But you had to keep up. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be one of those hipster douchebags who bragged about their flip phones and claimed they’d quit Facebook three years ago. Casey Pendergast did not get left behind, anywhere, anyhow. I accepted that part of being a person nowadays was that you had to maintain your personal brand. The personal brand I was going for was someone who was beautiful, fun, smart, funny (but not so much as to inspire the crueler kinds of envy), cared a lot about style (I posted a lot of home and wardrobe pictures) and a lot about substance (I posted thoughtful articles and commentary on education and light social-justice issues)—all in all, basically someone you couldn’t help but like. I wanted people to scroll through my Instagram and think That is Casey Pendergast! It was exhausting, but it was necessary.
Despite my long hours at PR and my own self-consciousness, a few weeks before my twenty-eighth birthday had served as a catalyst to reignite my childhood ambitions, which had, as Susan had predicted, been extinguished entirely after a few months of working at PR. After going on a whim to an open casting call for The Bachelor, held in a Marriott ballroom filled with self-esteem issues and women ten years younger than me, I’d decided I needed to put myself in fewer situations where the end result was me crying in Whole Foods and stealing fistfuls of chocolate raisins from the bulk aisle while googling personal trainer. The entertainment industry required a more tactical approach for a woman my age. I had a network; it was time to use it. Thanks to a commercial director I’d met through PR, I’d gotten hooked up with a local production company that specialized in commercial voice actors. My big break had come when I’d been invited for a callback for an organic dairy farm’s new campaign. After it, at my request, the production company forwarded me the audio from the audition.
Eagerly I clicked the email attachment. I heard rustling as I took off my coat in the sound studio, idle chitchat. My voice sounded high: the sound guy was cute, an involuntary reflex. The commercial director, Scott, had come in, asked if I needed anything—water, coffee, an apple to help with dry mouth.
“No, thank you,” I heard myself say tremulously.
“Then let’s get started.” He explained the concept behind the commercial: a new cow had come to the farm. The new cow was a vegetarian—only grass. The other cows didn’t like her because she was quirky and different. “You’re the new cow,” he said. “Can I hear you moo?”
“Moo!” I said.
“Great. You’re a natural. Now imagine you’re younger, a little more insecure.”
“Moo—oo?” I said.
“Beautiful. Now you’ve got a stomachache because the other cows put pig slop in your food.”
“Moooooooooo,” I said sadly.
It was not the audition I’d ever imagined for myself, back in the days where I played prima donna for my stuffed animals, but then again Kathie Lee Gifford had probably never dreamed of getting drunk on the Today show for a living, which proved that everyone had to be flexible.
“Great, Casey, gorgeous,” the director said. “Now the cow’s a little more alluring, a little more sexy, she’s gotten some attention from a bull and she’s feeling—”
“Moo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Mooooooooo!”
“Amazing, I love it.” He clapped his hands twice. “Thank you, beautiful! We’ll call you!”
Buzzing with adrenaline—the email said I’d hear back by the end of the week—and the sugar from the M&M’S—the latter had unleashed the monster in me who could only say two words: “MORE SUGAR!”—I opened the dating app on my phone, the one designed to make intercourse easy and efficient. I checked to see if there had been any new matches, or messages, in the past two hours. Indeed there had, including a brief missive from a square-jawedly handsome fellow named Chad. Chad, based on his photographs, enjoyed gym mirrors, boats, and bars that put a red glare in his eyes. I did not reply to most messages I was sent, but Chad’s question intrigued me. do you work at build-a-bear?
I wrote back right away. haha, no. why?
Chad did not reply right away, so I scrolled through the other messages. Lots of hi, hello, what’s up Casey? how r u doing on this beautiful day? Boring, boring, stupid, boring. No one who relies on stock phrases can be good in bed. Chad replied soon enough, as I knew he would, because I know the intricate wiring of a horny male dick.
i want to stuff u
Okay, Chad, I thought. Easy does it.
I could have left it there, but because I could not help myself, because every girl, no matter how contrary, becomes her mother, I wrote but then shouldn’t you ask if i’m a build-a-bear BEAR? i.e. you can’t stuff build-a-bear EMPLOYEES?
Chad did not reply to this, which was fine. Experience had taught me there were plenty of other Chads in the sea. This particular app represented and had helped codify the general philosophy of my generation. People are like playing cards in a game of Go Fish. You try to collect the ones you like; and the ones you don’t like, you try to get rid of as swiftly as possible. Sure, there were better ways of treating people, but how were we to know what they were? Our parents had plunked us in front of their personal computers as soon as the retail price became reasonable, and there we had learned to flirt in a chat box and always think that beyond what was in front of us, there was probably something better.
Sure enough, another Chad appeared a minute or two later. Actually, this guy was named Sam, but it didn’t matter. Sam, according to himself, was a lawyer who was hopin to get more into music. DJing and stuff. He sent me a song I should listen to, which in this app counted as romance. I listened to maybe half of it.
:) i like it, I wrote.
i like you
you don’t know that
;) oh really
We went on like this for a while. It was fun the way games are fun when you’re half paying attention, an easy way to pass the time. I wasn’t sure what winning meant in this game, but I believed it involved not caring very much. About the other person, I mean. In my experience, men were either trying to gobble you up or running away to avoid the vulnerability of hunger. But, I mean, so was I.
what r u wearing?
I looked down at my pajamas. My makeup was scrubbed off. On the computer screen was the summer-weight down comforter I’d been considering purchasing.
nothing
tease
you call this teasing?
I sent a photo I’d taken for another guy. All this and more, from the privacy of my own home. A whole bed to myself, nothing upsetting or smelly. We worked each other to climax, or so we said, through a sequence of increasingly explicit messages. He asked me what my fantasies were, and I repeated something I’d heard in a European film, something about doing a bunch of strangers on a high-speed train. Much better than my original answer, which was not to cry after coming.
When we were finished, and texted good night with vague promises of “next time,” I fell asleep hugging my decorative bolster pillow, like if I hugged it hard enough, it might one day pull a Velveteen Rabbit and hug me back. There was more to life, I was sure of it, but when I listened to the stillness for my clear signal these days all I heard was static. The static was too loud, so I turned on the television, and fell asleep to canned laughter.
About a month later, when I came into work—actually it was exactly a month, Tax Day—there was an email waiting from Celeste. I was to “stop by” her office at ten, the official start to our working hours, “for a quick chat.”
My watch, a fancy thing given to me by a former boyfriend—one of those finance guys whose generosity, consciously or not, always operates on a balance sheet—informed me it was 10:33. This was usually when I arrived, as I did not believe in working hours so much as I believed in work. My philosophy was: smart people work faster, and therefore shouldn’t have to be there as long. Plus, I’d slept badly the night before, caught up in a recurring and disturbing dream that
had me backed into a corner of the Build-A-Bear warehouse. I didn’t remember much, but, boy—tufts and fluffs everywhere.
Still, I felt terrible. I did not like letting Celeste down. I prided myself on being her faithful steed; you could say a good chunk of what psychologists called my “self” depended on this steediness. The thought of losing this identity for a reason as dumb as showing up late one morning—okay, many mornings. Most mornings. All mornings. Usually Celeste herself didn’t appear till noon. And yet—
“Shit,” I said to my computer screen.
“What is it, hon?” Lindsey said. The slim bangles on her wrist jangled as she reached her hand out to give mine a squeeze. Lindsey had the softest hands of anyone I knew, also the smallest. It was like holding hands with raw chicken breast. She was at her station right beside mine, working in Photoshop on the final mock-ups of Ellen’s face for the new ad campaign, which was set to go live the following week. The tag we’d finally decided on was simple: ALL REAL.
We were pleased, but Ellen had freaked out when we’d first shown her the print. Apparently there were many lines that needed to be removed. As a result Lindsey had spent the past four days doing God-knows-what brushing and filtering and screening to make sure Ellen’s face was up to Ellen’s standards. I myself couldn’t notice a difference, but I think something happens to a woman’s brain when she hits puberty, then again when she hits forty: she can no longer see herself objectively, only as a monstrosity. The prettiest forty-year-olds get this way the most, maybe because they’re so attached to the rewards for physical perfection, whereas everyone else had to get used to their monstrousness at an early age, find coping mechanisms for it: a sense of humor, say, or a unique take on current events, maybe an online shopping addiction.
“Uggghhhh I am such an idiot,” I said, dropping my purse on the floor and rummaging around my desk for—what?—something to take the anxiety away. I found the Rescue Remedy Lindsey’d given me and squeezed a whole eyedropperful onto my tongue, though the directions said to “gently place” one or two drops in a glass of water. Goddamn hippies; I didn’t have time for gentle placement! “I was supposed to meet with Celeste, like, a half hour ago, but I took my work email off my phone so I could, like, achieve balance or whatever but now”—I opened a vial of lip balm and compulsively smeared petroleum over my mouth—“I just look like a shithead. I don’t know if I should go see her now or hide under the desk until she comes looking for me.”
“Just go now. It’s not a big deal.”
I shoved the balm back into my cluttered makeup bag and looked up. “Seriously,” Lindsey said. She gave me a reassuring smile. “It’ll be fine. Celeste loves you. That’s not going to change.”
That was the thing about Lindsey. Right when you might not want to take her seriously, dismiss her and her Healing Arts, she’d tunnel right into the center of your brain, where all those secret and often sad thoughts lived, and she’d speak right to them.
She pulled what looked to be roll-on perfume out from behind her iMac. “Put this on your wrists,” she said. “It’s for grounding.”
My pulse whizzed from caffeine and anticipation. “I don’t need grounding,” I said. “I was born grounding!” I took it from her and put it on anyway.
* * *
—
Smelling like a feminist bookstore, I knocked on Celeste’s glass door. She was sitting at her desk with her laptop open, and she motioned for me to come in. She was wearing black, as per usual, which stood out against the accoutrements in her office, which were completely white, including the book jackets on her Lucite shelves. It was like being inside a Rorschach test. Hard to get an accurate reading from inside the inkblot, or was it. Mama!
“So sorry I’m—” I began, but she cut me off, motioned for me to sit down in a chair whose sleek lines and hard finish had the comfort of a church pew.
“You majored in English, didn’t you?”
I blinked twice and crossed my legs, so as to protect my dignity. Spring had sprung, which meant I’d taken to wearing short dresses that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to fully cover my ass. This one was wide, though, to offset its minimal length. It had become trendy to wear cloth boxes. “Yes. Why?”
“What do you know about Ben Dickinson?”
“Ben Dickinson?”
There were things I’d been hoping Celeste would ask (Hey, kid, you’ve got talent, do you want to be a star?), things I’d been dreading she’d ask (What’s wrong with you? Do you want to get fired?), and then some banal stuff in between, but in no universe had I imagined a left-field question like this.
“Ummm—” I smacked my newly petroleumed lips. “He’s a writer. Lives in town, I think. Wrote a novel that came out last fall, which I haven’t read, but I’m pretty sure my friend Susan has. I know it got good reviews, and I saw on Facebook there’s some event with him at a theater downtown—”
I was running out of steam. Celeste was looking at her computer screen, frowning, clicking on links I could not see. Her shoulder-length bob was more unkempt than usual, and despite her red light facials or whatever, she looked tired. Haggardness was something of a badge of honor around People’s Republic, a sign you were sacrificing yourself to a higher power. There was a Venti Starbucks on her desk, a bottle of water imported from France, and one of those energy drinks that comes in a vial because a larger dose would give you a heart attack. “Susan,” she said absently. “Your friend. Also a writer, yes?”
“Yes! She’s incredibly talented. Hasn’t published anything yet, but she will, I know she will.” I was impressed Celeste remembered Susan. Though I talked about Susan all the time, I wasn’t used to Celeste bringing up anyone’s personal life. Celeste, so far as I could tell, did not have a personal life, and her tacit expectation was that neither would we.
“Would you say you’re good with writers?”
“Uhh—” I rubbed my lips again. “I guess? I mean—sure. Writers are just like everybody else. They love to talk about themselves, or their writing, and if you pay a little bit of attention they’ll love you forever. But oh my God are they sensitive. Sometimes that makes them sweet, but not always. Once I was at this party with Susan, and this little group was going on and on about this writer they’d known in grad school who was famous now but at parties he’d never bring booze, just drink everyone else’s, and they were, like, eviscerating him for this. And it was years ago! I was like, you guys, this is a party, let’s stop talking and dance already! But they wouldn’t! I could never get a single one of them to dance, not ever. Not even when I twerked and my boobs fell out of my shirt.”
Celeste didn’t respond, just kept clicking.
“So, anyway,” I finally said. “What’s all this about?”
A long pause. I shifted in my seat and thought about how maybe I could have left out the part about my boobs falling out of my shirt. My chest grew hot, the way it did when I got too excited and spoke without modulating my foolisher tendencies. When Celeste looked up, her dark eyes reflected the cool lamplight like black magic. I had the uncomfortable sense of entering a high-stakes negotiation, one in which she alone knew the terms.
“Have you heard of a business strategy called Blue Ocean?” she said.
“Uhhhh…no?”
This felt like the wrong answer, but what else was there?
“Have you heard of Cirque du Soleil?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, hello, Vegas is literally my favorite city in the world.”
This was true. Vegas looked to me how a bit of crinkled tinfoil looked to a drug addict: so much promise beneath so much shininess! Every time I went I felt like I’d been baptized by the holy waters of the Bellagio, born anew by the excess of free drink tickets, VIP passes, and other perks handed to me by club promoters who decided my appearance passed muster for discounted rates.
Celeste shut her computer. She re
sted her elbows on top of it, interlaced her fingers below her chin, like a teacher at three o’clock who finds herself very, very tired of teaching idiots all day. “It’s the 1980s,” she said. “The markets are recovering from Carter’s disastrous handling of the recession. People are making money on Wall Street, they’ve got cash like never before, and they want to spend it. They’re taking vacations, they’re going to Disney, they’re trying out upscale restaurants, but they’re not”—she corrected herself—“they’ve stopped—going to the circus.” She pointed at me with both her index fingers. “Why?”
Another trick question. I considered it, or rather, tried to look as though I was considering it while flies buzzed idly around my brain. “Well,” I said. I thought of the time I went on a field trip to a traveling big top and I’d cried in front of my whole class when I saw the elephants in chains. “Circuses are disgusting.”
“No, circuses were disgusting,” Celeste said. She ticked the names off on her fingers. “Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey, Big Apple—all hemorrhaging money. Industry’s dead in the water. The founders of Cirque du Soleil knew this, so do you know what they did?”
“Started training preteens in Chinese acrobatics?”
Celeste leaned forward, and a strand of dark hair fell out from behind her ear. She put her palms up. The switchblade necklace dangled and clattered against the Lucite desk. “They discovered whole new waters.”
Then she leaned back, tucked in the unruly strand, and reached for her Starbucks. She took a long swallow, satisfied, it seemed, with her ability to drop bombs onto hapless targets.
“So Blue Ocean is a new—” I paused. “Um—industry?”
“No.” She drew out the vowel, like I did with Annie when I was patiently explaining something but secretly wanted to thwack her upside the head. “It’s an uncontested market space within a saturated industry.”
“Ohhhhhh, I see,” I said, though I did not.
“In contested markets, the water is red from companies fighting for market share and devouring each other. Cirque du Soleil was blue because no other circus could compete with it. Nothing like it had ever come before.”
A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Page 5