The Roxy Letters

by Mary Pauline Lowry

  When I climbed out I felt ready. The caffeine had cut through the worst of the opioid stupor. And besides, Artemis and Annie had busted me out of PharmaTrial before I received my afternoon dose. Artemis said she’d go in the store and buy a magazine and drink tea and wait for us. Annie and I took the elevators to the fifth floor.

  Annie introduced me to Teal, the new receptionist they’d hired while I was in PharmaTrial. Teal’s chunky hipster glasses and bangs made her look like she could be a nerdy librarian or the lead singer of an indie post-punk band. She welcomed us and walked us to a large room with a huge blackboard against one wall and a tray full of every color chalk imaginable. When I was a kid, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk was my jam. At the sight of those hundreds of chalk colors, I felt my inner artist child jump up and down yelling, “Can I draw with those? Can I?”

  Teal spoke with the utmost seriousness. “For the first phase of your interview: You have one hour to complete the challenge.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Topher Doyle is currently obsessed with ‘The Great British Baking Show,’ ” Annie explained.

  “Your challenge,” Teal continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “is to draw a field of enticing eggplants with the words: ‘Sale! Eggplants $4.99 per pound.’ ”

  “Do I write out ‘pound’ or just ‘lb’?” I asked.

  “That’s up to you,” Teal said. She picked up a remote control and pointed it at a giant digital clock on the wall. “On your mark, get set, draw!” she shouted. As she punched a button on the remote, the clock began to count down from sixty minutes.

  I felt gripped with the suspicion that I was still in PharmaTrial, that the opioid had driven me out of my mind and this was all a giant hallucination. I looked to Annie. “Is this real?”

  “Real as factory farming,” she said. “You got this, girl.”

  She and Teal left the room, pulling the door closed behind them. It was then I realized one whole wall of the room was glass and Topher Doyle sat in a chair watching, as if I was a zoo exhibit. Panic descended. How could I possibly draw in front of the CEO Lite of Whole Foods? But I took a deep breath and forced myself to imagine I was back in my living room, drawing signs. I turned my back to Topher Doyle and searched through the chalk, pulling out every shade of purple and green I could find. There was an abundance of each color—after I sorted them I had about fifteen different purples and just as many greens.

  The feel of chalk on my fingers made me excited to get to work—it woke up that inner artist child who loved to draw with sidewalk chalk and who had no concern with recognition, or money, or paying jobs, or gallery shows, or prestigious art contests, or even with making art that would last past the next rain shower or blast of the sprinklers. When I was a kid, it had been all about drawing for the sake of drawing, not about getting anything more out of it. The ephemeral nature of the sidewalk chalk drawings had been part of the fun. It hadn’t been about making art that endured or got me anything. It had just been about the beautiful, sometimes frustrating, but always glorious process of creation.

  I lifted up a piece of chalk that was a perfect deep eggplant shade, stepped over to the blackboard, and started to draw. For the first moment or two I was still nervous, but then I settled into a trancelike state. It was as if Venus and my inner artist child had joined forces and I was just channeling them as they tried to sketch the most gorgeous eggplants in the universe. I drew and drew, pausing only to swap out one piece of chalk for another or consider shading or perspective.

  “Ten minutes! You have ten minutes left of your challenge.” I looked over to see that Teal had cracked the door and stuck her head in the room.

  Shit! Where had the time gone? I stepped back and looked at my eggplants as a whole. I’d designed them around the “Sale! Eggplants $4.99 per lb” lettering. There were a few shading gaps that needed to be filled. I stepped up to the blackboard and worked double time.

  When the buzzer went off, Teal cried, “That’s it! Step away from the blackboard! Put your chalk down!” I stepped back, holding my hands up instinctively as if she was a robber and I a store clerk. I turned to look at the blackboard, entirely covered in swollen eggplants shaded a dozen colors of deep purple, with glistening green tops. If Topher Doyle didn’t like them, and if I didn’t get the job, I might get thrown back in jail for failing to pay my court fines. I might lose my house. But whatever happened, I told myself, I had shown up and done my best with the guidance of Venus. Whatever happened, so be it.

  “Have a seat,” Teal said, gesturing to the table that held the tray of chalk. I sat down with my back to the glass wall, as it would be entirely too disconcerting to sit staring at Topher Doyle as he stared at me. Teal disappeared and a moment later, Topher Doyle and Annie entered. Topher Doyle sat down facing the chalkboard. He took in the eggplants in silence for a long time as I waited with bated breath. Then he spoke abruptly. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Thinking about what, sir?” I asked.

  “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”

  How should one address the CEO Lite of a health-food empire? I wondered.

  “Topher. Call me Topher.”

  I nodded. There was another long, uncomfortable silence. I wondered if I should repeat the question. Annie made the slightest gesture with her hand, which I took to mean that I should wait it out.

  Finally Topher Doyle spoke. “I’ve been really thinking about what you said at your protest regarding the intersection of Sixth Street and Lamar Boulevard.”

  “Oh?” It was astounding, really, to imagine Topher Doyle had been mulling over the very thing I’d been obsessed about all these months.

  “Can you tell me a bit more about your philosophy of the intersection?”

  “Of course,” I said. “The intersection has historically been a hub of both local business and tourism. Whole Foods, BookPeople—such an amazing independent bookstore!—Waterloo Records, Waterloo Video, Amy’s Ice Creams. People come to this intersection because it’s bursting with what makes Austin unique and original. Keeping the intersection full of local businesses is what will keep people coming here. And the more people that come to the intersection as a local tourist destination and hub of cool, the more people you will have shopping at your flagship Whole Foods.”

  Topher Doyle nodded. “You’ve convinced me. I’m going to make a personal call to my friends at Lululemon and offer them relocation fees to an alternate location, as well as several months rent.”

  Everett, you can’t imagine how I felt in that moment! After my certainty that my protest had been a failure, it was like a dream. I clapped my hands over my mouth in astonishment. For a moment, I was literally speechless. “Oh my Goddess! Really? Would they go for it?”

  “People don’t want to get on my bad side,” Topher Doyle said with a devilish grin. “But I can only do it if I have a convincing argument for an unstoppable new venture in that location. Ideas?”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you suggesting I propose an idea for a small business?” I asked.

  “I want you to pitch what would replace the Lululemon. But it has to be something even the Lulu execus couldn’t argue against.” Topher Doyle paused dramatically. “Ideally, your idea would be for a venture that transcends capitalism, a venture even a true villain could not oppose without risking annihilation in the mind of the collective conscious (i.e., the shopping public). We want Lululemon to know implicitly that it’s in their best interest to comply.”

  “I like your style, Topher,” I said. “Do you work with the planetary deity Mars by any chance?”

  “I’ve been making offerings to Mars every Tuesday for the past seventeen years.”

  “Nice,” I said. I made a gesture that I hoped encompassed the fifth floor, the flagship Whole Foods store, the entire health-food empire Topher Doyle helped to build from the ground up. “Clearly he appreciates your dedication. Venus is my girl.”

  He pointed at the chalkb
oard. “Hence your ability to create beauty with nothing more than a tray full of chalk.”

  Annie stared at us as if:

  Unable to believe Topher Doyle and I were getting on at this level; and

  Wondering how she had such goofballs for both a boss and a BFF.

  “So,” Topher Doyle said, “what’s your idea?”

  Silence blanketed the room. Topher Doyle and Annie both stared at me. I froze, everything a blank.

  Nothing.

  I had nothing. Not a single idea.

  I had come this far, and would fail here on the edge of achieving my Great Work.

  The three of us sat in a long, incredibly awkward silence. The lack of sound rang in my ears like the clanging of my own foundering.

  And then, like Venus rising from the sea on a half shell, the idea rose up fully formed from the ocean of my unconscious mind.

  “An adoption center for puppies rescued from puppy mills.”

  Topher Doyle’s eyes widened. “Tell me more.”

  So I told him about the recent puppy mill bust and about how there were forty rescued adult female dachshunds—many of them pregnant—and about a bazillion puppies, which exceeded the capacity of the local no-kill pet shelter, Austin Pets Alive! The adoption center at Sixth and Lamar would be a showcase (and home) for puppies rescued from puppy mills. Adoption fees would be much lower than the price of a pure-bred dog. They could do fund-raisers, too, to increase awareness and raise money.

  “I love it!” Topher Doyle said. “It could be a 501(c)(3) under the umbrella of Whole Foods.”

  “And could create a substantial tax write-off,” Annie chimed in.

  “Exactly,” Topher Doyle said. “I’ll call my people at Lululemon today.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I need to get back to figuring out how to reduce this company’s carbon emissions to a negative number. We want to be like a giant corporate ghost, leaving absolutely no carbon footprint.”

  “Okay,” I said. I glanced at Annie. She nodded slightly. “And the job.” I gestured at my army of beautiful gleaming purple phalluses. “When will I hear back about the job?”

  “You can start sometime next week,” Topher Doyle said. “Direct all salary negotiations to Annie. I’ll be in touch about the Puppy Adoption Center.” Before I could thank him, he stood up, took an unexpected little bow, and sashayed from the room. For a moment, Annie and I stared at each other. “Keep cool!” she said. “Keep cool just until we get out of here.”

  As we walked through the fifth floor, I was in a daze. We thanked Teal, who gave us a funny wink and said, “Nice eggplants.” We rode down the elevator and when we stepped outside, Artemis was standing there waiting for us.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “We did it! We did it!” I said, jumping up and down and hugging Annie and Artemis as tightly as I could until we were all sort of jumping up and down together. “I love you! I love my girls!” Normally we would have gone to Deep Eddy Cabaret for a few beers to celebrate. But since Artemis is newly sober, we went into Whole Foods for kombucha. A cashier named Rex—who I know for certain did the do with Artemis in the parking lot a few months ago—waved at her hopefully. But she made a shooing gesture at him and he looked away, clearly crushed.

  We settled in at a table, and as I sipped a lavender-pear-flavored booch I said, “You know that without you two, I’d be in PharmaTrial right now, all doped up and trying not to fall asleep.”

  “True,” Annie said. “But you’re the one who did the footwork. You just momentarily gave up before the miracles could happen.”

  Despite the happy occasion, I couldn’t help but notice Artemis looked a little morose. “What’s up, Artemis?” I asked.

  “I’m thrilled for you. Ecstatic! But for me I feel a little sad. I’m unemployed. Mostly sober, not manic. Haven’t even felt like fucking a stranger in days. What am I going to do with myself?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure it will come clear. Venus works in mysterious ways.”

  “That she does,” Annie said.

  “What are you doing in here, Poxy Roxy?” a voice boomed. Dirty Steve loomed over me. He looked larger than I remembered him and really intimidating. Had our constant jousting been sort of friendly? With the opioid’s effects lingering in my brain, it was hard to remember. “Nelson told me you were playing dummy for Big Pharma.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I just got hired to work on the fifth floor.” I was gloating a little bit, I couldn’t help it.

  Dirty Steve’s face fell. “You gotta be fucking kidding me. Annie’s smart. Annie, I get. But you? Poxy? On the fifth floor? Fuck me. I’ve been working for this company for eighteen years and I’m still in the cocksucking deli.”

  I shrugged in a way that I hoped seemed casual, benevolent, and a little grand.

  “What can she say? Topher Doyle knows talent when he sees it,” Artemis said. We all stood up and headed out, giggling and triumphant, as Dirty Steve glared after us.

  And now I’m home with my sweet furballs and about to climb into my own bed. While I’m thrilled to be home, I feel lonely—and maybe it’s ungrateful to be lonesome with such good friends and a new job and Lululemon perhaps on the way out of Sixth and Lamar. But after PharmaTrial, I am now used to having a roommate and people around at every second of the day and night. I can’t help but remember I live all alone and have absolutely zero boyfriend prospects. It would be so great if there was a nice, sexy guy here padding around the house in his bare feet.

  But I don’t want to spoil a wild and perfect day thinking about the one thing I don’t have. I’m tired. And as Barbara Kingsolver so sagely wrote, “Even a spotted pig looks black at night.”

  Gratefully,

  Roxy

  October 22, 2012

  Dear Everett,

  This morning I called Mitch to tell him I’m not going to make the PharmaTrial $7,000 after all, but that I got a well-paying job as store artist at the mothership Whole Foods. I know he’s my public defender and NOT my parole officer (who I will meet soon enough), but I wanted him to know.

  “That’s amazing!” he said. “Um, this may sound weird, but can I tell Sam?”

  “Texas?”

  “The very one.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “He asks about you,” he said.

  “He bailed on being my lawyer. What does he want to know about me?”

  “Doh!” Mitch said.

  “Doh, what?”

  “Doh. Don’t you get it? Public defenders aren’t supposed to DATE their clients. I mean, state statute allows for it—after all this is Texas—but we have a firm office rule against it. It would be an exploitation of power.”

  “Are you saying you want to date me?”

  “Certainly not. No offense. My wife is number one in my My Girls: Period Tracker app.”

  A lightbulb clicked on, casting a glow over the confused murk of my brain, which hadn’t totally bounced back from my week in an opioid haze.

  “Are you saying Texas refused to be my public defender because he wants to DATE me?”

  “I’m not saying it. But I’m not NOT saying it, either,” Mitch said.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve revealed too much. What I should say is congratulations on your job.”

  As soon as I got off the phone I texted you and Nadia to see if I could buy y’all lunch as a thank-you for pet sitting (and as a way to distract myself from obsessing about Texas). You seemed pretty overjoyed to see me, which gave my self-esteem a little boost, I must say. Y’all both seemed really happy about my new job, too. You gushed that the kombucha I’d made was delicious. I feel hopeful that the spell I cast on that kombucha, ensuring that whoever imbibes it will be happy, powerful, and love their work, will come true for you. It’s clearly working for me, as I was guzzling it before I went into PharmaTrial and I’m now—against all odds—gainfully employed! I know you are totally sick of working at Kerbey Lane Cafe, and I woul
d love for you to have a well-paying dream job too.

  When I hugged y’all goodbye, I found myself sorry to be parting from Nadia, your OM Queen girlfriend I once assumed would be some sort of emotionally damaged hussy. That’s what I get for my contempt prior to investigation. She really is delightful!

  So all in all, it has been an interesting (and unlikely) morning.

  Mystified,

  Roxy

  P.S. I’ve now been staring at my phone, waiting for Texas to call and ask me on a date. Or at least send me a text saying hi? But so far, nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  October 28, 2012

  Dear Everett,

  I spent all week thinking Mitch would tell Texas about my new job and then Texas would be so impressed he would call and ask me out, but of course he hasn’t. I told myself it’s greedy to hope for great friends, great pets, a new job, AND a date. But at least obsessing about whether or not Texas would call kept me from worrying too much about starting my new job.

  My mom and dad are finally back from Peru, so I went to visit them in Sun City yesterday. My mother bragged about my brother, who seems to have bullied the other Peace Corps volunteers into letting him take some sort of supervisory position. I did not tell them about my arrest, or my time in PharmaTrial, but I did tell them about my new job. My mother is annoyingly thrilled, as if I was previously homeless and now have finally agreed to come in off the streets.

  “You look great, Dad,” I finally said to change the subject. “The vacation did you good.” It’s true. He had a tan, but it was more than that.

  “It wasn’t the vacation,” my mother said. “He moped through the whole thing. It’s that pro-bono patient he’s taken on.”

  “Captain Tweaker?” I asked.