by Eliza Gordon
Devotedly yours,
Danielle Spy-Stopping-Baby-Watching-Dimetapp-Dosing-Sex-Toy-Sleuthing Steele
*SAVE*
*CLOSE*
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Hello, Danielle. It’s Joan. I’m going to assume that Viv has updated you about the recent goings-on here in the office, as I know you ladies had your book-club meeting.
“In accordance with the ongoing investigation regarding the incident at work involving former employee Lisa Rogers, it has been requested that you come in and submit to questioning by the authorities handling the case. It should only take about an hour, and you will be paid your normal hourly rate for your time.
“As for your adjudication, your sister has had her attorney call me no fewer than six times. Your suspension remains intact for the full duration of the month, but you will not be fired at its conclusion. Please tell Dr. Steele to call off her attorney so I don’t have to get corporate involved.
“Also, let me know if coming in today midafternoon will work for you. Thank you, Danielle.”
TWENTY-NINE
FAX
From: PENELOPE “MOMMY” STEELE
Hello, Danielle,
It’s your mother. I would very much like to talk about the UFO conference with you—we need to solidify our plans. It would be great if I could confirm with my Greys (Alien) Anatomy group that I will attend as our representative. Is there any way you could come over for dinner tonight? If not tonight, then it must wait until the weekend, as I have wand consultations booked for the next two evenings.
Even though your sisters don’t like my business enterprise, I am pleased that it’s going so well. Considering this, I am again offering to go halfsies for our trip, given your dangerous financial circumstances (you really should finish your degree, Danielle!). Any word on if you’re going to have a job to go back to? I am not telling any of my friends what happened because physical violence goes against everything I believe in—which is why I do not understand your fixation with that wrestler fellow. Really, did you have to hit your coworker? What did she do that was so bad? Jacqueline said something about a penis picture—are you sending illicit materials over the Internet? This is exactly why I do not trust the World Wide Web. Malfeasance on every corner. Honestly, why would you need to see a picture of a penis in your email? Gerald Robert Steele used to keep Hustler under the bed, as if I didn’t know it was there, and it would make me so angry, the objectification of those poor girls. I do hope you’re not objectifying some young man by sharing these photos, Danielle. I raised you better than that.
Jacqueline also said her attorney is trying to get you your job back? This is all very confusing to me, and frankly, I’m embarrassed that you felt violence was the answer. This is definitely your father’s influence. Nature versus nurture, I suppose.
And because you might be looking for a new job, I was thinking that we could go into business together with these wands. We could also look at doing a first-edition book resale business on eBay. I have friends who make several hundred dollars a month doing this.
I’m worried about you being holed up in your apartment by yourself. Are you still doing your acting thing? You know, me and another fellow from my UFO group have started writing a play about a couple who are abducted by aliens, but no one will believe them. Maybe you would want to help us with it? You’re the one with the Hollywood experience.
I hope Timothy is getting you out of the house so you don’t turn into a hermit. You could always join me and the UFO ladies—we walk the mall before it opens three days a week to keep in shape and talk about developments in our ongoing efforts to prove the government is lying about Roswell. I don’t want to be nitpicky, but you don’t have the same metabolism as Jacqueline—you have my predisposition to bulking up in your legs and bottom—so you’d better take care of yourself or you’ll find a man like Gerald Robert Steele who calls you “thunder thighs.”
I am so glad that little William Morris is going to be okay. That was a welcome fax to receive this morning. Thank you for going over to sit with Dante and Mary May, although perhaps next time, don’t feed the children that terrible fast food. I think it’s safe to say, based on the angry handwriting in her earlier fax, Georgette is not pleased with you about that, but she’s too polite to say so to your face.
Okay, please fax me back with updates so I know how to proceed with my life.
Also, if you have time this weekend, Candace at Vintage in Vancouver found another signed first edition of 44 Charles Street, this one without a coffee stain, and she said she’d throw in a signed first edition of Judith McNaught’s Until You if I could get over there. Can you make that happen sometime soon? Will you need gas money?
Love and light,
Mommy
THIRTY
I cannot handle any more suckage right now.
Thanks to getting home at nine this morning after basically no sleep, only to find Mommy’s fax on the floor waiting for me and Joan the Crone’s voicemail, I think I’m already done with today.
Except I’m not.
After another missed workout, a brief nap, a smoothie, and a shower, I’m on my way to the office to “submit to questioning” regarding the Lisa Rogers scandal. I think Miraculously Beautiful Marco is losing patience with me—which is why he’s meeting me at five outside the office so we can run. “No excuses!” was his last text. Me running? Oh man, I hope he’s in the mood for some laughs.
At least I don’t have to worry about seeing Shithead Trevor tonight, though. Yeah, that’s his new name. I know. Real mature. Hey, it’s better than my family who can’t remember his name at all.
Whatever. I’m crabby and tired of my mother thinking I’m a total screwup and that I have no life.
INT. FLEX KAVANA (DANI’S CAR) - MIDAFTERNOON
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
You know, if pity parties could build muscles and prep you for that course . . .
DANIELLE
Really? You’re going to give me shit for feeling a little sorry for myself? Did you read Mommy’s fax?
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Blood, sweat, and respect—
DANIELLE
Yes, I know. The first two you give, the last one you earn. But how can I earn my mother’s respect when everything I do is less important than what everyone else is doing, according to some bizarre set of expectations I cannot possibly reach?
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Maybe you need to stop measuring yourself by your mother’s ruler. Stop comparing yourself to your sisters.
DANIELLE
Are you--is that pizza? Are you seriously eating pizza right now?
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
What? Georgie was gonna throw it out. It’s deep dish, babe.
DANIELLE
You’re not helping. You’re not supposed to be eating stuff like that except on cheat days. You’re sending me mixed messages.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Here’s the difference: I’ve been doing this for thirty-four years. You’ve been doing this for thirty-four days. There is no mix in my message. Get your ass to the office so you can get your ass to the gym, and stop whining about your family. Their suck isn’t your suck.
DANIELLE
Did you at least save me a breadstick?
I’m wearing slacks and a blouse, but under it I have on my workout gear—I don’t want to change in the office bathroom postinterview and then pop out in activewear; that would lead people to question what I’m doing. Not yet.
But as I sit down in the conference room across from the imposing, gray-suit-wearing federal agent with Superman hair and the shiny badge hooked on his pocket, I realize that so many layers of clothing make me look suspicious, secondary to the perspiration beading on my upper lip and forehead. And before he utters so much as a how-do-you-do, he slides a rather lengthy nondisclosure agreement in front of me and offers a weighted black metal pen so I can sign it.
Ohhhhhh, finally the interview delivers on something other than making me sweat like a pig in a hot dog shop!
Trevor is busted.
How much did he know? Holy shit, is he part of this whole thing?
When the questioning turns to how much I might have observed, even in passing, during my “romantic relationship” with Trevor, I tell the investigator, from the depths of my nervous stomach, that my relationship with Trevor was only occasionally romantic and we weren’t serious enough to live together or anything and I doubt Trevor is smart enough to have learned the skills necessary to become a hacker. Farting around with Photoshop Elements to make crappy logos for his dad’s business is one thing, but he’s way too lazy to go much beyond that, and his mom still does his taxes because he doesn’t want to learn the software.
His eyes droop the longer and faster I talk. I don’t know if this is a good thing, but I’ve never been interrogated by a federal agent before, so I want it to be very clear that I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told him. Especially about Trevor.
“We will get to the bottom of that with Mr. Kurzmann. Thank you for your time.”
That earlier fantasy that I would be rewarded for saving the company loads of money and embarrassment? Yeah, that evaporates. [Dani returns ball gown, hands statuette back to Joan.]
I am done earlier than expected, so I text Marco and tell him I will meet him at the gym instead of his coming to the office.
The interview with Agent Superman, lack of sleep secondary to dealing with Georgie’s kids, and general anxiety from being temporarily unemployed, et cetera, means I’m already wiped. And although I had a momentary pick-me-up as I handed over Trevor’s contact information to the agent, my mother’s fax is again weighing heavily. I need to tell her about the competition, how there’s no way I can take her to the beach for her UFO convention. I need to follow Imaginary Rock’s advice and stand up to her.
But first, pain.
Miraculously Beautiful Marco recaps our plan for upcoming training as we inch closer to the Big Event—three months to go—and reviews my workout journal. I’m sheepish as he reads through the diet; I’m still struggling with assigning certain foods to the Not-Right-Now pile. But he doesn’t nag. He reminds me that this is a process, that I’m new, and that things take time to adjust to.
Then he listens patiently while I rattle off my excuses for missing the last two days. I can’t help getting a little weepy about how mean my mother is and she keeps comparing me to my deadbeat dad and Trevor is a huge jerk but he’s involved with the dick-pic scandal and my older sisters are so accomplished and I’m not and I feel so betrayed and I’m just feeling doughy and unimportant—
“I’m sorry, can I interrupt?”
I look up at Marco, the moisture in my eyes clouding my vision enough to give him a brief halo.
“I need you to listen, and not stop me as I speak. I ask that you be serious for a moment. I’ve known you for just shy of three weeks now, and already I’m noticing a pattern. So this is going to sound cruel, which I don’t mean it to—I give this speech to all my new clients. I do think, however, you need to hear some tough love.”
I sniff and nod. Shit. Tough love?
“Look around the gym. Every person in this place has a story. You are not the only one with a sad tale. And sitting there on the bench feeling sorry for yourself because you think you can’t push a little harder—that is not the attitude that will get you a photo opportunity with your hero. What would The Rock say if he saw you sitting here sniffling because you’re tired or because your subpar un-boyfriend has again done something subpar or because your dad walked out when you were a kid? We’ve all got tales of woe, Dani. Every single one of us. It’s what makes us strong. It’s what propels us to get out of bed every day and do better than we did the day before.”
I think of the LA Times story I read about Marco’s best friend dying on that movie set . . .
“You see Handstand Man? Walter? You know why he always wears a ‘F*ck Cancer’ tank top? He had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Lifelong athlete, master’s degree in history, qualified for the Olympics in track and field. Then he almost died at fifty. But he fought. He fought so hard, and he’s been coming here, fighting, every single day for the last decade.”
I’m floored. I’ve worked so many cancer cases at IH&W where the survivors never return to their former quality of life.
“Or that woman over there, the one who always smiles at you when you come in?” I look over to where he’s pointing—the Limping Lady. “Esther’s son was killed by a guy who had just robbed a convenience store and was driving the wrong way down I-84. She limps because she was in the car with her son at the time of the crash. The cute guy you sometimes stare at who spends a lot of time on the bench press—he’s a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. An IED went off under his rig, and his driver was killed. Now Alex has a 60 percent injury in his spine for life. He’s twenty-four years old.”
The more he talks, the dumber I feel. Though I don’t think that’s his intent, I have nothing to complain about here.
“And our hulking friend—do you know why we call him the Minotaur? Because he was walking down the street, minding his own business, when a drunk slammed into and propelled him fifteen feet, headfirst, into a concrete wall. He died twice, and he should be dead now, or at least in a vegetative state. Instead, he has come into this gym every single day since his discharge from the rehab hospital, two years now. He’s gone from shuffling through the door with a walker, and then double canes, and now he’s squatting and bench-pressing three times your body weight.”
Wow. Okay. I’m a whiny ass. If Marco hadn’t told me, I would’ve never guessed that Minotaur had experienced something so horrific. His strength is so far beyond his muscles.
“So you need to make a commitment, right here, right now. Everyone has a story. You just have to decide how you want the next chapter to be written. If listening to your naysaying friends or family who tell you that you’re a silly girl for not meeting their expectations is how you want to spend your time, then I think your being here is not in anyone’s best interest.
“You must commit. I cannot run this race for you, and you certainly won’t win with this defeatist, the-world-is-against-me mentality you cannot seem to let go of.”
By this time, I’m sobbing and snotty and I don’t care who sees because I’m exhausted and every bone and muscle in my body hurts . . . Even though—Marco’s right.
He’s fucking right.
“You have three months left until the race. We can still do this, but you must stop cheating your meals. You must stop cheating the reps and sets I give you. You must stop cheating yourself.”
He hands me some paper towels. I blow my nose, the sound like an angry goose.
His voice softens a little, and he sits on the bench next to me. “You can do this. You’re smart and funny and beautiful and strong and brave and determined. You can do this. You only have to prove it to yourself—no one else matters.”
Marco puts a warm hand on my back, rubbing in slow circles.
“You’re good at tough love,” I say, l
aughing and sniffing. But he said so many nice things about me too. Should I feel special? Because while I feel a bit scolded, I also want to believe that he doesn’t say this to every sad sack who comes to him for help.
“Tough love is an added perk, free of charge,” he says. “But only because I know you can do this.”
I nod.
“You have to say it out loud. It’s not enough to bob your head simply to please me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I can do this.”
He leans forward and cups a hand around his ear. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I’m a little deaf from all the whingeing.”
“I said, I can do this.”
He smiles widely, the brown of his eyes sparkling under the bright gym lights. “I know you can. Because you’re a mighty warrior. You’re Danielle Fucking Steele.”
I laugh—and I feel freer for a moment. Empowered, like a rush of adrenaline is whispering that I can lift a car above my head if I wanted to.
Marco nudges my chin and then stands before me, his broad hand out. “Now go wash your face. And then let’s go run. You have a Rock to catch.”
THIRTY-ONE
I wish I could tattoo Marco’s words on my forehead, so when I look in the mirror I’d be reminded of everything he said. But since I cannot, as that would look really weird, especially since I’d have to have it tattooed backward so I could read it in the mirror’s reflection, I will just tattoo it to the inside of my head.
I can do this because Miraculously Beautiful Marco said I could.
Even if he’s being paid to be nice to me, it’s refreshing to have someone so positive in my life. I know, he doesn’t know what a jerk I can be or how I was to grow up with or what I look like in the morning or any of those things that only the people closest to us are ever exposed to—but he says he believes in me, and that’s just going to have to be good enough.
It’s these words I’m playing over and over in my head with every pounding step along the concrete.
