The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

When people ask me to describe Fleishman, I usually say he sort of resembles the young Martin Landau from his North by Northwest days, only that doesn’t really do him justice. He’s that tall, thin, and angular, but he’s dapper. When you look at him—and he’s so distinctive that people always do crane around to look at him on the streets or in restaurants—you would think that he must be an actor, or some other person used to being in the public eye. He might not be handsome in the way Brad Pitt is handsome, but he carries himself like a man accustomed to thinking of himself as exceptional. Aside from his bearing, he has these steely blue-gray eyes—they can seem intense, or full of humor. They are mesmerizing.

  On many an occasion those eyes have been my undoing.

  I knew better now than to get tripped up by those eyes now. I knew my limits. Both of our limits. I was well aware of what all the sparking and smoldering could lead to: Wild abandon chased quickly by abject regret.

  “Well, c’mon,” he said impatiently when I broke eye contact. “Let’s see what the old dame brung you.”

  Say this for her, Natasha Fleishman did not skimp on charity. From those shopping bags, which still had a perfumey smell lingering on them, we pulled out a wealth of stuff. Twinset cashmere sweaters, fabulous lightweight wool outfits in rich tweeds and checks, silk shirts, and so-called casual wear that would only be casual to people who actually wore formal wear on a regular basis. Putting on Natasha Fleishman’s casual chic, I would feel like a kid playing dress up.

  Yet after a few minutes I was pawing over garments bearing tags with Prada and Dior with a critical eye. The trouble was size. Natasha Fleishman was both taller and smaller than I was. That ruled out pants. I could, however, squeeze into most of the skirts and tops if I was careful to keep my breath sucked in.

  Fleishman, who had begun to look like he was losing interest, dug out a vintage dress. “Wow—I think this was my grandmother’s.” It was a fitted turquoise and deep purple houndstooth shift. “I think you should wear this on your first day.”

  I took the dress from him and frowned as I looked it over. The tag read Mainbocher, whom I thought was a really big designer at some point. “I’m not sure…”

  Fleishman looked hurt. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not the kind of thing you wear on your first day to a job. Unless your job is as a guest star on The Doris Day Show. It’s loud.”

  “You need to be louder,” he grumbled, putting the dress aside.

  I wasn’t so sure. It was both loud and fitted, and things that were so fitted played right into my paranoia about body issues. Growing up, I had been fat. The kind of girl to whom people would say things like, “You have the loveliest brown eyes!” Or, “You look just like Winona Ryder!” Meaning, Winona Ryder, but fat. I had brown hair and brown eyes, and there our similarities ended.

  When I lost weight, I actually did look a little more like Winona Ryder, but by then she was more known for shoplifting than good box office, so the resemblance was no longer in my favor.

  “Do you think this is too tight?” I asked Fleishman as I stepped out a few minutes later to model a newer black scoop-neck dress with a Prada tag. I couldn’t believe this stuff was from someone’s discard pile.

  Fleishman eyed me critically. “Sit-ups,” he said. “A week of sit-ups xand you’ll look like a million dollars.”

  “I don’t have a week,” I reminded him. “Besides, I haven’t done a sit-up since P.E. in seventh grade.”

  “Okay, we just won’t eat for the next three days.”

  I nodded. If it meant fitting into a free wardrobe, that sounded like a reasonable suggestion.

  That was the other thing about Fleishman. We’d known each other so long, he knew my history. He knew that growing up I was the little girl other kids had called Shamu in swim class. My weight had been a torment, but in a perverse way it had also seemed like my security blanket. Fat was who I was. The idea of losing weight and showing up at school thin (I always dreamed that it would happen overnight or something), which according to everyone was supposed to be my dream, made me feel even more self-conscious. I would be like the bald guy who suddenly shows up at work with a toupee.

  The summer after high school, though, I took the plunge. I dropped forty-five pounds, and not by a method I would recommend to anyone. But by the time I got to college, I was average size. No one there knew I was only masquerading as a normal person.

  At first, Fleishman was the only one at college I told about my deep dark secret. He knew all about me, and understood the yo-yo diet mentality and why I would panic when my size ten jeans started to feel tight. I have developed discipline over the years, but it’s the cockeyed kind of discipline that says that it’s fine to inhale a Krispy Kreme donut (or two!) for breakfast as long as you don’t eat again for the rest of the day.

  It’s the kind of discipline Fleishman understood.

  “Okay, modeling time’s over,” Fleishman said, two outfits later. “I’m taking you out.”

  I tilted my head. “Out where?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Natasha made a generous donation to the Fleishman fund, too, so I’m treating us both to haircuts.”

  Fleishman and I had been so tight knit for so long that we tended to treat financial windfalls as community property. We were so close we sometimes acted like twins with an extra set of parents. The fact that we had actually been an item—and that we had weathered not only a breakup but also a romantic lapse since—only made us that much more inseparable.

  Wendy was always telling me that I should be more cautious; if Fleishman considered me his scold, Wendy was mine. Typically, she would wait until Fleishman and I had one of our periodic dust-ups to swoop down on me with advice.

  “Someday you might want to put a little distance between yourself and the boy wonder,” she would warn. “I like him, too, but I’ve never been in love with him.”

  “I’m not in love with him! We’re friends.”

  That was her cue for the piercing stare. “Works out great, too. You get a Svengali, and he gets an entourage.”

  I think the old college ties were beginning to grow frayed for Wendy. Luckily, she was in the middle of graduate school now and didn’t have a lot of time for conversations like these anymore. She was too busy working on lighting designs for Waiting for Godot. She was up to her armpits in lighting gels and asbestos cables and didn’t have as much time to devote to our ongoing domestic drama.

  It was a beautiful winter day and Fleishman and I larked off into the city like two teenagers playing hooky. First we headed to Soho, where we were coiffed, and then we flitted down busy streets, in and out of stores, buying shoes and little trinkets and basically depleting the Fleishman fund to its previous shaky state. I charged a few things I shouldn’t have, and accepted a few freebies from Fleishman, including the haircut, without much protest. After all, I was usually the big breadwinner.

  When we had worked our way all the way up to Union Square, Fleishman sighed contentedly. I’ll say this for him—you’ll never meet a man happier to be down to his last dime. Maybe that was because he was always assured that it never really was his last dime. Another dime was always around the corner. Poverty was just a temporary mix-up to him. “I have just enough for dinner and train fare back to Brooklyn.”

  “I thought we weren’t eating until Monday,” I reminded him.

  “But all this shopping—I’m starved!” he whined.

  Fleishman was never big on deprivation.

  “Okay,” I said, “but after this…”

  Let’s face it. I wasn’t big on deprivation, either.

  We ambled over to an Indian place we liked.

  Once he and I were settled in our booth soaking in the comforting scent of curry, with our respective beverages of wine and tea, we both took what seemed like our first deep breaths since we had started our retail debauch.

  Fleishman slipped down in the booth until his torso formed a leisurely C. He sipp
ed his wine. “You know what? Your big success at finding work has given me a shot of ambition myself.”

  I tilted my head. “You mean you’re going to look for a job?”

  His eyes widened in alarm. “What? Why would I do that? I have a job.”

  “A permanent job, I mean.” One that you actually go to.

  He shuddered. “I still feel that I’ll make my mark in the world through writing. I haven’t given up on Yule Be Sorry.”

  I groaned. “I wish you would.”

  We had been over this before, gingerly. “It isn’t about you and me,” he assured me for the hundredth time.

  “No, it’s about an idealized you and a caricature of me.”

  “Not at all. You make Ramona sound like a cartoon. She just has a few traits you share. I’m culling from all over, though. She’s a composite.”

  Don’t be fooled; the woman was me.

  And really, I had to wonder. Because the woman was doggedly conventional and a bit of a killjoy. One of those tiring people who believed every argument had a flipside—who would come out with expressions like “different strokes for different folks” as if she were delivering original kernels of wisdom. (I never said things like that!) The boyfriend, an artistic free spirit, comes to realize that what is holding him back is this girlfriend he’s attached to who doesn’t believe in him and reins in his phenomenal creativity out of subconscious jealousy.

  That’s just what I gleaned from the first act.

  I didn’t want to be unreasonable. I knew that writers had to cull a little of their work from real life. This one just seemed a little too culled. But what was I going to do, take his computer away from him? I suppose I could have put my foot down, but the hold-it-right-there-buster impulse was never strong in me. And as much as I hate to admit it, I was scared. I liked having Fleishman for a friend, if nothing more; I didn’t want to alienate him.

  I consoled myself with the knowledge that it would probably never be finished, or if it were, that it would never see the light of day. The theater world was a lot tougher to crack than we had assumed back in our little college in Ohio. Wendy was going the academic route and following her dreams that way, but Fleishman professed to be burned out on school.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling inspired,” I said. Supportively.

  Maybe he would feel inspired to write something else.

  He raised his glass of cheap house wine. “To new beginnings,” he said.

  I clinked my chai tea against his glass. “Here, here.”

  He leaned back and sighed dreamily, pinning me with that gaze of his. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  I chuckled uncomfortably. “You make it sound as if you’re either about to accept an Oscar or to ship out overseas.”

  “It just seems amazing to me sometimes. We’ve been friends for so long.”

  “Six whole years,” I said.

  “Isn’t that a long time?” he asked.

  “An entire lifetime…if we were six.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it’s longer than most friendships I’ve had, and the amazing thing is what we’ve weathered. How many ex-boyfriends have you stayed friends with?”

  I had to admit that he was it.

  “And you’re the only ex-girlfriend I’ve ever been able to be around, too. Most of the time I duck down store aisles and sidestreets to avoid them.”

  “I feel honored.”

  “I guess the difference is we always knew getting together was a mistake,” he said.

  I swallowed. We did?

  He explained, “It would be like the old Dick Van Dyke Show, if Rob had run off with Sally.”

  I laughed, then stopped abruptly. Being compared with Rose Marie wasn’t exactly my dream.

  Besides, what if Rob had run off with Sally? Would that have been so awful? Sure, she wasn’t Mary Tyler Moore, but she could make up jokes, and she could sing. Think of how much fun Rob had at the office. At the Alan Brady Show they were always laughing, but at home, it was just mixups and headaches, the Helpers and Little Richie. (Sally would never have saddled him with Little Richie.)

  Fleishman snapped his fingers. “Rebecca!”

  I jerked back to attention. “Huh?”

  “You were about to start defending Sally, weren’t you?”

  I choked on my tea. “Okay, I get your drift. We weren’t meant to be.”

  “Right. Most people aren’t meant to be. The miracle is that we realized it was all a big mistake before our feelings got hurt.”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  At the end of the meal he looked at his watch and nearly knocked over his water glass in his hurry to wave down the waiter for the check.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I gotta get back,” he said.

  I frowned. “Back where?”

  “To the apartment. I have a date.”

  So much for companionability. I gritted my teeth. “Really? Who?”

  “This woman from the telemarketing job. Dorie. She’s got a painting at some gallery, but I think the gallery’s more like a coffee shop. It’s probably going to be really lame, but I promised to go.” He shrugged. “Dorie’s not really my type. She’s mousy and insecure, but for some reason she’s latched onto me a little.”

  I bolted the rest of my tea, cold by now. Fleishman generally went out a lot on weekends. I went out too, if less frequently. (Confession: A lot less frequently.) Still, every time I heard him say he was going out with someone, I could feel a little knife twisting in me.

  I could also hear Wendy’s warning voice.

  But I ignored it. Like Fleishman said, he and I were lucky that we had realized our mistake before any feelings got hurt.

  My first day of work, and wouldn’t you know it, it was pouring rain. The cats and dogs kind of rain where there’s no way to avoid getting soaked. I had a dorky all-weather coat that I threw over one of Natasha Fleishman’s suits. It was Chanel, and pretty snazzy, if I did say so myself. Then I grabbed the biggest umbrella I could find and shivered and sloshed my way into Manhattan. When it rains the subway can be so gross. Even when it’s not hot, there’s something about so many wet bodies crowded into a confined space that starts making everyone look limp and slightly mildewed. Glancing around my crowded car, the moment did not seem to auger great things for the new beginning that Fleishman had been toasting a few days earlier.

  As I was scurrying toward the building, I walked through a cloud of smoke and heard someone call my name. I turned. Rita, AKA my new boss, was huddled under a plaid umbrella, puffing away.

  She had to speak loudly over the sound of the rain beating down. “Aren’t you early?”

  “First day,” I confessed, though I had never had a boss complain about someone being on time. “I wanted to make a good impression.”

  She lit another Benson and Hedges. She looked anxious. “I should show you around…”

  “I can find my office,” I assured her, even though I was a little doubtful about whether I actually could. My memory of that place was that it was a confusing maze of hallways.

  She flagged down a passerby. “Andrea!” Another figure under an umbrella stopped in mid-scuttle toward the doors. “This is Rebecca Abbot. She’s starting today. Think you could give her the tour?”

  Andrea and I gave each other once-overs. She had dark curly hair, a Roman nose, and a mouth that turned down at the corners. She was tall and, I have to say, slightly intimidating. “So you’re the latest victim.” Her voice was loud, with a little bit of a scratch in it. “Okay, let’s go in before you float back to wherever you came from.”

  “I’m right behind you!” Rita called after us.

  We shook ourselves out like rain-drenched dogs in the lobby, causing the marble floor to get that much more slippery. In the elevator, Andrea turned to me. “So where else did you interview? Did you get in over at Avon?”

  “No…”

  She looked surprised. “They were looking
for someone. But they didn’t call me back, either.”

  “You applied there?”

  She laughed as though I had delivered a zinger. “My resume has been to every company in this whole damn town. I’m not going to get myself out of this place depending on telepathy, you know. Did you interview at Warner?”

  “Uh, no…I did interview at a trade publication. I think it was legal books…”

  Andrea shook her head disdainfully. “Oh God! You’re better off here.”

  An uneasy feeling nibbled at me. Could it be a good sign when the first coworker I met was scrambling to find a job elsewhere?

  “I noticed Random House was looking for a full editor,” she said. “You didn’t apply there, did you?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “Probably best not to waste your time. I interviewed with them before I came here.”

  “What happened?”

  “They hired someone else. Jackasses!”

  We faced forward for a moment.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Four years.” Before I could register whether I thought this was a long time or not, she answered the question for me. “I know, I know. I gotta get out—but the market is so tight right now.” She sighed. “My luck, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in an efficiency in Queens.”

  The doors opened, and Andrea waved me out with a sarcastic flourish. “Welcome to Alcatraz.”

  First stop on the tour was the receptionist desk, where the woman with the Peter Pan collar still sat at attention with her headset, looking like the proverbial operator standing by in those TV commercials of old. And was that actually a cameo she was wearing today?

  “Muriel, this is…um…” Andrea darted an uncomfortable glance at me.

  “Rebecca,” I said.

  “Yes, Rebecca, I remember you,” Muriel said. “Kathy Leo alerted me to your arrival this morning, so I have already put you into our message center.” She whirled a little plastic caddy around to the point where my name in a red colored tab was prominently displayed. “This is where you may retrieve messages left in person, or urgent messages that callers do not wish to leave on your answering service. But please keep in mind that the answering service is the most efficient way of retrieving your messages. I do my best to relay communications efficiently, but the human factor is always fallible, and I have noticed that some people forget to check for their message slips. So do set up your answering service at your earliest possible convenience. Your extension is fifty-six, which is written on the phone in your office, along with detailed instructions about setting up your personal recorded message. Of course if you have any questions, I will be more than happy to help. Welcome aboard!”