“Both. But I meant the fake one. Your anti-résumé, or whatever it is.”
“Know something scary? I could have made it five pages longer. I had more to print about the secret stuff than the not-secret stuff.”
“We all have that.”
“I have a theory.”
“You always have a theory.”
“You and I were extreme rule abiders in high school, right?”
I finished my mouthful of noodles. “After Serra and I got our responsible hooks in you. We established that a long time ago,” I said.
“That’s why we take extra pleasure in ditching our responsibilities now.”
“Recovering goody-goodies. I like it.”
“But I’m going to get my act together. Find a job I don’t want to skip out on, like you.”
“That’s the trick.”
That night we brushed our teeth at the same time. Eric had gone to the laundromat so he was wearing his own clothes again. Clean gray shorts and his Hitchcock shirt. I had on my ratty Beck T-shirt, the one Maggie had given me for my twenty-first, and the Nike sweats he’d washed for me.
He spat out white foam, then met my eyes in the mirror.
“Hey, roomie,” he said.
“Hey.”
I lay in bed thinking for a long time. About how right it felt with Eric.
And not just because of our shared history.
But because Eric thought he would find something new in a movie he’d already watched ten times. He was so sure there was still much to discover in the world, and I loved that about him.
For all the heat between us in bed, Cal had been passionless.
And now here were both kinds of passion on my beat-up sofa, ten feet away. Waiting for me, right there.
I don’t know how many hours of sleep Eric got that night, out on his couch.
But even though I had the AC on and the alley below my window was quieter than usual, I only got about three.
44
Coping Mechanisms
2008
Friday, 9:20 p.m.
We lie on the dewy grass in the lamp-lit roof garden, our heads near a big circular fountain. Everything on the square patio is laid out symmetrically—the benches, the curving hedges around the fountain, the potted flowers, and the ones in neat, low rows. It’s relaxing.
We listen to the wind in the palm trees, the trickle of the fountain’s spout, the occasional cable car trings from far below, on Powell Street. It’s too foggy to see stars, but there are blinking red taillights from planes, taking off from SFO airport.
“This is nice,” I say. “I should’ve brought my comforter up so I could sleep here. Though maybe the Fairmont wouldn’t be so keen on that. I’d probably get grass stains on it, and I’ve already done enough damage to their property.”
“It’s been a day, huh?”
“It’s been a day.” A day and ten years.
“So Serra’s little plastic Wild Kingdom put you over the edge?”
“Yeah.”
“A compliment to the artist. And we don’t even have the third section yet.”
“I know. It just hit me. How different things have turned out compared with what I expected. Work, everything. You know?” I roll onto my right side to face him.
He’s got his hands clasped together under his head, and the stretch has pulled his white T-shirt up a few inches, revealing his hip bones, a strip of midriff, the silky line of brown hair in the center. The treasure trail, it’s called.
I roll onto my back again, searching for the next plane.
“So you’re not that into your job right now?” he asks.
“Mild understatement. Do you know what I do all day?”
“You’re a content officer. You...officiate content.”
I confess to the night sky: “I monetize demographically sorted, SEO-keyword-generated paid media programming on vertical web content partner sites.”
Eric doesn’t answer, possibly stunned into silence by the force of my sarcasm. I’m just as surprised by the edge in my voice, the angry tremor. Though I shouldn’t be. It’s been building for a long time.
I’ve started my own graffiti club at work. It has a membership of one, and we meet in my corner office, under my polished rosewood desk.
I started the club one Monday a year ago. I’d just scored a huge victory for Newzly. A $300,000 ad-partnership deal. My email inbox was spilling over with congratulations.
Instead of celebrating with my colleagues, I locked my door, crawled under my desk, and drew a replica of the Feline Collective cat in red Sharpie. I remembered the tag exactly, down to the span of its raised tail and the curve of its haughty neck. The cat knows. Serra had said it was supposed to mean that nobody else could take away our name—our ineffable name. That only we knew who we were.
Yes, the act was entitled, self-indulgent, theatrical. Hunching under my desk in Armani silk-wool-blend tights to secretly tattoo the underbelly of my executive office furniture was all of these things.
But after I did it, I felt better. I crawled up to my chair and got right back to work.
For a while, it was the only mark down there. I pictured it, scowling in disapproval as I went about my workday. Have you forgotten your name, Rebecca Reardon?
Sometimes I’d touch it. I’d drawn it in a convenient spot, below the shift key on my keyboard, and it felt good to rub the underside of my desk where I’d hidden it. A quick, furtive stroke was all it took to calm me. My coworkers had all kinds of tchotchkes on their desks—Day-Glo Koosh balls to fondle, mini zen gardens to rake, silver Newton’s cradle balls to clack together; this seemed no different.
I had a bad day a few months later and drew again. A question mark this time. My tribute to A Room with a View, a book I’d loved in college.
I began writing something weekly. A sum-up or epigraph.
Then it became the only thing that got me through the day.
A few months ago I started running out of space. I made my marks smaller and smaller, overlapping, fitting messages inside an O or a B. I decided that when I ran out of room I would quit my job.
That was a month ago.
“I hate it,” I tell Eric, gazing up at a red plane light. It winks, rising, then disappears into the fog. “I hate what I do. I hate myself for doing it.”
I’ve never said this out loud. I haven’t even written it under my desk. I’ve scribbled pig and go to hell and once, after an especially tedious meeting, That’s 108 minutes we’ll never get back, people. Nice job!!!!
But now that I’ve said it, something cracks open. “The highlight of my day is writing secret messages on the underside of my desk. I spend all day luring people away from news, Eric. Away from what they set out to find. We’re flooding the internet with junk.”
It feels good to let it all out, without anyone trying to convince me otherwise.
I sit up, ruffle my palm along the damp grass in front of me. “I create little side routes, little...phony painted footbridges and gardens and rivers, all brilliantly designed to distract people from what’s important. They type in a search about the Olympics and before they know it, they’re reading an airline ad without realizing it.
“Our slogan is The News You Choose. But nobody’s choosing anything. They’re being manipulated.”
I tug at a blade of grass. Another. Then a clump. Rip. Rip, rip.
“They want to find out what happened in Washington today and end up doing some cutesy poll. So some think tank...” rip, rip, rip “...can extract data on them. And they have no fucking idea what’s real and what’s not.” I’m pulling hard at the grass now, indiscriminately. The Fairmont will have to reseed, but it feels incredible, better than tending any desktop zen garden. “And pretty soon nobody will remember. Or care. Maybe not even me.”
I yank up a fistful
of roots. Throw it at the trunk of a palm tree, where it hits with a sloppy thwack, leaving mud on the pale bark. “Add it to the damage fee.”
I glance over at him, afraid he’s going to be staring in horror at the bald patches in the Fairmont’s grass.
But he’s looking at me intently.
“Did that feel good?” he asks.
“Spectacular.”
He sits up, tears a grass clump, and throws it at the tree, making a splat just under mine.
I do another, and then he aims for that mark, nailing it.
“Nice one!”
“And now, the curveball...” He stands, bends over. Pulls out a giant clump, winds up. Exaggerating, tilting back on one long leg, windmilling his right arm. It’s a terrible pitch; the ball of grass lands on the trunk, inches from the ground. “I guess I’m a little rusty.” He brushes grass from his hands. “So these secret messages under your desk. What do they say?”
“Oh. You know. Shove your weekday click-through rate up your ass. Stuff like that.”
He laughs. “Your basic professional communication. I love it. Will you take a picture of your masterpiece and send it to me?”
“Sure. But don’t show anyone. I’ll never get another job.”
“I won’t show anyone. You know...”
“What?”
“Just that we’re lucky. To have any job right now.”
“I know. Beyond lucky. I am aware of that fact every single day. But...”
“Yes. But.”
He checks out a topiary in a pot in front of us. Three perfect spheres stacked on top of each other. Edward Scissorhands.
I will him to say it.
He doesn’t, but staring out at the lights of the city, he says something almost as comforting: “I don’t love what I do, either. Not all day, every day. Maybe it’s foolish to think that’s possible.”
“Maybe,” I say. “It’s like...we pick this industry we’re passionate about, and then if we’re really, really good at it and really, really lucky, we get to watch the job become a total perversion of what we once loved. Maybe we’d be better off keeping the passions to the side. Separate from the paycheck.”
“Maybe.”
“But the way you felt about movies, Eric. That doesn’t just die.”
He’s still looking out at the city, taking in the lights. The scattered bright squares of high-rise office windows, the draped Christmas lights of the Bay Bridge, and the white flares on the tip of Coit Tower.
“Maybe it can,” he says. So softly I almost miss it. “If you want it to.”
“Eric.”
Your dreams aren’t dead, I whispered to the twenty-two-year-old at Crystal Cove.
Eric, you don’t want it to, I want to say now, a decade later.
But just then he turns to face me, leans against the stone wall. “Okay. I can tell you something that might cheer you up. But you can’t tell anyone.” He points at me, mock-serious.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“And there’s a chance it’ll make you even more depressed.”
“I’ll risk it.”
“I have my own secret work habit. My coping mechanism, whatever you want to call it.”
“You crawl under your desk at the office and watch movies on a portable DVD player?”
He laughs. “You’re close. There’s this theater out on Staten Island, the Virago, that plays classics and second runs. Once a quarter, I blow off a big meeting and take in a matinee instead. Something so old that I can’t analyze it to death. I sit there in my custom-made suit and put my overpriced shoes up on the seat in front of me and for a couple of hours I try to forget everything else.”
Once he didn’t have to try. But it does make me feel better. I smile, picturing him in some dark theater, getting popcorn butter streaks on his power suit. Making his quarterly escape from the day-to-day. Both an attempt to forget and an attempt to remember.
“Do you schedule these quarterly matinee outings?”
“Not in my calendar app. I track them mentally.”
“But once every three months is enough for you? At least your habit’s under control. You haven’t accelerated, like I have lately.”
“Maybe...” He hesitates, the lights of the city behind him.
“What?”
“Do you think you’ve had an extra rough time lately because... My mom told me. I was really sorry to hear about it.”
His voice is kind, concerned. But this is a gut punch.
“Thank you,” I say, rising, checking the dew on my back and the seat of my pants. “Well. We should probably go down.”
He touches my wrist and the warmth sends tingles up my arm.
“Becc, sorry if it’s hard to talk about, I didn’t—”
“It’s totally fine! It’s just that I’m exhausted, and we have a long drive in the morning.”
45
Trifecta
August 1998
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | The newspaper
WHERE I WAS | Santiago Oaks Park
A long lunch hour.
I waited in the shade, near the park entrance. The groomed and toned specimens on the sidewalk jogged past in neon sneakers and glided by on Rollerblades and whizzed by on bikes.
“Penny for your thoughts, m’lady?” a voice growled in my ear. Eric.
“I was thinking it must be hard to get old in Southern California,” I said. “Look how perfect everyone seems.”
“Seems being the operative word.”
“True.”
We walked deep into the park, near the lake, lay down beside each other. The tree I’d picked made an island of shade just big enough for the two of us.
“So how’s the job search?” I asked.
“I have an interview to be a busboy at tumtum. That new restaurant way up in Silver Lake? Modern tapas.”
“Topless?”
“You’re hilarious.”
“No, I’m proud of you.”
“As far as jobs in my field, as they say, not so successful. Thirty letters out to the field last night. This is a nice napping spot.”
“Don’t let me fall asleep, you bad influence.” I stretched my arms above my head.
Eric rolled onto his side and touched the inside of my bent elbow. I lay still, not breathing. “Your skin is so pale here,” he said.
Behind Eric’s shoulder, the dry leaves shivered. The sky, blue daubed with smog-gold, quivered, too, from the heat. If I smiled, he’d stop. But in the second it took me to move my eyes to his, I decided.
I didn’t smile. I looked at his brown eyes as he slowly ran his finger inside the crook of my elbow, and as he leaned down and kissed me.
He pulled away to read my expression, his own face a beautiful mix of pleasure and surprise. I dug my hands into his soft hair and pulled him close for another kiss.
I got back to work only thirty minutes late.
So much can change in thirty minutes, if you let it.
* * *
“You’re so smiley,” my cubicle neighbor, Alice, said when I returned to the paper.
“Am I?”
I settled in and worked hard all afternoon. I made Paula’s Potpourri as snappy and reassuring as I could. I turned in my final revision on the punk band charity story, and Deborah said she was considering it for the spotlight feature.
“This has a lot of heart,” she said. Her highest praise.
Even when Skip Theobald made a fuming visit to my cubicle to harangue me about online comments at three, I was professional and calm. My hatred of Skip had melted into generous amusement.
Because I was happy. Eric and I felt inevitable, lucky, somehow unscathed by our years of near misses.
And the other thing.
My luck had held.
I knew I loved Eric. I hadn’t told him, but I did.
And I hoped that would be enough to carry us.
* * *
They say you can have a good job, a good apartment, or a good relationship, but never all three at the same time. But it wasn’t true.
For one afternoon, I had all three. The twentysomething’s trifecta.
4:08 p.m.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
We are pleased to announce that the OC Liberty is, effective this morning, a wholly owned subsidiary of CommPlanet, Inc...
...You are invited to a company-wide meeting on Aug. 29 to review new Team Wellness enrollment options...
We will continue our time-honored tradition of quality journalism...
The office hushed.
People in cubicles whispered into phones. People in offices shut doors. They were worried about their jobs, or the tradition of quality journalism. Both.
But I couldn’t focus on anything beyond the word CommPlanet. HR might as well have put it in double-underlined one-hundred-point type, bold Gothic font.
“Did you see it?” Alice whispered into the gap in the corner where our cubicle walls joined.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
It would be okay. The Liberty wasn’t the only local newspaper that CommPlanet had bought; the press release listed eight others. The incubator had gone on quite the shopping spree. So it was fine.
Unnerving. But fine.
I took a deep yoga breath, like back in that college class with Serra and Maggie. Ten counts in, twenty counts out.
CommPlanet. If you heard it, you might think it was Calm Planet. A good name for a yoga studio or flotation tank place or herbal tea shop.
How could such an innocuous-sounding company be so menacing?
Think, Becc. Don’t panic like a child.
But I felt queasy, motion sick without leaving my chair. One word had scooped me up and hurled me back to a time and place I wanted to forget.
Breathe. It would be nothing more than a company name on my paycheck. Maybe Cal didn’t even know about it; he was barely involved with CommPlanet day-to-day. He was probably busy sunbathing in Catalina with his latest conquest or sailing in the San Juans, oblivious. It was fine.
Summer Hours Page 26
