by Renée Rosen
I looked down at the paper she’d handed me and there was the new cover line. Or rather the old cover line with a minor tweak. The words to Men had been crossed out so it now read: The New Pill That Promises to Make Women More Responsive.
I typed up the line, walked it over to Mr. Berlin. His secretary showed me into his office, which was larger than my apartment, with a breathtaking view of Manhattan. Other than “Have a seat,” he hadn’t said two words to me. I sat in one of the stately wingback chairs opposite his desk. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, my body tiny as I gripped the armrests, waiting for the verdict.
He studied the line. His expression didn’t change, just his eyebrows. They knitted together and relaxed, knitted together and relaxed. I didn’t know which way he was leaning, and I dreaded the possibility of going back to Helen with bad news.
Berlin reached for a fancy fountain pen sticking out of his desk set and scratched something down on the paper with the new line. With his brows still drawn closely together, he picked up the phone and told his secretary to get Helen on the line. If she was still meeting with Francesco, the receptionist would have to interrupt her for the call. No one—not even Helen—kept Berlin waiting. There was already enough talk about Helen on the street; she didn’t need Francesco overhearing her conversation with Berlin.
“Helen”—Berlin whipped off his eyeglasses and tossed them onto his desk blotter—“you win. I can’t fight you anymore. I still think it’s the wrong approach, but if you insist on digging your own grave, so be it. Get this issue to the printers.”
* * *
• • •
The following Friday evening I was running late. After finishing up some correspondence for Helen and typing up the notes from her latest cover meeting for the August issue, I rushed to the train and headed for Grand Central.
I was meeting Erik for a drink at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. Other than a quick hello, how are you in the hallway, catching each other’s eye during meetings or riding a crowded elevator together between floors, this was the first time we’d seen each other in almost two weeks. By the time I arrived, I found Erik waiting for me, probably on his second drink. And of course, he was sitting next to a beautiful blonde, the only woman at the bar.
I stood back for a moment, watching Don Juan in action. My God, did he practice that head tilt in the mirror or was it just instinctive? Even the way he held his martini, fingertips teasing the stem like it was the inside of your thigh. His every move was meant to seduce. I took a few steps closer, and as soon as he saw me, he sat up straight, putting some distance between him and his drinking companion.
“Hi,” I said, extending my hand to the blonde. “I’m Alice.”
“Ah, Ali,” he stammered. “Ali, this is—”
“Tammy,” she said, shaking my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Thanks for keeping him company,” I said without a trace of malice. “I just couldn’t leave the office on time.”
“Place is pretty crowded,” Erik said, making some vague gesture around the room. “Looks like all the tables are taken.”
“That’s okay.” I set my pocketbook on the bar and deliberately took the empty stool next to Tammy. “Would you order me a martini? Tammy, what about you? Ready for another?”
“Tammy works for Hearst, too,” Erik said, as if trying to justify something.
“Really?” I smiled and nodded. I was good. “I’m over at Cosmo. Where are you?”
“Harper’s Bazaar,” she said. “I’m in editorial for now, but as I was telling Erik, what I really want to do is more on the writing side.”
Erik served up a tight smile and lit a cigarette.
“A writer, huh? That’s neat. Hey, I wonder if he can help you. Erik”—I leaned his way—“can you help her?” Before he answered, I focused back on Tammy. “What kind of writing?”
“Short stories and essays mostly. But poetry is my favorite. Although . . .” She paused, rolling her eyes. “I’ve never had my poems published. I’ve been working up the nerve to send them to the Paris Review. I’m just terrified of rejection.”
I felt a stir of solidarity. It was the same for me with those photography classes. If we hadn’t met under these circumstances, Tammy and I might have become friends.
“Can’t seem to get his attention,” Erik said, indicating the bartender, whose back was to us. Erik was fidgeting with his lighter first, then flicking his cigarette ash a bit too vigorously.
Tammy and I kept talking. “You know,” I said, “there’s this great poetry series down in the Village.”
Her eyes perked up. “The one at the Gaslight?”
“Yes. That’s the one. I’ve been wanting to go.”
“Me, too. We should all go sometime. Erik, do you like poetry?”
“Ah, yeah, sure.” His jaw was twitching, his teeth clenched.
“Well, great then,” she said. “Let’s all go.”
I couldn’t have scripted this better. I watched Erik eyeing a table across the room where a group of businessmen were paying their bill, rising from their chairs.
“Here,” said Tammy, jotting her telephone number on a cocktail napkin and handing it to me.
“C’mon, Ali,” Erik said, signaling the bartender for the check, “let’s grab that table.”
“Why don’t you join us?” I asked Tammy, relieved when she backed off.
“I need to get going, but it was so nice meeting you. And call me whenever you want to go to the Gaslight.”
“I will.” I tucked her number inside my pocketbook.
“Ali,” he said as soon as we took our seats, “she works for Hearst. What was I supposed to do, ignore her?”
“I didn’t say a word, did I?”
He laid his cigarette case on the table and gave me a suspicious look. “Besides,” he said, “I’ve been waiting here for almost an hour.”
“I had some things to do back at the office.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t pry.” I helped myself to one of his cigarettes and waited while he offered me a light.
“I’m not prying. I’m asking.”
I drew down on my cigarette and exhaled toward the vaulted ceiling. “Well, that topic is not up for discussion.”
The waiter came by and Erik ordered two gin martinis.
“Are you ever going to trust me?” he asked.
I gave him a sly smile. “What do you think?”
He sighed, shook his head in surrender. “Well, you’ll be interested to know that I had a meeting today with Berlin and Deems. We were talking about you.”
“Me? What about?”
“Relax.” He reached for my hand, smoothing his thumb over my fingers. “It was all good. There’s an opening at Good Housekeeping. It’s an editorial position. The starting salary’s almost double what you’re making now.”
“Wait—what? You’re talking about an editorial position for me?”
“Yes, for you.” He laughed. “They’re impressed with you. I told them I think you’re tops and—”
“Why? I’m not an editor.”
“You’ll learn. You’re smart. You’ll pick it up in no time.”
“But I want to be a photographer, not an editor. Besides, I’m not leaving Helen.”
“I know you don’t want to leave her, but let’s face it, if this issue tanks—”
“Don’t say that. It’s not going to tank. Helen’s not going to fail.”
The waiter came back with our drinks and we both took eager gulps.
“Ali, I’m just looking out for you.”
“I appreciate that.” And I did. “But I’m not interested in being an editor at Good Housekeeping. Tell them about Bridget—she’d kill for that job.”
“Forget about Bridget. I’m talking about you. You do realize there’
s a strong chance that Helen will fail, they’ll fold the magazine, and you’ll be out of a job.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I just wish you’d let me help you.”
“You want to help me? Take me back to your place tonight.”
We finished our drinks and headed to Park Avenue.
He lifted me onto the bed and began kissing my neck. He slowly started to undress me, and with each button he undid, I felt my stress and work worries dissipate.
Afterward, with the heat still radiating off my skin, I found myself in that post-coital haze. We were so good together in bed—we had such fun and passion—and it seemed that our connection should have been able to translate out in the wild. So I told him about a photography exhibit opening that weekend. “Do you want to go?”
“Why? Do you?” He reached past my shoulder for his cigarettes resting on the nightstand.
A draft swept across the room and I pulled the sheet up, over my goosefleshed skin. “Yes, that’s why I brought it up.”
He hesitated, made a big deal of lighting his cigarette and examining the hot ash as he exhaled. “Uh, yeah, okay, so we’ll go.”
“If you don’t want to, just say so.”
“It’s just that”—he shrugged, tipping his ash—“photography’s your thing, not mine.”
I glanced at the clock on his nightstand, next to his Lucky Strikes, a bottle of Bayer Aspirin and some Rolaids. It was a quarter past nine. “I should probably get going.”
“Stay.”
“I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Please?” he said, grabbing my hand.
“I need a good night’s sleep.”
He watched as I dressed, and it wasn’t until I was leaving his bedroom that he said, “All right, I’ll go to the exhibit with you.”
* * *
• • •
Later that night Trudy answered her door holding a floral print sleeveless dress on a wooden hanger. She hung everything on wooden hangers—a result of working at Bergdorf’s.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I thought you were with Don Juan.”
“I was. I didn’t want to stay at his place tonight.” I plopped down in a rocking chair and told her about meeting Tammy at the bar, followed by the editorial job at Good Housekeeping. “Me? An editor? Sometimes I wonder if Erik knows me at all.”
“Well, it’s not like the two of you do a lot of talking, if you catch my drift.”
“Very funny.” I brought my hands to my face, covering my eyes as I groaned. “I’m so confused. If we can go to dinner or go out for a drink before we have sex, why can’t we go to a poetry reading or a photo exhibit? I mean, where does an affair leave off and a real relationship begin?”
“You’re asking me? I haven’t been on a date in six months.”
“I don’t know what I want. And I don’t know what he wants, either. He’s always giving me mixed signals. Am I sabotaging myself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe deep down I do want something more with him but I’m just too afraid.”
Trudy gave me an incredulous look.
“Okay, all right,” I conceded. “So maybe I don’t want something more with him.” I sighed. “But this little dance we’re doing, it’s just exhausting. And c’mon, we have nothing in common. I know I said I didn’t want a relationship, but still, I deserve better.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Trudy said as she laid the dress out on her bed.
I began rocking back and forth, the chair creaking each time I moved. Sometimes I thought of my affair with Erik like a case of the flu. Something that needed to run its course and soon he’d be out of my system for good. Helen told me once not to beat myself up about him. “The thing about a Don Juan is that every girl has one . . . Don Juans are unavoidable. No matter how smart she is, every girl has that one man that she just can’t say no to even though she knows he’s no good for her.”
“I need your opinion on something,” Trudy said. “Wait right there. Don’t go anywhere.” She dashed into the bathroom.
I rocked back and forth while I heard the squeak of her medicine cabinet opening. Trudy had a portable black-and-white TV sitting directly on the hardwood floor. The rabbit ears weren’t fully extended for some reason so Johnny Carson was fuzzy with squiggly lines rolling through the Tonight Show set. The volume was turned down, too, barely audible.
“Why do you even have that thing on?” I asked.
“What thing?”
“Your TV.”
“It keeps me company.”
I couldn’t really hear the monologue but stared at the screen anyway until Trudy came out of the bathroom.
“Well?” she said, squatting down so that we were eye to eye. “Can you still see them?”
“Trudy. What did you do?” I stopped rocking. She had put on a layer of heavy pancake makeup that was two shades too dark for her skin tone.
“Maybe if I go one shade lighter?”
“No. No pancake.” I went back to rocking. “You look like a pumpkin.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I mean, it looks like you’re trying to hide something.”
“That’s because I am.”
“You have beautiful, clear skin. That happens to have freckles. Don’t cover them up.”
But she wasn’t hearing it. She went over to her closet, screeching hangers back and forth before taking out two dresses and laying them on the bed next to the other one.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked.
“No. No, I’m just trying to figure out what to wear. I have a job interview.”
“What?” I stopped my rocking again.
“Monday morning. I might have to go shopping for a new outfit this weekend.”
“Wait a minute. Who’s the interview with?”
“Believe it or not, it’s at an architectural firm.”
“What? Wow! Trudy, that’s—”
“It’s just the receptionist job,” she said to temper my excitement. “But it’s a foot in the door.”
“I’ll say. How did this happen?”
“You’re not going to believe it. Last week I’m sitting in the Candy Shop, just sitting at the counter, minding my own business, reading The Fountainhead. And the man next to me starts asking how I like the book. We get to talking about architecture, and it turns out that he’s an architect, and the next thing I know, he tells me his firm needs a receptionist.”
“You never said a word. How come?”
“Because I didn’t think anything would come of it. I thought it was just talk, a way for him to get my telephone number. But then they called me today to come in for an interview on Monday morning. What if they offer me the job? Should I tell them I need to think about it?”
“What’s there to think about?”
She looked at me and smiled.
“And whatever you do, don’t wear that pancake makeup on the interview.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There were fewer horns honking, more taxicabs with their lights on. The lunch line at the diner on the corner wasn’t snaked out the door. The elevators came faster and were less crowded. It was a Friday afternoon, the start of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and though Monday was the official holiday, the city had already started to empty out. Most New Yorkers had fled for the Hamptons and places like Atlantic City.
Now that the July issue was on press, Helen had been promising to take a few days off, but here we were on that Friday afternoon, long after everyone else had left, and Helen was still in her office, editing a piece for August, though she knew there might not be an August issue.
“Alice? Alice, dear?” she called to me, leaning sideways in her chair as if checking to see that I was still there. “Could you do me a fa
vor?”
“Of course.” I pushed away from my desk and stood in the doorway. Swirls of smoke from her last cigarette lingered, pooling near her desk lamp.
“Would you mind picking up Gregory from the vet? Poor little guy had an ear infection. It’s already four o’clock and I’m afraid I won’t be able to get there before they close at five. Would you be a love and get him and take him home for me?”
“Of course.” I realized just then how often I said those words to her: Of course. Of course I’ll do this, of course I’ll do that. I was there to serve and grateful that she’d given me something to do on the start of a holiday weekend, especially since Bridget had already left for Atlantic City with a man she’d just met and Trudy was in St. Louis and wouldn’t be back until Monday night, just in time to start her new job.
I’d been avoiding Erik, because I honestly wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about whatever it was we were doing. As a couple, we were never in sync. When I wanted something more, he didn’t, and vice versa. He must have sensed me backing away because now he was doing his best to reel me back in. After turning him down for the symphony and dinner at Barbetta, he pulled out all the stops with an invitation to join him over Memorial Day weekend at his family’s home in the Berkshires. On paper it sounded great—everything I’d ever wanted. Again, I questioned if I was sabotaging myself, but I hadn’t even known his family had a place in the Berkshires, which seemed like something to know before going there and being introduced as . . . what? His girlfriend, the girl he was sleeping with? In the end, I couldn’t do it. I lied and said I had other plans even though I knew I’d be looking at a long, lonely weekend.
The veterinarian’s office was on Third Avenue between 71st and 72nd. The waiting room was crowded and noisy, a combination of barking and hissing, the jangle of collars and dog tags, the sounds of toenails clicking against the linoleum floor. It had an odd smell, too, like years of pet accidents covered up with Clorox. A tuckered-out puppy with big floppy ears lay listlessly on its side, breathing hard.
I explained that I was there to pick up Mrs. Brown’s cat, and moments later the receptionist came back with a carrier that looked like a red toolbox with a wire mesh door. Gregory’s big blue eyes stared at me from inside. I stuck my finger through the wire mesh and tried to reassure him that everything was okay, I was there to take him home.