Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel (19 page)

Marjorie was trying to start from scratch. How dare Vera invade and squash her newfound hope with pettiness! What did she know about Mac, or even Marjorie, except that she represented all things unequal? How could she just shake off Brian’s betrayal? Did she have no self-respect?

Marjorie thought about that photograph of them as kids, their arms wrapped around each other, their only worry the next day’s algebra quiz. How long had Vera hated her? One year? Six? Had she only pretended to be a sister from day one, commiserating about unfair parental rules and making inside jokes, while harboring secret scorn? Once, they had complemented each other: Marjorie a relaxed, outgoing foil to Vera’s organized, controlled being.

Grief hit like a punch to the gut. Overcome, Marjorie slumped onto a nearby bench. How could she feel both betrayed and mournful? Her breath came short and labored. Panic.
This is a subway station. This is sweat down my back, a McDonald’s bag in the tracks, a friendship ending.

The F train pulled up and Marjorie climbed on board. The car was air-conditioned, but there were no free seats. She propped herself against a pole by a set of doors and stared out the window into blackness. Based on her reflection, looking back with tired eyes, her makeup had not worn well in the heat.

The jostling had a calming effect. Six stops later, at 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, Marjorie was starting to breathe evenly when a drunk man boarded and started mumbling, then ranting about the mayor. More alert passengers hopped off and onto the next car, sensing unpleasantness. Others watched the doors close with regret. Readers concentrated more closely on books, iPod listeners studied their fingers hoping to turn invisible. Some sturdy older women, longtime veterans of the New York City transit system, looked on with unflinching disinterest.

“First he took cigarettes, made ’em, how much—they cost, they’re … stogies on the black market, Canal Street, with their Chinese,” raved the man. “What is this? Russhhhia? Ain’t no Communist—this is—New York motherfucking City—this is—and no giant drink. I want me a big-ass soda! This ain’t a police state … Russia! This ain’t ching chong China.” A nearby Chinese passenger adjusted her pocketbook strap.

He made his way through the car, swinging between poles, stopping short before a seated thirty-something man in a tailored shirt and Ray-Bans. “They took—where’s my—polluting the damn air, man. We’re taking—cancer in our lungs, in
your
lungs!” He stuck a finger in the guy’s face; the passenger scratched an imaginary itch behind his ear and pretended not to mind being accosted.

That’s when the drunk spotted Marjorie, the lone person standing.

“You!” he yelped, pointing at her. “Women, man. Women, you’re—like flowerrrrs. You gotta—” He readdressed the sunglass wearer, who had wrongly assumed he was off the hook. “Gotta take care of women. ’Cause they flowers. They need water and … care!”

At least he didn’t think women were spawns of Satan, thought Marjorie. But then he stepped toward her. “I think—you look sad. You need a kiss.”

Horrified, Marjorie backed into the corner. He was so close she could smell metallic liquor and nicotine on his breath.

“Excuse me, sir,” came a nasal command from behind. The voice belonged to a pudgy middle-aged man, who—judging by his loafers and beat-up briefcase—commuted to the city for business from somewhere like New Rochelle, where his lovely family was looking forward to that night’s viewing of
America’s Got Talent.
“The lady would prefer to be left alone.”

Marjorie shot him a grateful look. Never before had she loved a gentleman in a Men’s Warehouse suit. She cursed her past prejudices. This guy was ten times the person she was, helping a total stranger.

“How’d you know what she want? You—her
boyfriend,
fatty? Mind your bid—business or I’ll hit you.” The drunk took a threatening lunge forward.

Of all things, Marjorie wondered, in that moment, what her actual boyfriend might do in this situation. Charm the guy out of kissing her? Offer him money? Let her get molested, then poke fun later? Right: He would never have set foot on a subway in the first place.

“No one wants a problem,” said the businessman. “She just wants to go about her day.”

The homeless man looked unsure. “Then why she’s not saying that?”

Both men looked to her for confirmation. Barely above a whisper, she managed, “I’d prefer if you didn’t kiss me. I’d like to be left alone.”

As they pulled into the station at Broadway-Lafayette in lower Manhattan, the drunk considered this, shrugged, and exited the train.

She exhaled. “Thank you so much!” she gushed to her savior, whose name, as it happens, was Fred, suggesting something supreme about the moniker.

“No problem.”

“What you did—I’m having a bad day. That’s not the point, but, well, thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.”

Only then did Marjorie realize that she was missing her stop. She leapt off the train, as the doors closed around her lucky Alexander Wang bag. She tugged at it, but nothing budged. From inside the car, businessman Fred came to her rescue again, prying the doors open. Just as she almost let go, watched her wallet, keys, and all fly away with the train, the doors opened, releasing her. She stumbled backward, falling to the platform floor.

“Thank you!” she shouted. Fred nodded at her with pity, vowing never to let his daughters move to the city.

22

There have been prettier sights than what showed up at Michael’s office that day and introduced herself as “Marjorie.”

At the front desk was one of two NYU film students who worked part-time as interns for Grover & Grouch Entertainment (named for the two
Sesame Street
characters who most resembled affable Michael and curmudgeonly Gus). She wore a porkpie hat atop thin blond hair and a too narrow face, a romper, and Keds that looked self-splatter-painted. (In fact, an art major from her dorm had created the masterpieces with tinted Wite-Out, after they’d inhaled a cumulous cloud of vaporized weed.)

“We’ve been expecting you!” she sang. “Wow. That sounded creepy, right? Mahahuhuh!” She giggled at her own Dracula impression. “I’m Lydia. And that’s Kate!”

The second intern appeared from inside a room labeled
VIDEO VAULT/FILM LIBRARY
and nodded. She was as short and round as her cohort was gangly. She wore a Flaming Lips T-shirt, faded jeans, and Janeane Garofalo circa
Reality Bites
bangs (extra short). Marjorie wondered if the girls were too young to have seen the movie. She felt ancient.

“Now you’ve met ‘the staff’”—Lydia mimed air quotes—“welcome to G & G! Do you want some water or iced tea? Hey! That rhymes!”

“That it does,” replied Kate, an alto to Lydia’s chirping soprano.

“I’m a poet.”

“Yes, you should start a blog. Oh, wait. You already did and I had to hear about it for all of yesterday.”

“I’m like obsessed with my blog,” confided Lydia. “I know that’s so 2009, but whatever! It’s called Feathery Weather, and I talk about cool art and film projects by kids in my dorm. It’s a platform for launching my clothing line, when I’m ready.”

“That sounds cool.” Marjorie smiled. Lydia’s dreams had yet to be tempered.

“Want to have a seat? His grumpiness will be right out.” So much for the drink offer. Lydia gestured toward three folding chairs pushed against a wall.

As the girls returned to work, Marjorie slid onto a cold metal chair and tried to collect herself. This looked nothing like Bacht-Chit PR. The space was bare bones: There were framed posters for indie movies she assumed they’d distributed, some of which she recognized. The reception furniture was unmistakably IKEA—well designed but not meant to stand the test of time. She could make out a small kitchen at the entrance of the hallway, which led to offices.

Gus emerged moments later. He turned to his intern. “Were you planning to tell me that someone arrived?”

“Oops!” Lydia grinned. “I knew I forgot something. Gus,
someone
has arrived.”

“Well done. Come talk to me about that raise.”

She smiled, wiggled, and resumed collating. Kate appeared in the vault’s doorway. “I like this one. Let’s keep her.” Next to tall Gus, she looked like a friendly stump.

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

For all the talk about Gus’s moods, they didn’t seem afraid of him.

He wore a Fugazzi T-shirt, jeans, and old school Nikes; Marjorie chided herself for dressing formally. This was her cue. She rose and stepped toward him.

“Hi. I’m Marjorie.”

His smile disappeared. “You
can’t
be serious. You weren’t
that
drunk.”

She shifted in her heels. “I’m sorry?”

“We met at Fred’s party.”

“Right. Of course. I remember. I wasn’t sure that you’d remember me.”

Under normal circumstances, Marjorie would have done a better performance of recognition or might have even mustered the brain power to recall meeting Gus. But today she lacked the wherewithal to fake anything.

“Amazing.” He shook his head. Kate and Lydia looked on with unabashed interest, as if the conversation was an episode of
Scandal.

“No, really. I know. You’re Gus. Gus, Gus, Gus.” He was unmoved. Marjorie sighed, not at him but with impatience at herself—an act promptly misinterpreted. “Okay. I’m sorry. I do remember meeting you, vaguely. That night is a blur. I was a train wreck. Not my finest moment.”

“Neither is this.” Gus started toward his office, then snapped, “You coming or not?”

Taken aback, but accustomed to abuse in an office environment, Marjorie followed him down the hall. Behind her, Lydia grimaced, then resumed bopping to whatever song played perpetually in her head.

Gus’s office was sparse and impersonal, especially—Marjorie would later note—by comparison to Michael’s homey nook across the hall, appointed with framed photos of Celeste and a desktop rock garden. In Gus’s lair, an unworn Yankees cap teetered on the arm of a rolling desk chair and fell several times a day. On the desk, beside a laptop, sat beat-up issues of
The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly,
and
Vanity Fair.
Philip Roth’s
I Married a Communist,
J. D. Salinger’s
Franny and Zooey,
and Jonathan Franzen’s
Freedom
—with a receipt as a bookmark—sat stacked.

A half-eaten pack of gum lay alongside a landline and two in- and out-boxes, empty save outdated junk mail. (No one in history has ever used them as intended.) A random green-and-blue-swirled rubber ball sat poised, ready to roll. Even Gus’s coffee cup—from a neighborhood spot called Java the Hutt—was disposable.

Against the back wall, below a window, leaned an Ork map of Philadelphia and a small signed photograph of Bruce Springsteen. The only mounted object was a black wall clock with a white face. A large flat-screen TV sat to the left on a metal rack above disordered piles of plastic DVD cases.

“Close the door,” Gus grunted.

Marjorie did as told, rolling her eyes as if she and the wall were in cahoots. As Gus futzed on his computer, letting her stew, she sat upright in the other chair, feeling that somehow her posture and pride were correlated.

He continued interfacing with his laptop, perhaps answering an e-mail. Apparently, the task trumped basic civility. Marjorie cleared her throat and smiled tightly. “Hot day. Hot, hot, hot day.”

“Yup. Couldn’t be grosser.”

She had the uncanny sense that he wasn’t talking about the weather. She pulled her hair up off her damp neck. The office was much cooler than outside, but she was still decompressing from her en route adventure. Her body felt like a furnace with a stuck valve.

Gus finally looked up at—almost
through
—her, his eyes grazing the exposed nape of her neck. “So, Mike didn’t tell me much,” he said. “What experience do you have in film?”

Marjorie was caught off guard. She hadn’t expected an interview. “I’ve actually never worked in film before. I worked in PR and—”

“Oh, great. PR.”

“But there are skills that may transfer, and my father—”

“Lemme guess: Daddy has buddies in the movie biz. He once invested his Wall Street capital in a failed indie film on a lark? Lost a bundle?”

“No, actually—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter.” Gus ran a hand along his stubbled cheek, then over his brown mop. “I was hoping Mike had found someone with chops, but you’ll have to do.”

Chops?

“You’ll basically be an assistant. Hope that’s not below you.”

The statement had to be rhetorical, never mind insulting, but he sat silent as if he expected a response. “No. Being an assistant is not below me.” Why did they need her, if they had Lydia and Kate?

He seemed to read her thoughts. “Lydia is the receptionist and a personal assistant for me and Mike. Kate keeps the vault intact and deals with deliveries, but they’re both part-time. What’s left is administrative. Hours might be long.”

“That’s fine.”

Gus stood. “Great. Wonderful. Fucking fantastic. Let’s get you started. Ready, Train Wreck?”

“Excuse me?”

“Isn’t that what you called yourself?”

This man was to be her boss for the next week at least, and Marjorie knew she should be respectful, but his snideness was too much. He swung the door open and headed into the hallway. Presumably, she was to follow again.

“Perfect,” Marjorie said aloud to herself, grabbing her bag.

She caught up to Gus in a small conference room with another large-flat screen and a plexiglass table surrounded by midcentury-modern-style chairs, surely Michael’s choice. Three enormous cardboard boxes sat parked in a corner. Gus was plugging in a laptop.

“You’ll work here. I’ll get you a scissor.”

“A scissor?”

“How else are you going to open the boxes?” He cracked the door and called, “Lydia! A scissor!”

The intern appeared with it in hand. “You rang?”

He didn’t smile. She set down the scissor and, when he turned his back, opened her eyes wide at Marjorie and mimed tiptoeing away. Gus turned to leave too.