Making It, page 15
“I think you’ll be blown away by these reels.” Krystal is flushed. She is new enough at her job to be excited by it.
As Krystal pops the cassette into a slot in the wall, her shapely backside stretches the black leather of her jeans. Audrey silently resolves to start back at the gym.
Her tongue flicks against a bump in the roof of her mouth. What is that? A blister?
“Gunter is our first choice,” says Krystal. The director’s one-word name appears in tiny type in the middle of the screen, then fades to black, and the footage that he has directed begins.
Krystal is a producer Audrey hasn’t worked with before. She worked for years with Krystal’s boss, Betty, who was let go in the first round of layoffs. Audrey feels a twinge when she remembers that despite promises to do so, she’s never once called Betty for drinks. Why is it that once you stop working with someone, that person stops being real, recedes into a place accessed only by memory? She is glad Howard is the exception to this. She and Oren drove, unbidden, to Irvington to see him in Julius Caesar, and Howard had hugged her backstage, his embrace exuding forgiveness, his foundation makeup dissolving under rivulets of sweat.
Gunter’s first spots are music videos. They are fast-paced and dark-lit and soundtracked with loud, pulsing music. Next come his commercials—for products in men’s categories: beer, motorcycles, aftershave, sneakers.
He is talented, she thinks, admiring the camera angle on a beer-swilling surfer taking a wave. But the product they are advertising is a women’s soap. They need a director experienced in skin care. But how to say this? She doesn’t want to be the voice of convention.
Sensing a problem, Krystal pauses the tape. “You can’t believe a director this hot would shoot skin care, right? Believe it! Ian and Clay are really psyched. It took me three conference calls to sweet-talk his rep, but now he’s willing to bid on the board!” Her dark eyes gleam with the pride of accomplishment.
Audrey had imagined gentle, pale film with a track of soft music, perhaps a female choir of a cappella voices.
She ventures, “As great as Gunter is, Krystal, I’m not sure he’s exactly right for this job. Shooting skin isn’t simple, you know? The right light . . . the right focus, takes a certain kind of experience.”
Krystal’s eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms. Then she breaks into a smile and slaps her head with the heel of her hand.
“You’re playing devil’s advocate, right? That’s just what the idiot client would say!”
No words come to Audrey, and Krystal continues: “You’re preparing me, right? For when the client says that? I’ll fast-forward! I’ll fast-forward to this!” She waves a wand at the screen, and the action speeds so that all that can be seen is a blur. Then a man on a motorcycle roars into view. The camera reverses angle to show, from the rear, a woman seated behind him, wearing only a helmet.
“It’s the Harley spot that scored in all the shows last year, remember? What better proof that the guy can shoot skin?”
Triumphant, Krystal tips back a can of diet soda, guzzling it with as much gusto as a man in a commercial takes in a beer. Krystal is engaged to be married. Audrey sees her in five years—a baby on her hip, a stripe of vomit down her back, her lithe figure grown thick, now wearing stretch waist jeans. How much more about life she will fathom then.
“Let’s see other reels, Krystal,” Audrey sighs, flicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Nervousness gives rise in Audrey the desire to chew. She reaches into a bowl on a side table. A fishbowl filled with little orange candies. The office is abundant with candy jars filled with chocolate kisses, licorice sticks, lollipops. Research directors deliver reports while sucking hard candy in the shape of a pacifier. Media heads apportion millions of dollars while blowing bubbles in psychedelic colors.
Krystal gives Audrey a solicitous look as Audrey tosses a handful of candies into her mouth.
“Headache?” Krystal asks. But Audrey can’t speak. Her head is suffused with sulfuric taste so repulsive it forces her to spit the chewed pulp into her hands.
“Sorry,” says Krystal. “I thought you knew. Those are Advil. For Mr. G’s?”
“For who?” Audrey dabs at her tearing eyes. Her mascara is surely running. They discontinued the mascara she’d bought for years. The new, improved version isn’t waterproof.
“You know, the waxing place everyone goes to?” Krystal phrases her answer in an interrogative tone, an unconscious habit of women her age.
Audrey got her legs waxed once, a birthday present from Greta. She cringes now to recall the experience. You vant hahf or whole? the Russian attendant had inquired, confusing Audrey. Who would want one leg waxed and not the other? When she didn’t answer, the woman had made a chopping motion at Audrey’s knee, which had made Audrey feel threatened, as if she meant to amputate there. When it was over, Audrey vowed never again to go through that ripping agony.
“Too bad I don’t need my legs waxed,” she says, reaching for a bottle of cold, cleansing water stacked in a half-size refrigerator disguised as a heart.
“Not leg. Bikini.”
Audrey pales to think of the pain.
“Mr. G’s is cheap, and all the waxers are from Rio. They do it best. They start them waxing down there at age ten.”
“How often do you do it?”
“Every six weeks or so, I guess. My fiancé would be turned off if I didn’t. Guys all expect it these days, you know?”
“They do?” Does Kabal?
“Because of porn videos, I guess.” Krystal shrugs.
Audrey fills with a surge of affection for Oren who would never expect such a thing, who came of age excited by natural women. The first time they had sex in the morning, he wouldn’t even let her up to brush her teeth first.
Her tongue can’t stop worrying the sore in her mouth. What the hell is it?
On the screen, footage resumes with loud colors and male bodies gyrating to bass-driven music.
And then she remembers: that kiss with Kabal! Could the sore have something to do with that? His tongue had gone round and round in her mouth. Has he transmitted a disease to her? There are so many diseases.
Audrey tongues the bump again, feels cells divide and subdivide, multiplying exponentially. She recalls an image burned into her years ago by the Book of Knowledge, Sexually Transmitted Diseases: a glossy photo of a man’s terrible lopsided face—lesions in his mouth had eaten into his brain.
A panel in the wall next to her is mirrored. While Krystal fumbles with controls on the set, Audrey leans into the mirror and opens her mouth. Sure enough, a bump rages red on the roof of it.
She must call a doctor. She must call a doctor immediately.
She lifts her new cell phone and punches at a key.
“Pause the tape, will you?” she says. “I’ve got to take this.”
She leaves an impression in the gel as she stands, mumbling to pretend that she’s on a call. Krystal’s eyes follow Audrey forlornly, as if she is watching a hooked fish wriggle free, swim away.
But Audrey’s doctor is not in town.
“She’s still on her book tour,” says reception. “You got the postcard?”
Audrey remembers: the card had been poorly designed; there were too many typefaces in sizes too big, horsey.
She calls her dentist, a gentle man who never scolds her for not flossing, and gets an appointment for the next afternoon. As she presses the key to disconnect, she stares at the numbers neatly arranged in a grid, contemplating them, as if to glean wisdom from their numerology.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Celebrate the moments of your life.
—General Foods
That night is Audrey and Oren’s twentieth anniversary, and she is hurrying uptown to meet him for dinner. She wishes she could postpone their anniversary until after her dentist appointment tomorrow. She can’t kiss him until she knows what the bump is. She’ll have to resist any romantic overtures. She doesn’t want him to feel the bump in her mouth or, worse, transmit a disease to him. He is older than she is, his body not as resistant. Poor Oren—she pictures him bedridden, covered with sores.
She flicks at it with the tip of her tongue. It doesn’t hurt, but the absence of pain is no consolation. The worst diseases (she has heard) are ones that begin benignly.
She also regrets agreeing to meet so far uptown. An assistant producer had recommended a new fusion restaurant in the Village, but Oren was loath to venture out of their neighborhood, seeing as how they’d be eating so late.
“Eight isn’t late, Oren,” Audrey had protested, though she knows he likes to be in bed by ten—the hour, he is convinced, that his REM state is most active.
Huddled in the back seat of a cab, she can’t stop worrying about what the bump is. She sees herself as if from a great distance, an adulterous speck inside a blotch of yellow, hurtling toward a thick, black line—the demarcation between life and death.
She can’t believe that she let herself kiss him. She kissed Kabal. Kissed her boss! Why did she let herself fall to the force of attraction?
She almost drowned once. A strong swimmer, she disregarded beach warnings and found herself pulled down to darkness by a force with a strength she hadn’t imagined. But she’d struggled against it, seeking the light, finally managing to come up for air.
She consoles herself with the thought that it was only a kiss.
But are consequences of the kiss something she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life?
She imagines herself in a hospital bed, breathing air dense with heat and the scent of flowers. She arranges Oren and Paley in hard plastic chairs by her side.
(“The highway?” asks the cabbie. “The highway is fine,” she says.)
She must say her good-byes, but in which order? Oren forgives her, has forgiven her everything. Paley sits on her deathbed (she has shifted him off the uncomfortable chair). His eyes, darkened by sadness, stare at her blanket.
There is so much to tell him. She longs to kiss the sweet flesh of his infant thigh. All the forces of motherhood gather within her to fashion something with words, some treasure to sustain him, buoy him through his long and motherless life. She is highly paid for her creativity, so why can she think only of clichés, words used by those without imagination, used and reused a thousand times before?
I love you. How vacant the phrase is, what paltry approximation of the pressure bearing down on her chest.
The driver rears his head, and she fears she has inadvertently flung the words into the air. But no—the cab has stopped. The driver is looking only for his fare.
She hurries through the gates of Columbia University’s campus, navigating stone walks as nimbly as possible in her new and torturous Manolo boots. She pictures the designer as he appears in his ads: his own comfortably shod feet propped up on a drawing table, head thrown back, laughing, amused by the contortions his designs force on women and by how much they are willing to pay for the privilege.
What a contrast her hobbled gait is to the unbridled strides of students breezing past her, who look to be the same age as her coworkers. She hurries, thinking of Oren waiting for her at the table (she knows he is waiting; he is always early).
The Terrace is one of New York’s unsung restaurants, patronized almost exclusively by residents of its neighborhood, who know to ride a certain elevator in a certain Columbia dorm. The last time they were there was for Paley’s eighth-grade graduation. Her mother was with them. The memory of her mother reopens a wound. She wishes she’d been more appreciative of her when she was alive. Her mother had not entirely approved of Oren: a shaggy-haired art school graduate, self-employed, old. Which had made him all the more appealing to Audrey. Lately she’s wondered if her mother had been right.
She pulls open the door to the unassuming dorm lobby, faintly smelling of Lysol, then Ding! sounds a bell when the elevator doors part. She steps in, and soon the doors open again to reveal a sumptuous reception that belies its unpromising entrance: thick red carpet, linen-covered tables lit by candelabra, gracious arrangements of flowers, the tinkling keys of a grand piano. Audrey approaches the lectern, presided over by a distinguished-looking man in a white uniform.
“Your party is here,” he informs her stiffly, making Audrey wonder if Oren has arranged a surprise gathering. The thought disturbs her—and the disturbance alarms her: that she does not want to publicly celebrate the fact of their marriage.
She is relieved to see that he is sitting alone at a quiet table by windows overlooking the glittering city. In the distance, Harlem looks prosperous and gleaming, not a place struggling to remake itself.
Oren is waiting for her, peering through reading glasses, already looking over the menu. He rises as she approaches, which ignites a flicker of gratitude in her. He does not usually observe the rules of gallantry: does not open doors or take the curb side when walking with her on the street, insisting that to observe manners is outdated and demeaning to women. He persists in this no matter how many times Audrey informs him that it isn’t true, that it hasn’t been true since women felt the need to assert independence by ogling their vaginas or burning their bras. (Audrey hadn’t been one of them; in those years, she was still wearing a Girl Scout uniform.)
But here he is, standing to welcome her. He leans across the table to kiss her, but she pulls away as soon as their lips make contact. Happily, her dispassionate graze doesn’t seem to surprise him. How different is a kiss between long-married people from that of new lovers: the low, steady flame of a pilot light versus the high, rollicking licks from a sudden combustion. But why does she think this? Kabal isn’t a lover. It was only a kiss and won’t happen again.
“Happy anniversary,” Oren and Audrey murmur in unison.
Has Oren ever kissed, really kissed, anyone else? She hopes not. Although once she had a scare. She found a pair of women’s glasses under his side of the bed. The discovery had rocked her and set her entrails into such motion that days passed before she could calmly confront him with the glasses. “Where’d you find these?” he’d asked, gladly pushing them on. “I’ve been looking all over!” He was surprised to hear that they were women’s glasses. How could he tell? There had been no such sign on the rack in the drugstore.
Oren is dressed up, for him: instead of jeans, he’s wearing chinos, and a button-down shirt instead of plaid flannel. She is grateful to him for making the effort, for changing the clothes he put on first thing in the morning, something he is usually loath to do. He is also loath to make reservations, hates to call ahead to restaurants, likes to keep options open for as long as possible, preferring to meander through side streets, peering at menus, ducking into doors, and sniffing like a hunting dog on a trail.
Yet he’d been the one to arrange tonight’s dinner. Does he suspect something? Have her recent transformations prompted him to reassert his claim on her?
“Sorry,” she says. “The meeting went late.”
Two decades ago, their union had ignited in the white heat of desire. In those days, the mere fact of his physical proximity had been enough to inflame her.
“That’s okay.” Oren shrugs good-naturedly. She is relieved to find herself feeling pleasantly disposed toward him. Much about him has irritated her lately: his habit of whistling when he is nervous, the regularity with which he takes vitamins before bed, the giant Rockports he leaves lying around like abandoned boats on the sea of their carpet.
After she decides on the sirloin (rare) and Oren quizzes the waiter on the origin of truffles in the risotto, after the sommelier refills their glasses from the dark, sweaty bottle, Oren fusses with something on the floor by his chair and pushes a small, ornately ribboned box across the white cloth on the table.
“I didn’t get you anything,” Audrey cries, defensive. They haven’t exchanged anniversary gifts for years. One of the things she likes most about her marriage is that she can let it operate on autopilot so that she has the time to concentrate on her work.
But Oren’s eyes are dancing with anticipation.
“Open it,” he says.
It is a bloodred box with gold detailing—Cartier. Her heart pounds. She doesn’t want an expensive gift from him. She doesn’t deserve it. She is the opposite of a loving, attentive wife. Reluctantly, she slides off the white ribbon and pries open the box.
Nestled on a pillowy cloud is a ring: a thick gold band studded with diamonds and sapphires, the ring of an uptown matron, not the downtown hipster she is trying to become.
“I always knew you wanted another,” he says.
When they had married, Oren had refused to buy her a fancy ring. Jewelry, he said, was a bad investment. The simple gold band had disappointed her then. But she had grown attached to it over the years. It had become a part of her, like her teeth.
“Oren, the ring I have is just fine.”
But he gently takes her hand and slides the ring from her finger and replaces it with the new, glittering band. Her finger feels weighted. The size of it, the brazenness of it, makes her own hand look like that of a stranger.
“Oren, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the gesture . . .” But Oren cuts her off.
“We went to six stores,” Oren says.
We?
“Paley helped me pick it out. I measured your finger while you were asleep.”
With the specter of Paley in the room, Audrey feels less inclined to protest. She shouldn’t protest. The ring is undeniably beautiful. Its small stones gleam in the candlelight, throwing off their own light. Perhaps she’ll get used to this ring as she got used to the other.
“You’re a good man, Oren,” she says, suddenly grateful for his dependable devotion, which she does not deserve. She worries the bump in her mouth with her tongue and tries not to think: he bought the ring with my hard-earned money.
