Summer Hours
Page 21
* * *
On weekends and evenings, Eric and I ate dim sum in Chinatown, leaving the restaurants with stuffed bellies and cheeks moist from steam. We went to the de Young Museum, the Exploratorium, Golden Gate Park, Haight-Ashbury.
One Saturday I won buy-one-get-one-free tickets to the wax museum from the Whirling Win Wheel, a promotional gimmick on Pier 39, and we screamed and laughed through the series of dark rooms with the other tourists.
I daydreamed about our excursions, past and future, while I worked at the real estate company. I’d taken the job because the pay wasn’t bad, the office was in San Francisco, near the Embarcadero BART station, and at least it was vaguely related to journalism (as I reminded myself ten times a day).
It was as dull as I’d feared. Some days were so tedious I felt my gray, tweedy cubicle walls closing in on me. One broker named Stan Case kept a bowl of blue jelly beans on his desk labeled Viagra and offered me some daily, winking, or else tried to sell me Amway shampoo. But most of the guys—and they were all guys—were okay.
I was allowed to listen to headphones, Seal singing over and over about how we’d never survive unless we got a little crazy.
It helped.
Eric and I rode the train together, and that helped, too.
He wasn’t faring much better in his internship, at a cable series called Golden State. The listing called it an “experimental documentary series.” But Eric said it was fake—trumped-up story lines about the telegenic daughter of a computer baron and the telegenic boys she wasn’t really dating. Eric hated perpetuating a lie that was so successful the show sometimes beat MTV in its time slot.
Mostly, he hated himself for not quitting.
We commiserated about our jobs as the shimmying BART car whisked us into the dark tunnel under the Bay, lights flicking on and off.
“Are we paying our dues or selling out?” he asked. “Remember when you wrote me that?”
“Yes. And I remember you didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t know the answer. I still don’t.”
July 21, 1997
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
Meet me for L.A. Confidential at the Roxie at 1? I’m dying here.
From: rebeccareardon@ehindustrial.com
Go back to work, brat. We’re lucky to have gainful employment.
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
Gainful=painful. Please. My treat? They’ll never miss you. C’mon... I know you want to.
From: rebeccareardon@ehindustrial.com
You’re going to get fired. You’re going to get me fired.
Email is for work correspondence only; please stop trying to negatively impact my career performance.
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
It’s just a movie. What, are you trying to earn one of those nifty mustard-yellow blazers with the patches?
From: rebeccareardon@ehindustrial.com
Wearing it now, snob. Kindly cease the personal emailing during work hours, as E & H policy forbids it.
Eric didn’t cease.
All through July, I said no.
When I turned my calendar to August, I continued to say no.
On August 5, the afternoon I heard Stan Case hollering to another broker across the office, describing his date’s breasts as “like tennis balls in tube socks,” I said yes.
And I continued to say yes, as the days got hotter and the air-conditioned theaters—and Eric—got their hooks into me.
August 14
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
Chron/E3. TL. AL1205. OM, S.
That was all.
We’d worked out a code. Today’s message meant Eric wanted me to look in the San Francisco Chronicle, page E3. The Entertainment section, main movie review at the top left of the page. Today, it was Grosse Pointe Blank. In Eric-ese, the email was an invitation to meet him at the 12:05 matinee at the Fillmore. OM, S meant lunch and candy would be on him, a surprise.
Sometimes the message ended OM, WUW? (Lunch on me, What do you want?) or OM, B/P/G/H (Lunch on me, Do you want a burrito or pizza or gyro or hamburger?).
Because just calling me up would be too simple. And not nearly as much fun.
If anyone ever read our messages, they’d suspect us of something far more nefarious than slipping away from our sucky jobs to go to matinees and eat junk food.
I emailed back:
100
One hundred percent chance I’d be there. It was our fourth workday movie of the summer.
I left my coat on my chair and scattered reports by my keyboard. My signature moves. I grabbed a blank CD and waved it at the receptionist as I passed the front desk. She was on the phone, whispering urgently to somebody.
“I’m going to lunch and the printer,” I said. “Need anything?”
She shook her head.
Sweet freedom. The Fillmore was only a couple of blocks away. Eric sat inside already, four rows from the screen. He chose his seats with geometric precision, factoring in the screen size, the type of film, and the placement of the speakers.
“Aren’t you that guy I saw in Teen People?” I said. “With, like, Krista Gold from Golden State? Can I have your autograph?”
Eric flipped me off. A blink-and-you’d-miss-it, one-handed flip-off.
“Are you ever going to let that joke die?” he asked.
“Nope, it’s still working for me.”
“It was weeks ago, and you could barely see me. And I wasn’t with her. I was in the background. Doing my job.”
“Come on, you’re famous. You should be milking it.”
“Keep it up and I’m not feeding you.”
“What’s on the menu today?”
Eric pulled two fat foil tubes out of a white bag and handed me the one with NG scrawled on it in marker. “No guacamole para usted.”
“From the good place?”
“Sí.”
“Yum. Thanks.”
“And for dessert...” He rummaged under his seat and pulled up a bag of toffee. He’d already rolled down the top of the bag so it wouldn’t rattle during the movie.
“Such a balanced meal,” I said. “So how’s it going this week? How often do you think about quitting?”
“Only every half hour. I might as well be a paparazzo. Take pictures of celebrities sneezing and say they’re crying.”
“It’s an internship. It’s supposed to suck.”
“Want to trade?”
“I don’t think I can handle more glamour than the Elliott & Healey, Industrial Realty newsletter.”
The previews started. “Hey, Eric,” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got to stop doing this.”
“You say that every time.”
* * *
Serra called us brats. We agreed, and agreed we had to stop.
But the glorious dark theaters drew us back. We munched our smuggled-in food, keeping the wrappers low when the kid came in with his flashlight to do his check. We never got caught bringing in our outside food or drink to save money, and our bosses never caught us skipping out, either.
“What did you think?” asked Eric after Grosse Pointe Blank, as we stood on the sidewalk blinking ourselves back to reality.
“A nine,” I said.
“I say eight and a half.”
Eric would happily sit in a café and deconstruct Grosse Pointe Blank with me for another two hours, but I resisted. “I’d better get back.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
We went opposite ways on the sidewalk, Eric to help record manufactured crises for his taut Golden State blondes, me back to my humming Dell monitor at Elliott & Healey.
The first time I’d ditched work to meet Eric at the movies, I’d felt guilty the whole time and
actually looked over my shoulder when I walked into the theater. Not anymore.
Of course, everyone in the office fudged their schedules. They got their teeth whitened and called it a meeting. They lingered at the park an extra hour after they finished the last bite of their turkey cheddar on whole wheat. But there was something about going to the movies during work hours that felt like crossing a line of decency.
Eric and I reminded ourselves all the time that we were lucky. I could parlay my dry newsletter into something better. Eric was learning the business.
“We have to stop,” we said as summer waned.
August 19
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Sitting in my gray pneumatic chair, my upper arms hanging vertically and elbows bent at ninety degrees, the top of my monitor no more than ten inches below my line of sight, as recommended in the office-wide carpal tunnel syndrome prevention presentation meeting we’d had the day before
WHERE I WAS | The 12:55 matinee at the Vogue
August 21
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
Chron. E3. BR. P1225. OM, H/P/C
From: rebeccareardon@ehindustrial.com
Reply—99/C
I’d been craving a calzone. We saw The Full Monty. Eric gave it a 7.0 and I gave it a 7.4.
August 22
From: ericlogan@goldproductions.com
E1. TR. R1255. OM.
From: rebeccareardon@ehindustrial.com
Reply—50
I really believed there was only a fifty-fifty chance I’d make it to the revival of Harvey. But by eleven, I’d finished all my work for the day, even made the rounds, asking the guys if they needed help.
I refreshed my inbox robotically for ten minutes, put my head on my desk.
I grabbed my purse, jammed out the door, and jogged the four blocks to the Balboa. I slipped into the seat next to Eric as the opening credits rolled. He handed me a root beer.
“I knew you’d come.”
35
Grownups
August 23, 1997
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Welcoming new English majors
WHERE I WAS | Staring at myself
More than two months after the last time we’d seen each other, I got an email from Cal.
How’s your summer gone? I blame that prehistoric laptop for losing the many emails you’ve written to me since June. (?) The Rebecca-lessness of my inbox couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that you never sent them.
Life is dull, dull, dull. All VC types, all the time. Big, boring parties. No you. I have daily thoughts of divesting from everything so I can sail around the San Juans.
I miss our parties for two. I miss you, human. But I understand, and want only good things for you.
Take care,
C
xx
A good-natured, restrained message, considering how I’d left things.
I almost typed, I miss you, too.
But it wasn’t true. I’d been too busy to miss him. Taking my class and working and sneaking out to movies during the day, playing with Eric and Maggie and Serra at night, making up for lost time.
I’d had a few guilt pangs, sudden images from my good moments with Cal, and the vague, immature way I’d left things, that intruded into the present.
Once, after a movie, Eric and I went to an old soda fountain on Cole Street for chocolate shakes, and there was a black-and-white sign on the door: Summer Hours. I’d been laughing when I swung the door open, and I had to force myself to keep the laugh going as we sat down at the counter.
But by the time our order came and Eric automatically dropped his cherry into my glass—I loved maraschino cherries and he hated them—I felt okay again. They were just two small words.
And the next time I saw one of those signs it barely registered.
My summer had been full, fun, easy. With Eric, I didn’t feel that thrilling-but-draining temptation to act more detached and cynical than I felt, like I had with Cal. We fell back into our high school friendship effortlessly, both of us appreciating it more now, knowing how unusual it was. How easy it was to misplace.
I turned off my laptop without replying to Cal, and it shuddered and clicked as it powered down.
I’d compose a reply in my head, during the English department reception. The reception would be dull, dull, dull, like Cal’s events with the VC types. These department mixers were always sparsely attended, sweating-cheese-cube affairs on the lawn by the clock tower. Nervous freshmen and a few TAs, rarely any faculty. But since this was my last one I’d decided to make an appearance before running across campus to Serra’s art show.
I pulled on my new green shift dress, swiped on lipstick, got my purse together. Keys, cash, my congratulations card for Serra, the Artek gift certificate I’d bought her.
The phone rang and I answered hastily. “Whoever this is, I’m late for the English department mixer.”
“It’s not going to sell. Fuck. I was an idiot to say I’d do it.”
Serra, calling from a pay phone in the gallery, though the invitational wasn’t for two hours.
“It’ll sell, Serr.”
“Yvonne talked me into pricing it at $800,” Serra said. “She’s insane. I was thinking more like $8.”
“It’s going to be worth $8,000 when you’re famous.”
“You should see the other work. I look like the kiddy corner.”
“I’ll come early.”
“Don’t skip your English thing, Becc. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
* * *
I crossed the sculpture lawn in front of the gallery, a low-slung concrete building on Bancroft. Serra was pacing inside, behind the glass front wall. She spied me and acted out a silent scream—wide mouth, rattling head.
I pantomimed my calm-down response—yoga thumb-on-index-finger gestures. (Maggie and Serra and I had taken yoga together sophomore year. The teacher had to split us up because she said we were disruptive. Maggie made us laugh too much, gyrating in goddess pose.)
“I’m a wreck,” Serra said, opening the door.
“I got that.”
The only people there besides the two of us were the caterers arranging glasses at the bar.
“I can’t even look at it,” she said, pulling me toward a pedestal in the Emerging Artists room.
From the way Serra had tried to downplay the event, I’d expected her piece to be shoved into some dark corner of the gallery. But Yvonne had given the new artists primo real estate near the front.
Triptych: Grownups/Suspended Animation, the placard on Serra’s piece said. Serra Indrijo. Urethane, plastics, and paper. $800.
I circled it, not speaking for a long time.
When she’d explained what a triptych was, I envisioned three separate paintings. Nothing like this.
She had created an entire aquatic world inside three thick, clear panels of plastic, held together with blue metallic hinges. She’d made it sound childish, like a grade school diorama, but it wasn’t. It was dreamlike, intricate as a Brueghel painting.
At first glance the animals in the aquamarine waves all looked alike. But when I leaned close to the third panel I saw it was us. All of us.
We were a herd of tiny furry creatures with gills. A different scene in each panel. In the first one we were sleeping, in the second swimming, and in the third...it was hard to say exactly. Maybe floating.
I examined the middle panel and found Serra—the round creature with the dark hair and paintbrush. Me—holding a notebook, one long mousy leg tangled in seaweed, beneath a stern white-furred animal with a ribbon on its gray head. Maggie—a whirling platinum-spiked critter with gray eyes. Eric, with a cowlicky pelt. And dozens of others, all paddling, some looking over their shoulders in fear, some closing their eyes, some g
azing up at the luminous surface.
Scraps of paper and objects surrounded us in all three pieces of the triptych—textbooks, a miniature Rancilio espresso maker, a corner of Serra’s Perkins loan statement, a Barbie-size suit, a laptop, a TV, a bundle of cash. In the upper-right corner of the middle piece, a gold graduation cap, like the mouth of a tuba, pulled in the sea, but we fought against it, swimming away and tugging each other.
“What do you think? Tell the truth. It’s garbage, right?”
“It’s incredible,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Honest? It’s not too literal?” Serra furrowed her brow.
“It’s brilliant,” I said.
“Last night I had a nightmare that a critic said it had ‘all the subtlety of a Kuddli Kreaturz Treehouse toy set.’”
“The fake childish thing is what makes it good. Because it’s not childish. It’s...semi-frightening. Hopeful, though, with the sun shining through the water here.” I started to tap on the top of the first panel but stopped myself. It wasn’t good form to touch art—of course I knew that—but that wasn’t what stopped me. I stopped because for a second I worried my tapping would disturb the animals inside the glass. That was how real the piece felt.
“How do you get everything in there?” I asked.
“I do it in layers, it takes forever. It’s a bitch to get it clear enough, and attached right. I’m still not one hundred percent happy with the technique. I wanted it to look seamless. And I didn’t make the hinges, I didn’t have the tools.”
“Where’d you get them?” I asked.
“Yvonne hooked me up with this awesome metalwork artist, Joy Gold, and she made them. Great name, huh? Like, the perfect artist name.”
“I think Serra Indrijo is a perfect artist name,” I said.
She smiled. “Anyway, she did just what I asked, but I feel kind of guilty that I didn’t make them.”
“It’s a world,” I said. “You created a world, Serra. What else matters?”
People started trickling in. The young artists were the first to arrive. They did excited laps around the gallery, trying not to stare at their own pieces too much.