by Melissa Ford
“Forget fashion work. That guy was an extra on a show I watched this week. I’m going to go find a new boyfriend,” Tabitha whispers to me, making a beeline toward a cute man standing alone and drinking a beer near the kitchen.
“Don’t leave me,” I blurt out, hopefully not loud enough to travel over all the conversations around me. Tabitha doesn’t get the point of safety in numbers, and I never remember that she’s the last person you want to take as a human security blanket to a party. Rachel would have stayed at my side all night, talking up my dress to everyone within earshot. I suddenly miss her intensely.
“So you’re Hepburning tonight?” Noah comments.
I do a self-conscious turn in the dress, hoping that someone notices me. “My own design. Well, with Francesca, our atelier designer. But all the embellishments are mine.”
“It’s beautiful,” he tells me.
Noah starts to pass me a beer, pulling back his hand just as my fingers touch the bottle. “Or would you rather have a glass of wine? There’s wine in the kitchen.”
“No, beer is good,” I tell him.
We’re silent for a moment, as if we’ve spent all the words we brought with us. Fizzled, I think in my head, which I’ve always found to be a funny word with few uses. The conversation fizzled out. We’ve caught the tail end of the party, based on the number of empty beer bottles I can see in the recycling bin. In fact, as we stand there, another two or three people float out the front door, waving good-bye to Noah from across the room. One of the women makes a sign with her hand to indicate that she wants Noah to call her, and he nods as a response.
“Feeling a little out of place here,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many celebrities outside of a work event.”
“Social dépaysement?” Noah asks.
“I don’t know what that is,” I admit. I’m almost finished with my beer, consuming it too quickly out of nervousness. I feel like I’m sloshing around like an overfilled bucket.
“Well, dépaysement is also one of those untranslatable words, this time from French. And it means . . . well, it’s that feeling of being an immigrant to an experience. Of not being on your home turf. I just tacked on social to make the word sound fancy.”
“Thank you, once again, for summing up such a messy thought so succinctly. You’re good at that.”
“It goes with the territory of writer.” My ankle wobbles on the high heel, and Noah holds my arm to steady me. Maybe the sloshing wasn’t just in my mind. “Let me introduce you to Paul. He’s one of the first people I met when I moved to the city, and he was the founder of that original poker game.”
I don’t have the guts to tell him that I’d rather meet someone female and someone a lot more famous. Someone who maybe would want to wear one of my designs. But I paste a smile on my face and follow him to a man shuffling a pack of playing cards while he speaks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. The two actors nod at me, sliding apart to let us enter the circle. Seth has his arm around the waist of a petite brunette who introduces herself as Lauren. “I’ve brought you fresh meat, Paul,” Noah tells the man with the cards. “Show Arianna a magic trick.”
“No, no, no more cards,” Seth laughs, saying good-night to the rest of the group, and leaving with the brunette and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I feel like a celebrity pariah until Carter Anderson slips into the circle, taking Joseph’s place.
“Paul is a professional liar,” Carter tells me.
“Actually, I partly own a restaurant called Voi,” Paul counters. “And I’m a writer for reality television shows.”
“Shows . . . is that what they’re calling Ugly Duckling and Altar Wars?” Carter jokes. I smile wanly even though I don’t get the joke.
“Do you really want to see a magic trick?” Paul asks doubtfully.
“I’m sorry, I’m confused. Are you really a magician?” I question.
“Well, I’m a card-carrying member of the Society of American Magicians.”
“Which is another way of saying that Paul doesn’t have a first-kiss story,” Noah says behind me. His breath feels ticklish against my lobe, and I feel my body tense. I pretend to look fascinated by Paul’s ever-moving pack of cards.
Paul hands me the pack and tells me to examine it, so I flip over the cards and glance through them. I shrug, and Paul takes back the cards, fanning them out. “So pick one. Any card. Just slip it out of the deck and look at it. Show it to that asshole behind you.”
I hold up the three of clubs so Noah can see it, too, and then flash it at Carter Anderson, who holds up his hand. “I don’t want any part of this. Encouraging Paul to do magic is like feeding a stray cat. All it accomplishes is that you will always have a Paul at your door, meowing until you allow him to show you his cup and balls.”
I mash my lips together to keep from laughing and slide the card back into the middle of the deck on Paul’s instruction. He asks me to tap the top of the pack and then flip the card over, and, of course, it is the three of clubs that has hopped up from where I placed it in the middle of the pack. “How did you do that?” I question. “How did you get it to jump to the top?”
“Magic,” Paul says mysteriously.
“Show me again,” I beg, but Paul shakes his head and slips the pack of cards into his back pocket like a wallet.
“If I showed it to you again, you might figure it out,” Paul tells me. “Half of magic is the element of surprise.”
“I’ve seen you do that trick about two hundred times, and I’ve never figured it out,” Carter tells him.
“But that’s because you’re a pretty boy with not much going on upstairs,” Paul says sweetly.
I shift my weight, my feet struggling to remain stable in my heels, the sides of my toes starting to ache. Noah’s hand taps my upper arm. “Want another beer? I’ll go get you another beer.”
I try to enjoy myself; I mean, I’m standing with Carter Anderson. If you had told me months ago that I’d be hanging out with people like Seth Rogen or Carter Anderson at a non-work event, I wouldn’t have believed it. My life—despite it now taking place in New York—is the definition of average: work, baby, boyfriend. But despite the coolness factor for scoring an invite to this party in the first place, I’m disappointed with myself that I haven’t parlayed it into something . . . more. Something lasting. It would be like driving a car on fumes to a gas station only to purchase a pack of M&M’s from the attendant instead of refueling the car. I’m riding this party nowhere quickly as I tensely smile at the remaining guests, wishing Tabitha wasn’t wrapped around the television show extra.
The party ends a half hour later when James Franco crosses the room to say good-bye to Noah, his eyes folding into their infamous squint as he pulls Noah in for a hug. He’s the last celebrity to walk out the door. My fingers brush the stack of newly made business cards inside my purse. I was too shy to even hand one to Noah to pass along to any of his female friends.
Tabitha floats over to me and confides that she is going out with the television extra and she’ll see me at work tomorrow. It’s not as if she was going to walk me home, but I thought we’d gossip a bit out on the sidewalk. I try not to look hurt as I set down my half-finished bottle of beer on Noah’s table and start to wobble toward the door after her.
“Wait up, Quinn,” I hear behind me, and I turn around to see Noah collecting his keys, surveying the state of his apartment. “I’m going to walk you home.”
“I can get home by myself,” I insist.
“This isn’t sexist. I know you can get home by yourself when you’re sober,” Noah says, “but you’re sort of wobbling around. I want to make sure my Emmy outfit actually gets made and that you’re not left in a puddle of your own vomit somewhere in Manhattan.”
“I’m not drunk,” I insist, even though everything does feel a little hazy.
&
nbsp; “Listen, I’ll feel less worried if I know you’ve made it back okay. Call it Jewish guilt. Humor me?”
We step into the hallway. Down below, I can hear the dregs of party guests spilling outside from the vestibule. Noah takes his time, checking his pocket to make sure he has his phone and then slowly locking his door. I tell him to wait a moment, and I untie my ribbon straps, slipping off my black heels and standing on his dirty landing in my bare feet for a moment before putting back on my ballet flats. “Sorry, I can’t walk home in those shoes.”
“It’s sort of cute,” Noah says, holding open his front door for me, “how drunk you are.” We’re alone on the sidewalk, the rest of the group already beyond the corner. He pauses, not knowing the way to my apartment, and I beckon him to follow me.
“Really, I’m not drunk. I had . . . maybe two beers?”
“You had at least three. Maybe three and a half.”
“I did?” I ask. I really don’t remember. I know that I was drinking more than I normally do because I was nervous, but three beers is a lot for me.
“You definitely did.”
We walk in silence for a bit, the noise of Manhattan between us like a friend. A fire engine roars passed, sirens blaring, and we both turn our heads to watch it go down the street. Guilt or no guilt, he really is a nice guy, I decide, if he’s willing to leave his own apartment to walk someone home.
When we’re about three blocks away from my apartment, Noah motions to an open diner and asks if I want to stop to get a cup of coffee. “Maybe sober up before you get home?”
“No, I should get home. I feel badly. You had to leave your apartment to walk me this far.”
“Quinn, it’s no problem. Look at it as you helping me put off actually cleaning up the party mess. Come on, we’re getting you coffee.”
I squint at the overhead fluorescent lights as we enter, hunching over a bit as we shuffle to an empty table. Everything feels too bright and shiny, including the Formica tabletop and the plastic menus. We order two cups of decaffeinated coffee and the waitress slides a bowl of individually portioned room temperature creams onto our table, knocking them against the sugar dispenser and a stack of napkins. Noah picks up one of the napkins and carefully cleans our table, brushing up the loose salt before I can.
“That was the perfect word tonight—social dépaysement,” I say suddenly. The waitress comes back with the coffee and sets down the mugs without fanfare. I wrap my hands around mine even though it’s hot outside. “I felt so out of place there. With all those movie stars. I mean, those are the people I watch on television. I had no idea what to say. I just stood there like an idiot.”
I want to ask him to help me, to connect me with one of his famous friends since I clearly couldn’t start a conversation with them myself, but I’m not close enough to ask him for such a huge favor. He must get requests like that all the time from real friends; why would he ever help out someone who’s barely an acquaintance? The fact that I’m drunk and just dragged him out of his apartment in the middle of the night probably just blew any chance of that.
“They’re just people,” Noah says evenly.
“Don’t you get tongue-tied around them? I mean, James Franco was nominated for an Academy Award. Isn’t it weird having friends who are famous? I guess you’re a little bit famous, too. By proximity.”
“Do you know what I think when I look at them? I think they—like me—are all just pre-corpses. We’re walking around, living out these moments before we die. But it really doesn’t matter what any of us actually do. Being an actor or being a writer or winning the Nobel Prize . . . none of it makes you immortal. So what difference does it make if we’re all just pre-corpses? There’s nothing we can do while we’re here that will stave off the inevitable fact that we’ll all meet on the level playing field of death. Think like that and you can talk to just about anyone. It’s better than that public speaking trick of picturing people in their underwear.”
“Wow . . . that just made me feel very sad,” I tell him.
“I probably shouldn’t say things like that to a drunk person,” he grins.
“Well, some corpses seem more important than others,” I try again.
“So we can call James and Joe VIPs: Very Important Pre-corpses. But we’re all still going to end up as corpses.”
“I think we need to get off this topic,” I tell him, suddenly feeling as if I’m on the verge of tears. All I can think about is Charlotte at the end of Charlotte’s Web patiently telling Wilbur that life is nothing more than being born, living a little, and then dying. I embarrassed myself in third grade by bursting into loud, hysterical sobs when my teacher read aloud that Charlotte died alone.
“Wow, I didn’t mean to bring you down,” Noah says. “Uh . . . forget celebrities. Though, you know, there’s an untranslatable word for people who feel anxiety thinking about the certainty of death.”
I stare at him, silently willing him to stop talking before I completely lose it. What would happen to Beckett if I died? I don’t even have a will. He’d have to go live with my parents in Minnesota. Noah takes a sip of coffee and cringes a bit, as if he’s stepping onto ice to test whether it can support his weight.
“The word is Torschlusspanik. It literally means, ‘gate-shut panic.’ That anxiety you get that time is running out. It comes from the peasants seeing the gates to the city closing before the enemies arrive. For years, I didn’t have a word to describe what it felt like when the doctor told me that it was cancer. But when I saw that word, it was like . . . the opposite of verbal dépaysement. It was like finally hearing someone speak your language. After the diagnosis, I wasn’t scared to die or be dead. But I was scared of that moment between the gate closing and the battle. I was scared to be living while dying.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say automatically.
“I’m fine,” Noah tells me. “I’m sorry that I was vague about it when I first told you. I guess I don’t love talking about my testicles. I didn’t even talk about my cancer with my good friends. A lot of them still don’t know what kind of cancer it was. In the cancer oeuvre, I was never that character who inspirationally lived life to the fullest and held my friends close, whispering the secrets of life that had been revealed to me on account of being half-dead. I was more of an asshole.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.” I try to reach into my fuzzy brain for the perfect thing to say. My happy buzzed feeling from the beers is being replaced by queasiness the longer we sit in the too-bright, dishwater-smelling diner.
“I don’t know what anyone would even say at my funeral if I had died,” he continues, affecting someone else’s voice to deliver his fake eulogy. “We’re sad about Noah. He was sort of a funny guy before his cancer. But, you know, lately, he’s been a real drag to be around. Other people get brave, inspiring friends who battle cancer like steadfast soldiers. We got a whiny, hand-wringing man who shut all of us out of the process of watching him die and deprived us of the epiphanies that come from being so close to someone suffering that much. We were cheated. Noah Reiser was such a selfish jerk. But we miss you, man, we miss you and the swag you would give us from work.”
“No one would say that,” I laugh.
“You are definitely overestimating my friends. No, you’re right, they would say that I was inspiring and brave and was saying witty bon mots right until the moment I took my last breath. But it wouldn’t be true. I wouldn’t deserve that speech.”
I stare at him across the table, the room rocking like a ship. He finally picks up on the fact that I’m struggling to remain upright, and he calls over the waitress, handing her money to cover our bill and a generous tip. I don’t attempt to grab my wallet; I’m not even certain I could tell the bills apart by this point.
“You know, I know other untranslatable words that aren’t so morbid. Like in Japan, they say koi no yokan to
talk about those times when you meet someone and you instantly somehow know that in the future, you’re going to fall in love. And Norwegians have forelsket to describe that intense euphoria you feel when you start to fall in love. And the Yaghan in Tierra del Fuego have mamihlapinatapei. I’m probably butchering the pronunciation, but it’s that look two people give one another when they want to start something, but neither one wants to be the one who starts it. Are you okay, Quinn?”
“I’m not feeling that great,” I mutter.
“Come on,” he says, helping me to my feet. I sway, feeling like a block tower that’s about to collapse. “Let me get you home. Take Tylenol. And promise me that you’ll drink as much water as you can keep down before you go to sleep?”
We stumble outside and I take shallow breaths, just trying to hold it together for the last three blocks before I get home. I cannot vomit in front of Noah Reiser. I will never be able to show up at the Nightly to drop off the outfits if I lose it in front of him. I try to hold my head higher to give off the impression that I’m still in control.
Noah takes a few quick steps, catching up with me as the door closes. His hand is swinging so close to my own that my fingers almost entwine through his out of habit. We’re a few steps away from my apartment door when we pause.
“There’s something about you that makes me want to tell you things. I like you, Arianna. I’m not expecting anything back from you; I know you’re with Ethan, and I would never want to overstep that line. But I just want you to know that you are liked.”
I skirt around the word ‘like’ as if I’m doing a figure eight, pretending it has a different meaning. We’re just two creative types who connect over the process of making our art. He gets the pressure I’m under in a way that Ethan doesn’t, and I provide him with a place to talk about life without worrying that what he says could affect future job prospects or social standing.
“You’re a great guy. Thank you for walking me home.”
“No problem. Just wanted to make sure you got there safely.”