Authors: Pamela Klaffke
“Oh, dear,” Esther says, noticing this.
“I think they meant
Satan
rules,” I say.
“Either way, the message is quite effective.”
At this I laugh. “Indeed.”
The bar is in the next block beside a small bookstore-cum-café called Connections. A sign indicates that part-time help is wanted and that healing stones are sold inside. The main display, however, is a tower of books, its author’s photo smiling out at us fifty-fold. It’s Chatty Ellen Franklin and her book,
The Infinite Woman
. In smaller type below the title it reads
Because Life Is All About Options
and there’s a tiny trademark sign beside the slogan in the upper right-hand corner.
“I met her.” I point at the display.
“She looks very nice,” Esther says.
“She wants to interview me for her next book about successful women entrepreneurs.”
“That’s fantastic! We’ll have to order a glass of champagne to celebrate!”
“I haven’t said I’d do it or anything.”
“Don’t be silly, Sara. Now, come on, we’re almost there.”
I should have worn something else. The men at the bar are in jackets, the women all wear dresses or skirts. I’m wearing my grubby 501s and a T-shirt silk screened with a snake smoking a cigarette. Everyone looks like they’ve come from church. I wish I was wearing one of Lila’s dresses, but I was unsure of whether wearing her clothes around her best friend would be too weird. But she was the one who gave them to me in the first place, though it’s unclear if I should give anything back. This collides with the Ted-Gen-Eva-cunt dilemma in my head and I decide to order an overpriced bottle of champagne to celebrate my successful entrepreneur status rather than a couple of piddly extra-overpriced single glasses.
The bar itself is not especially distinctive, but it’s elegant and old with dark woods, candlelight and purplish-burgundy velvet banquettes the color of Esther’s hair. The bar is called George’s and according to Esther it’s run by the original George’s son, George, who greets us personally and takes our order for champagne.
“And what are you ladies celebrating this evening?” George Jr. asks.
“Sara here is going to be in a book about successful women entrepreneurs,” Esther says.
I blush and rip a strip off a cocktail napkin. “We’ll see. Nothing’s confirmed.”
“What kind of
successful woman entrepreneur
are you?” I look up briefly. George Jr. is smiling down at me. He’s holding a pitcher of ice water. He’s cute and looks vaguely familiar. I rip another strip off the napkin.
“Sara is one of the owners of that lively little magazine
Snap
and the stores, too. And she does a lot of
consulting
,” Esther answers for me again.
“It’s a lot of fun,” I say. I am an idiot with a bulbous soft head because that’s not what I mean at all. What I meant to say is that I loathe my job, it’s inane and boring and I’m not even good at it anymore and my business partner is cheating on his wife with my assistant, who will bewitch you with her quaint suburban ways and her
golly-gee
manners and then steal your pages and your non–last name and demand that you fuck her cunt. I rip another strip from the napkin then crumple it up.
George Jr. snaps his fingers. “You’re that girl who does the DOs and DON’Ts.”
“That’s me.” I look up at him. His smile has disappeared.
“I was a one of your victims,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“A DON’T. I was one of your DON’Ts.”
“No!” Esther chimes in. “I don’t believe it.”
I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to remember, but then I do. I remember having him sign the release. He was wearing a black suit with white socks. It was a few years ago. I was doing a DOs and DON’Ts dedicated entirely to hosiery. I wish more than anything else I had that bottle of champagne in front of me so I could swill it back in continuous gulps until the chill and the bubbles locked my head in a spinning brain-freeze that with any luck would obliterate the memory of every DON’T.
“Sorry about that,” I say. I am really, truly, sorry.
“Oh, it’s all in fun, George,” Esther says.
“I know,” George says. “It’s silly.”
It’s silly
.
“But I never wore white socks with a dark suit again.” He manages a weak smile. “I’ll send Carol over with your champagne—good luck with your
successful entrepreneur
interview.”
“Thanks.” He turns to go. “Just a sec.” I root through my bag to find the Polaroid I didn’t bother returning to the Hipster Twins. “Would you mind taking my picture?”
George eyes me warily. “Is this a joke?”
“No joke. Please?”
“Okay.” George takes the camera. “Say cheese.” I don’t smile. The flash goes off. I may have blinked. The spiffily dressed customers turn to look. There’s nothing to see.
George hands me the camera back. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Esther wants to talk about my trip to Toronto and how wonderfully romantic my time with Jack must have been. I want to talk about Lila and her magazines, but mostly about her notebooks and if I might be able to take a look at more of them, if there are any. Neither of us brings up George Jr. and he doesn’t return to our table.
I tell Esther about the artners dinner and toss in a tidbit about Jack buying me piles of frilly expensive lingerie at that store in Yorkville. I mention that I reconnected with a dear old friend and checked in on the
Snap
store. I tell her I made a casserole from a recipe in one of Lila’s notebooks but leave out the part about how I ate it alone, in microwaved chunks, for four days and Jack didn’t try it once.
“That casserole was always a favorite of Lila’s—served it
every second week. For all her flights of fancy and her closets full of dresses, she could be quite practical—and frugal. I’ve never met a woman who could squeeze so much style from a penny. I’ll have to give you the rest of the notebooks.”
“Are you sure?” I hope I don’t sound too eager. “I could just borrow them if you want them back.”
“Don’t be silly.”
It’s silly. What I do is silly.
George Jr.’s words still ring in my head.
Esther lifts the champagne bottle from the standing ice bucket beside the table. I reach across to help her but she shoos my hand away, insisting on pouring the drinks herself. The veins in her hands bulge and I look the other way.
The champagne has me craving scotch, or at least a giant goblet of wine, but Esther doesn’t offer and I’m too self-conscious to ask. We’re back at her place and she’s pulling several volumes of Lila’s notebooks from a shelf in her bedroom. She hands me six. “I don’t want to give you everything at once because then you won’t have to come and visit,” she says in the flippant voice people only use when they’re trying to cover their sadness.
“I’d visit anyway,” I say and I mean it. I pat Esther’s shoulder. I can feel a bone jutting under her sweater set. I quickly snap my hand away and hope Esther doesn’t notice. I wish I hadn’t left the black vintage gloves Eva found for me at the bar the day of Lila’s funeral.
I tell Esther I’ll find a taxi. It’s still light outside and I walk down the street, past
Satin Rules
. I’m lugging another of Lila’s bags—an oversize black leather tote—filled with six of her notebooks. I stop in front of Connections bookstore-café
and, fueled by champagne, I go in and buy a copy of Chatty Ellen Franklin’s book,
The Infinite Woman
. The clerk rings through the purchase and I steel myself for a raised eyebrow or mocking look. But instead the clerk smiles, puts the book in a paper bag stamped with the store’s logo and tells me to have a pleasant evening.
Outside, I attempt to shove the Connections bag into Lila’s tote, but it won’t easily fit, so I open it wide as I walk and try to make space.
“Dirty magazine?”
“Huh?” I look up and it’s George Jr. standing outside his bar. He points to the Connections bag I’m desperately trying to push inside Lila’s tote. “Just a book.”
“Here.” George Jr. grabs the Connections bag from me. I want to grab it back, tell him I’m only shopping at Connections and buying Chatty Ellen Franklin’s book as a gift for a friend, as part of a joke, for something I’m doing for
Snap
. “Hold it open,” he says, gesturing toward the tote. I manage to separate two of the notebooks and George Jr. wedges the Connections bag between them.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Hey, look. I’m really sorry about the DON’T thing.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not and I am really sorry.”
George Jr. smiles, sincerely I think, and rolls his eyes. “It’s silly.”
It’s silly, it’s silly, it’s so very, very silly. Maybe that’s what I should tell Chatty Ellen Franklin when she interviews me if she interviews me. Everything I do, it’s all so silly, silly, silly.
I stop at the
depanneur
near my apartment and pick up a bottle of cheap French red. I ignore my phone and my
computer and crack open one of Lila’s notebooks. This one is older than the others I’ve seen but only by months, maybe a year; in several of the photos she wears the black dress with the jagged neckline. I skim through before scrutinizing the details. There are formal photos, of her and a man. There are letters from a man written in black ink addressed to
Darling
and signed
With Love.
A strip of photographs slips out onto my lap, the glue that secured it to the page long, dry and brittle. It’s Lila and a man—but not the man in the formal photographs—heads pushed together, pulling faces in a photo booth.
All the malls have photo booths, even ones that will print the pictures of you and your friends on tiny stickers. This was popular several years ago. I wrote about it in
Snap
and made the corporate cool hunters who paid us too much money to tell them about such things squeeze into a photo sticker booth to have their personal portrait taken with borders of hearts and flowers or big-eyed anime characters or Hello Kitty. If I asked him I’m sure Jack would go to a photo booth with me, push his head into mine and pull faces. I’m short of breath and claustrophobic thinking about it. He’d probably show off our adorable photo-stickers at an artners dinner and then all the artners would want to do it and Michelle and Dave would buy a photo booth for their loft with the commission fee of one of Dave’s paintings and all the vegan artners could take turns posing and one-upping each other.
The man in the formal photographs is Luc and he was Lila’s husband. The
Darling
man in the photo booth is Stephen and he was Lila’s lover. There are more letters, written hurriedly, assuring Lila of the fantastical life they will have together one day and they are always signed
With Love.
Lila pasted the envelopes into the notebook, Stephen’s letters tucked inside.
Some pages have three or four, glued amid theater ticket stubs and postcards from Vermont and Lake George. There are cryptic notes, sketches of black dresses, bits of poetry, an occasional recipe but no white space. I read until there’s no more wine and the pages of letters abruptly stop. There were a dozen sheets left blank at the end of the book. I flip through the rest in the pile Esther gave me—neither Stephen nor Luc are mentioned again.
I can’t sleep so I put on one of Lila’s dresses. It smells of smoke and sweat, but I’ll take it to the dry cleaner tomorrow. I take out my notebook and paste into it the awful picture Alex took of me, then the one I asked George Jr. to take. I try to think of something smart to write on the pages. I check my bag for any interesting scraps on which I may have written something profound but find only receipts for cigarettes and liquor and one from the market in Toronto where I bought the ground beef and Velveeta. So I draw a picture of a dress I imagine Lila would wear then I write
Satin Rules
in big cursive letters and laugh.
At least Eva isn’t sitting at her desk outside my office screaming for Ted to fuck her cunt, but why she’s here at all is a mystery—Ted has had plenty of time to get rid of her. But Eva is smiley and chirpy in her vintage sweater and orthopedic shoes and her Montreal red hair. She hands me a stack of messages and a proof copy of next week’s issue. “Oh, and I’ll be out tomorrow morning. We have to shoot the pictures for my column,” she informs me before heading back to her desk. She’s humming again.
I growl and skulk into my office where I discover more than one thousand e-mails in my in-box, six bankers boxes filled with swag and a copy of Chatty Ellen Franklin’s book on my desk, complete with a personal note, her cell number and the room she’s staying in at the Queen Elizabeth. I swivel my chair until it’s directly in line with the open door of my office. Eva’s back is to me and in perfect position. I lift Chatty Ellen Franklin’s book up and take aim, but before I let go, intending to hurl it at Eva’s head, Ted appears in the doorway and I bonk myself on the head with the book as casually as I
can, as if I were conducting some sort of test or checking to see if my head was hollow.
“Whatcha got there?” Ted asks. He closes the door.
“Book.”
“Nice.”
“Why is she here?”
“Eva?”
“Of course Eva. Or were you waiting for me to do it?”
“I don’t think we should fire her. She’s too valuable.”
“She’s my
assistant
. I’ll get another one.”
“Sara, her column is really taking off and Jack I and have been talking about her doing some work on the
Snap TV
project. Didn’t you read any of my e-mails? Listen to my phone messages? Didn’t you talk to Jack?”
“He mentioned that you might want to talk to me.”
“Jesus, Sara.”
“I was on
vacation.
”
“Yeah, freaking out the kids who work at the Toronto store and, what, telling some journalist that you were going to kill yourself until you got invited to an artners dinner?”
“That was a joke.” How does Ted know these things? “How do you know about artners?”
“Gen and I have been to a couple of dinners.” His voice is quiet now.
“Lucky you.”
“It’s good for networking.”
Fuck me—people have artners dinners here, too? “Okay, Ted, whatever. How
is
Gen?”
“She’s fine,” he says quickly. “She doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to know.”
“Really.”
“It’s not going to happen again. I’ve talked to Eva—we’re all business. She understands.”
“She’s a
cunt
.”
“Just leave it alone, Sara. Don’t turn this into one of your dramas.”
I spend the morning fuming and scrolling through two weeks of three-way e-mails between Ted, Jack and Eva, all of which have been copied to me. Eva: we need more of an online presence, it’ll make
Snap
more accessible; Jack: give people more of a chance to be involved; Eva: exactly. Let people be involved with the shows, let them interact with the brand, be part of it not just dictated to; Ted: make it more democratic?; Eva: and younger; Jack: this could work; Eva: let everyone in on it—you know what they say, if you’re not on TV these days, you don’t really exist; Ted: I like it, I like it a lot.
I like the idea of sawing off Eva’s fingertips with an extra-sharp serrated bread knife. There would be no more e-mails, no more
Life of Style
for Eva B., no more hijacking of my one original smarty-pants bite of nouveau philosophy. I dig around in my desk drawers knowing I won’t find an extra-sharp serrated bread knife, but I do find a rusty letter opener that’s shaped like a cross and has a skull for a handle. I carve tiny lines into the plastic of my phone that won’t stop ringing until I look up and see Genevieve heading straight for my door.
“Sara speaking,” I say into the phone. I didn’t check the caller ID and am suddenly consumed with fear—it could be anyone.
But it’s Diane. “You’re one tough lady to get hold of.”
“I know, I know. I’ve been away.”
“Listen. I don’t have a lot of time here, but I need the biggest favor. I need a guest judge for tomorrow. We tape at three. I can have you out by five.”
“I don’t know….” Diane produces
Stylemaker
, a television show in which twelve high-strung, fashion-obsessed contestants live together and compete with each other in style challenges and try not to get eliminated and be labeled a
fashion faux pas
by judges who are usually fashion magazine editors and second-tier former models. The last one standing is crowned The Stylemaker and wins money and prizes and gets to go on early-morning TV shows across the country and tell people what to wear. It’s very popular.
“Come on, Sara. It’ll be fun—painless.”
“I guess if you’re not on TV these days, you don’t really exist, right?” Gen is standing in my doorway. Her breasts are huge.
“So you’ll do it?”
“E-mail me the details.” I sign off with Diane and hang up the phone. Gen barrels toward me and kisses me on both cheeks. Her breasts are huge.
“We must make a pact—no more fights!”
“I’m sorry, Gen. It was supposed to be funny.” Her breasts are huge.
Gen waves a hand in front of her face. “Let’s forget about it and go for lunch. We never go for lunch anymore.”
I glance over at Eva’s desk. She’s not there. “I know. It’s been forever. Let’s go right now.”
Gen unlocks her black SUV with the beep of a remote and I open the door. “Just throw that stuff into the back,” Gen says, indicating the papers on the passenger seat. On top of the pile there’s a greeting card that reads
Congratulations on the Twins
and has a drawing of a smiling woman with huge breasts like Gen’s, except the drawing of the woman on the card is a cartoon.
I’m not feeling well and wonder if someone in the kitchen at the restaurant can make me some plain toast or if there’s
one of those two-cracker packs of saltines I could have. But I doubt it—the menu is gorgonzola-fish-tartar-quail everything. I order a ginger ale that comes in a small tumbler filled with so much ice that half of the two gulps of soda that fit in the glass dribble down my chin.
“Are you okay?” Gen asks.
“I’m just feeling a little queasy.”
“You’re not sick, are you?” She sounds genuinely alarmed.
“I don’t think so. Maybe just fighting something off.” I order the plainest salad and isolate the flat toasted garlic-herb croutons and nibble on them. I stare at the mixed greens and roasted red peppers, the shavings of chèvre, but eat none of it. Staring at the salad makes me feel flush and sick but I don’t know where to look other than at the salad because if I look Gen in the eye I’ll want to tell her about Ted and Eva—or not want to, which may be worse—and if I look below her neck it’s all huge breasts and I have no cartoony greeting card in my purse.
Gen tells me about her show—shooting starts in a week. I tell her that I met Lucy Sparkle and that her electro-goth band is interested in doing something with her. I’m momentarily proud that I remember this but then Gen tells me Jack already e-mailed Ted about it and passed the message along to her and now her manager is looking into it. Gen has a manager and huge breasts.
I survive lunch but am sure I’m going to vomit as Gen’s SUV lurches through midafternoon traffic. I power down the window and stick my head halfway out.
Gen pulls into the
Snap
parking lot. I thank her for lunch, pull the handle and push my weight against the door. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Gen asks. I open my mouth but
nothing comes out. “You, of all people, Sara. I know you know—you won’t even look at me for God’s sake!” She wags a finger in my face.
She knows about Eva, she doesn’t care, it’s all very progressive. My stomach settles. I can breathe and look her in the eye. She sticks her chest out. But she’s talking about her huge breasts. “You can touch them. Everyone wants to touch them.”
I feel sick again. “No. Thanks. I’m good.”
“It’s just that after Olivier they were so saggy and stretched—”
“You don’t need to explain,” I say.
“They feel totally normal if you touch them like this.” She takes my hand and places it firmly on the front of one of her huge breasts. “Or like this.” Gen moves my hand under her huge breast and lifts it. “It’s only when you touch them from the top that you can tell.” She guides my hand to the top of her huge breast and presses it down. It’s very firm, like a ball, and too round.
“Wow,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else. I step out of the car, feeling very nauseous. Then I see Eva walk by, bouncy in her orthopedics and smirking, and this makes things worse.
“Having fun, ladies?”
“Hey, Eva!” says Gen. “I’ve been meaning to call you and thank you for the card—it’s hilarious.”
“I thought you’d get a kick out of it,” Eva says.
I crouch on the gravel beside Gen’s SUV and throw up.
I am pregnant. I know this because I spend the rest of the afternoon with my office door closed logging on to every pregnancy Web site I can find. I lurk on a forum for newly pregnant women with morning sickness. They describe in
detail the dizziness (yes), the bloating (yes), the fatigue (yes) and the vomiting (obviously), but are so chipper about it I have to flee and search instead for abortion clinics and information pages about fetal alcohol syndrome. I read about how some cases of fetal alcohol syndrome don’t always manifest as physical handicaps, but as behavioral and psychiatric problems like sociopathy. I’ve dated at least three men I’m positive were sociopaths, so I figure I could deal with a kid sociopath and this would be a preferred option to the mutant baby I’d be so repulsed by and guilt-ridden about that I’d have no choice but to drop the two-headed, harelipped creature with Down’s syndrome and no hands on Jack’s doorstep. But then there’s always the chance that the baby could be a mutant
and
a sociopath. That would be no good. There has to be a test for that. There’s a test for everything. I do a search for prenatal tests but immediately clear my screen and my search history when Eva knocks lightly and opens my door without waiting for me to say it’s okay to come in.
“Ellen Franklin is here to see you.”
Chatty Ellen Franklin is better than the thought of a nine-inch needle poking into my belly. I reach over and grab the copy of her book from the top of the swag box I threw it on this morning and put it back on my desk. “Send her in.”
“I apologize for dropping in like this—I just finished doing a seminar not that far away and thought I’d take the chance and see if you were up for a drink.”
My stomach turns over at the thought of my usual red wine, but something cold, like a vodka and soda, has a refreshing appeal. Maybe a vodka and ginger ale would be better. Most of the baby damage happens in the first weeks after conception so the mutant sociopath baby that there’s no way I
can have is in all likelihood already a mutant sociopath so another drink isn’t going to make any difference now. I agree to go with Ellen to the lounge at the Beaver Club at her hotel, where we can drink in dim lighting surrounded by businessmen with expense accounts and eat bowls of nuts that according to a TV newsmagazine special investigation I saw we shouldn’t eat because public nut bowls are rife with germs and microscopic creepy-crawlies. But we have to stop first at a drugstore to get a pair of pressure bracelets that the least chipper of the chipper women on the morning sickness Web forum swears are the only thing that help her nausea. I don’t say goodbye to Eva or to Ted.
The pressure bracelets look like sweatbands and are made of white terry cloth with a raised bead on each that pushes on the inside of my wrists and is supposed to make me feel better. I’m an asshole and tell Chatty Ellen Franklin that terry cloth sweatbands are a DO as per the eighties-Olivia-Newton-John-sings-“Physical” revival. I also tell her I have an inner ear problem that sometimes makes me dizzy and sick and affects my balance. I could have bought a pregnancy test while I was at the drugstore, but why bother when it’s going to tell me something I already know. People always say that women just know when they’re pregnant.
“I know how busy you must be, but have you had a chance to give any thought to letting me interview you for my book?”
“I’m not sure—I don’t think I’d have much to say.”
“I can’t believe that. You founded such an influential and unique business—I’m sure you have great stories.”
“Cofounded,” I correct her.
“Of course. Look, I don’t want to pester you and if it’s no,
it’s no, but, Sara, sharing your experience could be so valuable.” Ellen leans forward. “Off the record?” I’m pretty sure I’m not the one interviewing her, but yeah, okay, whatever. I nod. “Most of the women I interview are very corporate, MBA-types. It would be great to include someone more creative. There are only so many times I can hear about the
management track,
being
on the same page
or how they’ve given
one hundred and ten percent
to get where they are before I want to drip hot oil into my ears and slice off every navy blue button on every navy-blue-suited woman.” She reaches into her purse, pulls out a Swiss Army knife, waves it around and laughs. Our waiter, who has noticed our empty drink glasses, looks nervous. I order another vodka and ginger ale and decide I like Ellen Franklin.
Four drinks in I like Ellen Franklin better than Eva or Ted, definitely better than Gen’s implants. I like her better than Jack—what do I tell Jack about the mutant baby growing inside me?—and the Hipster Twins, the artners, queeny Alex and Parrot Girl, which goes without saying because I
hate
her. I like Esther, but she’s so old and I wish she wouldn’t touch me. I think I like Rockabilly Ben but that could just be because he’s young and fuckable and Eva’s ex-boyfriend. I have a drawer stuffed with business cards people have given me who want to have lunch or a drink or hang out or hook up. My personal address book is full of names of people who I call sometimes when I’m drinking wine alone and feeling social but not enough to make the effort to go out. This usually happens in the winter. Sometimes the people in the address book call me for a restaurant suggestion or shopping advice; they ask me to meet up with them, invite me to come over and see the kid, meet the fiancé, tour the new house but
I mostly don’t because I’m sick, I’m working, I already have plans to knock a few back, read tabloids and smoke.