by Darcy Cosper
I nod, and she sweeps away, hiking up the bodice of her strapless dress, the red satin sweeping the floor behind her.
“That was a dramatic exit.” Gabriel emerges from the crowd, hands me a fresh glass of champagne, and watches Joan disappear into the crowd.
“They’re Joan’s specialty.” I take a sip of the champagne. “Thank you. Well, that ceremony was—”
“Unusual, yes.” Gabe obviously doesn’t want to discuss it any further. I’m not surprised. Raised as he was in the If-You-Can’t-Say-Something-Nice-Nod-Politely-And-Change-The-Subject tradition, Gabe is generally disinclined to talk about anything he finds genuinely offensive or affronting. “Ah, familiar faces.” He waves to Tulley, who is skipping toward us with Pete in tow.
“Hello, boss! Hello, Gabriel,” Tulley calls.
We rise to greet them. Gabe extends his hand to Pete, who takes it shyly, ducking his head. Tulley pulls me down until I’m almost doubled over so she can reach to kiss me on both cheeks, then fusses over wiping off the lipstick marks she has left.
“What did you think of the ceremony, Joy?” She twinkles. Tulley actually can twinkle. It’s the weirdest thing.
“I think our master of ceremonies should have availed himself of your services, Tull.”
“I didn’t think it was too bloody bad. Very original, wasn’t it?” Tulley gives me a bright smile. I can’t be sure if she’s joking.
“You’re our foremost authority on romantic tracts,” Gabriel addresses Pete. “What did you think?”
Pete blushes at the compliment and bobs his head.
“I think it’s kind of cool, I guess,” he says. “For them. But I, ah. I guess I’m kind of old-fashioned.”
“So only angels above should enjoy adultery?” Tulley snags two beef carpaccio canapés from the tray of a passing server, and hands one to Pete.
“Well, you know.” Pete bobs. “That’s not really what Lovelace was talking about, exactly, I think, in that poem, I think. He was kind of talking about how his love for this girl and being loved by her made him free. I think. In a larger sense, I guess. Spiritually free.” He puts the bloody sliver of meat into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.
“Well, there’s the rub,” says Gabe.
“So you’re all old-fashioned about this.” Tulley twinkles. “You think their arrangement is immoral?”
“It’s not about morality. It just raises questions,” Gabe says.
“Such as?” Tulley puts her hands on her hips and lifts her little chin.
“The nature and purpose of marriage. Forsaking all others. These two whom God has joined let no man put asunder, and so on.”
“Why not reinvent the bloody institution?”
“Why not dispense with it entirely?” I ask. “If one wants freedom.”
“Why throw the baby out with the fucking bathwater?” Tulley tries to look austere, then lapses into giggles.
“I can kind of see,” Pete says, “how you would want to get married, even if you didn’t want all the stuff that comes along with it. Everybody gets married. It would be hard not to.” Pete’s brow furrows. “People want to get married, and the world wants people to get married. And, um, the way that the world thinks about love makes it hard to prove that you’re really together in a real way, I think, even to each other, right? Unless you get married.”
“I love this song.” Tulley leaps up. “Pete, let’s go dance!” She pulls at his arm. “We’ll talk to you old traditionalists later!”
“He’s really very eloquent in print,” I tell Gabe as they disappear into the crowd.
“Traditional,” Gabe says. “First time I’ve been called that for not planning to get married.”
“I think she meant literal, really, not traditional,” I answer. Gabe blinks, this slow-motion, feline, half-in-a-trance blinking thing he does when he’s processing something.
“Huh. I suppose she may have something there.” He looks at me blankly for a moment, then blinks again, shakes his head slightly as if to clear it. “Want to dance?”
“Yes. Right out the door and all the way home.”
Friday, April 27, 200—
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, Charles and I are pushing things around on our desks, pretending to be productive, when Damon lopes in.
“That’s the ninth revise on the screenplay.” He drops a pile of papers on my desk. “Can you look it over? And then let’s never work for them again.”
“The glamour of Hollywood,” Charles protests.
“The money of Hollywood, is what he means,” I tell Damon. “Is it that bad?”
“The wealthy wayward son of a powerful, presidentially ambitious senator,” Damon tells us, putting on the sunglasses Charles has left on my desk. “Boy falls in love with and is transformed into good person by sensitive girl from the wrong side of the tracks or, in this case, the art world.” Damon dances around the room, flailing his long arms. “Our heroine is an artiste. Through a strange series of events, the wayward son discovers that the girl of his dreams is in fact his half-sister, who his father abandoned as an infant after his mother and her lover were killed in a car crash when our hero was a wee child. Scandal is brought to light by son’s former friend turned evil gossip columnist for city paper. Ambitions laid to waste. Lovers torn asunder. All ends in disaster and tears.” He bows deeply. “I tried to get them to throw some vampires in there. Hot vampire chicks. Vampires are big this year. But no go.”
“I think it sounds fabulous,” Charles declares. “Very Greek tragedy. I can hardly wait to read the novelization.”
“Guy, I hate to tell you, but it’s already an adaptation.”
“All the better.” Charles waves his pen at Damon. “A novelization of an adaptation is so, so… post-post-something!”
“Vern, you’re so literary,” I tell him. “Maybe you should go to Hollywood.”
“They could do a box set!” Charles claps his hands. “The novel, the screenplay, the novelization, plus a tell-all, behind-the-scenes, making-of documentary DVD. And—”
“Just get the thing out of here,” says Damon. “I’ll see you next week.” He waves and strolls out.
“My sunglasses!” Charles yelps. The sunglasses come sailing back through the door and land on my desk. “Our babies.” Charles sighs. “So multitalented.”
“Yoo-hoo! Girls!” Miss Trixie’s voice echoes across the courtyard through our open windows. She’s standing on her balcony waving to us. Charles and I get up and clamber out onto the fire escape. “Hello, darlings!” Trixie hoists a martini shaker at us. “Ready for a little drinkie?”
“Yes!” Charles cheers.
“Vern, it’s four-thirty.”
“It’s always cocktail hour somewhere in the world, sweets,” Trixie says. She’s wearing pink capri pants with matching pink shoes and a yellow halter top. Miss Trixie is a rather tall, athletic-looking man, broad-shouldered and slim-waisted, like a member of a high school swimming team. The effect is an odd one; I’m always amazed at how the practiced grace of her gestures distracts the eye from and denies her physique. She’s a master illusionist.
“You’re looking very springy,” I tell her, as she leans daintily across the dim canyon between our buildings to hand Charles a pink drink in a plastic champagne glass.
“An old queen has to keep up appearances, sweetie. Cosmopolitan?”
“Don’t you have to go to a bachelorette party tonight?” Charles asks me. “Better pace yourself.”
“Just a thimbleful,” says Trixie, pouring. She performs a neat little arabesque to deliver the glass, then raises hers to us.
“To you, girls. Divine neighbors.” We stretch out over the void to touch glasses. “I want to invite you both to a Miss Trixie extravaganza,” she tells us. “I have a new show premiering in a couple of weeks, and our little friend Delia and her girls are opening for me.”
“Henry’s girlfriend?” asks Charles.
“Fiancée,” I correct.
“The very on
e. The second week in May we have our gala opening at the club. You’ll be my guests.”
“Put us in the front row,” says Charles. “We’ll throw bouquets of snapdragons and kiss the hem of your gown.”
“And what are you two working on these days?” Trixie asks.
“Today, a bad screenplay,” I tell her. “And some bad romance novels.”
“Screenplay? Is there a part for me?” Trixie vamps. “I’ve always wanted to be in pictures.”
“You can play the ingenue, gorgeous,” Charles says. “You reform a bad man.”
“Only in the movies,” Trixie sighs. “And my ingenue days are long gone. I’m only good for a Norma Desmond role. Ready for my close-up—but for God’s sake, not so damn close!” She strikes a pose, leaning on the rail of her balcony. “Now I have to get ready for rehearsal. You two be good little girls, and I’ll throw over some invitations for the Trixie-Fest next week.”
We hand our glasses back to her, and she disappears through the narrow French doors and into the mysteries of her boudoir. I lean back on our rusty fire escape and push my face into a shaft of sunlight. Charles surveys the narrow canal of air below us, the quiet, dingy backs of the buildings across the way.
“All this could be yours, my dear!” He spreads his arms wide.
“I always knew you were the devil.” I struggle over the windowsill and back into the office.
“Speaking of soul-selling.” Charles clambers in behind me. “Interesting new job opp. Someone from your friend Erica’s agency called us. They want to start a corporate sponsorship program for young writers and artists. Commercial patrons for individuals—like the Medicis, they said. Isn’t that precious? And they’re interested in having us help develop it.”
“This job gets weirder by the minute.”
“They’re sending the materials over for us to look at. If you approve I’ll meet with them in a couple of weeks.”
“Okay. It seems a little off our normal beat, but what the hell.”
“We’re expanding our skill sets,” he tells me. “We’re thinking laterally. Maybe we can throw some vampires in there. I hear vampires are hot this year.”
A COUPLE OF hours later, Henry comes to pick me up; we are going to Aunt Charlotte’s bachelorette party together. The office is swooning in pale, dusty sunlight, and quiet as a church. Most of the staff have departed. Besides Charles and me, only Tulley remains in the front room, seated at the conference table with her laptop computer, squinting and reading softly aloud her latest masterpiece for BabyDoll. I’m standing by the front windows with a sheaf of papers in my hand, watching the street below. It’s a mild day in the city, though not actually warm, but everyone seems to have removed as much clothing as possible. It’s as though they can’t bear to wait a moment longer for spring to begin and believe that by disrobing they can will the temperature to rise. I hear footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later, Henry pushes our door open.
“I’m stuck.” Tulley looks up. “What’s a good synonym for jism?”
“Spooge is one of my personal favorites.” Henry waves at me.
“Want a job?” Charles calls from the back office.
“How about it, Hank?” I leave the window and come to kiss her. “Want to become invisible? Tulley will share assignments with you, won’t you, Tull?”
“And leave off teaching The Iliad to those little hormone-addled darlings at Greeley? How could I?” Henry pretends to weep at the thought of it. “It’s been hilarious lately. The seniors must have been fucking like rabbits all through spring break. I can’t make it through a sentence without one of them sussing out a double entendre and setting the rest off.”
“Maybe they’re just quicker than we are,” Tulley suggests.
“It’s kind of amazing that the mere suggestion of sex is so powerful for them,” Charles says, wandering into the front room. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“That’s because it was yesterday, Vern.”
“You’re the one editing the trashy romance novels, Vern.” He points to the manuscript in my hand.
“That’s my trashy romance novel you’re talking about,” Tulley scolds.
“Pete did this one,” I tell her. “It’s the bankers in Hong Kong installment. Young futures trader falls for beautiful daughter of Chinese mobster. Very Oriental.”
“Put down the exotica,” Henry says through the police megaphone of her cupped hands. “Let’s go get a drink. Want to come, guys?”
“I have a date,” Charles says.
“I have a date,” Tulley says at the same time.
“I didn’t know you two were dating.” Henry giggles. “That’s great.”
“Office romances allowed only in our trashy romance novels,” I say.
“I’m having dinner with the owner of Boîte.” Charles waves dismissively at us.
“My brother knows him,” I mention to no one in particular. “How about you, Tull?”
“Um.” Tulley looks sheepish. “That editor at BabyDoll.”
“That’s interesting.” I squint at her. “You know we can’t do anything about sexual harassment off the job, right? Can we, Vern?”
“Tulley’s a professional.” Charles winks at Tulley. “She doesn’t mix business and pleasure.”
“Working for you, Charles,” Tulley says, curtsying, “business is pleasure.”
“And working for BabyDoll, pleasure is your business.” Charles tips an imaginary hat at her.
“Oh, my god, stop. Death by witticisms.” Henry stands and stretches. “Come on, Jojo. Let’s motor.”
I collect my things and follow Henry down the stairs. The door to the Socialist press on the floor below Invisible is open. As we pass, the sounds of a passionate argument are audible. Someone pounds a table. A woman coming up the stairs flattens against the wall to let us through, then slips into the psychologist’s suite. Out on the sidewalk, I take a deep gulp of the early evening air.
“Oh, no.” Henry angles her head in the direction of a petite blonde exiting the New Age bookstore. “Don’t look! Too late. She saw us. Better go say hello.”
Here’s a weird thing about Henry: For all her rowdy bitchiness, she has this stringent (though erratic) sense of etiquette; she’ll show up late to a dinner party with an extra guest or two, but she’ll always write a lovely thank-you note, for example. Which is why she insists on dragging me over to make small talk with Ora Mitelman, whom she obviously hates. Maybe it’s a Southern thing; I don’t know.
“Hello, Joy.” Ora clutches a lavender paper bag emblazoned with the Crystal Visions bookstore’s logo, some kind of giant mandala, which she is holding so that the mandala is positioned directly over her pelvis. “And, Harriet, is it?”
“Henry, it’s Henry.”
“Henry.” Ora holds up her cheek to be kissed. Henry obliges, barely.
“How’d the shopping go?” Henry nods at Ora’s bag.
“A gift for a couple of friends who just became engaged.” Ora holds it out for inspection.
“A Gathering of Spirits,” Henry reads from the cover of the book. “A collection of multicultural marriage rites, rituals, and vows.’ That sounds so… inspiring.”
“I hope so.” Ora tucks the book under her arm. “It must be such a challenge to write the ceremony oneself. But my friends really feel that it’s the right thing to do. They want the wedding to represent who they truly are.”
“Well. I think that’s just great,” Henry tells her. “Don’t you, Joy?”
I nod.
“Listen, we have to run, but it was great to see you!”
“Yes, and I’ll see you girls at Joan’s bachelorette dinner, if not before.” Ora directs a gracious smile into the middle distance behind us.
“We’re looking forward to it. Aren’t we, Joy?” Henry bares all her teeth at me. “Taxi!”
“ARE YOU SURE we have time for a drink?” I ask, as the cab pulls up outside Pantheon. The yellow neon sign over the entrance burn
s a halo into the gray twilight.
“There is always time, little missy.” Henry hands the driver his fare. “Always time for a gathering of spirits. And the party is close by. Out!” She pushes me out of the cab, slams the door, and with her hands on my shoulders, marches me ahead of her into the bar.
Pantheon is already crowded with young professionals, sharp-eyed women hiking up their skirts to perch on the bar stools and young, very young men in several-thousand-dollar suits. Their smooth, elastic faces and bright, blank stares give them the appearance of unfinished sculptures, and they elbow one another in silence and move aside for Henry, a tribute she accepts with the oblivious entitlement of the organically gorgeous. Luke has seen us coming in and is chilling a martini glass and opening a bottle of wine by the time we take our seats. He leans over the bar to kiss my cheek.
“Where’s mine?” Henry pouts.
“You can have extra olives.” Luke swirls his martini shaker.
“Fantastic.” Henry watches him pour. “She’s not even your girlfriend, and you won’t cheat on her. We should stuff you and put you in a diorama in the Museum of Natural History.”
“Maybe you should stuff me instead.” I put my head down on the bar. “A rare specimen for inspiring such loyalty.”
“My, my.” Henry fishes an olive out of her martini. “Barkeep, tell that girl in the red sweater I want to buy her a drink.” Luke and I look down the bar.
“The one with the Brooks Brothers model attached to her mouth?” I ask. The woman in question, a spunky sitcom type with a wheat-colored ponytail swishing across her back, is nuzzling giddily with one of the young suits who checked Henry out when we came in.
“Damn. He beat me to the draw.”
“Aren’t you getting married in a couple of months?” Luke asks her.
“What’s your point?” Henry sucks gin off her fingers.
“Look, there’s Donald Trump’s new girlfriend.” I gesture vaguely in the direction of the entrance.
“To the best of my knowledge, most girls stop sending drinks to strangers when they’re planning to get hitched, is my point,” Luke says.