by Marc Acito
I pick up Eddie’s diary and flip through it, wondering whether I should come up with some excuse to go out so I can call Chad from a pay phone. “Anything else going on in 1965?” I ask.
“Yeah, Eddie got chlamydia from a guy who blew him in Central Park.”
“What’s chlamydia?”
“I dunno. But it makes it hurt when you pee.”
I put down the diary.
Without a trace of irony, Natie unpeels a banana. “Gay guys don’t still have sex in the Ramble, do they?”
“How should I know?”
“I just figured, y’know, since you wanted to be alone in the park the other day.”
“Don’t be a cheesehead.”
He plops down next to me. “So what happened with your gig tonight?” he asks. “Didja go to the wrong place?”
I explain to him how he was duped by the delinquent detective.
He frowns, his forehead wrinkling like a pierogi. “So you were supposed to be at the Waldorf?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, don’t bite my head off.”
I glance at something called Muscles A-Go-Go. “Anyone else call?”
He hands me a pile of pink While You Were Out slips that I swiped from Irving’s office before I quit: 7:45—Hung called to say hi. 8:50—Hung called to see if you were back. 9:30—Kelly called to find out why you’re not calling Hung.
I cringe. Not only am I not interested in Wei Tu Gay, but Kelly’s still pissed at me for quitting the way I did. Apparently another assistant already had a brain tumor.
As usual, I’m awoken by the Garbage Truck Derby. Normally I’d try to eke out whatever sleep I could, but this morning I’m instantly alert with Chad on my brain. I realize it’s just as well that I didn’t call him, because I would have squandered an opportunity to see him in person.
The only problem is how I can reasonably show up at his office. Our arrangement is supposed to be secret. I lie in my loft bed, Natie snoring below, while I ponder who might visit a brokerage firm. Probably the same people who visit Pinnacle Management: clients, UPS and FedEx guys, delivery boys, and bicycle messengers. Of the list, the last feels like the easiest to pull off; plus it allows Chad to see how good my butt looks in spandex. I climb out of bed as quietly as possible for someone sleeping on the top bunk, gather up the appropriate clothes, and creep into the living room, where I slip on tights with a T-shirt and windbreaker. I don’t have one of those little cycling caps, so I tie a bandanna around my head to look more Latino.
Natie appears in the doorway, wiping sleep from his eyes like he’s an enormous toddler.
“Why are you dressed like a Solid Gold dancer?”
“I’m, uh, going to an audition.”
I grab a clipboard, a pen, an envelope, and a pad.
“I thought you said auditioning gave you gastric reflux.”
“I…got over it.”
“Is that so?”
“Hypnosis. Amazing stuff.”
I toss everything in my messenger bag.
“You didn’t tell me you were seeing a hypnotist.”
“I’m not. It’s self-hypnosis. I’m actually in a trance right now.”
I grab my Walkman, because messengers always seem to have them, though how they can listen to music without getting hit by a bus is one of life’s great mysteries.
“Affirmation tape. Ooh, look at the time,” I say, glancing at my wrist despite the fact that I’m not wearing my watch. “Gotta go.”
I fumble for my keys and tumble out the door. As I descend the stairs, greeting my downstairs neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Crackhead, I ponder why I have no trouble claiming to be a British TV star or an Oklahoman without kneecaps, but I find it so hard to lie when I’m being myself.
Lower Manhattan feels as if it were an entirely different city, a quainter, more colonial one, like Boston or Philadelphia, with narrow streets and winding alleys and Greek Revival buildings like Federal Hall, where Washington was inaugurated. I get turned around twice trying to find Chad’s office because there’s water to the east, west, and south. But I finally find the building, a glass-and-metal skyscraper that looks like an immense honeycomb attracting very busy bees. Making note of the coffee shop adjacent to the lobby, I go upstairs.
The reception area of Sharp, Thornton, and Wiley resembles the drawing room of an English manor, all mahogany paneling and brass fixtures. There’s even a mantelpiece, above which hangs a portrait of a heavily whiskered man with the fierce, frowning countenance of someone passing a kidney stone.
The receptionist looks up. Unlike the high-haired gum chewer at Pinnacle, she has the pretty, self-possessed air of a Miss Porter’s School for Girls grad, her blond—but not too blond—hair pulled back in a severe ballerina bun, as if she were punishing it. Her nameplate reads, SHANNON RIEKE, the friendliness of the Irish first name punctuated by the Teutonic officiousness of the last. Trying to remember Milagros’s accent as best I can, I inform the receptionist I have a “letter for Shat Severson.”
“Who?”
“Shat Severson.” I show her the name on the envelope and give her a look like, Don’t you speak English?
“You can leave that with me,” she says, more Rieke than Shannon.
“I need his signature.”
“Can’t I sign for it?”
“No. I need Shat Severson.”
The fraulein frowns, picks up the phone, and relays the message to Chad, who, judging from her response, isn’t happy about it. I’m forced to wait just long enough to feel I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake when the object of my affection comes banging through the doors. He has his jacket off, revealing a blue pin-striped shirt with a white collar, his yellow tie knotted tight around his neck. He frowns, his chest heaving against his suspenders. He glances at me, then does a double take.
“Shat Severson?” I say.
He nods, cartoon-eyed.
I hand him the clipboard. As he signs, I flick my eyes at the envelope, which contains a note saying, I have news. Meet me downstairs in the coffee shop.
I get into the elevator, my shirt clinging to the small of my back. In less than twelve hours I’ve been three different people—four, including myself. Shakespeare was right: All the world is a stage.
Once in the lobby, I head into the coffee shop and take a seat at the counter, setting my bag on the stool next to me. I examine the menu, willing myself not to stare at the door like a faithful dog, when a voice behind me says, “What the hell are you up to?”
It’s not Chad.
Sixteen
I whirl around on the stool and find myself face-to-muffin-face with Natie. He folds up the brim of his fishing hat, making him look like a burlesque comic.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss.
“Me? What about you?”
“I can’t explain. Just go.”
Through the window looking out on the lobby, I see Chad stop to buy a paper. I turn my back on Natie, who decides to make my life a living hell by plopping down on the next stool over. He’s wearing the sweatpants he slept in. “You don’t know me,” I mutter.
I reach for a napkin to wipe the sweat off my forehead. I am the worst spy ever. The waitress approaches and, just as I’m about to order, I hear Chad behind me, demanding a coffee. I move my bag, as if I’m making room for a stranger.
“Thanks,” he says, then whispers, “pretend you’re listening to your Walkman.”
It’s all very cloak-and-dagger. I put my headphones on and bop my head to unheard music. Chad unfolds a copy of the Times and starts filling out the crossword puzzle.
“W-H-Y-R-U-H-E-R-E,” he writes in 37 across.
I softly sing my answer, as if I were singing along to a tape. “I wanted to call youuuu, but it was too laaaa-hay-hay-hay-hayaaate.” Natie peers over Chad’s right shoulder, an even more inept spy than I am.
Chad doesn’t notice him, as he’s sort of hunched my way so I can read what he’s writing. “W-H-A-T-H-A-V-E-U-G-O-T.
”
I like this game. This time I answer with a real melody, to the tune of Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”
You can start a fire;
Your hair can go right up in flames,
If you buy a blow-dryer,
Beau-Sonic 2000 is its name.
It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s pretty good on short notice. Chad writes, “B-O-S-O-N-I-C-2-0-0-0,” in the puzzle, adding, “N-O-T-B-A-D.” Meanwhile, Natie holds up a spoon as if he’s examining it for spots, when it’s perfectly obvious he’s trying to see what Chad’s writing. Chad scrawls a note in the margin:
Next time call me at home,
no matter how late.
I feel a twitch in my groin.
Use a pay phone.
I nod in a bopping manner. Seeing him in his natural habitat makes me want to please him even more. He seems so grown-up, so put-together, with his slick hair, tight pores, and tailored suit, like he’s been assembled in a factory. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the way he looks.
Chad snaps his fingers for the waitress and tells her he wants his coffee to go. He opens his wallet, pulls out two bills, and places them on the counter. One is a dollar he leaves for the waitress. The other is a hundred for me. As he rises, he flicks his eyes downward at my crotch. “Cute tights,” he mutters.
Then he winks. I love people who wink.
Natie and I walk to the East River, which I’m seriously considering tossing him into. “Why did you follow me?” I cry.
“I had to. You’ve been acting so strange. First you tell me you’re being recruited for the internship program at Sharp, Thornton, and Wiley, which is just a Dumbo ride short of Fantasyland. Then, all of sudden you’ve got shopping phobias and this thirteen-year-old stalker….”
“No, she’s for real.”
He shrugs, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “I don’t believe you, but I’m willing to concede the point.” He continues: “I just figured, since we’re at the age when people can turn schizophrenic…”
“Oh, I see. One psych class and suddenly you’re Carl Jung.”
“Of course not. Jung collaborated with the Nazis.”
“That’s not what—”
“You can’t blame me for being suspicious,” he says. “After all, your mom is kind of a dipsy doodle.”
He’s got a point. This is the woman who moved to Sedona to contact extraterrestrials. Any similarity between her reality and ours is completely coincidental.
We lean on a fence and take in the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, the autumn wind whipping off the water. There’s so much sky down here, as if the world suddenly opened up. I tell Natie everything about my burgeoning career in corporate espionage.
It’s such a relief. What’s more, Natie offers to help. “My friend, with your acting skills and my business know-how, we are gonna get rich.”
“How?”
“Whaddya think Chad’s gonna do with the information you gave him today?”
I have to confess I don’t exactly know.
“He’s gonna trade on it.”
“But the Beau-Sonic 2000 is being recalled. That’ll send the stock price down, won’t it?”
“Yeah, but he can buy options.”
“Options?”
“Meaning he’ll short the stock. It’s kind of like betting it’ll go down.”
“Sounds like gambling.”
Natie claps me on the back. “Welcome to Wall Street.”
“So, what’s that got to do with us?”
“Chad’s not the only one who can trade on that information.”
It never occurred to me that I could buy and sell stocks. That’s for men in suits who work in offices, not for guys in spandex. But if I invest the money I’m earning from Sandra and Chad in the stock market, I won’t have to work in an office. I can make my own way on my own terms. I’d be totally self-sufficient. Then I could show Al once and for all that I don’t need his goddamn money. And maybe once he saw what I’d accomplished, he’d be so proud that he’d offer to pay for Juilliard anyway, so I could use my money for myself. And finally buy some baggy socks. Those suckers are expensive.
When we get back to the apartment, Natie examines the Beautonics® annual reports and business prospectuses that Chad sent me and informs me that the Beau-Sonic 2000 accounts for too little of Beautonics® business to make a huge difference in the stock, and that “we” should keep looking for other information. “We” meaning Eddie Zander.
Being the son of a legend opens doors (an invite to a lake house, several promises to fix me up with single daughters, and, once, an offer of some choice Colombian cocaine), but it doesn’t guarantee information. Reasoning that businessmen have kids, I expand my search to the bash mitzvahs.
Unfortunately, no one wants to talk business with British MTV’s hottest veejay.
Luckily, my commitment to winning friends and influencing people doesn’t escape Sandra’s notice. Overwhelmed by the administrivia of running her burgeoning business, she hires me to do some of the grunt work, providing me a view of the underbelly of the overprivileged. For weeks Sandra’s been fretting about a sweet sixteen thrown by oil and commodities trader Will Owens for his daughter from his first marriage, Windy, so Sandra has spent the better part of her time running interference between the first and second Mrs. Owenses, the former being much embittered because the latter isn’t much older than sweet sixteen herself. Since Owens’s company, Petrolox, is a big woofy deal, the party is only slightly less elaborate than the Radio City Christmas spectacular.
Still, no amount of gossip prepares me for the surrealism of the event, which is held in the backyard of Owens’s estate on Long Island’s oh-so-exclusive North Shore. And by backyard I don’t mean a place where you set up a grill and a few lounge chairs. I mean a state park. The house itself, a stone manor with ten chimneys, is so grand it must require serfs. Even though it could easily accommodate hundreds of tenants, let alone guests, Owens throws the party under a circus-sized tent erected over the tennis courts, which are repainted “Windy Pink.”
This kind of arrangement typifies the decadent logic of party planning. Sandra has produced events where she’s assembled an arbor of wisteria in a hotel ballroom to create the feeling of being outdoors. (Here’s an idea—throw the party outdoors.) Conversely, she’s also used slide projections to replicate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel inside a tent, an odd choice for a bash mitzvah.
The inside of the Owenses’ tent glows with projections of pink clouds, as if a storm system of cotton candy just blew in. Since the birthday girl is a passionate equestrian, life-size horses made of rose petals flank the entrance. Windy herself makes an entrance on a white stallion dyed her signature color for the occasion. With a haughty lift of the tail, the steed expresses our shared opinion that this is horseshit.
Still, the evening is a sparkling success, with the most popular attraction being a booth marked DADDY’S MONEY, where guests try to catch dollar bills that are blown around by a fan. I do my usual shtick while trying to avoid the guest entertainment, British singer Robert Palmer, who corners me before he goes on and asks about the plans to launch MTV in Europe. I mumble something about Margaret Thatcher not wanting her MTV before dissolving into a coughing fit, possibly the most convincing part of my performance.
After introducing him, I retreat to the back of the tent, where Sandra is having an Alka-Seltzer-and-vodka. She points at Windy. “You see that tiara on her head? That cost more than I made last year.”
“What does an oil and commodities trader do?”
“You’re asking me?” Sandra says. “I don’t even know what a commodity is.”
I look around at the splendor surrounding us. “How do people afford to live like this?”
Sandra glances around to make sure she’s not overheard. “I might as well tell you. It’s gonna be in Monday’s paper.”
I head into the house to find a phone, which I discover in a bathroom the size of my apar
tment, all dusty rose and sea-foam green, like a spa. I’ve never seen a bathroom with a phone, let alone a television, which is mounted from the ceiling, like in hotels or hospitals. I lock the door and call Chad.
He picks up on the third ring, not that I’m counting. I just happen to notice.
“Hello.”
It’s a statement, not a question, which strikes me as ineffably sexy.
“Hi!” I squeal. “It’s Edward!” My voice sounds uncannily like Lizzie Sniderman.
“Hey, I was going to call you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I got a call from someone named Dagmar.”
Seventeen
This is my worst nightmare. Well, not exactly. My worst nightmare is being chased by an angry mob, falling off a cliff, and hanging on by the tips of my fingers; but being hounded by my stepmother the succubus ranks right up there. Inside my chest, someone starts playing basketball with my heart.
“How did she find you?”
“I don’t know. Someone at Brooks Brothers must have told her you charged the suit to me.”
“What did she say?”
“That you’re a liar and a thief. And an asshole.”
“She’s crazy, you know.” My heart is beating so loudly I can hear it, like the pounding of the drum on a Viking ship to keep the crew rowing.
“She’s just bitter because I told my father she was stealing from him,” I say. “You shouldn’t believe anything she says.”
“I didn’t.”
Actually, that’s not my heart at all. It’s Robert Palmer’s drummer. I pull some toilet paper off the roll to wipe my forehead.
“Are you calling on a pay phone?” Chad asks.
“Uh…yeah,” I say. Imitating Sandra’s adenoidal whine, I add, “Please deposit twenty-five cents,” then tap on the receiver a couple of times.
“Sorry about that,” I say. “So, what did you tell Dagmar?”
“The truth. That you work for La Vie de la Fête Productions and I bought you a suit.”