by Lynn Messina
“It needs tweaking, of course,” she says, before rattling off a list of changes that I’m too slow-witted to understand. I’m not used to the fast-paced world of daily newspapers. “Don’t worry if you didn’t catch all that. I’m going to fax over my notes right now. Same fax number?”
After picking up the fax, I head to the kitchen to get a fresh cup of coffee. Leila’s notes are dense and copious and require an alertness that I’m not capable of right now without artificial stimulants. Flipping through her comments, I realize that the word tweaking is an understatement but I’m not worried. I’m exhilarated and thrilled and on fire to start the second draft.
Tweaking aside, the future is bright. The editor from the New York Times said she was sure I’d have a better feel for their style next time.
Drinks at the W
Maya loves hotel lounges and bars. She loves their glamour and evanescence and the way they make her feel as though she’s almost far away from home. Here people are immersed in their lives; elsewhere they are running away.
“I never loved Roger,” she says after the waiter brings her a capirinha. She’s never had one before but she’s looking for a new drink—cosmopolitans are for mourning Roger, whom she never loved—and she fancies the idea of alcohol made out of sugar cane.
I take a sip of my mojito—a new drink in the spirit of new beginnings—and wait for her to elaborate on her topic sentence. I have revelations of my own to share, but they must take a back seat. Relationship conversations always trump.
“It’s not like I ever thought I did,” she continues, after the capirinha passes muster. “That ring was like Kryptonite, it made me weak. When I found it in that drawer, I felt something overwhelming and assumed it was love. I think now that it was just nostalgia for something—the Cleavers at the dinner table—that doesn’t exist,” she confesses with a hint of embarrassment. It’s hard to realize that you are just as susceptible as your friends from the suburbs who want to stay in the suburbs.
“The smell of other people’s barbecues,” I say.
“Hmm?” she asks, her eyes on the entrance, as if she’s waiting for someone. We are in the bar at the W hotel in Union Square. We are surrounded by sleek counters and large velvet couches and beautiful people in tight skirts, but don’t let the W fool you. It’s still your parents’ Westin.
“The smell of other people’s barbecues when I’m sitting on my fire escape. It’s the same thing,” I say, explaining.
She nods understandingly. “And some songs.”
“It’s a universal,” I say, as if our three examples are proof of basic human experience.
She turns to me and smiles brightly. “Which means this thing with Gavin isn’t completely doomed. I can’t be rebounding if there’s nothing to rebound from.”
I’m in the act of swallowing rum and lime juice when she makes her statement, and the randomness of it causes me to cough and sputter. I’m aware of no things with Gavin. “What?”
“Gavin and I have been in touch,” she says, looking away. She is somewhat abashed.
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“What am I going to say? ‘Hey, Vig, Gavin and I talk every night and have really great conversations. I think I’m falling in love,’” she says, mockingly. “It’s embarrassing. I can’t even say the words really great conversation without cringing.”
I sweep by her hyper self-consciousness and zoom in on the significant piece of information. “You’re in love?”
She shrugs, trying to appear indifferent. She didn’t mean to reveal so much and is now trying to backtrack.
“You like him a lot?” I ask, trying to temper the immensity of the admission.
Her eyes shift again to the entrance, which she expects Gavin to walk through at any minute, I realize now. He arrived in town late last night and went directly to the gallery first thing this morning to oversee the final stages of setup.
I’ve come up against the Maya brick wall enough times to know when I’m about to bash my head against it. “I sold an article to the Times.”
She flings her head around and she grabs my hand with such tremendous force that my drink spills. “You what?”
“I sold my interview with Pieter van Kessel to the New York Times. And not just the interview,” I say, drying my arm with a cocktail napkin. “They liked my idea for a series. They want the whole thing.”
Maya is speechless for a few seconds; then she starts hitting her hand on the bar. “My good man,” she calls, when she finally has the bartender’s attention, “we’d like a bottle of your worst champagne.”
“That’s not necessary. I—”
“What? We can’t have a celebration without champagne. What are you going to toast with?”
I’m about to say that we can toast with mojitos and capirinhas, but the bartender is already opening a bottle of Moët.
“Besides,” she adds, handing me a flute, “I’ve got something I want to toast to as well.”
“What?”
“No, no, you first.” She raises her glass. “To my dear friend Hedwig Morgan, journalist.”
It sounds weird and lovely, and I swallow six ounces of champagne in a single gulp. “All right, now your news.”
“I started a new book—”
“That’s excellent. What’s it about?”
“Trying to poison an anorexic, but it’s not a mystery because nobody dies.”
I refill our glasses and raise mine for a toast. I gesture for her to do the same, but she does not comply. “To literature!”
“I don’t think—”
“Uh-uh. If I must suffer your toasts, then you must suffer mine.”
Maya knows better than to go up against a slightly inebriated Vig. “All right. To literature.”
She doesn’t say it with any sort of feeling, but I let the lack of conviction slide. At least she said it.
“Anyway, the point is that I gave the first few chapters to an agent in New York who is friends with Gavin’s agent in London. She read it as a favor to Gavin, but she thinks it’s promising. She wants to see the whole thing as soon as I’m done.”
In rigorous compliance with term of reference, August 15, the word agent has not passed my lips in almost three months. I’m happy and relieved to discover that others haven’t been so circumspect. “That’s excellent.”
“It doesn’t really mean anything. It could be that she’s just being polite and there’s always a very good chance that she won’t like the rest of the book,” she says discouragingly. “It’s a long way from being something.”
Her knee-jerk pessimism is an uninvited guest at the party and I brush it aside. “To promising.”
This toast has a melancholy mix of hopeful and hopeless (the possibility of succeeding, the inevitable falling short) that appeals to Maya and she raises her glass with enthusiasm.
By the time Gavin shows up, we are invincible. We are invincible and giddy and convinced that anything is possible. We are like Godzilla, and all those tiny obstacles in our way are just the rooftops of small Japanese villages.
Maya throws her arms around Gavin and gives him a sloppy, enthusiastic kiss, which he receives with a shy smile. He makes eye contact with me over her shoulder and waves. Because their only dates have been really great telephone conversations, I leave them alone for a few minutes. I go to the bathroom and admire the fixtures and feel a little sorry for myself that Alex isn’t here. When I called earlier to tell him the good news, I’d intended to invite him. I’d intended to ask him out for a drink, but something stopped me. Celebrating huge lifetime milestones seems too much like a relationship thing.
When I return, Maya is signing the credit card receipt. With our debt settled, we bundle into a cab and go to Maya’s favorite restaurant for dinner, where we gorge on mushroom crepes and olive crostini and crème brûlée. Someone orders a bottle of wine, and I eagerly accept a glass, even though I know I’m about to be ambushed by exhaustion. Because he missed out o
n the earlier round of ecstatic toasting, Gavin makes a series of toasts that are hilarious and sweet and bring tears to drunken Maya’s eyes.
The evening concludes happily with the customary scuffle over who gets to foot the bill, which I win because my reflexes are the least impaired by alcohol. Outside the air is chilly and fresh and before I grab a cab home, I insist on walking them back to Maya’s apartment. The Future is just around the corner.
Omens
For Christine the bathroom is the last unexplored storage frontier, and she’s covered the tile walls of her shower with white plastic baskets, the sort that suction-cup on. This is where she keeps her Lysol and her Soft Scrub and her Fantastic.
“They all fell,” she says, entering my office and shutting the door. “I’ve had those baskets up for two years and they never once budged and now all six have fallen, even the little one in the corner that holds my loofah.”
Although I’ve cleared the guest chair for her, Christine prefers to stand. She’d rather pace and dodge scattered stacks of magazines that litter the floor than take a seat.
“Then this morning when I opened my door, my doormat was gone.” She looks at me, her eyes wide and blue, and waits for my response.
“Gone?”
“Gone.”
“Someone stole your doormat?” I ask, oddly disturbed. Nobody steals doormats. It’s a violation of the social contract.
“But that’s not all. Get this—when I woke up this morning there was a squirrel in my bed. He was on my comforter staring at me with his beady red eyes,” she says, recalling the experience with a shudder.
I don’t know what to say. These morning mishaps seem unimportant and inconsequential to me, but an inexplicable vehemence has crept into Christine’s voice, making me realize that she thinks she’s listing disasters. To fill the expectant silence, I mutter something always remembering to close your windows before going to sleep.
“You don’t see,” she says, her voice flat. It’s only 10:23 in the morning but I’ve already disappointed her. “These are all signs.”
“Signs?”
“Signs.”
“The squirrel in your bed is a sign?”
She rolls her eyes. “Like a red cow in Israel. It’s a sign that something terrible is going to happen. What do you need,” she asks, her voice scornful of my lack of faith, “a plague of locusts?”
The answer to this question is yes. Yes, I need a plague of locusts. “Nothing bad is going to happen.” I’m trying to treat the matter with the solemnity that Christine feels it deserves, but I’m having a hard time keeping a smile off my lips.
“You can’t dress Jesus up in a bias-cut halter-top silk dress by Givenchy,” she says, “and not expect something biblical to happen. You must be humble in the presence of the Lord.”
I know little about the Bible and humility and being in the presence of the Lord, but I recognize panic when it’s striding around my office. “Nothing bad is going to happen,” I say in soothing tones as the door opens.
Sarah enters. She has a huge smile on her face, and although momentarily distracted by seeing Christine in my office, she recovers quickly. “They’re picketing.”
“What?” I ask.
“They’re picketing the building,” she says, barely able to contain her excitement. This is the first indication that our plan is working. “We’re completely surrounded by irate Christians holding signs that quote scripture. The police are down there right now trying to break it up because the demonstrators don’t have a permit.” She laughs. “Police—can you believe it? This is better than anything I expected.”
Christine gives Sarah a cross look. She sees nothing here to be exultant about. “You should call it off now before the locusts arrive.”
Sarah raises an eyebrow. “What locusts?”
“Go talk to Jane about it,” I say. “It’s her party.”
But Christine doesn’t want to talk to Jane. She’s frightened of her. “Couldn’t you do it?”
The idea is so ridiculous, I almost laugh. “Me?”
“Jane listens to you,” she insists, her hands jumping agitatedly in front of her.
There it is again—this odd assumption that Jane respects me. “I’m not asking Jane to cancel the party. There’s no reason to.”
“But I told you about the squirrel and everything. These are all omens.” She pauses for a moment, as if considering her next move. “And then there’s Allison.”
I stiffen at the mention of the one person who could bring our plan tumbling down. “Allison?”
Christine looks around the room and then leans in. “I think she’s talking in tongues,” she says softly.
Sarah starts giggling. I’m also amused but contain my laughter. Christine is one hundred percent serious. “Speaking in tongues?” I ask.
“She’s excited, almost fevered, and she’s muttering incessantly under her breath. I’ve tried to make sense of it but I can’t. It’s not English.”
Although I’m pretty sure that Allison isn’t speaking in tongues, I realize there’s no way to convince Christine of that. So I placate her with promises. “Tell you what—if Allison is still excited and muttering at four o’clock, I’ll see what I can do.”
Four o’clock is too late to call off the party, but Christine doesn’t notice that. She lets out a relieved sigh. “Thank you, Vig.”
I shrug, as if it’s nothing, which it actually is. Even if I wanted to talk to Jane today, I couldn’t get in touch with her. She’s gone deep into the belly of the beauty beast and isn’t scheduled to emerge until she’s been plucked, exfoliated and coiffed.
Christine leaves and Sarah and I press our heads against the window to watch police officers interact with the picketing crowd. This is how Delia finds us.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she says, looking over our shoulders.
Sarah squeals happily. “I have to get closer than this. Care to come?”
Delia and I both decline and we watch her skip out of the office and down the hall. “Well,” I say, “it looks like things are going according to plan.”
She nods and sits down. “They are, only there’s one small thing.”
Despite my atheism, my heart catches and for a split second I fear that she’s going to tell me about a horde of locusts coming up Fifth Avenue. “One small thing?”
“Remember Australia?”
“Australia?”
“You know, the continent that Jane had Marguerite deported to?”
“Yes, of course. Australia.”
“Well, it turns out that was an act of reprisal,” Delia says, pushing a legal-size yellow notebook across the desk.
I pick it up and try to read it but I can’t. Delia’s handwriting is a series of tight wide swirls. None of it is legible. “What’s this?”
“My shorthand notes. I just got off the phone with Parvenu’s editor in chief’s old assistant, Lucy Binders. A very friendly woman. She works in car insurance now.”
Although a large part of me wants to know how she found Ellis Masters’s assistant twelve years later, I control my curiosity. Delia’s investigative skills are not the point. “What’d Lucy Binders say?”
“That Marguerite is a manipulative scheming bitch and that after her promotion to senior editor, which she got by sleeping with the managing editor, she made all the junior staff’s life hell, particularly Jane’s. She gave her crap assignments, changed deadlines on her so that all her articles were in late and rewrote her copy to make her look inept and incoherent. Five months later Jane was fired.” She flips the page and starts reading from her notes. “I’ve been in touch with a few editors over at Australian Vogue but nobody’s talking. Marguerite’s rise through the ranks there was meteoric. She went from senior editor to editor in chief within sixteen months. You’d think someone over there would have an opinion but they’re all hush-hush. However, on the bright side, she seems to have no issues with age,” Delia says, breaking down the staff of Australian Vogue by
age and education.
My instinct is to break into a Christine-size panic. My instinct is to call the whole thing off and run away, but this is now beyond my control. Religious groups are picketing the building and nothing I say will make them go home. “All right. Keep digging. Maybe we can find something on Marguerite that we can use later on if she becomes a problem,” I say, more than a little disturbed by my own expediency. Plotting against Jane was supposed to be a onetime deal, not a new way of life.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, chief,” she says, a bright approving smile on her face. Delia’s happy with my newfound ruthlessness. She thinks it means that I’m inching closer to the dark side. She thinks it means that any minute now I’ll start keeping files on my co-workers.
I don’t really know what it means, but I sincerely hope she’s wrong.
Judas
When I arrive at the gallery, Gavin is dismantling the Gilding the Lily exhibit. He’s packing up his Jesus statues as if they’re marbles he can stick in his pocket and take home.
“What’s up?” I ask when I spot him in the corner pulling sheer panty hose off a Jesus in a classic Chanel suit. Everything else is going smoothly—the caterers are setting up the bar, the sound engineer is double-checking the microphones, the protesters are assembling their podium and booing at fashionistas who walk by. Only Gavin is working against the common goal.
I know Gavin heard me—it’s obvious from the way his shoulders stiffen—but he doesn’t look up or answer. He simply balls up the stockings and tosses them into a brown cardboard box. Then he starts unbuttoning the jacket.
The silence and the Jesus-stripping are two very bad signs, but I don’t panic. I hold on to my cool and walk over to Gavin for further investigation. “Hey, is something wrong?”
Gavin turns to face me. His eyes are hot and angry and his lips are pulled together in a tight, straight line. This isn’t the easygoing, familiar Gavin who made drunken toasts and ate greasy crepes and kissed me on the forehead at three o’clock in the morning. This is frightening stony-faced Gavin.