The Narcissism of Small Differences

by Michael Zadoorian

  "Yeah, right," said Ana dryly. "We have that snobbish Detroit attitude. We're just like New York agencies, only worse."

  He lifted a hand off the steering wheel and ran it through his hair. "Or sometimes people are just in a shitty mood, who knows?"

  "Well, I'm sorry that she would feel the need to do that. I guess I always hope that women in business want to be supportive of each other."

  Bruce tipped his head back and had a nice long laugh. "Ah, yes. Sisters sticking together, doing it for themselves. You go, girl," he said in a stiltedly sassy voice.

  Ana felt embarrassed by his condescending tone, along with everything else she was feeling. "Yeah, kinda. Is that so bad?"

  He smiled wistfully as he watched the road. "No, there's nothing at all wrong with that. But it's not really that way, is it?"

  Ana hated to admit what she was about to say. "No, hardly ever. Most of the time it's like a big competition. Way more women in the business world treat me like shit than men. More backbiting, more bad behavior. It totally sucks."

  "It's just something I've noticed in meetings and with the office politics. I mean, men do it too, but it's more—I don't know—more overt, more loud, more aggressive."

  Ana shot him a glance over her glasses. "Yeah, I know what it looks like. I've been to the zoo."

  "Touché," said Bruce, as he shifted his gaze from the road to smile at her.

  Ana quickly looked down at the screen of her computer.

  21

  Out Come the Freaks

  Joe opened the front door of their town house and threw his keys and cell phone in the bowl on the prong-legged fifties table they had placed near the doorway. He had survived another soul-smothering day at the Dollar Daily. That afternoon, Terrance had him cold-calling area businesses to see if he could drum up ads for the newspaper. It had come to this; he was turning into a telemarketing Willy Loman.

  Joe was hardly even writing for them anymore. Terrance just wouldn't relinquish any territory or let Joe do any of the things for which he had been hired. At first Joe thought that Terrance was one of those sadistic people who loved squelching others' talent because it made them feel better about their own lack of it. Yet he soon realized that the man wasn't evil, he was simply scared. Joe now believed that Terrance had sincerely planned to change the paper (it was how he could so convincingly sell the job to Joe), but the reality was that he was too afraid to do anything that might offend his precious "core audience," thus lowering profits. Which left Joe as the staff effigy, Terrance's walking compromise, his way to feel secure in the knowledge that something could happen should he desire to make it so. But it was never going to happen, Joe now knew that.

  Of course, he still had "Rap Sheet," though Terrance had given him a talking-to for making it too funny.

  "This is serious stuff, Joe. People turn here to find out what crimes are happening in their neighborhood. The Detroit Free Press tells you when someone's been murdered, but they won't publish a story about a break-in two blocks from your house. That's what we're here for."

  Yes, spreading the news about someone's embarrassing DUI is a real public service, thought Joe. At that moment, he almost told Terrance to take "Rap Sheet" and shove it up his sanctimonious ass. Instead, Joe just nodded like the corporate toady he was. Except the truth was, he wasn't even a corporate toady. He should be so lucky. A corporate toady would probably make a lot more money. That was something that hadn't taken long for him to realize. Though his salary had sounded like a lot of money when he first took the job, it really wasn't. Especially compared to the money that Ana brought home as an SVP. He decided that she was just so elated that he would be contributing financially to the household that she'd neglected to tell him that he actually wasn't really making all that much. Isn't that sweet? He's so proud of his little pauper's wage. I won't burst his bubble. Joe felt embarrassed to think that, but it was probably true. Ana hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings.

  Why had he chosen to do this? There were so many interesting things going on in the city right now and he was stuck writing about the vanilla suburbs. Still, who was he kidding? He was not one of the newly arrived swarms of twentysomething optimists and idealists, artists and upstart entrepreneurs (most of them recent émigrés from the suburbia to which their parents had fearfully fled in the seventies and eighties), riding their thrift-store bicycles on the deserted, litter-blown streets of the Cass Corridor, past once-grand Victorian mansions with trees growing through the moss-covered roofs, past stunned SRO residents, milling prostitutes, and the muttering homeless. Those kids were all looking to forge some new beginning, creating urban farms, quirky co-ops, quixotic start-ups and nonprofits, and hopelessly hopeful art projects. He had to admire their gumption.

  Yet all of that sounded like a lot of work for a forty-year-old guy who had just gotten his first real job. But then, at least he wasn't like a lot of people his age who had fled the city long ago, holed out there in the massive, jiggling belly of exurbia among the homogeneous big-box stores and franchise restaurants, in a towering beige McMansion with matching patio furniture, waiting with trepidation for either the next promotion or the layoff that would make it all go away. He wasn't that either. What the fuck was he?

  Joe lay on the couch, closed his eyes. He felt too exhausted even to get up for a beer.

  When Ana came in through the door almost two hours later, Joe opened his eyes, feeling disoriented and logy. Apparently he had been sleeping. Ugh. He hated the heaviness of mind and body that he experienced after an involuntary nap. (For this reason, he did not like naps of any kind, whereas Ana could and would nap anywhere, anytime, especially if she was depressed.) He felt even worse when he remembered what he had been dreaming about.

  Joe had been dreaming about being rich. Had he ever dreamed of money before? It felt perverse to him, like a wet dream that reveals the bizarre fetish of the dreamer. Yet, was it that surprising? He'd been thinking about money a lot lately. Fifteen years ago, all he thought about was writing and reading and music and art. Now all he thought about was making money. And in the dream, he had it. He was driving around in a massive chrome chariot, a gold 1971 Cadillac Eldorado, a real superfly pimp wagon straight out of a blaxploitation film, with the Continental kit on the back and the phrase Sex Is My Hobby hand-painted on the trunk. It was the kind of car that Joe had always coveted in a silly white boy way. In the dream, he was dressed in present-day clothes but he was loaded, a giant Detroit roll in his pocket, C-notes on the outside. He was copping a lean, one hand draped over the steering wheel, stopped at the light beneath the 8 Mile Road overpass where it was always dim and vaguely menacing. He remembered pulling out the wad of bills and handing money to some guy begging there. He was wearing dirty jeans and a torn T-shirt with a picture of Redd Foxx on it, emblazoned with the phrase, You Big Dummy. He peeled off some bills for the guy and said, "Here you go, broke-ass fool."

  That disturbed him too. Joe would never, ever say something like that to anyone. He was too polite and way too afraid of getting beaten up. Nor would he ever use the term "broke-ass fool." (Maybe Brendan could pull it off, but not him.) Now the rest of the dream came to him: The Fred Sanford guy pulled out a gun and shot him three times right in the chest. After which, he was yanked out of the Caddy and left there under the bridge, in the middle of 8 Mile. In the dream, he even remembered staring up at the grime-caked girders of the overpass. Then came the truly bizarre part—suddenly he was driving the car again! Right out from under the overpass. He couldn't remember the face of the guy who had shot him, but there he was, Joe, driving the car right past the skeezy 8 Wood Motel, where there were always Good Humor ice cream trucks curiously parked in the lot. Had he carjacked himself? Was he the broke-ass fool in the Fred Sanford T-shirt?

  Joe hated dreams. He hated trying to figure out what they meant. Most of the time, he thought dreams didn't mean anything. They were just a collection of stupid incidents and things that felt like symbols but were really just a few
random details he had seen in a movie or television show or read in a novel.

  There was noise coming from the kitchen: a drawer opening and closing, the thunt of a wine bottle being opened. Joe peered up at the ball clock. It was ten past seven. He had been sleeping for quite a while. Even so, it was pretty early for Ana to be coming home.

  "Ana," he called out. "Where are you? In the kitchen?"

  Nothing.

  Joe raised his voice, in case she was down in the basement. "Ana? You want to grab some dinner somewhere?"

  Nothing for a moment, but he heard sniffling.

  "Ana? Are you okay?" He sat up, still groggy and weary of dreams.

  "Yeah," she said, her voice breaking. "I'm in the kitchen."

  More sniffling. Joe got up from the couch. He found Ana sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of wine untouched before her. Her eyes were closed, arms wrapped around herself, slowly rocking. Joe walked over to her. "What's wrong, sweetie? Are you okay?"

  Ana's eyes were red and swollen. She looked at him as if he could read her mind.

  He kneeled next to her, laid his arm over her shoulders, trying to comfort her. "What's going on? Is it work?"

  She shook her head, then turned away from him. "I don't know."

  "Ana, I'm worried about you. You never used to come home so upset. Poor baby." Joe wrapped his arms around her from the side, inhaling her smell, a lemony sweetness that he never grew tired of. He didn't even know if it was something she put on, or just the smell of her skin. He kissed the hair above her ear, and then smoothed it out. "I'm so sorry you had such a bad day," he said.

  Ana turned, put her arms around him, and squeezed hard. She started kissing his neck, kissing his mouth, her tongue darting across the edges of his lips, then diving inward. She then completely took him by surprise by sliding her hand down the front of his pants.

  "Hey," he whispered into her ear, "not that I'm complaining, but I thought you were upset."

  Ana took a deep breath. "Joe," she said, "let's go to bed."

  * * *

  It was the best sex the two of them had had in a long time. It was like it was when they were first together, before they moved into the same house. Joe wasn't exactly sure how it differed from their early-living-together sex, to the almost nonsex that they had been having lately, but this time he somehow recognized that newness, that eagerness, that fuck-each-other's-brains-out feeling again. It was like finding something that you hadn't realized you'd lost. It was the kind of sexual energy between two people that just naturally fades after a certain level of familiarity is achieved. Unavoidable, when you thought about it, and in many ways, just fine. That particular energy was supplanted by other things—less anxiety, laughter, the harmoniousness that came with a greater understanding of the other's pleasure—all of which made sex with that person an authentic act of intimacy, a joining of minds as well as bodies.

  But this sex, this lovemaking, this fucking, had all of those feelings, it seemed to Joe. The newness and the closeness and the harmony, all at once.

  "Was it just me," he said to Ana, lying there afterward, his side of the sheet rumpled near his feet as he tried to cool his body, still damp from exertion, his face and neck flushed pink, "or was that amazing?"

  Ana lay still, her body covered with her half of the sheet, up to her neck, her arms under it as well, despite the temperate warmth of early spring. "Yeah," she said, leaning over to kiss him lightly on the mouth. "That was pretty wonderful."

  Joe widened his eyes and gave a little shiver. "After-work sex. Unheard of in these parts." Ana curled into the space between his chin and shoulder. It wasn't helping him cool down, but was nice nonetheless. "What's gotten into you? We have to send you off to Grand Rapids more often. Is it all those Dutch Reformed conservatives? Is there some sort of funky atmosphere of repressed sexuality in the air?"

  Ana moved closer to him. "I don't want to talk about Grand Rapids."

  "Ana?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You okay?"

  "Yeah, fine . . . sure. Just a little dazed."

  "Yeah, me too."

  She kissed him again.

  "Ana, are we self-involved?"

  She pulled her head away from where it was resting on his shoulder and peered at him. "This is odd postcoital chitchat. I don't know. Probably."

  "That's what my mother says, that we need to be less self-involved. That we're selfish because we don't have kids."

  Ana rolled her eyes. "Mine says the same thing. I always tell her, And making a tiny version of yourself isn't selfish?"

  "I don't get it. Are we really that bad, just because we don't want kids?"

  "I don't know. If you stopped someone on the street and asked them, they might not call us evil, but they would probably say that we should have kids."

  "Really?"

  "You haven't figured this out yet? Wait, what are you trying to tell me? Oh god. Do you have baby fever?"

  "Of course not, Ana. Which reminds me: I need to pick up some condoms. It's been so long since we used them, I forgot there was only one left in the box."

  Ana fanned out the sheet and smoothed it around her. "Anyway, I know what you mean. I get this weird feeling from these women at work. There's like three of them that all got pregnant at around the same time. As if their bodies all got the idea simultaneously, like synchronized menstrual periods. They basically act like I'm a freak."

  "I think maybe we are freaks," Joe said, readjusting himself under Ana's torso. His shoulder was falling asleep.

  "They just have this smugness to them. They look at each other and it's like they're saying, Isn't it so sad that she'll never know the joy of motherhood?"

  "Well, they do have a point. We never will know the joys of parenthood."

  "True. And I'm sure there are many. But there are other joys to know."

  Joe stretched his neck to the side. "Not to them. If they've got kids, they think you've got to have 'em too. They're like Jehovah's Witnesses or Deadheads. They're not happy until they've turned everyone on to Jesus or Jerry."

  "Why? What do they care?"

  "Having kids is just what you do. That's what everyone always says." He pushed back a dot of sweat on his temple with his finger.

  "Is that why I sometimes feel like people are mad at us for not procreating?"

  "I don't know, I feel that too. I think we all spend about 85 percent of our time talking ourselves into the decisions we've already made. I did the right thing, didn't I? Of course I did. Then when someone comes around who hasn't made the same decision, we look at them and say, What's wrong with doing what I did? Not good enough for you? Everyone wants people on their team. It's just natural. We do the same thing. Look how many friends we have who don't have kids."

  After a short silence, Ana spoke up: "So, you ever think about what it would be like to have a kid?"

  "Sure, how could I not? I've thought about it. I sometimes wonder what our lives would be like if we had kids. I know they would be a lot different than they are now. But not necessarily better or worse. Just different."

  Ana took his arm and wrapped it around her, then covered the both of them with the sheet. "So I guess we're horrible people, huh?"

  Joe squinted like a tough guy. "We're bad, baby," he growled. "So bad."

  "Yeah," Ana said, her voice fading slightly. "I'm bad."

  * * *

  The next day, Joe noticed a difference in himself. Frankly, it was pathetic to see how much having sex improved his disposition. He didn't even mind making more cold calls that day at work and even managed to generate a couple of leads which were promptly intercepted by Terrance for further investigation. Joe was delighted to hand them over. He didn't want anything to do with them.

  Happily, he had other things to do. That morning, in a fit of uncharacteristic enthusiasm (the sex again), Joe had actually convinced Terrance that publishing music reviews might help the Dollar Daily garner some media advertising. It was complete and utter malarkey, b
ut it worked. The idea of big media bucks was more than Terrance could resist. So instead of making cold calls, Joe spent the rest of the day writing reviews of the new Iron & Wine (good), the new Grizzly Bear (really good), and the new Coldplay (meh). All fairly well-known stuff, but as he might have said to Chick, he was keeping it populist for now.

  Joe loved writing music reviews and prided himself on actually writing about the music and not himself, like a lot of reviewers tended to do these days, and avoided overloading the reviews with intergenre comparisons ("haunting overtones of electro postpunk lo-fi Danish death-metal calypso swerving into Nuggets-era noirish Gothic Americana ye-ye-tinged soca psychedelica") or incessant references to other artists crossed with show-offy lists of their obvious influences ("It's as if Carl Stalling, Swamp Dogg, Clara Rockmore, Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album, Buddy Bolden, and Big Star all participated in a time space continuum–twisting fuck-fest that birthed a glorious Thalidomide flipper baby of sonic exploration"). Also, he tried not to pretend that he was Nick Kent or Hunter S. Thompson or Jacques Derrida, though he would have loved to have been either of the first two (except for the addictions and/or suicide). Anyway, it would probably all backfire on him when no new revenue followed the reviews, but he was hoping they might get a few glowing e-mails from readers that would turn the tide and make Terrance a little more amenable to actual culture in the paper, instead of yet another article like the one he had just finished yesterday: "Local Bakery Celebrates Anniversary with Cake!"

  It didn't matter. He was in too good of a mood to care.

  22

  Semi-Infidelities and Interim Campaigns

  Though Ana was dealing with it, the guilt lingered like a low-grade fever from a virus she couldn't quite shake. She would be seemingly free of it for a while, then it would pop back into her head at some inopportune moment, causing her throat to tighten and face to burn. For the past couple of days, Joe had been exceptionally sweet—and that couldn't have come at a worse time. Lately, he was full of lovey murmurings, bringing her coffee in bed, downloading music for her that he knew she'd like (Sarah Harmer and Laura Veirs, two of her favorite girly-girl folkies), and being so dear at the door when she would leave in the morning, telling her to "Be careful, okay?" before he would kiss her goodbye.