by Alex Witchel
“It’s the pacing of the magazine, you know, that determines whether the reader keeps reading,” Buffy said. She dropped her voice low, as if she was sharing a secret.
“The reader doesn’t read a photo layout,” I said.
She thought about that a minute.
“Why don’t you just tell them which layout should come first?” I suggested. “They could use the help.”
“Yeah, like I might ever do that,” she said snippily.
Susie Schein lifted her head and stared at the cluster of us. “Give us a minute, will you?” she barked. Everyone scattered, mincing down the hallway in both directions, careful not to tread upon the shots of Jolie straddling a motorcycle in two scanty strips of spandex that would set the beloved reader back at least a hundred bucks.
Back in my office, I closed the door and lit a cigarette. It was close to spring now, and the trees were starting to turn a soft green in the yard next to St. Patrick’s, which I could just see if I leaned over far enough.
Paul.
For the millionth time, I thought of Paul.
I had been home for a week and still couldn’t get the visit out of my mind. On that Sunday morning, just before I left, I had walked into the kitchen to find Paul in his robe, drinking coffee, his baseball cap on the table beside him. When he saw me, he fumbled for it, jamming it onto his head, which, I saw, was covered only in sparse hairs and baby fuzz.
“You don’t have to put your hat on,” I said quietly.
“I don’t want you remembering me looking like a rat’s ass,” he mumbled.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “I’ll be back soon, in a few weeks. Don’t say things like that.” He smiled faintly, as if I had already left, and turned away, to his paper.
Sally drove me to the airport, and as I was getting out of the car she handed me a package. “Paul said to give this to you before you got on the plane,” she said. “It’s a book.”
Once in my coach seat, I unwrapped the package: Kate Vaiden, by Reynolds Price. The dust jacket was dark and pictured a white horse in the woods with a man nearby, reflected in a pond, a double image. I opened the book and found an inscription Paul had written in his spidery hand, “To Sandra, There are few things in my life I have loved more than this book. There are few people I have loved more than you. You lighten my soul and make my heart dance. Love, Paul.”
I felt a chill. That’s what he had been working on when Sally and I were watching the horse race. I turned the next page and saw the opening line of the novel: “The best thing about my life up to here is, nobody believes it.” I put the book back in my bag, unwilling to read it.
Once I was home, though, I carried it with me everywhere, to work and back again. I wanted to save it, to hoard it. I wanted, ten or thirty years from now, to sit down and read it and feel that Paul was right there with me, sharing his own special message, new, as if he’d just thought of it. I wanted it to last. I wanted him to live.
The week before the Philadelphia trip, I spent hours doing research. I hardly needed to, but anything was better than going home. Sharon had moved out amid rainstorms of tears when her mother’s accountant located a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side that qualified as a good investment. Unlike our building, this new one didn’t have a doorman, and Sharon refused to give her mother a key. That was progress in itself. She seemed finally ready to move on, to find the man who would be her husband. She knew she would meet him soon, because that’s what all the books said. That if you cared enough about yourself, felt good enough to feel you deserved only good things—like leaving your pitiful friend in your pitiful share so you could use the bathroom whenever you wanted—then you were ready. She had also dumped the mute. Entitled girls were entitled to conversation, at the very least.
After Sharon left, I decided to keep my spot on the living room floor, despite her urging me to move into the bedroom. I just didn’t like the idea of closing the door and not knowing what was going on outside. I put an ad in The Village Voice, like everyone did who was looking for a roommate, and found one just in time to pay May’s rent.
Mary Ann White looked like her name. She must have been six feet tall, with stringy blond hair—a total jock who worked in advertising. No, she didn’t know Bucky, had never heard of him, in fact. When she came home at night, she would change out of her tie blouses, put on her sneakers, and run, miles at a time. Then she would bring home from the salad bar on the corner a plastic container filled with chickpeas and cottage cheese that smelled like an old refrigerator, and she would eat it while drinking two of the most enormous beers I had ever seen, straight from the bottle. She declined to sit at the table, the way Sharon and I had, but took the food into her room and ate it in front of her own TV. The fact that we weren’t friends and had been thrown together by financial need only was lost on neither of us. In her first week in residence, we hadn’t said more than five sentences to each other.
The Wednesday evening before my Philadelphia trip, I came home around seven-thirty, just in time to watch the plastic container make its entrance. I took my place at the table, alone, with a bowl of reheated vegetable fried rice, but I just couldn’t eat it. The trip was worrying me, and my stomach was killing me. I’d been drinking from a Pepto-Bismol bottle all day.
I started flipping through the file, then put it down. Okay. The problem was that Mark and I were taking this trip for work and one of us was confusing it with romance. Which one of us would that be? After all, if he had been dying to see me socially, he would have called. And he hadn’t. Fine. We would be friends. Or professional acquaintances. Or whatever. But no wish lists here. I would deal with this head-on. I picked up the phone and dialed. He answered on the first ring.
“Mark? Hi. It’s Sandra Berlin.” My mouth felt dry. I hadn’t thought he would actually be home. “I’m just calling to touch base before the weekend, to find out what you’re planning, so I can work around you.”
“I’m glad you called,” he said easily. “I’ve been so overwhelmed these past few weeks with other deadlines, I have to admit that I hadn’t focused on this. Um, that’s what I’m doing tonight, though. Sitting here surrounded by all things Philadelphia.”
“That makes two of us,” I said. “Does it make sense to go through some of it now?”
We did. Naturally, I had overprepared. Everything he wanted was much more manageable than anything I had imagined.
He talked about some of the artists’ exhibitions at the Museum of Art that had interested him, and mentioned, in passing, an exhibit at MOCA in Los Angeles. I had wanted to see it when I’d visited Paul, but obviously, I hadn’t managed it.
“You know, I was just out there and I missed it,” I said. “I was visiting a close friend who was too sick to go.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“AIDS,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as if I’d told him someone had died. Covering the art world, I imagined, put him in close proximity to a number of people with AIDS. He seemed to know the implications better than I did. He asked a few questions, and I told him everything, the whole story, all in a flood. I hadn’t realized that I didn’t have someone to talk to about this; normally, that person would have been Paul. When I stopped to look at my watch, I realized we had been on the phone for more than an hour.
“Listen, you’d better get off and concentrate on Philadelphia,” I said. “Sorry we got off on such a lengthy tangent.”
“Don’t worry, I was glad to talk about it,” he said. Somewhere in the last hour I had lost track of the idea of being professional and found myself hoping he might offer that cup of tea again. Hopping a cab to the Upper West Side seemed a suddenly appealing notion.
“Are you just going to stay in and work now?” I asked. “I mean, have you had dinner yet?” My voice seemed shrill, even to me.
“I had a sandwich earlier,” he said. “So I think I’ll just sit here and finish things up.”
His tone
seemed distant now. We arranged to meet at Penn Station Friday morning and rang off. “Think work,” I kept repeating, as I drank some more Pepto-Bismol and went to bed.
Friday morning at a quarter to nine, I saw Mark standing underneath the big board with the scheduling information on it, his bag at his feet, reading the papers. My stomach pinched—yet again—and I willed myself to remain composed.
“Good morning.” I was as chipper as possible, clutching my coffee and my garment bag.
He seemed to brighten. “Good morning,” he said. “Do you need help with that?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” It was just too early in the day to be this nervous. I still felt awkward about our conversation the other night. I knew I’d sounded pushy about dinner. I hadn’t meant to, but once we’d started talking about Paul, and he was so comforting—well, I got knocked off course. I did not intend to make that mistake again.
The panels on the board started flipping, directing us to Track 9. “Well, how many other assignments do you get where someone goes with you to catalog Amish apple butter?” I said. “I know this must seem silly.”
“Not at all,” he said as we walked toward the stairway. “My agent told me all about Susie Schein and her rules. I gather that in the world of women’s magazines she’s a notorious horror. I’m surprised you’ve lasted as long as you have.”
“Me too.”
When we reached the train, I took an involuntary step backward. “If you want to get some work done,” I suggested, “I’ll meet up with you there.”
“No, don’t be silly,” he said. “Let’s sit together. The trip isn’t long, and I was just going to read some papers. Unless, of course, you want to sit alone.”
“No. Fine. Great.” For heaven’s sake! New rule: All business with members of the opposite sex whom you are secretly dying to sleep with should be conducted only at night, when you’re awake and have a fighting chance at forming actual sentences.
He put my garment bag in the overhead rack, we sat down, and he handed me some of his newspapers. His eyes were really shockingly blue, I thought as the train emerged into daylight and the sun hit them. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and navy jacket—which probably helped the effect, I reminded myself—along with beige khakis and loafers. He was excited, I saw, to be taking this trip. He had dressed up. Just do your job and everything else will take care of itself, I cautioned myself, turning my attention to the Daily News. Try to relax.
The newspapers didn’t last long. Mark started chatting about how much he loved trains, and how often he used to take them when he was growing up. After a while, he pulled out a piece of white paper that had “Itinerary” typed across the top. “Here’s what I have,” he said, “if it’s okay with you.” Everything we had agreed on was there: the museums, the Liberty Bell, the Mint, and Benjamin Franklin’s house.
“I also made a dinner reservation tonight at Le Bec-Fin,” he said. I nodded and said nothing. “Well, can you come with me?” he asked, flushing.
I felt myself flush, too. “Oh, no, sure,” I said, stumbling over my words. “I’ve heard it’s great. I’d love to.”
Maybe he hadn’t been put off by the phone conversation after all. As the train slowed on its approach to the Thirtieth Street Station and the conductor called out “Philadelphia,” the excitement of what might prove to be a genuinely fun weekend caught me and buoyed me up. Okay, so it was work. But it was also fun. And I felt as if I hadn’t had any fun in a long time. I was ready.
Mark stood and reached to the rack for my bag. I looked up as he handed it to me and saw him blanch, his mouth opening, and for a second I thought he might be having a heart attack. Or maybe I was. He was streaked in Pepto-Bismol.
Long banners of it splashed down the front of his pale blue shirt and onto the lapels of his navy jacket, puddling in the folds of his beige pants. My mouth opened too, in what I hoped was a silent scream, and I looked at the bag, firmly zippered and completely saturated. The family-size bottle must not have been closed, I realized. And here was Mark Lewis, the most famous art writer in America, marinating in my stomach medicine.
“I’m sorry” was the best I could do.
“What is it?” he asked, stunned.
“Pepto-Bismol. I had a stomachache, and I guess I didn’t close the bottle all the way and it leaked. Oh, my God, I am so sorry.”
Other people walked past us with their own bags, looking suitably aghast at the pink ooze that was now dripping onto the floor. I stepped off the train, holding the bag away from me, following Mark, who trudged on ahead. As we emerged into the station’s main room, he turned, but before he could speak, my adrenaline kicked in. “I can fix this,” I blurted. “I really can, if you’ll give me a chance. But we need to go to the hotel first.”
He looked down at himself, miserable. He seemed truly shocked, not that I could blame him. If the roles had been reversed and my clothes had been doused with a thick pink liquid associated with diarrhea, murder wouldn’t have been good enough.
“Why don’t you go to the men’s room and see if any of it comes off,” I urged, “and I’ll get on the taxi line.” I walked away before he could protest, and he followed my suggestion as if anesthetized.
I took my place on line and tried not to hyperventilate. This was a bona fide disaster. “Pay attention and fix this,” I told myself sternly. As I inched toward the head of the line, I saw him walk slowly out of the station doors, dazed, holding his bag in front of him like armor.
I forced a big smile. “You can’t see a thing!” I said too loudly—and falsely. He’d gotten a little carried away and now looked as if he’d showered with his clothes on.
He stepped into the line behind me. “Rittenhouse Hotel,” I told the dispatcher, and we were off.
The ride was silent—none of the “Ooh”s and “Ah”s and “I remember when”s I had anticipated. He stared out his window with great concentration, and I imagined he must be cursing the day he’d agreed to this trip. As we pulled up to the hotel, I opened the cab door before the doorman could do it for me. “You pay the fare and I’ll find the concierge,” I said to Mark decisively. “Meet me inside.”
I bolted to the front desk and cornered the concierge, a young man with a kind expression. “Listen,” I said. “I’m in terrible trouble. I’m traveling with my boss, and the absolute worst thing just happened, which is that I had a bottle of Pepto-Bismol that opened in my bag and it poured all over him. Now his clothes are ruined, and I’m going to get fired unless I can fix it.”
The concierge nodded sympathetically and tried not to smile. “We have a dry-cleaning service,” he said. “We can send everything out this afternoon and have it returned by four.”
I thought I might cry. “Thank you,” I gushed as Mark walked in the door.
“Everything’s fine,” I proclaimed as the concierge scrutinized the pink-stained wretch before him. “They can send your jacket and pants out to be cleaned, and they’ll be back this afternoon. No problem.”
Mark looked at the concierge and asked, “Do they do shirts?”
“They can try” was the answer, though now that he’d assessed the damage, the concierge looked doubtful.
“Sure they can,” I said peremptorily. “Listen, why don’t you go upstairs and change? You don’t need a jacket for this afternoon anyway, and we can have an early lunch and see what there is to see. By the time we’re done, the clothes will be back and perfect.” I was practically pushing him toward the elevator. The bellhop picked up Mark’s bags, and he turned and followed.
“I’ll be waiting right down here,” I said brightly as Mark disappeared into the elevator. “Take your time.” I turned back to the concierge. “The shirt’s ruined, right?” I asked.
He half smiled. “It doesn’t look good,” he said tactfully.
“Okay, where can I buy men’s shirts?” I asked. “After four, when we know for sure.”
“Hecht’s is open late,” he said, writing down the address a
nd phone number.
“You may have saved my job,” I said, and he finally gave me a full smile, which I gratefully returned. To hell with Mark Lewis. I would move to Philadelphia and marry the concierge.
“What about your clothes?” he asked, and I stopped, surprised that I hadn’t considered them myself. I unzipped the bag and found everything inside untouched. The only thing in the outside pocket had been the Pepto-Bismol.
The concierge then called the bellhop to show me to my own room—in a burst of inspiration, the Jolie! travel office had figured out the two-for-the-price-of-one strategy—which was better than I expected, considering the rate. I hung up my clothes, threw the garment bag into the bathtub, and raced back to the lobby, hoping to arrive ahead of Mark. I would buy him a whole new wardrobe if I had to, I thought, noting my shiny nose in the reflection off the elevator door. I dug around my purse for my compact, which I found just as the doors opened and Mark stood before me, watching me slap powder onto my face. He was wearing fresh khakis and a striped shirt and seemed to have recovered his equanimity enough to find the sight of my on-the-fly makeup job most entertaining.
“You know, I have another pair of pants and another shirt I can make do with,” he said. “I should have realized that. I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Listen,” I said, taking his elbow. “I want to apologize to you. It goes without saying that the magazine will pay your cleaning expenses. And if you need to replace any of the clothes, we’ll pay for that, too.”
“Really, it’s okay,” he said mildly as we started out the door. “How about that lunch?”
Thank you, God, he had forgiven me. I realized I was starving. I had scared myself so far past the diarrhea stage, nothing could faze me now.
“Let’s get some cheese steaks,” he said.
“Sure,” I answered gamely. “Sounds great.” I’d rather die, I thought. I imagined they must be made with the crappiest meat and Cheez Whiz, and I figured I would just spit mine into my napkin when he wasn’t looking.