Mr. Nice Guy

by Jennifer Miller

  It was time, Carmen decided, to see whether they could thrive under the bright and exacting light of day, so she’d broached the idea of finding work elsewhere. Then they could go public.

  At this suggestion, Jays cowered like a vampire caught at daybreak. He would not return her phone calls or emails. The Sphinxes repeatedly said his calendar was full. It felt worse, even, than if he’d fallen in love with someone else. Instead, this silence—her sudden banishment—revealed that she wasn’t special at all. Like everyone else, she was a pawn.

  Carmen waited to be fired, but the call never came. Maybe Jays feared she’d run to the press. Or maybe he was just a coward. Or maybe he was just waiting for something else to push her out—and then along came Nice Guy. There was no return to the way things were, she realized now. When “Screw the Critics” was over, she was over.

  “I’m totally dispensable to Jays,” Carmen said.

  Mira swept up her Solitaire game and started to deal out cards for Gin. “Then you must make yourself indispensable.”

  “How many gimmicks can I really cook up? What’ll I do—go on tour, teach people how to screw onstage? I’ll have cameras follow me around. It’ll be a total sensation.”

  Mira organized her hand, her lips pursed in thought. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Mira!”

  “Not the public sex, Carmen. The tour. Why not make a bigger name for yourself? Brand yourself, as they say. You’d be terrific on camera.”

  “And I’d talk about…?”

  “Well, the column you’re writing for starters. The experience of reviewing and being reviewed. Juicy tidbits about mystery Nice Guy. Don’t you think people would be curious? Don’t you think they might—and should—learn something from you?”

  Lucas had said exactly this, but Carmen kept that point to herself. “I’m trying to get out of the sex-writer ghetto, remember?”

  “I’m merely suggesting a strategy, Carmen. You start with what you know—and what you’re known for—and then you use that platform as your launching pad. You move from sex and relationships to sexual politics: reproductive rights, women in politics, cultural sexism. You respond to the news cycle, make yourself the go-to commentator. From there, you can talk about anything you want and people will listen. In short order Vanity Fair will run a profile titled ‘The Reinvention of Carmen Kelly.’”

  “Jays would never go for that. He’s got a vise grip on the media spotlight. All the TV, radio, print—it’s all him. His face is the only face of Empire.”

  “Why do you need his approval?”

  “Because he’d fire me.”

  Miranda laid down her cards. There was no need for her to say “gin”; a perfect hand stared back up at Carmen. “It seems to me that for the next few months at least you have an enviable degree of job security.”

  Carmen looked up. Oh, wise, wise Mira. “Because he can’t fire me while the column is going well.”

  “And if his plan is to let you go anyway, you have nothing to lose. Though I suspect if you play your cards right he’ll feel compelled to have you stay.”

  “And I might have other magazine opportunities by then.”

  “And a book deal or, better yet, a movie deal.”

  “Right, and the film will be called Screw the Critics.” Carmen rolled her eyes, but she was starting to feel genuinely rejuvenated. Lucas was just a child. How could she have allowed herself to be defeated by his nonsense? Moreover, and this especially delighted her, Jays was going to be pissed. He was going to be so pissed that the farthest reaches of the empire would feel his ire. Well, let it.

  “I’ll need to start with a late-night show,” Carmen said. “I think that’s the right audience. But I’ve got to do something absurd enough to go viral; otherwise nobody will pay attention. Like, I dunno, teaching some gawky PA how to kiss on air.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  “I was kidding!”

  “I’m not.”

  Carmen pondered this. “I recently met a writer from Late Night with Kyle Carter. I guess it’s worth a try.”

  “Oh, I adore that Kyle Carter! He is handsome and terribly funny. Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for your camera-ready outfit.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mira.”

  Mira gathered up her silken robes and tucked her legs beneath her on the couch like an excitable teenager. “Yes, Carmen, let’s!”

  CHAPTER 16

  Lucas lay awake, ruminating over that evening’s encounter with Carmen. She’d issued a challenge—Do something to my tits. Make it good—and he’d diligently applied himself. He believed he’d done a good job; by that point, he’d had a week of coaching with Sofia. But he suspected his technique was irrelevant. Carmen didn’t want a fair and honest critique. She wanted to embarrass him. And so, when she took off her shirt, she’d set a trap: He could accept her challenge and be portrayed as a failure, or he could reject it and get the same result; the game was rigged.

  Lucas thought about this for a moment. He needed to hit her with a no-win choice of his own—throw her off-balance, regardless of whether she said yes or no. He sat up in bed; it was 3:00 A.M., but there was no chance of sleep now. He grabbed his laptop.

  Dear Carmen,

  I didn’t realize it was possible for a woman to detach herself from her boobs, until you presented yours to me. (Readers, you should know: This week was dedicated to Second Base, and it happened standing up: Carmen took her shirt off and insisted I get in there, so I took her up on the invitation.) I want to be descriptive here, but most words for breasts are cliché. Are they voluptuous? Not really. Ample? Depends on who’s measuring. Perky? Well … sort of, though they’re just too large to completely escape gravity. Oh, hell, let’s just be plain about it, because I mean to be complimentary: Your boobs are just really nice. They’re more than a handful—just large enough that when I put my face in between them I can press them up against my closed eyelids. That’s a little embarrassing to write, but I guess it’s the point of these columns, so … the boobs-on-eyes thing has always been a turn-on for me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the intimacy of it—that I have to be really up against a woman, really involved with her body, to have her boobs against my eyes.

  But though I had your boobs, I most certainly didn’t have you.

  You’re really big on taking notes during our sessions, so I tried taking a mental ticktock of how you responded to a man’s face in your boobs. For the first minute, you stood with your arms to your sides, like nothing was happening. Your boobs were there in front of me, though the rest of you seemed to have wandered off in search of a cocktail. But oh! Then you breathed deeply, twice. And finally, finally, you tentatively ran your fingers through my hair—not in a particularly erotic or encouraging way, and only once, downward to my neck. What was that? I’d like to think that I’d given you at least a twinge of pleasure in that moment. Then you stepped backward. You’d had enough, which is just as well. Carmen, you had driven me to a state I wasn’t sure I was capable of: I was getting bored with boobs. And I love boobs. I love your boobs, in theory at least. Yet I now realize that there’s a big difference between boobs in isolation and boobs on a living woman’s body.

  I’m trying now to think of what it was I did in the seconds before you touched me. Was it sucking your nipple just a little too hard? The flicking of my tongue? Circling of my tongue? Is that something you’re into? It’s so hard to tell with you. You give no feedback. And that, dare I say, is the sign of a lousy lover. You certainly seem confident of your sexual abilities, but I think your confidence is misplaced. You think you know what’s right and wrong, which gives you the right to sit back and judge what’s delivered to you. But a good lover is confident enough to say, “I like this; do more of it.” A good lover is confident enough to reveal themselves. So, Carmen, here’s what I think: You’re hiding something from me. There’s something about me that you like—something about me that you think is worthy—and you don’t want to
show it.

  So I’m going to issue a challenge, here in these pages, and readers can see next week if you’ll take me up on it: Let’s get drunk. Let’s get sloppy enough that we can’t hide things from each other. Sloppy enough that handwritten notes would be illegible in the morning anyway. I’m taking three shots of Jameson before you and I meet next time, and I challenge you to do the same. I’ll bring a bottle, so we can throw back some more. Let’s see what you’re like when you’re not thinking so hard about what we’re doing.

  Lucas clicked “save,” smiled, and settled back down into bed. Finally, he had a plan.

  * * *

  The next morning, far too early, Lucas’s alarm buzzed. He dragged himself out of bed, showered, and headed out. He was off to meet Nicholas Spragg, who’d resurfaced a few days before with a brunch invitation. Lucas still felt a little weird about the love hotel, but he was too curious about Nicholas to say no.

  They were meeting at Ice, a trendy glass box of a restaurant in Greenwich Village west—or was it Meatpacking south?—in which the décor was entirely transparent. Clear glass tables, walls, even cutlery. Nicholas was already there, sipping a cappuccino at the see-through bar. Lucas quickly noted the tailored khaki suit with its precisely folded maroon pocket square, the checkered white and maroon shirt, and the maroon leather belt. A third maroon object dangled from Nicholas’s fist. It was a leash, Lucas realized. And it was attached to the maroon leather collar of a black dachshund.

  “This is Saint Regis,” Nicholas said. He smiled proudly, as though he alone were responsible for the dog’s existence. “Isn’t he delightful?”

  “Hiya, pup!” Lucas squatted and rubbed the dog’s head affectionately.

  When the hostess arrived to take them to the table, the dog would not budge. He was visibly shaking. After a minute of failed coaxing and cajoling, Nicholas finally lifted the puppy into his arms.

  “Is he OK?” Lucas asked.

  Nicholas frowned. “I hope so. A breeder dropped him off first thing this morning,” Nicholas said, as though there were nothing particularly unusual about door-to-door pet delivery. “But we may not be a good fit.”

  Lucas could only imagine Nicholas abandoning the dog on some street corner and he dearly hoped the breeder accepted returns. “Why’d you name him Saint Regis?” he asked.

  “It’s the hotel where I’ve been living.”

  Lucas did a double take. Did he just say “living”?

  “Did you know the Bloody Mary was invented at the Saint Regis?” Nicholas went on. “And John Jacob Astor, who built it, died aboard the Titanic. Anyway, as you can imagine, my father is absolutely aghast that I refused to decamp at a Kingswood property. But your average Kingswood is utterly devoid of elegance or charm. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  Lucas did not, but he nodded anyway.

  Nicholas leaned forward, his face flushing. “Back in the day, much of New York society lived in hotels. They’d ‘take rooms,’ stay on for months, and have all of their meals together. Everyone ate luncheon—so much nicer than ‘lunch,’ which sounds like a sneeze. And they dressed for dinner. They were cultured.”

  He said all of this wistfully, almost nostalgically. Forget New York, Lucas thought. Nicholas should move to Charlotte and take up with Grandmother Callahan; he’d have all the luncheons he could stomach.

  “But, to be totally honest with you,” Nicholas continued, “the Saint Regis isn’t quite what I’d been hoping for. People don’t really stay for more than a week and the crowd is, well, old.”

  Even Lucas, who knew next to nothing about fancy hotels, could have told Nicholas that. “Wouldn’t you find a younger crowd at The Standard? Or The Bowery Hotel? Or one of those new places in Williamsburg?”

  “Do you think those are places where you could congregate? I mean sit with your friends and drink cocktails and talk about city life? You must do that all the time at the magazine.”

  “Drink cocktails and talk about city life?” Lucas repeated with a smirk.

  “I would love to be a fly on the wall during one of your editors’ lunches. All of you discussing your fascinating stories. And in the evenings, taking off to these fashionable events, where you meet the city’s most cultured and fascinating people. It must be a brilliant life.”

  Not long ago, this had been Lucas’s own image of Empire. But the work was more ordinary than he’d imagined—just another office, really, where people did office things. Except for Jays and his deputies, everybody ate lunch at their desks, usually salad from the shop downstairs, coated in a dressing that left your mouth feeling what Alexis called squeaky. Meanwhile, the weekly publicist parties were not particularly exclusive. Even Kobe sliders got old after a while. And although the sporadic last-minute invites from Jays were truly a world apart, Lucas was so obviously the outsider at them, nothing more than a spectacularly mismatched body double. It seemed absurd for Nicolas to see him as part of some inner circle, especially since Spragg was the heir to a hotel fortune, partied with gorgeous socialites, and had (at least purported to have) Jays’ cell phone number!

  And yet Lucas recognized the longing in Nicholas’s eyes, empathized with his unfulfilled desires. He supposed that everyone—even the most wealthy—desired things they could not have.

  But what they could have was two hundred dollars’ worth of brunch. Nicholas ordered a round of mimosas, a pile of fresh pastries, a stack of ricotta pancakes, and truffle-oil omelets. When the drinks arrived, he raised his glass. “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” Lucas asked.

  “For your friendship,” Nicholas said.

  “Oh,” Lucas said, a little confused. “Well, thank you.”

  No longer terrified, Saint Regis jumped up from Nicholas’s lap and caught a croissant in his mouth.

  * * *

  Lucas walked home through the Village, enjoying the neighborhood that was so much quieter and cleaner than his own. But just as he turned the corner onto Perry Street, he nearly barreled into a woman laden with grocery-packed tote bags. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She backed up half a step. And then, “Oh. Hi.”

  Lucas froze. It was Carmen, of all people. And yet this was her neighborhood, so what did he expect? She was not alone either. An old woman, wrinkled and gaunt with large, heavily lidded eyes, stood beside her.

  “I’m Mira Kelly,” the woman said, and stretched out a frail arm, encircled in flashing beads. “Carmen,” the old woman mumbled, “your manners.”

  Carmen shifted the grocery bags. “Grandma, this is Lucas,” she said curtly. “We’re colleagues.”

  Seeing Carmen loaded down like that, Lucas felt a pang of guilt about the previous night. Attacking her age was a low blow. He’d now been in the media scene long enough to know that Carmen was absolutely too old for her column. She was playing a twentysomething’s game. And it was a shame, because she was a really good writer—he had to admit that much. For all of his frustration with Carmen, it was still a point of pride that he was able to go head-to-head with her on the page.

  “Let me help you with those,” he said now.

  “We’re fine.” Carmen shook her head.

  “These are my groceries,” Mira said, “so it’s my right to insist that Lucas carry them the rest of the way.”

  Reluctantly, Carmen let Lucas slip the bags off her shoulders and onto his arms. Lucas and Mira began to walk side by side, with Carmen trailing behind.

  “I’m sure you know of Mira Kelly, the Broadway actress?” Lucas asked now.

  “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Wait—it’s you?” Lucas stopped, bewildered. How could this legend be Carmen’s grandmother? “Three years ago Empire ran a fantastic profile of you. I’ll admit, I didn’t know you then, but after that story—wow! I’d kill to see you onstage. Are you in anything?”

  Carmen looked a little stunned.

  “That’s quite a good memory,” Mira said, clearly impressed. “I’m retired now. But you work at Empire
with my granddaughter?”

  “He’s a fact-checker,” Carmen said flatly. “He makes sure the names are spelled correctly.”

  Mira furrowed her brow at Carmen’s rudeness. “Well, everyone starts somewhere,” she said.

  “This is us,” Carmen said abruptly, stopping outside a building at the end of the block. It was only a few doors down from the café that Lucas had visited after his first night with Carmen, in his post-coital ignorance, before he knew better.

  “Thank you so much for your help,” Mira said. “And good luck at the magazine. I hope you’ll forgive my granddaughter her crankiness. She and I were up far too late last night plotting world domination.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Lucas said, handing Carmen the groceries. “See you at work,” he said brightly, and thought of his column—his challenge—that was about to hit newsstands. She had no idea it was coming, and he liked finally feeling in control of something.

  “Sure,” Carmen replied, visibly relieved to be free of him. “At work.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Lucas had never been a fan of late-night talk shows. The hosts were poor interviewers; their only real talent was the agile shuffling of oversized index cards. And the whole thing felt like a vestige of older times, when the most sophisticated thing on television was a guy on a stage talking to an audience. Today’s viewers deserved better, Lucas thought. But still, he made an exception for Kyle Carter. The man was late night’s newest star, but he’d started as a humble Internet creator, making YouTube videos out of his home. They were funny and weird and experimental. He once finagled a meeting with the marketing department at Froot Loops and berated them for ten minutes about their misspelling of the word “Fruit.” In another video, he recruited five guys named Kyle and five guys named Carter and had them mud wrestle. (Team Carter won.) A late-night show seemed like an unnatural fit, but the network was clearly aching to reach a younger audience, and Carter wasn’t about to turn down the paycheck. His show was decent, but not nearly as daring as his online stuff. There was sadness at the edges of his 1000-watt smile, a sense of loss. Lucas appreciated that.