Excerpt I Continued


Sweet Chester tackles everything the rest of us don’t have time for, and I get the honor of dealing with the remaining muck, i.e. fact-checking, making sure we’re on schedule, and staying on top of the writers (who have slipped through Spencer’s fingers), photographers (who have slipped through Samantha’s), advertisers (who have slipped through Steve’s), the printer, the copy editor, and Trevor. It’s a tough job, as they say, but somebody’s got to do it. And because I absolutely, positively love it, that person is me.

The May issue of the magazine—theme: “May Day, May Day: Do Movies Just Suck?”—is shipping to the printer tomorrow, which means that all the art and articles have to be as close to print-perfect as possible.

“Hey Sam?” I glance over my shoulder at the desk behind me. “Have you finished reading the text?”

“Yes I have,” she says, interrupting the hushed conversation she’s having on the phone. “I’ve been through it twice now. What about you, Mademoiselle Managing Editor? Gotten much work done aujourd’hui?” The way she peppers her sentences with Franglais makes the hair on my arms stand up in protest. Sam puts down the phone, wheels her chair swiftly over to me, and presses her lips together in what is supposed to resemble a polite smile, before aiming a crisp stack of marked-up computer printouts at my throat and wheeling back to her desk.

She picks up the phone and launches back into her hushed tones. At five feet tall, my 27-year-old coworker is a flawless, fairy-tale creature with azure eyes, a miniature Victoria’s Secret-model figure, and straight blond hair that falls to her waist. I’d envy her if she didn’t have a smug sense of superiority to match her looks. Okay, I used to envy her one thing before I moved into my new apartment, but I don’t anymore: the ridiculously low price she pays to share a dream-duplex in Chelsea with a handsome filmmaker-slash-trust-fund baby, who hit it big when Sony Pictures Classics bought his independent thriller after a protracted Toronto Film Festival bidding war. His parents bought him the multi-level two-bedroom as a film school graduation present—and he charges Sam next to nothing to rent the spare bedroom. In New York, nobody has enough space, and everyone obsesses about real estate and dreams about pulling off that kind of coup.

The article on top of the pile is Spencer’s interview with the semi-talented squirt the press at the Sundance Film Festival just declared “The Next Big Thing.” His directorial debut is hitting screens in two months, and Spencer’s exploring the “Who gives a shit?” angle. Halfway through his second paragraph, in which he compares the experience of watching the film to eating rubbery eggs that have been sitting on the counter at Denny’s attracting flies for an hour, I hear AliCat22 summoning me.
“seeing another apt today”

“Thank the LORD ALMIGHTY,” I type back.

Alicia’s apartment search is not going fast enough. My sister moved to New York from LA a month and a half ago, following a mid-life crisis at age 28. She announced that producing commercials was a useless occupation that no longer fed her soul; quit her job; moved out of her cozy bungalow in Venice; dumped her cat with our parents (like a teenaged mom who isn’t ready to be saddled to a squawking kid); and came to New York to crash on half of her big sister’s brand new bed in her big sister’s brand new apartment. I love my sister, but after six weeks of tunneling through her mess to reach my closet and sleeping with a pillow on my head to block out her endless inter-time-zone chattering and late-night TV addiction, I asked her (very nicely) to please find a room of her own, and she has been searching ever since.

“hate hate hate, can’t bear 2 C another $1400 hole”

“You’ll find something, they’re not all that bad.”

“yesterday saw 4 places, one on the scariest blk in Bklyn, Bed Stuy I think? rm the size of yer toilet, guy wanted $1000! he wuz cute tho J”

Princess has yet to find a place in which she would deign to rest her more-than-a-little-demanding bones. However, her search is yielding unexpected perks: She met an Italian chef who invited her for a home-cooked meal; a wily jack-of-all-trades and the self-proclaimed Mayor of Williamsburg, who promised to introduce her to the best bars in “the ‘Burg” (as those in the know call the hip Brooklyn ’hood); and an actor so good-looking she became frazzled just breathing the same air as him. They fondled each other in front of his TV set and decided it would be best if she didn’t move in.

“going out w/ the actor tomorrow. nervous. might throw up.”

“Stop puking and find an apt please.”

“chill”

“Hey, are you at my place?”

“ya”

“Will you bundle up the newspapers and dump them in the recycle bin? Trash goes tomorrow.”

“sorry, out the door. late for spinning”

“Hey, Jacquie?” I turn around to face Samantha. Still gabbing on the phone and examining her nails, she doesn’t even look up. “Have you gotten the Cate Blanchett piece in yet?” Samantha sometimes surprises me. She can sit there looking emphatically blond, gossiping with her friends all day long, and at the same time searching photo archives online for just the right glamour shot of some British starlet, then out of the blue throw out something like, “Have you gotten the Cate Blanchett piece in yet?” I completely forgot that my cover story is running late and the copy editor only saw it for the first time this morning.

“Where the hell is Stella?” I ask no one in particular. “She was supposed to bring that and a couple other pieces over by 6:30. It’s 6:30.”

Alicia IM’s again: “i have a story idea 4 u, how looking for an apt’s a good way 2 meet guys. 3 more called today, one sounded cute. u shld try it”

I dial Stella, the copy editor’s, number and type: “I’m not looking for an apartment.”
“so fake it”

Stella picks up and I say, “Hey, where are you?”
“In front of the building in two minutes,” she says. “Come let me in.”

I check my email again. A message from Clancy says, “Sorry babe. Ideas won’t fly. V. picky here. Editorial mtg tomorrow a.m. if you want to try again.”

I groan and leave my seat in a huff to buzz Stella into the building and wait by the elevator so she can physically deposit the precious folder of text into my hands. When the elevator arrives, Courtney gets out as well. My best friend since college, who’s taking me out for pre-fête dinner, is in classically Courtney party attire, that is an outfit that only Courtney can get away with: a flowing red skirt she nabbed for next to nothing at a Catherine Malandrino sample sale, a thrift-shop tight yellow shirt with a bright, multi-colored flower pattern all over it, unbuttoned to reveal a lacy peach bra, red patent leather boots, a big pink plastic flower in her hair, and a short fake fur coat from H&M that I covet. It is the kind of outfit a classroom full of sixteen-year-olds would regard with great admiration, which is only one reason she’s the most popular teacher at the ritzy Brooklyn private school where she teaches art. A guy walking down the hall lets his eyes wander from the top of her silky, black bob to the pointy toes of her boots, until she catches him staring and turns the color of sliced watermelon before dropping her eyes anxiously to her cherry-red fingernails.

“Love the flower,” I tell her. She grins a toothy grin that turns her eyes into green slivers and kisses both my cheeks. We walk back into the office.

“Hey, Jacquie?”

I look back at her over my shoulder. “I brought the champagne,” she says.

What champagne? I think, as she pulls a Veuve Cliquot bottle out of her bag.

And on cue everyone starts singing. I spin around to see the staff beaming around a big, pink birthday cake with my name and seven candles on it. Courtney hugs me and says, “Happy birthday, old lady. You look stellar for your age.” Courtney is exactly five months younger than me, and has been reminding me of the fact since she and the rest of my freshman-year dorm floor kidnapped me on my eighteenth birthday and made me drink upside-down margarita shots and sing Prince songs in a fountain until I passed out in the arms of the arrogant frat boy I obsessed about for the rest of the semester.

We hold up plastic cups of bubbly, and Steve makes the toast. “Here’s to Jacquie’s annual twenty-seventh birthday! Last year’s was a blast and the one before that, but I have a feeling that this will be your best twenty-seventh birthday yet.” While we’re indulging in our first cocktail of the day and shoveling gooey chocolate cake into our faces, Jake finally calls.

“You coming?” I say, trying not to sound too anxious.

“I’m gonna try. It depends on this guy, you know? We’re meeting at the gallery at eight and if he wants to get drinks after, I gotta go, you know? This could be major, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, biting off a split end, snapping my rubber band, and willing myself not to say anything needy. “I’ve got a cuter date anyway.”

“Use a condom.”

“Jake, I hate it when you say that shit.”

“I’m kidding. Jesus Christ.”

“You’re really funny. I’m grabbing food with Courtney before the bar.”

“Give her a big sloppy one for me.” I cringe again.

“Please try to come. It’s my birthday.” I catch Courtney’s pitying glance out of the corner of my eye, turn my back to her and whisper into the phone, “I really want you there.”

 “Okay, okay, I’ll be there, but it might be late.” For a minute, my heart chokes me as it tries to jump out of my mouth. Then as quickly as it arose, my elation passes. Why should the news that the guy I’m sleeping with is coming to my birthday party elicit such palpable joy? I worry for a minute that I am heading for emotional devastation—“but I told you I wasn’t ready for a relationship,” he will say—but suppress the thought.

“Alright, I’ll see you later.” I hang up and look over at Courtney, who’s doing a spacey hippie dance, eyes closed, hands undulating like slow-motion butterflies above her head. It occurs to me she might be stoned. Suddenly she drops her arms, faces me and says, “Happy birthday lovely lovely lovely lovely…”

“Jacquie!” Samantha interrupts, before I find out just how many lovely’s I deserve. “Courtney! S’il vous plait, listen up. I have an announcement to make.” Sam’s cheeks are flushed with champagne and her smile so wide it might crack her champagne-flushed cheeks. Chester has put on a Madonna CD and is dancing on Spencer’s desk and Spencer is yelling at him to get down. Stella is showing Steve the last few articles for the issue.

“You guys!” Sam shouts. “Chester! Be quiet!”

Down from Spencer’s desk, our disobedient intern saunters over and asks me if I want another piece of cake. I mime barfing violently and point at Sam. “Chester, please listen,” she scolds, as if he were six. Then she marches over to the stereo on a mission and shuts it off with a petite stomp of her designer Pumas. “Listen. Everybody!”
We all stand at attention. “So guess what?” She pauses theatrically and we take the opportunity to fill our glasses again. Chester bumps my desk and spills my champagne. I jump up and we both grab paper towels to wipe it up.

“Sorry,” he says to Sam, hands full of wet napkin.

“Out with it, Samantha,” Spencer suggests.

“Okay, fine. You know Charlie? My…my, uh…” she claws the air with her middle and forefingers to form quotation marks, “roommate?”

“You mean your roommate Charlie with the long lashes and luscious lips?” Steve asks. We all chuckle.

“Yes,” beams Sam. “Charlie with the Paul Newman baby blues and James Dean je ne sais quoi, Charlie with the darling petite chambre de bonne that he charged me suspiciously little for all these months.” She pauses for emphasis. “Well, we’re in love!”

The room goes silent. “That’s right,” she continues, bouncing up and down, as if she is about to make an attempt at springing up to punch a hole in the ceiling with her head. “C’est vrai! Gorgeous, sweet, wonderful Charlie, who hasn’t charged me a cent since I moved into his room a month ago asked me to marry him! This summer! Charlie loves me. He gave me this!” She turns around and fumbles in her pocket for a second before turning dramatically to display a diamond on the ring finger of her left hand that must be at least two carats, surrounded by baby sapphires. It is huge. Beaming but solemn, she adds, “It’s the ring his grandfather gave his grandmother.”

I plunk down in my chair, stunned. Everyone else flocks around Samantha to congratulate her and check out the rock. Another bottle of champagne pops.

“This is so Goodbye Girl!” Chester swoons. “Roommates doing the wild thing with roommates.” Sam giggles in giddy response.

I stare at my disorganized desk sipping the warm champagne they brought for my birthday from a plastic cup. Only Courtney refrains from the ooing and aahing to hang back and place a comforting hand on my back. This is so unfair. Sam doesn’t have boyfriends; she doesn’t date so much as collect admirers that swarm around her as she flicks them away like so many insects. And now she answers a random ad for a room in the Village Voice, and she’s engaged?  I suddenly feel competitive.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Courtney says. “He’ll realize how annoying she is eventually and call the whole thing off.” It’s not like Courtney to make a joke at someone else’s expense, so I force a smile at her attempt to cheer me up.

Someone turns the music back on, and everybody starts dancing around the office to “Everybody.” Courtney forgets about me and resumes her hippie dance. My desk is a mess, and I feel like I have to get out of here fast.

I hear the IM sound from my computer. Apparently AliCat has time for one last comment, but not enough to take the trash out. The screen says:

“I’m not looking for an apartment.”

“so fake it.”

And then the latest: “honestly it’s a good way to meet guys, easy 2 screen 4 losers, u c their gross kitchen, sweaty socks, pix of chix. one hottsy wuz in his boxers. NICE PECS.”

Yeah, I think, that is a great idea for a story. I sit up straight in my seat and, typing so hard my fingertips throb, email Clancy a pitch, subject heading: “Catch!”

“Hey Clancy,” I write.

“I just came up with a GREAT story idea! It’s about looking for a roommate as a great new way to meet guys. My sister’s apartment hunting right now and she’s got a date EVERY NIGHT! This system is better than the Internet, because a guy’s home doesn’t lie. You get right in there, see if he’s a neat-freak or a slob, check out his books, his music, find out if he waters his plants, slings jockstraps on the living room floor or has pictures of his mother—or some chick—on his nightstand. You cut right through the crap, get to know who this guy really is. You’re allowed to ask him anything you want, because he thinks you’re going to be living together. It’s more immediate and intensive than Internet dating, the personals, trolling the bars... It’s an untapped market. The dating scheme of the moment. What do you think? Talk soon! Jacquie.”

Pretty damn satisfied with myself, I hit send and check my Instant Messages one last time.

Alicia’s last remark reads, “dude, write an article and pretend ur looking for a room to rent. i have a feeling. u’ll meet your husband.”

» Excerpt II