Pounding the Pavement

by Jennifer van der Kwast

  “He’s the perfect choice for anything.”

  “And what about Die Dämmerung?”

  “Die what?”

  “That German book you gave me.”

  “Oh, right. You mean, The Twilight.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No. Nothing yet. You start reading it?”

  “I’ve been meaning to. But I never seem to have the time. Princess has been sending me all these books to cover—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Laurie’s hand shoots up again to stop me. “You’ve been reading for Princess?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No.” She sneaks a furtive glance around the bar. Her voice drops to a hush. “Any chance you’ve come across a book called Gideon?”

  “Uh-uh.” Her secretiveness intrigues me. “What’s Gideon?”

  “It’s supposed to be huge. We’re waiting for it to slip any day now. People are saying the writer is going to be the next John Irving.”

  “Really? What’s the book about?”

  “I don’t know. What are any of these books about? ‘Boy Comes of Age,’ probably. You’ll let me know if you see it?”

  “Laurie, you know I can’t do that. I’d be betraying Princess’s trust.”

  Laurie looks at me quizzically. “Geez,” she grumbles. “You make it sound like we’re stealing plans for a fusion bomb.”

  I snort. If anyone has an overblown sense of importance about the film industry, it isn’t me.

  “Just keep it in mind,” she says.

  Before I can protest any further, the bubbly brunette from the entrance steps up behind us and places her fingertips on our backs.

  “Ladies. It’s time for you to take your seats.”

  The sailor sits down across from me. He has a shy smile and light blue eyes that dart around helplessly. I feel awful that I’ve taunted his haircut behind his back. Bad haircuts can happen to anyone. I shouldn’t have held it against him.

  “You ready?” he asks, leaning forward a bit, but not enough to be intrusive.

  I flip my hair, and then am shocked I’ve fallen back on such obvious flirtations. Be professional, I remind myself.

  “Sure am.”

  “Good. Okay.” He puts his elbows on the table. “I thought it would be a good idea if I thought of one really good question to ask. Just one. So, I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

  “And? What did you come up with?”

  “Well, nothing, you know, mind-boggling, or anything. I mean, I don’t care what kind of dog you think of yourself as, or, if you could be on any reality TV show, which one you’d choose—”

  “Rhodesian ridgeback, and Amazing Race.”

  “All I really want to know—” He stops himself and his shy smile becomes a little less painful. “Really? Amazing Race?”

  “I like to travel.”

  “Interesting,” he murmurs. He bows his head. “You know, I’m actually kind of nervous. Do you mind if I just get to my question? Since I’ve spent so much time working on it?”

  “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. Go ahead.” I make a mental note, in future interviews, to fight the urge to jump the gun and interrupt the line of questioning.

  “All right.” He sucks in his breath. “What is your number-one priority?”

  “That is a good question.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “But it’s a little unfair.”

  The blood drains from his face. “Really? You think so?”

  “I’m not sure I can narrow it down to just one. Can I pick five?”

  “How about three?”

  “All right.” While I think, I’m tempted to chew a fingernail or toy with a strand of hair. Instead, I force myself to keep my hands in my lap. Like a little lady. “Okay, well, first of all, I have to say stability.”

  His eyes widen. “You’re talking about commitment?”

  “So to speak.”

  “And? Go on:”

  “Second priority? Well, I know it’s obvious, maybe a little cliché, but I’d have to say growth potential.”

  He gulps. “Growth potential?”

  “Oh, and I also really enjoy a good challenge. And the opportunity to be creative.”

  “Creative?” He turns a bright shade of crimson. “What, like … sexual role-playing?”

  Good God! Where the hell did he come up with that? I replay my answers in my head. Okay, yeah. Now I see what I did.

  “Uh, no,” I say meekly. “This has nothing to do with sex. I’m not really interested in sex.”

  “Not at all?”

  “It’s certainly not a top five priority.”

  He squints. “Now I’m confused. Then, why are you here?”

  I try to smile. It comes out all wrong—clenched teeth, tight lips. Like I’m trying to hold back an enormous belch.

  “Oh, I get it now.” He leans back in his chair, the hurt in his eyes burning with new ferocity, almost enough to bring him to tears. “This is a joke to you.”

  “No, no, it’s not that,” I say quickly, feeling a minor twinge of guilt.

  “What is it then?” he snaps.

  I shake my head ruefully. “Can I be frank with you,” I squint at his name tag, “Frank?” I pause. The absurdity of what I’ve just said makes me want to giggle, but I stifle the urge. “The problem is your question.”

  “Now all of a sudden it’s not a good question anymore?”

  “It’s a great question,” I assure him. “It’s just tough. ’Cause the truth is …” I shrug helplessly. “The truth is, dating is not a priority for me. And finding a boyfriend? Not even remotely. I’m only here tonight because my friend Laurie convinced me it would be good interview practice. See,” I swallow hard because it still pains me to say this. “I’m unemployed.”

  I suppose I half-expected him to leap out of his chair and shriek, “Ewww!” Instead, his shoulders lose some of their rigidity and he lets himself inch just a little bit closer.

  “How long you been out for?”

  “Six months.”

  “That’s nothing. I’ve had friends that were out for a year. I was out for six months myself before I started freelancing.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a sound engineer.”

  All right, good enough.

  “Hey, Frank,” I beckon him with a finger. He scoots toward me and lowers his head, listening intently.

  “My friend Laurie is sitting right next to me,” I whisper. “She works in the film industry. Did you see The Walk of Shame?”

  “Yeah, last Friday,” he whispers back. “It was all right.”

  “Don’t say it’s ‘all right.’ Tell her you loved it. It’s her first associate producer credit.”

  “Oh, okay. Gotcha.”

  “And if it turns out you’re interested, you should invite her to a late-night dinner at Blue Ribbon. It’s her favorite restaurant.”

  He smiles gratefully.

  The whistle shrieks, signaling the end of round one. The men stand and shift seats. When Laurie turns to eye me curiously, I flash her an inconspicuous thumbs-up.

  The freight elevator hoists me up and deposits me squarely in the middle of a sprawling, sun-drenched loft—the apartment set. When I think “set,” I conjure up images of weights and pulleys, wooden beams, cardboard cutouts, and enormous spotlights. “Set” means fake, it means unreal. And this is, by far, the most unreal apartment I’ve ever seen. Hardwood floors, high ceilings, bay windows—even the walls are painted one of those colors with a fancy name. Like Sanguine Earth. Or Burnt Sienna.

  “What do you think?” asks a husky voice. I crane my neck every which way around the corners of the apartment and eventually find Gisele, the art director. I can only see the top half of her, two braids under a plaid bandana, and freckled elbows propped up from behind the kitchen counter. In one hand she holds a coffee mug and, yes, in the other a cigarette.

  “It’s gorgeous!” I gush.


  “Yeah, well, we’re changing it.” She exhales a smoke ring slowly and watches it vanish. “Michel wants it simple. He wants it white.”

  “You’re going to paint the whole thing white?”

  She shrugs. “It’s supposed to be a boy’s apartment. Michel doesn’t think boys would live in an apartment painted amber.”

  Amber? That’s a little anticlimactic. I would have called it Spicy Salsa.

  Gisele takes one last drag from her cigarette and drops the butt into her coffee mug. She studies me for a moment, her eyes lingering on my T-shirt.

  “You go to Princeton?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Like a turtle, she withdraws her head and her skinny, freckled arms behind the kitchen cabinets. “This way.”

  It takes me five minutes to cover the entire stretch of the loft. Eventually I find her in front of the kitchen sink, splaying the bristles of a paintbrush under the running water of the faucet.

  “They have to be clean,” she says. “Make sure you get every single bristle. Any trace of amber will totally fuck up the white.” She hands me four large, stiff brushes. The clean one, the one she’s been grazing with the hardened, callused tips of her fingers, she keeps for herself. “I’ll be in the back. You can start anywhere once you have a clean brush.”

  As soon as she leaves, I light a cigarette and begin the thorough cleansing process. Three cigarettes later, I decide enough is enough. I pick the cleanest brush and select the wall furthest from Gisele. She has already left out a bucket of white paint for me. I dab the brush gingerly in the paint, stroke it once against the wall, and panic. The blemish is small, but not entirely inconspicuous. I am staring at a fine line of Spicy Salsa running down the center of my white streak.

  I turn, stricken, and squint my eyes toward the bay windows. The most I can make out of Gisele is her tiny, dark silhouette. I breathe a little easier.

  I stroke the wall anew. Now two fine lines of amber scrawl down my fresh coat of white. I grab the brush and race back into the kitchen. I don’t care how many cigarettes it takes this time. I scrub the brushes raw, looking over my shoulder repeatedly, dreading the possibility of Gisele’s imminent return.

  But Gisele isn’t my problem. My problem presents itself later, only after I’ve produced one entire wall of glorious, sparkling white. My problem steps off the freight elevator and stands motionless in the center of the loft, howling with fury.

  “Non!” He stamps his foot. “Non, non, non!” He stamps harder.

  Evidently, he has caused just enough of a ruckus to stir Gisele’s attention. She turns casually from the window.

  “The fuck is your problem, Roald?”

  “What I’m supposed to do with thees!” he spits, cuffing his chin at the walls.

  “Michel wanted it simple.”

  “So? You want seemple, you paint the walls bleu. You paint them green. You do not make them white. White, I cannot!” He spits again. He cuffs again.

  It doesn’t take a genius to identify My Problem at this point. This madman import, with obscenely messy hair and an affected accent from nowhere in particular, can be none other than the Director of Photography. He turns to me and sees the offending brush, slathered with white paint, in my hand.

  “You! Stop dee painting!”

  My paintbrush clatters onto the newspaper under my feet. Otherwise, I remain perfectly still. Gisele charges toward the center of the room and grabs her cell phone off the coffee table. The madman starts rummaging in the pockets of his suede jacket.

  I’ve never before seen choreography timed and executed with such precision. Gisele and the cameraman turn their backs on each other, flip open their cell phones, and trade alternate screams.

  “Get me Michel!”

  “Get me bleu!”

  “I need him now!”

  “I need today!”

  Again on cue, they snap their phones shut and swivel back to glare at each other.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Roald,” Gisele seethes. She marches over to me and grabs my trembling wrist, leading me away like a toddler on the verge of tears. Together we stomp further down the loft (actually she stomps, I stagger) until finally she flings me into a back room crammed with stacks of furniture. She takes a moment to readjust her bandana, angrily stuffing strands of her hair back into it.

  “All right, here’s the deal. We need to make this furniture look old and worn, like it’s been around forever.” She pulls a hammer out of her tool belt. “I want you to chip the paint a little. Nothing too drastic.” She taps the hammer once against a dresser. A chip of green paint falls neatly to the floor. “You see?” She hands me the hammer.

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  She leaves the room and I crouch down on the floor. I hammer away at dresser furiously, shredding it into oblivion. I like the hollow sound it makes every time I give it a good whack. Bit by bit, chip by chip, I break it down and whittle it away. Like it’s my dignity.

  Laurie is waiting downstairs for me at 6 p.m. on the dot. She’s wearing a pretty sundress and killer dark sunglasses to match her killer dark combat boots. She drops her cigarette to the cement and crushes the life out of it with a steel-tipped toe.

  “Petty cash,” she says, holding up an envelope. “Dinner’s on us. It’s an extra-special thank-you for today.”

  “Can dinner come in a funny glass with an olive?”

  “An olive, a maraschino cherry, a lemon wedge, you name it.” She slides the envelope into her purse. “Just pick the place.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “But what?”

  I drop my eyes to the ground and my voice to a whisper. “See, I told Amanda I might hang out with her tonight …”

  Laurie rolls her eyes. Make no mistake about it, there is no love lost between the two of them. Then again, Laurie is a little wary of anyone uninspired enough to do something as tedious as math for a living. But people like Amanda—those who work too hard during the day and play too hard at night—are an altogether different kind of beast. Laurie will never be able to understand such zealots. She sees them as the corporate vampires ready to drain the life out of her otherwise bohemian lifestyle.

  “Fine.” She shifts the tension in her shoulders and sighs. “Tell her to meet up with us later.”

  “Thanks,” I breathe with relief.

  An hour later, Laurie and I are crammed onto a bar stool and a half in the dark, forgotten corner of a tiny West Village tavern. We chose this particular bar by default. The mad frenzy of the post-work cocktail hour is usually a standing-room-only affair, and it is a mighty tall order to ask for a firm, stiff plank on which to plant a sore, tired rear. Granted, for twelve dollars a martini you could buy yourself a throw cushion and cozy spot on a velvet chaise. But then you’d be forced to play coy with snooty bartenders and be graciously accepting of any group of pinstriped stockbrokers that sends a round of drinks your way. Laurie and I can do well without the cushions and trappings of such glamorous establishments. We’d much prefer to pack into the sardine tins that usually house the West Village staple of aspiring actors and screenwriters—people who don’t have the means to buy you a drink, and therefore lack the approach to join a conversation uninvited.

  “Who paints the walls amber? What a stupid idea!” Laurie giggles into her vodka collins.

  “Not like white was a stroke of genius either.”

  “Oh, don’t even get me started! I felt like a police dispatcher as soon as I got off the phone with Gisele. ‘Mobilize all units to Janovic Plaza immediately!’ Then everyone was like, ‘What color should we get?’ And, I’m like, ‘I’ll tell you when you get there!’ ”

  I doubt anyone at one of those pretentious lounges would find our conversation all that funny. Yet we double over in hysterics at the sheer absurdity of colors, film productions, and people in general who take themselves far too seriously. And the tortured writer beside us, who has been hunched over his journal and eavesdropping on our conversation all eve
ning, allows a small smile—suggesting he understands us only far too well.

  All of a sudden, Laurie freezes. Her face turns ashen, as white as the controversial apartment wall. She stares, transfixed, over my right shoulder.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  I turn my head to follow her gaze. Perched in the doorway, as always, and seemingly oblivious to the squalor she generally tends to avoid, Amanda seeks us out with a caterpillar smile and butterfly wave. But she’s committed a sin considered unforgivable among single women.

  She brought a date.

  “That’s Ryan,” I whisper quickly to Laurie as they make their approach. “He’s her boss. Be nice!” I’d have better luck telling my gin and tonic to be nonalcoholic.

  Laurie clamps her mouth shut. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t say another word for the rest of the evening.

  “Hey, you guys!” Amanda hooks an arm around Laurie’s shoulder and air-kisses her cheek. It’s such a rare display of affection, so artfully staged, Laurie grimaces and shoots me a venomous glare. I kick her stool to shake her free of the impulse to stick her finger down her throat and gag.

  When Amanda makes her introductions, Laurie nods hello. When Ryan offers to buy us our next round of drinks, she smiles politely, because to refuse him would be too rude even for her. Ryan grows visibly uncomfortable under the heat of hostile eyes, so he turns to me to open up with the small talk.

  “Amanda tells me you’re looking for a job.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tough market out there.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You know, we’re looking to hire a receptionist at the company. If you’re interested you should give your résumé to Amanda. I’d be happy to put in a good word for you.”

  Now I’m the one glaring. Amanda refuses to catch my eye.

  “What happened to your old receptionist?” I ask.

  Amanda tosses her hair and shrugs. “Turns out she was a top-ranked analyst in the investment banking class she took in the spring. She’s going to be replacing me.”

  “We’re very good to our loyal employees,” Ryan confirms. “We offer a lot of growth potential.”

  I shudder at the thought. “I’ll think about it,” I mumble.