by Todd Babiak
A black man in a polyester suit, walking shoes, and a demeaning chapeau de chauffeur waited for them in the arrivals area of LaGuardia with a printed sign that said MISTERS DEMSKY AND MENROD. Toby did not allow him to take his bags. He did not allow him to open the limousine door.
“Sir,” said the chauffeur, quietly, as he closed the door, “this is my job, all right? I applied for it. Don’t let it torment you.”
The driver navigated the wide and clogged streets, thick now with rain. The tips of the towers were hidden by fog. In Manhattan, the transition from the symbolic to the actual was noticeably smooth. Arrival came with mild disappointment, like spotting the tour guides of a great museum smoking at the loading dock.
Mr. Demsky slapped Toby on the knee. “What’s your problem, Tobias?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s your key message?”
“My—”
“Don’t hesitate.”
“The gentleman must return. Etiquette, to the video game people, is more exotic than Burma.”
“Rangoon. Say ‘Rangoon.’ I love that word, and I know I’m not alone.”
“They only need a spiritual guide, a Moses.”
“Moses isn’t sexy.”
“I’m completely uninterested in street drugs and hookers, so no one who hires me has to worry about scandals.”
“Completely uninterested? I don’t think you should say that aloud.”
“I’d never hire a hooker.”
“Never say never.”
“Have you?”
“They never bother you for attention, or ask you to be nice to their mothers. If you want them to sing an Edith Piaf song and dance while they defrock, no problem. It’s an extra twenty.”
Toby wondered, briefly, if Mr. Demsky was quite the best mentor for a man in his position. The car stopped in front of an industrial brick building with a glass-walled restaurant cut into the first two floors. Silver letters spelled NEW GOTHAM above the entrance. Toby opened his door. Mr. Demsky did not.
“You’re not coming?”
“I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“I’m off to a meeting of my own.”
“Oh.”
“You nervous, Tobias?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Terrific.”
“Are you sure about this, Mr. Demsky?”
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
The driver held a large umbrella for Toby and opened the restaurant door for him. Toby had prepared a five-dollar bill.
“Obliged,” said the driver.
The darkness of the autumn rain added an air of noontime romance to the restaurant, designed with a loft aesthetic that seemed a bit tired. Toby had thought New York would know better. Huge windows, white pillars, bamboo floors, exposed brick, an open kitchen hidden behind glass like an exhibit.
A great beauty held his menu. He was not good enough for this place. No, he was. He was. “Your name?” she said.
“Tobias Ménard.”
“Mr. Maynard. Welcome.”
Toby had expected William Kingston, his hero. Instead, he met a thin, fierce-eyed woman in a skirt and blazer and an uncommonly ugly man, lumpen and either sick or hungover, a dusting of white on the shoulders of his black corduroy sport jacket.
Astrid Stanhope, East Coast director of entertainment, sat across from Harry Bennett, outgoing senior producer of Wake Up! Astrid drank Gerolsteiner, while Harry had already finished most of a carafe of white wine. The Americans stood up to shake hands, a peculiar moment as they boldly assessed him: the colour and sparkle quotient of his eyes, the white of his teeth, the blush of his skin, the way a suit hung on his shoulders.
“How old are you?” Astrid replaced the serviette on her lap.
“In Canada, we always begin conversations with a comment about the weather.”
“It’s a piece of shit out there,” said Harry. “Feel better? How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“See?” Harry pointed to his temple, and a pinch of dandruff shimmered into the carafe of wine.
“There’s thinking thirty-seven,” said Astrid, “and seeing thirty-seven.”
Harry topped up his wine and splashed some into Toby’s empty glass. Two of the dandruff flakes twirled on the surface. “The flight was okay?”
“Lovely. Thank you.”
“I like that, you know?” Astrid waved her jewelled fingers at Toby as though she were watching him on television or visiting his cage. “The way he just tosses the word out there. ‘Lovely.’” She included him, now: “Our worry, when we hit on this concept, was that we’d get some pretty boy who’s spent most of his life rich and silly in Kensington. Or some, sorry, blander-than-maple-syrup Canadian with a stick up his ass.”
“Maple syrup is bland?”
“Lovely,” said Harry. “Some lovely Canadian.”
“Maple syrup may not be bland, but we think it’s bland. You see? The very idea of it bores us. You see?”
“I see.”
“You gay?” Harry took a drink.
“Not necessarily.”
“Smartly put, Harry. You just violated a constitutional amendment. Now if we don’t hire Mr. Maple Syrup on a two-year contract, he’ll sue us.”
Harry stared at Astrid and sighed languidly. On the exhale he whispered, “I’m an unhappy man.” He called the server to the table and ordered another carafe of wine.
Astrid tilted her head winningly, renewed by Harry’s declaration. It was clear she had once been on television herself. “We treat Canadians like that smelly aunt upstate we never visit but should visit. And that’s a terrible feeling, knowing she’s up there, alone. But we’re busy, right? We have our own shit to deal with.”
“On behalf of my people, I’m only sort of insulted.”
“You see? You see! That’s what I’m talking about. Could you get any milder? More sweetly inoffensive?”
Toby scanned the room for exits. The server arrived and interrupted an eight-second silence. It was a simple menu, one long sheet of paper, but every item was complex and needlessly employed French phrases. The words steeled him.
“I’ll have the boudin blanc of Saint Pierre,” said Astrid, enunciating every vowel and consonant.
Toby didn’t really know what it was, but he asked for the Rouelle de Thomas farm squab avec farcie aux cerises, pronouncing the French with his best imitation of a Parisian, not a Québécois, accent.
“You said you weren’t gay,” said Harry.
After lunch, a different driver, also a large black man, squired them to the headquarters and studio, just off Times Square. It was all quite similar, on the broadcast floor, to what he had known in Montreal, only twenty times larger, busier, cleaner, prettier, newer. No one walked, they scurried, as though the stories of missing babies in Arkansas, schoolyard stabbings in Texas, and polygamous religious cults in South Dakota were the glue that kept the United States united. Every stupid little thing was epic. Toby knew that if he ignored or dismissed this simple fact of American storytelling, he would fade into loveliness and maple syrup.
Astrid disappeared. Toby interrupted the tour and extended his hand. Harry took it, and they shook for a moment. “I want to thank you for a fascinating lunch, and for this mini tour,” Toby said. “But I’m sure I’m wasting your time.”
“You are. You are wasting my time. I could be in my office right now, watching old episodes of Seinfeld.”
“I can find my way out.”
Harry wheezed. Reporters with sheets of paper whirled about them. “You don’t want to work here?”
“I’d love to work here. But the maple syrup.”
“The what?”
“We just sat in a restaurant for an hour and a half. I didn’t say more than three words to you and Astrid. I haven’t actually pitched the idea.”
“We’re pretty clear on the idea.”
“How?”
“Our boss, William, was the best man at
Adam Demsky’s wedding. If you shit the bed, you’ll be on the first train back to the sticks. But you have your shot. You’re in.”
“I’m in.”
“I have to call Stanhope. She’ll piss herself that you didn’t know.”
Harry led him to a small conference room populated by three people—two writers and a producer, all women. The final confirmation that this was more advanced than an audition was when the team showed him mock-ups of Toby a Gentleman, a daily segment on Wake Up! that would, in the producer’s words, “Consider fashion and etiquette in the broadest way possible.”
“You’re basically Martha Stewart,” said the senior writer.
“But a fellow,” said the junior writer.
The producer rubbed her hands and looked up at the exposed vents and ducts in the tiny boardroom. “You’re presenting, and ultimately selling, a lifestyle.” With that statement, greased with brightness and confidence, Toby knew two things: these people were smarter than anyone at the station in Montreal; and sometime over the next year or so he would sleep with his producer. “Metrosexuality was riddled with flaws, and that’s why you don’t hear about it anymore. We’re after something more timeless. Our mission is not to teach effete New York professionals how to dress. They already know how to dress. You’re addressing, primarily, the wives and girlfriends of dirt bikers.”
“Yobs,” said the junior writer.
“Firefighters,” said the senior writer.
“Chinos, pulled up super-high.”
“Wife beaters.”
“Contestants on The Price Is Right.”
“McDonald’s eaters.”
“Gamers.”
“They have those yellow Support the Troops ribbons on their cars.”
“Trucks.”
“Goddamn trucks.”
“SUVs.”
“They take up both armrests on airplanes.”
“Hockey watchers, basically.”
“Professional wrestling.”
“Oh God, yes.”
“Are you familiar with our electoral system, Toby?”
Harry Bennett, who had listened while balancing the right side of his face on one hand, stood as abruptly as a man of his age, physical condition, and relative sobriety could manage. “All three of you, please, shut the fuck up.”
They did.
Toby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He removed it and peeked at the incoming caller. Dad—cell.
“Don’t listen to them,” said Harry. “Not a word.”
The phone stopped buzzing.
Harry walked around the table and leaned on the chair backs of the writers. “Do not let them strip the dignity from the Middle American. There’s nothing clever about it, despite what they think.”
“Come on, Harry,” said the producer.
The phone began to buzz anew. Again, Edward’s phone.
Harry informed Toby that he had only three weeks remaining at the network, that this industry and this city no longer interested him. They were a revolving door, the two of them, Toby in and Harry out. He was off to Connecticut, where he belonged. Books and liquor, long walks in the perpetual autumn, cocktails for the exquisite hour. Eventually, he would hire a very young housekeeper from Russia who would have trouble with his tendency to take off his pants during the exquisite hour. “This is an industry for women now.”
The producer rolled her eyes and said, “Here we go.”
The phone stopped buzzing.
“What’s left for a man to do, really? Let alone a gentleman. Play dress-up? As you said, we’re after the wives and girlfriends of dirt bikers. We’re after them.”
The phone showed two voice-mail messages. It began to buzz again, a third call. Edward.
“When’s your first day?” said Harry.
“I just learned I had the job from you, a few minutes ago, in the newsroom.”
“How attached are you to your name?”
“Ménard?”
“Maynard,” he said.
“It’s fake.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Mushinsky.”
“Ouch. Seriously, ouch. How about Marshall?”
“Whatever you think.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m off to get drunk with my dog, Gretel—real name.”
They waited for Harry to leave the boardroom and made plans to meet for dinner and drinks that night, to celebrate. The producer, whose name was Jill, led Toby up the elevator and into the corporate offices. “That was impressive in the boardroom, letting your phone go like that.”
The walls of the office were rounded and covered in plates of hammered steel. The floors were oak, stained dark, splashed with track lighting.
Jill introduced Toby to the human resources director and extended her hand for a shake. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“Perfect. Perfect.”
For the next hour and a half, Toby filled out forms and half listened to an explanation of his work visa. There were several opportunities to excuse himself, to listen to the messages on his phone. He had taken too much sparkling water at lunch; a trip to the washroom was in order. But he chose to remain in the office. He was a man of extraordinary ability, an O-1 visa, like Hollywood stars. The network would take care of it. Two weeks at the most, before he could operate as a consultant. He’d be perfectly legal by February. If he could start officially in early January, the eleventh or so, for a week of planning with his team, it would be grand.
“Any family?”
The phone buzzed again. “A son.”
“His name?”
“Hugo.”
“Hugo Ménard?”
“Hugo Brassens, at the moment. Maybe Mushinsky, maybe Marshall.”
The human resources director swallowed. “Oh. How old is he?”
“He’ll be three soon.”
“I have a couple myself.”
The HR director showed him pictures of her children. The view out the windows behind her was of rain-soaked prewar buildings. Beyond them, he imagined, Central Park. He would jog there, pushing Hugo in a stroller of some sort. They would stop for lunch, in the summertime, and throw something back and forth. They would leave hockey behind and settle in the land of football and musical theatre. She described the furnished 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side where he would live for up to four months. It had a maid’s quarters but, sorry, no maid. Cleaning services were once every two weeks. Just off the lobby, what was once a ballroom was now a vast children’s play area. But he couldn’t stay forever, ha ha. As soon as he was settled, in January, he would meet with an ABS relocation consultant who would find him and his son a more permanent place to live, child care, parking, and anything else he might need.
The phone buzzed. Four voice-mail messages. Five.
Broadway was too noisy to hear not his father’s but his mother’s recorded voice, so he walked a few blocks east on Seventh Avenue. It was only marginally quieter. Montreal had always seemed a big city to Toby, but next to the ambient roar of nineteen million people, it was a quaint French village.
The first call was Karen, frantic. “Toby, it’s happening. Please call back right away. It’s happening sooner than we thought. Call me, please, no matter what you’re doing.”
Businessmen rushed past, their briefcases swinging. Young women dressed like extras in a Madonna video, smoking and waving their long arms like ribbons. Men in layers of brown and green, slathered in filth, mumbling and hooting. The mental illness equivalents of vintage wines.
Karen again, her voice quavering and raw. The extra cigarillos she had been smoking. No longer frantic. “The chaplain’s in here, and Hugo. The chaplain’s going to pray with me. I asked him not to make it Jesusy, because I know Ed wouldn’t like that. It’s your last chance to say goodbye to him, Toby, or I love you, whatever. Whatever you can manage. It’s like I’m watching myself.”
To hear the hospital room, with Hugo chattering in the background, Tob
y replayed the second message. He turned south on Forty-Ninth Street.
The third message was short, little more than a whisper: “Your dad is dying.”
A man danced to music that was not there, unnoticed by the pedestrians. Toby the tourist, the rube, looked him in the eye. The man stopped dancing, abandoned his pile of items, and walked next to Toby down Forty-Ninth Street. “All I need is three dollars. Three or four, to change everything tonight.”
Toby gave the man a five.
“Here he is.” The dancing man kissed the bill. “A good man! Behold!”
The fourth message was difficult to hear. Toby crossed Avenue of the Americas with the phone on one ear and his finger in the other. Karen and a man speaking in a low monotone. “May His great name be blessed forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, and lauded be the name of the Holy One. Blessed is He.”
He had never been to Rockefeller Center, but he decided to continue past it, to look down and avoid eye contact with the dancing men and keep walking. It started to rain again. The prayer went on for some time, with plenty of interruptions by Hugo. “You’re hungry.” “What am I doing, Grandma?” This was new: Grandma.
Toby did not listen to the final message right away. He waited until the crowds with shopping bags thinned on the other side of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“Don’t bother calling back.” He did not recognize this tone in his mother’s voice. There were no hospital sounds in the background, no Hugo. A long silence, with a faint crackle.
Toby had never been well schooled on what counted as art deco. He usually pretended. If someone was with him now, in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria, he would say it was art deco. He stood in the lobby. He did not move. If he moved, he would throw up. A porter stood next to him, speaking. Hector. The name tag said Hector. There had been this stop-motion animated show on, when he was a kid, about a bear named Jeremy, and one of his sidekicks had been a raven named Hector. Growing up in Montreal, he could watch the original French version, too. The bear’s name, in French, was Colargol. Colargol wanted to travel the world and sing in the circus. But if Toby remembered well, he went to the moon. Somehow, Colargol was also Polish. The summer light harsh on the television, dust in the beams, Edward and Karen talking in the background, making meals, plans, putting on the day’s clothes, aftershave, hard shoes on shag, blue smoke hanging in the air. Have a wonderful day. We love you. See you at—.