Domestic Violets (5 page)

“Trouble is my middle name,” I say. This seems to cover all the bases.

“Clever.”

“It’s true. It actually is. My dad lost a bet with Norman Mailer.”

There are five or six other smokers milling around on the roof of our building. Some are from MSW, others are from the other random companies that share the building. Most of these people look like they’re contemplating throwing themselves over the edge.

“Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, you know,” she says. “Everyone’s been talking about it. That’s our third client to go bankrupt this week.” A police car speeds by on the street below, its siren echoing off the pavement. “There’s gonna be more layoffs. I don’t see how there won’t be.”

“We’ll be fine,” I say. “People who aren’t
needed
get laid off. They need us. We’re copywriters. The company’s gotta advertise, right?”

We smoke for a moment, and Katie seems to believe what I’ve just said, which would make one of us, officially. Advertising and marketing budgets are always the first to go. Anyone who’s been in business more than a few years knows this. But there’s no sense in letting Katie in on this trade secret, so I just take another drag.

“Do you ever feel like
anyone
could do our jobs, though?” she asks.

“Like a chimp with Microsoft Word?”

“So you have thought about it?”

“Yeah. But, by now a monkey would have choked Greg to death. I’m sure of it.”

God, I love the sound of Katie laughing. The other smokers on the roof glance over, men and women alike. She’s one of those girls who glows a little, like when you see an actress in real life.

“So, guess what,” she says. “I finished your book today.”

I nearly drop my cigarette. “Really? I just gave it to you two days ago.”

“Yep. I snuck over to the green space after lunch to finish it. I was up till like two last night reading in bed.”

I try to keep my composure in the midst of a flash fantasy. The thought of Katie in her night things, lying in bed with my manuscript propped up on her belly, makes me feel like I need to sit down.

“Tom . . . seriously, it’s fantastic.”

“Really?” I suddenly wish I had another cigarette. “You think so?”

“There’s so much there. Like that scene near the end when Danny gets to Hollywood. That’s so sad. He spends the whole novel trying to get there, but when he finally does, he realizes he has no idea where he’s going. And so he just runs out of gas. That was so . . . I don’t know, poignant. It reminded me of your dad’s writing—when he was younger. Remember how I told you that your dad knows he’s hot? Well, he knows he’s a great writer, too, and he kinda writes like it. I think that’s why I didn’t like his last novel. But you’re writing like you’re trying to prove it. That’s how he used to write. I was actually telling Todd—” She stops here, self-conscious suddenly. Katie and I have developed this unspoken rule that somehow prohibits us from making direct reference to either Todd or Anna. “I was telling Todd that, about your dad.”

“Todd’s welcome to read it, you know.”

“Right. Maybe if it ever gets made into an Xbox game.”

I want her to keep talking. I want her to tell me more of the things she liked and to further marginalize Todd, but she doesn’t. Instead, she looks thoughtfully—a little sadly—over the roof of our building at the top of the Washington Monument about a mile way. I allow myself a glance at the lovely plunge of skin ranging from her earlobe to her collarbone. There’s a line in one of my dad’s novels about the most beautiful parts of the female anatomy being the ones that are the most innocent—the ones that have never been scandalized by nudity.

“So the kid in the book?” she says. “Danny. He’s
you
, right?”

“I don’t know. No, probably not. I don’t think so. Just some imaginary kid in a book.”

I look down at the street, and I see Danny, the kid I made up, standing at a crosswalk. I’m not crazy, I know it’s not actually him and that he doesn’t exist. But I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last five years, and so I see him sometimes, walking around town in his sweatshirt and sneakers. He never seems quite sure where he’s going.

“Well, he’s gonna be famous soon. And so are you. You’re gonna publish your book and leave me all alone in this place with Gregory.”

“Greg,” I say, correcting her, and for a moment, I allow myself to believe what she’s just said. It’s an easy thing to do, because, aside from myself, she’s the only person in the world who’s read the book. Not my wife. Not my mother, my famous father, or my famous father’s famous literary agent. Just this beautiful smoking girl from work in her corduroy jacket.

Chapter 7

W
hen I finally
do make it to Doug’s office, it’s after six, and I find him hunched over a glossy proof of an ad that I wrote last week. It’s a branding piece for a popular business journal, and it used to be a pretty cool ad. After going through Greg’s tractor beam of sucking, though, it’s now a typical, buzzword-laden hunk of corporate communications turd.

He looks up at me, weary and gray. Doug is twenty years older than I am, and it shows, particularly this month. Since the bottom fell out of the economy, everyone in charge here looks like they need to go to the hospital. There’s a little TV on his bookshelf with the volume down low, and everyone on MSNBC is somewhere between panic and ritualistic suicide. The bold headline beneath the talking heads reads, W
ORSE
B
EFORE
B
ETTER
?

“Rough day?” I ask.

He sighs, capping his red pen and letting it fall on his desk. “Apparently the roughest since the Great Depression.”

“Oh, well that wasn’t so bad.” I fall down onto Doug’s old leather couch. It’s one of those worn and tattered pieces of furniture that can remind you quickly of how tired you are. “It’s all good,” I say. “When Obama wins, he’ll save us.”

“Yeah, well, I’m voting for him, too, but the president doesn’t really have anything to do with any this, I don’t care how cute his daughters are. The captain of a ship can run a great ship, but he can’t do anything about the tides. My dad used to say that. Did you tell Gregory that you had a meeting with the executive team today about marketing initiatives?”

I pretend to think hard about this. “I’m sorry, Doug, I don’t believe I know a Gregory.”

“I think you might. Nice hair. Perfect diction. Always wears a tie.”

“Oh, you mean
Greg
? Yeah, I know Greg.”

“Well, you can congratulate yourself, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so pissed off.”

I place my hand on my heart. “Well, then the day wasn’t a total loss.”

Normally Doug would smile here, but not today. He crosses his arms, thoroughly unamused by me, and nods at the television. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to have a few people on your good side for a change. Comrades are important when corporations start falling to the ground.”

“I’d never align with the Dark Side, Doug, you know that. Besides, what do I have to worry about?
You’re
on my good side, right?”

He gives me a look that lets me know that he could go either way on this. My rivalry with Darth Gregory has been a pain in this man’s ass for years, since the day Greg was reconstructed by evil droids and hired here. Doug is my boss
and
Greg’s boss, and, apparently when two of your direct reports hate each other with irrational passion, it reflects poorly on your management skills. Last year, Doug went so far as to take us both to lunch to help us settle our differences. Our latest argument then was about how I’d embarrassed Greg in a staff meeting by suggesting that he no longer be allowed to use the term “low-hanging fruit” to describe easy-to-acquire customers on the grounds that it sounded gross. I’d taken to making a buzzing sound in meetings whenever Greg used buzzwords, which was particularly childish, but very effective. Everything at lunch was going well until I said that I was going to circle back and try to leverage a strategy that would create synergy between my chicken sandwich and my iced tea.

Sometimes it’s tiring behaving the way that I do.

“He’s also upset about something else,” says Doug. “Something a little more . . . well, sensitive.”

“Oh?” I say. “Is it the dead fish I left in his locker after study hall?”

Still no smile. Doug is giving me nothing here. “Not exactly. He thinks you’ve been less than professional with a certain junior copywriter who’s currently under your tutelage.”

I’m rarely shocked by things said in this building, but here I am, my mouth open. “What?”

He shrugs. “I’m just the messenger here, my friend.”

“Katie works for me, Doug, and I’m trying to help her be a better copywriter. And we actually get along with each other, which is probably a foreign concept to Greg. What business is it of his anyway? I don’t tell him how to deal with his storm troopers.”

Doug rubs his eyes, tired of all this. “Listen, this is Gregory we’re talking about, so you have to take it all with a grain of salt. He’s probably just jealous. I don’t imagine he’s had a lot of success in his life with girls who look like that. But let me give you some friendly advice, OK? Off the record. Beware of young, beautiful things.”

The awkwardness in the room manifests itself into a burst of laughter from my mouth.

“I’m serious. For guys our age, they bring nothing but pain and hardship.”

“Doug, I’m nowhere near your age.”

“You’re close enough, believe me. When I was coming up, offices were dark places filled with ugly men in bad suits. But now . . . well, you think it’s a coincidence that the divorce rate has gone up steadily with the amount of women in the workplace?”

I’ve never thought of this before, and it makes me wonder how many divorces my dad could have racked up if he’d ever had a real job.

“And
you
need to be extra careful. Remember, I have daughters. I can tell when a girl has a crush on someone she shouldn’t. She’s not old enough to understand how powerful she is, yet—but
you
are.”

“Let’s not be dramatic here. She has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I remember him from the holiday party. Seems like a real winner—reminds me of all my daughters’ boyfriends. Just think of me as an old sage, Tom—the voice of experience.”

“Duly noted,” I say. I glance at the picture on Doug’s desk—him and his wife and their five children and a cocker spaniel in a dog sweater. “So, is this why you wanted to see me? Greg’s tattling?”

“I wish. Like I said, I don’t pay much attention to Gregory when it comes to his opinions on you. Truth is, all this turmoil is making Buckingham Palace nervous. I’m getting some bad vibes.”

“Really? From Ian? Is he even in town? Maybe his cricket team lost or something. The Brits are a moody people.”

Doug looks out his window where we have a lovely view of a construction site. Every man and woman in this building is afraid of two things:

“Our clients have lost their asses this week. Some of them don’t even exist anymore, as of this morning. If they don’t have money,
we
don’t have money. Trickle-down economics.”

“What’s this mean for us then?”

“Ian’s been looking to bring over some of his cronies from the Mother Country for years. Those swinging dicks in London would love to shake things up over here. All that bullshit about streamlining. Less is more. That kind of garbage.”

I fight the urge to make a buzzing sound. It seems like that would be counterproductive. In the last five minutes I’ve been told to fear a beautiful twenty-three-year-old girl and all of Great Britain. Doug runs his hand through his gray hair and looks at the television. H
OW
B
AD WILL
I
T GET?
the new graphic asks.

“You remember that tsunami from a few years back?” he asks. “Remember how things were all tranquil and sunny in those home videos, like some vacation, and then that big wave came out of nowhere and sucked everything out to sea?”

“Yeah,” I say.

He points at the TV again, which has suddenly become the world’s most frightening appliance. “I think the wave’s coming.”

Chapter 8

I
parallel-park my Honda
between a Mercedes and a BMW SUV. I’m two blocks from the house, but I can already hear Hank barking. He recognizes the sound of my car, its engine, and the way the door sounds when I close it. According to our vet, Hank suffers from something called “acute anxiety.” Before Hank was our ugly little dog, he was someone else’s ugly little dog, and then he was an ugly little dog at the D.C. pound. I don’t know how he ended up there, but when we leave him alone, even if only for a few hours, he acts like we’re never coming back.

As I walk through my neighborhood, I look at all of the expensive houses, fairly certain that many of their inhabitants are inside suffering from a little acute anxiety of their own. How many of these people could barely afford these places when they bought them and now can’t at all? The Obama/Biden signs in each of the tiny yards look uniform and neat, like B-roll footage from a campaign commercial, and I wonder if Doug is right about all of this being bigger than a president. It seems like one of those pessimistic things that people say when they’ve accepted certain things about the world.

Hank’s happy yapping borders on mania and I’m surprised to find my dad’s Porsche unmoved in the driveway, one tire still run up drunkenly in the grass. Like Sonya, I figured by now he’d be safely tucked away in one of the most expensive suites at the Fairmount Hotel, but apparently he’s still here. I touch the car’s fender and look inside. My dad’s old messenger bag is sitting in the front seat, a few paperbacks spilling out.

Inside, I’m greeted by Hank and Allie together.

“Hi, Daddy!” she yells over all the barking. She’s holding her artwork for the day on three pieces of construction paper. I kiss the crown of her head and swipe at the leaping animal, telling him to shut up.

Her first picture is a nature shot—a barn, a big green tree, and a horse. Her sense of perspective is still shaky, and so the horse is comparatively the size of a basketball arena. The next picture is a bicycle, I think, and it’s not one of her best efforts. Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m supposed to criticize her work, or if I’m just supposed to continue telling her how wonderful it is. When I was nine, I wrote a story about a turkey that escapes the day before Thanksgiving. When I gave it to Curtis, he told me it was charming but too overly sentimental to be anything better than emotionally manipulative. Allie’s third picture is far and away her best. In silver crayon she’s drawn the Porsche and a little Crayola version of Curtis Violet in a green sweater.

“It’s Grandpa,” she says.

“Heck, yeah it is. I think this one might be fridge-worthy. Well done, my friend.”

“Really?”

I make her give me a high five, and then she runs away with the dog.

Anna’s in the kitchen boiling pasta and reading the mail. She’s dressed in her running shorts and a gray tank top. An oval of sweat marks the spot between her breasts, and I feel fat and lumbering by comparison.

“Your mother called a few minutes ago.” she says. “She sounded weird.”

“Well, she’s a weird lady,” I say.

“Oh, and we also got a delightful call from your stepmother.”

“Oh Jesus.” This is inevitable, but still not good. “What did she want?”

She nods to the answering machine. “Listen for yourself. It’s quite a performance. Allie, cover your ears again, honey.”

Allie, who’s hanging her picture on the fridge with fruit magnets, covers her ears without comment as I push the little button. There’s a throat clearing, and then it’s Ashley in all her glory. “I know he’s there,” she says, her voice boozy and sharp. “Hell, you’re probably
all
there, listening to me right now, you fucking chickens. Why are you hiding from me, Curtis? You can’t just keep hiding. I love you . . . well, I
loved
you. Doesn’t that even
fucking
count for anything? Why are you so awful to me? I don’t deserve it. And you don’t deserve
me
. I hate you now. Hate, hate, hate you. So fuck you, I’m going to New York. Come get your shit before I burn it all in the street.” As she hangs up, I can hear the venom betrayed by a sniffle, like a high school girl in tears.

“Well, she seems to be doing well,” I say.

“She sounded drunk.”

“That’s probably a safe bet.”

Anna sips from an orange-colored vitamin water. “What do you think the odds are of her killing us all in our sleep?” she asks.

“Nah, even if she tried, she’d never make it past our liquor cabinet.”

I take in Anna’s body as she stirs pasta. Tight, lean little muscles seem to be appearing daily in new places, like above her knees and the backs of her arms. I guess those are called triceps. I touch one of them with my index finger, poking it with mild fascination.

“Have you been smoking?” she asks.

“Sorry,” I say. “Doug wanted to talk after work. Doom and gloom stuff.”

“Really? What’d he say?”

“Smoking kills, Daddy,” says Allie. “It makes your lungs all black and yucky, like two big sponges all covered in oil.”

“I know, honey. That’s crooked. A little higher on the right.”

Technically, I’ve just lied to my wife. I’ve used Doug as a diversion to distract Anna from the fact that I’ve smoked, and now I’m not sure what to say. I decide to spare her the tsunami metaphor, at least for the time being.

“Is this better, Daddy?”

“Perfect,” I say. “He’s just worried, that’s all. That’s what Doug does—he worries. He’s got like eleven kids.”

“Is it about the . . .
economy
?”

Anna is as helpless as I am when it comes to exactly what it is that’s put the world in its current state. At least one of us really should have majored in something legitimate. Our daughter is standing in front of the fridge like Vanna White, presenting her work. “Do you like it, Mommy?”

Anna tells Allie that it’s a beautiful picture, but her eyes don’t leave mine.

“We’re gonna be fine,” I say. “I’ve survived three rounds of layoffs this year alone. I’m untouchable, like Eliot Ness.” I flex my biceps, but no one seems impressed. Recently I’ve begun imagining that other people in my life write formal complaints about me and submit them to imaginary HR departments.

“Grandpa said he’s taking me for a ride in the Porsche. He said he’ll go super fast, too—way over the speed limit because the cops can’t catch him because they all have sucky, American-made engines.”

I tell my daughter how fun this sounds, and then I take two beers from the fridge. If this were a different era, the sixties maybe, I’d pour a couple of giant glasses of scotch. But I guess light domestic beers will suffice for now. “So he’s still here, huh?” I ask Anna.

She stirs the bubbling pot still. “He’s upstairs. I think he’s writing.”

I open the door and find my dad sitting at my computer desk staring at his laptop and casually smoking a joint. The window is open and he’s turned on the ceiling fan, but the entire upstairs smells like the inside of a VW van, and I have to actually wave a plume of smoke out of my face.

“Nice, Dad. Just make yourself right at home.”

He coughs and snaps his computer shut with a loud
thwack
. From the sleepy, stoned look on his face, I can’t tell if he’s been writing or napping.

“You know, there is a child in the house, right?”

He holds the wiry little bud out, offering me some.

I look out into the hallway for signs of Allie or Anna and then close the door. “All right, but I’m doing it under formal protest.”

“I’ll make sure it’s noted in the official ledger,” he says.

I take a quick toke, hold, and then exhale. I read somewhere that smoking pot is way worse for your lungs than cigarettes, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. The inside of my skull loosens a notch, and I hand it back to him. “You shaved,” I say. “Looks good.”

He rubs his chin as if reminding himself. “Allie demanded it. She told me I looked old.” He’s wearing the same pants as last night and his tweed jacket over a T-shirt. Although he looks better than before, he’s still pale, slumping in my IKEA chair.

I hand him one of the beers I’ve brought with me. He takes a sip with his nonjoint hand and smiles at me. Beer bottles are excellent props for men who don’t talk as often as they probably should.

“Your wife called earlier.” I say. “She left quite a message.”

“I heard it. Ashley’s a passionate girl. She swears a lot when she’s feeling vulnerable. It’s a classic defense mechanism. Her parents are horrible, horrible people . . . or so I’m told.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to feel sorry for her when she shows up to boil the dog on the stove.”

Curtis giggles. He’s artfully stoned in a practiced, fully functioning sort of way. He’s one of those aged pot smokers who kept at it while everyone else gave it up and got jobs and started quietly voting Republican.

“How’s the writing going? You getting some work done?”

“A little. The men upstairs are getting restless. They want this book to be over and done with. It’s been a tough road though. Tougher than it’s supposed to be.”

When I was a kid, I took this literally, and would sometimes sneak into his office when he was gone and look for the “men upstairs.” I’d search his closet and under his bed, convinced that they were hiding from me.

“I read about you on the Web today. Even in the middle of a full-blown financial clusterfuck, you’re still getting press.”

He takes another sip and then the last hit of the joint. “It makes this next book that much more important. I can’t follow the Pulitzer with a dog. They’d never forgive me for it. Either way, at least it’ll get Zuckerman off my back. Nicholas’s been holding the Pulitzer over my head for years, the arrogant bastard. I should take out an ad in the
New York Times
and congratulate him on being one of the finalists. Do you think that’d be too snide?”

“Publicly showing up a literary icon in a major American newspaper? Seems gentlemanly enough.”

“You’re right. He’d take it too seriously anyway. That’s the thing about Zuckerman, he’s a talented son of a bitch, I’ll give him that, but he has no sense of humor. He still hasn’t forgiven me for calling him the most boring writer in America three years ago.
Clearly
I was only joking.”

It’s been a while since I smoked pot, and things in the room seem misshapen all of the sudden. The pictures on the wall are crooked, and the pattern in the throw pillows is beginning to vibrate. “Jesus, where did you get this stuff?”

“Good, isn’t it? It’s a special blend from Colombia. Or maybe Peru. I can’t remember. Somewhere like that.”

I rise to leave, warm and a little giggly. One hit off a joint and I feel like putting on my pajamas, eating an entire bag of Doritos, and watching a Will Ferrell movie. “All right, Cheech. Dinner’s in ten minutes. If you’re not down there, I’m giving your spaghetti to Hank.”

“Yes, sir,” he says.

Before I leave to go find some Visine and change out of my work clothes, I stop. “So, who is she, anyway? You’re not screwing around with Veronica Stewart again are you? I don’t think that’d be a very good idea.”

He’s smiling at me, this old cad in yesterday’s clothes. “What are you talking about?”

“The new girl, Dad? Who are you in love with now?”

Talk of women has brought some color back to his face, and he sits up. “Once again, son, you’ve managed to expose my tragic flaw.”

“Really, there’s just one?”

He grins. “Don’t you get it by now, Tommy? I’m a writer. I’m always in love.”