“Wait here,” said Charles, and left, and David, looking up into the mirror and realizing the extent of his dishevelment—there was a clot of ink above his right eye that was sinking into his skin like a bruise—took his wad of paper towels and went into one of the stalls in case another of the partners came in. But when the bathroom door opened next, it was only Charles, with a flat cardboard box tucked beneath his arm. “Where are you?” he asked.
He peered around the stall door. Here, he said.
Charles looked amused. “What are you doing, hiding in there?” he asked.
I’m not supposed to be here, he said. I’m a paralegal, he added, as clarification.
Charles’s smile became a bit wider. “Well, Paralegal,” he said, lifting the lid of the box to reveal a white shirt, clean and folded, “this is all I have. I think it might be a little big on you, but it’s better than walking around looking like the dark side of the moon, right?”
Or topless, he heard himself say, and he saw Charles’s look turn sharp and appraising. “Yes,” he said, after a short silence. “Or topless. We can’t have that.”
Thank you, he said, taking the box from Charles. He could feel from the cotton that the shirt was expensive, and he pulled out its stays and the cardboard beneath its collar and unbuttoned it with his inky fingers. He was about to hang it on the back of the stall door and begin unbuttoning his own shirt when Charles reached out his hand: “Let me take it,” he said, and he draped his own, clean shirt over his arm, like a caricature of an old-fashioned waiter, while David began undressing. It seemed churlish to close the door at that point and ask for privacy, and, indeed, Charles didn’t move, but stood there, silently, watching him unbutton his shirt, remove it, exchange it for the one he held, and then button up the new one. He was very aware of the sound of their breaths, and of how he hadn’t worn an undershirt, and of how his skin was pimpling even though the bathroom wasn’t especially cold. When he had finished buttoning it and then stuffing it into his pants—turning from Charles as he did to unfasten his belt: How clumsy and graceless it was, this process of dressing and undressing—he thanked Charles again. Thank you for holding my shirt, he said. For everything. I’ll take it back. But Charles grinned. “I think you’d better just throw it away,” he said. “I don’t think it’s salvageable.” Yes, he agreed, but he didn’t add that he had to try—he only had six shirts, and he couldn’t afford to lose one.
Charles’s shirt sat around him, a balloon of crisp, dry cotton, and as he stepped out of the stall, Charles made a little sound of amusement, saying, “I’d forgotten about that,” and David had looked down at his left side, where, just above his kidney, were Charles’s initials stitched in black: CGG. “Well,” Charles said, “I’d cover that up, if I were you. We can’t have people thinking you stole a shirt from me.” And then he winked at him and left, while David stood there, stupidly. A moment later, the door opened again and Charles’s face appeared. “Incoming,” he said. “Delacroix.” Delacroix was the managing director of the firm. Then he winked again and was gone.
“Hello,” said Delacroix, entering and studying him, clearly not recognizing him, but wondering if he ought to—he didn’t look like someone who’d be using the executive washroom, but these days, anyone under fifty looked like a child to him, so who knew? Maybe this fellow was a partner, too.
Hello, David responded as confidently as he could, and then he scuttled out.
For the rest of the day, he held his arm bent at a right angle over his stomach, concealing the monogram. （That night, it occurred to him that he could have just taped a patch of paper over the spot.） And though no one noticed, he felt marked, branded, and when, leaving the archives room, he saw Charles walking toward him with another partner, he flushed and nearly dropped his books, catching a glimpse of Charles’s back before he rounded the corner. By the end of the day, he was exhausted, and that night his arm floated toward his torso, already disciplined into submission.
The next day was Saturday, and despite his vigorous scrubbing, Charles was proven right—the shirt was hopeless. He had debated whether he could get away with washing and ironing Charles’s shirt himself, but that would have meant adding it to his own bag of laundry and taking it all to the laundromat, and something about putting the shirt in the mesh bag containing his underwear and T-shirts made him embarrassed. So he’d had to take the shirt to the dry cleaners, spending money he didn’t have.
On Monday, he made sure to arrive at the firm particularly early, and was heading toward Charles’s door when he realized he couldn’t just leave the box outside of his office. He stopped, and was thinking about what to do when, suddenly, there was Charles, in his suit and tie, holding his briefcase, regarding him with the same amused expression he’d given him the previous week.
“Hello, Paralegal David,” he said.
Hi, he said. Um—I brought back your shirt. （Belatedly, he realized he should have brought something for Charles, to thank him, though he couldn’t think of what that might possibly be.） Thank you—thank you so much. You saved me. It’s clean, he added, stupidly.
“I should hope so,” Charles said, still smiling, and he unlocked his office, and took the box, which he set on his desk while David waited in the doorway. “You know,” Charles said, after a pause, turning back to him, “I think you owe me a favor after this.”
Do I?, he finally managed to say.
“I think so,” Charles said, stepping close to him. “I saved you, didn’t I?” He smiled, again. “Why don’t you come have dinner with me sometime?”
Oh, he said. And then again: Oh. Okay. Yes.
“Good,” said Charles. “I’ll call you.”
Oh, he repeated. Right. Yes. Okay.
They were the only ones in the office, and yet they both spoke quietly, almost in whispers, and when David walked away, back to the paralegals’ area, his face was hot.
The dinner was arranged for the following Thursday, and on Charles’s instructions, he had left the office first, at seven-thirty, and had gone alone to the restaurant, which was dark and hushed, where he was seated in a booth and handed a large menu in a leather case. A few minutes past eight, Charles arrived, and David watched as he was greeted by the ma?tre d’， who whispered something in his ear that made Charles smile and roll his eyes. After he sat, a martini was brought to him, unbidden. “He’ll have one, too,” Charles said to the waiter, nodding at David, and when he had been given his, Charles had raised his glass, ironically, and touched it to his. “To non-exploding pens,” he said.
To non-exploding pens, he’d echoed.
Later, he would look back on that night and realize it had been the first real date he had ever been on. Charles had ordered for both of them （a porterhouse, rare, with sides of spinach and rosemary-roasted potatoes） and had led the conversation. It soon became clear that he had certain ideas about David, which David hadn’t corrected. Besides, most of them weren’t wrong: He was poor. He hadn’t had a fancy education. He was na?ve. He hadn’t been anywhere. And yet beneath those truths were a set of what Charles, in the courtroom, would have characterized as mitigating factors: He hadn’t always been poor. He had once had a fancy education. He wasn’t completely na?ve. He had once lived somewhere neither Charles nor anyone he knew could ever go.