by Eliza Gordon
“You’re going to have to get some Xanax for your goldfish,” she teases.
“I’ll just sprinkle some of mine into his fishbowl when he’s not looking.”
As the clock has now passed five, other employees in our building start shuffling about, pulling on coats and logging out of their computers. A few give me a look as they pass, but no one says anything.
“I’m gonna miss you.” Viv eyes sparkle with moisture.
“You won’t. Because we can still hang out. Can I come to the baby shower?”
“As long as you promise to bring me one of your mother’s magic space wands. Could come in handy during labor.” She laughs and sniffs at the same time.
I stand and give her a hug, and when I pull away she’s offering her pinky. “Let’s be friends forever. Okay?”
I lock my pinky around hers. “Sounds like a solid plan.”
Viv returns to her part of the building, leaving me to finish packing in peace. Soon the evening cleaners are the only company I have. It’s amazing how much junk I’ve accumulated in six years.
I write a quick note on a Post-it and place it on Charlene’s desk with the few gift cards I’d been saving to dole out over the coming months. At least her kitties will have a few extra bucks this month.
I walk out to my car, the cool air redolent with the scent of wet greenery from a late-spring downpour. My box of personal effects on the front seat, I pull out of the lot for the last time, feeling a little bit guilty that my most prominent emotion is relief.
I think back to my first day at this job—the uncertainty of starting something new, something I didn’t really want to be doing, the voice in the back of my head harping at me that I’d sold out and given up on the dream, me reminding that little voice that dreams are expensive, and landlords don’t take IOUs or pizza coupons to satisfy rent requirements.
INT. DANIELLE’S CAR - EVENING
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Is it time for me to tell you the story about that last seven bucks I had in my pocket . . .?
DANIELLE
No. I know the story.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Look at this as an opportunity to reinvent yourself! Joan the Crone’s right. You hated this job.
DANIELLE
Yeah. I did. But I like food and heat and electricity.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Don’t we all. So: reinvent! I’m awesome at reinventing myself. After the football dreams didn’t work out, I decided to go into the family business. My first wrestling event was in front of, like, twenty, twenty-five people, tops. I’ve been Flex Kavana, Rocky Maivia, and finally, The Rock. For a while, the crowds hated me –- “Die, Rocky, Die!” and “Rocky sucks!” So those commenters on your blog who are dissing you? I get it.
But you gotta reinvent, kid. You gotta make yourself into something bigger. I did, and look at me today.
DANIELLE
Top-grossing Hollywood movie star, father, devoted partner, Disney demigod, all-around good guy.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Don’t forget incredibly handsome super-stud.
DANIELLE
You do smell particularly nice.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Dani, my girl, you gotta get clear on what it is you want. You’re half-assing this whole life thing. How many times do I have to tell you, sister--you gotta be the hardest worker in the room. This is your MATRIX blue pill/red pill moment. You gotta choose what path to take.
DANIELLE
Did Neo take the red pill or the blue pill? I can never remember.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
All I know is Keanu Reeves never ages. I need to get in touch with his skin-care team.
DANIELLE
I think Morpheus should’ve had more options. Like green or yellow. I would’ve chosen green, but only if it wasn’t lime. I hate lime.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Limes go well with tequila, you gotta admit . . .
DANIELLE
True, true . . .
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Speaking of green . . .
DJ points at the stoplight that has changed.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (CONT’D)
Dani, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get this show on the road. Find the good in this mess. Silver lining and all that jazz.
DJ digs through my box from the office.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (CONT’D)
Maybe when you get home, though, we should hang up these photos. Wouldn’t want my face to languish in a box, now, would we?
DJ finds a shot with his legendary eyebrow raised, holds the photo up, and smiles next to it.
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (CONT’D)
See how handsome I am?
DANIELLE
How is this relevant to my current predicament?
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Oh. It’s not. I was just trying to make you feel better so maybe we can stop for deep dish. I have coupons!
DJ grins, holds up coupons
FORTY-TWO
Hi, Danielle,
I just wanted to write and tell you that the entry you wrote back when you were fifteen, the one where you were teasing that guy Steve White and he got mad and slammed you against a row of lockers—I had a situation like that, and it really damaged me. This mean girl who had it out for me because I liked the same boy as her put a can of half-opened tuna fish in the back of my locker, in a forgotten box of Kleenex so I wouldn’t see it. I think I know how she got into my locker—all the popular kids worked their volunteer hours in the main office where there was a master list of locker combinations for our ancient locker setups. Anyway, the tuna smelled awful, naturally, and it made my coat and all my books stink—I seriously thought I was having some sort of physical reaction to puberty that made me stink. This is a real medical condition, which I’m sure you know because of your job! Anyway, everyone started calling me Fish Girl, and they would leave samples of soap on my chair, and they’d hang air fresheners on my locker handle and spray perfume at me in the locker rooms.
The point of all this: High school sucked, and your diary and mine sound a lot alike, even though you’re ten years older than I am. Thanks for being a real person with real problems and for sharing those with us.
Signed,
No Longer Stinky in Seattle
[Message from user ORIGINALDIANAPRINCE1998]
FORTY-THREE
May 2, 2016
Dear Dwayne Johnson,
Happy birthday to my favorite superhero. I hope you get to spend some time with the people you love most. Thank you for being awesome for the WHOLE WORLD.
In honor of your special day, I have in front of me a delicious red velvet lava cupcake with whipped cream frosting (don’t tell Miraculously Beautiful Marco). I’ve bought Aldous her own kitty-cat “cupcake,” and we’re about to sing to you.
Happy birthday, to you . . .
Happy birthday, to you . . .
Happy BIRTHDAY, dear Dwayne Douglas The Rock Johnsonnnnnnn,
Happy birthday toooooo youuuuuuuu!
All our love,
Danielle and Aldous Stuffin’-Cake-in-Our-Faces Steele + Hobbs the Goldfish
FORTY-FOUR
“Hey, Dani—Janice, here. It’s Tuesday morning so you’re probably at the gym. Listen, I know this blog thing is a real shit storm for you right now, but I think it’s going to help. Like, I’m not even kidding—I’ve had four different casting directors from Portland and a writer/director of a small theater company down in Los Angeles call me in the last twenty-four hours because, of course, your little email infection reached all kinds of people—side effect of you having my email address in your address book.
“And get this—my cousin is an assistant at William Morris Entertainment, Dani—WME, in Los Angeles! She works for The Rock’s agent. And she got an email from me with the link
because of the email bot or whatever you called it . . . Dani, can you even imagine if somehow the folks at WME got wind of this?
“Anyway, these casting directors are calling to see if you’re available to submit on projects, kid. This is such great news!
“And a theater director—Davina Gudbranson is her name—you’ve seen the Vagina Monologues, right? She did her own version of this a few years back with her own theater company, and she wants to talk to you about the possibility of putting something together about your crazy-ass family. Every cloud has a silver lining, my friend! Call me!”
FORTY-FIVE
Ding-[staticky growl]-dong.
The world’s most pathetic doorbell alerts me to company. I wipe the slobber off my cheek and check my phone. It’s 9:32 a.m. I launch forward, disturbing my fuzzy new bedmate, panicked that I’ve overslept and now I’m so late—
Except I don’t have a job anymore.
Oh yeah. Right.
I wonder how many weekdays in a row I’m going to have this fun panic moment.
The doorbell tries to do its job again.
“Coming!” I throw on my fleece bathrobe—yes, the one with The Rock’s face covering the entire back panel as well as stitched into the breast pocket—and scurry to the front door. A check through the peephole. FedEx?
“Hey,” I say, cracking the door. Could be a ruse. Could be a guy in a stolen black-and-purple uniform come to deliver a dirty bomb on behalf of Lisa “Dick-Pic” Rogers. Just because she allegedly told Agent Superman it’s over doesn’t mean it’s really over. Maybe she still wants to splatter my guts all over the beige walls.
I keep my foot behind the door like they show you in those self-defense classes.
“Envelope for Danielle Steele—hey, my mom loves your books,” the FedEx guy says, smiling widely to reveal his upper teeth silver with braces. Is he old enough to have this job?
Okay. Dude’s real. Maybe. I open the door wider. “If I were really her, do you think I’d be living in this dump?”
His smile melts a little. “Just need you to sign here.”
“Who’s this from?” I ask, taking the stylus to sign his little electronic-signature doohickey.
“Looks like a lawyer. That’s what esquire means, right?” he says, reading the return label. I hand him back his device. “Great bathrobe, by the way. Love The Rock. Have a nice day!”
I close the door behind me, my path impeded by a wide-awake tabby cat who is making it very clear she’s interested in breakfast right this second.
“Come on, little sweetie.” Aldous bounds behind me into the kitchen, mewling like a rabid demon until I slide the bowl of wet food under her nose.
I can’t think about anything involving lawyers until caffeine.
Once the pot is brewed, I pay homage to Saint Drogo, patron saint of coffee, and fill my mug bearing said saint’s likeness to the brim. Aldous, having finished her breakfast, plants herself on top of the table next to Hobbs and scratches at the fishbowl. In response, Hobbs twitches his tail and darts back and forth like someone has electrified his water.
“You cannot eat your new brother, Aldous.” I throw a catnip-filled mousie into the living room, and she chases after it, much to the relief of my stressed-out goldfish.
The FedEx envelope isn’t very thick—certainly not thick enough to be an improvised explosive device—but I’m assuming it’s stuffed with important papers. Papers from lawyers are always important.
God, is someone suing me over the blog?
I unzip the FedEx envelope, my heart pounding in my chest. If someone is suing me, if this is a subpoena, they would’ve sent a process server, right? Someone to knock on the door or come up to me at the market while I’m hiding the box of cookies under the huge bundle of spinach and say, Are you Danielle Elizabeth Steele?, to which I’d naively reply, Why, yes, do you know me from television?, which is crazy because I’ve never been on television in any capacity that anyone would remember me. And then that someone, likely dressed in a shoddy Salvation Army suit and a tie with yesterday’s coffee spilled on it, would say, Here, you’ve been served, and hand me a fat envelope. I would start crying in the cookie aisle, and another someone, a kind, caring woman who looks just like Julia Roberts, would feel sorry for me, so she’d stand there among all those delicious cookies and we’d open a bag of Oreos and she’d tell me everything is going to be okay, even though Oreos are terrible for us and they are made with palm oil, the farming of which is killing orangutans in Indonesia, and I shouldn’t cry because the sun always rises—
“Stop stalling, Danielle,” I say to myself. Aldous meows at me.
I pull the papers all the way out of the envelope.
It’s not a subpoena.
It’s a copy of Howie’s Last Will and Testament and an accompanying letter. Which is heartbreaking, but I’m so relieved that I’m not being sued, I kiss the envelope.
Hello, Danielle.
Here we go with one of those maudlin openings: “If you’re reading this letter, then I must be dead.” So be it. I’m dead. Please, don’t tell me how I died. It’s enough of a relief to know I won’t have to find a warm and dry alcove tonight or that I no longer have to fret about a decent spot to piss without someone chasing me with their pitchfork. (You can laugh at that last part.)
You’re probably wondering why in the hell I’m writing to you and not some long-lost relative or perhaps a jilted lover or forgotten ally from my days in academia. To be completely honest, any long-lost relatives have long forgotten about me; my lovers were never jilted because I am a tireless romantic; and allies in academia, well, that is a sad, sick joke unto itself. Those prattling bastards don’t deserve the turtlenecks they swaddle themselves in.
Now if I could’ve written this letter to a nice bottle of Chateau Lafite . . . Then again, who has time for such luxuries as letter-writing? Let us drink the Lafite instead.
SO: This correspondence and all its included peripherals are meant to serve as a thank-you.
You were my friend when the rest of the world was not. As Cassius says to Brutus in Julius Caesar, “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.” You did this for me. Something as simple as bringing me warm clothes, hot food, the regular contribution via the recyclables—all well and good. But it was your humanity, your respect, your willingness to engage in discourse with someone who had chosen a different path from the rest. I thank you for your endless kindnesses.
I loved someone kind once. I loved her with everything I had. We had a son. Both were taken from me.
I didn’t choose to live under a bush; the bush chose me.
Tristan would be about your age, and I think you two would’ve been friends. He would’ve been lucky in your friendship. I like to consider myself the stand-in for the friendship that was never given the chance to happen. I also believe that my pursuit of protecting his happiness would’ve given me a purpose in life that I haven’t had since the day I buried them both.
Thus, it is in the spirit of friendship and in protection of your happiness that I say this:
Get out of here. Go back to your dreams.
You’re languishing. I know you refer to yourself and your coworkers as hens, forced into cages day after day to meet your quotas and keep the “farmer” happy. Nothing makes me sadder than to think of your vibrant creative energies being wasted on something that brings you absolutely no joy.
(In your honor, I’ve sworn off eggs in protest. If Saint Peter tries to serve me eggs here, I’ll tell him, “No, sir, toast only, if you please.”)
But if you find your way out of the Imperial Henhouse, away from those utterly snobby snobs, don’t look back. Send a message skyward that you’ve found yourself again—I’ll watch for it eagerly as it’ll mean I can resume eating eggs. I hear the western omelets served up here in this cloudless afterlife are divine. (Pun intended.)
The books from my cart—my lawyer has instructions to make sure they are delivered to you posthaste. Accept
them with my gratitude. Read on! The answers you need are there, in those pages.
Life is tough. But remember, only those things that make you question your sanity are worth pursuing.
Never let those go. Bernard Marx learned this; so can you.
Wishing you all the best, my dear friend Danielle.
Howard G. Nash
The date on the letter is from a year ago. “Howie, you were so full of secrets, my friend.”
I realize that whatever books were in his cart wouldn’t be with the lawyer because they’re here, with me—actually, still in the trunk of Flex Kavana. I totally forgot about them after Marco and I cleaned out his cart that night we found him.
“Thank you, Howie,” I say as Aldous pushes herself in front of his letter. She smells it and rubs her face against the paper’s edge. “You smell your dad, do ya?” Purring, she bites at it, trailing her tail against my face.
I’ll let the lawyer know that I already have the books—I’m glad they’re not headed to some generic, cold thrift store where the new owners wouldn’t know what a remarkable human had owned and loved them before.
Reverently, I refold Howie’s letter into its envelope before Aldous chews any more of the corner. I scoop her off the table and nuzzle against her fuzzy belly, suddenly choked up with gratitude that Aldous is with me and not alone on the mean streets of Portland. That would’ve been the worst. As sad as I am that Howie is gone, I am so, so grateful that fate landed Marco and me at Grant Park that night. The alternative is unimaginable.
“While I’d love to hang out with your beautiful little face all day, I gotta be a grown-up,” I say to Aldous, curled in the crook of my arm as she gnaws playfully on my knuckles. My hands are covered with fine, scabbed-over scratches, and most of my conversations lately have been with a kitten. I’ve gone full Cat Lady. Charlene would be so proud.
I check the time on the microwave clock.
The unemployment office opened at nine. There’ll be a line already.
Ticktock.
FORTY-SIX
From:Agent F.P. Wilkins
To:Danielle E. Steele
