Syrup (23 page)

“Isn’t that right? Employees should work together, not stab each other in the back.”

6 is shaking her head. “Not true. In the long run, internal competition benefits the company. Even when it’s insidious.”

“How can that be?”

“Because it’s a marketplace. Competition forces the weaker players out, leaving the stronger product. Brennan gives way to a stronger player in Sneaky Pete, and the company benefits.”

“Huh.”

“Of course,” 6 adds, “it can’t be explicit. If the company openly encourages it, it gets out of hand. When someone makes it too obvious that they’re playing politics, like Brennan, they make an example out of him. Even though he’s doing what they want.”

I think about this. “That’s a little scary.”

“That’s business,” 6 says.

I’m not looking forward to this at all. What I am looking forward to is spending some quality time alone with 6, and being stuck in a room with a bunch of strangers, her ex-roommate and my exgirlfriend is not even close.

6 pushes the buzzer. “So?” Tina says eagerly.

“We did it,” 6 tells the speaker, and it distorts with a dozen cheering voices. The door clicks open and we make our way up the sagging stairs.

When we reach the top, Tina pulls 6 in for a hug. “You’re the best!” she yells.

“Okay,” 6 says, alarmed.

“So come in—everyone wants to know what happened.”

We squeeze into Tina’s apartment, where she’s somehow managed to fit about twenty people. There’s lots of smoke, beer and ’70s fashion, and it’s hard to believe that 6 ever lived here.

I spot Cindy engrossed in conversation with James, who acted in our scenes, and decide I should really go over and thank them. It takes me a while to force my way through the crush, during which time a girl accidentally sticks her cigarette into my arm, another drops her drink on my foot and some guy, I swear, pinches my butt.

“Hi, Scat,” Cindy says happily. “You know James, of course?”

“Of course,” I say, shaking hands. “Hey, I want to thank you both for your help today. You really saved us.”

“Yeah, well,” Cindy says. “Let’s not go into that.”

I smile at her. “That would be good.”

“Oh, hey,” she says suddenly. “I brought you a present. You know, you left all your things at our apartment, and I thought maybe—”

“You brought my
things?
” I ask, pathetically grateful. “You brought my
clothes?
”

“Um, no,” she says, almost apologetic. “I brought your phone charger.” She reaches into her purse and hands it across, a sad little bundle of wire.

“Oh,” I say. I stare at it for a moment, then look up at her. She shrugs and looks at the carpet. “Well,” I say slowly, “thanks again, Cindy.”

I’m expecting that 6 will want to stay at this party for roughly five minutes, but three hours later, she’s sipping neat vodka and guarding a prime position on the sofa. The closest I can get to her is a tight group with Tina, so I strike up a conversation.

“So,” I say, “you’re okay with the fact that your artwork was actually liked by a corporation?”

Tina sips at her beer. “I didn’t produce art.”

“I mean the film. Art, right?”

“No,” Tina says. “Not.”

I’m lost. “What?”

“Art and marketing can’t coexist,” Tina says. “It’s either one or the other.”

“Not this again,” 6 says from the sofa.

Tina ignores her. “I made the film for you with the intention of appealing to a bunch of corporate suits. That I used artistic techniques to do it is irrelevant.”

“Just because it’s aimed at a particular market means it’s not art?” I say.

Tina nods once. “Exactly.”

I frown. “What if I take a work of art and market it? It’s still art, right?”

“You can’t take artwork and just tweak it to be more commercially appealing.” She sips at her beer. “Not without destroying its artistic merit.”

“Tina, this is so crap,” 6 says, standing up. “If I showed you a painting but didn’t tell you whether it was created by a starving artist or an agency commissioned to produce it, you couldn’t tell me whether it was art or not.”

“Oh, I think I’d be able to tell,” Tina says.

6 shifts impatiently. “Who cares what the intent was? It’s the
result
that matters.”

“The intent is not divorceable from the result,” Tina says. “I know you people don’t want to face that, but it’s true.”

“
You
don’t want to face the fact that marketing is the greatest producer of art on the planet. There’s packaging, copy, TV advertising—can you tell me why that’s not art?”

“If you can’t make that distinction yourself, I won’t be able to explain it to you.”

“Oh, right,” 6 says, “you think some hack’s poems that no one ever reads are more important than a movie half the world sees? A lot more people have seen a Coke can than a van Gogh.”

“I’ve noticed you corporate people do this,” Tina says. “Confuse popularity with quality.”

“It’s a democratic society, Tina,” 6 says. “Your opinion of what’s quality is no more valid than mine. Popularity
is
quality. And so marketers
are
today’s real artists.”

“Drink, anyone?” I say.

Most people—including Cindy—leave by midnight, but a lot stay on until about one. A few hang around until two, when Tina disappears into her bedroom with James, and a few obnoxious assholes don’t leave until it’s three A.M. and I open the door and point to it.

6 has spent the last hour watching
Clueless,
which Tina has on tape, and I can’t work out whether it’s weirder that Tina has this or that 6 is watching it. “Well,” I say. “That’s the last of them.”

6 ignores me. Alicia Silverstone says, “As
if.
”

“So,” I say carefully, sliding onto the sofa next to 6, “I guess it’s just you and me.”

6 frowns slightly but doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. This is a little disconcerting, and I bite my lip for a second, then shuffle a little closer. 6’s frown deepens, but again that’s the limit of her reaction.

I’m not sure if she’s deliberately brushing me off or just really absorbed in the movie. I struggle between the two for a moment before realizing I should just find out.

So I do.

I lean in fast, but even so she beats me easily. With my lips puckered and heading for her cheek, she whirls and slaps both hands on my cheeks, catching me smack in mid-descent.

“God
damn!”
I yell. I pull my head free and jump up from the sofa, my cheeks burning. “God
damn!
What was
that?
”

6 rises from the sofa, her eyes like black flames. Her voice is low and murderous. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m
kissing
you! What do you
think
I’m doing?”

“We need to get something straight,” 6 says. “Whatever might have happened between us at Coke, I am
not
your little woman.”

I gape. “Little—?”

“You think it’s all over,” 6 says, as if she is amazed. “You think because of what happened at Coke, it’s over. Well it’s not. Do you understand that?”

“6, I just wanted a
kiss
.” I rub my cheeks. “
You’ve
kissed
me
twice.”

“What’s your point?”

“My
point
is that you’re a control freak.” 6’s eyes widen. “You want to keep me on a leash, so every time—”

“This is
so
not true,” 6 says.

“Is so,” I say, a little sullenly. Doesn’t really match the rest of my argument to date.

“You need to realize something, Scat,” 6 tells me, leaning close. I try to act nonchalant, but don’t even get close. “You can’t
ever
take me for granted.”

When the credits roll on
Clueless,
we make up our sofa-floor bedding combination in silence. We plant our backs to one another and, feeling resentful, I don’t even try to modulate my breathing.

I’m annoyed with 6. Now, I know I have a long tradition of being wrong, but here I’m fairly sure I’m right. If 6’s behavior doesn’t qualify as mixed signals, I’m giving up on relationships.

Growing steadily more righteous, I start running through a few revised arguments in my head, making my points clearly and effectively in all of them. However, they all seem to end up with 6 apologizing profusely, and that’s just too implausible to swallow.

Despite this, I eventually slip into a light doze and dream something weird involving Sneaky Pete and a cactus. It’s one of those dreams where everything is spinning out of control, and there’s so much going on in my head that a vague rustling from the sofa takes a long time to pierce my consciousness. It could be minutes before I become aware that 6 is leaning over me.

I concentrate on not moving, which is a little difficult since my heart and lungs immediately shift into fourth. 6’s scent teases my nostrils, and I even feel her hair tickling my chest. I have no idea what she’s doing, but I’m willing to take the risk that it’s good.

Then she moves, and with dismay I realize she’s leaving. But she’s not. Like a brush from angel wings, I feel the unmistakable contact of 6’s lips on mine.

At this point, I’m very, very lucky.

You see, my reaction is instinctive. The kiss is so unexpected that I have no chance of controlling my body’s response. A few of the less appealing possibilities include snorting, gasping, and sitting bolt upright and screaming.

Fortunately, I do none of these. Instead, my entire body, maybe figuring that this display of affection from 6 must be a dream, shuts down. I don’t freeze, I
relax.
I’ve never felt so relaxed in my life. It’s like her lips have drugged me.

6 hovers above me for a few more moments: I feel her there. Then, perhaps satisfied, she rolls over and resumes her position on the sofa, her back to mine. I slip back to sleep like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and I don’t dream at all.

We’re woken by Tina snapping a Polaroid of us, which ensures that 6 starts the day in a foul mood. She mutters about privacy and Tina mutters about whose apartment it is and in the end I have to cook breakfast and talk inanely about the weather.

The whole morning feels very strange until I realize that for the first time in a long while, 6 and I don’t have anything to do. We have the whole weekend to kill: no deadlines, no last-minute struggles, no panic. It almost feels illegal.

Midmorning, 6 takes me shopping for new clothes. I try to tell her that unless my new clothes cost less than sixteen dollars, I can’t buy anything, but she produces her credit card. “We’ll get a budget from Coke. Trust me, if we’re successful, we can charge whatever we like.”

“Really?” I say. “Wow. What if we’re not successful?”

“Then,” she says, “it will be the least of our problems.”

6 is a dynamo: she stalks through shops like a commando, her eyes flicking from one rack to another. Occasionally she rests her hand on a jacket or a pair of pants, which is my signal to go try it on. Then she studies me, which is pretty unnerving but also pretty exciting, and makes the final decision. We buy everything I try on, and by the time we get back to Tina’s, we’ve totaled up just over five thousand dollars’ worth of purchases.

In the afternoon, Tina drags us to an all-day film festival in Santa Monica, which turns out to be such an astounding bore that I vow to never see an independent film again. After fidgeting through a thirty-minute epic about a man who wanders around Hollywood telling people, “Bluebird,” 6 and I walk out. That night, Tina tries to explain that it was a heartfelt examination of mankind’s failure to acknowledge nature as the precept of civilization, and I nearly throw my takeout at her.

Around seven I ask 6 if she wants to go for a couple of drinks down by the beach, and she actually agrees. We take Tina’s car and watch the sun set over the Rollerblades and bikinis.

By the time we get home, it’s eleven o’clock and we’re both tanked. In the bathroom, I boldly peck 6 on the cheek and she glances at me in a way that I could swear is affectionate. When we go to bed, she lets one forearm dangle off the sofa so that her fingers graze my arm but acts like she doesn’t know she’s doing it, and I could believe that this is the best night of my life.

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I wake on Sunday and spend ten minutes just looking at 6. She is splayed out across the sofa, her face hidden in a mass of midnight hair, and with the soft orange sun teasing at her it’s like I’m looking at a vision. I don’t notice that Tina has emerged from the bedroom until she speaks.

“Hey,” she says quietly. I look up, startled, but she’s smiling. “Coffee?”

“Have you told her?” We’re sitting on the steps outside, nursing coffees while bums and kids in baggy jeans trawl the street.

I feign confusion. “Told her ... ?”

Tina rolls her eyes. “That you’re in love with her.”

I splutter into my coffee. “Hey, I never said anything about—”

“Scat,” Tina says. “It’s obvious.”

I search Tina’s eyes for a way out and fail to find one. I sigh. “Yes, I told her.”

Tina snickers.

“What?”

“You’re screwed.” She takes an impressive swig of her coffee.

“Pardon me?”

“She didn’t say it back, did she?”

“Uh,” I say. “Well, you know, not everything is said in so many words ...” Tina’s green eyes bore into me. “No.”