Free The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus Page B

He shakes the rain from his long black umbrella and hands it to her. She’ll want to talk about the Cultural Initiative Grants. He doesn’t want to talk about the Cultural Initiative Grants. Just thinking about it kills his mood. He hopes she doesn’t ask him how his mother is. In the last six months he’s taken days off here and there, ostensibly to join CeCe at various medical appointments. At work he’s had to outbright everyone, dazzle them out of pity and out of the possibility they might strike up a meaningful conversation, so he smiles and says:
    “Hello—tuna! It’s kind of early for tuna?”
    Office jocularity affords few and simple topics, for which he is grateful. New hair. New outfit. Commuter pain. Computer pain. Sustenance. Wait—did he? He cups his chin. Yes, in his haste to leave the hotel, he forgot to shave.
    “George, hi.” Audrey looks startled to see him. “No carbohydrates. Pretty rugged.”
    “You, come on! Why would you do that? You look great. What have we got? Stacks to read, floor to ceiling?”
    “I—” They pause to greet Stanton—Will, William—who’s wandered silently around the corner in his usual way, relaxed a blink shy of coma: already an ambler in his fifties, with the pink of a baby out of a bath. As always, his clothes appear just-bought—today, a navy cable-knit sweater, khakis, expensive gray running shoes. The unspoken rule that only the boss gets to wear sneakers, to bring his dog. George smoothes his rough chin, his tie. The massive golden retriever glitters at Stanton’s side.
    “Betsy’s looking handsome,” George says.
    “And how is—it has a strange name?”
    “3D. He has us on a leash. Those two”—George leans down and touches Betsy with his index finger—“should have a playdate. We’d love to have you and Anita out for a visit.”
    “Hmm.” Stanton sighs. “Glad we’re all with Liz on reviewing the Program Guidelines.” He must think George attended Friday’s meeting. He’s surprised Stanton attended. Stanton’s time is usually reserved for the board and the big donors, not the day-to-day. George agrees, Liz was right on. Says he can’t wait to take a look at her material. Stanton and the dog move down the hall.
    As program director for the Arts and Culture Fund at the Hud-Stanton-Fox Foundation, George makes $75,000 a year. His mother supplements this income with what she calls “infrastructure” (subcategories: productive leisure, real estate tax, Iris), which is granted as a relatively modest disbursal once a year through CeCe’s lawyer so they may avoid speaking of it and he may avoid his shame in taking it.
    “Trust him with a trust?” she’d said. “I trust it is only through work he will not descend into moral turpitude, and I trust he will only work if I provide him with the essentials and no more.” This to the lawyer—George at eighteen, sitting like a giant, disembodied pimple between them, the only time the three had met together until this year. Until her illness.
    “I didn’t expect you in until tomorrow. Your mom’s called twice this morning. How’re you holding up?”
    “I’m well. I’m great.”
    Awkward. Audrey’s concern, draining as the fluorescents. She yanks her rubber band out of her jet curls and reknots the bun with a violence that still startles George, though he’s seen her do it a hundred times a day for two years. She forks a bite of the wet lump in the foil. In silence together they search and find Stress, the North Star of office camaraderie.
    “Wow,” she maws, “it mushed be streshfu.”
    “Stress can be a powerful and driving force.”
    “Your mom calls me Ellen. Wasn’t your first assistant named Ellen?”
    “No,” he lies.
    Lying, lying, lying. To cheer himself up he pictures lying under Audrey in her starter-kit apartment. A plastic alarm clock on top of a plastic milk crate. The Official Audrey Fantasy does not have its usual soothing effect; in its place he imagines her