tape spotted with elongate black specks.

"There might be bugs in it," explained Nene. So that was out.

In the end I had to sit down and think about buying food. "What is there good around here?" I asked Christopher.

"Well, there's -"

"Sh!" said Teresa. "It's her job. Do your job."

So I was on my own. Eventually, however, I managed to extract from him the name of a good Szechuan place nearby, and I used grubhub to order mapo tofu and bok choy from them. Forty minutes later the order arrived. By that time Teresa had left again. Nene and I set the table, being sure to put down stiff plastic placemats to "protect the marble". I also put out some things I found in the fridge: half a cup of very garlicky rice, some yakitori skewers, and a dish of something porky which smelled overwhelmingly of bagoong. It made quite a spread for just three of us, especially since Christopher and Nene are both such bird-eaters.

My conversation with Nene was exactly the same as the ones I had with all the donas I met in Manila, right down to her remarking that I "don't look Filipino." I tried to be charming and not awkward but it was pretty hard to focus on that when I kept noticing Christopher's presence. I especially noticed it after he dropped bagoong-scented pork grease on his pink button-down and had to go around in his undershirt for the rest of the afternoon.

Teresa reappeared around two. "Tell me when it's four-forty so we can get to the networking event in time," she said, but when four-forty came we remained in place. Then Teresa noticed Christopher in his undershirt. "You're wearing that to Goldman-Sachs?" she asked, incredulous. He collected his pink button-down from where he had hung it to dry in the shower and we examined it. Not only did the stain remain, but there was a big hole in the armpit, and it was of course several sizes stylishly overlarge. Teresa was appalled.

"We're finding some nice clothes for you," she said. No mention, good or bad, of me in my altered middle-school skirt.

They went into Teresa's bedroom and proceeded to make lots of noise undressing and redressing Christopher in first Teresa's husband's and then Teresa's clothes. There was a lot of giggling and slamming things and it was all very disconcerting.

Teresa and Christopher discovered that they wore the same size in shirts, since Teresa prefers loose fits and Christopher prefers tight and both are really skinny. He finally emerged from the bedroom wearing one of Larry's big shirts and then one of Teresa's slim sweaters to cinch it in. That sounds unflattering, but Christopher is one of those thin stylish guys who probably get approached by street-fashion magazines even when they hobble out of their apartments to buy coffee in their sweatpants, so he looked presentable.

By this time, Teresa was all in a fuss. "We're late for our own event," she said. "This had better not happen again." We rushed out, down the elevator, and onto the street, the doorman swinging the door open grandly before us as usual. As soon as she got to the sidewalk, Teresa began to sprint, and Christopher and I followed at a trot, dodging trash bags and Christmas trees until we reached 5th Ave. There Teresa stood as deep into the traffic as she could without being run over and held her arm out for a taxi. It was rush hour, so unoccupied taxis were in short order, which made her more and more frustrated - until at last one with its little light lit arrived and we got on. We all squeezed into the back, my right leg pressed chummily against Christopher's left, and the taxi slid into motion. Despite the squeeze the taxi felt luxurious. I hadn't been in once since Manila, and this government-regulated Manhattan cab was a lot nicer than any of those.

With the "networking event" looming dark and clammy in my near future, all I wanted to do was lean my forehead against the cool window and be quiet, but Teresa would have none of that. She tasked me with talking, not a conversation but an oral exam: "What do you want to get out of this event?" "How many people do you want to meet?" "How will this event improve you as a person?" Every time I managed to compose an answer she insisted that I make it bigger, better, more specific.

She hadn't quite finished examining me when we arrived at the Goldman-Sachs complex. I hadn't been there since visiting my dad at work when I was six years old, and as soon as I saw the buildings memories from those visits rose up like bubbles in a just-opened soda bottle. I tried to latch onto the memory of my six-year-old confidence so that I'd have at least a vestige of confidence for this event.

We went into the lobby and presented ourselves at the desk. When we got there the most average Caucasian in the world appeared and declared us as his guests. Introductions revealed that he was Larry Schwartz, Teresa's legendary husband (turns out both Riviera and Lo are her own names). I shook his hand warmly and firmly in the way Teresa had instructed me. I was only about an inch shorter than him in my power pumps.

We got our "Visitor" stickers and passed through the glass gates I recognized from Dad's office. I remembered the wide marble hall of elevators, too, and we went up to some floor in the dozens. Near the hall of elevators on that floor was a conference room, and in the conference room were a dozen or so people at little tables like a rescaled kindergarten. They looked much less intimidating than I expected. Teresa collected Christopher and me around a table near the coat rack outside the room and pulled some cards out of her bag, the ones Christopher had been designing and printing the past few days. She distributed them among us and told us to distribute them among the tables. I went in and gave them out with a little schpiel in my waitress voice. (I was a terrible waitress.)

Christopher went into the corner and got to work hooking up the video screens and things and I thought I would be left to fend for myself making conversation with thirty-year-old investment bankers. Just then some lady in well-tailored chiffon and tweed got up and announced that the care package assembly would start then. She suggested people assign themselves to different tasks, but what happened was more of a mad dash to whatever.

There were boxes and boxes of different kinds of supplies, pencils and notebooks and toothpaste and soap and razors and lots else, each with their own little section of the long line of tables marked with a Scotch-taped label. I set to work opening the boxes and putting out the supplies. At first it was easy work of the mindlessly menial kind I like, but before long the bankers' type-A personalities began to show and it became a race to see who could deplete their supplies fastest. The representative of World Vision, a short round man in a black suit with a black shirt, officially assigned me to supply control, so I walked the aisle again and again, restocking shampoo and crayons as fast as I could. The guy at pencils was especially agile and I had to spend a lot of time bending in front of him passionately unpacking boxes. At some point I remembered what Teresa had said about meeting at least ten people, so I tried to make conversation with him. My being out of breath didn't help with my usual awkwardness. Luckily the pencil man was also awkward, as his obsessive pencil-packing suggested, so I didn't feel too awful. I went to go restock the toothbrushes and decided not to bother too much with the assignment. The pace just got faster as the night went on, and I and my dumb shoes got quite a workout.

The event was slotted until seven-thirty, but the packages were all finished before six-thirty. Once they had all been loaded into boxes the workers milled around drinking ginger ale and eating Chex mix - the real networking part. I escaped to the bathroom and stared at myself like I used to when waitressing got too bad, and when I had returned most of the workers had tired of networking.

All that was left to do was stick the postage labels to the boxes. I started on that alongside Larry and a few of his friends. I tried to chat with one of them, a blonde lady who reminded me of one of my least favorite elementary-school friends, but when I began to speak her irises jiggled behind her glasses like she was about to go into a seizure so I stopped trying pretty quickly. Instead I worked like an automaton and listened to the group's asinine, vaguely flirtatious tape-related banter and felt disappointed with adulthood as a whole.

When the taping was done there was nowhere left to escape, so I stood up and watched the GC video which had been quietly playing on the big video screens the whole time. Christopher was standing there, watching likewise.

"Did you make this video?" I asked him, smiling. Despite all my earlier discomfort, he seemed like my only ally in this atmosphere, a beacon of solace. What I was really trying to do was draw the surrounding people into the conversation, but as soon as I said something everyone else dissipated like they thought they were intruding and I was stuck in another tete-a-tete.

Christopher told me he hadn't made it, but he had helped with it, and it had in fact been made by a young woman with some tangential connection to GC. "She's really young, almost our age - early twenties," he said.

I'm not your age, I thought, and I won't be in my early twenties for another two weeks. I felt a little less comfortable.

Finally the last few old ladies left and we could collect our coats and bags.

"How did you do?" asked Teresa. I readied my anecdotes about the pencil man and the iris-jiggler, but then Christopher took from his pocket a battered blue field book and took from that a thick stack of business cards. He fanned them out in his thin hands. "Check it out," he gloated. He had not just ten but at least a dozen definite contacts. I didn't even realize there were that many people there.

Teresa said it was okay that I hadn't got any contacts, as long as I "met people" and "had fun". I lied that I had, and we went back through the complicated security system out to the street.

"Want to come out to dinner with us?" asked Teresa. "We've got reservations at a Korean place."

That was tempting, but it was already late and the thought of any more small talk made my head hurt. So I declined with the excuse that I had to go cook for my family, and it was time for goodbyes - unfortunately the Filipino kind involving tight hugs and kissy noises, including with Christopher. I kept one hand clutched tight to my counterfeit Dooney & Burke so that I could keep it a one-hand minimal-contact hug. Then I could escape to the subway, where everyone's primary concern is touching each other as little as humanly possible.

January 8

1/8

Yesterday, Abigail turned thirteen. Today, I was also forced to grow up a little - it was my first day at the fancy new internship I've been talking about since Teresa Riviera-Lo offered it to me when she visited Filipina Club at her alma mater Radcliffe in December. In the common room over trays of Chinese delivery, Teresa and her interns Reese and Christopher talked about their NGO Growing Capiz and forced each of us to say something deep and interesting about ourselves and our goals for the club. All I said was that I was an Environmental Studies major - I had just declared about two weeks earlier - and before I even finished my sentence she said she wanted me on the team. The opportunity alarms in my head started sounding and I accepted.

But by god, did I ever not want to go as I stuffed down cheese wontons and tacos at Abigail's birthday feast last night. I thought of my pimply face and my recent weight gain and of my nonexistent office-clothes supply (the latter no longer able to be supplemented by Mom's collection because of the weight gain). I couldn't sleep from anxiety.

Still I forced myself up this morning and pulled on the black chiffon skirt from my weight-gain wardrobe and a top from Mom's closet (luckily only my bottom half has really blossomed). I put on my favorite lace-up heels and painted my face like a shaky-handed whore of Babylon. I even attempted to do something about my hair (and failed).

Mom drove me to the train station. It was freezing on the platform, even in my puffy down coat and my three pairs of tights, and I sat on the frozen bench and stared at Mom's car where she parked until the train to Manhattan finally arrived. "Bye, sweetheart," she called as I got on, and blew a kiss. I did not blow one back.

I fell asleep on the train - understandable considering I stayed up until three being nervous and watching Youtube mash-ups insinuating a homosexual relationship between Ferris and Cameron of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But I woke up on time, and I navigated Penn Station all right, and I coolly braved the rush-hour crush waiting for the C train. It was fun to be just one black-clad body in a mass of countless others (although most of the others weren't wearing fishnet lace tights).

The C train was packed when I got on, but by the time I reached my stop at 86th street a family of English tourists and I were the only people left. I got off and then I had to walk all the way across the frozen park in my fishnet tights and my stupid shoes. I had done the same walk once before through half a foot of slush and spent most of the walk trying to decide whether or not that was better than a slick of fresh black ice.

At last I arrived on Museum Row. I turned onto one of the headachingly expensive residential streets - the ones that make you whisper as you pass the doors, like walking through a church - and saw that one of the pristine green awnings said "eight" in cursive white letters. I glanced through the tinted door and saw a uniformed doorman standing before a gold-colored wrought-iron gate.

I checked the address I wrote down in this book. Yup, ten. Then finally I squared my shoulders as much as my permanent slouch would allow and went in.

"I'm looking for Growing Capiz," I said, with the suggestion of a question mark on the end.

"Is she expecting you?" said the doorman.

"Yes, she should be expecting Jane Flemson," I said, and called to ask, and I was buzzed up.

"Sorry about the wait. She's in 8B," he said as I walked to the elevator, so I pressed the button 8. Some seconds later I found myself in a dark little space with a little table and flowers and four doors. I rang the one that said "B".

Teresa opened the door for me. She was wearing a baggy sweater and baggy jeans and bare feet. Behind her was a bright and airy and pristinely tidy apartment, not the drop ceilings and office carpets I expected. "We're shoes-off here," she said, gesturing to a mat holding several pairs and then to my bimbo pumps.

Off they went and I padded across the floor in my fishnet stocking feet. Christopher, the intern who had come to the dinner at Radcliffe, was in the kitchen working at a mystical-looking stone teapot on the stove. I was not pleased to see that I'd be working with a young man - one of the reasonings I placated myself with as I lay awake in the throes of anxiety last night was that I at least wouldn't have to deal with any prospective mates. He suggested that I sit down so I did, on the firm sofa in the middle of the room.

Teresa talked to me for a while there and then led me to the work table at the other end of the room. I sat at the end of the table so that I wouldn't have to be across from the enormous mirror behind it. I was given an old Mac laptop and some forms to sign, and I signed them, and then Teresa had me make an agenda, so I did. Christopher served us muddy coffee in thin white cups and I was very grateful for it, having had no time to drink any before to train (and having only slept about three hours). Then, following my agenda, I worked. I sent emails. I read papers. I typed purposefully. I didn't spend a single minute online shopping.

At noon suddenly Teresa declared it was time for lunch and we put on our coats and shoes and walked out into the cold bright light, the doorman grandly sweeping the door open for us as we went. I remembered Manila, the only place I've ever been considered an elite, and it was an odd feeling.

We walked two blocks to a French restaurant. Inside was warm and bustling, all brown and copper and lunchy smells. Waiting for us in the foyer was the person we were there to meet - Brad Panganiban, president of the Fil-Am club at Berry College. He was soft-faced and sharp-haired, crisply stylish in wire glasses and a J.Crew sweater. Hands were shaken all around and then a hostess appeared and said there was a fifteen-minute wait for a table. Teresa decided she would rather not wait and we stepped back into the polar-vortex cold and walked another block to an Italian restaurant where the maitre-d greeted Teresa like he knew her and guided us to a quiet back room. There were white tablecloths and gold chandeliers and paintings on the walls depicting the restaurant at different years in the past century. The menu arrived, bound in soft real leather, and the prices were equally grand. I had my eye on a black-truffle pizza for $35, but I knew that I had only $15 in my wallet. Christopher said he would order the sausage pizza and I offered to split it with him, hoping we could also split the price, but he looked taken aback at that idea. I looked at the menu again and chose a $25 plate of mushroom ravioli, reasoning that it would be easier to eat that politely than spaghetti or a salad, and hoped the remaining $10 would materialize somehow.

Conversation ensued. Brad was very good at talking. He treated silence like it was a ball in a game he had to catch before it fell, and he caught it again and again: "What made you decide to start GC?" "How did you get into banking?" "What is your end goal?" etc. He even got a monologue out of Christopher. Not even Teresa could do that at the dinner at Radcliffe - she tried to have him give us a male perspective on relationships and all he said was a lot of um's and a few words on being raised by a single mother. And now here he was draping his black-clad slim arms in various elegant positions and describing his path from architecture student to country-club line cook to whatever exactly it is he's doing now. Meanwhile I kept an eye on Brad and watched him fall for my fellow intern. I thought they'd made a pretty cute couple.

Bread arrived, dense beautiful foccacia speckled with rosemary and almost translucent with olive oil, hot and steaming - but no one took a piece, so I couldn't either. It steamed away until the fat frolicking wisps thinned into wispier ones and then disappeared altogether. At that point Christian finally took a piece, so I waited a judicious few moments and then took one, too. It was delicious, almost as good as the foccacia my boss at Trattoria used to bake for the staff and which was my only food all day when I worked there.

When the entrees came Teresa said, mercifully and bluntly, "Let's stop talking for a while so we can eat." So we did, sort of. My dish consisted of five ravioli - so, $5 each. It was very good, and I could probably have eaten all five in two bites, but I noticed that Christopher ate only half of his sausage pizza and Teresa half of her salmon salad and even Brad despite his softness barely a third of his orecchiette, so I very slowly and tidily consumed one and a half ravioli and left the rest to coagulate into a cohesive mass on my plate.

You can see where my priorities are, but let me try to remember a little of the conversation for the sake of posterity. Brad talked about all the fundraisers his club had been doing for GC: $20 to pie an RA, very expensive bake sales, straight-up begging, etc. In all, they had raised $6000. I said "amazing" and "impressive" until I sounded like a wind-up doll. 

"You should have a competition with Radcliffe," said Teresa. "Whoever can get to $10,000 first wins."

I thought of the $200 in dried mangoes we were so proud of at Filipina Club and declined, but Brad just widened his eyes slightly behind his stylish glasses and said, "Ok, let's do it!"

The talk went on and on. Teresa had finally met her match in talking and nothing could stop her now. The waiter filled our glasses and eyed the plates that stayed resolutely half-full. After several concerned passes-by he finally asked if we wanted to wrap up our plates to go.

"I'm still eating," said Teresa over her quarter-consumed slab of salmon. So they went on talking. 

At some point the other server, a strong sturdy-looking woman, approached our table. When she asked if we wanted our leftovers to go, Teresa accepted. She took them and wrapped them nicely, and when we had our food back in our hands we said goodbye to Brad and went back to the apartment. 

By then it was past two - just three more working hours left. Well, not quite three. At four forty-five, Teresa pulled on her down coat and said she was going to see the acupuncturist. She told me I could go home if I wanted. I decided I'd finish a few things first, but when she slammed the copper-covered door shut I realized I was alone in the room with Christopher and I started to feel strange. Warnings from Victorian novels about unchaperoned young women came into my head. I know this was just my paranoia working - I'm pretty positive Christopher stands squarely on the other side, and even if he didn't he's out of my age range and my league. Even if he does have a nice nose for a Filipino.

I was thankful that the radio was on so that it wasn't completely quiet. I was not thankful that it was playing some hipster ballad about two people alone in a room or something like that. Right after the vocalist whined "I've never been so attracted to you before," Christopher decided he wanted to make conversation. 

"Do you like this station?" he asked.

"Yes, it's nice," I said, polite society smile on full power.

"What kind of music do you usually listen to?"

I looked at his shaggy hair and calculatingly disheveled clothes and decided that he probably wasn't that into classical music. So, "Classical," I said. 

"Just classical?"

"Yes, I pretty much always listen to classical. I like opera a lot."

He got up and looked through the CDs by the stereo. "I don't think there are any opera albums here," he said. Instead he found a Beethoven collection and put it on, then sat back down. The maestro's passionate swells filled the room.

"So what year are you in college?" Christopher asked.

"I'm a second year."

"Oh, so you're twenty years old?"

"I'll be turning in two weeks," I said, smiling virginally.

"Nice," he said.

Then I decided I'd done enough work that day and stepped back into my whore oxfords and said goodbye. I arrived home an hour later, too late to cook dinner but early enough to stuff myself on the remainder of Catherine's birthday feast. It's a good thing I grew so fat and unattractive these past few months or I would be even more self conscious. (But it would be a more pleasant kind of self conscious.)