I could hear him chewing. “That a CIA schubsidiary?”
“No, it’s an advertising agency. We’ve found a blue ocean in the branding market. Now specializing in matching uncapitalized-upon cultural assets with struggling corporate interests?”
I heard him smack and swallow. “Bullshitsh.” Then I heard a clunk. It was approximately the sound of a body dropping to the floor.
“Johnny?” I rapped on the door. “Ummm. Johnny?” No response. “That’s it. I’m going to get management to open the door.”
“Don’t talk to management!” he cried, suddenly throwing open the door. “They’re after me!”
By the time it was over it made for a good story, which I relayed to Ben and Susan one hot early summer evening at a beer garden, as fireflies blinked above us and the sky took its sweet time changing from sunset to dusk. I’d arranged the weeknight get-together when I got back from Reno in an attempt to get back in Susan’s good graces, seeing as having fun together is the quickest way to reestablish fading intimacy. “The hotel room seriously looked like something straight out of Celebrity Rehab,” I said, leaning forward, my elbows resting on the picnic table. Ben was next to me, Susan across. “Pre-intervention, I mean. Like, there was all this tinfoil? Not to mention the pill bottles and pipes and liquor. The guy looked like he weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, so I took him to IHOP and bought him Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity pancakes. His request, obviously.”
“Did he sign the contract?” Susan took a sip of her oatmeal stout. She was the only woman I knew who dared to drink dark beer. “He must have eventually, right?”
“I got him to sign, yeah, but I don’t know if he’ll remember. I tried to talk to him about Castleville but all he wanted to talk about was what to do with the money. Apparently there’s some casita in Mexico and a dog he wants to buy? But it’s out of my hands now.” I made a show of dusting my palms. “I told Celeste about it. She’s going to hire someone in Reno to look after him while he’s working, which I thought was nice.”
“That is nice,” Ben said. He turned to Susan while sticking his thumb toward me. “You should have seen this one giving me the hard sell. None of these writers stand a chance against her.”
He meant it in a complimentary way, but given my moral dilemma, I winced. Luckily, Susan let the opportunity to take a dig at Nanü pass her right by. “You think that’s good, you should have seen her as a slam poet,” she said to Ben.
“That’s enough,” I warned her.
Ben raised his eyebrows mischievously. “Casey was a slam poet?”
“Nooooo,” I groaned.
“Briefly in college, before the Dark Lords pulled her into advertising. Talk about commanding a room. I still remember this rhyme she had about this guy Sam she dated who gave her—”
“Okay, okay!” I said, waving my arms. “SOS! Mercy! Give me CPR before I die of humiliation!” On the plus side, we had moved on to my favorite subject: moi, myself, and I. I turned to Ben. “Susan was the real standout in our class. I was just fooling around.”
“You were a slam poet too?” Ben said to Susan.
“She was the writer,” I informed him, pointing at Susan.
“And she was the clown,” Susan told Ben, pointing to me. “I kept telling her to do something about it—did you know that when she was a kid she wanted to be on television?—but she was always too shy.”
Ben looked at me with incredulity. “Casey? Shy?”
“Not in the ways you’d expect. But when it comes to—”
“Well, well, well, I think that’s just enough pop psychology for one evening, thankyewveddymuch” I said, checking my watch. It was almost eleven, and the brewery was soon to close. My face felt pink and warm. I wasn’t sure if it was from the beer or from hanging out with two highly perceptive people.
“Huh,” Ben mused. “Should we sign her up for an acting class or something?”
“Good luck trying,” Susan said, standing up. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the horse do the one thing she deep down wants to do already.”
“It’s true,” I said, and went around the table to give her a hug. Perhaps it was a consequence of the late sunset, or the beer, or the lightness in the midsummer air, but there was no rancor hidden in our exchange, only easy familiarity. “On a completely unrelated note, you finish your novel yet?”
“You two,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Like an old married couple.”
I put my arm around Susan’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Yup. She’s my wife, and you’re my…”
“Farm boy,” Susan supplied.
“Yeah, farm boy,” I said. “Baling hay and sleeping in the barn.”
As Susan pedaled away on her bicycle, Ben tipsily put his arms around me and kissed both my cheeks, then my eyes, then my lips. “You’re not going to keep me in the barn forever, are you?”
I laughed. “Of course not. It was just a joke.” Yet while I kissed him, I couldn’t keep my mind from drifting toward work, traveling elsewhere, to all the places I had traveled and would soon travel, away from him and alone. The secret that I didn’t tell anyone, not even myself, was that I liked traveling, I liked the ungroundedness. No roots, you can’t get torn up.
* * *
—
Just a few nights later I found myself in a gazebo in the Sausalito hills with Izzy Calliente, the doyenne of magical realism and soon-to-be label-maker for a new salsa company. The salsa company had offered to not only reward Calliente handsomely for penning spicy Spanish exclamations for the back of their jars, but to commission a sculpture in the Latin American country from whence she came in honor of those who “disappeared” during one of the military coups.
“Idiots!” Izzy had initially cried when I told her about the offer. To be fair, the drawing of the sculpture in question had been of a joyful-looking man throwing his sombrero up into the sky. “We don’t even wear sombreros in my country!”
It took a very long conversation with Izzy, one that lasted over two meals and well into the night, to convince her to buy into Nanü. She was the hardest sell yet, by far. Having grown up in a country where the government controlled pretty much everything, it was initially unfathomable to her that she would do anything to compromise what she called “my creative freedom. The one place where I am truly free.”
Given my own circumspection about what I was selling, I remained mostly quiet while Izzy talked, planning what I would tell Celeste if and when Izzy said no to the offer. Interestingly enough, however, the more Izzy talked herself in circles, the more she warmed up to the idea. When she finally said yes, it seemed that she herself had flipped a switch in her brain, told herself the right story. I found this happened often, not just with writers. We humans, we can convince ourselves of anything. “Now my daughter can finally pay off those ridiculous student loans,” she said as she capped the pen after signing the deal.
At the office that summer, a pervasive aura of jealousy was circulating as I fluttered in and out of Celeste’s office, leaned my elbows on Simone’s desk while she prissily made my travel itineraries (boy, did she love lording her scheduling power over me), and frequently left in the middle of the day for a long lunch and/or afternoon delight with Ben, a reward, I told myself, for a travel schedule so tight you couldn’t even stick a vibrator in it. “What’s the rush?” I remember asking Simone as she was booking one flight after another. Simone had answered by parroting a line I was sure Celeste herself had said. “Stay in a blue ocean too long, Casey”—she sniffed—“and someone starts to bleed.”
Meanwhile, in my absence, Annie was transitioning to a role Celeste called the Asset Liaison, shepherding our authors through the creative production process inside the corporations. Jack and Lindsey were working closely with Encore and Mary London on the visual side of the store’s rebranding. The special treatment the four
of us received wasn’t going over well with our colleagues. Once, in the kitchen, I heard a couple girls from Accounts talking shit about us and murmuring about rumors of layoffs. “I heard Celeste’s planning on selling to some huge agency,” a blond Tiffany-braceleted girl named Britney said to the brunette version of herself. They each took a Diet Coke out of the stainless steel Sub-Zero.
“What. The fuck.”
“She’s gonna take them with her somewhere else.”
“They’re not even good. Jack’s a diva, Annie and Lindsey are lackeys, and Casey must be eating Celeste out every night because otherwise there’s no way—”
That was about when I cleared my throat so they’d turn around. “Hi!” I said, and nothing else, so they’d spend the rest of the afternoon wondering and worrying if I’d overheard them.
“You guys, I just heard Britney talking shit about us in the kitchen,” I said to Jack and Lindsey once I got back to my station. Annie was on one of her many trips to the bathroom. Annie’d taken to hiding in the stalls and playing Candy Crush on her phone when she needed a break from her new position.
Lindsey looked up from her large monitor, eyes wide and hurt. “What’d she say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Did you know there were rumors that Celeste was selling the company?”
“Is that the blond one? Whatever, fuck her,” Jack said, flinging a dismissive arm in the air. “Wait, she talked shit about me?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said again. “But the sale, is that true? That can’t be true.”
Lindsey shrugged her shoulders and winced. Beats me, her body was saying. Please don’t hurt me for not knowing.
“No, it’s not true,” Jack said. “You think Celeste would sell this place to some giant corporation? It’d be like selling your own baby into slavery.”
“Jack!” Lindsey and I both said, abashed. “You can’t say shit like that!” I added.
He sniffed. “I’m gay. I don’t have to be PC.”
Luckily, I wasn’t in the office that much and could mostly avoid these petty dramas. I found myself strolling through a tiny terminal in Cedar Rapids two days later and felt very pleased with myself. Not only had I escaped the acrimony, but no one at that particular moment knew where the hell I was. Given how quote-unquote connected the world was, it felt like a form of liberation, this catapulting through the world like a tetherball yanked from its chain. I was in Iowa to meet Betty Calvinson, the dour grande dame behind such inspirational Christian novels as Heal Me, Jesus and My Love, My Father, who agreed to write a short story for Reader’s Digest that “prominently featured” a new, over-the-counter pill for female incontinence. I ate Pepperidge Farm cookies with Betty on her gabled porch and listened to her drone on about her own incontinence, and how she felt it was important that as “a very prestigious writer” she draw attention to the subject. Whatever story you need to tell yourself, I thought, as she held forth on the idea that it was God’s will that had brought Nanü to her, so that she might spread further the truth of the Gospels.
With Betty and Izzy and Ben, Mary, Wolf, Tracy, and Johnny, not to mention YA phenomenon Geoffery Turge (writing a campaign for Camel’s new cigarettes, Camel Teen), I’d managed to get my asset number up to eight by early August, only two assets away from securing the success of Nanü for the venture capitalists. I was surprised by how easy it’d been to get these writers on board, but I guess Celeste’d been right: people would do pretty much anything once the right dollar amount was on the table. I would have a two-week travel respite in August, but my last stop before it was Milwaukee, of all places, home of Mort Stillman, the aging cartoonist and Holocaust survivor.
I say of all places because Louise had moved there a few years before to be closer to Aunt Jean, who had moved there from L.A. for the cheap rent in the aughts. Unfortunately, Aunt Jean was out of town. Unfortunately, too, my mother was in town. We agreed to meet for lunch at a restaurant on the north shore of the city, not far from the art museum, and in Louise’s neighborhood—a part of the city that was very grand and old-moneyish, filled with people just like her.
I hadn’t seen Louise since Christmas and, when I saw her, I was struck by how lined her face was getting, how her body was shrinking, getting thinner, though there was also a new softness to her belly. “Hello Casey,” she said stiffly into my shoulder as we hugged. Or rather, I hugged, and she patted me on the back. How is this stranger my mother, I thought, and the thought filled me with loneliness.
“What are you getting?” I said once we’d been seated. The menus were huge, and I took comfort in the buffer they provided. I dreaded having to fill the time. Perhaps we could talk about food allergies.
Louise’s hands were folded on her unopened menu. “I always get the spinach salad.” To an outsider, she probably looked perfectly harmless: an erect, sixtysomething brunette in pearls and a cardigan set. Uptight, sure, but harmless. Most parents seem harmless to the children who are not their children.
But to me, every gesture, every word she said was obliterating. “I’ll get that too,” I said, imagining myself taking up the giant menu and attacking the table with it, each thwack a reprieve from the millions of words we’d left unsaid.
“So what brings you to town?” she said once the salads had arrived. I looked down and resolutely began shoveling greens into my mouth. I had died a thousand deaths over my mother’s lack of interest in my life. I would not die of it again.
“Work,” I said, talking purposely with my mouth full. “I got a new assignment.”
“That’s nice,” she said, and took a bite, closing her lips tightly around her fork. As she chewed I braced myself for the inevitable onslaught of Louise ruminations. But when she swallowed all she said was, “What kind of assignment?”
I blinked. Louise did not ask follow-up questions. “I dunno, you really want to hear about it?”
She nodded and took a sip of mineral water. I took the rare offering of her attention and told her about Nanü, leaving out the parts about my moral dilemma so that I might appear more pleasant and successful. I told her I was traveling a lot, but I didn’t mind it, and I got a kick out of getting people excited about something they otherwise would never do. Louise listened while slowly eating exactly one half of her salad. She listened! I felt encouraged, and kept talking more and more. When she finished eating, she put her fork down and placed her napkin on top of the plate. After a second I realized her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Are you crying?” I said, surprised. I’d been talking about Tracy Mallard’s animal shelter. “Don’t be sad—it’ll be no-kill in no time, once the money comes in.”
She brushed a single tear away from her cheek. “It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer, but the tears kept coming. Irritation prickled my skin. “What?”
“It’s only”—she delicately dabbed her eyes with her napkin—“you sound so much like your father.”
My fists instinctively curled in my lap. “No I don’t.”
“It’s just the kind of thing he would have loved to do.”
“No it’s not,” I said hotly.
“Honey,” she said sadly, and reached across the table for my hand. “It’s okay to be sad still. I’m sad too.”
“Oh my God, I’m not sad!” I bumped the table so the silverware clanked and the water sloshed in the glasses.
“We all grieve differently—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“I gave birth to you,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you, probably better than you know yourself.”
“No, you don’t!” I threw my napkin down and stood up.
“Casey—” Louise started to say, but I was already gathering my things. I fumbled for money and dropped a twenty on the floor. I dropped my scarf and tripped on it. “Leave me
alone,” I snapped as she reached out to help. And with that I stalked out of the restaurant. Though on some level I knew that I longed for her to comfort me, I did not consider turning back.
* * *
—
Mort Stillman lived in an old industrial part of milwaukee trying its best to make a comeback, though it’s hard to make a comeback when even saying the word Milwaukee makes people cringe. Mort had a live/work space with giant factory windows and vaulted ceilings, the kind of place that would go for millions in Tribeca but in Milwaukee was, in Mort’s words, “dirt cheap.” He greeted me at the door with a cane, wearing a button-down shirt with a small stain on the front. He must have been well into his eighties, and his hands shook from Parkinson’s. “Come in already,” he said. “Don’t just stand in the doorway.”
But there was nowhere to sit in Mort’s studio that wasn’t covered with books. “You want a drink or something?” Mort said. “You want a cup of coffee?” He was leaning against his drafting table with his cane-free arm. The table was covered with drawings, and more drawings were hung on a clothesline by the window. Drawings of dogs, mostly, but dogs acting like people. In one picture of two dogs sitting in a diner booth, there was a speech bubble with one saying to the other, What we did will be remembered.
“Love one,” I said. A few minutes later, he reappeared with an old ceramic carafe and a box of saltines. We moved the piles of books from the Adirondack chairs by the window, and I ate almost an entire sleeve of crackers. So relieved, I think, to be out of that restaurant and my mother’s shadow.
While I chewed, Mort watched and smiled, urged me to eat more, rested both his hands on top of his cane. I felt very safe with him, right off the bat. Whatever testosterone aggression he might have had as a younger man had already burned through him, or else he never had it. Some men, a few, the ones I like best, just don’t.
My spiel to Mort, out of all the spiels for Nanü that Celeste had coached me on, was the one I felt shittiest about. I had flat-out refused the first time Celeste told me what the deal was, but as always, she’d smoothed and soothed me with her rhetoric. “Let’s let Mort decide what is conscionable,” she said, and added, “and give him the dignity of not deciding for him.”
A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Page 16
