Bleak (28 page)

Which I am.

I don’t even feel anger. The realization of my stupidity is so overwhelming, it leaves room for nothing else but self-condemnation. This is what I deserve for being gullible and overconfident and smug and desperate and hopeful and eager and naïve. They played me like a fiddle, as the saying goes.

John raises his glass. “Hear, hear. You were a pleasure to work with,” he says, slurring his words slightly. He’s drunk. They all are. Sober men wouldn’t rub my face in it like this. They couldn’t. Something inherently humane would stop them.

“An absolute pleasure,” Joshua adds. “And your script was quite good. I might even make it one day.” He immediately starts giggling. “No, I won’t. Who am I kidding?”

Turning away from them, I look at Harry, who’s standing by the door. He refuses to meet my eyes, and I discover I was wrong. There is anger inside me after all.

As I walk toward him, a million things cluster inside my head, insults and indictments and righteous accusations, but I know it’s all a waste of time. Harry is soulless. What I took for artlessness and innocence is really an enduring emptiness, a bleak amorality that cares about nothing but its own comfort.

It’s so obvious now. Of course it is.

With nothing to say, I raise my hand, pull it back and slap him across the cheek so hard red welts immediately appear. His eyes glitter brightly with something resembling tears but I can’t tell if it’s from pain or shame, and I don’t care.

Lesson one in the school of hard knocks mastered. Ricki Carstone won’t be making this mistake again.

Without turning around, without looking at any one of them again, I walk to the door, open it and step into the cool night air feeling a hundred years old. I keep it together until I get to the car but as soon as I close the door, the grief hits me like a wall of bricks and the tears start to fall. They fall hard and fast and with so much force it feels like a summer squall has taken possession of my body. I try to regain control but it’s useless so I simply sink into it. There’s nothing else I can do.

Every dream I’ve ever had has died.

I wake up in the Wagon Wheel diner with my head on the table and a small puddle of drool on the cocktails-of-the-world place mat. Across the aisle, twin boys in matching Old Navy T-shirts are staring at me. Before I can even blink groggily at them, the one on the right hurls a french fry and hits me in the eye. I throw it back. Their mom, previously absorbed by the morning newspaper, catches me in the act and immediately reprimands me for provoking her two angelic children.

It’s obvious from their full plate of fries and my empty table who the provocateur is, but I don’t bother to defend myself. I understand how it works now. Life is injustice.

I wave down the waitress, the same one who was on shift the previous night, and ask for my check. She drops it on the table and says, “They’re never worth it, sugar,” making me think that weeping women stumbling in at one a.m. and ordering coffee and onion rings isn’t such a rare thing around here.

My joints are stiff, and I stretch before standing up. The mischievous boys giggle at my old-lady movements and their mom throws me a dirty look. I stare blandly back, then leave.

By the time I pull into the parking lot at Bleak, it’s after ten. Carrie and Glenn’s flight will be taking off in twenty-five minutes, so it’s safe to go home. As I wait for the elevator, I list all the things I want in descending order: shower, hot coffee, oblivion.

Now that my houseguests are gone, I should be able to attain all three.

I just hope someone had the sense to put the food in the fridge. I don’t want to come home to the smell of rotting beef—as if that’s the only thing in my life that stinks.

Everything is in place when I open the door. Not only have the groceries been put away, all my papers have been returned to their files. It even looks like someone vacuumed.

Relieved, I let the door shut behind me and walk to the kitchen to get started on my second most cherished desire. I measure the coffee, add water, plug in the machine and turn to see Carrie sitting on the sofa,

I jump in surprise.

“Hey,” she says. In the same clothes as yesterday, she looks so tired I think I might have gotten more sleep in the window booth at the Wagon Wheel.

Not that her exhaustion’s my fault.

“Hey,” I say in response, looking around for Glenn. Maybe he’s pawing through the stuff in my bedroom again. If he is, he’s certainly doing it more quietly than last time.

The coffee percolates as we consider each other silently. I don’t say anything because I have nothing to say. My life has collapsed, imploding violently like a played-out coal mine, but I’m still not sorry for what I said. It was mean and cruel and yet not nearly as terrible as spying on your sister. She’ll never know what it’s like to come home and find the one person you trust above all others in the act of betraying you. It’s supposed to be us versus our parents. It’s been that way since we were little girls.

I pick up a dish towel, grasp it in my hands and wait.

Just as the coffee’s finishing, she says, “The red was discontinued.”

It’s the last thing I expect her to say. “What?”

“The red cabinets from Ikea. They were discontinued. It wasn’t Glenn’s fault.”

“All right,” I say calmly, although she doesn’t need to explain herself to me. Her life is her life, just like my life is mine.

“He even tracked down a place in the city that also did the red. It would have cost $35,000 for the whole kitchen.”

I take the pot off the coils and fill up a mug, which I offer to Carrie. She accepts and I pour another cup for myself.

We sip our coffee and pretend we’re not waiting for the other one to apologize first. I know she expects me to bend a little after her explanation but I don’t. Even if he’s not responsible for the bland ashwoodness of her life, Glenn has plenty to answer for.

After ten minutes, Carrie begins to cry. I’m tired enough of my own tears to feel impatient with someone else’s, but I bite back the mean reply that jumps to my lips.

“God, you’re so hard,” she says, standing up. “You never give anything.”

I don’t know what I have to give her except absolution and she has to ask for that first.

She walks to the window and stares out at the cars passing below. “Look, I’m sorry,” she says, her back toward me. “I know it was wrong to poke through your stuff. I felt terrible doing it. Part of me was even hoping to get caught so I wouldn’t fee so dirty about it. But it’s just that you scare us.” Her tone turns accusatory as she looks at me. So much for her remorse. “We don’t know what you’re thinking anymore and you’ve moved so far away and without any notice and you never come home, not even for Christmas. What are we supposed to do? You don’t tell us anything.”

Even as I find myself getting angry all over again—how
dare
she purport to be concerned when she brought
him
with her—I acknowledge the truth of the statement. I don’t tell them anything anymore because I know they wouldn’t approve.

And look where it got me. If I had confided in someone who loved me, I probably wouldn’t have been swindled out of my entire inheritance.

But even knowing how foolish it is to keep my own counsel, I still can’t bring myself to tell her what happened. I’m too ashamed. Having gotten what I deserve, I can’t stand the thought of her pitying me. It would be so much worse than I-told-you-so.

“I’m sorry too,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about Glenn. That was entirely out of line. And he’s really not that bad.”

“Thank you.”

With the fragile détente in place, she turns to face the traffic again and I drink my coffee. Even though we’ve made a rough sort of peace, we’re awkward with each other. This has never happened before. It’s always been the Carstone girls against the world, not the Carstone girls against each other.

But I don’t know how to fix it.

The phone rings and I let the machine get it. I expect it to be Glenn giving a minute-by-minute account of his boarding process, but it’s Lester with a movie update.

“Hi, Ricki. I know you’re wondering how the meeting with the investors went on Wednesday. According to Lloyd, they’re still interested but won’t put money in the film until the male lead is cast. Lloyd is going out with the script. It’s a tough situation to be in because the script has some problems. He’s showing it along with the notes from the director detailing what changes he plans to make but he won’t make those changes until he gets paid. So that’s where we are. I’ll let you know if the situation changes. Hope you’re well.”

As he talks, I feel the knot inside me unwind and I start laughing, mildly at first, as if I’m not really amused, and then with full-on, breathless glee as the absurdity of the situation hits me.

I can just see Lloyd with his inflated lips explaining with increasing desperation to yet another young hottie that this is the script they would have if only the fucking greedy director would get off his lazy ass and rewrite it. And Blake Alden—I see him sitting on a towering heap of dross, counting brass tacks as if they were pieces of eight, his belt tightening with every hunger pang.

Self-destructive selfishness makes no sense but of course it makes beautiful sense. This is Hollywood, opposite land, where acting in your own best interest sets you back thirty paces. Every widget manufactured in this town is a collaboration and yet there is a no collective good. It’s still the gold rush mentality, with everyone staking their claim and guarding it jealously with a Winchester rifle.

The standoff could go on forever. There’s no resolution in sight, no way out of this seemingly endless string of catch-22s. Already I’ve lost my life savings and my self-respect. The only thing left is my dream of a happy ending: a movie premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater with all my friends and family cheering as my name comes across the screen in ten-foot-high letters.

I could go on believing in that. It would take very little effort to suppose it’s only a matter of time until Lloyd casts the film and we get the money and the movie gets made and does so well it spawns not just two sequels but a television series and a spin-off.

Hope perches in the soul.

But there’s nothing more destructive to the soul than a dream deferred, and I can no longer wait for it to dry up or explode. This has to end now.

Here’s where I get off the mountain.

I run into the bedroom and pull two duffle bags from under the bed. I toss one to Carrie.

“Start packing,” I say. I open up the top drawer in my dresser and throw everything inside.

Carrie stares at me, baffled. “What are you doing?”

The second drawer is all underwear. I take ten pairs and leave the rest. “Driving you home.”

“That’s crazy,” she says. “I’ll catch the next flight. I only stayed because I couldn’t leave without talking to you.”

“No, you were right to be worried.” I grab my passport and close the drawer, then empty the entire contents of my jewelry box into the bag. “I’ve lost everything, so much more than you can possibly know. This place has ruined me. It’s time to leave.”

She steps into the room, walks to my closet and takes a pair of jeans off the hanger, carefully folding them.

“No,” I say, pulling three shirts off their hangers at once, “dump and go. Dump and go. I want to be out of here in ten minutes.”

“What about Simon?”

I pause for only a fraction of a second, but it’s enough to clog up my throat. No, I can’t think of Simon now. The one thing keeping me upright is not acknowledging just how much I lost. The money I can recoup. The self-respect I can regain. But there’s no getting Simon back.

When I don’t answer her question, she says, “He’s worried about you. He even went out to look for you last night when you didn’t come home.”

I know she thinks she’s trying to help, but she’s only making it worse. I can never, ever see Simon again. Love might mean never saying you’re sorry but there’s no clause about being a fucking gullible dumb fuck. Some things you screw up so badly, there’s no redeeming them.

This is one of them.

Carrie drops the subject and finishes stuffing clothing into the bag. I do a brief drive-by in the living room, packing up my laptop and gathering my files. I take the worthless
Tad Johnson
script and burn it.

My sister comes running out of the bedroom when the smoke alarm goes off.

“Don’t worry,” I say, climbing on a chair to remove the battery. “It’s just a little flame, easily extinguished, not a conflagration.”

Five minutes later, we have everything. Carrie runs ahead to bring the car around and I linger by the door, my hand on the light switch, taking one last look. All the value I have in the world is in this room and yet it is valueless.

Standing there, I think of the last time I did this—moving from one coast to another, divesting myself of all my material goods, so confident I knew what I was doing. This time I’m following through for real, starting over, leaving scorched earth behind.

No, not scorched earth. Not yet.

I drop my bag, walk over to the phone, dial Angela Deering at the
Times,
wait three rings for her to pick up and tell her to run the story.

Now I’m free.

Glenn crashes with friends for a month to give me some time alone with my sister. It’s such a sweeping act of kindness, I’m forced to concede he’s really a nice guy. Carrie, in her turn, admits that the touching is a little much, especially when she’s trying to eat ribs, which really can’t be done with one hand, and that she has talked to Glenn about it several times. He keeps promising to do better but so far has made no progress. Despite his nice-guyness and all, I still think he needs professional help.

Carrie insists that telling our parents is part of my recovery, and prepared for the worse, I confess all to them in one rapid-fire speech full of remorse and repentance. Amazingly, they take it in stride.

“We’re just happy to have you home again, safe and sound,” Mom says.

Dad agrees, adding, “It’s only money.”

He says it with such gushing relief I realize Carrie wasn’t looking for incriminating papers but heroin vials and dirty needles.

My parents offer to give me some money to help me get back on my feet but I refuse to take a handout, and in the end we settle on a loan with proper interest and a repayment schedule. Dad complements me on my negotiating skills even as he overrules my insistence that we go as high as the prime rate.

Over the course of many quiet nights at home eating boxed macaroni and cheese and defrosted veggie burgers, I tell Carrie everything. She listens with remarkable patience, never interrupting no matter how much she wants to. She’s an amazing listener, and I wonder why I didn’t know this about my own sister.

I explain how easy it was for Harry to play me, the one long ego stroke our entire relationship was. Some gushing praise and a few inspiring speeches and I was putty in his hands. I wanted someone to believe in me so badly because I couldn’t believe in myself that I never once stopped to consider his motives. And he warned me from the onset: “I’m calculating in everything I do,” he said the very first time we met.

Fool that I am, I didn’t listen. I soaked up his compliments like a flower starved for rain and shut out the one person who actually believed in me. Simon’s faith was as sincere as it was quiet.

Every time I mention Simon, Carrie tells me to call him. She doesn’t understand why we can’t just kiss and make up. All I have to do, she says, is apologize and he’ll forgive me.

But I know it’s not that simple. I replay that last conversation in my head and see the disappointment in his face, the sorrow in his eyes when he realized I’d confided in Harry, and know that what I did is beyond forgiveness. He’s right—I never trusted him. I put the distrust on him and made myself a victim but all along it was the other way around.

As much as it hurts, I know it’s for the best. Any apology would have to include an explanation about Harry, a detailed narrative of my stupidity and newfound poverty, and that I couldn’t bear. Opening myself up for more ridicule—I know I deserve it but I can’t stomach the thought. Far better to never see Simon again than have him know what a truly stupid, naïve, idiot newbie I am.

At Carrie’s urging, I give the Solutions contract to one of my former Hertzberg colleagues to see if I have any recourse. My prospects are dim.

“The hard part will be proving they never intended to make the film in the first place,” she says. “All the protections in place apply only if the film doesn’t go into preproduction, but their lawyer is insisting that they’re still developing the film. You might win if it goes to trial but it’ll cost you at least twice what you lost, and that’s being optimistic.”

When Carrie hears this, she rails for thirty minutes about our inadequate court system, then gives the contract to Lionel for a second opinion. Expecting nothing, I’m neither surprised nor disappointed. It’s also what I deserve for being gullible, stupid and willful.

Stiff-upper-lipped, I turn my attention to the future.

With no idea what to do with the rest of my life, I scan the help-wanteds every day. Even though I’m qualified for very little, I feel like anything is possible. I e-mail my résumé to the local hardware store looking for a bookkeeper and to the Fresh Air Fund, which needs a executive director. Neither calls.

Surprisingly, the New York Public Library asks me in for an interview for a research associate position at the main branch, a turn-of-the-century beaux arts building on Fifth Avenue. It’s supposed to be a preliminary, half-hour chat with a human resources guy, but several key people are in the building so I wind up talking to most of the research department. Their questions are pretty straightforward, having to do with organization and problem solving, and my years as a paralegal, which is all organization and problem solving, serve me well.

Forty-eight hours later they offer me the job.

Delighted, I spend my first day feeling overwhelmed by the size and the grandeur of the distinguished old institution. More than two million New Yorkers have library cards. The number is staggering, and during my first week, it feels like half of them call the research hotline with questions about obscure facts. At first I’m intimidated by the seemingly endless rows of books, but by Friday I find it comforting and heartening to think there’s so much information in the world. It, like the want ads, makes me feel like anything is possible.

The next step is finding an apartment, and Carrie and I are so focused on the real estate section, we’re both shocked to see my article in Sunday Styles. But there it is, as bold as day, a photo of me and Moxie in rough newspaper-print ink running alongside it. There’s a black blotch on my left arm that looks like the world’s worst tattoo.

I don’t care.

Carrie insists on reading the article aloud, and, listening, I expect to feel anger or regret or sadness but all I can scrape together is relief—relief that is has nothing to do with me anymore. It’s almost like
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
happened to another person.

At work on Monday, nobody connects me with the article. People talk about it during the morning meeting but they don’t have a clue the author is sitting right there sipping a soy latte. Although it doesn’t speak well of their investigative skills, the anonymity is just what I need. I’ve said my piece on the subject and have nothing left to add.

Relieved Hollywood is well and truly behind me, I unlock the door to Carrie’s apartment and put a pot of water on the stove to boil for pasta. I’m taking a jar of red sauce out of the fridge when I hear a knock on the door.

I pause. Knocks on the door are unusual. People always buzz downstairs first.

I put the jar on the counter, turn down the boiling water and open the door.

And there is Simon. He has the
New York Times
in his left hand and a huge grin on his face.

Staggered, I stand there, my hand falling to my side as I try to think of something to say. But I’ve got nothing. My mind is blank. Joy doesn’t leave room for anything but its own munificence.

Unchecked, Simon keeps his eyes fixed on me as he leans forward and brushes his lips against mine, tentatively at first, then with increasingly abandon as I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer. He drops the
Times
to the floor when he presses my back against the door, the force of his kiss making my knees weak as I steady myself against his body.

Faintly, I hear the sound of a door opening and Mrs. Skouras’s outraged gasp as she takes in the indecent scene on her threshold. She immediately slams it again.

If Simon notices at all, he gives no indication, only lifting his lips to trail searing kisses along my neck. Dizzy, I throw back my head, dimly aware that we should take this inside, where the couch is softer than the metal frame of the entrance.

But I can’t bring myself to break contact. The feel of Simon’s muscles bunching under my fingers is something I thought I’d never experience again. I know we have to talk. There’s so much he has to know, so much I have to explain. But right now it’s enough that he’s here. He got it—not the message because the article wasn’t a message but the symbolism. What it meant: the break, the freedom, the future.

Simon runs his hands down my back and under my shirt. He moans softly as he makes contact with my warm skin.

I don’t know what comes next, how his West Coast–ness will mesh with my East Coast life, but I know we’ll figure it out. He didn’t come three thousand miles to kiss me on my sister’s doorstep, turn around and go home.

No, this flash of desire, seemingly ephemeral and certainly intangible, is more solid and vital than any lavish promise made by Lloyd Chancellor or Harold Skimpole or Howard Tulkinghorn. Like the city itself, they prey on hope, peddling shining kingdoms to which they themselves don’t have the keys. It’s all chimera and the misguided conviction that if you believe in something hard enough it will come true.

Faith doesn’t equal reality—Brigadoon isn’t a thought waiting to exist—and in the end there’s nothing behind you except a green screen on which to project your desires.

And yet here is Simon running his hands down the length of my back.

Of all the dreams to ever come out of Hollywood, he’s the only one that’s real.