by Alex Witchel
“C’est moi! C’est moi! C’est moi!” she cried delightedly, pointing a finger at each new image.
“Ah, oui,” Jean-Louis cooed.
I left, forgotten. I’d have to cut the story now to match the postage-stamp-size picture. And then I’d have to listen to complaints about how our features weren’t selling the magazine. Could it be possible that even women, those masochistic creatures, could get sick of looking at paragons like Jolie? Did it occur to anyone here that someone, somewhere, might want to read a story about an actual grown-up who had worked for decades and had something to say? When Jolie was Colleen Dewhurst’s age, what would she be doing? Paging through her scrapbooks, still chanting “C’est moi?”
In the gloomy conference room, I sighed out loud, louder than I’d meant to, drawing Susie Schein’s annoyed attention.
“Nothing, sorry,” I muttered. But the damage was done. Consulting her notes, she squinted at me and demanded, “Why are you using the same writers over and over?”
“Because any time I suggest new ones, you reject them,” I snapped, though I caught myself before I could add, “And because they’re the ones so desperate for money that they’ll let you, through me, destroy their work.”
“Well, I think it’s time for a change,” she said crisply. “What we have to do is stop thinking the way we’ve been thinking. How about using some men, for a change?”
Everyone murmured eager assent, even though we already used men. But maybe this was a way to get her off our backs.
She turned to me again. “What about Mark Lewis?”
“Mark Lewis?” My heart sank. I could practically hear him saying to Peter Darby: “Why was she so incredibly pissed off?” “Uh, sure, what about him?”
“Miss Belladonna met him at a dinner party last week,” Susie said, pulling out a sheet of paper. “She sent me a note on it: ‘Charming company, funny stories.’ Why isn’t he writing for us?”
“Well, no offense, Susie,” I said slowly, “but why would he?”
“Because this is a national publication with a readership of one million people,” she said impatiently. “Art and Our Times has a fifth of that.”
“Okay,” I said, conciliatorily. It was probably best not to introduce the notion that Mark Lewis might not cotton to writing for a magazine most frequently read under the hair dryer. “Do you want an essay on something in particular?”
“Not about art,” she said. “Try something different. Call him up and ask what he’s passionate about, what his hobbies are. Maybe he races sports cars or has a summer home in the Vineyard that gives him a spiritual lift. Maybe there’s some city he’s madly in love with. Didn’t he grow up in Chicago? Maybe he could write about that.”
To argue would be pointless. I would now have to pick up the phone and admit to Mark Lewis that I was the bitch who had snubbed him at the Limelight. Not to mention having to call the other big names Susie was reeling off now—everyone from a food writer at The New York Times to a movie executive who wrote book reviews in his spare time—none of whom would be caught dead writing for us. I nodded dutifully and said nothing. My life sucked.
Back in my office—yes, my very own office, as of three days earlier and bare of everything except my computer and the requisite white orchid sent to anyone who got a promotion—I closed the door and lit a cigarette. Then I threw self-respect to the wind, picked up the phone, and left cheery messages far and wide, saving Art and Our Times for last. The receptionist there referred me to Mark Lewis’s agent, Victoria Segal, which was an immense relief. Maybe this way he would just say no in principle and never realize it was me who had asked.
I checked my watch: 11:41. Paul’s plane was due at five-thirty, and I didn’t care what Susie Schein said, I was walking out of this office at six sharp.
Paul had called a few nights earlier to tell me that he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous. His boss had taken him out to dinner and told him what a bright future he had, or could have, with the company. But it had come to his boss’s attention that the partying was, after all, out of control. Meaning what?, I had asked Paul suspiciously, but all he’d say was that he’d tell me when he saw me.
He was arriving that night for a week’s stay. Maybe he’d do some Christmas shopping, he’d said, though I didn’t see how. His every minute was already booked. As a rule, Hollywood agents have breakfast, lunch, tea, cocktails, and dinner each day with anyone they can get their hands on. Paul also had theater or opera tickets every night, and somehow had to squeeze in AA meetings, to which I agreed to accompany him.
I certainly had nothing better to do—except work, to which I was now devoting a minimum of twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week. In addition to editing, I had started writing, too— little pieces, mostly, but I enjoyed it. They were certainly easier than the fairy tales I’d been writing at home (I had kept the books but ripped out the title pages). Without Bucky and the prospect of children, the stories had lost their urgency, somehow. I tried keeping a journal instead—everyone said it was great writing practice—but I had no appetite for reality, either. I would start out with Susie and Miss Belladonna and end up with the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. My writing was as mixed up as the rest of my life.
I hadn’t heard from Bucky since the end of the summer. After the unreturned phone calls, he sent a few more letters written in his baby script on yellow legal paper. “Sitting here thinking of you,” they inevitably began. He dotted his i’s with circles. I thought only girls did that. In seventh grade.
Yes, I was bitter, and it was a dark, ugly emotion with a taste all its own, one that even Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch could not obliterate. I tasted it all the time. I tasted it whenever I wanted to take one more bite, smoke one more cigarette, drink one more drink. I tasted it whenever I was overindulging in something I only thought I wanted and then thought about why I was wanting it. I tasted it in the back of my mouth, right near my brain, bitter.
I worked and walked and paid my bills, took my shoes in to be resoled, read the paper. I did everything I was supposed to do, only with an extra weight pressing right against the spot between my ribs where you get the wind knocked out of you.
After my brief flurry of social activity, I did not go on any more dates. I had freed myself of that obligation as my own extra-special birthday present. I didn’t care what anyone else said or what they advised. I was sick of every man on the face of the earth, and if I could kick each one of them in the balls and watch them keel over in pain, I would levitate with sheer delight. Did I mention that I was bitter?
When Paul told me he joined AA, I actually felt jealous. Why wasn’t there someplace I could go that would fix me? Some group of jilted women where I could stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Sandra and I’m a gullible, pathetic sap. I believed every word my prom date ever told me and I’ve just turned twenty-seven and I’m totally alone.” Everyone would smile kindly and say, “Hi, Sandra,” then we would drink coffee together, and each time I had the urge to walk over to Klein Chapin & Woodruff with a loaded shotgun, I could call my sponsor, Miss Havisham, who would adjust her tiara and talk me down.
The phone rang as I was grinding out my cigarette. My brother, I suddenly thought, always teased me about smoking cigarettes like a Friendly’s waitress, right down to the end.
It was Victoria Segal, Mark Lewis’s agent, and she sounded vaguely amused. I took a breath and launched into my pitch.
“I’ll ask him,” she said, surprising me. “He could probably use the cash. Divorce always means needing cash. I’ll call you back.”
Swell.
The afternoon dragged on. I had arranged to meet Paul at Joe Allen for a burger before the theater. I got there early, had a glass of wine, and relaxed. I always felt better when I went to the theater district. I usually ran into people from school, and I liked the us-versus-them feeling of watching the civilians gulping down their dinner and running to the theater at seven-thirty for a curtain that wouldn�
��t rise until five minutes after eight. Tonight, though, I knew very few people and nursed my wine alone, waiting for Paul to appear, which he did, finally, at almost seven o’clock. He had a new, short haircut I didn’t like at all: It made his face look square and drawn, at odds with his ebullient smile.
“Feel this,” he said as we hugged, moving my hand to his stomach, which was sticking out over his jeans. “I’m eating ice cream all the time, ’cause when you quit drinking you need to replace the sugar you’d been getting from the alcohol.” He looked at me expectantly. “Is it bad?” he asked sweetly.
“No, of course not. It’s fine. I wouldn’t even have noticed if you hadn’t told me. Don’t panic, Romano, you’re still pretty.” That part was certainly true. Every chorus boy in the place was panting. “But what’s with the hair? Are you joining the military?”
His hand flew up to fluff it, as he always did, but he didn’t have much to work with. “I don’t know why I cut it, I just did. A new start, I guess.”
“Cutting your hair is a new start? What happens when it grows out?”
He ignored me, sitting down and ordering coffee and a burger and launching into a sermon on AA and his new favorite word, “co-dependency,” which seemed to mean that when Sally bailed him out of jail for drunk driving, she was encouraging him to drink.
“Wait a minute,” I said suspiciously. “You drink and it’s her fault? That’s a neat equation.”
He smiled the smile of an apostle. “It’s a good thing I’m here for so long so I can explain it to you.”
Not that he ever did. The days flew by, packed with activity. Fun activity, in spite of my job—and his. We laughed at the theater, cried at the opera, window-shopped Madison Avenue. We descended on the men’s department of Saks Fifth Avenue, where I sat in an overstuffed chair, like one of those husbands in the dress department, while Paul modeled the most fabulous suits, jackets with broad shoulders and pants with crisp pleats, and I fingered the sumptuous material and nodded approvingly. He flipped through piles of cashmere sweaters and chose a handful. When Peter Darby joined us for drinks one day at the Plaza, Paul made us howl with tales of a priest he had had sex with, and the very large cross the priest kept above his bed that Paul could never take his eyes off.
One night, finally, at an early dinner before an AA meeting, I made Paul tell me what had prompted his big cleanup.
He sighed. “It was because of that jerk Richard Whitford,” he said.
“The actor?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah. He’s a new client, and I was at a party with him where there was this huge bowl of coke on the dining room table. Everyone was doing lines, and he made a pass at me, and I wasn’t interested, so he narc’ed me out to my boss.”
“But are you really supposed to do anything to make a client happy, including fuck him?” I asked.
“Sure,” Paul said glumly. “And if you don’t, you shouldn’t then be stupid enough to fuck a more famous client instead.”
“And who’s that, dare I ask?”
“Do I really have to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“John Bean Marshall.”
“That old thing? What did he direct last, the Ziegfeld Follies?”
“You are a witch. He has six projects in development.”
“He’s old enough to be your grandfather.”
Paul cackled. “And you should have seen him when he was getting ready to come, with all the rolls on his stomach just shaking. Shake, rattle, and roll!”
“Eeeeyooooh!” We both hooted with laughter.
I put down my fork. “Paul, really, though,” I said, “is this the kind of thing you want to be doing? I mean, is this business the right place for you?”
He smiled benignly, as if I were a child. “Sandra, you’re dear to worry about me,” he said. “But if I’m going to sleep with these men anyway, why not get a picture out of it?”
“That’s lovely.”
“Well, it’s true. It’s not such a big deal, you know. A lot of it’s amusing. Most of the time, anyway. And also, well, truth be told, I guess I felt sorry for Marshall. He’s lived with this woman for years, and I think he’s only able to get out for some fun once in a while. So, you know.”
“And figuring you’re about to enter into the same kind of arrangement, you thought you’d give him a tumble? So when your karma comes around, someone else will return the favor? I mean, Paul, do you ever sit down and think of how you’re going to balance all these flings when—and if—you do marry Sally?”
He looked hurt. “Yes, I’ve thought about it, Sandy. I’ve thought about it constantly, and I’ve decided that I don’t want to be alone. I look at Louis, the president of my company, who’s like sixty, now. He’s been this big queen forever, he still hates his mother, he flirts with waiters who laugh at him in the kitchen, and he lives in this huge house all alone. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “But does it have to be Sally? It is possible, you know, for you to meet a guy you could be happy with.”
“No, it’s not,” he said decidedly.
“Why?”
“Because it’s not. Could you see me living with a guy? Marie would have a heart attack. She wants grandchildren, poor thing.”
“And what about your father?”
“What about him?” he asked sharply.
“Well, usually, one parent is more flexible. Your father’s been out in the world, done business, made a success of himself. Do you really think he doesn’t know you’re gay?”
“Yes, Sandra, I really think he doesn’t.” He snorted. “As if business has anything to do with it.”
“You know what I mean. He wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Enough,” he said, going for a cigarette. “I can assure you beyond a reasonable doubt that this is a devoutly Catholic man to whom God gave only one child, so he expects molto grandchildren. End of story.”
“Okay, then. Don’t you think you at least owe Sally the courtesy of the information? The truth? She may decide it’s no problem, but at least you won’t be like Bucky, lying to her.”
“Sally is why I joined AA,” he said.
“I thought Richard Whitford is why you joined AA.”
“Jesus, who are you, Perry Mason? They’re both why I joined.” He sighed. “Sally told me that this was all too hard for her, and she wouldn’t be able to see me anymore if I didn’t stop. She’s put up with so much. I owe it to her.”
“You do,” I said. “You also owe her the rest of the truth.”
“One thing at a time, Sandy. Okay?” His expression was pleading.
“Okay.”
We went to the meeting, in a church basement with folding chairs and Styrofoam coffee cups. Everyone seemed friendly and genuinely supportive. We left as soon as the speaker finished and ran to the theater. We seemed to run everywhere, as Paul was his usual combination of manic and euphoric, fueled by avoidance, Christmas cheer, and king-size hot-fudge sundaes, which we ate every night at David’s Potbelly Stove on Christopher Street.
He had very generously agreed to cancel a dinner to come with me to Green Hills for my parents’ annual Chanukah party, an event I couldn’t bear to face alone. Not that Bucky had ever attended—probably because he had never been invited, and I never pushed it. I knew he would rather die than be whispered about by the assembled congregation of Ahavas Israel—and frankly, I didn’t blame him.
Paul and I arrived early and helped my mom set up. She loved Paul, and the feeling was mutual—he made her laugh with his outrageous-boy stories, and she mommied him, which he loved. My father was civil enough, though he considered my fraternizing with faygelehs instead of husband-hunting a clearly inferior decision.
The house looked great, buffed and polished, and the good china was making its annual appearance. The dining room table was loaded with lox and whitefish and bagels, and Mom had spent the past few weeks making and freezing hundreds of potato pancakes, wh
ich she now reheated—her favorite activity. I armed myself with a double Scotch and hid in the den once the doorbell started ringing.
“Everyone’s going to think I’m an old maid who was thrown over by the big goy from the baseball team,” I whimpered. “And they’re going to think I’m fat and that my skin is bad and that no one will ever go out with me again. And they’ll tell their kids what a mess I am and how they all knew from the start that this relationship would crash and burn because anyone who is descended from Betsy Ross would never marry someone whose mother freezes potato pancakes in Scott towels and waxed paper and aluminum foil. I never should have come.”
Paul laughed. “You’re nuts,” he said comfortably.
“Easy for you to say,” I answered. “Think if our roles were reversed and I was the one coming to your family’s Christmas party.”
He stopped laughing.
“My point exactly,” I said. “Just hang around with me, okay?”
“Of course,” he said. But I could tell that he was already scoping the student Mom had hired to tend bar, some tall, awkward guy with chewed-up fingernails.
“Look, it’s Sandy!” Mr. Schwarz boomed from across the room. He of “knockers” fame, from the day of my prom pictures.
“Hi, Mr. Schwarz, how are you?” I introduced Paul to him and his wife, who took me in from head to toe with one shrewd glance. I gave her one of my own. She bought most of her clothes at Loehmann’s—they were all stylish but often came in peculiar colors, which is why they were sold there instead of Saks. So she was always well dressed, except that something would invariably be aqua.
“Sandy, you look well,” she said, shaking my hand. My eyes narrowed. What did that mean, exactly?
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
“Enjoying the magazine?”
“Yes, very much.”