Lexicon

of. You’re very close, Emily. What’s your answer?”
    “To your bullshit question?”
    “You don’t have to believe it. You just have to answer honestly.”
    “Fine,” she said. “I did it because I felt like it.”
    Lee nodded. “One disappointing thing about this job. People always turn out to be less interesting than you hope.” Before Emily could decide whether he’d insulted her, he spoke a jumble of words. They slid by her and were gone. She felt dazed. “Go to the restroom,” he said. “Wait there for me.”
    • • •
    She walked to the counter. She was leaving her bag behind, but that was okay. Lee would look after it. She asked a boy behind the register for the bathroom key and he gave her a look but handed it over. There was a single stall. She closed the toilet lid and sat on it.
    After a minute, the door opened and Lee came in, talking on a cell phone. Her heart thumped. He was kind of handsome. His face grew on you. She even liked his hair. She sort of loved him. “Yeah,” Lee told his phone. “But hey, we’re here, let’s give it one more pass.” He stopped in front of her. She watched him fumbling with his zipper. She was in an interesting place. She was present, but remote. Everything was curious and amusing. Lee jammed his cell phone against his shoulder, dug into his pants, and pulled out his penis. It was longer than she expected. It bobbed in front of her, curving upward before her eyes. “I’m actually with her now,” said Lee. “Thought there was something there, for a minute.” He covered the phone. “Put it in your mouth.”
    She put her hand around his penis. She opened her mouth. She thought:
Wait, what?
    “I know,” said Lee. “Every time.” He laughed. His penis jumped in her hand.
    She punched his balls. Lee howled. She tried to kick him but he was doubling over, in full retreat, and she caught his knee or elbow or something. She ran for the door and pulled it open. Heads turned. “Pervert!” she yelled to the turning faces. “There’s a pervert in there!” She scooped up her bag. Not one person had moved. “Pervert!” she shouted, and ran.
    • • •
    In the alley, boys in baseball caps were dealing drugs or freestyling lyrics or whatever they did and one stepped toward her, his hands out. She blasted past him. Her bag bounced. It was three blocks before she felt safe enough to stop and check whether Lee was following. No. She dropped her bag for a second and put her hands on her knees to suck air. People flowed around her. What had just happened? She remembered the details but it didn’t make sense. She didn’t know what she had been thinking.
    She looked up. Lee was shambling toward her, a hand clutched over his groin, his face contorted. She jerked upright. On the other side of the street, a girl with long brown hair and a cheap suit stepped onto the road, backed away from a car, then ran at her through traffic. The way she was angling, she wouldn’t cut Emily off so much as corral her, force her eastward, and this set off all kinds of alarm bells, because when someone did that, they had friends. She craned her neck and spotted two clipboard-carrying boys in suits heading straight at her. “Help!” she said, but to no one in particular, and of course there was no help. She spied an alley and ran for it. The bag slipped and she panicked and let it drop, which was unthinkably terrible because without her bag she had nothing; she would have to rely on people. She passed an office building, a beautiful business couple emerging from its glass revolving doors like an advertisement, and she thought about running in there, to whatever clean, safe, corporate-warmed world they had come from. But that would never work; that would end in her being tossed out the same door by a security guard in charge of protecting that world from people like her. She kept running. The alley turned and dipped and became a driveway.
Not good, not good.
It terminated at a locked roller door painted KEEP CLEAR LOADING AREA . She started back the way she had come, but they were already here. One of the boys held her Pikachu bag. She shoved a hand into her jeans pocket. “I’ve got Mace.” She backed up until she hit the roller door. All those office windows: Surely someone would be looking down. Maybe if she screamed. Maybe if there were angels.
    “Take a moment,” said the girl. “Get your breath back.” Beside her, Lee bent and spat.
    “Stay away from