by Sloane Tanen
Janine walked into the crisp, clean loft. Minimal was an understatement. The wood floors had been painted white, and a Pendleton blanket was tossed over a very low, deep sofa. A biergarten table was the only other piece of furniture. She wondered where Kayla kept things like lamps and books. “Great place,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so nice.”
“Uh, thanks,” Kayla said with a smile. She closed the door behind Janine and walked toward the open kitchen. Janine followed her, carrying her portfolio bag, and didn’t fail to notice how Kayla managed to make sweatpants and a tank top look so carelessly chic.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Janine said, assuming Kayla was likely on a parental payroll too. “You’re just so young, and it’s fancy.”
“I rented it when I was modeling. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep it now that I’m old and washed up.”
“Shut up,” Janine said. “You’re a baby.”
Kayla looked agitated as she started searching for something, opening and closing the tidy kitchen drawers quickly. Her face relaxed once she found her cigarettes in a small basket on top of the fridge. She tapped the box against her hand and offered one to Janine, but she declined. “I’m twenty-six,” Kayla said, “but seriously, I might as well be forty. Not that forty is old,” she added quickly. “It’s just, you know, it’s old for modeling. A lot of the new girls are twelve and thirteen.”
“I get it. No explanation required.” Kayla was always talking about her age around Janine and then apologizing. Janine wondered what Kayla would do instead of modeling but didn’t want to ask. She was more concerned with her feet hurting after the long walk from the subway and wondered if minimalism had eliminated chairs along with bookshelves and appliances.
Leaning against the fridge, Kayla slipped a cigarette between her lips. “I gotta figure out rent. Corey is living here now, but, you know,” she said, tilting her head and lighting the cigarette, “I like him but not…forever kind of like.”
Janine was relieved that Corey, whom she hadn’t grown any fonder of since their first class, wasn’t Kayla’s idea of Mr. Right.
Kayla slowly exhaled three perfect smoke rings. “He kind of sucks, huh?”
Janine smiled, put her bag on the floor, and happily took a seat on one of the narrow benches Kayla magically pulled out from under the dining table. Janine was surprised at how much she liked Kayla. Young, beautiful people generally intimidated her, but Kayla was eccentric and loopy in a way Janine found irresistibly charming. Like when she’d stood up in class and done an unabashed demonstration of the Smurf dance for Ms. Louie. Who could possibly resist a gorgeous girl willing to make a fool of herself? Not that she’d really made a fool of herself. She was a good dancer.
“What about you? You have a boyfriend?” Kayla asked. She took a seat on the opposite bench. “Married?”
“No,” Janine said, thinking of Jürgen, no longer her boyfriend but still pathetically on her speed-dial. They’d been together almost ten years, until Jürgen decided he wanted to get married and have kids, at which point Janine decided it was time to break up. Thinking about the actuality of marriage, of being a mother, had made her inexplicably sad. She loved Jürgen but not enough to abandon her nostalgic longing for something else, something she couldn’t even put her finger on.
“There’s a word for that,” he’d said lightly, because he didn’t want her to feel guilty about breaking things off and because he knew how much Janine had come to love his German tutorials—how succinctly one word in that language could contain so much meaning. It had started years before, when they’d been reading the Daily News on the subway and he’d casually noted that Ted Cruz had a Backpfeifengesicht—a face that needed a fist. Janine had been so amused and delighted that such a term really existed that she’d made him spend the entire train ride teaching her to pronounce it correctly. The word he’d used the day they broke up was Sehnsucht, and although Janine couldn’t remember exactly what it meant, she understood it to imply she’d probably never be happy.
“Anyway,” Janine said to Kayla. “I don’t want to get married. I prefer being alone, and I can barely take care of my cat.”
“Right on,” Kayla said, holding up her hand for a high five. “Marriage is archaic.”
Janine was confident Kayla would be married with three kids and a Maltipoo by the time she was thirty-two. “Can I get you a glass of wine?” Kayla asked. She stood and walked back to the kitchen.
“Sure.”
“Red or white?” Kayla asked, beaming. “Or Scotch?”
“Scotch?”
“Yeah, Corey turned me on to it. It’s yum on ice. You should totally come to our next tasting party.”
Janine nodded, touched that Kayla wanted to be friends. She started unzipping her portfolio. “Did you want to go with cat food, underwear, or the dating service?” Those were the choices for the ad-campaign assignment.
“I was thinking cat food?” Kayla said, putting down two gold-rimmed tumblers with ice that had appeared magically from the kitchen. She held an amber bottle. “I already had some ideas.”
“Great,” Janine said, pushing her work for Soulmates.com back into the stack of pages as Kayla finished pouring their drinks and then disappeared to get her own pages. Janine had had some ideas, too, but she was willing to yield to Kayla if hers were better. She walked over to the window and wondered what it would feel like to be Kayla. She wasn’t sure she’d want to be that young again. All that pressure to conquer the world when just getting through the day without drawing attention to herself had seemed overwhelming. She’d wasted so much time, but she didn’t really want even an hour of it back.
Kayla returned a few minutes later with what appeared to be a year’s worth of drawings. The cat-food-ad assignment had been straightforward: They were to create three mock-ups for an illustrated print campaign for Fancy Feast cat food. “Wow,” Janine said as Kayla excitedly unrolled sheets of fully executed colored art proofs.
“I hope you like them,” Kayla said. “That you think they’re funny or whatever.”
Janine realized that Kayla was seeking her approval. Kayla had been working hard to impress her. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Janine felt the warmth of the Scotch. She took another sip and relaxed.
Kayla finished spreading out her pages and weighted the corners with four more tumblers she’d grabbed from a cabinet. The first page showed an expertly drawn cat with its paw immersed in a fishbowl. Instead of a fish, it was trying to catch a can of Fancy Feast cat food. “Clever,” Janine said, smiling. The next page showed another cat, equally well drawn, standing outside a Tom and Jerry–like mouse hole and staring at the just visible can of Fancy Feast. Huh? Janine thought, but she said nothing. The last one, which Kayla had just started to sketch, showed a cat staring at a birdcage from outside a window. No bird in it, just a can of…Fancy Feast cat food.
“You’re a wonderful artist,” Janine said and swallowed the contents of her glass in a hurried gulp. Her throat burned. She poured herself another without asking for permission, unsure how to explain the problem to Kayla without sounding harsh.
“You hate it,” Kayla said. She pulled her hair off her face and gathered it into a tight ponytail with the rubber band she’d had around her wrist. Her face was screwed up.
“No! It’s just…maybe we should go with all cat-and-water themes?” Janine suggested. “Like a cat fishing for Fancy Feast on a boat, and a cat…” She ran out of scenarios. She gazed fixedly at her Scotch, waiting for Kayla to understand.
“You don’t like these two?” Kayla stared down at her work.
“I do,” Janine started. “It’s just, well, unless I’ve been shopping in the wrong aisles, no one sells mouse- or parakeet-flavored cat food. Canned house bird? I think maybe it’s confusing.”
Janine could practically hear the spinning wheels in Kayla’s brain before the last cog snapped into place and she covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God!
” Kayla screamed. “I’m the biggest idiot ever!”
“No,” Janine said, relieved and feeling slightly buzzed.
“Okay,” Kayla said, crumpling up the beautiful drawings as if they were newspaper. “What have you got? And do not tell anyone about this.”
“Don’t do that,” Janine said, trying to grab the drawings away from Kayla, who laughed outrageously when Janine accidentally ripped one of them in half. “Shit. Seriously, I like the first one a lot. We could use it.”
“Let’s just move on,” Kayla said, swiping her remaining drawings onto the floor before topping off both their glasses. She drank it quickly, like a shot, then nodded at Janine to do the same. “But first,” she went on, pulling out a small drawer from the underside of the table, “we need to get high. Or I do, anyway.”
“To forget?” Janine laughed and emptied her glass.
“To bury,” Kayla said.
Janine didn’t smoke pot but she was having too much fun to say no.
“You’re up,” Kayla said, handing Janine the joint, exhaling a long stream of smoke into the bare living room, and pointing at Janine’s portfolio. Janine took a hit, coughed, and felt her head swimming almost immediately.
Hesitantly, Janine slipped out her drawings. She’d gone with the dating-service option. It struck her as odd that anybody would choose to do cat-food or underwear ads over dating-website ads.
“Do not make fun of my drawing,” she said, wondering how she could possibly be this messed up from a hit of pot and a little Scotch.
“Promise.” Kayla lit another cigarette. As Janine had expected, it took Kayla a few long minutes to grasp the ideas. The words were there, but the drawings were rough. Janine waited, sipping her drink nervously now, as she watched Kayla process.
The first picture showed what was supposed to be a bar where a gussied-up lady squirrel was staring at a man squirrel with six heads. The tagline said, Barry wasn’t exactly what Mindy was hoping for, but he was Jewish. In bold print it read, Soulmates.com—because nobody wants a funky nut. The second drawing showed a princess squirrel wearing a tiara and kissing a frog. The tagline read, Anastasia was through making out with Ethan. He was never going to change. Then: Soulmates.com—Because you can’t change a bad nut. The last one showed the bow of the Titanic with a lady squirrel and the ship’s captain looking down into the water. The tagline read, I don’t know, the last thing he said was something about being king of the world, and then I may have accidentally pushed him. Followed by Soulmates.com—because sometimes you just need a new nut.
“You’re like a fucking genius,” Kayla said, looking up at Janine, who was busily tearing the cuticle away from the nail on her index finger.
“For real? You like it?”
“I love it. I mean, this could, like, totally be a real campaign.”
“You think?”
“I know. Why don’t you use some of your, you know, connections?”
“I don’t have any connections.”
“Well, I’m gonna draw these up and send them to Match or JDate.”
“You are so high,” Janine said, smiling so hard her face hurt. Kayla didn’t seem dumb at all. Suddenly Kayla seemed like the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“Do you want to smoke some more before I get started?” Kayla asked. “I’m psyched about this!” She did a little jig and ran into the kitchen.
“Yes, ma’am,” Janine said, marveling at Kayla’s generosity.
“I’m getting the bong now!” Kayla giggled.
“Can you draw when you’re high?”
“I draw better high!”
Corey got home hours later; Kayla was passed out on the living-room couch, and Janine was lying on the floor next to her. He whistled but got no response from either of them. “Hey,” he whispered in Kayla’s ear.
“Go away,” Janine heard Kayla say. “Sleeping. Need to sleep.”
Janine was too exhausted to move, although she knew she probably looked ridiculous, splayed out on the rug with her skirt twisted around her thighs, an ashtray full of cigarette butts on her left, the empty bottle of Scotch on the coffee table, and dirty water from a spilled bong pooling near her hair.
“Jesus, ladies,” Corey said. Janine opened one eye for a moment; he was admiring the artwork but assuredly not getting the jokes. Janine had a vague sense of him pulling his phone out of his pocket and getting as close to her face as he could. For some reason, he moved the Scotch bottle onto the floor near her hand. She fell asleep again before she could ask him why.
Bunny
“You didn’t!” Bunny cried, placing her hand on her chest theatrically as she pushed open her front door and took in the crowd gathered inside. She immediately saw Sam and Elaine along with a blur of twenty other familiar figures.
“I did, darling,” Ian deadpanned, eyes searching the room. He was standing next to Bunny in the doorway. “Happy birthday, sunshine.”
“Look at this place!” She beamed, squeezing Ian’s hand.
It was a good thing Bunny almost didn’t recognize her flat; it allowed her to feign surprise. The rooms had been transformed for the event. Something deeply exotic had been done with the lights, and the entire living area was tented in dark blue velvet. Gold rope drew back curtains on the back wall revealing hand-painted chinoiserie panels where the Alex Katz portrait of her usually hung. The doors to the wraparound deck were all open, and the railing had been delicately and generously dressed with thousands of tiny blue lights. Two long tables were covered in elaborate Garnier-Thiebaut cloths and set with pink dahlias bursting out of mismatched Murano glass vases. Lilac tufted-leather sofas joined the tables. Her large Gerhard Richter painting had been moved and replaced with a mirrored pagoda bar. Bunny was spellbound by the voluptuous excess. The room was so tacky, it was magical.
“It looks like a Chinese jewelry box. Or like the Artesian Bar!” Bunny practically squealed. “How on earth did you pull this together?”
Ian smiled stiffly. They had been gone for only two and a half hours. Amazing what lots of money could buy.
* * *
Bunny knew that Ian had needed to get her out of the house so the staff could set up and the guests could arrive. Bunny played along, not wanting Ian to suspect that she knew anything was afoot. She’d made it clear months ago that she didn’t want a party this year and Ian had assured her that oysters and champagne in the private room at Bentley’s would be the extent of the celebration. But when Bunny removed her coat at Bentley’s and revealed a brand-new sexy Armani dress, Ian’s knickers vaulted into a twist.
“And what’s all this?” he’d asked, looking wary. His round face colored.
“You don’t like it?” she asked. The waiter poured champagne as they settled into a banquette. She took a sip and looked at Ian.
“You look ravishing but…”
“But nothing. I wanted to buy something special. I’m seventy years old, for Christ’s sake. These arms maybe—maybe—have two more years of airtime.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them.” He was staring at Bunny’s white limbs with disbelief, no doubt thinking, How dare she be so thin at seventy?
“Well, you know I don’t like scaring the natives.” She giggled, then signaled for a refill.
“What else have you got under there?” he asked, fiddling with his cuff links.
“Absolutely nothing of interest to you, certainly.”
“I’d say you’re the one who isn’t interested,” Ian said, a reference to a setup Bunny had agreed to a couple of weeks ago only because Ian had sworn the man was simply irresistible.
“He smelled like chips, and his pants made this awful noise when he walked,” Bunny said in her defense. “Christ, Ian,” she whispered, “he must have been ninety-nine years old. It might have been a colostomy bag making that racket.”
“He is seventy-five, which, dare I remind you, is age-appropriate.”
“If seventy-five is age-appropriate, I’d rather
die alone. Quite honestly, I can’t think of anything more appealing than dying all alone in bed. And I’m happy. Don’t I look happy?”
“At the moment,” Ian granted, most likely wondering why Bunny was so uncharacteristically cheerful. “So, a younger man?” he asked.
“Stop it, Ian! No man.” A waiter refilled her empty glass. “A younger man would only be after my money.”
“But you’re fabulous—”
“Not that fabulous,” she said, cutting him off.
There was a short pause while he silently agreed, and then Bunny fell into a fit of giggles.
“What is all this?” Ian finally asked, gesturing to Bunny’s dress and never-before-seen arms and décolletage. “Just admit it! He told you,” he cried. “Your linty ex-husband told you about the party and ruined everything I’ve been slaving over for weeks. Have you any idea what’s gone into this?” he asked. “What in the name of Jesus H. Christ is wrong with him?”
“Party?” Bunny asked. She was a terrible liar.
“Oh, cut the shit. The new dress, the chippie smile, the willingness to go and celebrate. He told you,” Ian whined, his voice cracking with disappointment.
“It was an accident, Ian,” Bunny admitted. No point in carrying on with an undignified charade. “Sam feels terrible. And he will simply evaporate if you confront him. Just let it go. I don’t like surprises anyway.”
“I should never have told him,” Ian snapped.
“True, but what good is hindsight?” Bunny asked lightly. “Look at Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, and the rejection of Hitler’s application to art school.”
“Very funny,” he said, sulking. He ran both hands through his hair and massaged his scalp as if struck by a terrible headache.
“What difference does it make, darling? I’m deeply grateful to you.” She grabbed his hand. “Nobody will know that I found out. I’ll clutch my chest, fake surprise, and Bob’s your uncle, yes?”