“You have literally one minute,” Celeste said.
I spoke as fast as I could while still speaking precisely. I left nothing out. I told her I shouldn’t have mixed my business and personal affairs, shouldn’t have given Wolf Susan’s poems, or at the very least should have told her about it. I told her, too, about seeing Ellen, about Ellen’s and my drunk scheming, about what we’d had the lawyers and Barry do.
All this took about thirty seconds. For the next thirty seconds I told her what happened with Julian. Except I couldn’t get it all out, that part, the clear narrative I’d written down got all muddled and strange, and by the last five seconds I was speaking only haltingly and using words like he was, um, putting his hands—and it was like—and I dunno it felt—and I remember running. Sweat was pouring from my armpits and inner thighs by the time I’d finished. I did not cry, because it was the animal in me saying these things, and animals do not cry. When I finished, I put my forehead on the freezing metal desk. I wanted to stay like that forever. My head weighed so much I could barely pick it up.
But I did. Because I had to.
“You done?” Celeste said. I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. I looked out upon this shiny artificial city I was in, a city in the desert, a mirage made of glass.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said, though it was not.
“The thing is,” she said after a pause. “It happens all the time. It’s happened to me too, more than once. Men in the entertainment industry, probably any industry, when they get a little power, they’ll use as much as they can get away with. Ask anybody. They see it all the time.”
“They—do? Then why doesn’t—”
“I’m not trying to make you feel that what happened to you isn’t, you know, terrible.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m just saying you have to see the bigger picture. I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but you need to move on, or you’ll become one of those people who”— she paused—“see themselves as victims. And that doesn’t play well over time.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding and nodding. “That makes sense.” I didn’t know deep down if it did, but there was relief in being given instructions.
“All I’m saying is, do what you need to do to get past this, as soon as you can. That’s what I did. This sort of—you can’t let it hold you back. I mean what happened with you and Julian.”
“Okay,” I said again. “Okay.” In that silent space inside me that knew things, the room where my old antenna used to live, I felt crushed; Celeste’s words were making less and less sense. She was telling me, more or less, that what happened was par for the course, a fact of life. What I wanted to tell her but couldn’t bear to was: I can’t stand that this is a fact of life. As she told me matter-of-factly how the world worked I saw the single most important difference between Celeste and me, and the reason why our relationship was doomed from the beginning. Working for People’s Republic, while exhilarating at times, had been a big mistake. I couldn’t live with the world as it was, like Celeste. I wanted the world to become what it could be.
“Of course, what happened online goes beyond all that,” Celeste said. “Julian’s already issued a statement, very well-crafted, obviously, saying—hold on, let me find it.” I heard her keyboard clacking. “Here we go. ‘Ms. Pendergast, as I understand, is a bright young woman with an active imagination. I believe that she believes that she and I were involved in some kind of relationship, but I can assure you that I did not have an affair with this woman, nor did we engage in any sexual activities. Ms. Pendergast and I met only once, on the evening in question, in the sushi bar of Caesars Palace, at which time Ms. Pendergast attempted to coerce me into a sponsorship deal with her advertising firm, which I refused. After several drinks, Ms. Pendergast became increasingly flirtatious and asked repeatedly that I let her come to my room. I refused, yet she must have followed me there after our meeting.
“ ‘Of course I did not betray my wife. I love my wife. I have walked beside her for twenty years, and through all stages of her illness. I wish the best for Ms. Pendergast and hope that she is able to get the support she needs in order to treat what appears to be a major mental illness. I imagine she is struggling tremendously right now, and, in light of this, I would ask you to suspend judgment. Indeed, instead of punishing her for an illness she has no control over, offer her your compassion. Mental illness affects over a quarter of Americans every year; I myself suffer from depression. I hope this unfortunate incident allows all of us to be more forthcoming about the struggles we face and how we might better cope.
“ ‘To Mr. Prana, who posted this video and is widely known as an agent provocateur: please consider the disastrous effects your provocations have caused the next time you use your considerable means for destructive ends. To all of you, thank you in advance for your good wishes, your respect for our privacy, and your continued support of the arts.’ ”
I exhaled a big whuff when Celeste was finished. “Jesus Christ, this guy’s a criminal liar!”
“That’s not the point,” Celeste said sharply. “Wolf should have never taken that video, but you gave him good reason to. What Julian did is inexcusable, but I have yet to hear you take responsibility for the considerable role you played in jerryrigging these particular circumstances. There’s a million different things you could have done to avoid this along the way, you know. You could have called me the minute Wolf came on to you in Brooklyn. You could have told me you were talking to him about Susan’s poems. You could have come to me the minute it came out that he plagiarized, hell, you could have called me last night after you left Julian’s hotel room—” Celeste’s voice was rising. “But you didn’t, did you. You kept it all from me and plotted and manipulated, and in some way I imagine you liked doing that, didn’t you, keeping your secrets, keeping your little sphere of influence—”
“I did not!” I burst out.
She made a sound that was some mixture of laughter and fury. “Not to mention antagonizing a very important new client with another client behind my back. Getting Ellen involved? Come on, Casey. Can you take responsibility for that, at least? Wolf emailed me this morning with a photo of the bruises on his face and is threatening to sue Nanü for negligence.”
“I’m sorry!” Though I was not sorry. Or rather, I was only sorry for myself.
“And to top it all off the most important asset we could have won just shit on us in a nationally released statement. What am I supposed to do with this, Casey? What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“How the fuck should I know!” I said. I pushed my chair back and stood. “Are you saying it’s my fault—”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Celeste interrupted. “I stuck my neck out for you hundreds of times. I trusted you, and you betrayed my trust. You’ve failed me, and you’ve failed yourself. Disappointment doesn’t even begin to express—”
“I said I’m sorry!” I exploded. I was stalking around the messy hotel room like a penned-in big cat. “What else do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I want you to say nothing. I want you to listen. I want you to hear me. I’ve never been more—” Celeste paused. “You know what? All I’ll say is, what a waste. What a waste of time and work and potential. As of immediately, you’re terminated. I’ll have Simone pack up your belongings and ship them to your house.”
I stopped pacing. “You’re firing me?”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Well, you know what?” I said. “You can’t fire me! I already decided to quit!”
“Oh Casey,” Celeste said. To call her tone patronizing wouldn’t begin to convey it. “There’s no need for that.”
“Oh yes there—” but before I could finish, she hung up.
“UGH!” For the third time that day, I chucked my phone across the r
oom. I hit a bedside lamp and knocked it over. This time it broke. And then when I went to check out later, I found Celeste had already canceled my company AmEx. I would have to pay.
* * *
—
I purposely kept my head down as I wheeled my suitcase out of my hotel room. The people walking past, gambling and laughing and filling their mouths with colorful food and drink—were they looking at me? Were they talking about me? Had they been on the Internet? Had they seen the video? Did they know who I was? Did they think I was a monster? Was I a monster? How much of monstrousness was innate, and how much was born out of circumstance? How many people believing you were a monster did it take for you to believe it yourself?
The latter was a matter of arithmetic.
The answer, I believe, is not many.
Even if they did not know, I told myself, they knew. They knew just by looking at me that I was not right. I had looked to them my whole life, these strangers, to tell me who I was. I had tried my best to look good, feel good, act good, be good, to please, to shine, but never too brightly. If I had a self that felt like mine and not just an amalgamation of rhetorical tricks and gestures, sure, I might not have needed these strangers’ benedictions so badly, but tell me, where the hell in this world was I supposed to learn that? Why would anyone want anyone to be themselves when what they can get instead is a reflection of their own image? For when I tried, those few times, to be what you might call a self—to act, to be subject, rather than object—I ended up feeling crazy. I ended up feeling bad.
Yes, I was crazy. Yes, I was very bad. Someone and something—or was it everyone, and everything?—had taken a thin paring knife to my body and removed a layer of skin. Then another layer, and another, and another, until all the layers were gone. No need to protect myself anymore. There was nothing to protect in the first place. Come now, I said through my side-eyes to these strangers. I know what you want. Take my body. Push me to the ground and kick my stomach. Chase me through the woods with stones. Turn my ass toward you and push into me while my head bangs against the fountain. I have nothing left, if there was anything in the first place. Do, take, what you wish.
I found myself waiting on the floor of the Caesars lobby, leaning up against this fountain, in the middle of which was a classical marble sculpture. My suitcase was pressed up to my knees. I wanted to see what would happen if I did nothing. Nothing at all. I would wait passively for something to happen to me. Then I would respond, or not respond. I would be very quiet for the rest of my life. That was what they wanted, wasn’t it?
Sometimes I think I might have stayed leaning against that fountain forever. I would have let my body disintegrate further and rot, until I was just a skeleton. And they would keep me around at Caesars because people come to Vegas not just for the gambling but for the profane attractions. Sideshows and peep shows and sex shows and freaks. Look here, the concierge would say to a group of visitors. Here are the remains of a girl who went mad, and look, she died of her madness. Isn’t that interesting? And the visitors would take pictures of my skull and nod because, yes, yes, they’d heard that story, or they’d heard a story just like it. It was just like girls to do that sort of thing.
But I did not stay to rot against that fountain because my phone rang. It was Susan. Susan had a specialty ring. She chose it. It was a Yoko Ono song.
I could not bring myself to pick up at first. Shame, see, is a powerful silencer.
But what I could do, however, is pick myself up off the floor and walk unsteadily to the concierge desk with my suitcase. And when the concierge asked, “Taxi?” I could nod yes. I don’t believe anymore in gods and angels, but if I did, I would elevate this man among them. He wasn’t special-looking, but he had a kind mouth, and eyes that had only respect and courtesy when they met mine. “Of course,” he said. “Would you like some water while you wait?”
I nodded again, and he pulled a miniature water bottle from beneath his desk. I know he was just doing his job, but it didn’t feel like that at the time; it felt like a life vest.
When I got to the airport, I looked at the arrivals and departures on the screens in front of the ticketing counters, and for a moment I considered getting on the next flight to anywhere. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I had nobody, was nobody. I was alone.
The feeling of standing at an airport with nothing between you and disappearance is so extreme that it’s easy to mistake the extremity for ecstasy. Possibilities on the departures screens: Shanghai, Sydney, Frankfurt. So many places where no one knew my name, whereto I might abscond with my shame. It was a deeply unsettling kind of giddiness, which is why it took me a second to come down enough to hear the noise coming from my pocket.
It was Susan again. My phone was ringing.
“Hello?” I said when I answered it. My voice was pitched high and strange.
“Where are you?” Susan said.
“I’m—” I looked up at the departure screens, all these plans, all these people coming and going. “I’m at the airport.”
“The Vegas airport?”
“Yes.”
“Are you on your way home?”
“N-n-not yet.”
“Will you be soon?”
I looked up at the screens again.
“Yes,” I said finally.
“Good. Will you call me when you land?”
What was this water all over my face?
“Yes.”
“Are you hanging in there?”
“Y-y-y—” I started to shake.
“Oh Casey,” Susan said in her most Susany of voices, and that’s about when I lost it.
I took a cab to Susan’s apartment after I landed. She opened the door in sweatpants and an old basketball T-shirt two sizes too big for her. Her hair was piled on one side of her head. I hadn’t seen her since the day she kicked me out of the apartment.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, and started weeping again.
She led me to one of her garage-sale armchairs and made me put my bags down and made me a cup of tea and let me curl up into the chair and hide my face in my chest. As she waited for the kettle to whistle, she filled the heavy silence with some news: Mary London had called her a few days ago. She’d read the story of Susan’s that I’d given her and used the contact info in the header to tell her personally not only how good it was, but to inquire on behalf of Mary’s own agent about representation. Susan had stammered she didn’t yet have an agent, and Mary asked if she’d like to speak with hers, and Susan’d gathered her courage and stammered yes, in fact she was working on a novel she would love to have her read. Mary had said, “Good, send her the first fifty pages,” and gave her the agent’s email address. Susan said she and the agent were due to talk the following Friday. As she poured the tea and put some pretzels in a bowl, I noticed how buoyant her voice was, how she was standing a little taller, walking with her shoulders back. I didn’t think I’d seen Susan undepressed in—God—years, maybe. The sight of her so happy and hopeful was almost enough to make me happy and hopeful. Almost.
“I’m so happy for you,” I said. I struggled to lift myself up in the chair despite the crushing weight pressing down upon my body. “I’m also—” I teared up again. “I’m so sorry I did that—without asking—and with Wolf—I know it’s so—”
“It’s okay,” Susan said in a quiet voice. She sat down at the foot of my chair, cross-legged, and tapped her knees. I looked at her. She tapped one of my calves and, when I did nothing, pulled my legs down to her lap and started rubbing my feet. The feeling of her warm hands on my skin unlocked some deeper layer of shock. I stopped crying. My whole body began to shake. She rubbed my feet in silence for I don’t know how long, and it was only when the trembling began to slow that Susan let up massaging with her fingers and, instead, squeezed my feet tightly with her hands. There was animal comfort
in that pressure. My breath slowed and evened. I inhaled, exhaled.
“Thank you,” I finally said. I rolled my shoulders, stretched my neck.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at me.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said.
“Yeah I do.” After a moment she said, “I haven’t been a good friend to you in a long time. I pushed you away. Every time—”
“You had every right to,” I said. “I don’t even know—I don’t even know who I was. Got stuck in a house of mirrors and couldn’t see my way out of it.” I added, “Not anymore, though. Even if I wanted to—”
“—I put up a wall—” she was saying, shaking her head, but at the last part she looked up. “Wait, what do you mean?”
I told her moment by moment what had happened with Julian, told her how Celeste had fired me, told her what I’d done about Wolf with Ellen: the lawyers, the hit by Barry. Despite ourselves, despite how bad it all was, despite this enormous amount of pain leaching out of me like mercury, we somehow ended up laughing. “Oh my God, Casey,” Susan said, wiping her eyes. “What in God’s name were you thinking? Getting a Real Housewife to—”
“It was her idea!” I said, putting up my hands. “I had nothing to do with it! Okay, okay,” I immediately conceded. “I had something to do with it.”
“I can’t believe it.” Susan’s voice was appalled, but there was a teensy bit of pride beneath it, like: Wow, look at this ridiculous thing my friend did on my behalf.
“Listen, the guy is a rank motherfucker who stole your poems. I would’ve done a lot worse, let me tell you. Still would.”
“Well then, maybe we should do something,” Susan said forcefully, clambering to her feet. She redid the knot in her hair, stuck a bobby pin in the back to catch the strays, and put her hands on her sweatpantsed hips. “The thing that really pisses me off, too, is I bet Celeste would’ve fired you even if there was nothing between you and Wolf. Fucking Celeste goes whichever way the wind is blowing.” Her lip curled a little. “She’s doing literally nothing to defend you against a sexual predator, not to mention—well, you know what? Whatever.” Susan exhaled with a puff and ruffled her flyaways. “Fuck her.”
A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Page 24
