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He told David Cooper that Karen was third on the transplant list. But Toby’s reserves were depleted, of both rest and fluids. In his weakened state, he was susceptible and primed for the acute jealousy of the thing he saw before him, which was an utterly normal marriage, a thing he had tried so hard at and had wanted so badly. It was an enormous privilege to take your spouse for granted until something bad happened; that was life, and that was beautiful, this idea that you’d just be trudging along and remember each other’s birthdays once a year and fall into bed exhausted and wonder if you had enough sex and then one day BAM! you become awakened to just how much you needed that person—some crisis like this, and that was all you’d need to remember how much you loved your spouse. That was all Toby had ever wanted. Sometimes you saw couples who seemed wild about each other, always holding hands, sitting on the same side of the table when they ate out, even when they were together alone. Rachel would say that those people were putting on a show, that they were covering up a real poison in their relationship, and that was the only time Toby ever felt like she was on his side: when she was working as hard as he was to make their misery seem normal.
Bartuck had taken an interest in Toby. Not in Phillipa London—in him. Toby would go home and share news of the day with Rachel. “You have to ride this mentorship to the sky,” she would say, which was the kind of imbecile power-talk they used in the mailroom at Alfooz & Lichtenstein. [...]
made me laugh in just how horrible and condescending he is to her
He spent nights waiting for her innumerable study groups to disband so that she would arrive home and consider having sex with him. More often than not, though, she would politely beg off because sex kept her up, which destroyed her chances of succeeding at the thing (the test, the paper) that was her priority. In this desert of opportunity, getting laid at least a little became his primary directive in the relationship, never asking himself if this was all there was to companionship, or if he even liked her. That was a dangerous question, and besides, he was in no position to ask it; he had to direct all his energy toward interpretation of whether a sloppily slung arm over the shoulder or a kiss directly on the mouth was a green light.
Their relationship ended unceremoniously after four months. One morning, after she had allowed him to have sex with her—or on her, or at her, which was probably more accurate—she said her parents weren’t really okay with her dating someone who wasn’t Catholic or Italian, and she’d rather not lose this much sleep if the relationship wasn’t going to go anywhere. He objected to this loudly, not considering whether he actually liked her and wanted the relationship to continue. Out of pity, she offered to fuck him one more time, “goodbye sex,” and he took her up on the option. He had felt humiliation pursuing sex in his life, but he had never felt humiliation during the act of it, watching her wait for it to be over, until now.
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“All right,” he said. Her eyes were a fishhook. “Negotiate with me.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’d like four for the price of two.”
“I’m sorry, you have to pay for all four.”
“I’ll only be paying for two.”
He made his body into a stubborn stance, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his head so that he could see her through side-eye. “No deal. What kind of Middle Eastern open-air market do you think this is?”
She smiled and shrugged, and she began to walk away, first one step, then two, and then it was clear she was really walking away. She moved to a couch across the room and sat down, her back still to him, and she struck up a conversation with the dude on the couch. Toby was amazed; he was excited. When was the last time he was excited and not just scared? He walked across the room and crouched down behind her and whispered into her ear. “I’ll give you six,” he said. “You don’t have to pay for any of them.”
this is cute
They had sex that night, which was for the best, since he didn’t think his ego could handle an extended period of time in which he wondered if she thought of him as a friend or an actual romantic contender. He kept thinking, “She’s a real girl.” Not in a sexist way. No, in a Pinocchio way. She was everything he thought a girl should be, even if he’d never known to pray quite so specifically: She wore red lipstick all the time, she listened to Neil Diamond and didn’t give a fuck how weird that was, she could do a handstand for like ten minutes, [...]
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When he woke up in the morning after the three hours of postdawn sleep they’d decided to allow each other, he watched her for a few minutes. She was still so pretty in the daylight, even with smudged mascara and caked saliva in the corner of her mouth. He went out to get breakfast. He stood in line for bagels and coffee, and he had never felt so normal and American in his life. He had a girl waiting for him back at his apartment, and it was Saturday morning, and so he was going to bring her a bagel and some coffee. He was overwhelmed by the simplicity of his emotions: gratitude for whatever moments had worked to make this moment happen for him; happiness, yes, just pure plain happiness. He loved his country! He was going to eat a bagel!
this is cute
He was learning from Rachel, too. They went skiing—he had never been skiing before, but she’d learned because her school had a ski trip every year and finally, when she was a senior, her grandmother handed over the $250 and let her go. She was helping him negotiate the strange, surprising, suddenly political machinations of medical school that were beyond good grades. His residency advisor didn’t like how sarcastic he was; Aaron Schwartz, a sallow-skinned pigeon of a guy he knew not just from Princeton, but who had gone to his high school in Los Angeles, was also in his med school class and kept getting favored for surgeries. Rachel talked to him about how to talk to people. She taught him how the fact that he was naturally funny also meant that he had a side that favored a quick burn, which wasn’t so good. She taught him to slow down and consider people’s faces, that this was the most crucial exercise in all of negotiation, and eventually he did it—he learned to listen to people and to look them in the eyes. And wouldn’t you know, when he finally was able to enact these skills, he became a better doctor, one who could understand his patients’ suffering more specifically, who could listen more closely for clues. He shot ahead of Aaron Schwartz, earning praise from the doctors in charge and his teachers for his sensitivity and intuition. He would always commend her for teaching him a skill that no one had taught him throughout all his years of med school, and she would respond, “That’s because they don’t want you to get ahead.” When she said that, he’d realize she wasn’t trying to make him a better person; she was trying to get him to advance. That was all she’d ever tried to do for him. But, he reasoned, that was because she thought he was a good enough person as it was.
Toby now began to pace the bedroom. “He’s met me. He knew you were married. We’d been out to dinner with him and his wife.”
“Yeah, well that’s how scumbags operate, Toby.”
“Did you remind him that he knew me?”
“I’m sorry, Toby, no, I didn’t, I really didn’t realize this was about you at the time.”
But it was a little about him, wasn’t it? This was his wife! It’s one thing to hit on someone whose spouse you don’t know. But he was real. Toby was real. And Matt Klein didn’t even see him as threat enough to stop himself from hitting on her. Matt barely registered Toby’s existence. Matt was not afraid of Toby’s wrath.
lol this makes me really mad on rachel's behalf
“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”
There were several possible acceptable answers to this for Toby: that she didn’t take it seriously, that she didn’t want to hurt Toby, that she barely registered it the minute it happened, so in love was she with her husband—all these would have been fine. Instead she went with: “I didn’t think to. It was just something that happened at work. Do you tell me everything that happens at your work? Actually, don’t answer that, maybe you do.”
He didn’t like how not a part of this story he was. He didn’t like that he was only hearing about this because it was mitigating information against something else that had happened that day. He didn’t like that she didn’t seem to think her marriage was relevant to all of this.
i like the bit at the end of her dialogue about him telling her everything about his job [which she complains about in a beautiful scathing way later on]
It was hard for Toby to pinpoint exactly when he’d noticed the change in her. Yes, she spoke to her subordinates like they were pieces of shit, but that was the culture at Alfooz & Lichtenstein—that was how they taught their employees to survive, or something. Toby would express surprise when he heard her on the phone talking to an intern or an assistant—it particularly seemed that asst2 couldn’t find his ass from his ass these days. He would hear her on the phone saying, “You forget who you are talking to,” and “I’m sorry, but do you think I’m an idiot?” and “Honestly, I am listening to you and cannot believe what is coming out of your mouth,” and “No offense, but when I hire at a Yale job fair, I expect someone with a little light behind the eyes,” and “I saw those press kits and it looks like a homeless person off the street did them.” He assumed the stress of her work was sending her into overdrive. But then she said things to her clients like “Oh my God, were we the same person in another life?” and “You are too much,” and “That is amazing,” and “You are amazing.” See? She was also capable of that, which made the fact that she didn’t do it at home harder to stomach.
ok but she is putting on an ACT for her JOB omg this makes me mad on a personal level for obvious reasons