Mercury in Retrograde (7 page)

Dana's divorce was spiteful and became even more so as—even though Dana had done nothing wrong and had even tried to excel as the perfect working wife—Noah refused to talk to her directly.

“I just can't believe he hasn't called or texted or anything,” Dana told Sally, despondent.

“Well, if he does,” Sally said, putting her hand on Dana's, “you'll just tell him to go back to hell or Cleveland, or wherever it is that he came from.”

“Two years! Two fucking years! I was married to the guy—and nothing!” Dana said, starting to cry.

“He might
not
call,” Sally said.

And he didn't. Instead, Dana negotiated herself a good deal—in which she'd kept Karl, received a small cash settlement, and gotten a legal commitment from him to pay for her new apartment for the next ten years, which, at four thousand dollars
a month plus utilities, worked out to close to $700,000 tax free. She'd fallen in love with the penthouse loft at 198 Sullivan Street the second she'd seen it.

Dana had chosen Soho as it was far, far away from the Upper West Side and Noah. Plus, Sally had once told her, “If you're going to be single in New York, Soho is the place to be. Lots of eye candy and plenty of bars to find a one-night stand in!” It was a funny building on a funny street. The tourist throngs that filled Soho from West Broadway for six blocks east to Broadway didn't come to that block, which, had Dana decided to renounce Judaism and become a Catholic, would've been perfect as it was bookended by Saint Anthony's convent on Prince Street and the church on Sullivan. In between, she counted two coffee shops, two dry cleaners, three restaurants, a meat store, a cheese store, and a knitting shop that Dana never set foot in. (People who knitted were to be avoided at all costs. For a capitalist like Dana, she just couldn't deal with the organic, Zen crowd that did things like Knit Nights. And worse, they were usually vegan, which was taking things a step too far, in her mind.) And best of all, there was a bar that quietly stayed open late so that when she walked Karl at night, there was always a smoker or two out to ensure her safety.

The building itself was a five-story, four-window-wide, walk-up tenement building that made Dana feel right at home thanks to a mosaic of the Jewish star in the foyer.

“Most of these apartments are rent-controlled or rent-stabilized,” Mr. Brillman, the landlord, had told Dana upon showing her the apartment. “Some people have been here for years, and when they move out, we do enough collateral renovations to charge more. Once the rent goes above two thousand dollars, all rent-stabilization laws are moot.”

The apartment Dana was looking at was not rent-stabilized and was grandly referred to as the Penthouse, even thought it was a five-flight walk-up.

“I consolidated all four apartments on this floor into one for my wife,” Brillman said, sighing, “but then she died and my knees are going…”

The apartment was an 1,800-square-foot loft, with a large bedroom space in the back against the four floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over McDougal Street (the quiet side), an open kitchen in the middle, a (nonworking) fireplace and a decent-sized bathroom and the living area, whose windows peered out over Sullivan Street. Best of all, there was access to the roof, half of which Mr. Brillman had cordoned off for his (and now her) own private use.

“I'll take it,” Dana said, figuring the five-flight walk every day would counteract her marriage thighs and complement her Weight Watchers fitness program. Before she moved in, she got a contractor to resand the blond wood floors, install hidden closets along one whole wall of the apartment, and put in new kitchen appliances as well as bathroom fixtures. She also hired a gardener to replant the roof garden (her section of it) and got Mr. Brillman to sign an unheard-of ten-year lease.

Even though it was four thousand dollars a month, the apartment was still a coup; similar ones in the area were going for at least six thousand dollars, and Dana wanted to get as far away from the Upper West Side as possible.

“It's a whole 'nother country up there,” Sally assured her. “You'll never see Noah or that slut ever again unless you want to.” Dana didn't.

 

Six hours after hearing “Noah's Big News,” Dana was almost finished cleaning out the drawer.

There was a knock at her office door. It was Ifoema.

“I'm getting a drink at O'Malley's if you want to come,” Ifoema said kindly.

“No, I should get home,” Dana said.

“You always go home,” Ifoema answered. “And you look like you could use a drink.”

Dana sighed. “Okay, you're right. Just give me a minute.” It would mark the first time Dana had gone for an after-work drink in almost a year. She heaved herself off the floor and caught a look at herself in the full-length mirror behind her office closet door and froze.

“And here I am, single again after I thought I had found
the one,
forty-three pounds overweight, with my love handles hanging out over my skirt like muffin tops. I even own a small dog, who has tiny
Ralph Lauren
sweaters,” Dana told Ifoema over vodka and diet cokes at O'Malley's on the corner. “I used to make fun of people like me—you know, ‘Oh look at her, she's just trying to substitute a child with a dog, so pathetic,' ‘Why bitch about weight—get on a treadmill' and ‘How could you
not
know your husband was cheating on you? He stopped coming home and gave you crabs, for fuck's sake.' God totally got me.”

“Well you
can
get on a treadmill and have a kid any time you want,” Ifoema said.

“That's a load of crap, Ifoema,” Dana said. “I've been on a treadmill my whole life, not to mention going up and down my five flights of stairs for a year, and still can't get rid of my thighs. And let's not talk about kids….”

Dana was particularly sensitive about this subject. She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family that hailed from Cleveland and Miami. She was raised in Cleveland by parents who were Orthodox, yet reformed enough to allow paper plates at Passover instead of having a separate set of china and who didn't believe in covering up the shoulders, hair, or ankles. Family was
deemed a priority—but most important of all was growing the Jewish family tree. “Jews don't believe in heaven,” Dana's mother explained to her when she was a child. “We believe in lineage. Your grandmother was only on this earth because of you, and her grandmother before that. We are the generations who went before us and are only here because of the generations that will go after us.” Her earliest memory was of her mother buying her a doll and saying to her, “When you're a mother…”

Dana put her head in her hands and moaned, “I am from Cleveland, Ohio. I was supposed to be married by now with two kids and a good job but with a husband who had a better job so I didn't have to work if I didn't want to. And look at me! Nothing! No kids, a little fucking dog who has the entire Ralph Lauren doggie sweater and polo shirt collection to keep me company, and an ex-husband who cheated on me with a European exchange student slash model. It's so trite I could die.”

“Evya did you a favor and got that cheating bastard off your hands,” Ifoema said, trying to make Dana feel better. “You're the best lawyer I know, you made partner at the crazy young age of thirty, and maybe you just need to pick yourself up and get back out there. You're thirty-two now and when was the last time you went on a date?”

“I don't remember,” Dana said.

“Okay,” Ifoema tried again, “let me rephrase that. When was the last time you went out of your apartment and did
anything
…got a drink, had fun, went to dinner…”

“Ummm…tonight?” Dana mumbled. Ifoema rolled her eyes. “I went to a Weight Watchers meeting—”

“Exactly!” Ifoema said. “Why don't you, instead of staying home every night of every week, start going out again and put yourself out there. How are you supposed to meet anyone, much less a baby-daddy, in your apartment?”

“Where would I go?” Dana asked. “It's just so…daunting.
I feel like I gave it my best shot. I met the guy I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with, I got married, and, despite my every effort, he left me. What if it's meant to be?”

“That's bullshit,” Ifoema said, slamming her fist on the table. “And I'm sick of hearing you say that. Noah was quite possibly one of the bigger assholes I have ever met and you fell in love with the image of a perfect husband, which he was
not
. Now, I have to go back upstairs and finish the Callahan brief, but next week, Nader and I are taking you out. Being a hermit doesn't suit you.”

“Okay,” Dana said, although she didn't look like it was okay.

“Say, next Tuesday?” Ifoema asked.

“Sure, whatever.” Dana sighed, already knowing she had no intention of going, as that was Weight Watchers night.

 

Sure enough, the following week Dana bailed on Ifoema to attend Weight Watchers. At 8:00 p.m. that evening, elated that she'd lost two pounds, Dana walked into her apartment, tossed her briefcase, bursting with case files, behind the front door, took off her camel-colored Burberry overcoat, walked out of her four-inch black Manolos, unzipped the skirt of her black wool suit, and plopped down on her white sofa without bothering to take anything else off. Karl, who'd spent the day at Pup Culture, the doggie day care three blocks away, jumped on her lap.

“Hello, Mr. Kisses,” she said and scratched his butt.

Karl got up, ran across the floor, and body slammed himself against the door, his signature
I have to pee
move.

“Okay, okay,” Dana said. “I'll take you out.”

Dana hauled herself off of the sofa and went looking in one of the hidden closets for her sneakers.
It shouldn't be this hard to find my shoes,
she thought.
It's not like I have any furniture to hide them behind.
When Dana moved in, she'd felt so bur
dened by life that she'd refused to clutter up her new apartment. She bought only a white sofa, a glass coffee table, a flat-screen TV, a small white kitchen table with one white chair, a white electronic scale she kept in front of the fridge, and a big white bed with a white nightstand. White made her feel clean.

Dana finally found the sneakers, which Karl had hidden under her bed, put them on, and, still in her work suit, took Karl out for a quick pee. On the way down the stairs, on the second-floor landing, she ran into what looked like a large, pink Michelin man (or in this case, woman). It was the girl from the fourth floor, wrapped in what looked like ten layers and a pink puffer coat.

“Oh, sorry,” the girl said, barely looking up, as Karl started barking at her and tried to bite the edge of her coat.

“Karl!” Dana cried, yanking the snarling dog's leash, “stop that!” Turning to the girl, she said, “Sorry about that. He's a little…nuts.”

“That's okay,” the pink Michelin woman said. “No one likes this coat. Honestly, the way things are going, I'm surprised he didn't lunge at my throat.”

“Bad day?”

“Try bad month.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Dana said.

“Well, have a good night,” the girl said, before trudging up one more flight.

Penelope was tired. She'd been rejected for a position as staff writer for a women's magazine and then had to suffer through one more humiliating interview for another position that she didn't want but financially needed.

She'd found the listing for an associate editor at a little known plumbing trade publication called
Modern Faucets & Toilets
in the
New York Times.
Penelope had never really mastered how to wield a plunger, much less the intricacies of copper versus nickel piping, so the interview was awkward.

“Why do you want this job?” the managing editor asked.

“I need to pay my rent,” Penelope answered, unable to summon the strength to lie. Granted, it would never have been her
dream job, but her bank account was dipping into dangerously low territories and, according to the latest ATM statement, she had exactly $250 left before complete and utter
Ishtar
set in. She'd edit a cancer pamphlet if she had to, if only to pay next month's rent and not have to move back to Ohio.

All she wanted to do was eat her Chinese leftovers and go to bed. But Neal was coming over to cheer her up.
I'd better get my place somewhat cleaned up or Neal will freak,
she thought as she opened the door to her apartment.

It's amazing what depression can do to one's cleaning habits,
she marveled to herself as she turned on the lights and took a good look around her apartment. Clothes were strewn everywhere and there was a week's worth of dishes in the sink.

Daily newspapers were piled high on the kitchen table. A pair of used underwear hung from the shower doorknob, and her bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off in a third-world market. Clothes spilled out from the closet, dresser, and bed, which hadn't been made for a month. Trinkets and knickknacks were all over the place, the newspapers she'd read in bed were on the floor, and the sheets on the bed itself were halfway off the mattress.

Neal was coming in twenty minutes, so she did what she could.

By 9:30, when she buzzed Neal up, Penelope, who moved her CD clock radio into the kitchen so she could rock out to her
Hair Metal Bands of the '80s
CD while she cleaned, had successfully thrown out all the old papers; relocated all the clothes from the living room, kitchen, and bathroom areas safely out of sight behind the bedroom door; and worked her way through the majority of the dirty dishes.

“Oh, Laverne!” Neal cried, upon entering and seeing the mountain of dripping dishes. Laverne was Neal's semipsy
chotic Maltese poodle mix he was obsessed with—so much so that her visage was bedazzled on the black cashmere sweater he was wearing that night over a blue checked oxford and gray slacks. Laverne was trained when she wanted to be, but prone enough to grudge-pooping or biting that the cry “Oh, Laverne!” was commonplace, not just for when Laverne misbehaved, but for everyday shocking situations Neal encountered.

“Oh, pooky, this is nothing!” said Penelope, kissing Neal on the cheek while scrubbing a pot. “Done in a sec. Start drying, will you, so they don't fall over and break everywhere.” Penelope stopped washing dishes to turn off the music and said, “Sorry 'bout the music. I was cleaning to it. And Poison drones out the construction during the day.”

“What construction?” Neal asked as he grabbed a dishtowel and started drying the dishes.

“Mandonna moved out.”

“Mandonna?”

“Yeah—you remember the Madonna-obsessed trannie next door who was always playing ‘Holiday' till like four in the morning?”

“Oh, yes. She was…special.”

“Well. She's gone. Said she'd found a cheaper place in West Chelsea by the bar where she does her cabaret act. I don't know if I believe her, though. I think she found some sugar she-male to move in with, but whatever. So they've been renovating it for the past couple weeks. Hopefully they'll be done soon; the work starts at eight a.m. and doesn't end till six. And now that I'm actually home to hear it, it drives me bazonkers.”

“Has it been rented yet?” Neal asked as he wiped the last plate and put it in the cupboard.

“No, why? You redoing your apartment again and wanna slum it for a while? Come on, it'll be fun, I think they're installing an actual bathroom in there so it won't be too bad.”

“No thank you,” Neal said, uncorking a bottle of red wine and pouring Penelope a glass. “My Sutton Place apartment is just fine…but I do have this friend who needs a place. When will they be done?”

“My landlord said mid March. I better get a job soon, though, or he'll be renovating mine too.”

“Not good, huh?” Neal asked gingerly, sipping his wine.

“The worst,” Penelope said, plopping into the armchair and tearing up with self-pity. “I'm not exaggerating. In the past month I have been on nine job interviews. I have called in every contact I know, every news editor of every paper, and every managing editor of every magazine. No one is hiring. They either say they'll keep my résumé on file and they'll call if something comes up, or the honest ones just flat out tell me they're not interested. I got so desperate that today I went on an interview for something called
Modern Faucets & Toilets.
A
plumbing journal
! I fucking hate toilets! I still have nightmares about that bad drain clog last year. Believe me, it wasn't pretty…”

“What about one of those blogs?” Neal asked, deftly avoiding the details of Penelope's fecal clogging.

“Oh, please, don't even get me started on those things.” Penelope sighed, taking another swig of wine for dramatic effect.

After Penelope had run through her contacts in traditional media, she'd tried websites and blogs. But she'd managed to quit/get herself fired at a particularly bad time of year. Most of the sites were fully staffed, and while some were hiring, they paid next to nothing.

“Let me get this straight,” Penelope had said to one media
website owner during an interview. “You want me to blog for twelve hours a day, five days a week, and you'll only pay me ten dollars per post?”

“Minimum of ten posts a day—that's not bad,” the owner, wearing a brand new gold Audemars Piguet watch and a perfectly tailored Armani suit, had said. “That's ten dollars an hour.”

“Starbucks pays more,” Penelope shot back, adding, “and they give lunch breaks and benefits.”

The owner had blogged about her indignation after she'd left, noting “So-called ‘mainstream media' reporters, like Penelope Mercury, have not a clue as to what life is like on the internet. Just because you used to get benefits, honey, doesn't mean you should expect them now. Your sense of entitlement and lack of work ethics are jaw-dropping. Especially since you burned down your last place of employment.” That was pretty much it for Penelope's online interviews.

“A job is a job, babe,” Neal said, topping off Penelope's wine glass.

“I know,” Penelope said, taking a sip. “That's why I went to the interview. You'd think that seven years at the
Telegraph,
five as an actual reporter, would count for something.”

“It's the time of year,” Neal said.

“I mean, what the fuck? What kind of an asshole was I in a previous life that I deserve this?” Penelope half-laughed and lit a cigarette.

“Oh, please. You're not some rabid dog on the street or Britney Spears. Mercury is in retrograde, darling; everything is a little haywire.”

“Ha! So I was in retrograde. What does that mean anyway, and do you really believe that stuff?” Penelope said, puffing on her Marlboro Light and laying her head down on the couch.

“Of course I do!” Neal said. “And why are you smoking? Haven't you learned your lesson? You almost burned down the
Telegraph,
wasn't that a big enough sign for you to stop?”

“Please,” Penelope said, taking a long drag, “I've got other battles to fight right now. And frankly, it's the only thing that's keeping me even a little bit sane these days. When I get a job, I'll stop.”

This was a mantra she'd told herself for years: “When I (fill in the blank) I'll stop.” Penelope had been smoking since she was thirteen years old (“Um, hello? I was raised in Ohio—what else was I supposed to do? Tip cows?”), and while she realized it made her clothes and breath smell, atrophied her lungs, and—thanks to stringent New York smoking laws—basically ostracized her from the community at large, Penelope still loved cigarettes. She would quit, one day, when she was locked in an asylum where she couldn't hurt anyone. But she was still young enough not have the smoker's face (crisscrossed wrinkles) and until then, “Forget it. I actually think that because no one does it anymore, it makes me a little punk rock,” she rationalized.

“Have you thought about TV?” Neal asked, ignoring Penelope's smoking dissertation. “You'd make a great producer.”

“I wouldn't mind going into TV,” Penelope said. “At least it's still considered journalism—however loosely—and it'd be a paycheck. I'll do anything right now. Why?”

“Maybe I can help,” Neal said. “You remember David?”

Neal had met David two months ago at the Tool Box, a gay bar off the still yet to be gentrified part of the Upper East Side. They'd both been ogling the same go-go dancer—whose G-stringed bottom was obscuring their view of each other—and when the dancer left the stage for a break, their eyes met. David, a thirty-year-old transplant from Venice Beach, California, was
a short guy—only around five-feet-two-inches tall—with jet black hair, a chiseled face, blindingly white teeth, and bright green eyes. Neal was smitten.

They had been casually seeing each other ever since. Two nights before, David, the assistant to the station manager at NY Access, New York's
other
local cable channel, mentioned that there was a job opening.

“David said they were looking for an assistant producer at New York Access,” Neal said. “I could get you an interview if you want. But I don't think they pay much.”

“And the
Telegraph
did?” Penelope snorted. “I got my annual one-to-three percent ‘cost of living' increase every year—
if
I was lucky—and that was it. For seven years! I don't care. I just need a job. Who do I call?”

“I'll sort it out tomorrow,” Neal said, “but on one condition.”

“What?”

“You let me do something about…this,” he said, waving his hands in her general direction.

“What's wrong with me?”

“Everything.”

“Oh, not that again.”

“No, really,” Neal said, “you can
not
be walking into job interviews with the pink Michelin coat looking like a nineteen-year-old homeless wonder and expect them to hire you. I have a plan.”

“What is the plan and how much money does it involve?” Penelope asked as she took a final drag of her cigarette before stubbing it out.

“Nothing, it's free. You just have to call your landlord tomorrow and get my friend Lipstick that damn apartment across the hall for two thousand dollars a month or less.”

“That socialite friend of yours? She'd want to live here?”

“It's a long story. How much do you pay for this…palace?”

“It started out at a thousand dollars a month. It's now twelve-hundred dollars, which isn't bad considering I've lived here seven years. But the new renovated apartments are going for fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred dollars. That's because they have real bathrooms built in, with a tub and everything.”

“Doesn't matter, that's perfect,” Neal said. “Lips needed to find an apartment yesterday. Anyway, she doesn't have room to move all of her stuff. I told her I would help store the majority of her furniture and clothes, but frankly, there's a lot of editing in that closet that needs to be done. She already has like five trash bags full of Dolce, Dior, and Gucci going to Housing Works, but I think that you, my dear, are a much better charitable cause. We'll call it an apartment finder's fee.”

“Nice.” Penelope sniffed, rolling her eyes, “I'm a charity case now.”

“Never let pride get in the way of a good wardrobe,” Neal shot back.

“If this girl has so much money and good stuff, why does she want to move in here? The only really nice place in the building is the penthouse upstairs, and that chubby chick with the dachshund that just tried to bite me already lives there. And I heard she signed like a gazillion-year lease.”

“That would be too expensive for her anyway,” Neal said. “The one-bedroom next door will be fine. It's a long story, P, and I told her I wouldn't get into it, but just do it for me, okay? I'll bring the clothes over tomorrow after you call David about that job and your landlord about the apartment. She's a bit bigger than you, but alterations are cheaper than a wardrobe.”

“Sure,” Penelope said. “Let's toast to my first Gucci, Pucci, and Toochi!” They clinked glasses.

“Now, darling,” Neal said, “you look like you haven't had a decent meal in a week. Let's go to Raoul's for steak, my treat!”

 

The next day, after Penelope called Mr. Brillman and got him to promise her he wouldn't show the apartment to anyone until he'd talked to Neal and his friend Lipstick, Penelope dialed David about the job at NY Access.

“The opening is for an assistant producer,” David told Penelope over the phone. “It's basically a fancy title for the get coffee/carry extraneous camera and lighting equipment, union rules be damned, fix the teleprompter, and all-round general errand girl. You're totally qualified—in fact, you're overqualified. My boss Marge usually likes to hire 'em fresh out of college because they're pretty dispensable. But on the bright side, there are always opportunities to advance because of the turnover.”