by Alina Simone
Anna exhaled and shook her head. No one does that. No one should do that. It sounded awful. She had the urge to interrupt Taj to tell him about the day Professor Kagan had sat with her all through a congenial lunch, chatting away about the amazing colloquium series the faculty had set up for the fall semester—the semester Anna would not be invited back—before shooting her down in the graduate lounge in full earshot of two of her fellow classmates, both Slavs, of course. But Anna could sense that it wasn’t her turn to talk. With Taj, she wasn’t sure when, if ever, it would finally be her turn.
“Seriously, don’t say anything to Lauren,” he was saying.
“I won’t,” Anna said. “And you know, there are a lot of other festivals. You can always submit it somewhere else.”
He poured himself another shot.
“There’s South by Southwest, there’s Sundance, Toronto,” Anna listed. She began eating the chocolate herself.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck Tribeca and Slamdance and Toronto. At the end of the day you know what? It’s between the creator and the public.” Taj’s eyes glistened the way they did whenever he slipped into speech mode. “The truth is that all the self-anointed gatekeepers—agents, managers, lawyers, producer reps, festival selectors, talent spotters—all the fucking cockroaches and jumped-up arrivistes, have no power to either stop or help you. They only exist if you believe in them. And I’m going to tell you something else,” Taj said, “but you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”
“I’ll put it on the list,” Anna said, thinking a little jokiness might help lift his spirits.
But Taj regarded her unsmiling. “I am not shitting you.”
“I will,” she said, then quickly, “I know.”
“Gilman was on the jury.”
Anna sucked in her breath. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Maybe he didn’t know it was you?”
“He knew.”
“But why would he do that? Does he have something against you?”
“I don’t know. Apparently. Who knows?”
“Well, I’m sure it’s not your fault.”
He threw her a sharp glance. “Why?”
Anna did her best to recall something Leslie might have once said about the Power of Yes, or how optimism is like a muscle you have to work to develop, but suddenly decided to try a different tack.
“You know, I actually think what you are doing is way beyond Gilman. Conceptually, that is.”
“Anna, you love Gilman. You want Gilman’s cock in your mouth!”
“I maybe did at first, love him, I mean,” Anna said, flustered, “but that was before I started working with you.”
“So now you’ve seen the light,” Taj said, his voice flat. “Hallelujah.”
“It’s like what you said, remember?” she continued. “About the difference between titillation and titillation plus. I really think you’ve got it. You’ve got the plus.”
Taj considered this for a moment, lining up a few things on the table: a votive candle holder shaped like a tree trunk, a tiny notepad from Muji, a box of diuretic tea. Then he looked up. She looked back at him, not without hope.
“Come here,” Taj said. She stood and went over to him. He drew her into a full embrace. “Thank you,” he said, exhaling deep into her sweater.
It seemed as though they stayed that way for a long time.
* * *
Two drinks later, Anna and Taj were on the roof, which was strictly off-limits. The roof had no railing and was covered in peeling tar paper. Strange protuberances erupted from its lunar surface like calligraphic symbols from some unknown language. The downtown Brooklyn skyline squatted low on the horizon like it was bending down to wipe Manhattan’s ass. Taj and Anna sat underneath a satellite dish, kissing. It was cold out, but the combination of vodka and Taj’s warm mouth sent a liquid heat coursing through her.
“I don’t know anything about you,” Taj whispered. “I’m such a selfish pile of shit.”
“You’re not!”
“I am.”
“I don’t need to talk about me,” Anna said, meaning it. “I already know about me.”
“The clock tower looks really nice from up here.”
“I know.”
“Tell me something. Something you’ve never told anyone.”
Taj’s hands were moving all over her now, causing Anna to regret certain folds of fat. She tried to reposition herself to allow for better access as she considered Taj’s question. She could tell him about Kyle, her boyfriend in freshman year of college, who she had dated for a year but never kissed. Or about the time she had sold some of her eggs to pay for her summer in Europe. She could relate the story of her embarrassing failed suicide attempt in high school, how she’d drunk half a bottle of her mother’s hydrogen peroxide, then immediately dialed 911—but instead she found herself saying, “I’m addicted to the Internet.”
Taj laughed, his hand fumbling around her back in search of bra hooks that were, unfortunately, located in the front.
“You and everyone else.”
“No. I’m really, not-jokingly addicted. I-I can’t get anything done. I think it’s why I’m so … fucked up. Maybe why I got kicked out of grad school.”
“Internet addiction is the meme of our generation.”
“It’s not just getting things done,” Anna continued. “It’s everything. Life, relationships. I have this fantasy. Want to hear my fantasy?” Taj said nothing so Anna decided to keep going. “It’s that someday Google’ll figure out a way to make real life like Gmail so then you can, you know, trash bad conversations, run people through filters, delete them—”
“Clean out your cache?” Taj added. “Junk your preferences?”
“Yeah.” Anna laughed. Taj laughed, too. Suddenly it was funny, even though, really, it wasn’t.
“I get up in the night and check my e-mail—”
“Shhh,” Taj said. But this was annoying, because now Anna wanted to talk.
“—like some old guy with a bad prostate who needs to pee all the time. Two, three times a night sometimes.”
The whine of an ambulance sounded in the distance and suddenly she felt ashamed of her ridiculously bourgeois complaints. “But I guess it’s probably not a big deal, as addictions go, right?” she added.
“It’s not like you’re dying of cirrhosis,” Taj said. “My dad sees a lot of those cases.”
“No,” she agreed. Still, she suspected it was exactly these sorts of embarrassingly petty revelations that would bring her and Taj closer together. Brandon would be proud of her; without even realizing it, she was playing the vulnerability game.
“Anyway, I bet Gilman got rejected a lot, too, you know. In the beginning.”
“Yeah, well, Gilman found a work-around,” Taj said in a cryptic voice.
“You should keep submitting. You’re so good,” Anna said, not caring about Gilman anymore. The tips of Taj’s fingers were darting around her breasts like cold little fishes.
“I’m never submitting to anything again.”
“Taj…”
“Fuck it. I’m done. Fucking gatekeepers.”
“But the Gugg—”
“Fuck the Gugg.”
“It’s just one—oh!”
“Shhh…”
“But you—”
“That feels good?”
“Y-yes—”
“Right there?”
“Mmm … yes.”
“Or maybe there?”
“Oh!” Anna breathed into Taj’s neck, surprised. Addiction, she thought. A. Dick. Shun. She giggled. It had been a very long time.
“Yeah, yeah … right there…”
15
As Taj drove Anna sat silently in the back, staring out the window and cradling thoughts of the two of them together. She had spent the past two days since the roof episode having conversations with Taj in her head. She was careful not to call him, instead trying to enjoy the Tajy tint he’d lent to her
life. Tajiness was hard to quantify or describe. She felt herself quicker to judge, if not to express that judgment. Sharper. A little meaner, maybe. Even wasting time on the Internet, she’d started clicking and mousing more deliberately. Be careful, Leslie had said after Anna filled her in on the latest developments with Taj. Don’t do what you always do. And Anna had taken these words to heart, even though Leslie failed to elaborate on what she meant. Last night, though, she had started to get the jitters, fearing it would be weird seeing Taj in front of everyone the next morning without having debriefed their encounter. But a jokey e-mail from him yesterday had dispelled all doubts. It was a link to an Internet addiction rehab program. Subject line: Online, natch:)
Now the crew was on its way to Islington, New Jersey, to shoot a carnival on the edge of town. They were traveling down a ratty two-lane highway past tract houses decorated with American flags and ceramic fawns, trucks on concrete blocks, plastic polycarbonate jugs filled with colored water. What an unspeakably real and poignant place, Anna thought. She was in the kind of dangerous mood that made even the eighties pop music blaring from the stereo resonate with meaning. “Falling in love is so bittersweet,” Whitney Houston sang. So true, Anna thought. Both bitter and sweet, yes, only at the same time!
She imagined herself and Taj inhabiting one of the dreary houses that lined the highway, wondered what their life together would be like. Of course, the thought of Taj—who was probably born with an iPad in his hand—living here of all places was hilarifying. It hardly mattered, though. Anna was so boozy with desire she could location-scout their future anywhere. McDonalds. Alcatraz. The Moon. Their movie would be shot with a blue filter. She could already picture herself at the kitchen sink, staring through the faded curtains, past the browning lawns and all the way back to her old life, which had been entirely devoid of real things like love and lawns and deflated kiddie pools. In the seat in front of hers, Fifteen and Sixteen were palming twin Zi8s and filming the same scenery. She pretended not to notice when they panned the camera her way, and was careful to keep the melancholy look on her face.
The highway ended in a delta of chain restaurants and cheap motels. Another mile down the road and the tremulous outline of a Ferris wheel hove into view, its lights Crayola bright.
“Welcome to our John Waters movie,” Lauren murmured as Taj ratcheted back the parking brake.
Was it just Anna, or had some distance opened between Taj and Lauren? When it came time to unload, instead of forming their usual intimidating little clique, they circled each other like opposing magnets. In addition to Sasha and the hoodied crew members, they had brought along the star of the production: Lamba, a forty-seven-year-old Sikh man whose dream was to fall in love at a carnival. Privately, Taj acknowledged Lamba was a hard sell given the rot that was spreading across his front teeth. Still, here they were in central New Jersey, where anything was possible.
Thinking that Lauren looked—could it be?—a bit lonely, setting up a tripod at the edge of the parking lot for an establishing shot, Anna decided to approach her. But once she was standing beside Lauren, she could think of nothing to say, found herself yearning for a Google search prompt. Like how when you start typing crotch into Google, it might suggest “crotch rocket,” “crotch rot,” or “crotchety” to speed you on your way. And this reminded her how during a break last week at the Compound she’d wandered over to Taj’s Mac Air and typed Gilman’s name into Google, revealing Taj’s search history for the same name: “Paul Gilman narcissist” and “Paul Gilman backlash.”
“Your hair looks really nice today,” Anna ventured at last, thinking maybe this was something Brie would say.
Lauren breathed a heavy sigh. “If you have mid-length hair and you want to look like a natural blonde in New York City, it will cost you about three hundred dollars.” She looked directly at Anna. “Such a rip.”
Though well versed in the brutal economics of highlights and lowlights that made wage slaves of so many women, Anna still found herself with absolutely nothing to say on that score. She tried again.
“So what do you think of this place?”
“I don’t know.” Lauren shrugged. “Same old, I guess.”
Then the conversation dried up like it always did with Lauren, who probably hated her. Who probably thought Anna was an unbearable neophyte, a clingy wannabe and pathetically lacking in dietary self-restraint. That’s it, Anna thought, and vowed to stop trying. But as it turned out, she didn’t need to worry about Lauren being left alone. Somehow it fell to her to accompany Lamba through the souk-like cluster of game booths crowding the midway, scoping out lonely women in search of a savior with a pocketful of quarters. The hoodied crewmen followed them with their Zi8s while Sasha monitored the sound on their wireless mics from a distance. This left Anna and Taj free to retreat to the shadows of the Tilt-A-Whirl to make out.
“Shouldn’t you be out there filming?” Anna whispered.
“Five more minutes,” said Taj, snaking a hand warm and dry as a fresh Xerox under her shirt, up her bare back. She straightened up and sucked her stomach in imperceptibly. The Tilt-A-Whirl was making a huge, ground-thumping sound that echoed in Anna’s rib cage as it swung on its axis. “Your thing is beeping,” Taj breathed into her neck.
It was true, Anna realized. Her cell phone was pinging away.
“I don’t care,” Anna breathed back. But despite the circumstances, it wasn’t true. She found herself badly wanting to check her caller ID. Why was it that whenever she missed a call, she automatically assumed it was Yahweh calling to inform her that her whole life was fixed now?
“We should go,” he said at last. They were already testing the boundaries of propriety; it turned out small children exclusively were the ones interested in patrolling the undersides of the carnival rides. When they emerged into the klieg lights and the thick smell of burning sugar and dough, Anna slipped her hand into Taj’s. Just as quickly, he removed it.
“We should probably keep things on the down low,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to confuse the guys.” At this Anna could only nod, confused.
It was halfway down the midway that the incident with the woman took place. Rather, the girl—she couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Taj stopped so suddenly that Anna was already well past the Bottle Ring Toss when she realized he was no longer beside her. The girl was sitting on a bench chewing on an enormous thing of blue cotton candy, an orb so garish that for a second Anna thought she might be eating a clown’s wig. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts that showed off her long, tan legs and a button-down shirt knotted above her midriff, like Britney Spears in that video.
“Wow,” Taj whispered. “Look at that. Isn’t she hot?”
She was, Anna had to admit. Heart-shaped face, eyes blue as sea-whipped glass, dark wind-blown hair, a nose that belied Nordic heritage. It was rare that all the elements aligned so perfectly. When Anna ran the girl’s face through the TSA scanner in her head and matched it against the universal profile—the cutter from which supermodel cookies emerged—a bell clanged somewhere in her head, activating her fight-or-flight impulses.
“Mmm,” Anna managed.
“Those eyes! Killer.”
The girl’s lips, blue from the cotton candy, now matched her eyes as well. She blinked and ate and stared off at nothing in particular, not noticing either Taj or Anna. Eventually they started moving again.
“I swear, you only see girls like that in places like this,” Taj said. “Totally unspoiled.”
What is this? Anna wondered. Hadn’t Taj just been kissing her? Weren’t they—even in some marginal, non-hand-holding way—together? Did he even consider she might feel hurt or insecure by his gawping openly at a beautiful young woman? And wasn’t it borderline autistic of him to ask Anna to join him in extolling this girl’s hotness when he’d never so much as complimented her choice of earrings, let alone the entirety of her person? They walked the rest of the midway in silence until they finally spotted the crew huddled aroun
d the Crossbow Shoot, where Lamba was taking aim at a clothesline of moving paper bull’s-eyes.
“How’s it going?” Taj asked Lauren.
“He doesn’t want to talk to any women. He just wants to play the games,” Lauren said. She pointed to a row of plush Disney characters dangling from nooses under the awning. “He’s obsessed with that Tweety.”
They watched as Lamba shot another round. The cap gun popped loudly several times and a little plume of smoke emerged from its barrel. He brought the barrel up to his nose, inhaling deeply.
“Smells good!” Lamba said, to no one in particular.
“Maybe if he wins a prize,” Taj said, “we can just walk around with him afterward and find a girl he can give it to?”
“Then we’re going to need a lot more tickets,” Lauren said. They all watched grimly as Lamba fired at the target rapidly, intently, and with what appeared to be a total lack of accuracy.
Taj turned to Anna. “Hey, can you get us some tickets?”
“How many?” Anna said.
“Fifty bucks’ worth.” Taj touched her shoulder then lowered his voice a notch, adding, “I’ll get you later.”
Anna walked away, irked. The hand-holding incident, the girl, the fifty dollars—in the space of five minutes, all of this bad juju had suddenly accrued, threatening to spoil her mood for the rest of the night. She did her best to channel Leslie’s thinking. Repositioning one’s disposition, as she’d told Anna, required taking responsibility for her own role in the way people treated her. Perhaps Anna had subconsciously invited these slights. Or somehow failed to subconsciously invite the requisite compliments. Regardless, Anna reminded herself, nothing had actually changed. Taj—an actual guy, and not some elusive on-screen avatar—liked her, wanted to work with her, better still, wanted to kiss her, even if that latter activity was relegated to obscure and uncomfortable locales. Wasn’t she still a creative partner whom he could both trust and build a lasting professional relationship with? And right then, Anna made a new resolution: to be easy. She would not ask for the fifty dollars at the end of the night when Taj dropped her off. In fact, she would not mention it at all, unless he brought it up first. Hadn’t he asked her for his trust in the very beginning? Thus resolved, she bought herself a funnel cake, both as a reward for being sensible and with the justification that traveling to Islington, New Jersey, was akin to visiting an exotic country where funnel cake was the indigenous specialty. She was, in a sense, a locavore.
