Summer in the City

by Robyn Sisman

  Betsy scrolled back through the pages, checking her spelling and honing her prose to perfection. Before she knew it, she had drifted into one of her favorite daydreams, the one where she finally allowed Lloyd to read her thesis and he returned afterward, awed and amazed, to pronounce her a genius. This developed seamlessly into her other favorite daydream, where he took her out to dinner and proposed formally, with a ring. She would accept, naturally, and then—then life would begin. Lloyd would be promoted to the board. They would buy a house with a yard. After a suitable interval Betsy would relinquish her academic career for motherhood. She would meet Lloyd off the commuter train, haloed by the setting sun at the wheel of their station wagon.

  Sometimes she thought she would die if Lloyd didn’t marry her. She took in his dry cleaning, ran his home, organized their vacations, let him choose what movies they saw, cooked dinner for his friends, almost always said yes when he wanted to make love. Right now, hidden at the bottom of the bedroom closet, were his birthday packages, already wrapped and beribboned: the new Wallace Stevens biography he wanted, a travel alarm clock and the handsome Brooks Brothers tie she had smuggled into England as a special surprise. There would be steaks for dinner and candles on his cake. What more could he want? What was he waiting for? Her eyes strayed to the pinboard behind the desk, where she had cleared a space for her postcard portrait of Jane Austen. She looked so neat, so knowing, so unknowable. So what do you think, Jane? Betsy challenged silently. It seemed to her that the portrait’s mouth curled slyly. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man already in possession of everything a woman has to offer need be in no hurry to marry her.

  Betsy looked away and sank her head into her hands. What else could she offer him? With what key could she unlock that mysterious part of him that eluded her? She was sure that she could make him into the man she wanted—if he would let her. But there were aspects of his personality that she didn’t understand, or even like: his friendship with Jay, for example, his silence about his family and the moods when he liked to lock himself away and listen to the saddest, sexiest music she had ever heard: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf—even the names were weird. There were times when she didn’t even know what he saw in her. If she knew, she could do it more—or better.

  Out of the corner of her eye Betsy caught a stealthy movement in the doorway and spun around in terror. It was the cat again. It stood frozen in the doorway, giving her a long, blank look, then minced into the room, tail erect. Betsy sneezed helplessly, unstoppably, until her eyes and nose ran. What was happening to her? Why hadn’t she brought her antihistamine pills to this dirty, godforsaken, cat-ridden land? She groped in her sweater for a handkerchief and held it over her nose until the sneezing fit subsided. A tide of rage and resentment ran hot through her body. She had told Lloyd about the cat, more than once. All he had done was murmur, “Oh, really?” in that absentminded-professor way he had.

  Betsy rose from her chair and walked stealthily to the kitchen. First she shut the window. Then she got out a bowl and filled it with milk. “Here, kitty-kitty,” she crooned, carrying the bowl back into the living room and setting it on the floor. Moving with exaggerated care, she picked up the waste-bin from under the desk, positioned herself at the edge of the couch next to the bowl and waited.

  It took a long time. The cat stayed crouched in the shadow of the table, staring at her suspiciously. It washed itself from head to toe, with some unpleasant sound effects. Then it pretended to go to sleep. Eventually it strolled out into the room, assessing the contents of the bowl with the casual droop of an eyelid. It looked at Betsy. She smiled encouragingly, tightening her grip on the poised basket. At length the cat folded itself down and began to lap at the milk. Betsy made herself count to twenty, then launched herself from the sofa and slammed the basket upside down over the cat.

  There was a squawk of panic. One sinewy leg remained free, clawing wildly at the carpet. The cat’s tail flailed furiously as it struggled to back out of the trap. But Betsy was ruthless. She pressed one polished loafer, hard, on the cat’s tail. With the other she stuffed the errant leg under the lip of the basket. The tail followed swiftly. Betsy sat down on top of the rocking basket, flushed and panting. With a coarseness that would have shocked Jane Austen right out of her little lace cap she shouted, “Got you, you bastard!”

  Chapter Nine

  Suze retrieved the copy from her computer memory, repositioned it on the screen grid and zapped the mouse. Her computer gave its usual frenzied cheep and flashed up the Matsuhana party invitation. She considered the effect. “It’s design, Jim, but not as we know it,” she muttered.

  Still, it was what Sheri wanted, and Suze was in no doubt that what was good for Sheri was good for her. After one week at Schneider Fox New York her status as Sheri’s protégée was established. Within hours of their bonding lunch, Sheri had squared Quincy, requisitioned a Mac, and installed both it and Suze in the office next to her own—Lloyd Rockwell’s office, in fact, conveniently free. Instead of a hellhole down in the art department, Suze had a power desk, her own telephone and a view of the Hudson that made her heart sing. Dino said she was so lucky he wanted to do her chart for her.

  There were penalties, of course. Last Friday Sheri had discovered that no one had designed the invitation for the grand opening of Matsuhana’s first-ever retail store outside Japan. Matsuhana was the worldwide brand leader in sound and video systems, a byword for technological innovation and sleek design. Its store was to be at the cutting edge of retail design—part store, part amusement arcade, part showcase for electronic wizardry—situated on a prime piece of Fifth Avenue real estate. The party was less than three weeks away, and Schneider Fox had pledged to deliver an event of maximum glitz. It was clear that somebody had goofed.

  Late on Friday, Sheri had called a rush meeting, explained that darling, head-in-the-clouds Lloyd must have forgotten this crucial detail, and had there and then hammered out a brief. The mood of the meeting was resentful. At this time of year, New Yorkers counted on slipping off early on Fridays. No one had volunteered to work over the weekend, and it therefore fell to Suze, as the new girl, to “prioritize” the invitation. Somebody very important was coming by this afternoon to give the artwork the OK, then it would be rushed to the printer and the invitation couriered. This was very New York. Suze had learned that any invitation that came by US mail wasn’t even worth opening.

  Suze hated jobs like this, where she was told exactly what to do, handed the dullest copy in the universe and asked to make it “fabulous.” Her eyes ached from staring at the screen. She was longing for a cigarette. The sun had crept around the building to glare in at her office window, and she could feel it on her back, uncomfortably hot despite the air-conditioning. Irritably, she twisted her heavy hair into a rough knot on top of her head and secured it with one of Lloyd Rockwell’s beautifully sharpened pencils. Then she double-checked that all Sheri’s corrections had been made, put everything she needed onto a Zip disk and took it down to the art department to print out.

  When she returned, she found Sheri ransacking papers on her desk. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “The party promoter’s coming by any minute. I absolutely cannot keep him waiting.”

  “No need.” Suze put a folder on the desk. “Exactly as you wanted it.”

  “What else have you got there?” Sheri asked suspiciously, noticing a second folder that Suze was holding.

  “Just some extra color Xeroxes,” Suze lied.

  Sheri took out the invitation that Suze had mocked up and examined it keenly. The background was cool gray, washed over in a darker tone with a calligraphic device that looked vaguely oriental. The type was modest and beautifully spaced, the wording dignified, the famous black and orange logo placed discreetly in a corner. It looked elegant, expensive, supremely tasteful—and dull.

  “I hope people will come,” said Suze dubiously.

  Sheri looked startled, then gave a forgiving smile. “I don’t t
hink you understand, Suzanne. Matsuhana has total command of the high ground in sound product—and I mean, like, globally. They are a multibillion-dollar corporation. Wall Street loves them. Their executives are profiled in Fortune magazine. They have major holdings in US telecommunications. They practically own Nevada—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Suze interrupted. “Everyone knows the company is great. But, well, a Japanese party. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? All I can think of is raw fish and short men in suits bowing to each other. It’s not exactly a turn-on.”

  “You think people might turn down this invitation?” Sheri was incredulous.

  “Not businessmen.” Suze tried not to sound scathing. “Or rich old people with nothing else to do. But I thought you wanted the party to be hot, young, hip. Perhaps things are different in New York, but in London we’d want to put out something more offbeat, maybe with a teaser or a gimmick to give the event a little twist.”

  “Gimmick?” Sheri’s eyebrows rose another notch.

  “For example, last year we launched this sexy lingerie business and enclosed a condom with every invitation.”

  “Condoms!” Sheri’s eyes widened in shock. Before she could summon the words to comment further, there was a warm chuckle from the doorway, and a teasing voice said, “I always knew you career women liked to talk dirty. Sheri, how are you? You’re looking gorgeous.”

  Framed in the doorway, sunglasses dangling from one tanned hand, was the most divine-looking man Suze had ever seen. Sun-streaked hair, laid-back smile, Glo-white T-shirt under a crisp black linen jacket: here was James Dean reincarnated.

  Sheri accepted his kiss on her cheek with stunning sangfroid and introduced the man as Nick Bianco, party promoter. “And this is Suzanne, who is working with us on a temporary basis. She’s from London,” she added, as if to explain the condom lapse.

  “Really? Wild place. I adore London.” Nick’s palm was smooth and warm against Suze’s as they shook hands. Her stomach somersaulted. She wondered if he was married. She prayed to God he was heterosexual.

  Nick picked up the invitation and started discussing it with Sheri. Suze’s brain fogged over as she watched him sit down and cross his legs, placing one slim ankle on the opposite knee. Early thirties, she guessed. She couldn’t see a ring. How did he get his jeans to look like that, at once so authentically faded and yet so miraculously clean? He must have just bought them at Calvin Klein. Unless they had been polished to this soft indigo bloom by the caresses of millions of adoring women.

  “. . . and thereby majoritize their market status,” Sheri seemed to be saying.

  Nick looked up from the design and gave Suze a dazzling blue stare. “Did you do this?”

  “Yes, I . . . At least—not exactly.” Of course he was heterosexual. No gay man ever gave women quite that kind of hungry, questing look.

  “Because I like it, in fact it’s fabulous, but I just wonder . . .” Nick turned back to Sheri. “The thing is, I’m planning to deliver a major scene here. That’s why you hired me, right? Besides the usual suits, I’ve got guys flying in from the Hollywood sound studios, celeb DJs, rock stars, actors. I’m working on Bliss Bogardo to cut the ribbon. There’s even a chance I could get The Truck.”

  “What truck?” asked Sheri.

  “It’s a band,” Suze explained, hoping to redeem herself as a cool person.

  “So what I’m asking myself is whether this”—Nick flapped the card—“is funky enough?”

  “Now wait a minute, Nick.” Sheri fixed him with her headlamp eyes. “ ‘Funky’ is not a concept we discussed. We have six days to get this thing together, and I’ve already had to crawl to the printer. This is not the moment to go creative on me.”

  There was a difficult silence. Nick twitched one foot fretfully. Gucci loafers, Suze saw, beautifully polished. “You’re right.” He sighed. “I wish you could have put a little more sizzle on the steak, but I guess I’ll just have to be extra persuasive. Frankly, I think you’ve missed an opportunity.”

  Suze watched as he stood up, gave the invitation a final, withering look, and shut the folder. Any minute now he was going to walk out of her life, believing that she was responsible for this limp piece of design—and deaf and dumb to boot. Heartbeat accelerating, she reached for the other folder, the one she had slipped out of sight behind her computer. “Uh, Sheri,” she gave a diffident cough, “why don’t we show him the alternative?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, the alternative version you asked me to rough out. Remember?” Suze pressed the folder into Sheri’s hands and gave her a significant look.

  “Oh. Sure. The alternative,” Sheri said in a robot voice. She laid the folder on the desk and opened it.

  This was the version that Suze had prepared in secret, partly out of frustration with the restrictions of her brief, partly out of experience. When a client was unhappy, it was always the designer who took the flak; she had learned to keep the odd ace up her sleeve.

  There was total silence while Nick and Sheri took in what Suze had done. Instead of tasteful gray, the invitation card was brilliant orange, a Day-Glo version of Matsuhana’s trademark color. Sheri’s original copy was still there, but consigned to the foot of the card. What hit the eye first were the words “SOUNDS LIKE FUN,” printed in huge, black, blocky type. The effect was startling. When the idea had come to her in the middle of last night, Suze had thought it inspired. Now, as the seconds passed, it began to look horribly vulgar.

  “It was just an idea,” she babbled. “Of course, it needs more work. I know it’s not in line with the brief.”

  Nick lifted her mock-up from the desk. “It’s perfect,” he breathed reverently. “I love it. I adore it.” His handsome face melted into a delighted smile. “How did you guys come up with such a great idea?”

  “Well,” Suze began importantly, but Sheri got there first.

  “Sometimes, Nick, you just have to break the rules,” she told him, with a pussycat smile. She put a proprietary hand on his elbow and steered him toward the door. “Let’s go into my office and action this thing right away. You,” she tossed over her shoulder at Suze, “can go home.”

  Suze watched, speechless, as Sheri led the way out into the corridor without a backward glance. Nick followed her obediently, but in the doorway he turned back and gave Suze a glorious wink. They exchanged a conspirators’ smile that said as plain as words that while Sheri must be humored, there were only two people here who were hip, sexy as hell and the right side of forty.

  Thoroughly overexcited, Suze had to go to the ladies’ room to bathe her face in cold water. It was a humiliating feature of office life in America that you had to get a key every time you needed to go to the “bathroom,” a cluster of primary-school-type lavatories that was kept locked against lurking rapists and toilet-paper thieves. Dee Dee was keeper of the key. Suze found her typing away in her cubbyhole, surrounded by plastic dry-cleaning bags.

  “Going to a party?” Suze asked, trying to be friendly. She had the feeling that Dee Dee didn’t approve of her, but couldn’t think why.

  Dee Dee gave her a sour look. “It’s Sheri’s stuff,” she said shortly. “Please remember to bring the key back this time.”

  Suze retreated, feeling stung. It was true that last week she had found the key in her handbag when she had popped out to do a little shopping, but it was a perfectly understandable mistake. Anyway, who needed approval from someone who wore sleeveless blouses in beige Crimplene?

  In the bathroom, Suze gave one glance in the mirror and let out an agonized yelp. What was that pencil doing sticking up out of the top of her head? Wayward tufts of hair sprouted from her scalp. Her zingy lemon-yellow dress (yellow was the “new white” this summer) had crumpled like a used tissue. She looked like a pineapple. Nick hadn’t been smiling at her; he’d been laughing.

  Suze tore the pencil out of her hair and threw it into the waste-bin. As she ran the cold water and soothed her flushed face, she brood
ed darkly on the kind of irresponsible man who could not only “forget” about the Matsuhana party, but also left pencils lying around to tempt people into hair abuse. Damn Lloyd Rockwell!

  Chapter Ten

  By the time Suze had struggled her way back to the apartment she was feeling hot and ill-used. Heat pulsed from the asphalt streets, yet there was hardly any sunshine, just a sullen, radioactive shimmer. Inside, the apartment felt airless and as cramped as a kennel. Suze went around checking the little metal boxes on the windows that she had initially thought might be loudspeakers—perhaps to blast out “America the Beautiful” on the Fourth of July: she had heard that Americans were terribly patriotic. Actually they were air-conditioners, and it seemed to be a rule of Manhattan life that their effectiveness was in inverse proportion to the outside temperature. No amount of fiddling or banging seemed to improve their performance. Instead, Suze took a long, cool shower, dressed herself in shorts and a singlet, lit a cigarette and tried to think of something interesting to do. “I am not lonely,” she told herself. Once, she would have been straight on to Bridget for a girly gossip about Nick; nowadays she feared a lecture on diaper rash. There was nothing on television—quite a feat, really, considering the number of channels—and she was too embarrassed to go down to Video Heaven again. She decided that a serious snoop was in order.