How To Judge A Book By Its Lover

by Jessica Jiji

  Suddenly, I knew why. This was all so new, so momentous, I had to talk to Trish!

  “Oh, God, that sounds so great, but I have some plans I can’t break.”

  Irwin was perfectly understanding and loaned me one of his soft, worn-in shirts, which he buttoned up, pausing to kiss me at intervals. It still felt like his arms were around me after he’d dropped me off at my parents’ house.

  “Oh. My. God. He is SO SEXY!” I whisper-screamed, checking over my shoulder at the crowded Pizza Hut. It wasn’t exactly gourmet cuisine, but Trish and I had our own special table there where we’d been talking about boys since we were eleven.

  “Can I just say this once? I told you so,” she squealed with delight. “Yay! So is he as good as Lucien the Silver Lamborghini?”

  “This guy doesn’t even have wheels—he flies. And he takes me to heaven.”

  Following her usual habit, Trish peeled the pepperoni off of her pizza and popped each slice in her mouth. “And how perfect is this? He’s best friends with my husband, and we’re best friends!”

  I smiled giddily, unable to even eat for all my excitement. Trish went on. “We can all go bowling together!” My best bud wasn’t the most sophisticated sportswoman in the world, but the idea of knocking back a few pins with both of our guys did sound fun, if a little retro. “Totally,” I affirmed.

  - 21 -

  My thighs were sore in the most pleasurable way, with the memory of Irwin’s body against mine resonating as a physical sensation and enveloping my mind in a dream-like state. I don’t remember the ride over to Gallant or the walk up Broadway, and I only regained my bearings when I faced the receptionist.

  “Hi, Sherill!” I said. “I have a quick meeting up at legal.”

  Instead of buzzing me in with a friendly smile as usual, she motioned for me to take a seat and punched a light on her console. “Ms. Linden is here; she says she has an appointment.” After a pause, she added, “Okay then,” and pressed the buzzer without another word.

  I was looking over my shoulder as I walked through the hall, wondering if they’d sent out some kind of e-mail warning all staff to shun me, and my suspicions only grew when I saw the lawyers. Without so much as a greeting, they placed a stack of papers in front of me to sign and initial.

  When I was through, I smiled weakly. “Well, guys, it’s been great working with you.”

  “You call that work?” one gray-suit replied. “Sixteen thousand dollars, and you never published a word. Wish I could get a gig like that.” The other lawyer snorted, and I slunk out of the room.

  At the far end of the hall, I could see my three publicists huddled around a copy machine. They’d always been so friendly, and I thought I owed them at least a thanks. But as soon as I approached, they glared in my direction and tightened their circle. I’d been in enough high school cliques to read the body language and translated it easily as: “Go away, loser—we don’t want to catch your germs.” I didn’t hang around to hear them say it out loud.

  I had almost made it out of reception when Sherill stopped me. Are they going to frisk me before I leave? I wondered. “Almost forgot,” she said. “Here.” She handed me a plain white envelope with my name handwritten across the front. I would recognize that red pen anywhere. Nona. Her last contact with me had been so friendly, I held out hope that this might be a decent goodbye and opened the envelope in the elevator. When I peeked inside, I saw her familiar red ink all over a page of my now-dead manuscript. Not anymore, Nona, I thought to myself, shoving it back in my bag. I’m a free woman now.

  Free! Free to live off of my dwindling savings and have crazy fun with my boyfriend. Over the next few weeks, interspersed with efforts to secure even moderately respectable employment, Irwin and I fell in love during a whirlwind of dates. In Manhattan, we indulged in guilty pleasures Lucien would have scoffed at, like ice skating at Rockefeller Center, surrounded by the colorful autumn leaves, going to a Broadway matinee like a pair of tourists, and coasting on bikes through Central Park. We always ended the evening the same way: with uncontrollable, hot sex.

  One afternoon, as we sped toward Brooklyn with the top down, I peppered him with questions about Coney Island. “Do they still run the Cyclone? Can we get hot dogs? Is there an actual boardwalk?” I sounded like I was seven years old and going to an amusement park for the first time in my life.

  We parked by the New York Aquarium and joined the crowds of people from all over the world, breathing in the tangy sea air and heading toward the rides. With his boyish energy, Irwin grabbed my hand and made straight for the Caterpillar, a goofy ride favored by kids. I couldn’t understand why he was so keen on it until the Caterpillar’s canvas skin covered the seats and we were suddenly plunged into total darkness. Irwin took full advantage of our minute of privacy, kissing my breasts until the light started peeking through as the hood lifted back off.

  On the carousel, we fed each other popcorn, and after dismounting our painted horses, we strolled hand-in-hand over to the original Nathan’s. I don’t know if it was the famous grill, the wise-cracking cooks, or just my mood, but that hot dog was the most delicious thing I ever tasted.

  The highlight, though, had to be the Cyclone. We grabbed the first car, and as the classic ride began its steep climb, we threw our arms up like teenagers, leaving us tense with anticipation. As it curved over the summit and began its terrifying plunge, I clung tightly to my lover, and we screamed in rapture. Just like the wheels clicking in the track of this rollercoaster, I felt my life was in sync with Irwin’s, like we’d always been together and always would be.

  Despite the thrills and peaks of my new romance, my lack of paid employment was bringing me down. Before I could even look at the classified ads, I had to figure out how a person could make money with a degree in English Literature, the ability to look at any mutt and guess its mixture of breeds, and a propensity for daydreaming.

  That’s how I found myself paying two hundred and fifty dollars to attend a workshop at the Levittown Marriott called “What Song is Your Dance?” It looked professional enough when I entered the large conference room and was handed a clipboard by one of the well-groomed staff, but as I sat down, I suddenly felt like I was taking an SAT, since I was older than everybody else by at least ten years. I tried to convince myself that I was that much more mature and would get that much more for my money.

  A burly but hyper man took the microphone and repeated the pitch that had brought me there in the first place. “Congratulations on taking the first step in your new life,” he said, exhorting us to applaud ourselves as if we had already landed dream jobs. “By the time you leave here, you’ll not only be stepping, you’ll be dancing your way to success, power, money, and satisfaction—not to mention the big bucks.”

  Sounds good, I thought. We had an hour and a half to complete a comprehensive survey that would reveal all. I picked up my pencil. At first, the questions were fairly standard—name, age, work experience—but by the fourth page they started getting difficult:

  23. When you dance, do you:

  a) Lead

  b) Follow

  c) Sometimes lead and sometimes follow

  d) Neither; I only dance freestyle.

  24. Where do you pick up your latest dance moves?

  a) The hottest nightclubs

  b) The street

  c) Music videos

  d) I invent them

  25. When you square dance, do you prefer:

  a) Promenade left

  b) Promenade right

  c) Acey Deucey

  d) Do-Si-Do your partner

  26. When you do the rumba, do you think with your:

  a) Hips

  b) Butt

  c) Neither

  d) Both

  It only got worse from there, and by the time I finished, my wrist was aching, my head was spinning, and I never wanted to dance again.

  During the twenty-minute break while they fed my answers into a computer, I wandered out to the hot
el lobby and retreated into the refuge of Celebrity Style. Flipping to the People Profile section, I noticed that journalist Salli Simmer was covering a story in the nearby Hamptons. She set the scene beautifully and ended her article on a rare personal note:

  As we wandered through the Japanese gardens of Karismah’s magnificent thirty-eight-room, neo-Tudor–style mansion, she pulled a few dead leaves off of the only tired-looking plant for miles around. “They told me to throw this one away, but I just can’t give up on any living thing,” she said with characteristic expansiveness. Her million-dollar fingers can stand a little dirt if that means one rhododendron bush will enjoy a longer life.

  Walking next to this lithe and ever-youthful doe, I felt like a giant cow with thirty-five extra pounds of pregnancy weight topping my already hefty figure. Gads! But before I left, Karismah reminded me of the true miracle of birth. “There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman with child,” she declared, probably thinking back on her own nine-month odyssey to produce precious little Beeno. “As soon as you set eyes on your wondrous baby, you’ll understand,” she added knowingly. I can’t wait until December.

  I could have devoured the entire issue, but it was time to go back and meet my career specialist. Sitting face-to-face with one of the experts, I was eager to hear the big results.

  “Well, Laurel,” he said, adjusting his tie. “I have excellent news for you.” I leaned forward in my seat expectantly.

  “You,” he declared, “are a bossa nova.”

  I was dumbfounded.

  “With just a touch of merengue,” he added, “and a little cha-cha-cha.”

  “I’m sorry,” I asked tentatively, “this has what to do with my career?”

  “It has everything to do with your career. You came here to find out how your song dances. And I’m telling you.”

  “Umm . . . bossa nova, merengue, and cha-cha-cha?”

  “A little cha-cha-cha,” he corrected.

  “So, I’m pretty . . . Latin?” I guessed.

  “That’s not a job!” he laughed. “We’re much more scientific than that. I’m pleased to inform you that you are ideally suited to be—and remember, there is a one point seven percent margin of error—a retail specialist in the biotech industry.”

  “What?”

  “Either that, or quality control in a transportation warehouse”

  He handed me a scroll of paper with a ribbon tied around it. “Here’s your diploma,” he said, patting me on the back. “Show it around on your job interviews. And don’t forget—Do the Hustle!”

  Thank God Irwin rescued me from that disaster in his little red Audi, but even after a night of getting drilled by the dentist, I was still depressed about my aptitude results the next morning when we went to the supermarket.

  “Where am I going to find a transportation warehouse?” I moaned as Irwin pulled a box of pancake mix off a shelf and threw it into our shopping cart. “And how do I do quality control? Examine containers to make sure they’re not going to fall apart on the railroad?”

  Irwin was as perplexed as I. “Dunno. Hey, you want some blueberries?”

  I shrugged. “Either that or selling biotech stuff. Like what, I have to go door-to-door hawking genetically modified crop seeds?”

  Irwin looked into my eyes tenderly. “That seminar was ridiculous—a total waste of two hundred and fifty dollars—but forget about it. Just concentrate on what you really want to do.”

  “That’s the problem,” I said, as we joined the line to pay. “I have no idea.”

  “If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?”

  “I always wanted to be a writer, but the only person I ever respected in that business basically told me to forget it ‘cause I suck.”

  “Come on, I don’t believe they said that.” His eyes were filled with such love and admiration that I almost felt there could be hope for me.

  I tried to recall Nona’s actual words. “Well,” I admitted, “she said I wasn’t the worst writer she’d ever worked with.”

  “Of course you’re not!” he said, starting to put our groceries on the conveyor belt. “Tell me the good things she said.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, she did say my character depictions have some insight and flare, and she liked my short sentences. Apparently I can be engaging . . . when I’m not trying to be deep.”

  “I don’t know; the deeper I get into you, the more engaging you are,” he said, grabbing my ass.

  “Stop!” I wriggled away. “The point is, she made it all too clear that my abilities are insufficient to meet my ambitions.”

  “Well, maybe you just need to readjust your ambitions.”

  “Yeah, like a gig at Girdle and Support Hose Quarterly,” I sighed. Irwin meant well, but he knew nothing about the business. To soothe my mounting anxiety, I grabbed a handful of junky magazines and tossed them on the counter.

  We’d been so busy making eyes at each other on the way in that we hadn’t bothered to notice where we were parked, so when we got out, it took us a good ten minutes of wandering up and down the asphalt before we found his car. It was the thing I hated most about shopping in the suburbs—except, of course, the congested traffic, which we encountered next.

  When we got back to his house, Irwin mentioned that he’d cleared out a whole dresser just for my stuff. I should have been thrilled by the intimate gesture, but instead I felt strangely disconcerted. “That’s okay, honey,” I said. “I’d rather just bring fresh clothes every time.” It must have been insecurity about my work prospects. I trusted Irwin would understand.

  - 22 -

  Nona, Nona, Nona. I couldn’t sleep that night imagining those big, wise owl eyes watching me. Irwin had made me realize that she’d never said I sucked as a writer, only that I’d failed as a novelist. Suddenly, I remembered that letter she’d left for me at Gallant, the one I’d shoved to the bottom of my bag without reading.

  I climbed over Irwin’s sculpted body, slipped out to the living room, and retrieved the envelope. As I’d initially suspected, there was no card inside, just a sheet from my novel marked up with a note at the bottom in her trademark red. This was her parting gift to me, but what did it mean? I unfolded the paper:

  Marie Antoinette languished in the Bastille, awaiting the guillotine. As a kindly gesture, Napoleon had sent his hairdresser to the doomed monarch for her last updo. Marguerite was immediately impressed by the gracious cordiality with which she was invited into the dungeon. Despite the dirt and grime, the deposed queen exuded an air of grace and sensitivity. Yes, she had spent the last three years chained to a wall, but her hair still shone radiantly in the one beam of light coming through the bars.

  Despite the circumstances, Marie Antoinette’s regal air hadn’t faded. With that aristocratic chin pointed high, she demanded that the guards unchain her for the beauty appointment, and they obliged, clearly in her thrall.

  As Marguerite lathered the royal locks in a bucket of dirty water, the daughter of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, who had grown up always believing her destiny was to become Queen of France, complained about the ingratitude of her subjects. “The stories you read in the citizen’s press about my excesses are vastly overstated,” she said with her lilting Viennese accent. “Okay, maybe I was a teenaged party animal,” she conceded, “and I did indulge in a shopping spree now and then. But that ‘Let them eat cake’ line is pure republican spin. Look at this waist!” She gestured to her perfect hourglass figure. “Do you think I eat cake?”

  Marguerite acknowledged the low-carb bod. “No, Your Highness.”

  “And how they go on about my spending! Sure, I never wear the same designer hoop skirt twice; what royal does? But the year before the revolution, I reduced the household staff at Versailles from twelve thousand to eight thousand. Whether it was helping to carry a fifty-five-pound side of venison or dusting that blasted Hall of Mirrors, I shouldered my burden around the palace. And what will I have left to show for it? Nothin
g but my shoulders!” she lamented.

  The poor, beautiful head. Marguerite did her best to make it pretty for when it landed in the basket the following day. Reflecting on the soon-to-be-cut-short life of this extraordinary woman, she realized that no amount of eye-catching looks, heartthrob boyfriends, swinging minuets on the hottest dance floors, or flaunting the finest fads and fashions could save a queen from the guillotine.

  I braced myself and read Nona’s comments. She had given me a report card of sorts:

  Verisimilitude: F (timeline is way off)

  Plot sequencing: D- (doesn’t fit the novel’s structure)

  Literary possibilities: Zero (need I say more?)

  BUT

  That one word held the promise of a better future. But what? I thought, and read on:

  Character profile: A+! This is an amusing, insightful glance at one of history’s great, misunderstood women. Unfortunately, you’ve totally mangled the facts (low-carb diet?), and your voice is thoroughly modern (party animal?)—get out of the eighteenth century—but there’s a market for this sort of profile. Maybe you should try the Biography Channel, or better yet, something that doesn’t require fact-checking. Anyway, you’re a brave girl, and buried inside this hopeless novel there is evidence of talent. Get out there and use it.

  Best of luck, Nona.

  She was encouraging me, but the Biography Channel? Ugh. And anyway, that was fact-check city.

  Then another idea struck, keeping me up for the rest of the night, this time not with anxiety but with an electric sense of possibility.

  I didn’t discuss my inspiration with anyone—not even Irwin, and least of all Vanessa, who surprised me out of the blue to invite me to lunch at her apartment. I dreaded going, but I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. Hoping she’d heard me and that we could start our relationship on a new footing, I showed up that week at the familiar lobby and was let up for the first time.