Mercury in Retrograde (8 page)

“Whatever,” Penelope said. “What's it pay?”

“Only forty thousand dollars.”

“Same as the
Telegraph.
Fine.”

“Okay, Marge said you can come in Monday at two p.m., but I have to warn you…”

“What?”

“She's…a little difficult.”

“Like what?”

“Like fucking crazy.”

“Please. My boss at the
Telegraph
could've used an enema in 1992.”

 

The following Monday, Penelope, who spent an hour that morning fighting with her blow dryer to get her hair straight-ish for the interview, walked into the NY Access offices in the ware
house section of East Twenty-eighth Street at 1:55 p.m.—exactly five minutes before her meeting with Marge Green was to begin. The reception area of the station was a dull gray room—the kind of color that looked like it had once been white but over the decades turned permanently dusty—with a heavy, peeling, rust-colored door that presumably led to the inner sanctums of the TV station. The only decoration on the walls was a shabby banner that read:
NY Access—New York's OTHER local cable station!
below a picture of the evening news anchors: T
RACE AND
K
ANDACE, SERVING UP THE NEWS HOT, JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT!
The room itself was empty except for a moth-eaten multicolored wool sofa, a rickety coffee table, and a desk that hid the receptionist—a tiny, ancient woman with short gray hair, thick black Coke-bottle glasses, and a large hearing aid in her left ear. She was sitting on a small swivel chair and wearing a fuchsia muumuu with a name tag that read
GLADYS,
and barked “Yes?” after Penelope peered over the top of the desk to see if anyone was actually there.

“I'm here to see Marge Green.” Penelope said. She was dressed in a tailored hand-me-down dark wool Armani suit and a gray cashmere overcoat from Neal's friend. Neal had come over several days before—“with just enough time for you to get alterations done before your big interview!”—armed with three huge bags stuffed full of designer clothes and at least two usable interview suits. “You look like you mugged Nan Thrice,” Penelope said. The two had sorted out which clothes were best for Penelope, which pieces should be altered first, and which didn't have to be altered at all, and in the process cleaned out the majority of her old closet. The pink puffer was the first item to be tossed.

“What?!” the geriatric receptionist snapped.

“Marge Green—”

“Yes, she works here!”

“I know. I have an appointment to see her.”

“Name!”

“Penelope Mercury.”

“What?”

“Penelope—”

“Speak up!”

“PENELOPE MERCURY!”

“Sit!”

Two seconds later, Gladys barked into the phone, “Pamela Minklestein to see Marge!”

Penelope sat on the edge of the “vintage” wool sofa. She didn't want to stain the new-ish suit, and the couch looked like it had the recent remains of someone's lunch on it.

Twenty-five minutes later, as Penelope's eyes started to glaze over, Gladys called, “Through the green door, down the hall to the left.”

Penelope collected her purse (a black Coach bag—also donated from Neal's friend) and, clutching her résumé, walked through the rust-colored door and down a long hallway that opened up into a large room with cubicles on the left (
Newsrooms are always the same,
Penelope thought) and a studio on the right. At the end of the cubicles was a stand-alone area where David was dressed smartly in what looked like a very expensive suit (
How can he afford that?
Penelope wondered.
It must be a knock-off
). He was seated behind a desk that guarded an office with a black door that was open. To the left of the door was a placard that read: “Marge Green. Station Manager.”

Penelope rushed over to David, gushing, “Hiii!” before she looked around and said, “What happened here?” There were pockmarked holes in the wall behind David's head—as if someone had been hammering at the walls haphazardly as David sat there, leaving only his body outline intact.

“Don't ask,” David said and sighed before calling into the office, “Marge, Penelope Mercury is here to see you.”

Penelope could hear a woman talking loudly into a phone.

“Marge! Penelope Mercury is here to see you!” David yelled when his first interruption received no response. Penelope could hear the woman tell the other person on the line, “One minute, I have a two o'clock appointment,” before a voice boomed, “Bring her in!”

David pointed to the door and said, “
Entrez,
my dear. But don't say I didn't warn you.”

Penelope slunk into Marge's office as Marge resumed her conversation with an underling on the other end of the line.

“We gotta sex up the show! Sex sells!” Marge, a petite blonde of a certain age who looked like she'd had her fair share of plastic surgery, yelled into the phone while banging her fist against her desk. “Sit down,” she instructed Penelope, pointing at the hard wooden chair opposite her desk before talking back into the phone, “No, not you! Anyway, where was I…”

As Marge debated the merits of sexing up the afternoon broadcast, Penelope placed her résumé on Marge's desk, which was cluttered with papers, pens, several staplers, a rickety old computer, and various stress balls. Behind Marge the wall was plastered with framed awards, marking her various achievements over the years: “1999: Best Local Newscast Producer: ABC's Marge Green—
New York
magazine,” “
Time Out:
2001 Special Achievement Award to CBS's Marge Green,” “1997: CNN Innovator of the Year,” “NBC Salutes Marge Green for her Emmy-Winning Year, 1989,” and so on.

There were awards from almost every station imaginable. Marge was like the garden weed of local news—she had popped up everywhere—but some of the older awards, which had been typed out on a typewriter instead of a computer, had their dates rubbed off.

“Marge doesn't want anyone knowing how old she really is,” David later explained. “She thinks that if she rubs out the dates, no one will be able to prove she isn't—ahem—‘fifty.'”

There were some filing cabinets behind Marge's desk, on top of which was an industrial-sized coffee machine, with a coffee pot that looked like it had a half cup of coffee left in it, several empty coffee mugs, and a jar of Coffee-Mate.

Marge, hyped up on more than five pots of Colombia's finest ground beans, slammed down the phone, picked up Penelope's résumé, and said, “So! Pamela!”

“Penelope.”

“You want to work at New York Access?”

“Yes, I think it's a—”

“David!” Marge cut Penelope off.

“Yes,” David answered.

“My coffee's low. Get in here and make me some more!”

“I will in a second—”

“Now!”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

Marge pursed her lips into a thin, white line, and a vein on her forehead bulged dangerously.

“You went to the bathroom yesterday!” Marge said before picking up one of the staplers on her desk, leaning to her right, and flinging it out the door in David's general direction. There was a thud and Penelope heard David scream, “Aaahhh! You bitch—you got me!” before Marge got up and slammed her office door shut. “You just can't find good help around here,” she said to no one in particular.

“So, Polly,” Marge said, sitting back down behind her desk and turning her full attention to Penelope, “as you can see, I am extremely competitive and dedicated to my work.” She smoothed down the lapels of her hot pink suit (“She thinks pastels and bright colors make her look younger,” David had
warned Penelope). “I need someone who can match that dedication. Is that you?”

“Sure…” Penelope said, aware that Marge was glaring at her. A bead of sweat rolled down her back and, feeling her one and only job opportunity slip away, Penelope sat up very straight and said, “I mean, yes! Yes, it is me! I am dedicated—I'm dedication incarnate!”

“Great,” Marge said, sitting back in her chair, dropping Penelope's résumé back on her desk and staring at the ceiling. “You start Monday.” She picked up the phone and barked, “David!” and Penelope was escorted from the room.

 

“You got the job,” David said. “That's great.” He now wore a small Band-Aid on his forehead.

“What just happened?” Penelope said.

“You got the job, darling—no unemployment lines for you!” David said.

“But she didn't even ask me anything.”

“She never asks.”

“How does she know I'll do a good job?'

“Because there were no other applicants.”

“Did she just throw a stapler at you?”

“Oh, please—she does that all the time. It's a little game we play. She throws, she hits, she buys me Prada. If she misses I get nothing, so even though she has a horrible aim, I suck it up, dive in, and take one for the closet every now and then. It's kind of like playing a fun game of dodgeball. Except I get to go shopping afterward!”

 

Outside the NY Access offices, Penelope checked her voice mail. Her mother had called, naturally. “Penelope, it's your mother. What are you doing about a job? What is going on? You haven't called in two days and your father is very upset. He can't under
stand why you didn't go back and beg your boss for your old job back. He started speaking in tongues again. It's driving me up a wall. He said he'd stop if you called. I think he's feeling neglected.”

The other call was from Neal.

“Penelope,” he cried, “Lips got the apartment! Thank you so much, my sweet. It means so much to me. You will love her, I promise. Drinks on me when she moves in and has her first housewarming party. Now, how'd the interview go? Call me back and fill me in on everything!”

The first Monday in March marked not only Penelope's first day of work at NY Access, but Lipstick's Big Move into the newly renovated and tiny (by her standards) apartment on the fourth floor of 198 Sullivan Street.

It had been three and a half weeks since her parents had issued their ultimatum and Lipstick had not spoken to them since, despite her mother leaving several messages on her voice mail.

The first message Lana left Lipstick was the night after the disastrous day Lipstick referred to as “Bitsy's Birthday.” “Darling,” Lana's voice rang through, “I'm terribly sorry about Daddy last night, but you know, it's for the best. I know you were trying
to save face and seem brave, but I wanted to tell you that I'm so excited for you to come home. Daddy said you can even have the west wing of the East Hampton house all to yourself. I can't wait to see you; just let me know when to contact the movers!”

When Lipstick hadn't returned her call, Lana waited a week to record another message for her daughter.

“Darling, I haven't heard from you all week and I'm getting concerned,” Lana cooed into the phone. “What am I supposed to tell the movers? Please call me back. I've had the geldings Barbuto and Barbetto moved from the Hamptons to the stables in Riverdale so we can do some riding on the weekends until summer. But I have to warn you, they make you suit the horse up yourself. It's awful. I almost fell off Barbetto yesterday when the saddle started sliding. Can you imagine? So embarrassing. The new housekeeper Rosanna comes to help me now. She has those strong, sturdy Guatemalan arms, you know.”

After that, Lana waited another seven days to call her daughter after once again receiving radio silence.

“Darling, where have you been?” Lana asked, feigning ignorance. “I checked Socialstatus.com and saw the pictures of you at Annie Ratner's party so I know you're alive. I also saw that you are ranked just four short spots behind Bitsy for top young socialite. Good job, darling. She's a formidable opponent, you know. By the way, I haven't actually
heard
from you; I assume something is wrong with your phone? Frankly, I'm starting to get offended and Daddy is very upset. He's even suggested that perhaps you were serious when you said you weren't coming home. I told him not to be silly and took him to Scalinatella for dinner to calm him down. You know how much I hate that place: seventy-five dollars for a plate of pasta that just gives me wind.”

 

During the time Lana was leaving Lipstick messages, Lipstick had been very busy. She and Neal had gone through her apart
ment, “editing,” as Neal put it. He carted the majority of Lipstick's furnishings to a warehouse in Upper Manhattan, leaving Lipstick her bed, her armchair from the front hall, her debutante portraits and the Matisse, two coffee tables, a TV, and her stereo.

The hardest part of the edit had been whacking her closet down to a third of its original bulk and shoving the “keepers” into boxes for the move. Her ball gowns were stored in a large wardrobe box that Lipstick marked in thick, black indelible marker, “Do Not Touch,” and for special effect, she'd drawn a crude image of a skull and bones with a dagger through the head.

The clothes she'd “left behind” (“So dramatic, Lips, you make it sound like you're in a Holocaust movie,” Neal said) were either moved to storage or donated to Neal's friend Penelope. Anything that was left over, that was deemed not “classic,” “just too dated,” or “If I see you in that again I will burn it,” went to a consignment store near Lipstick's new home in Soho. The resale store sent her checks totaling $3,500 from a stack of clothes that had cost at least $25,000. But money was money.

Barring selling off her entire wardrobe at a steep discount, there was always her salary, which was, in Lipstick's mind, negligible.

After she had a small, private word with the human resources department at
Y,
asking them to reroute her checks to a personal HSBC account as opposed to her father's business manager, she'd finally been able to sneak a peek at her biweekly earnings. And this is how Lipstick, the senior society editor at the exclusive fashion and society magazine
Y,
found out her annual wage was $43,500. After taxes she was left with $425 a week—or, roughly, lunch for four at Nello. Without tip.

In practical terms, it meant she could afford, at most, $1,400 a month for an apartment, which in Manhattan, would get her
little more than a room and a toilet and allow her to live on water and grass—like the geldings, Barbuto and Barbetto.

Thankfully, her last monthly allowance deposit from her parents of ten thousand dollars had been made a week before their decree, so there was that.

But all in all, Lipstick was optimistic. She'd learned how to navigate the subway, taking the West Fourth Street stop to Thirty-fourth Street and walking from there, and was generally eager to be out on her own.

“Neal,” she gushed one morning on her way to work. “It's amazing! There are so many people in New York! And so many different kinds—”

“Lips,” Neal cut her off, “I love you but I don't have time for an ‘I just found out New York City was a cultural melting pot' discussion. I have to be down in Tribeca in half an hour. The Madisons bought a loft for their son, who's being released early from Sing Sing next Monday for molesting their Westchester neighbor's daughter four years ago. I have to not only decorate the damn thing in a week, but inform the neighbors, discreetly of course, that he's on some sort of sex predator list. They're paying me extra for that.”

 

The date before the move, Lipstick informed Muffie and Jack via email that she'd be taking some personal days for the next forty-eight hours and went home to meet Neal.

“You know, Neal,” Lipstick said, sitting in her armchair in the middle of her empty living room, “I'm actually kind of excited. I feel like the weight of belongings is off me.”

“Oh, Gandhi, do go on. Tell me more about how thrilled you are about being poor,” Neal joked, while opening a closet door to ensure nothing had been left behind. “I'm just waiting for the day you want to shed the weight of belonging—as opposed to belongings.”

“Hmm?” Lipstick asked, not paying attention. For a moment she truly was excited. Almost euphoric, as if, for the first time, she'd be out from under her parents' watchful eyes. She felt like a bird being set free from a cage, but moments later Lipstick's euphoria turned to fear and she started chewing her cuticles.

“Nothing, my dear. Now, are you sure you don't need me to help you move tomorrow?”

“Nope!” she said, with fake bravado even though her stomach was in knots and a small trickle of sweat—glisten, as she called it—ran down her back. “I'm on my own. I can do this. I know it. I can.”

“That's right, Lips, convince yourself,” Neal said, rubbing her back.

 

But by ten a.m., as the three large Russian moving men from FlatRate Movers—who'd sworn to her they would do the move for one thousand dollars—arrived in front of 198 Sullivan Street, Lipstick, in jeans, a cream Dolce cashmere sweater and an orange satin puffer vest with fur lining, was already exhausted and regretting that statement.

By 10:45, after she'd refused to fork over an additional thousand dollars in “tip money,” the Russians split—claiming she'd never told them it was a fourth-floor walk-up and therefore she owed them an extra grand—leaving the fifteen boxes of clothes and shoes still out in front of 198's green door.

“But you can't just leave me here,” Lipstick cried as Vlad started the moving van. “These boxes are full of Prada!”

Vlad, Dmitri, and Yergi ignored her plea, and Dmitri even tossed his cigarette butt out the window in her general direction as they pulled away.

At least they took the furniture up,
Lipstick thought, trying to remain optimistic. But then she took a good look at the
mountain of heavy boxes, stuffed so full they were bulging at their seams, and she felt momentarily overwhelmed.

Well, now you won't have to go to the gym or yoga for a week. Ass, be gone!
she thought.

She grabbed the box nearest to her, lugged it to the front door, opened it, and pushed and pulled the box, which was a lot heavier than she'd thought it would be, up four flights of stairs.

By the time she'd finally negotiated the first box up the stairs and through the door of her new apartment, Lipstick's thighs were burning (“a good thing!”), she was sweating (“so gross”) and her knee was beginning to swell under her jeans from tripping on the uneven stairs on the third flight (“ouch”).

“One down, fourteen to go!” she told herself. But when Lipstick walked outside the building, something was wrong. There didn't seem to be as many boxes as there had been when she'd last seen them, and there was a guy with shoulder-length black hair squatting on the box farthest from the door right by the dry cleaners.

“Hey!” Lipstick said, a tone of alarm in her voice, “What are you doing? Don't sit on those—they're my clothes! And how come…wait a minute…” Lipstick counted the boxes. She recounted again. There were only twelve.

“Two of my boxes are missing!” she cried, running up to the man, who was looking at her with a mix of irritation and fascination, and poking a finger at him. “What did you do with them? I'm calling the police.”

As Lipstick pulled her cell phone out from her back pocket, the guy, who looked to be in his thirties and would have been pretty cute except for paint smears on his hands and face, put his hand on Lipstick's arm and drawled, “Slow down, sister. I didn't take your boxes.”

“Well, where are they?” Lipstick said, slapping her phone
shut and getting slightly hysterical, “They are full of—oh my God! Oh my God! Where are the dresses?”

The box that had been specially marked and packaged with her ball gowns was gone. “Thief!” Lipstick cried, shaking and pointing at the man. “Thief! Police! Someone arrest this man!”

“Now, just hold on,” the man said, getting up from the box, “I didn't steal your damn boxes or dresses.”

“Well then, where are they?” Lipstick demanded, starting to cry. “I move one fricking box and come down to two missing and you sitting on another…What am I supposed to think?”

“I was sitting here because I was watching it for you,” the man said calmly. “I saw you fighting with the movers, went in to get a cup of coffee at Local, and when I came out, some guy was shoving two boxes into an unmarked van. When I yelled at him, he drove off. And so I've been sitting here, watching the rest of your boxes, waiting for you to come back down.”

“Oh.” Lipstick sniffed, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her sweater, “I'm…sorry. I guess I just…my dresses. They're all gone. I'm screwed! Did you get a license plate? Should we call the police? Can we catch him? How far do you think he got?”

“Dude, he's gone.” The man sighed. “I'm sorry about your dresses, but let's focus on getting the rest of your stuff off the street.”

“Huh?” Lipstick asked, her mind racing.
Dresses. Where are the dresses? Oh my God. Gala season starts in a week. What will I wear? What will I do? I have no dresses—Jack will kill me.”

Snapping his fingers in front of her zoned-out eyes, the man said, “Hello?”

“You're going to help me?” Lipstick mumbled. “I don't even know you…and why are you covered in paint?”

“I'm Zach. I live on the second floor, I have paint all over me because I'm an artist and yes, I'm going to help you. Now,
open the front door, reach around behind the stairs for the door stopper, and prop open the door.”

Lipstick did as she was told.

“Okay,” she said, “now what?”

“Now move all the boxes into the building,” Zach said, looking at her strangely. “Seriously, have you never moved before? Don't you know not to leave your stuff out on the street unguarded? Move everything inside and then shut the door so you can move the boxes into your apartment without it being stolen by some asshole on the street.”

“Oh, okay,” Lipstick said, grabbing a smaller box. “I'm not stupid, I swear. And no. I haven't moved before, and I wasn't supposed to be moving now.”

It took Lipstick and Zach ten minutes to haul the remaining boxes into the front hallway of the apartment building. When they were done, Zach pulled out the stopper, shut the front door, and said, “You're on your own from here, doll.” He started walking up the stairs.

“Huh?” Lipstick said, feeling her panic rise with every step he took. “Wait! You're leaving me? But I still have to get them up four more flights….”

“Listen, princess, I may be an artist, but I still have shit to do,” Zach said, scratching his head. “The last time I checked, I didn't work for a moving company. I have a show coming up and if I don't get this painting done by tomorrow and get it approved by the gallery, I won't be able to pay my rent. You're inside now; no one is going to steal your stuff. Besides,” he added, looking at Lipstick's red, puffy face and laughing as he disappeared from view up the stairs, “you look like you're enjoying the exercise.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Lipstick said, wiping off more sweat from her brow. “So much fun.” Did he just call her fat? “Well, thanks for everything,” she said. “I appreciate the help! Oh, and um, how can I thank you?”

“No need,” came Zach's voice, floating down from the third floor. She heard a door open and slam shut. The building was quiet again.