Fake Plastic Love

by Kimberley Tait

  I said I’d give it some serious thought.

  “You take the time you need to make the decision that’s right for you—but know that we’d really love to start a conversation with you,” was his astonishing reply.

  As Piggelo awaited my answer, with each passing second her eyes shrank farther and farther down until they were so small and black and appalling they might as well have been the barrels of stainless steel firearms polished to a high shine and pointed directly at my hairline. I cleared my throat and regained my nerve.

  “Certainly,” I told Piggelo. “You can count on me to be on board.”

  “There’s just one more thing,” a vacant voice added from the corner. I inhaled sharply, spinning around to face off against the blank physical canvas of Drewe, seated in a winged armchair in a far corner of the office. Had he materialized there out of thin air—or somersaulted through a trapdoor that connected his office with Piggelo’s? Wearing neutrals that blended perfectly into the upholstery and paint color behind him, he was a camouflaged praying mantis impassively observing its prey. “It wouldn’t kill you to smile more, M. Show everyone a little more of your personality. We’ve heard some feedback from your teammates to that effect.” By teammates, he might as well have credited Chase and given honorable mention to Leezel, faithful parrot and computer mouse guardian.

  I let loose one incredulous guffaw.

  “That’s more like it,” Drewe added. “We all knew it was in there somewhere.”

  * * *

  Back at the desk, there was a startling level of inactivity for late morning. Chase was still gone and his golf bag had also vanished, though his blazer and blinking monitors implied his imminent return from the gents. Leezel was standing in a nearby hallway, lecturing a lesser assistant on the merits and demerits of vacationing in outer space.

  “M., can I speak with you?” Jeremy asked me, approaching me from across our row. His tie was still loosened into a low knot of distress thanks to the Tiffany ad episode earlier and he glanced around him carefully. “Out of the public square? How about O’Hara’s after the close?”

  O’Hara’s was a no-frills pub halfway down the fourth, unfashionable alleyway west of The House of Bartholomew. After hours, it was the place near the office where Jeremy and I caught up together most regularly, with zero likelihood of running into Brothers prototypes who tended to swarm together in self-satisfied prides atop the cobblestones of Stone Street. Scott was coming over to my apartment for dinner later that evening—I had no idea what possessed me to do it but I had offered to cook for him—so I sent him a message asking if we could push things back an hour. The sight of that low-slung, loosened tie—atypical for the fastidious Jeremy—and the urgency in his voice meant this was important. And it really could only be about one thing—or one person. In many ways it was so odd that Jeremy ever felt drawn to finance, an industry filled with people who viewed it as an abnormality, even a deformity, to define one’s existence and ultimate success by the softer emotions. Love was the only benchmark that ever mattered to him. Beyond it, everything else just seemed to fall away.

  “Don’t get worked up by all that business about a ring,” I said to Jeremy as we took our seats in the pub with our usual bowl of dry-roasted peanuts. “If Chase had any clue about what Belle actually wants they wouldn’t have broken up in the first place.”

  “Do you really think so?” he asked, all at once exposing the rickety, bare skeleton of his insecurity. “I’ve never wanted to speak with her about him.”

  “Jeremy! Come on already! I’ve never seen Belle be more, well, Belle since you’ve been in her life.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Because last night I told Belle that I love her—that she’s the first girl I’ve ever loved in my life.”

  It was hardly a word or notion Jeremy flung around lightly. I knew he’d never been in love before, reserving all of his heartfelt emotion like a resilient cactus to ceremoniously secrete to the parched and deserving person that would eventually enter his life. And because of that, when the time came I’d been expecting an overly egged recap—all lights and blazes and the bloom of schoolboy flushes. But instead, he stared pensively down into the amber fog of his untouched bourbon old-fashioned, brushed with disappointment.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” he pondered. “When I said it to her, and by some wild fluke she said it back, it just didn’t feel like a beginning.”

  “But it’s everything you’ve been dreaming of!” I cried, wanting to grab him by the shoulders and jostle some sense into his lean frame.

  “What’s next, then? Where does this go?”

  I stared at him—he was lost in his world of angst so scarcely noticed—and tried to make heads or tails of it all. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t allowed himself the indulgence of imagining things reaching that point. Of course he had—Jeremy’s visions soared higher than any hot air balloon could ever take him. Was it that suddenly, he knew there could be nothing more meaningful to chase, no superior summit? People always said that was the danger of getting your heart’s desire. Everything became, all at once, both miraculously redeemed and tragically meaningless. It was a magnificent but stark cliff edge, where you could only tumble over the lip straight into the abyss. Maybe for him, Belle’s Love was that kind of abyss—a path to everything and nothing. I would take a lighter tack.

  “Well, now, what does that rhyme say? First comes love … then comes marriage…” I swung a silly finger in the air like a cartoon conductor’s wand.

  Now it was his turn to stare back at me, and my swinging finger, which I lowered to my lap, regretfully.

  “How is that possible, M.?”

  “Well, as I understand it, you get down on one knee and pop the question?” I suggested.

  “You know I send most of my paychecks home. I’m stretched so thin, and my mom has been so unwell.…”

  “It’s wonderful how you support your family. Belle could never take issue with that,” I said.

  As the words paraded out of my mouth they hung stupidly in the air between us and collapsed, one by one, in a messy heap on top of our untouched bowl of peanuts. Belle was not a fundamentally superficial girl—at her core I believed she prized real things, things of substance, behavior as dutiful and selfless as Jeremy’s. It was on that basis that we had become friends in College. But since her parents’ accident she had allowed herself to be wrapped up in a different set of standards—those dictated by Chase, Young Manhattan, her ultrafashionable stratum of the blogosphere—and in the process became the unofficial poster girl for so much that meant so little. She didn’t want the three carats but would her following expect it of her? Were there specific boxes she’d need to tick in the blog entry she crafted recapping her future engagement? The tables could have been turning on her, whether she recognized it or not. At some point, instead of dictating fashions and tastes to her followers, their adoration of her began to shape the things she wanted and who she actually was.

  “I told her on our first date that I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was a kid. Belle’s asked me to take her up in a balloon for a blog story but I keep putting it off. I know she’d fall in love with it. But I want our first flight together to be something private—something between us in the basket, not a show for thousands of strangers to gawk at, unless they happen to be watching from the ground.… There’s so much that I haven’t shown her—so much that we haven’t said to each other. I’ve never explained that what I’m doing in New York was only ever with the intention of getting out, not getting in. And I haven’t gone into the details of my family situation.… When’s the right moment to do that, exactly? She might be okay if I told her my granddad was a rumrunner but what about my father? The last seven months have been the happiest of my life, M. But they’ve been complicated. It’s packed a punch in my pocketbook, if you catch my drift. Why does a gin and tonic need to cost twenty dollars? Can’t we mix them up ourselves at home? And w
hy can’t I ever just order soda water?” He hesitated a moment, as though not wanting to articulate the crass, summarizing line dancing on the tip of his tongue. “It all leaves me … a bit constrained in what I’m able to offer her. Now and maybe ever.”

  For as long as I’d known him, I thought of Jeremy as someone who saw the universe expanding infinitely around him, believing that if he heaped the full contents of his heart into a thing—anything—he could lasso it in and call it his own. Now it seemed his old universe, the realm of what was actually possible in his mind, was shrinking into a spongy mass small enough to fit into a drinking glass. Meeting Belle, loving Belle, being loved back by her, and coming up eternally short of what he thought she’d expect of him was doing that to him. Jeremy could offer champagne-laced dinners at Le Bilboquet or midnight jazz concerts at The Carlyle’s Bemelmans Bar as one-offs to impress; Belle would expect their equivalent every Saturday night. In their city life, he was hanging on by a rapidly thinning thread. And that didn’t even factor in the issue of a wedding. With Belle’s parents no longer present, there was no deep-pocketed father of the bride to pick up the bill. And, when the time came to meet Jeremy’s parents, would she make the connection between Jeremy’s superstitions and Jack Kirby’s troubling addiction to multilevel marketing schemes? Would she think delusions were built into him, like a bitterly dominant gene he just couldn’t fight, and only a matter of time before he ended up, butterfly net in hand, chasing phantom profits down that same fantasist’s back alley?

  “Sure, Belle’s obviously gotten used to a particular lifestyle cavorting around with Chase … but what if she’s looking to get away from all that?” I protested. “And if you’re worried about a wedding, Belle of all people could dress up any backyard into a three-day affair with outdoor chandeliers and croquet and bonfire sing-alongs.” In my honest attempts to comfort Jeremy, maybe I was the one who was becoming the fantasist. Of course Belle would never be married in anyone’s backyard. “Maybe she wants something simpler,” I clarified. “Maybe that’s exactly what she wants to find with you.” I knew I was treading into dangerous territory, articulating my hopes for why Belle took up with Jeremy, not my confirmed knowledge. She claimed to be so starry-eyed around him, and I’d seen it for myself countless times, as had the world via La Belle Vie. Of course his buttonholes and foxtrotting must have charmed her. But she never gave me a substantive explanation of what drove her to pick him and stay with him. Jeremy’s ultimate goal was to move back upstate to become a pilot and the truth was it was virtually impossible to imagine Belle, who viewed herself as a heroine in her own very special story, putting down roots somewhere like Syracuse.

  Jeremy continued to look wary.

  “I want her to be happy above all things in the world,” he said, nobly. He removed his cardboard coaster from underneath his old-fashioned and balanced it atop his tumbler as a curious signal that he was done with it, though no one was looking or interested and no one would be appearing tableside to top him back up. Taking a deep breath, he shifted his kind brown eyes to me, deciding to be out with some weighty thing he’d been swallowing for God knew how long. “I see serious things in her, M.—things I know that Chase isn’t capable of seeing. Do you remember her package that I dropped off with him all those months ago, on the day in December when we met again? It was her manuscript. It was Clipped Wings.”

  “I thought Chase never opened it. Flying in the face of handle with great care and all that. Did she tell you what was inside?”

  He pressed on, ignoring my question.

  “She’s a wonderful writer, M. And I think she’s hiding behind that blog of hers. She should be writing novels, not taking pictures of fabric bolts or what’s on her dinner plate. I don’t want to come out and tell her that because I don’t want to hurt her, or scare her, for that matter. She has her whole life wrapped up in that blog—or maybe it’s the other way around, I’m never sure which. I think if she could see how well received her real writing is, the choice would be easy for her. She can give up all the nonsense.”

  “Jeremy, how did you actually get the manuscript?” I asked again, pointedly.

  “Chase left it on his desk for a week. One week, M. Collecting dust and powdered sugar. I could see Leezel sneering at it every day before digging into her morning brioches. How could I let it sit there? Belle opened herself up to him and he threw it all in the shredder.”

  “You mean he actually threw the manuscript into our office shredder?” I asked, slow-wittedly.

  “No, M. He didn’t give a damn, that’s what he did!” Jeremy exploded, taking the coaster sitting atop his old-fashioned and frisbeeing it uselessly toward a nearby wall. “I rescued her manuscript and helped get it into the right hands. I just happen to know this man in publishing who I went to school with—”

  “Does Belle know you’ve done all this?”

  “I think it’s better that she doesn’t know. I want this to be about her. About her work. I don’t want her to think I was meddling, or choreographing.”

  I sat there baffled. If this wasn’t painstaking choreography to help guarantee Belle’s success, Belle’s happiness, then what in the world was it? But most of all I was amazed by the indirect revelation that Belle had voluntarily shared her most intimate piece of writing with Chase but for whatever reason chose to keep it from Jeremy, even after they’d become inseparable. And despite that, he still downgraded himself to the role of petty thief to help her with it. Stealing Belle’s manuscript seemed much more serious an offense to me than stealing a box of hair-covered cupcakes to cajole her.

  “But won’t she think it’s Chase’s handiwork if she gave the thing to him in the first place?”

  “Chase, doing something thoughtful? I don’t think the thought would ever occur to Belle. She never needs to know how it happened. It’s irrelevant.”

  “Well, whatever does happen with the book, don’t get caught up in fighting Belle’s battles for her,” I cautioned him. “She’s never had any trouble taking her own shot at something she wants. You love her and God knows you support her and that ought to be enough.”

  But I knew it would never be enough—Belle was a woman who, whether she realized it or not, would always demand more of the people who flocked naturally around her. She was expecting front-row orchestra and he could only hand her a pair of nosebleeds in the back rafters. He was convinced he needed to compensate for that in other ways to try and assure her happiness.

  I checked the time and felt the full weight of my incomprehensible offer to cook dinner for Scott back at my apartment.

  “I’m really sorry, Jeremy, but I’ve got to get uptown. Can we head to the subway?”

  We left O’Hara’s and walked north on Church Street to the 4/5 train that would clatter us back uptown for the night.

  “I know things have changed, M.,” he said to me, his voice stitched with sorriness. “Our talks aren’t quite like they used to be. It feels like I spend the whole time getting your advice about Belle.”

  “Things have changed for you, Jeremy—I understand that.” I appreciated his self-awareness and his apology. “And I know how complicated it must be for you. Just keep things straightforward. What I’m saying is, just be who you’ve always been and everything’ll work out the way it’s supposed to.”

  “But I don’t want any of this, my relationship with Belle, I mean, to change our friendship,” he persisted. “Or make you think that I have in any way forgotten what a rock you are. And I want to get to know Scott. That’s just as important as any of this!”

  “I want you guys to get to know each other, too. That is if Scott sticks around after I cook dinner for him tonight.…”

  “Hold on,” Jeremy said, stopping in his tracks and sticking his right palm out in my direction. “You’re cooking dinner tonight?”

  “I realize the thought of me voluntarily taking charge in a kitchen is terrifying. I have no idea what’s come over me.”

  “I know exactly what�
�s come over you,” he beamed back at me, warmly. “When Love hits, it hits, and suddenly it becomes everything.”

  I wasn’t ready to admit that I was starting to understand what he meant. A week earlier, the Philharmonic had been playing on the Great Lawn of Central Park and Scott suggested we go. We slipped into a scurrying queue away from Fifth Avenue and into the trees along a winding path that buzzed with happy talk of how nice it would be to lay back and get a good look at the sky lit up to Mozart or Liszt or Grieg for an hour or two. We reached the lawn and stretched out on our tiny blanket, one of hundreds of neatly sectioned flannel squares knitted across the grass that night, and stared straight up into a twilight spectacle of powdery blues and roses and lavenders. The orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5, taking us from tragedy to triumph in a matter of forty-five minutes. I burrowed against Scott’s shoulder. Above us the colors braided and unbraided as a giant celestial kaleidoscope on display for anyone who made the effort to look up. Everything felt simple and warm and safe and bright, which I’d eventually recognize as telltale signs of happiness.

  “This is the best view of all,” Scott observed, passing a thermos of red wine over to me. I agreed wholeheartedly, taking a sip until I was flustered to realize he was looking down at me, with a soft look floating in his eyes. Dozens of lanterns dotted the lawn, throwing a flickering, sentimental light across the moment. Half-intoxicated by the red wine and the smell of his limes and the effect of the lanterns, lying there on the grass with Scott, for a short time I did believe the sky, with all its limitless expanses, was not a daily stranger visible only in teasing bursts behind the vigilant towers reigning over the island, but a friend I could come to know and love closely. Later that night when the concert was done and we wound our way back toward Fifth Avenue, an a cappella quartet hung back in the shadows of a maple tree, echoing Tchaikovsky’s second movement with a dreamy, interpretative dose of Glenn Miller in four-part harmony: Will this be moon love … nothing but moon love?