The Clasp by Sloane Crosley Read Free Book Online

century. When she tried to take his temperature in a more technologically advanced fashion, Victor feverishly gestured at his desk, thinking a thermometer might be lurking in there. Caroline crammed the jump drive into his mouth.
    He clamped down, but things were going to get suspicious when it didn’t produce a reading.
    She twisted it around. “This is a weird-looking thermometer.”
    â€œIt’s not.” He coughed. “It’s not a thermometer.”
    â€œHuh?” She leaned on the open drawer. “Oh my gosh, what is all this stuff?”
    She picked through his stash, which had become just varied enough to be suspicious. There was a church key, some magnetic“chip clips,” a nose-hair trimmer, gel insoles, a portable can opener, a collapsible tire pump, a chrome tape dispenser, a neoprene eyeglass case, and a set of Chinese reflexology balls.
    He knew the shame of the drawer, the possibility of repercussions, should hit him hard, but the fever gave him a woozy layer of remove so that even when she made eye contact with a couple of price tags, he remained calm. Nothing to see here, folks! Just a man and his portable can opener.
    â€œYou boys and your toys.” She pushed the drawer closed.
    Eventually Caroline left and Victor stopped sweating, cooling down in his sleep. He had the kind of epic dreams made possible only by total exhaustion. He woke up starving—for food and for community. In the dining hall, next to the fro-yo machine, he apologized to Kezia and she to him.
    â€œSo we’re okay?” she asked.
    He said that yes, they were. He tried to mean it. It seemed to everyone that he would come around, fall in line, meld back into the larger whole just as Olivia had done the year prior. That he could teach himself to be less hurt, to be less publicly aggrieved, to not rock the boat before it set sail into the real world, leaving the more unsavory events of college in its wake. He would try.

FIVE

Kezia
    I t lives!” exclaimed Meredith, standing at the top of her stairs as Kezia plodded up to her apartment. “We didn’t think you were going to make it.”
    Meredith and Kezia worked together at the fine jewelry company right after graduation. They had been paired together during a training program for new hires, touring facilities, laughing until they cried at unfunny private jokes about “loose pearls,” calling each other from their respective cubicles and asking, “Guess how many diamonds are on my desk right now? Just guess.” While Kezia had been impatient for more responsibility, Meredith had stuck it out as a merchandising analyst. In the four years since Kezia had left, Meredith had been promoted twice.
    â€œThis is new.” She touched Meredith’s gold-link necklace.
    She was a little out of breath and nearly yanked it for support.
    Meredith hugged her. “Magpie, how I miss you.”
    â€œNice bling.”
    Once a year, the company held a sale during which employees could purchase rejected prototypes or slightly flawed versions ofpopular designs. Kezia recognized the necklace from a billboard above the West Side Highway. There was hardly a scratch on Meredith’s version, but even if it had been dipped in acid and run over with a truck, Kezia couldn’t afford it on what Rachel paid her.
    â€œAnd this ring, too.” Meredith held out her hand. “Five-year-anniversary gift from corporate. It was this or a crystal paperweight. Even the men pick this.”
    â€œThe men?” Kezia handed her a bottle of wine in a paper bag.
    â€œRight. Man. They hired one since you’ve been gone.”
    â€œWell, it’s really lovely.”
    Inside, Meredith’s husband, Michael, was wearing mint-green drawstring pants and opening a bag of frozen shrimp with a corkscrew. Michael beamed at her.
    Kezia had almost canceled. She was inundated with work, and any detour between her desk and her apartment