The girl sticks the ends of the scarf into the collar of the shirt. “I saw this English guy wearing one of these,” she says. “And I swear it was the hottest thing ever. There.” She steps back, then turns me toward the big mirror.
“What is this thing?”
“It’s an ascot,” she says. “It’s very Thomas Jefferson.”
“Is that good?”
She nods deeply. “He was the hottest founding father of all!”
I look at myself in the mirror again. It does look sort of elegant and old-fashioned.
“Could I wear this to a launch party for a magazine?”
“Yeah, wear it with those jeans. You look great.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“Not really.” She goes back to folding clothes. “Just playing.”
I turn away and look at myself in the mirror. I twist and turn a few times, but I find it hard to form an independent opinion on what I see. I know I’m irresistibly handsome, because that’s what Ramie’s always told me. But I can’t be sure if the outfit is enhancing or detracting. I’ve never seen a real-life person wearing an ascot. I can only half recall a memory of Jill seeing one on a guy in a movie once. There’s something unreal about it. In fact, the more I look at myself, the more unreal the whole image seems. I don’t think it’s just the ascot or this shiny silver shirt. It’s all of me. It’s like I’m seeing myself for the very first time.
“Are you okay?”
I turn to look at the girl folding clothes, and I must have a terrible expression on my face, because she looks worried.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
I turn back to the mirror, but the person staring back isn’t me anymore. He’s a blank, an impostor.
“Are you going to be sick?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
I return to the dressing room and close the curtain.
“Well, don’t get sick in there,” she says.
“Okay.” I sit down and look in the mirror right next to me. I recognize all the pieces, but somehow they don’t add up.
Do you want to know something? I’m not irresistibly handsome. I’m average. My eyes are smallish, and I have a boring nose. I’m not very tall, and my body is mediocre at best.
What made me think I was so good-looking?
I whip the curtain open and walk up to the girl at the folding table. “Can I ask you something?”
She nods but keeps folding.
“Tell me the truth,” I say. “Am I average-looking?”
She stops folding. “That’s a funny thing to ask a total stranger.”
“Yeah, it probably is,” I say. “But I need to know.”
“You look a little pale,” she says. “Do you want to sit down?” She moves a pile of clothes from an old wooden chair and tells me to sit.
“Thanks,” I tell her. I can’t see the mirror from there, which is a great comfort.
The girl goes back to folding her clothes. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as average,” she says. “Am I average?”
“No way,” I tell her.
In truth, there’s nothing exceptional or beautiful about her. She’s a bit stumpy. And her gigantic glasses keep sliding down her nose. But she’s so friendly, so kind, that to me she seems like an angel. And angels are beautiful.
“Is it okay if I just sit here?” I ask. “I can’t face the mirror right now.”
She nods. “I’ve had days like that.”
I lean back in the chair and watch the other customers slowly browsing through the racks. The quiet screech of metal hangers and the whish of fabric on the folding table soothe me. After a while, though, I begin to feel as if I’m invading her space.
“So you think I should buy this scarf thingy?” I ask.
“It’s an ascot,” she says. “And yes. That and the shirt, and you should wear them both out of here. You’ll feel better.”
“I will?”
She nods. “Hold on.” She digs a pair of scissors out of the pile of clothes on her table, then cuts the tags free and hands them to me. “Very few guys can pull off an ascot,” she says.
“Are you sure I’m one of them?”
She nods. “There’s something unique about you.” She hands me the tags. “Just take these to the register.”
“Okay.”
While I’m paying, I realize she never told me if I was average-looking. And I no longer trust my own opinion.
•
It’s cold and bright outside. The silver shirt feels strange against my skin and the silky ascot thing is surprisingly warm. But every time I catch a glimpse of myself in a storefront window, I shudder. The windows are not telling lies, though. It’s not in their nature to lie.
I stop and stare into one. It’s an old hardware store with an artless display of paint cans and dust mops. And right in the center is my face. It’s not the face itself that bothers me. It’s an okay face, I guess. It’s the fact that I’m only now seeing it for what it is. It makes me realize I’ve been seeing myself through Ramie’s eyes for most of my life. I was handsome because she thought I was. I was sexy because she had sex with me.
Even now, as I examine the white ascot bulging from the collar of this silver shirt, I can’t help wondering what Ramie would think. I picture her appraising and critiquing it, but I can’t appraise or critique it myself.
Is this what I’ve become?
I spent all that time trying to escape my Winterhead prison to have a real life of my own. And what did I do? I made myself a reflection of Ramie Boulieaux. That one skinny girl has borne the burden of my whole existence.
But that’s no way to be. Even Jill, who’s worshipped Ramie for most of her life, is at heart her own person. In fact, now that Ramie’s not here to guide her every move, she’s blossomed.
So why have I shriveled?
As I stare at my face in the dingy hardware store window, my father’s words come to me suddenly, courtesy of a crisp Jill-time memory: “I hated what I’d become.”
Dad found himself standing on that precipice because of a series of small mistakes. Jill managed to avoid that fate by finding the courage to be honest, first with Larson, then with Tommy. But me? I must have made thousands of small mistakes somewhere along the line, because I am facing down the same horrible conclusion as my father. I hate what I’ve become.
I hate that I don’t recognize my own face. I hate that I’ve been walking around with a bloated ego because Ramie thought I was sexy. I hate that I bought this ascot, not because I liked it, but because that girl at Beacon’s Closet was nice to me.
I want to be better than this. I was going to be somebody, wasn’t I? Not just some heartbroken, sex-starved (possibly ex-) boyfriend of somebody else. But somebody in my own right.
I pull myself away from the window with its dingy reflection of my mediocre face, then run back home. The necessity of my next decision becomes clearer with every step. There’ll be no precipice avoidance for Jack McTeague. It’s far too late for that. What I have to do now is drastic and terrible.
When I get to my building, I take a moment outside to catch my breath and stiffen my resolve. It’s not confidence I need to do what I’m about to do. It’s something bigger, something deeper. Moral fortitude, that’s it. I need to know that what I’m about to do is the right thing.
Which it is. Trust me.
I run up the stairs and knock on Natalie’s door. When she opens it, she screws up her face at me. “Are you wearing a cravat?” she asks.
“It’s an ascot,” I tell her. “I need you to do me a favor.”
She looks suspicious.
I hand her my cell phone. “Keep this. Do not give it back to me, no matter what I say.”
“Why?”
“There’s a phone call I want to make, and I must be prevented from making it.”
“You can just use a pay phone, though.”
I drop my head in my hands. “Please, Natalie?”
“Okay,” she says. “Fine. How long am I supposed to keep it?”
“Give it to Jill,” I say. “She’ll be back in a few days.”
She nods. “Do you realize how strange you and your sister are?”
“Yes I do,” I tell her.
I head upstairs to my apartment.
I am letting Ramie go. For real. Don’t argue with me. It’s the right thing to do. I can’t go on feeding off of her for the rest of my life. It would only drive her away. It probably is what drove her away.
Besides, I’m Jack McTeague. I escaped a high-security prison. I helped make the world safe from girl-traders. I am not the kind of guy who needs a girlfriend just to be real.
I am real.
“Right, Mannequin?” “Hell yeah!”
“You’re my witness,” I tell her. “Today I begin a new chapter.”
“What’s it called? You need a name.”
“You pick a name,” I tell her. “I have to get ready.”
I won’t lie. I spend nearly an hour crying in the shower. My commitment to letting Ramie go is like a punch in the gut, the righteousness of it ennobling, but not dimming the pain. After ward, I get dressed in my new threads and try to get used to the way I look in the mirror.
From the other room Mannequin calls out, “Don’t get so hung up on your appearance, Jack. Look at me. I’m missing an arm.”
“Thanks, Mannequin,” I call out. “And don’t let anyone tell you that’s a handicap either.”
“I love you.”
I fix my ascot as best I can and get the heck out of there before things get even weirder between me and Mannequin.
As you can guess, I’m feeling a little raw.
The party is in an art gallery near the L train. It’s a small space. In the center is a towering robot sculpture made of Legos and plastic shopping bags. On the walls, Natalie has stapled blowups of the magazine pages. The place is packed with your usual Williamsburg denizens: ironic, scruffy, terminally cool. I remove my coat and dump it in the corner with the others. I am, of course, the only person in the room wearing an ascot.
But that’s okay, I tell myself. I’m Jack McTeague and I wear what I want.
I do a slow perimeter of the room, eavesdropping on conversations and meeting people’s glances with glances of my own. After a while, the gut-punch agony of Ramie’s absence feels less like a weight and more like a hunger. But for what I can’t be certain.
Eventually I spot Natalie near the bar, surrounded by guys. She looks beautiful in a tight black dress. When she spots me, she nods and gives me a quick, appraising up and down.
Not far away, a blowup of the infamous chart is pinned to the wall, and next to it is a crush of pretty girls. I prepare to go over and grandly take credit for it, receive their thanks, and tell them that as long as I’m here, they should consider themselves protected against the nefarious forces of Permascrew and his idiot posse.
But then I notice Perm and his idiot posse, dressed flamboyantly and standing in the midst of all the girls, smiling and laughing and having a grand old time. When Alvarez sees me, he breaks into a great big grin.
“Mayberry!” he says. I glance over my shoulder to see if he’s talking to someone else.
“No, you!” he says. “Jack!” He waves me over. I walk over tentatively, and he takes my hand and whips it around in one of those funky jive handshakes. “You are one tricky S of a B,” he says. He gestures toward the chart.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“Yo, check it,” he says. He points to some photos next to the chart, which feature him plus Perm and Sasha prancing around outside some derelict warehouses dressed as pimps! Sasha is wearing the vinyl jeans, and let me be clear on something, he looks even more ass-ish than you’re thinking right now. No, seriously, turn it up a notch. Then another.
The three of them seem to have taken the satirical photo shoot as a fashion lesson because they’re all dressed in imitation of their photos.
“Yo, Perm!” Alvarez says. He points his thumb in my direction. “Man of the hour.”
Even Perm smiles at me. “Hey, man,” he says. “I owe you one.”
“What?” I lean in to Alvarez. “Why does he owe me one?”
“Dude,” he says. “We’re like celebrities now. Check this out.” He taps Sasha on the shoulder.
Sasha turns around and faces us. He’s holding a notebook and pen, and Alvarez takes it from him and shows me. Written inside is a list of girls’ names.
“New blood,” Alvarez says.
I glance at the cluster of pretty girls hovering around the chart on the wall.
Alvarez sidles up close to me. “They want to know what they can do to get on the chart.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively. “We’re trying to convince Natalie to make this a regular feature.”
“But—”
“Seriously,” Alvarez says. “You’ve got my marker. You ever in a jam, you need an emergency chick extraction, you pick up the phone. You got my digits?”
He stuffs his hand in his tight front pocket to pry out his cell phone, but just then Natalie approaches. She grabs me by the elbow, drags me to the bar, and hands me a plastic cup full of wine.
“Don’t think,” she says. “Drink.” She grabs a bottle and refills her own cup. “So you went with the cravat?”
“It’s an ascot.”
“Uh-huh.”
My eyes keep wandering back to Perm and company.
“Tell me about it,” she says. “They’ve spun their humiliation into a harem.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why are girls volunteering to be on their chart?”
“Why do starlets get out of limos with no underwear?” she says. “There’s no such thing as bad fame, I guess. Don’t worry. I’m not making it a regular feature. I am, however, doing a story on those girls over there. You know, the new trend in self-objectification?” She clinks her plastic cup with mine. “Hey, maybe you should write it.” She takes a sip.
I’m too stunned to follow suit. I can’t believe Perm and his posse have turned this around. Where’s the justice in that?
“Jack,” she says. “It’s a party. Come on, you’re sucking all the joy out of the room.”
“Sorry.”
“Hey,” she says. “See that unbelievably boring guy over there?”
She points to a middle-aged balding guy standing in front of a photograph of a girl in a snowsuit.
“Isn’t that Kevin Jelivek?” I say.
She scrunches up her face. “How do you know Kevin Jelivek?”
I panic. “Um. Jill told me about him.”
“You recognize him from Jill’s description? Wow, is that a freaky twins thing too?”
I nod. “So, are you back together with him or something?”
“I don’t know.” She bites on her fingernail. “Do you think a guy who wears a gray suit every day can have a soul? You know what? Don’t answer that. I have to go mingle. Please drink that.” She backs away, but her eyes linger on my neck. “I take it back. I like your cravat.”
“It’s an ascot,” I say again.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Why don’t you go flirt with someone.” She winks, then wanders off to mingle.
Kevin Jelivek watches her from a safe distance. I don’t have any idea whether a guy in a gray suit can have a soul. My instincts, based on memories of Jill temping, say no. But I know what devotion looks like, and that guy is full of it.
I take a big sip of wine and glance around the party. Then I put in some time “mingling,” but the sudden affections of Perm and gang make me want to hit something. The only girls who’ll talk to me either want to hear about my involvement in “that chart thing” or provide useful criticism of my ascot.
I’m about to call it a night when I notice Larson in the corner, staring at me cagily. When I look at him, he looks away and stares at his old girl-trader buddies. Poor guy. He gave up all of that to impress Jill. And where did it get him?
When I walk over to him, he cringes but doesn’t try to escape.
“Hello, dickhead,” I say.
“What do you want?”
I lean against the wall right next to him. “I’m willing to entertain your apology,” I say. “On Jill’s behalf.”
“Shut up.”
“Ooh, good one,” I say. “Hey, Larson, you want to know why she really fled your apartment that night?”
He narrows his eyes at me.
“Because of the way you smell.” I take in a deep breath through my nose. “You really should do something about that.”
He looks at the floor.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “Don’t be such a pussy.” I push him in the chest.
“Stop that.”
“Or what?” I say.
He looks straight at me. I stand a little taller to give him a bigger target. I want him to hit me.
“It’s true,” he says. “Isn’t it?”
“What?” I say.
“You really are her,” he says. “I didn’t believe her at first. But … it’s so obvious now.”
“Oh yeah?” I say. “And what do you want to do about it?”
He keeps looking at me. I push him in the chest again, and he swats my hand away.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Shut up.”
“No,” he says. “You’re right. I was a dickhead.”
“Agreed.”
“I couldn’t make sense of what she was telling me,” he says. “But I’ve been thinking about it a lot and …”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Dude, I didn’t come over here to listen to your feelings.”
“Well, why did you come over?”
“To beat the living crap out of you,” I say. “Duh.”
“That’s really mature.”
“Oh, come on!” I say. “You turned your back on Jill when she was really vulnerable.”
“I know,” he says.
“No you don’t. You don’t have any idea what it’s like.”
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