After the Workshop (3 page)

“Okeydoke,” I said. “Good enough.”

I started to pick up the baby again, but when I saw one of the bell-boys, I motioned him over and said, “Could you? Do you mind?”

He smiled at Vanessa but frowned at me, reaching down and taking hold of the baby seat as though it were an old piece of Samsonite.

“Be back soon,” I said. Vanessa merely nodded. She followed the stranger lugging her child away. The huge glass double doors swept open, and an agreeable blast of ventilated heat hit me before the doors swept shut again, leaving me in the skin-charring cold.

A
CHEERFUL, ANTISEPTIC MUZAK version of “Psycho Killer” wafted like nerve gas through CVS’s ceiling. I looked down at the sheet of paper that Vanessa had given to me. The only words on the page were “Advent Isis iQ Uno.”

“Excuse me?”

A portly woman stocking shelves stopped what she was doing to hear what I had to say, but she wasn’t pleased that I had interrupted her.

“I was wondering,” I said, “if you carry this?” I showed her the sheet of paper.

She read it, then looked up at me. By her expression, I half-expected her to pull out her walkie-talkie and announce a Code Red in aisle four, but then she turned without uttering a word and walked away. I followed. When we reached an aisle stocked full of baby supplies, she pointed to a box on the top shelf. What I had asked for, apparently, was a breast pump.

“Oh,” I said. “Perfect. Thank you.”

The woman, still not speaking to me, returned to her appointed aisle. Her revulsion clung to me, though. I wanted to find her and say, “Look, it’s not like I came to CVS looking for a
penis
pump. This is
for my
wife
! It’s for our
child
!” But it wasn’t for my wife or child, and maybe she sensed this. I wasn’t wearing a wedding band, and I was slightly out of breath. I may even have been panting.

I grabbed a Starbucks Frappuccino from the freezer on my way to the checkout. More than anything, I needed a fix of caffeine right now. Or, perhaps, I
desired
the Frappuccino, whereas I
needed
a new muffler. It had been my experience, however, that desires almost always trumped needs.

Behind me in line, someone said, “Jack?” It had been over three years since I’d last seen Alice, ten years since we’d been a couple. Even though we resided in a town of sixty thousand, it was entirely possible to live your whole life here and not see everyone, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that Alice and I traveled in entirely different orbits: She was a scientist; I was . . . something else. I couldn’t say that I was a writer. And yet I couldn’t quite pin down my occupation—my reason for being—since what I did for a living struck me as more of a hobby than a profession. In an earlier life, back when I
could
have said what it was I did (or, at least, what it was I
thought
I was doing), Alice and I had been engaged to be married.

“Alice!” I said, trying to convey in my smile a complicated commingling of fondness and regret, though almost certainly expressing bewilderment and worry instead. Alice shut her eyes slowly and opened them, the way a cat sometimes does when you say its name. She had green eyes and skin so pale it was almost blue from her veins. Strange as it sounded, I fell in love with her translucence before I fell in love with her.

“It’s funny,” Alice said. “I was just thinking about you the other day. A friend of mine was going on and on about a play that I should see, and I remember how much you hated plays. Remember? You used to say, ‘The acting. It’s so . . .
theatrical
!’” Alice laughed. “Remember that?”

“No. Did I say that?” I asked, wagging my head, though I knew perfectly well that I had. I was the king of witticisms back when my
New Yorker
publication meant (or seemed to mean) that I was destined for larger things, but now that I knew the truth, that I was a one-hit wonder, I quit making ridiculous pronouncements and regretted that I had been such a pompous asshole.

Alice, making a pained expression, said, “So, how have you been?”

“Oh, not too bad,” I said, but when this sounded to my own ears like a pathetic appeal for sympathy, I said, “Actually, pretty good. Great, really.”

“Oh good,” Alice said, brightening. “I’m so glad.”

“And you?” I asked.

She made an exaggerated frown. “I’ve put on a few pounds,” she said. “You know. Old age. Metabolism.
Ugh
.”

“Stop it,” I said. “You look great. You could use the weight. Seriously. Don’t get me wrong. You were gorgeous before. But you look even better now.” I could see that I was heading into dangerous territory, so I quickly added, “And I’m older than you. Remember?”

“You’re sweet,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows, shrugged. I looked down at my shoes. I was still in love with Alice, but I didn’t want her to know. And yet I couldn’t think of anything else trivial to say or ask.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

“What?”

“You look so sad,” she said.

“I do? No, I’m great. No, no, everything’s great.”

“NEXT!” It was the cashier; I had failed to see that my turn had finally come. I stepped forward, and Alice moved up behind me.

“Do you want to get coffee sometime?” I asked. My heart had begun to thump harder, causing me to take quicker breaths.

The scanner beeped twice—once for the Frappuccino, once for the breast pump—and the cashier said, “That’s two hundred and sixteen dollars and forty-three cents.”

“
How
much?” I asked.

Alice, eyes lighting up, said, “What did you
buy
, Jack?” and then she looked down and saw the breast pump. “Oh,” she said. “Congratulations?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, but as soon as I said this, I realized that it sounded even worse. If a breast pump wasn’t going to be used for its intended purpose, then to what use would I be putting it?

“Credit?” the cashier asked. She pursed her lips, waiting.

“Uh . . . just a sec,” I said. My credit line was close to being maxed out, but in my bank account sat less than three hundred bucks—barely enough to last me the month. My choices were to humiliate myself with a credit card purchase that would be denied, float the check, or return the merchandise.

“Do you take checks?” I asked.

“Do you have an I.D.?”

I pulled out my driver’s license and wrote a check.

The cashier bagged the pump, threw the receipt inside, and yelled, “NEXT!”

I drank my Frappuccino and waited for Alice by the exit, hoping to salvage our talk, but she pretended to be in a hurry when she saw me.

“I’ve taken
way
too long of a lunch break,” she said.

“Do you know who Vanessa Roberts is?” I asked.

“Is she the one who wrote
The Bathroom?
”

“
The Outhouse
,” I said.

Alice nodded.

“Well, this is for her,” I said. I raised the bag with the breast pump in it.

“I really need to go,” she said. “But it was great seeing you, Jack. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“All right,” I said. “Okay.” I lifted up the bag, spun the breast pump to tighten the plastic sack’s opening, and then carried it out of the mall like a hunter clutching a dead goose by its limp neck.

Back at the hotel, standing at the front desk, I used the house phone to call Vanessa. Her phone rang and rang, but no one answered.

“Are you sure this is the right room?” I asked.

The man working the front desk shut his eyes and nodded. Displays of visible irritation were not uncommon in Iowa City. Nearly everyone in town had an MFA or a PhD, and yet most were relegated to jobs that paid barely above minimum wage. For all I knew, I was probably talking to the next great post-abstract-expressionist.

I hung up and said, “Listen. She
needs
what’s in this sack. Could you give it to her as soon as possible?” I handed over the pump and said, “This is urgent. A child’s life depends on this.” To further make my point, I added, “A
baby’s
life.”

The man took the bag with no emotion.

“Thank you,” I said. “I mean that.” My hope was that sincerity might breed competence.

The man looked over my shoulder and said, “Checking in?”

I looked over my own shoulder: A family of eight had somehow snuck up on me.

“Welcome to Iowa City,” I said, “the third best small metropolitan area in the United States!” I stepped aside, gesturing for them to proceed to the front desk. “According to
Forbes
,” I added.

O
N THE CORNER of Summit and Burlington I lived in a turn-of-the-century house that had been divided into four apartments, two large, two small. I lived in one of the small ones—hardwood floors, gas oven, built-in bookshelves, arched doorways, a claw-foot tub. Each year, the owner jacked up the rent; a letter, informing tenants of the new rates, appeared under our doors in the middle of the night. My annual income had long since plateaued, so it was only a matter of a few years before I would get the boot.

The first thing I saw today when I stepped inside my apartment was the blinking light of my answering machine. There were half-a-dozen messages waiting for me. I punched “play” and listened while I made myself a baloney sandwich. All of the messages were from Vanessa Roberts’s publicist, Lauren Castle. Lauren was head of publicity for Roberts’s publisher, and, like most New York publicists, she seemed to think that if I wasn’t busy running errands for the publishing house, I was out slopping pigs or birthing calves. This was Iowa, after all. What else would I be doing?

Publicists usually worked for a season or two, and then they disappeared, never to be heard from again. Mostly they were women in their early to mid-twenties, and when they called, they barked orders at me,
wondered why I didn’t have a cell phone, and told me what wonderful human beings the authors were that I would be taking care of, even when it wasn’t true. Oh, most of the authors
were
lovely people (polite, gracious, funny, even apologetic), but more than a few had been terrors, like the famous Canadian author, Coop Dunfield, whose list of demands specified that he required a wooden podium for his reading (metal would not be acceptable), a 1.76-ounce tin of cinnamon-flavored Altoids (unopened), Fiji water (no other brand would be consumed), three black Sharpie Ultra Fine Points, and four moist towelettes (the kind given to patrons of Kentucky Fried Chicken for cleaning their greasy fingers). There were detailed dietary restrictions, too, and a message that I was to relay to the bookstore: Mr. Dunfield would not be signing any books after his event.

Dunfield wasn’t the only pain in the ass. Another was Kit Austin, who had written one acclaimed short story collection followed by a lame, uninspired novel. I sometimes made small talk with the author to pass the time (“Read any good books lately?” “Are you at the beginning or the end of your tour?”), but whatever I happened to say to Ms. Austin, she countered with a combative comment: “Define
good
,” or “What difference does it make if I’m at the beginning or the end of my book tour?” I was prepared to dump Ms. Austin off at her hotel with directions on how she could find the bookstore on her own (it was only a two-block walk from where she was staying) when she requested that I join her for dinner. (“I wouldn’t know where to eat around here,” she said. “Meet me at 5:30.”) What I learned about Ms. Austin was that her editor had hated her new book, had even tried talking her out of publishing it (“She thought it would kill my career”), but then, finally, relented. The initial deluge of reviews was indeed bad, some of the worst I’d ever seen, but then Janet Maslin weighed in with a glowing review in
The New York Times
. Austin stabbed her rare rib eye, sawed off a
hunk, lifted it to her gaping maw, and said, “I guess I knew what I was doing after all.” She popped the steak into her mouth, chewed, and said, “Have you read the book?”

“Which book?” I asked.

“My new one. The novel.”

“Oh. Not yet. No.”

She nodded, clearly disappointed. “Well, I’d be interested in knowing what you think when you read it. I mean, Janet Maslin loved it. Janet fucking Maslin of
The New York
fucking
Times
.” She swallowed, coughed, turned red, lifted the napkin up to her mouth, coughed out whatever she was chewing, took a long swig of wine, and sawed off another slab of meat. “Yeah, I guess I knew what I was doing after all,” she repeated.

And so it went: For every half-dozen decent authors, I would get saddled with a real piece of work. I rolled with it, though. What else could I do?

Today’s messages from publicist Lauren Castle began with her wondering if the plane had come in on time and if everything was going all right, but by the third message, she wondered what was wrong with my car.

“Vanessa thinks you’re lying to her,” she said. “She thinks you don’t even have a muffler.”

By the fifth message, Lauren was pleading with me to call her.

“Are you there? Why won’t you pick up the phone? Vanessa told me she had you run an errand an hour ago. I don’t understand. How could you not be home by now? Call me the second you hear this.”

While the answering machine beeped one last time, letting me know that the last message was over, the phone started ringing. I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Where have you been?” demanded Lauren.

“I just got home,” I said. “I’m making myself a baloney sandwich.”

“Why didn’t you call me? Never mind. Listen. What’s wrong with your car? Do you have time to get it fixed? Are there service stations where you live?”

“Service stations?” I said. “What are those?”

“Are you making fun of me?” Lauren asked. “Forget it. I want you to get your car fixed before you take her anywhere else. Can you do that?”