The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel

by Lorna Graham

  “Does it have to be exact-exact?” she asked. “Isn’t the show two hours long or something?” She didn’t want to trigger any more animosity with her questions, but curiosity got the better of her.

  “You’re a walking faux pas machine.” He closed his eyes and shook his head again. “Timing a live show is unbelievably complicated. First of all, there are, like, a thousand elements: the segments, the commercials, the bumpers, the teases, the ‘hello’ pages.” Eve wished she had a pen to take notes. “Plus, twice an hour, the computer takes the network off the air and goes to the local news and weather cut-in. If the anchor’s still blabbing away because you wrote too much, or put in too many questions for him to ask, it looks really ugly having him disappear from the screen mid-sentence. On the other hand, if you write too little, and leave the host with nothing to say and time to fill, let’s just say don’t bother coming into work ever again.”

  “I see,” said Eve. Who would want this job? “And how am I supposed to come up with precisely twenty seconds about bouillabaisse?” she asked. “Could I ask Hap McCutcheon what he’d like to say?”

  “You’re elevating my blood pressure,” said Mark distractedly as he tapped on the keyboard. “No, you cannot ask Hap or Bliss what they want to say. You’ll probably never even meet them. They work mornings; we work nights. I’ve been here four years and I’m sure neither of them could pick me out of a police lineup.”

  This was starting to sound like a very strange arrangement, writing for people you didn’t know. Rather like choosing an outfit for someone you’d never seen. But Eve had to admit this Mark was slightly more obliging than her two previous New York bosses, and she decided she ought to be grateful. “Got it,” she said.

  “It’s your job to figure out how to interest the American people in some foreign soup with a hard-to-pronounce name. At eight-thirty in the morning. No one else’s.”

  “Okay.”

  “So—go to it.” He stood up and motioned for her to take the chair behind the desk.

  Eve took her seat, thinking hard about bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse. “Well,” she began. “I guess the name itself is appealing.”

  “Because?” he said, looking at his watch again.

  “It sounds glamorous. It makes me think of sophisticated French people sitting around in striped T-shirts and neck scarves on the shores of the Mediterranean.” She’d been there as a child during a family trip to France. Her mind strayed further as the reverie took hold. “They’re under the stars, drinking red wine. They’re laughing—at a political joke. Or a Jerry Lewis reference maybe. And they’re eating this wonderful bouillabaisse, big steaming bowls of fish and fragrance.” She opened her eyes.

  He nodded a little impatiently. “Okay. But now imagine you’re a mother of four in Indianapolis.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s our target audience. You have to make her obsessed with making this soup. And to her, that fantasy sounds intimidating. These French political joke makers are so urbane and this bouillabaisse sounds pretty complicated.”

  Eve jumped in. “Oh, but it’s not. I just made it, down in the studio. All by myself. I mean, it took a while because I was making a large amount. But for a normal dinner party, I think it’d be pretty easy.”

  “All right,” he said. “Take those two ideas and put them together. Most intros are a combination of two contrasting ideas. See what you come up with. Make it conversational and of course mention Zorin at the end. Show me when you’re done.”

  Just then, Tanya popped her head in, looking irritated. “Hey, it’s time for your pre-interview with Senator Farnsworth. You’re not at your desk and his aide is giving me all kinds of grief.”

  “ShitShitShit. Okay.” For an instant, his commanding demeanor seemed to slip. He threw a glance at Eve and left.

  A senator on the phone? Great Scott. Eve was relieved to have only soup on her plate, or in her bowl, as it were. She perched her fingers on the keyboard but all the ideas she’d had evaporated. Striped shirts? Beaches? What had she been thinking? Either her attention span had shrunk to nil or Donald had messed with her brain’s wiring somehow. Or maybe this job—writing a handful of very specifically tailored sentences—was just too difficult.

  She thought of her job back home. The paralegal work she did for her father, Gin—taking notes during depositions, summarizing documents, and preparing reports—came easily. It always had. Only lately had that effortlessness begun to feel constraining. But it had been weeks and weeks since she’d done even that, and she was feeling rusty.

  Her fingers hovered above the keys. Donald rarely seemed to have a problem getting started. What was it he said about writer’s block? Ignore it. Write your way round it.

  She began to type, slowly at first, before picking up steam as her dormant skills roused themselves. She looked down at the computer timer: Her first attempt had yielded four minutes of copy. She began to play with the words—adding, subtracting, and changing their order as if stringing them on the add-a-pearl necklace she had when she was twelve. But no matter how much she reworked it, she kept winding up with twenty-two seconds. She had to lose three words, but which ones? “Rich and delectable”? Or “hearty yet elegant”? It was a linguistic Sophie’s Choice. Half an hour later, she printed her best effort.

  (HAP:)

  BOUILLABAISSE. THE VERY NAME

  CONJURES UP SUMMERS ON THE

  MEDITERRANEAN, AND THE RICH

  FLAVORS OF ITS SEAFOOD. IT’S

  DELICIOUS AND EXOTIC—THE

  PERFECT DISH TO SERVE FRIENDS

  AT YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY …

  IF ONLY IT WEREN’T SO DIFFICULT

  TO MAKE. WELL, GUESS WHAT? IT’S

  NOT. IN FACT, YOU CAN THROW IT

  TOGETHER IN LESS THAN AN HOUR,

  AND EVEN HAVE TIME LEFT

  OVER TO TOSS A SALAD BEFORE

  YOUR GUESTS ARRIVE.

  HERE TO SHOW US JUST HOW EASY

  IT IS IS CHEF ZORIN.

  Eve went out into the hallway. The other office doors were now open, and she could hear the low sounds of conversations and typing. Before knocking on Mark’s door, she overheard what appeared to be the last of his discussion with the senator.

  “I can’t promise you that Bliss will ask you that exact question, sir.” Pause. “Yes, I realize that, but as you know from your previous appearances on Smell the Coffee, she tends to do her own thing.” Another pause. “I understand you want to discuss your wife’s new charity, and I will include a question about that, but it’s impossible to guarantee—” A few moments of silence followed before he said a polite “Thank you” and hung up. Eve knocked lightly and pushed the door open.

  “That was fast,” said Mark. He waved her into a chair. Silently, he took the page from her and ran his eyes over it, frowning slightly in concentration as he did so. “This isn’t awful.” He raised his eyebrows. “I think we can work with it.”

  Eve took the first real breath since she’d arrived.

  “Now let’s go through the rest.” Mark showed her how to convert Zorin’s recipe into a script so that Hap could follow along. They put the list of ingredients on the left side of the page, and on the right side, questions for Hap to ask, like “That smells great. What goes in next?” and “Can you substitute pike for red snapper?” and “Will you think I’m a wimp if I tell you I don’t like cayenne?”

  When they were done, he leaned back in his chair. “All right, Toulouse-Lautrec. You just eked out a segment.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said.

  “True. But listen, next time, you’ll have to come up with all the interview questions on your own, okay? That’s part of the job.”

  Eve nodded. “You think there’ll be a next time?”

  “Well, it’s up to Orla, of course. And she’s hard to predict. She can be really tough—she fired someone just today, for God’s sake. But she can be surprisingly supportive if you press the right
button. Though if she gets a chance to read your résumé and realizes you’re not a newsperson …” Thankfully, Mark abandoned this train of thought. “But look, we do lots of non-news stuff around here. And you did a decent job with the writing, so it should be fine. I’m a bit surprised by your aptitude, actually. I’ll talk to Orla tomorrow after the show and we’ll go from there.”

  “Thank you,” said Eve.

  “One piece of advice. If you do wind up coming aboard, make sure to watch the show every morning.”

  “Are you kidding?” Eve said. “I can’t wait to hear my words on national television.” As she said this, she realized it was true. What an incredible experience it must be. Even Donald couldn’t say he knew what that was like.

  A small laugh bubbled up in Mark as if she had just said something childish. “I guess. But the real reason is so you’ll know which way to come into work.”

  “Subway versus taxi?”

  “Elevator versus stairs. If your segment went well, you can come up in the elevator and walk in the front way.” Eve didn’t want to hear the corollary. “But if it goes badly—whether it’s Bliss’s fault, Hap’s fault, Lark’s fault, Zorin’s fault, or even God’s fault—do not take the elevator. Come up the fire stairs, check the halls for anyone even remotely resembling one of the senior-level producers, make for your office and keep your head down.”

  “Okay.” It sounded like a war zone.

  “Hey, like I said, you should be fine. Now go on home.” He stood up and offered his hand, squinting at her temporary ID. “I didn’t get your name. Does that say … Eventual?”

  “Everyone calls me Eve,” she said.

  “Ah. Pretty.” The way he looked at her, she couldn’t quite tell if he was talking about her appearance or her name. “Anyway, sorry about before. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just sort of stressful around here, and the writers …”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Guess we’ll be seeing you soon.” Finally, there was a small smile and Eve realized that on closer inspection, Mark was more handsome than she’d realized.

  Chapter 3

  Taxis clustered along Seventh Avenue like bouquets of yellow tulips, and Eve plucked the closest. She hummed as she looked out the window at the enchanted Manhattan she’d come to know in the last few weeks, a Narnian landscape of strange, wild creatures. There were no trolls exactly, but there was the lumbering, grunting super of her townhouse who enforced recycling rules with shocking ferocity. Down on Wall Street, executives with the bodies of men and the heads of bulls bellowed their deals on street corners, while the streets played home to bike messengers who whizzed by like sprites, barely missing pedestrians and dancing off, laughing at the mayhem in their wake.

  The fare came to $6.35. Flushed with triumph, Eve handed the driver a ten and told him to keep the change as she hopped out onto the slate sidewalk of Perry Street, enjoying, as always, the sight of her slightly shabby townhouse with its wrought-iron gate and steep stoop.

  It was after eight in the evening and she was starving. She contemplated sushi to celebrate her good fortune, but instead resigned herself to getting upstairs. She wanted to tell Donald everything that had happened. And she had some leftover moo shu shrimp in the fridge. As she made her way up the burgundy-carpeted stairs and past the coffin corners decorated with bud vases, each holding a single silk rose, she heard the faint sound of whining. The higher she climbed, the louder it grew. On the top floor, her neighbor’s door stood open.

  “Mrs. Swan? Are you all right?” She heard the old woman’s customary heavy-footed walk and then she appeared, clad in a tie-dyed T-shirt, long denim skirt, and clogs, her flowing gray hair submitting halfheartedly to the confines of a topknot. She leaned heavily on her cane.

  “Thank goodness you’re back.” Her heavy-lidded blue eyes searched Eve’s. “You’re usually home and I’ve been trying to … anyway, how are you, dear?”

  “I’m extremely well. What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s this little thing here.” Mrs. Swan stepped aside, revealing a pointy-nosed puppy covered in speckled fur of black, white, and brown shivering behind her in the doorway. The dog continued to whimper for a moment, made a hiccupping noise, and fell silent.

  “Whose is it?”

  “You know the boys downstairs? The ones who always leave hockey sticks in the hallway?” Eve knew them. Four hulking twenty-somethings whose music pumped out from behind their front door in waves and for whom the hall served as a locker room. She still had a bruise on her knee from tripping over their equipment. “Apparently, they were late with the rent. Only three or four days, but that was enough for De Fief. He didn’t even send a letter first this time.”

  “Really?”

  Mrs. Swan took a few steps into the hallway and peered over the railing. “He’s famous for harassing tenants,” she said in a low voice. “If he decides he wants you out, it can get pretty nasty.”

  “What does he do?”

  “We’ve seen it all. Cutting off the heat, threatening phone calls in the middle of the night. The works. With the boys, he had some thugs ‘escort’ them out with about fifteen minutes’ notice.”

  “He can do that?” asked Eve.

  “Apparently he can,” said Mrs. Swan, shaking her head. Eve glanced down at the dog, and Mrs. Swan remembered what they were talking about. “Anyway, all of a sudden there’s a pounding on my door and one of them is standing outside with the dog and a bag of food, saying they have to vacate, they have no idea where they’re going and are probably going to have to split up and can I please take the puppy. He seemed absolutely desperate, so what could I do?” The pup peeked out from behind Mrs. Swan’s knee.

  “Poor thing. It can’t be more than what? Two months old?”

  “Well, I really don’t know much about dogs. I’ve asked everyone else in the building if they could take her, and so far, nada. I can’t because my hip surgery’s finally come through.”

  “Congratulations!” Eve gave Mrs. Swan a quick hug. The old woman had been waiting for months.

  “Thank you. The thing is, I’ll be in the hospital for a week and then I’ll be staying with my daughter in New Jersey for several months, maybe longer. You can probably see where this is going. I thought you might know someone who—”

  “I can take her.” The words were out of Eve’s mouth before she could think.

  “Could you? I know it’s a lot to ask, but you’re home quite a bit.…”

  Eve decided not to disclose her new status as New York career woman. She knelt down to get a better look at the dog.

  “What’s the matter, sweetie? You shy?” The dog shrank back. “What’s her name?” Eve asked Mrs. Swan.

  “No one knows. Guess it’ll be up to you.”

  Eve liked dogs. She hadn’t had one growing up because of her mother’s allergies, but her parents had run with a rather horsey set, and since horsey sets inevitably comprised dog people, many a long afternoon at the Watsons’ or Giffords’ had been passed in the pleasant company of a retriever, beagle, or spaniel. Plus it was spring now and it would be most pleasant to stroll the Village with a well-behaved dog at her heel. Wasn’t it a tenet of city life that dogs brought people together?

  “What do you think, fuzzball? Want to come next door?” Eve snuck a hand under the dog’s belly and picked her up gently. The pup struggled, her little legs flailing wildly.

  Mrs. Swan pulled out a shopping bag filled with dog food, toys, and a leash. “From the boys’ apartment.”

  “Thanks,” said Eve, looping the bag over her wrist.

  “I should warn you, she’s a bit stressed. Howling like a banshee. Post-traumatic stress maybe.”

  Eve slid her three keys into their appointed locks and opened her door a crack. “She seems okay now. I’m sure it’ll be fine.…” She felt a claw nick the underside of her chin. As she set the dog on the floor of her apartment, Mrs. Swan lumbered forward.

  “Let me come in with you. It might
help her transition—”

  “Actually, it’s not a good time.” Eve felt her heart race. She’d long dreaded the moment when someone would ask to visit. Donald would no doubt pull something and send the person running for the hills. Or for their nightmare landlord. Luckily, New Yorkers seemed content to live mere feet from each other for decades without setting foot in one another’s homes. “I’m having a plumbing problem. There’s water on the floor and—”

  Mrs. Swan’s eyes flew open wide. “We have to call Vladimir immediately! He’ll come in the evening if it’s an emergency. Flooding is dangerous; it can weaken the whole building.” To Eve’s horror, Mrs. Swan began to push past her. Just as unbelievably, Eve found herself stepping in to block the old woman’s path. Their thin arms were actually pressed against one another and they looked into each other’s face, eyes widened with mutual incredulity.

  “No!” said Eve. “I mean I’ve cleaned up the water. Everything’s fine now. It actually wasn’t a leak. I just spilled a pot of water, that’s all. But it’s all cleaned up. The problem is, I’m expecting a call. Transatlantic.” The puppy, apparently distressed at the commotion, began to whine again. “Shhh. It’s going to be okay,” Eve soothed. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Swan. I’ll take good care of her. But I do have that call now.”

  Eve stepped inside and pushed the door shut with deliberate force, hearing Mrs. Swan stumble backwards. She surely thought Eve had gone insane, but, thanks to Donald, who might just find popping into the old woman’s head a refreshing change of pace from Eve’s—likely scaring her into an early grave—there was nothing to be done about it.

  Eve tried to carry the puppy down the hall, but the little thing jerked and kicked as if suffering an epileptic fit. Hot breath assaulted Eve’s face and scratches multiplied along her arms. “Stop it now, honey.” She put the dog down and crossed the noisy, complaining floorboards to the galley kitchen, where she retrieved her china bowl from earlier and filled it with cold water.

  “Come here. Have something to drink.” The dog began to whine again. “Well, I’m certainly going to.” Hands shaking, Eve fixed herself a highball of bourbon and soda at her tiny art deco bar by the window that overlooked the courtyard. Shaped like a half-moon and covered in somewhat dulled black lacquer, it had been the only piece of furniture in the apartment when she moved in, and it was, except for the bed, still the one she used with the most regularity.