by Lorna Graham
“Were you ever married?” asked Eve, wondering idly if he might be gay but also picturing him with any of the dozens of beauties he’d dressed in his time.
Klieg leaned back again, folded his napkin, and placed it on the table. “Yes.” A cloud passed over their little patch of sky and threw the patio into momentary dimness. Klieg looked at his watch. “Do you mind? I have some calls to make.” He scraped his chair back with a bit more force than necessary. They stood and faced each other and Maxine hurried out with a furrowed brow.
Lunch was over.
• • •
“How about we get back to ‘The Numbered Story’?” asked Eve. “I have to go out in a while, but I have time before I need to leave.”
Donald didn’t have to be asked twice. “Capital idea. We’ve got to finish this one quickly, in fact, because I have another I want to start before I forget it. It’s very hard to keep track of things in the state I’m in. Now, what number had we gotten to?”
“Let’s see. Twenty-six,” Eve replied, flipping through the pages of their legal pad. “ ‘A school of fish swam by and offered encouragement.’ ” Eve knew better than to ask why there were fish in the sky.
“Ah, yes.” Donald sighed approvingly. “Here we go. Twenty-seven: Scumbag. Twenty-eight: Asshole. Twenty-nine: Motherfucker.”
Eve put down her pen. Ugh. She knew enough not to complain about the blue language, but there was so much else wrong. “Sorry, but are you sure this approach is a good one?” she asked. “I mean, a numbered story about a man climbing a ladder to nowhere on Waverly Place? Look, I have a suggestion. We start the story earlier, get to know this poor fellow, understand him.…”
“I’m afraid,” said Donald in his most exaggeratedly patient tone, “that this is just a tiny bit over your head. You may think you’re a writer now with your big television job but that carries no water with me. And you’re certainly no editor. No one edits me, ever. Now—back to it. Thirty …”
Eve sighed. “All right, all right. May I just ask, how many sentences are there?”
“I would think you could figure that out for yourself. One hundred. Now, thirty …”
• • •
In mid-July, the mercury skyrocketed to 93 degrees, where it sat for a week like a stubborn child. Manhattan lay prostrate under a white sky, and almost everyone dissolved into a listlessness that bordered on catatonia.
Eve, used to the summer breezes that moved across the open spaces of the Midwest, felt as though she were pushing her way through the days, the tall buildings holding the humidity close. Yet she had to take the dog out, and when she did, she would often come across a new plaque. Today it had been Frank O’Hara and, even more exciting, Allen Ginsberg himself over in the East Village.
When she came home, she asked Donald what he remembered about each. It turned out that O’Hara, who was not just a poet but a museum curator and champion of everyone from de Kooning to Pollock, had died even before Donald, the result of a car accident. In fact, Donald said O’Hara’s early death had triggered his first thoughts about mortality.
“Little did I know how soon my own bend in the road would come …” he said, his voice growing more and more distant before fading out completely.
• • •
The hot weather had an unfortunate effect on work, too. Consumed by the heat that had invaded the entire East Coast, Smell featured endless segments on air-conditioner maintenance and quirky cooling techniques.
There was only one bright spot on the horizon.
“A drink with your boss? You must be joking,” huffed Donald.
“Mark’s not really my boss. The boss is still in L.A. Mark’s just filling in,” Eve said, clearing the mail that had accumulated from the bar and setting down her pad for another stab at “The Numbered Story.” The truth was, she was excited. There had always been a hint of something between her and Mark; she’d just felt it. Mark had been vague when he’d suggested they see a movie, and she wondered if he was ever going to propose something concrete. Then, finally, yesterday he’d suggested a drink tonight. Of course, Alex had never called, so this was her chance to finally go out on a real New York date. Plus, Mark really was handsome, albeit in a way that it took a while to notice. And he was nice. Extremely nice.
“Nice. Nice,” Donald spat the word in her inner ear. “What’s happened to sexual politics since I left? Women never used that word to describe the male power structure in my day. The thought of socializing with—let alone flirting with, sleeping with—the oligarch was verboten. What we knew is that—”
“Let’s get on with dictation,” said Eve, cutting him off. “We wouldn’t want my wayward love life to deprive the world of your brilliance.”
Donald grumbled, letting her know he was onto her, but picked up the thread of his profanity-laden tale. After the sixth vulgarity in as many sentences, Eve had to say something.
“You’re absolutely sure about this approach?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck. “You might want to consider that times have changed. I mean, writers in your day, all you had to do was use the f-word and the, uh, the c-word to cause a stir. Now it takes a little more than that.”
Silence. Eve felt slightly guilty. She hadn’t meant to sound so critical. Donald’s writing had some potential, she thought. If only as an early example of a new kind of fiction that had revolutionized an art form. And if he worked on it now, and accepted a suggestion or two, he might even generate something satisfying in its own right. Maybe.
“Do you mean ‘fuck’? And ‘cunt’?” he hissed.
“Stop it.”
“God, you’re such a prude,” said Donald. “You can take the girl out of the Midwest … All the mooning you do over Mark, and that Alex person. You think being such a priss is going to get you a boyfriend?”
Eve put the pen down on the paper. Having a man in her life, if and when it happened, she realized, was going to be yet another thing made more complicated by Donald.
• • •
That evening, Eve was the last to finish her segments, and by the time she and Mark left the office it was close to one-thirty in the morning. They set off through the hushed streets, the new moon hanging like a glowing eyelash in the sky. Eve took a deep breath of night air and noticed that the streetlights were kinder to Mark than the office fluorescents. They softened the worry lines on his forehead and the shadows beneath his eyes.
As they approached the bar, Eve wondered what the moment would be like when the conversation turned from professional to personal. They worked so closely yet knew so little about one another. She was just pondering why this was when they pushed through the doors and she saw them: Russell, Quirine, Steve, and Cassandra, all piled into a booth together.
“Hey, everyone.” Mark said, squeezing in on the side next to Quirine and Cassandra, while Eve stood awkwardly. She tried to perch on the three available inches of bench not used by Russell and Steve but had to brace herself with her left leg. Her foot slipped on a puddle of spilled beer.
“Whoa, careful now.” Mark hopped up and dragged a chair over from another table. “That’s better,” he said, settling her in it.
“Thanks,” she said, wondering whether he would have done the same for Quirine. She certainly hoped he wouldn’t for Cassandra.
“Next round’s on me. We’re celebrating,” Mark said, waving over the waitress.
“What can I get you?” she asked, giving her nose ring an unappetizing twist. Everyone gave their orders, finding they had to repeat and clarify them, frustrated by this obstacle to hearing the news. Eve was intensely curious; Mark hadn’t even hinted he had anything to announce on the way over, let alone that it was something important enough to warrant summoning the whole department.
“Celebrating what?” asked Russell, as soon as the waitress departed.
“You may have been wondering why Orla Knock has been gone for so long. Turns out she’s been promoted to Vice President of Entertainment Programming,” Mark
said, looking around the table. “She’ll be staying in L.A.” A beat of silence was followed by an ebullient eruption.
“Yes! Whoops,” said Steve, slamming his pint of ale on the table and wiping a few errant drops off Eve’s sleeve. “That witch was always out to get me.”
“Me, too,” said Cassandra bitterly, hooded eyes flashing. “Always complaining about the angle of my interviews. Always telling me to focus more on industry news instead of advice for young actors—”
Russell shook his head, cutting off his colleagues’ grievances. “Uh-uh,” he said, pushing his glasses firmly onto his nose with his forefinger. “I know you think that but she wasn’t out to get anybody. She was distrustful of everybody, which, let’s face it, is true of a lot of women in management. And understandably so,” he hastened to add when Quirine gave him a look. “Personally, I think that’s why she’s been sent out west. She’d bumped heads with everyone in New York.”
A flood of relief swept over Eve. She’d been carrying a pit in her stomach ever since she’d started at Smell, waiting for the day Orla came back.
“But wait,” said Cassandra. “Why would she want to do entertainment? She’s a news person.” Everyone exchanged questioning looks.
“Yes, but she gave that interview to some online place last year where she said her real dream was to do arts programming. Remember?” said Quirine.
Russell smothered a laugh. “Last season, the network ran a sitcom on Friday nights about a family of crickets—played by people. So if she thinks she’s going to be doing Masterpiece Theatre out there in L.A., she’s on drugs.”
“Who cares?” cut in Steve. “What I want to know is, what does this mean for us? Mark?”
The waitress reappeared. She placed the glasses on the table in the wrong order and then rearranged them, still incorrectly, in a manner that was less than apologetic. Finally, she toddled off and everyone’s attention refocused on Mark.
“Okay. If you think I’m the new managing editor …” he began, his face betraying nothing. “You’re right. Giles mentioned it might happen last week, and confirmed it yesterday.”
There was a burst of applause and a clinking of glasses. Quirine, elegant as always in a generous cowl-neck that showed off her delicate clavicle, gave Mark a quick kiss on the cheek. “That’s great. You deserve it,” she murmured, patting his hand. If Quirine hadn’t mentioned her boyfriend Victor a number of times, Eve might have wondered if she too had feelings for Mark.
“So maybe this is it? A reordering of the cosmos? Maybe we’ll finally graduate from our status as the bastard children of network news?” asked Steve.
“ ‘Bastard children of network news’—now, that’s a shopworn cliché,” chastised Cassandra, who was immediately interrupted by Russell’s “Hello? Ree-dun-dant.”
“What—what do you mean?” asked Eve, wanting very much to join in. “I know the writers get blamed when a segment goes poorly, but ‘bastard children’? Are things really that bad?”
“Let me clue you in to something,” began Steve. “We, the writers, are the dirty little secret of television news. No one,” he held his forefinger up to his mouth and blew a loud shhhh, “is to know we exist.”
“Why not?” asked Eve.
“Because,” said Quirine, “the great illusion is that these anchors—who, by the way, are called ‘presenters’ in Europe, where they don’t believe in this kind of pretense—aren’t reading to the viewers, but speaking. We are never supposed to lift the curtain and show how much behind-the-scenes help they have.” Quirine continued, looking at Eve, “It’s probably what you assumed before you got here, no? That they just spoke their own thoughts?”
Eve nodded.
“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s what they want you to think,” said Quirine. “And it’s silly. There’s no way anyone could anchor a show like ours—with twelve segments a day and who knows how many guests—without someone else doing the writing and interviewing. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”
“Want to know how far they’ll go to preserve the impression that anchors are solo acts?” asked Russell. “Let me tell you about when we took the show on the road for May sweeps two years ago. We were at Euro Disney—I know, I know. It was hideous, just hideous,” he said as Quirine and Cassandra made gagging noises. “And we were told to fan out across the place and interview employees for tips on how to enjoy the park.”
“I got a tip from this really cute cub from Le Jamboree des Country Bears,” said Steve. “She told me that if you see two lines for a ride, always take the one on the left. Most people gravitate to the one on the right, like driving on the road, so the one on the left moves faster.”
“So that night,” said Cassandra, downing a slug of merlot, “we get together in Russell’s hotel room and make a list of everything we’d learned to put into the show.”
“Right,” said Russell, “and I wrote something like ‘Our writers have scoured the park for tips you can use to have a great time. And here are the top ten.’ ”
“Innocuous, no?” chimed in Quirine, putting down her gimlet. “But the next morning, when Giles saw the script, guess what happened?”
“What?” breathed Eve.
“He changed the word ‘writers’ to … ‘staffers.’ ”
“No.” But Eve suddenly remembered the caption under her picture with Klieg in the paper. She’d been called “an unidentified Smell the Coffee staffer.”
“Yes,” came the unanimous reply.
“They never mention writers on the air. Ever. They’ll give a nod to the producers, bookers, and production assistants,” said Steve. “They’ll mention the director and even the prop guys. But never us.”
Eve had been disappointed to see the gang when she first walked in, but now she was glad they were here. She was learning a lot. And since the Village was turning out to be a dry hole when it came to meeting people, this band of writers might yet be her best chance at a social circle.
“And what about the production meetings?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Mark.
“Giles consistently compliments every other department except ours. Now, why is that? The writers aren’t exactly a secret to the staff of the show.”
“No, but we do have the temerity to be in a union,” said Russell. “We make more than the bookers and a lot of the producers. Plus we don’t constantly put in ‘face time’ with Giles the way the other departments do. We get on with our—not inconsiderable—work.”
Quesadillas arrived, but they sat, congealing. The writers seemed hungrier to get things out than take them in. They were sorry for themselves, true. But they were also prickly, dramatic characters worthy of The Happy Island, Eve decided. She felt a sudden surge of affection for them.
“Hey, you guys, c’mon. I told you not to bombard Eve with all this stuff, remember? You’ll scare her,” said Mark, who had been quiet for the last few minutes. Eve was thrilled that he’d actually been concerned about keeping her.
Cassandra rolled her eyes again. “Please. You think we should all be grateful just to have jobs. Admit it.”
“Yeah, well, he does have a point,” said Russell. “In theory, this is one of the greatest jobs ever. Steve—you got to talk to DiMaggio, for God’s sake. And Cassandra, you interviewed Paul Newman before he died.”
“And, at the risk of giving you swelled heads: You’re all extremely talented,” said Mark. “Each of you could be at The New York Times or Newsweek or even writing novels. But you’re not. You’re at Smell the Coffee. There has to be a reason.” The others grunted into their drinks. “Okay, what about this?” he continued. “You can’t open a paper today without reading about the latest round of news layoffs. If we hadn’t snuck Eve in while Orla was away, we’d probably have lost another position in this department and we’d each be writing four segments a night.” This sobered the table, and the writers bowed their heads in tacit agreement.
“But that doesn’t mean this job d
oesn’t suck sometimes. Mark, you can’t deny it. Tell Eve what’s going to happen if she ever starts writing for Bliss,” pushed Cassandra. Mark shook his head. “Fine, I will,” she said. “When you start writing for Bliss, and be glad you’re not near ready to yet. But if you ever are, get ready for major pain. No matter how talented you are—”
“And you are, Eve,” interrupted Russell. “Still green, but you’ve gotten some interesting shit out of some pretty boring people. Personally, I think it’s because you’re the last earnest girl left in New York.”
A chorus of “Mmm-hmm”s went up, which Cassandra quashed with an “Anyway.”
“No matter how talented you are, this woman will treat your work like a pile on the sidewalk to be stepped over. Even when you give her what she wants, it’s not what she wants.” Eve thought this had to be bluster, since Cassandra wasn’t yet allowed to write for Bliss. But the others nodded with heavy heads.
“She doesn’t want what she wants?” asked Eve. “What does that mean?”
Quirine elaborated. “It means you rack your brains to come up with an intro that is perfectly suited to her. Something even her husband would swear she’d written. You’re feeling good. And the next morning, you watch as she fixes those big blue eyes on the camera. She pauses dramatically and says … something totally different.”
“It’s as if she punishes you if you out-Bliss Bliss,” Steve said, nodding.
“You should confront her. Tell her to knock it off,” said Cassandra to Mark, sounding a little slurry.
“Yeah, thanks for that,” he said, not even looking at her.
“I’m serious. You’re the boss now. Tell her we want some fucking respect.”
The writers exchanged looks. Eve wondered why they couldn’t just enjoy the fact that for the most part, Hap appreciated their work. But perhaps that was a writer’s nature, to focus on the bad review.
“So, given the circumstances, what is it you want?” Eve’s voice sounded hoarse and she coughed. “I mean we. What do we want?” she asked the table at large.
Quirine swirled her glass. “This is a question.” There followed an uncomfortable silence.