"I'm fine. Everything's okay. I'm just . . . I'm sorry we got in the fight."
"Oh god. Me too. It's been so awful here without you and knowing that you're mad at me. I'm sorry about everything."
"Me too. It really got way out of hand."
"I love you, Ana. You know that, right?" A sizzle in the line.
"Of course. I love you too."
Ana wiped her eyes with the now-damp, black-streaked wad of tissues from Adrienne. There was a long pause, which felt like a kind of relief, but then it was as if they had nothing else to say to each other.
"How is it there?" said Joe, finally.
"It's okay. The weather's nice. It's sunny, of course. I'm standing outside right now next to someone's massive Beemer."
"Isn't it impossible to not stand next to one out there? It's snowing here. Goddamn, is it snowing."
"We just had some breakfast before we head over to the production company."
"That's good. You guys do anything when you got in?"
"We had drinks at the hotel bar. The place is so cool it's almost unbearable. I felt like my head was going to explode from the coolness."
"Well, don't hook up with any actor-slash-waiters."
"Yeah, right. Those guys look at me as if I'm not quite as good-looking as their grandmother." Joe laughed and she remembered how much she enjoyed making him laugh. "They do have GILFs here, you know. I've been doing research."
"Great," said Joe, chuckling. "Good to know."
It was so strange: how could being out of town for less than forty-eight hours give her an acute appreciation of this person she'd been with for so long? Sometimes after being away for a few days she'd miss Joe so much it felt like a physical longing.
"I'm glad you called," he said.
"Me too. Why don't I give you a call tonight? You going to be home?"
"Yeah, should be."
"Okay, I'll talk to you then."
Ana hung up and stood there for a moment until she noticed a man with long blond dreads wearing an ill-fitting sport coat and creased jeans glaring at her. "What?" she said, not sure what was going on.
"Please get away from my car."
"What? Huh?"
He kneeled and examined the paint on the door right near Ana's butt. "Were you leaning on it?"
Ana wanted to speak, but was too flummoxed by the proximity of his head to her ass. That was when Adrienne walked up.
"What's up?" she said.
"I think she was leaning on my 750i." He exhaled on the black lacquer and wiped it with the sleeve of his sport coat.
Ana, still a little spooked, just shrugged at Adrienne.
"Not you. Her," said Adrienne, grabbing Ana's arm and pulling her over, all the while staring stonily at the man, who was still crouched down next to his car. "Oooooh. You gonna call the Surface-Scratch Division of the LAPD?"
The guy looked up from the glistening metal and frowned at her as if he had just then realized, This amazon is not at all sympathetic to my plight.
Adrienne started to lead Ana toward their car. "Blow me, Bob Marley," she yelled over her shoulder.
Ana said nothing as she settled into their white Malibu rental for the drive to Santa Monica. Adrienne was driving, like she always did.
"You okay?"
Ana nodded. "I'm fine. He just kind of freaked me out."
"What a tool. Dreads. So hilarious on a white dude. Fucking trustafarian twat." She paused and her voice relaxed. "Everything cool with Joseph?"
"Yeah." Ana admired Adrienne's ability to transition so quickly from scorn to concern. "Everything's fine. I'm glad I called. Thanks."
"Knew you'd feel better." Adrienne steered the car onto Santa Monica Boulevard. "I checked my messages while you were outside. Looks like we're going to have a little visitor while we're here."
Ana looked over at her. "Uh-oh. Our periods?"
"No, Bruce Kellner."
"Bruce is coming to our shoot? What for?"
Adrienne's fingers flared from the steering wheel for a moment. "I have no idea why. But I don't have a problem with it."
Ana shot her a sidelong glance. "Really. Hmm . . . Well, I know why you don't have a problem with it."
"What are you saying, Ana?" said Adrienne, her voice steeled with false indignation. "Is it because he's so good-looking, is that what you're saying?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
There was a faint smile on Adrienne's face as she watched the road ahead. "Okay, you'd be right. I've totally got a boner for him."
"I would not mess with that, Ade."
"Oh, like you wouldn't if you weren't in a committed relationship," she said, dragging out the last part to make it sound disgustingly respectable. "Come on, you know he's totally doable. It doesn't hurt that he's also in charge of the creative department."
A light-blue Maybach suddenly cut in front of them. Adrienne hit the brakes. "Fucking douchebag!" she yelled, displaying her middle finger against the windshield. A window powered down in the rear of the Maybach and a well-manicured, tastefully bejeweled black hand emerged, returning the finger.
Ana loved Adrienne, but she did sometimes grow tired of the confrontations, the swearing, the bluster that came with spending time with her. But the scene in the parking lot with Adrienne rescuing dumbstruck Ana—that was the other side of it. Despite the drama, she always knew Adrienne had her back.
"Bruce is our boss," said Ana. "And isn't he married?"
"I think he's recently divorced. I'm not sure though."
"Yeah, I bet he likes to keep it that way. Vaguely unattached."
Adrienne pushed the button to open one of the rear windows. A cool rush of air entered the car and riffled a few loose strands of hair behind Ana's ear. She smoothed them back with the tips of her fingers.
"Eh, I don't know," Ana continued. "I just don't get why everyone goes so crazy over him. I mean, he's nice-looking and everything, I guess. There's just something about him, I don't know. It's like when he enters the room, he walks in crotch first."
Adrienne laughed. "That's it exactly. That's what I like. But he doesn't wear it out there in a sleazy way. It's like he just can't help it. Plus, he's got the power thing. He's one of those guys that just seems totally comfortable running everything."
"You have thought about this way too much."
"I'm just agreeing with you," Adrienne said, both innocent and insincere at the same time.
After the conversation with Joe, it felt good to talk about work, about something not very important. "Come on, Ade, you've heard the same stuff as me. It always seems to involve some hot young art director."
"Maybe that's because he actually does work now and then, unlike most creative directors. Maybe he's just working with—"
"The hot young art director?"
"You know. Benefit of his experience. He is very accessible. Not one of those CDs that you can't even get in to see."
Ana glanced over at the Troubadour as they passed. "Hmm, maybe too accessible. Remember Leiah? How she suddenly and mysteriously soared up through the ranks?"
Adrienne considered this. "I did hear a few rumblings about a thing."
"That said, Leiah is a great designer. God forbid anyone should think that's why she's successful."
Adrienne nodded absently. "True."
They were both silent for a moment. The more Ana thought about it all, the less she liked the situation. "Why the fuck do they suddenly think we need to be supervised? Because we're both women?"
"Take it easy, Steinem."
"Seriously, I'm insulted."
"It could be perfectly innocent," said Adrienne.
"You think?"
"Sure. He's probably thinking that since we are a two-woman creative team, his chances of having sex are doubled."
"You asshole," said Ana, laughing.
"It's win-win, as we say in FranklinCovey training."
Years back, the agency had forced everyone to participate in a 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People program. Everyone except the most brainwashed AEs thought it was total bullshit. She and Adrienne took every opportunity to deride the program, making all that business dogma sound as dirty as possible.
"You're right," said Ana, giving in. "He's Beginning with Your End in Mind."
"So you're saying you want him to Make a Deposit in Your Emotional Bank Account?"
"Unless it ends up somewhere else."
The two of them couldn't stop tittering after that.
Adrienne reached over and petted Ana's shoulder. "You see? You are fun. I love it when you're filthy."
Ana held up her right hand with the thumb folded over her palm. "I will try to be more filthy more often."
"I wish you would. Anyway, you know he's gorgeous."
Ana sighed. "I know. I just think he knows it too. And I guess I think men who aren't quite so sure of themselves are nicer to be around."
They stopped at a light. Adrienne looked over at her, completely bewildered. "Good lord, woman. Why would you ever think such a thing?"
"I don't know, I just do. He's too used to all the women adoring him."
There was something inexplicably appealing about Bruce Kellner. Ana would hear women in the office (even the pregnant ones) say things like, "I get to present ideas to Bruce today!" then sigh like schoolgirls. She had heard that whenever Bruce would go to pitch new business, the admins would be swooning after he left the building. But it wasn't just women, men liked him too. All the male creatives raved about what a good guy he was. Ana had once seen him charm a roomful of auto-part store owners who she thought were complete louts. (Maybe that was because they had pretty much ignored her and Adrienne.) Those gearheads walked out of the conference room loving a pretty wacky TV campaign that no one thought could be sold.
Lately, it seemed as though Bruce had been paying extra attention to her and Adrienne. She had noticed that whenever she was in a meeting with him, he seemed to funnel a lot of comments directly to her, as if to let her know that she was an important part of the group. The first time it happened, she had been thrilled. Then, later, it bothered her that she had been thrilled.
She fancied herself as having better taste in men than someone like Bruce Kellner, some $200-haircut, designer-suit-with-no-tie-wearing, smooth-talking creative-director type. Ana's tastes ran more toward men who were considered "interesting looking" by most women. Like Joe, who was definitely rocking the arty nerd look. True, these days it was a slightly balding, horn-rimmed, middle-aged arty nerd, but she still found it appealing (along with other women she knew). He was also interested in things other than advertising, thank god. Someone like Bruce made her appreciate what she loved about Joe. That he was funny and kind and smart. How he wasn't afraid to be vulnerable around people, especially men. (She had witnessed a fair number of times when some seemingly macho frat-boy type would suddenly start talking to Joe about John Cheever's stories or Gil Scott-Heron or the French new wave, as if he was so relieved to reveal this side of himself that he didn't have to be a guy-guy for once.) Yet Ana was concerned that in the past few years, Joe seemed like he had lost some of his confidence. He used to be a bit cocky, especially when it came to his writing. He had opinions and wasn't afraid to express them, damn the consequences. Now it seemed like what he did was practically the equivalent of copywriting. He summarized things, wrote bullet points, recommended products. Sure, those products were great music and books and movies and whatever, but still. It was like he had lost something—his passion, the need to care.
It was quiet in the car.
"So when's Bruce coming in?" asked Ana, just to say something.
"Oh, he's in."
"He is? Already?"
"Yeah, he's waiting for us over at the production company."
"Hm."
9
Gentlemen
It had been sitting there on his desk at home all day Tuesday: a giant pile of CDs, books, and DVDs, as well as all the accompanying promotional materials (often more important to Joe's work than the actual music, books, and films) that he needed to sift through to write capsule reviews. "Short-Attention-Span Review" was for a different publication, Rent, a culture magazine that reportedly was on the verge of killing off the print edition in favor of going completely online. (Joe knew that this meant anything was possible, including an e-mail that informed freelancers that in the future, the magazine would no longer be able to compensate them. But we'd still love to have you write for us.) When he told someone that he wrote reviews for the magazine, he tried not to put little air quotes around the word reviews, but it was still hard not to do it in his head, for what he wrote were not so much reviews, but précis. Thumbnails. Synopses. Scut work. The bummer of it was that he spent so much time trying to make money by writing about what other people created that the idea of creating something of his own was fast becoming strangely insurmountable.
As for this day, he still hadn't gotten around to doing any of that scut work. Instead, he had spent it eating cereal and watching a film noir box set that he had reviewed weeks back. Just after he finished watching Gun Crazy ("Two people dead, just so we can live without working!"), Joe turned off the TV and started the long trudge upstairs to the study. He just hadn't been in the mood for it. The irony of the name of his column was not lost on him today.
At about six p.m., when Malcolm texted him to see if he felt like going out for a drink, it felt like the governor had granted him a stay of execution. Joe was all too happy to text back yes immediately. He told himself that he needed a break even though he had hardly gotten anything done. Malcolm worked with Ana, but he was more Joe's friend than hers. He was an art director at the same agency she'd worked at ten years ago and wound up moving to her current agency two years after she hired on. When Joe first met Malcolm, it took him awhile to get used to his dandyish manner: the tousled hair and the stylish, flashy clothing (part couture, part vintage) that made him look like the lead singer of a twee band.
Yet once Joe got to know him, the two of them had become great friends. Joe had found that it wasn't always easy to develop close friendships with ad people. When a group of them gathered (he had been witness to many such evenings out, mostly agency going-away parties at bars, when Ana or Malcolm toted him along), their conversations were often sharp and funny, well peppered with references to obscure music or cult films or brilliant but unappreciated television shows. They raved about certain graphic designers and artists as if they were gods. In their offices, they fetishistically passed around glossy Taschen books devoted to arcane ephemera like nineteenth-century circus posters, fifties men's magazines, or seventies steak houses as if they were samizdat. In many ways, they were his kind of people. Yet there was something else he saw in them, something unsettling, a soiled shared knowledge, a rarefied attitude with its own argot of condescension that he suspected was often found in people who made their living manipulating the masses.
It was as if they were saying, We are not like the people to whom we sell things. Often they didn't seem anywhere near as evolved as they fancied themselves. Sometimes they were just people with bigger paychecks, bigger egos, better clothes, and too much cynicism for their own good. Of course, Ana wasn't that way. Mostly. And who the hell was he to talk? When it came to his opinion of humanity in general, he was no Johnny Sunshine, that was for sure. Malcolm though. Malcolm seemed to understand people on a different level, perhaps a bit more than he cared to at times. Joe had never felt condescension from him about anybody. In fact, whenever Joe couldn't quite get a handle on someone, he would ask Malcolm, who viewed everyone in a filterless way, seeing things that might be thought of as faults as simply fascinating traits. It was detachment in a way, but mostly a positive one. Malcolm simply believed that it was easier to like someone than to dislike them. Yet Joe also remembered one of the first real conversations that he had with him (after a few beers, of course), when Malcolm had revealed that he had a strange talent. He said that after getting to know some
one he could tell the truth about them.
Joe was fascinated by the idea of this. "What do you mean, the truth?"
"Oh, stuff they might not realize about themselves. What they might not want to know or have never wanted to admit to themselves."
"Wow. That's like psychological kryptonite," Joe said.
Malcolm nodded solemnly, as if it were a curse that he was doomed to carry with him forever, like some character from Greek mythology.
"Do you ever use it on people?" Joe asked eagerly.
He nodded again. "I've used it eleven times."
Hearing that had both enthralled and unnerved Joe. "I find it alarming that you know the exact number of times you've used your deadly power on people."
Malcolm said nothing to this.
Joe did not feel as though he were lying. "So what's it like?"
Malcolm's eyes tightened. "It's kind of horrible, actually."
"Really? Well, I'm envious," said Joe. "There are some people I'd like to use that on."
Malcolm shook his head. "No, you wouldn't. Once you say something like that to someone, you can see in their face how deeply you've hurt them. It's a bad feeling. It really is."
Since then, he had never seen Malcolm use his power on anyone, but for whatever reason, Joe had never once doubted that he could do it. Afterward, he kept wanting to ask Malcolm about his own secret truth, but always chickened out, afraid of what he would hear.
Tonight at the bar, Malcolm was already waiting at a table, along with Chick and Todd, Malcolm's cousin, who was friends with all of them. Todd was the only one who actually lived in Detroit, in the Woodbridge district, one of the areas that was currently becoming a kind of artist enclave. Todd was very committed to living in the city. He helped build a community garden hut with an edible roof and did free music workshops with the kids in his neighborhood. He was also an engineer for a local sound studio, wrote soundtrack and commercial music for a production house, and was a player in various bands that had formed around some of the crazy ethnic mash-ups that were not uncommon in Detroit. If anyone needed an oud, koto, bouzouki, duduk, or shamisen virtuoso for their Albanian/Japanese/Armenian avant-folktronica band, Todd was their man. Joe admired Todd's commitment and musicianship, but also felt like a no-account suburbanite around him, since he and Ana had once lived in the same neighborhood in Detroit right after they started living together. They gave up and ran off to the burbs after their apartment was broken into for the second time. Joe was also amazed that Todd had figured out how to practice his art, support himself, and be a decent human being all at the same time. Joe had tried so hard to hate him initially because that would have made everything so much easier, but damned if he could.
The Narcissism of Small Differences Page 6