I Wish I Was Like You Page 12

  “Chuck, Chuck, what the fuck?” he shouted at Charlie and clapped him on the shoulder. When he noticed me he laughed, sheepishly but loudly like he was performing sheepishness. “Sorry,” he said to me. “You’re the new, you’re the new, you’re—wait a minute.” He sprinted out of the room. Through the open double doors we heard him talking to Shelly in the reception area.

  “Who’s the new, what’s the new reviewer’s name?”

  “Gerta,” she answered without hesitation.

  “What are you, what’s the, what are you doing?” he asked Shelly.

  “Martin is giving me a trim,” she replied.

  After a few seconds of silence he said, “Shelly, how can you keep, why do you keep, look, you’ve got to be ready for things.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “More ready than that,” he said. “Ready for something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Things that happen. Somebody could walk in. The phone might ring. You have to be, you need to be ready.”

  “I’m ready,” she said again.

  “But you’ve got a plastic sheet around your neck and you, it’s like you wandered in from a salon, or, or maybe this is a salon. Christ!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shelly, this is a business. It’s, this is a place of—you know—business.”

  “I get it,” she said. “I get it.” Followed by the rustling of plastic. “Martin, I’ll meet you downstairs on my lunch break.” Kissing sounds, the fake mwah kind.

  The blond guy barreled into the production room again. He raised his eyebrows at Charlie and me. Then he held up one hand, covered his mouth, hiding his laughter. “You heard that, right? Sorry! Welcome aboard, Gerta.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Greta,” I said and shook it.

  “Jesus, sorry,” he said. “Shelly’s an idiot. I wish I could remember to fire her. Okay, Chuckie D. Whatcha got for me?”

  Charlie had returned to work at his desk. On the PC screen before him he was moving blocks of text, resizing ads and comic strips, and making a soft thumping sound with his tongue. When the publisher clapped him on the back, Charlie looked at me and said, “By the way, this asshole is Carl Stitch, the publisher. Don’t make fun of his name or he’ll have your whole family killed. Carl, this is Greta Garver and she’s a genius.”

  “Ha!” Carl said. I didn’t know what he meant by that.

  “Maybe an exaggeration,” I said.

  “No,” Charlie insisted. “I read your writing sample, the piece about Mia Zapata.” He turned to Carl again. “Eve finally hired a reviewer who can write.”

  My sample, the essay I stole from Daisy, made the rounds of the Boom City office before I arrived. By Tuesday most of the staff had praised me for my guts, my voice, my talent, and my youth. Oh yeah. I also lied about my age, said I was a year younger just for the hell of it. The only person in the office who appeared to be over thirty-five was Eve.

  “You know what? You’re a prodigy,” said Fucky-Face the moment I met her. I can never remember what her real name was, although she introduced herself. She was a round-eyed buxom girl with wispy hair, wearing a Girl Scout beret and listening to Seven Year Bitch on a boom box that occupied three quarters of her desk. She was friendly and solicitous. Outside the office she was popular, sought out by friends for compassionate advice. Every time I saw Fucky-Face she was on the phone lending quiet comfort or simpering advice, or she was out lunching with a pal. I never addressed her by name because all I could recall was the moniker slapped on her by a couple of hamsters working part-time for Charlie. They said her typical expression—furrowed brow, lips parted in a soft O—prompted the nickname, and I believed them.

  “Oh, that piece,” I said to her. “First draft, kind of embarrassing. You know. I dashed it off for the interview.”

  “Wow,” said Fucky-Face. “I think that proves my point, don’t you?”

  “No. No. It was nothing.”

  “I loved it! I made a copy and showed it to some of my friends, I hope you don’t mind. A lot of people wrote tributes to Mia but you did so much more than that.”

  Shaking my head and trying to step away didn’t kill the compliments. Fucky-Face kept coming.

  “Someday,” she said. She gathered my hands in hers, dry and warm and a bit chubby. “All of this—the city, the country, the world the way it is today, all of us—won’t matter to anybody anymore. We’re going to leave so little trace we might as well not exist. But you know what?”

  I didn’t dare breathe. It was mortifying being trapped at the entrance to her cubicle with people eavesdropping all around us. I kept staring into her beaming, flushed, girlish face framed by the winged kittens and pastel ponies decorating the wall above her desk. I stood there like an idiot, half-smiling, waiting for more praise.

  “We’ll be gone. But those words you wrote about Mia and what she meant to all of us, those are going to live on. Those are immortal. You see?”

  “Oh, well…”

  “I mean it! That piece is book-award material. You should have an agent.”

  Technically speaking, Fucky-Face was a volunteer, an acquaintance of Eve’s with a real job editing text at Microsoft. She came to the office one day a week to fact-check anything Eve deemed questionable. In a pinch, if the intern of the moment was out sick, Fucky-Face was also a meticulous proofreader.

  Ed John Maynard was a nineteen-year-old who hitched a ride from a farm in Idaho to follow his destiny in the city. He was paid three dollars an hour and he would do anything. Distribution. Reception desk when Shelly wasn’t available. Pizza run. Ad collection. Cleaning the production room. Taking out the trash. He also wrote letters to the editor on slow weeks, and penned short reviews in music and film under a vast number of pseudonyms.

  “Uh-huh,” he said when he met me. “You smoke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I bum?” He had the large eyes of a feral animal coupled with a human affectation, the cocked eyebrow of a film noir gangster. In all other respects he was nothing but a gangly kid.

  I gave him a cigarette and told him to fuck off. He laughed.

  “Read your story,” he said. “The Mia thing. Not bad. Not bad at all.” Then he pinched the cigarette between his lips and headed to the stairwell for a private smoke.

  “Moo,” said the blonde with the pixie haircut. Her eyes were sapphire and she had the twinkle of a Disney heroine when she smiled.

  I didn’t know if she was speaking office code, so I said nothing.

  “Ginny Moo,” she said. “Ad sales. Marketing. Special events. We do brunch at my place every other Sunday. You’re invited.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “No. What you wrote was nice. Better than nice. Fucking great.” She tapped me lightly on the shoulder and strode away. Baggy shorts cut for an old man, for the beach. Muscle shirt. Bare feet. Silver toe rings in the shapes of stars and moons. Moo.

  Ginny turned out to be the only granddaughter of a Dallas oil tycoon who married and started a family in his 50s. He had two sons who ran the business and one of them was Ginny’s dad. All of this information came from Charlie because Ginny didn’t like people to know she was slated to inherit millions.

  “So, how do you know?” I asked Charlie.

  “We were kind of back and forth, for a couple of months last year,” he said.

  “And she told you her family history?”

  “What can I say? Some girls cry when they make love. Ginny blurts out financial stuff about her mom and dad.”

  “What else do you know?” I asked Charlie, on my third day.

  “I know you’re going to have a hundred enemies, right off the proverbial bat,” he told me. “They will loathe you.” He pantomimed hurling a knife at my forehead.

  “Why? Nobody knows me. How can they hate me?”

  “Take my word for it, Greta. Some people would kill for a job at the Stranger, and if they can get some experi
ence at this dump first, they can apply for a job there.”

  “Wouldn’t they make more money at the Weekly?”

  “Yes, but the Weekly is uncool, so, so uncool. Uncle Jim the groping dinosaur and his girlfriend in the tent dress work there. Everybody wants to be cool. Don’t you, Daddy-o?” He winked and walked away.

  Steve Billings didn’t show up until Wednesday. His reddish brown hair had the texture of a raccoon pelt run through a washing machine and toweled dry. His pants and flannel shirt were a few sizes too big and his oversized hiking boots made a series of clunking and whooshing noises when he walked.

  I introduced myself. Steve stared at me with his mouth ajar and his arms hanging slack. He made a sweeping gesture toward his cubicle. I entered and sat in the only extra chair. When he took a seat next to me our knees almost touched. He went on staring and I decided to take the lead.

  “I guess I’ll be working with you,” I said.

  “Yeah. Right,” he said.

  “How long have you been with Boom City?” I asked.

  He shrugged. And said nothing.

  “This is my first reviewing gig,” I said. “I moved here a couple of years ago from eastern Washington. Pretty boring. Where are you from?”

  His eyes were as dead as the bottom of the ocean when he said, “Seattle. Been here all my life.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You hardly ever meet a native here.”

  “Yeah,” he told me. “People keep moving in. More every year.”

  There was a peculiar smell to Steve. Not quite oily or dirty but not quite clean. I wondered when he had last showered.

  “Does your whole family come from Seattle?” I tried but I couldn’t think of another topic. Not with his dead eyes fixed on me.

  “Yeah,” he said in the same flat tone. “Four generations. Watch the newbies come, and watch ’em go.”

  “Wow,” I said again. If I could have slapped myself without appearing to be insane I would have. “Well, nice to meet you, Steve.” I stood up and started backing out of the grubby cubicle, by far the messiest one I’d seen. “Let me know if you want to talk about anything. Or anything. You know?”

  He was peering at me with shark eyes gone dark and hands folded together in a massive tangle in his lap when I left. For all I know he sat there all day staring after me.

  Vaughn was ecstatic when he heard the news. He insisted on bringing me a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. We toasted the future. We toasted art. We toasted new beginnings.

  “Holy shit,” said Daisy when she stopped by and I opened the door with a half-empty crystal glass in my hand. “What are we celebrating?”

  “Our Greta is a newspaperwoman now!” Vaughn announced. He poured champagne all around and we toasted ourselves, our future selves, our life in the city, and everyone we ever knew. The noise attracted our neighbors and Vaughn invited them in for another round.

  By nine o’clock we sprawled across my sofa, chairs, and carpet telling stories and laughing like maniacs. Daisy leaned her head on my shoulder and drew long, decadent clouds of cigarette smoke. Ivy reclined against a large cushion like a gorgeous Russian aristocrat, puffing a joint and passing it to Ted and Stacy.

  By that time Vaughn’s prediction had come true. Bunny had run away with a guy who played drums in a band from L.A., leaving Ivy brokenhearted and all the more beautiful in her dark-eyed sorrow.

  “Read it again, Vaughn,” she said. She waved a slender hand in the air.

  Vaughn cleared his throat and spoke in his sweet baritone.

  “I loved you first: but afterwards your love

  Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song

  As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

  Which owes the other most? My love was long,

  And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong…”

  Ivy raised her hand again, a signal to stop. Her eyelids fluttered but she didn’t cry. She lifted her glass and Vaughn filled it, an unspoken bond of lost love dancing in the air between them.

  I woke the next morning with gray dawn light sneaking through the bedroom blinds. My tongue was coated in moss and my legs refused to move. I spied Daisy on the other side of the bed, sleeping deeply with a faint childish grin curling her lips. She had stripped down to an undershirt and panties to crash beside me. I wondered what amazing adventures she had been pursuing since the previous week. I had a fleeting impulse to wake her and confess but I couldn’t put the words together.

  “I stole your story.” Or…

  “I’m a fraud.” Or…

  “I got a job using your work.” Or…

  “I’ll never write the way you do. So I plagiarized your essay.”

  Nothing would make sense out of what I’d done. And nothing could explain why I’d accepted the job, or why I was staying despite the lousy deception I’d pulled to get it. How could I admit the real reason I was at Boom City?

  “You see, I think it might be fun to try and ruin a woman’s life…”

  At night the towers of the Pacific Science Center resemble waiting monsters, their arched backs struck by teal and violet light, silent, brooding, animals of great height pausing near water to listen.

  You stop here three times a week, to sit on the bench and recall those heady, happy years when your children loved this place and the nearby carnival, the carousel with its heroic, pretty horses. Your wife was alive then; every visit meant something new, no matter how often you returned. You know every inch of the science center, from the mechanical demonstrations of backhoe and tractor, to the mad charms of the insect room.

  Tonight your house is full of angry teenagers, smelly former friends who won’t give you the time of day anymore. With their loud entourage your kids have broken into the liquor cabinet and stolen the good scotch, replaced it with tea. To safeguard your stash of weed you’ve begun wrapping it in cellophane and carrying it with you.

  Before children your life was quiet. Then your wife insisted on a family, and you went along for the ride.

  When they were little they were noisy, bright, hilarious. Where has their sense of humor gone? Why do they ignore your anecdotes and roll their eyes at your jokes? There must have been a first time but you missed it. You lagged behind, a man lost in nostalgia.

  If you linger too long a guard will stop by on his rounds and ask you to move along. You have no reason to move along. You feel so tired sometimes, weariness settled in your bones. Go on and lie down. Watch the burbling water in the fountain. Take off your coat and roll it up as a pillow. You won’t need it. The night is losing its edge. You won’t feel the bitter cold until it’s too late.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Apparently you know your way around the office,” Eve said on Friday.

  I didn’t know what she meant. Was I showing off too much? Did she hear me quizzing Charlie about Carl’s dissatisfaction?

  “So let’s get you started,” she said. “Vanessa is the music reviewer. Music is the big section of arts and entertainment. Including the club calendar for the week, music brings in half of the paper’s ad revenue. Vanessa writes five or six reviews a week, her freelancers write the rest. She’s the best person to explain what you need to know. I want you to shadow her.”

  “Shadow,” I said. “Don’t you want me to write theater reviews for the next issue? Won’t there be a gap, if I don’t…?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whatever’s opening now you can catch on the second or third week. I don’t care.”

  I thought of Vaughn. He was constantly complaining about papers running a review the same week a show was scheduled to close.

  “But won’t it affect my—you know—”

  “Your what?” Eve’s thin, pinched lips reminded me of a leather clutch I gave my mom for Mother’s Day when I was seven.

  “Readers,” I said. “I mean, readership. My, you know, my audience?”

  Eve studied my expression and shook her head. “Don
’t overthink this, Greta. Most of the regular readers never look at your section. They read the personal ads, the columns, the film and music reviews, and the comics.”

  “But isn’t the idea to increase readership?” I tried not to let this sound pathetic.

  “A worthy objective,” she said. “I wouldn’t attach too much significance to the numbers, if I were you. At this point what I want is better prose. Theater doesn’t make money but that’s no excuse for sloppy writing.”

  “The section might make more money if the writing is better.”

  “Hypothetically, yes,” she said. “Just don’t get your hopes up. Maybe a few hundred people in the entire city go to see live theater without being affiliated with it. By that I mean a few hundred people who are not actors or directors or board members. Theater companies and theater actors comprise most of your ‘readership.’ They buy cheap ads and expect miracles in return. We offer them a handful of reviews every week, and they’re never pleased. These are the people who will be courting your favor, sending you press kits and little bribes, which they call ‘gifts of appreciation.’ They’re not your friends. They’ll try to be, but you can’t give in to it or the writing will suffer. You cannot lose your objectivity. This is why I want you to shadow Vanessa. She’s experienced, she’s detail oriented, and she keeps the right distance from the musicians she has to review every week.”

  Eve put on her glasses and turned her attention to the piles of unopened manuscripts on her desk. She smirked at me. “Unless you’d rather read the slush pile?”

  The office was strangely quiet. I surmised this was the typical shame and lull of a hard morning-after, following a party at somebody’s house. I had my own hangover to nurse.

  “Where do I find Vanessa?” I asked Shelly.

  “Nobody finds Vanessa,” she said. Her eyes were crusted together by sleep and yesterday’s mascara. She was sorting back issues into small stacks for storage. “Go have a smoke and she’ll find you.”