Читать книгу Love Slave - Jennifer Spiegel - Страница 7

Wednesday, January 11, 1995

New York Shock is housed on the third floor of a shabby building about three blocks from the Village Voice near Astor Place; our people see their people every day. Voice staff eats lunch at Bowery hot spots; Shock staff packs peanut butter and jelly, tuna on rye. We don't mind, we insist. God knows, we're such a better paper.

We have our audience. Copies garnish NYU halls. East Village types take it on the subway, sometimes leaving pages open, inviting rumination from residents of other boroughs. People in Brooklyn make a point of getting it hot, so to speak, off the press. It's easy to find in Chelsea: splayed across plastic chairs in Laundromats, on tile floors near ATMs. One can pick it up on a TriBeCa street corner, but probably not anywhere near Gramercy Park. Those on the Upper West Side skim it, think about doing a weekend activity listed in the back but rarely follow through. Near Grand Central Station, Midtown folk read Daily News headlines, disregarding Shock completely while drinking cups of coffee doused with whole milk and eating sugar-glazed donuts. SoHo citizens give it a quick glance if it's left behind on Dean and Deluca tables. No one from the Upper East Side has even heard of it.

The column, my column, bears my name, the day, the year: Sybil Weatherfield, January 6, 1995. A loaded name, a good year.

Despite my fame, one's gotta eat.

My poverty gives me the creeps. Haunted by thirty-thousand-dollar student loans, I lack knickknacks and the freedom to drink anything but water with dinner. Going out to eat is a problem. People talk about the great restaurants in New York; I wouldn't know. I don't shop on Fifth Avenue, never have. I eat canned tuna; name brands are treats, reserved for special occasions like Labor Day or Halloween. I'm thirty years old; don't think I'm unaware of this fact.

My short-lived boss calls out, "Ms. Weatherfield, could you come into the hall?"

I temp, therefore New York is.

Putting down Shock, I peek out of my cubicle. "Yes?"

"This goes in your in-box." Dapper as a butler, he waves a piece of paper at me.

I didn't know I had an in-box.

He holds the document out, and I grab. Just as I'm about to seize it, he snatches it away— forcing me to bob up and down. In my short skirt, I look like a city girl hailing a cab in a commercial for pantyhose.

Our eyes meet. A sly smile creeps out from behind his closed lips. A gas leak, a drippy faucet. Acid traces through my veins.

He lowers the paper again, offering it. I take the bait, making the reach. And just as I'm about to get contact, he pulls it away again!

This is a New York Shock.

It's like that guy in the opening credits of Kung Fu talking about snatching a pebble from his hands. Get the pebble, hit the road. I remember a peaceful Chinese man looking wisely upon David Carradine– as– Boy, a smooth pebble in his palm. The suggestion was parable, lesson, Grimms' fairy tale à la Asian Coming-of-Age story. Where is my satchel, my dusty sandals, my wide-brimmed hat to take with me as I wander the earth in search of knowledge, holiness, and righteousness?

Exasperated, I feel my cheeks sag and my frown lines deepen.

The man lowers that wretched memo/letter/fax cover sheet again.

Hell, no, says my face. I turn around, disgusted, and walk away. I'm a temp; irreverence is my luxury. If he wants me to see it badly enough, he'll put it on my desk.

I'm not, nor have I ever been, a full-time writer. If I don't go into the New York Shock offices at least twice a week, the staff forgets who I am.

Then I need to wear my Shock badge. It says, It's Shocking, But True. I'm Sybil Weatherfield. I Write.

Armed with a college degree from a good school in Southern California, I go — day by day— to different major corporations, time card in hand, job assignment in tote. This Renaissance woman punches a clock, earning big bucks for a temp agency and getting request upon request for Monday-morning returns. The good news is that I get to wear the same outfit over and over again. The bad news: no badge.

There are rules for a temp:

* Always— I mean, always— bring something to do in your spare time, but make sure it's not a book. You can use Microsoft Word to write that letter to your health insurance company you've been wanting to write, or you can figure out your monthly budget; but you can never, ever— not in a million fiscal years— open up a book and turn its delicate pages. That's a temping no-no. But know this, and know it well: it's better to keep busy than to sit around and twiddle your thumbs. Look industrious, not like a lazy ass.

* Don't go out of your way to look for projects. You may think it's your job to efficiently and quickly complete tasks and then chase after your transitory supervisors with a self-deprecatory willingness to complete a dozen more meaningless jobs, but it isn't. The truth of the matter is that your ephemeral superiors only want to keep you out of their hair. So do what they tell you and do it well, but that's it. One additional Is there something else you'd like me to do? is fine, but don't go overboard. Say no to displays of false humility.

* Don't be sexy. Dress professionally, not glamorously. Wear your glasses instead of your contacts. Part your hair in the middle. Go for the same rounded-toe, scuffed flats every sin gle day. You don't want to make anyone turn his or her head, and you don't want anyone to be jealous either.

* If you're educated, let it slip unpretentiously. Read Charles Dickens in the break room. Accidentally leave your Picasso date book by the water fountain. Carry around copies of the Economist. Say intelligent things about the House of Representatives.

* Be sure to mention you temp for a particular reason. You temp, but you really write. You temp, but you're also a cellist. You temp to save money for a trip to Florence to study art in monasteries. That sort of thing. Temping must never be an end in itself.

Why should you hint at your secret intelligence, your devotion to the classics, your plans to join the Peace Corps? People like smart temps, temps with goals. They don't like glamorous or buxom temps.

At least, these things work for me. And, yes, I have written more than one column on the job.

I get my temp assignment from my temp agency. I have a good working relationship with the girls who work there based on faux affection. They send me Christmas cards; I call for new assignments. We speak in hushed and gossipy tones about former employers, past johns. Over the phone, I scribble directions to floors on buildings near Penn Station, near Union Square. These addresses give bodies and faces to previously ghostly edifices.

New York, in the pretemping past, was mythical, intangible. Pinstripes on Wall Street, sweatshops in Chinatown, middle managers eating hot dogs while standing near vending carts. Corporate America eluded me.

But then, then: The early temping assignments. After hopping in place (skirt pushed high over hips) and squeezing into pantyhose a tad too small, I would push elevator buttons to dream-like floors, and I would step into offices occupied by men and women who crunched numbers and lived on Long Island, having gone to school in Florida. I knew that New York wasn't my Disneyland, my silent-film era. The ghosts diffused, vapor-like, reminiscent of Casper's upward flight.

Now I get my assignment, remember the rules, and do what needs to be done. I do it well, but without Great Expectations.

I'm meeting Madeline for lunch on a Bryant Park bench at 1:15. I rip my nylons in the elevator on the way down, so I have to take them off in the lobby bathroom and dump them in the paper-towel bin.

Walking past people in the park, I see Madeline Blue, whom I love.

She sits on a bench, legs crossed, an exposed ankle beating time to the Duran Duran song in her head. Her wrist is balanced on the edge of her seat so she can shake her cigarette free of ash. Her face is pouty, pale, slightly pitted from ancient acne. There's something sultry about her full lips, big eyes, and long lashes. She's sensuous like Morticia Adams, glamorous like Miss Piggy, commanding like Cher— a pretty girl, not a gorgeous one. She looks cynical but superstitious, like a woman who reads her horoscope, twists apple stems, and blows out birthday candles while making a wish. A world-weary cynic who loves puppies and kittens.

The pout: what does it mean? Is she unhappy? The lackadaisical swing in the ankle: liberal, loose? The cigarette between her fingers: blemishes, a past?

I see Madeline Blue, the only thing I've kept from temping.

The first thing I ever said to her, three years ago, was "Is that your real name?"

Keeping her fingers on her keyboard, her shoulders hunched in an arc, she looked up at me, the new temp at Rights International. "Yes." She went back to her computer screen. "I got lucky."

"It makes me think of the seventies," I said, touching human-rights papers on my new desk in the back office I would share with this girl.

Madeline typed as she spoke. "You're thinking of that Joni Mitchell album. Blue."

"Madeline Blue," I repeated. "How Annie Hall."

She stopped typing, pushed her chair out, and swiveled around. "Is your name real?"

"Yes."

"Because it sounds like a stage name."

Then we shared that back office for two months.

When I left Rights International, I revised my résumé. She examined it, her lips moving. "What are you doing?" she asked, having reviewed it.

Puzzled, I cocked my head. "What do you mean?"

"Your objective isn't 'to find a position that combines an expertise in rhetoric and composition with a desire to serve in public relations,' " she quoted. "Give me a break—"

"Sure, it is." I had a college degree, an internship at the state capitol.

"Sybil, you write. Remember?" She closed our back office door.

I had been in New York City for over a year. I temped and halfheartedly looked for a real job. I wrote goofy pieces that were published inconsistently. "Madeline," I began, "I need a profession already. I'm aging."

Madeline Blue, with piercing eyes and blanched skin, whispered to me on my last day at Rights International, "Who says you need a profession?"

This was my epiphany. I crumpled up my résumé; I kept temping; Shock hired me shortly thereafter. I temp; I write; I live in New York. I have no real profession.

From the Bryant Park bench, she turns her head and sees me. Her lips make an o and smoke rises in artful curls and rings, like she's an expert at this cigarette thing. "What took you so long?" she calls out.

"Sorry. I had a pantyhose mishap as I was leaving."

Madeline looks at my legs. "But you're not wearing pantyhose."

"I ripped them in the elevator." I sit down and dig through my stuff. It's freezing, but we're desperate for fresh air, a shining sun.

"You threw them out?" She scrunches up her face. "Surely you could still use them for something."

"Like what? Puppet-making?"

"To wear under pants?" she suggests. "What do you have to eat?"

" Fruit cocktail."

"That's all?" Madeline swishes her ankle violently.

"I'm on a diet. Where's your lunch?"

"Are you yacking again?" Her face turns red, and she's accusatory. "You're yacking, aren't you?"

"I'm not, I swear." Only once. Last night, after I ate a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey because of alienation, desperation, tragedy, sorrow, loss, life, death, and a rerun of Seinfeld that I had never seen before. It was quick and clean. I flushed the toilet and waited for ER.

Madeline makes a point of doing nostril tricks with the noxious fumes. " Drink the syrup at the bottom of your fruit cocktail for nourishment, why don't you."

"Where's your lunch?" I tip my Tupperware, wedging my spoon under a pineapple slice.

"I ate at ten. I was starving."

"Oh."

We sit there in silence, staring at people. Across the way, a homeless man rummages through garbage. Others rush around, a little sweaty despite winter. Then, for a while, we discuss low-income housing and the cost of public transportation. Bad, bad, bad, we agree.

I tell her about my boss and his snatch-this-memo-from-my-hand trick. She sighs and rolls her eyes. "Look in the mail room, Sybil. That's where the real people are."

Twenty minutes later, I offer a suggestion. "Let's sit on the lions in front of the library and drink hot cocoa."

"I can't." Madeline tosses straight hair out of her face. She irons her brown locks— she literally irons her hair. I assume other people use special gadgets and tools to straighten coiled tresses. Not Madeline. No gels called "Wavy Be Gone." No foamy formulas in her medicine cabinet declaring "Out, Frizz, Out!" Madeline pulls the ironing board out from behind her bed— the one she got at a yard sale in Park Slope— and spreads her mane across it.

I squint, unused to hearing zany Madeline refuse anything along the lines of sitting on the Bryant Park lions while sipping cocoa. "What do you mean, you can't?"

"I just can't."

"Why not?" I'm incensed.

"I'm not wearing any underwear."

I certainly didn't expect this. "What?"

"I never do." She drinks her Coke with nonchalance.

"Oh." I stare out at the park and the pigeons. "Well."

"How's Jeff ?" she asks suddenly.

My boyfriend. "Oh, fine." I spin my Diet Pepsi around, making sure it still doesn't have any calories.

"Sybil. There's something I've gotta tell you." She smashes her cigarette into the ground under the bench and pulls her coat around her legs. Without warning, she's grim.

"What?"

"I've accepted a job teaching in Guatemala beginning in October. I'm leaving."

Twice, my mouth opens and closes. "Madeline, you can't."

She looks into her lap and pulls her fingers out of her gloves. "Sybil, we knew that, sooner or later, one of us was going to get out. I thought it would be you." Lifting her eyes to mine, she says, "We can't go on doing nothing."

"We're doing something. We're doing something." I get flushed, panicky, ill. "You teach. You're a great teacher. I write— because of you. You made me. You can't go— I can't do this without you. I can't stay here. It's just biding time—"

She shakes her head. "Till what?"

My voice cracks. "I don't know." I bite my lip. "Why do you want to go? Why would you want to leave me?"

Madeline Blue stands. She pulls her coat around her and arranges a hat on top of her head. "Because, Sybil." Her eyes are glassy with tears. "I don't like my life." She leans over, kisses me on the cheek, straightens, and says, "Bye, Kitty." She walks away through Bryant Park, heading to Rights International, where human rights are fought for on a daily basis.

I return to my temp job, my cubicle, my copy of New York Shock. I finish the day in a flurry of administrative know-how. On my way home, I stop at Mohammed's Gourmet, my neighborhood deli, to buy ice cream.

I pay my favorite Mexican immigrant nearly four bucks, which is a perfect binge price. A pint of Ben and Jerry's is the ideal binge: consumable in one sitting, contains countable calories, pricey for ice cream but cheap for an act of desperation.

I'm embarrassed because my immigrant friend can tell I'm alone. He knows that sometimes I eat like a deer, feeding on trees, grazing on grass. At other times, I clear shelves. In the morning, coming back from the gym, I buy a mango. Later, after work, after undisclosed disappointments, it's chocolate brownie pie.

Ask no questions, my Mexican friend. Yes, I'm alone. Yes, I'm not what I appear to be. Hand over the New York Super Fudge Chunk, buddy. Put it in a paper bag. I don't need the neighbors talking.

When I get home, I unplug the phone. I'm going to eat the whole damn thing. Nothing will be left. I think: Do it. Do it now.

So I do it. I push in a spoon. I work it under the cream. I like the texture. I like the taste. It's better than any friendship with a woman, better than any man's love. It's better.

I'm alone, alone at last. I turn to "Abscess." I have this column; that's what I have. In it, I say everything. I say it all. It sounds crazy, but I don't care.

Sybil Weatherfield at the top of the page. Sounds theatrical, tripping with melodious syllables. A poem, a folk song, something to count instead of sheep. Other things should be attached. Sybil Weatherfield, Lady-in-Waiting. Maybe I'm a lady-in-waiting. Or I could be Sybil Weatherfield, Writing in the Tradition of Jane Austen and Those Crazy Brontë Sisters. Jane and her Sense and Sensibility, her Pride and Prejudice, that goofy girl with her genteel writing: we've abandoned her. Forget propriety and manners. We've got Sin and Sensuality, Death and Duplicity. As for Charlotte and Emily: Wuthering Heights, you say? We're talking Washington Heights, honey. Sybil's name sounds regal, but she's not noble. Add Punchy and Pretentious to the budding list of titles, fine examples of clever and descriptive alliteration.

I study my tabloid. I meditate on my terrain. I eat ice cream.

Exposés on the hard-core history of Chinatown, on where to find the Italian mafia should you be looking, on male escort services, on supermodel love, on the poetry of Henry Rollins, on what members of the underground (What underground?) do dur ing the day, on Katie Couric sightings, on dog-run politics— these garnish our pages. We take polls on how many times New Yorkers have been victimized by a pigeon undertaking a waste management project. The mayor is a constant target. Celebrity-club christenings are frequent. Anecdotal columns are favored.

Me. That's me. "Abscess" is my column: a wound that doesn't heal.

And so we arrive joyously, enthusiastically, ecstatically, at my personal contribution to the alternative press. Sybil Weatherfield, my moniker. The year, a red line in time indicating where I am at thirty years of age, what I do at the beginning of 1995, maybe a good year, but possibly a year to forget in the maelstrom of years, of decades, of sweeping changes in the lifetime of a woman poised to write another into love.

That said, I have little in the way of expectation.