by Amy Gray
“I had accident.”
“I know—are you okay? I was worried.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “It was good. I realize that I need to stop doing what I'm doing, you know. I hate to drive that car, you know, so I been applying to school and I go back to Tunisia in a week.”
I felt my heart drop a little. It was so much easier to imagine Moez tragically outdone by New York than leaving willingly. Leaving me.
“I get married,” he said.
“What?” My shock was evident.
“Yes, my sister's friend. I met her a few years ago, you know. It's time to settle down, my sister says, and I miss my home.” I wished him luck, and felt strangely relieved about the marriage thing. It was less romantic than the bildungsroman I'd scripted seconds before about a handsome, gentle young man returning to a bucolic life in the Promised Land after a punishing turn foraging for survival as a New York cabdriver.
At eleven-thirty Peter joined me.
“You're wearing a skirt,” he said, fingering the edge of my sexy tight purple herringbone pencil skirt.
“Your crown jewels aren't on display,” I protested.
“Umm, they will be later,” he said. Soon enough I was completely entranced, forgetting all the other characters, foreign and otherwise, in that bar. Then I was only taking note of my own slow, hopeful breathing and monitoring the respiration and movements of one other person.
Peter and I woke up at ten and cuddled until eleven.
“I'm scared to let go of you,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“Let's not,” he said.
At noon he said he had to go to the gallery to put up a new show. I held on tighter.
“You can stay here,” he said, kissing my arms.
“Really?”
“As long as you don't take the opportunity to read my diary and look through my underwear drawer.”
“Why? What's in your underwear drawer?” I asked.
“Maybe I should send you home,” he said, unpeeling himself from my embrace.
“Nooo, I'll be good,” I begged.
At two he kissed me for the billionth time and brought me a cup of coffee in bed.
“So, when will I see you again?” He leaned over the bed as I sipped.
“I dunno.”
“How about tonight?” he asked, smiling.
“That's two nights in a row.”
“I know. It's a big move for us.”
We agreed I'd call him around six.
Been Caught Stealing
Being in Peter's house without him was exhilarating. It required a confidence that was exciting to have conferred on me. I wore his boxers around the house, watched Oprah, ate some bran flakes, and admired his book collection. He had beautiful taste, effete and distinct. I wanted to live there and study his mind like gospel and commit it to memory and make it mine. I was touched by our sameness and thrilled by our differences.
By five I was bored and stir crazy. I got dressed and stood at the door, ready to leave, trying to think of what final discoveries I could make in my ephemeral moment in his house.
I couldn't think of any, but I decided to check my e-mail before I left. His computer was asleep. I hit the return key and listened to the quiet whiz as it reignited. H-o-t-m-a-i-l-d-o-t-c-o-m. There was a note from Peter with the subject “Lovely.” “I've decided that this is what you are, so this is your new nickname, if you'll have it.”
I wrote back, “With honor!” and sent it. Then I read that day's Salon.com postings—just a lot about the crumbling technology sector. And I was seized by a sudden panic that there might be something I needed to know about Peter that I might need to protect myself from and this might be my only chance to learn it. His warning not to go through his drawers hung in my mind, but I felt overwhelmed by fear.
I'll just check through some of his files, I thought to myself, clicking on his hard drive, and opening several documents only to quickly close them and think how stupid this whole thing was. I even found a letter, but it was eleven years old and who gives a damn. Then I spotted a file that said “Theoneyouleft,” and I was riveted. I had to open it.
I gasped. The document was the sign I'd seen in the subway two months earlier. It was the love letter to a stranger that had made me cry then, and now, signed by theoneyouleftbehind.com. I studied the sign and couldn't make sense of it. If he could fall in love with a stranger like that, he was just like Edward, in love with reality-TV stars, or Alexis Whitcomb, in love with a pathetic shell of a person. I was disgusted that he could do it, but even more, I was furious with myself for erring. I put my coat on and prepared to storm out before I had one more impulse.
I did a search. One document was found. It was a diary entry. There was no date. He was talking about drinking late with his friend Haskell, going to Katz's Deli for an early breakfast at 5 A.M., and then wanting to call Skye. He couldn't get her out of his mind. I couldn't keep reading. Just as I suspected, he was in love with Skye, just like every other guy. Two drops of hot salty water rolled down each cheek. I finally slammed the door and wished he had been there to hear it.
I Never Want to Work in This Town Again
Outside I wasn't sure what to do with myself. The weather was bitter and punishing. Fighting intermittent rain and gales, I hiked over to Union Square and longed for something to catch my eye. In front of Barnes & Noble I braced myself against a blustery winter chill. In the window was a sleek, large-format volume called In the Eye of the Storm. I had seen that book before. When I was working in publishing. When I was a word detective.
I stepped inside to inspect the book. Opening to the acknowledgments page, I read, “Special thanks to Nathan Lazarus, my agent, Bill McGuire, my publisher …” The list went on and on. I was used to opening books immediately to their acknowledgments page. You could always determine who edited the book, who represented it. People don't know these things, but there are rules you learn when you work in the business of pushing books.
When I came in for my first publishing interview, I still had two weeks left of being a college senior. Boris, the other editor I would work for, asked all the questions.
“How do you feel about smoking?” he asked me, his impish grin revealing a gap between his front teeth.
Was this a trick question? A test of my current-events know-how? I was uncertain, but presented with the ridiculous self-possession only displayed by neophytes.
“Well, I think that the settlement with the Liggett group is a great first step. I hope that the other tobacco companies follow suit, since in the long run this saves everyone from years of litigating—”
“No, no, no, no,” Boris boomed, slapping the table as he exchanged smiles with Gloria. “I mean, smoking as in cigarettes. As in being proximate to cigarette-smoking and the like.”
“Oh!” I flushed. “I do it all the time. A pack a day.” Gloria giggled as Boris told me I'd just barely missed losing the job.
“Want one?” he offered me, holding a Marlboro Red across the table.
“Oh, no. Not right now, thanks.”
A year into my work, Boris had given me a manuscript to read, one that, as it happened, I actually liked. I sent him a baroque reader's report that ended with the imperative, “Reading In the Eye of the Storm is not optional. It is elemental.” Until this point, I'd read dozens of proposals and been lukewarm about all of them.
This was my big ticket, what I imagined would be the fairy-tale beginning from whence my illustrious publishing career would grow. I arranged the note and manuscript on Boris's desk to somehow stand out from the rest of the clutter. The piles on his desk were like archaeological strata: farther down, the rubber-banded and boxed stacks of paper had more yellowed edges, more cigarette burns, more stains from messy lunches. Finally I decided to put it on his chair. He didn't come in for two days after that. When he came in on the third day, he gave me a warning.
“Do NOT put any materials on my chair. Ever.”
“Okay.” Mon
ths passed. There was no word on my report. Finally, one day I was in his office, taking dictation for a rejection letter. “Capital ‘R,’ ‘Regarding the matter of your submission, comma, I'm afraid this young writer has neither the pathos nor the gravitas that your enthusiasm led me to anticipate. Period. Alas, I'm afraid this is not right for me. My suspicions are that it will likely not be right for most mindful readers. In summation, dis ain't right for me.” My inexpert prose was flowery, but Boris's was decidedly rococo. I respected his blend of highfalutin grandiose talk and street jive. As I scribbled this last line of his letter, I started to crack up.
He was laughing, too, until, apropos of nothing, he said, “That book, In the Eye of the Storm—it's crap, it'll never sell.” I argued my point, saying he should give it a second read, but Boris was unmoving on the issue. So I dropped it—until we got a call from our publisher.
“I need to speak with Boris,” he hissed.
After fifteen minutes of hushed conversation behind frosted-glass doors and some raised tones emanating from his office, Boris came out and asked me if I had that manuscript that I was “creaming over.”
“Where's your copy?” I asked him, amused by the turn of events.
“I threw it away” he said between clenched teeth. It turned out there was a huge buzz about the book, and several publishers had made bids on it, none of which had been accepted. When the publisher called the agent and asked why he didn't have it, the agent said Boris had it.
I took a taxi home and got my report and the book, which I brought to the publisher. My publisher made an offer on the book a week later. Boris called me into his office.
“I don't want you to think that our buying this book has anything to do with my opinion about this book. It's still shit,” he said warily.
I made a mental note to myself: Quit your shit job. Consider registering for that website called sendapieceofshittosomeoneyouhate.com.
Standing outside the bookstore, I noticed another book stacked next to In the Eye of the Storm. Dozens of copies of Dot Comedy towered like a grim reminder of romantic failure.
What a World It Would Be
After four cold hours walking around Manhattan with a head of steam, I decided to see Peter that night and confront him. I called him on my cell phone and we agreed to meet at his house at nine.
“Lovely?” he asked.
I stiffened. “Yes?”
“I have a surprise for you tonight.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Wear something dressy.” When I hung up I suddenly felt guilty and doubted my intentions, but then I remembered the feeling of being duped and I braced myself and resolved to forge ahead.
After going home to Brooklyn, showering, and changing, I came back into the city and Peter met me at the Delancey Street subway stop near his gallery. He had some roses sticking out of his jacket pocket. “What are those?” I said, breathing heavily from the three flights to ground level.
“It's a pocket full of posey For you.”
I half laughed, but my petulance seemed to boil right over the surface. Still, Peter didn't seem to notice. He blew air in my ear and hailed a taxi.
“Are you excited to see where we're going?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, staring out the window. Soon we pulled up to a façade in Tribeca that looked dark and severe, the windows great arcing panes of darkened glass.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“It's Bouley Bakery. It's one of my favorite restaurants in the city.” We were seated in a romantic banquette near the back. I barely remember the food, but I tried to order the most expensive things, thinking, “He'll be sorry.” I noticed a pained flicker cross Peter's face when I loudly asked for a glass of their “most expensive” aperitif.
Afterward we stood outside the concrete building, back where we started. The tidal wall gave way. Whatever muscle had kept me from screaming and running out on him, from hanging up on him or telling him to kiss my ass, snapped. Did he think I was stupid, I wanted to know, did he think that I wouldn't know he really wanted Skye, and how long did he think he was going to have to date me to get her and I would never touch anybody who was so lowly and desperate they posted want ads on the fucking subway to get laid. I remember that Peter looked scared and then said, “I can't believe you looked on my computer.”
I had an excuse for that, but he had already made up his mind.
“You think you're fucking Nancy Drew? You don't know anything!” he shouted. “You are a scared, pathetic, cruel person. You clearly expect from everyone what you get from the fucking psychos you investigate, and it's made you crazy!”
For an amount of time I couldn't begin to calculate, I stood there sobbing. He must have left at some point. I called Cassie. I was so cold that my blue fingers could barely manipulate the digits.
When I finally got through she asked, “Hey what's up?” in her usual chirpy voice.
“Kiiin I come oveeerr?” I wailed.
Cass answered the door looking serious and I burrowed into her shoulder, crying. She hugged me. “I'm sorry, Amy,” she said. She was wearing the red sweater.
Peggy Lipton Ain't Got Nothing on Me
Back in the office, George and Sol seemed giddy with the promise of a sanctioned night of drinking away from screaming kids, curfews, and work. George called me over. “Listen, Gray, I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“I've got this computer guy coming in and I want you to talk him up.”
“About what?”
“Nothing. Just flip you hair or something to, you know, get his attention. Every time they come, they spend about two minutes on the server and it breaks again.”
“Okay.”
“I want him to stick around and fix this thing till it's really done.” It briefly occurred to me that this was probably an inappropriate request, but I liked my assignment nonetheless.
When the computer guy came into the room, nobody looked up but me. I smiled, crossing the room to ask, in my gee-whiz voice, “Hello. May I help you?” His face smacked of total system failure. Did not compute. “My name is Amy, by the way.” I figured it couldn't hurt to amp it up. His features were skewed across his face, almost like objects sliding off an overturned table. He screwed his mouth in a chewing-type motion before he answered, his beady black eyes moving slowly and listlessly over the office, “Yep, yep, yep.” I brought him over to the server, which was housed in the broom closet, and leaned seductively against one of the circuit boxes inside.
“It must be fun, fixing computers and stuff.” I was stretching, but Computer Guy wasn't biting; he didn't even look at me. He unloaded his fanny pack of itsy-bitsy screwdrivers and sat on the floor, muttering “Yep, yep, yep” occasionally. Finally, I turned back to my desk, where George came and chastised, “I thought you were going to turn it on.”
“I'm sorry. He's cataleptic. It's weird. I don't even know if he's a Homo sapiens.” This was particularly humiliating for me, who needed to feel like I had some wiles left in my crazy self. But not even the IT guy was fooled by me.
“Just homo, maybe,” George responded, laughing himself all the way back to his desk, as the computer guy tooled away, never knowing that all this laughter was about him.
Are We Having Fun Yet?
I called Cassie before the big night and invited her. Skye said she'd try to be there, but she had a dozen other parties she was juggling, including a thing David Blaine had invited her to at Studio 54. Jeremy was invited, too, and he e-mailed back asking if there'd be hot chicks. “We make no statements regarding the number of invited females or their scores on the bootylicious meter,” I wrote back.
When we left work that night, Renora, Evan, George, and Linus had said they were coming, and maybe, it had been rumored, the famous Berks might show. It would be quite a night, but somehow much less than I'd hoped for only a week ago.
For the New Year's festivities, the Blue and Gol
d staff had taped a cardboard star covered in tinfoil to the St. Pauli Girl bar tap. On the way over, Cassie had been agonizing about how she looked. “I wish I just knew what the lighting was like in there,” she complained. “I mean, is it bright, fluorescent?” “Is there a mirror in the bathroom?” “How dark is it?” “Like, really dark?” “Like, a yellow dark or a red dark?” How was I supposed to know she'd want to do bar reconnaissance? When we got there, she seemed underwhelmed. “You call this dark?” she guffawed. I closed my eyes and prayed for her to get laid tonight.
Evan was already there. “Laaaadies,” he sang, slinging an arm and a spattering of beer over each of us. “You're looking loooveleee tonight.” He was already hammered, and was fond of vowels when he was drunk.
Wendy was at the bar, having it out with Sol and Morgan. I left Cassie in Evan's sloppy hands and wandered over to referee. “A. Gray, maybe you can help us here.”
“Doubtful,” I clipped.
“Come on, come over here.” Sol had his arm around me, too. The Agency had never been so full of love. “You can help us.” Sol's eyes rolled back, and for a second I thought he was going to throw up on me, but instead he said, “Is it true that Renora is in love with Assman?” I smiled.
“I cannot tell a lie,” I said, grinning.
Morgan groaned. “I'm participating in conjuring the voyeuristic equivalent of a car wreck,” he whined. Then he smiled. “But I still want to stop and stare, damn it.” Wendy and I exchanged shocked glances. I had never heard Morgan swear before.
“There is no way,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “I just know Renora's taste. She likes nerds. It's, like, impossible.” She folded her arms, which had cute little sweatbands on them. I was more than happy to disseminate misinformation on this subject, but I had no idea how the rumor got started, since I hadn't told anyone about our conversation. Unless Renora told someone and they'd got it wrong, didn't know how my Assman fetish had gotten shunted onto Renora.
