Mr. Nice Guy

by Jennifer Miller

  “But it shows your hunger. Your ambition. And in the end, even the best writers need good editors. A guiding hand.”

  Lucas nodded. He was hungry. And Jays saw it. Franklin was wrong; Jays had been watching.

  “I can see that you’re a fiercely dedicated young man. A person who has the potential to do great things here.”

  “Thank you,” Lucas said. He felt like adding a “sir” but feared it would sound ridiculous.

  Jays stood. “I want you to feel comfortable coming to me if you have any questions or problems, Luke. My door is open.”

  “I appreciate that,” Lucas said, again stifling a “sir.”

  “Now, do you have any questions for me, Luke?”

  Lucas had not been prepared for this. “I guess I’d love to know if you have any specific advice for me?” Lucas could have slammed his head against the wall. How uninventive could you be? Yet for some reason, Jays seemed to find the question amusing.

  “You wrote it yourself,” he said, chuckling. “Remake yourself in the image of Empire. You were born a North Carolina boy. Go become a New Yorker.”

  “Yessir,” Lucas said, letting his head go full nod. Who would have expected Jay Jacobson to be so welcoming? This was not the remote and fickle autocrat he’d been warned about. This was a person who appreciated Lucas for the man he really was—or at least the man he wanted to be.

  “And Luke?” Jays said. “Quick question. Whose tie are you wearing?”

  Lucas had no idea. His grandmother had purchased it from Macy’s, and as little as he knew about fashion, he knew “Macy’s” was the wrong answer. “Brooks Brothers,” Lucas said, thinking it sounded safe.

  “Huh.” Jays nodded. “Mine are Gucci. They might look good on you.”

  “Thank you!” Lucas exclaimed, though that wasn’t exactly a compliment. He backed up a few paces, then turned and shut the Editor’s door behind him.

  Lucas floated past the Sphinxes, his smile bright as the streaming Manhattan sun. He felt positively baptismal, like he’d emerged a sparkling new version of himself. The naysayers—his parents, his grandmother, Mel, Cal fucking Braden—could all go screw themselves. Lucas had been blessed by Jay Jacobson, ruler of the empire.

  “Well?” Alexis asked as Lucas walked by her desk. “Do you still have a job?”

  Lucas didn’t want to cheapen his conversation with Jays by discussing it. He wanted to go somewhere private and think it over, sentence by sentence, word by word. But Alexis was waiting. “He had some pretty harsh things to say about my cover letter.”

  Alexis frowned. “That’s rough.”

  “He also said I might look good in Gucci.”

  Alexis grimaced.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “OK, listen carefully. As soon as you leave tonight, you need to go and buy yourself some ties. Nice ties. Only not too nice—not Gucci nice. But stylish. Michael Kors maybe?”

  “What’s wrong with—?”

  Alexis cut him off. “If you get the right ties, I don’t think he’ll let you go.”

  “Let me go! Over a tie? Are you kidding?”

  Alexis shook her head. “No offense, Luke, but you don’t know where you are yet. Jays will be paying attention to your ties now.”

  Lucas nodded. He didn’t know what to make of Alexis’s assessment, but it was clear that Jays had given him a test, one that he must pass. There was only one problem. “I can’t afford to buy new clothes.”

  “Stock up on those dollar bagels from the street-corner carts in the morning,” Alexis said. “That’s what I did my first full year here. You can make your paycheck go a long way on those bagels.”

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, people were unusually nice to Lucas. According to Franklin, Lucas’s firing was all but guaranteed. Why else would Jays have bothered to call him in and criticize his cover letter? “It’s such a shame,” Franklin said disingenuously. “You’ve only been here a month.”

  That night, he and Alexis invited Lucas for drinks. A “just in case” good-bye party, they called it. Of course, Lucas wasn’t going anywhere, but he couldn’t exactly say, Jays said he admired me. He’d make enemies of them both. “I’ll meet you at the bar,” he said as the day wound down. “I’ve got an errand to run.”

  By the time Lucas arrived, Franklin was so drunk he was sweating large circles under his arms. “What’dya buy?” he asked, pointing at Lucas’s Bloomingdale’s shopping bag.

  “Nothing,” he said, though in this case “nothing” cost about half of his paycheck. He pulled the bag toward him, but Franklin managed to grab it. In went his hand and out came a fistful of tissue paper and silk ties.

  “Well, well!” Franklin exclaimed. “Who knew that Luke was such a devotee of Beau Brummell?”

  “Who?” Lucas asked, snatching the ties back.

  “The original dandy. He polished his boots with champagne. Before him, the only proper necktie color was blanc d’innocence virginale. But clearly,” Franklin scoffed, “that’s not you.”

  Lucas felt his face turn a color that was decidedly not blanc d’innocence. Meanwhile, Alexis was laughing so hard that her delicate body looked ready to shatter. Hiccupping, she told Franklin that she’d played a little joke on Lucas: told him to wear designer ties or he’d definitely be shit-canned. Franklin nearly spit out his beer, and Lucas lunged to protect his ties.

  “You made all that stuff up?” He forced a smile. First thing tomorrow, he would return the ties before his checking account was the wiser.

  “Let’s raise a glass to Luke,” Alexis said, “and toast his relatively decent chance of retaining employment.”

  The three of them clinked. Lucas was feeling better. They’d never embrace his hustle if they didn’t like him. But they seemed to. “So Jays isn’t really as crazy as you guys’ve been saying?” Lucas asked. “I mean, that’s why I believed you, Alexis.”

  “Oh no, he’s crazy,” Franklin said. “Or he makes everyone crazy, at least. Every decision in this office is made because someone’s guessing what Jays wants but is too afraid to ask him. He’ll still kill a story you’ve been fact-checking for weeks, months even.”

  Alexis wiped the last tears from her eyes. “He falls out of love with something that he’s assigned and then blames the editor or the writer—or both—for wasting his time.”

  “Good thing I’m just a fact-checker then,” Lucas said, and the others laughed.

  The evening continued with more talk of Jays’ antics. Rumor had it that during a brief tryst with a high-end interior designer the Editor had spent an ungodly amount of company money outfitting his dining room with an ornate crystal chandelier. “We’re talking Versailles-style,” Alexis said. “I heard it cost ten grand.”

  “I heard it cost twenty,” Franklin said.

  “Who’s doing the expenses?” Lucas asked. “Somebody must be keeping track.”

  “Why not wait until you’ve been here awhile and then let us know what you think?” Franklin said, finishing off his drink. Lucas remembered what Alexis had said earlier that day: You don’t know where you are yet. But she’d been joking, having fun at his expense. This talk of Jays’ expense reports was obviously more of the same.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was 12:30 A.M., and the evening was in full blossom. About now, the tattooed girl with brown bangs agreed to a second drink. About now, you sped along Central Park West, your taxi windows down, the dazzle of gilded doorways rushing by. About now, as you rollicked toward the next bar with a group of people you’d only just met, you mustered the courage to take a pretty stranger’s arm.

  These were Lucas’s fantasies of New York. They weren’t climactic moments—when you gained entry to the penthouse party in the West 80s or actually took the pretty girl into your bed. Events realized were too easily ruined. The real excitement lay on the glorious cusp.

  And yet, for Lucas, the cusp was a lonely place to be. He stood at the corner of Bleecker and Cornelia Streets, clutch
ing his bag of expensive ties. His colleagues, having dispersed to their significant others (Alexis) and their Tinder prospects (Franklin), had deserted him. Meanwhile, the West Village buzzed with activity. Bars were packed. Long-legged women strode arm in arm down the sidewalks. Herds of Jerseyites wandered past, the men with meringue-stiff hair, the women squeezed into sausage casings that passed for dresses. Lucas had no group, no pack, to call his own. Yet he was desperate to feel a part of these streets. And that meant he was going to have to choose a bar. It meant he’d have to talk to a woman he didn’t know.

  At Christopher Park he paused. To his left was the former Lion’s Head bar, where Pete Hamill said a “glorious mixture of newspapermen, painters, musicians, seamen, ex-communists, priests and nuns, athletes, stockbrokers, politicians and folksingers” had all “bound together in the leveling democracy of drink.” Lucas knew this, for the same reason he knew about anything in New York: Empire had written about it. But no longer would he have to rely on the secondhand telling. He could now experience these places in the flesh, absorb their spirit through osmosis. It was only a shame that the Lion’s Head technically ceased to exist. Now it was an NYU dive called Kettle of Fish.

  Inside, college students drank cheap beer and played Connect Four. Thirtysomethings and neighborhood locals clustered around the bar. Lucas stood helpless, gripped by indecision. Maybe he should just go home. He thought about his cramped apartment with its fluorescent lighting and grimy floors. Fuck it. He pulled up a stool. He hung the shopping bag on a hook, carefully, as though the silken bounty were a nest of sleeping snakes.

  He eyed the Macallan 12 but thought about his wallet and settled for a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Nearby, a trio of women complained about their law firm. One of them was petite, with a jaunty blond ponytail and perky breasts. Lucas should offer to buy her a drink. But then what about her friends? And even if he could afford to buy them all drinks, wouldn’t the gesture come off as creepy—like he was hitting on all of them at once? What did a man do in this situation? Silently cursing his inexperience, Lucas caught the eye of one of the women. It wasn’t the pretty one. Lucas smiled anyway, but she’d already averted her gaze. This was a disaster.

  He pulled out his notebook and a pen. If he looked artistic enough, or mysterious enough, maybe a woman would come talk to him. But Lucas couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was watching him, judging the fact that he was twenty-four and had no idea what to do with himself at a bar, alone. Or that he was at a bar alone to begin with. He needed to order another drink—that, at least, he knew how to do—so he downed the rest of his whiskey in a gulp, then signaled for the bartender.

  And that’s when he saw her.

  Her dark brown hair, which fell in a thick sweep over one tanned shoulder; the critical arch of her eyebrows; the sexy bump in her otherwise delicate nose; her long fingers turning a glass of red wine; and, most of all, her sternum. It was the result of her dress—black with a V-shaped plunge that revealed a wide expanse of lightly freckled skin. The cut, he realized, was the exact shape as Christopher Park. Only instead of facing east, the tip of this triangle pointed south, downward toward regions unseen.

  Lucas had never given any thought to a woman’s sternum. Why would you when there were breasts in the vicinity? (He momentarily thought of Mel, whose large breasts he had loved, despite her complaints that they created unflattering side-boob.) This woman’s breasts were modest at best. But in the moment, nothing seemed more appealing than the flatness in between: bare and exposed. Almost proud. It was like the sternum was issuing a challenge: Come on over, Lucas; see how close you can get.

  Mel had always expressed hostility toward lone women in bars. Clearly, she’d say, they were either desperate or slutty. Otherwise, why submit yourself to the kind of men who went to bars to meet women? Lucas never argued, but he disagreed. Why was aloneness an automatic sign of depravity? It was like he knew this day—this specific day, in which he sat alone at a bar—would come. And yet Lucas swore he could read that sternum like a crystal ball. In his future: immediate rejection. Only how else was he going to remake himself in the image of Manhattan? Not by sitting here, ruminating. Not by not trying. If only he had some pretext for talking to her. What a loser he was, afraid to strike up a simple conversation.

  He needed to grow a pair. He gave the woman another cautious glance. She was scribbling on a bar napkin. Hadn’t he basically been doing the same thing? Maybe it was a sign. Awkwardly, he maneuvered through the throng until there she was, mere inches away. She was even more stunning up close. She’d done some dark makeup thing to her eyes, a technique, Lucas realized, that Mel had spent years attempting unsuccessfully. His heart throbbed in his ears. “Excuse me?” he said.

  The woman looked up and gave Lucas the briefest of once-overs, a glance that said, simply: He’ll do.

  Lucas needed to say something else, but what? He felt a sudden sympathy for every man who had ever attempted to use a line on a woman. Those men weren’t sleazebags! They were terrified! And rightly so, because the woman was starting to look impatient. Lucas was sinking. If only he could be honest: Cut me some slack. I’ve never done this before.

  But then, remarkably, she saved him. “I’m Carmen.” She held out her hand.

  “Lucas,” he said, and slipped his fingers into hers. They were soft and warm. He felt his body flush. “Nice to meet you.”

  “So what brings you over to this side of the bar, Lucas?”

  This was it. He was going to either start swimming or die a cold, watery death. “I was—well, I was wondering if you needed a piece of paper.”

  “Paper?” She sounded intrigued.

  “Well, that napkin you’re working on looks about tapped. I thought maybe you’d like some actual paper.”

  “And you have some?” The woman smiled, but just at the corner of her mouth. “Do you travel the bars of New York dispensing office supplies to women in need?”

  “On occasion,” Lucas said. In fact, Mel had often berated him for taking his reporter’s notebook along when they went out. She accused him of being distracted and, worse, weird. But ever since Lucas had read a profile in Vanity Fair about Jay Jacobson’s obsession with writing in notebooks, he’d started carrying one with him. Of course, his wasn’t expensive Italian leather, but a cheap pad from Staples. He pulled it from his back pocket and ripped out a few pages. “And don’t worry,” he said coyly. “There’s more where this came from.”

  Carmen frowned.

  You moron! “I just mean I’ve got plenty,” he corrected himself. “In case inspiration strikes.”

  “Ah. Let me guess: NYU MFA program. Aspiring novelist.”

  “Journalist,” he said, relieved. He was pretty sure that “writing program grad student” was a deal breaker. He thought about mentioning Empire, which might even impress her. But if she discovered that he was only a fact-checker, he’d find his ass tossed back onto Christopher Street. “You’re a writer, too?” he asked, nodding at the napkin.

  “Of a kind,” Carmen said. But she didn’t seem eager to elaborate. “So you’re what—twenty-two, twenty-three?”

  “Do I look that young?” It occurred to him that he might have gotten in way over his head. It wasn’t just that Carmen was obviously a thousand times sexier and more sophisticated than Mel. She was also older. Early thirties older. Though weren’t more older women picking up younger men these days? Empire had recently run a story on just this topic. Carmen smiled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. The scent of some large-petaled flower blossomed in the beery air.

  “Would you like another glass of wine?” he asked.

  “Sure, Lucas,” she said. “You can buy me a drink.”

  Luckily, he was able to get the bartender’s attention without much trouble and order Carmen’s drink.

  “Another Jack, bub?” the bartender asked.

  “Macallan Twelve,” Lucas said sharply, and gave Carmen a look that said: What self-respecting person drinks J
ack?

  The drinks arrived. “Your Macallan, sir,” the bartender said, rolling his eyes. “And a Pinot—on the house.” He nodded at Carmen as though the two of them were sharing a private joke. Lucas bristled. But never mind. He and Carmen clinked their glasses. This was actually happening.

  “So, Lucas,” Carmen said. “How’s your night going? What brings you out here alone?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was flirting or deciding what caliber of loser he was. “My friends got tired,” he said.

  “But not you.” She eyed him steadily.

  “Not me,” Lucas said, and nearly choked on his Macallan. He waited for her to say something. It seemed like her turn, but he feared another awkward silence. “I came in here because it used to be a big writers’ spot, in the sixties and seventies. I wanted to check it out.”

  “You sure you’re not in grad school?” Carmen laughed.

  Lucas’s face burned and he took a large sip to cool his nerves. “Have you been in New York a long time?” he asked.

  “Born and raised on the Upper West Side. I’d never live anywhere else.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get here my whole life.”

  “All twenty years of it.”

  “Really,” he protested. “I’m not that young.”

  She nodded skeptically.

  “But I’ve only been here a month.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “My ex. She wouldn’t even consider moving.”

  Carmen nodded solemnly. “Well, we New Yorkers certainly don’t want anyone like that around. But you on the other hand—New York is happy to have you.”

  At that moment, someone behind Lucas jostled him and he bumped rather hard into Carmen. Some of his drink splashed onto her lap.

  “Sorry,” he said, panicking. “I’m really sorry. Let me get you something—a napkin?” He reached for the one on the bar, but it was covered with her writing. He cursed, frantically signaling to the bartender.