The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (15 page)

“I think so.” Eve glimpsed Maxine watching them from the kitchen window. When their eyes met, Maxine looked away.

“It is part of development,” said Klieg. “That feeling of being immortal, it lets you take the chances you will no longer take when you have a husband and children and a legacy. So my advice to you, Miss Eve, is this: Be bold while you are young.”

Klieg asked her about
Smell the Coffee
and whom else she’d interviewed. As with Alex, the topic brought the storyteller out in Eve. The more she worked, the more entertaining stories she had, especially about celebrities. She didn’t get to talk to big stars; usually it was just “movie of the week” folk, but even they constituted a minor brush with notoriety. The famous behaved differently in phone interviews; they were far more relaxed than on television. There was a “just between us” feel that arose from the meeting of two disembodied voices, and Eve had used that to lure some interesting tidbits from her subjects. She told Klieg about an up-and-coming actor she’d interviewed who had met his wife on a movie set. Unfortunately, she was engaged to the director and the entire shoot had taken on a cloak-and-dagger feel as the two actors tried to steal time together without the director knowing. By the end of the story, Klieg had stopped eating and was actually leaning forward in his chair.

“Fascinating,” he said. “Though they sound like a very ill-bred pair, making a mockery of the woman’s fiancé. Discretion used to be customary in such matters.”

“Were you ever married?” asked Eve, wondering idly if he might be gay but also picturing him with any of the dozens of beauties he’d dressed in his time.

Klieg leaned back again, folded his napkin, and placed it on the table. “Yes.” A cloud passed over their little patch of sky and threw the patio into momentary dimness. Klieg looked at his watch. “Do you mind? I have some calls to make.” He scraped his chair back with a bit more force than necessary. They stood and faced each other and Maxine hurried out with a furrowed brow.

Lunch was over.

   • • •

“How about we get back to ‘The Numbered Story’?” asked Eve. “I have to go out in a while, but I have time before I need to leave.”

Donald didn’t have to be asked twice. “Capital idea. We’ve got to finish this one quickly, in fact, because I have another I want to start before I forget it. It’s very hard to keep track of things in the state I’m in. Now, what number had we gotten to?”

“Let’s see. Twenty-six,” Eve replied, flipping through the pages of their legal pad. “ ‘A school of fish swam by and offered encouragement.’ ” Eve knew better than to ask why there were fish in the sky.

“Ah, yes.” Donald sighed approvingly. “Here we go. Twenty-seven: Scumbag. Twenty-eight: Asshole. Twenty-nine: Motherfucker.”

Eve put down her pen.
Ugh
. She knew enough not to complain about the blue language, but there was so much else wrong. “Sorry, but are you sure this approach is a good one?” she asked. “I mean, a numbered story about a man climbing a ladder to nowhere on Waverly Place? Look, I have a suggestion. We start the story earlier, get to know this poor fellow, understand him.…”

“I’m afraid,” said Donald in his most exaggeratedly patient tone, “that this is just a
tiny
bit over your head. You may think you’re a writer now with your big television job but that carries no water with me. And you’re certainly no editor. No one edits me, ever. Now—back to it. Thirty …”

Eve sighed. “All right, all right. May I just ask, how many sentences are there?”

“I would think you could figure that out for yourself. One hundred. Now,
thirty
 …”

   • • •

In mid-July, the mercury skyrocketed to 93 degrees, where it sat for a week like a stubborn child. Manhattan lay prostrate under a white sky, and almost everyone dissolved into a listlessness that bordered on catatonia.

Eve, used to the summer breezes that moved across the open spaces of the Midwest, felt as though she were pushing her way through the days, the tall buildings holding the humidity close. Yet she had to take the dog out, and when she did, she would often come across a new plaque. Today it had been Frank O’Hara and, even more exciting, Allen Ginsberg himself over in the East Village.

When she came home, she asked Donald what he remembered about each. It turned out that O’Hara, who was not just a poet but a museum curator and champion of everyone from de Kooning to Pollock, had died even before Donald, the result of a car accident. In fact, Donald said O’Hara’s early death had triggered his first thoughts about mortality.

“Little did I know how soon my own bend in the road would come …” he said, his voice growing more and more distant before fading out completely.

   • • •

The hot weather had an unfortunate effect on work, too. Consumed by the heat that had invaded the entire East Coast,
Smell
featured endless segments on air-conditioner maintenance and quirky cooling techniques.

There was only one bright spot on the horizon.

“A drink with your boss? You must be joking,” huffed Donald.

“Mark’s not really my boss. The boss is still in L.A. Mark’s just filling in,” Eve said, clearing the mail that had accumulated from the bar and setting down her pad for another stab at “The Numbered Story.” The truth was, she was excited. There had always been a hint of something between her and Mark; she’d just felt it. Mark had been vague when he’d suggested they see a movie, and she wondered if he was ever going to propose something concrete. Then, finally, yesterday he’d suggested a drink tonight. Of course, Alex had never called, so this was her chance to finally go out on a real New York date. Plus, Mark really was handsome, albeit in a way that it took a while to notice. And he was nice. Extremely nice.

“Nice.
Nice
,” Donald spat the word in her inner ear. “What’s happened to sexual politics since I left? Women never used that word to describe the male power structure in my day. The thought of socializing with—let alone flirting with,
sleeping
with—the oligarch was verboten. What we knew is that—”

“Let’s get on with dictation,” said Eve, cutting him off. “We wouldn’t want my wayward love life to deprive the world of your brilliance.”

Donald grumbled, letting her know he was onto her, but picked up the thread of his profanity-laden tale. After the sixth vulgarity in as many sentences, Eve had to say something.

“You’re absolutely sure about this approach?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck. “You might want to consider that times have changed. I mean, writers in your day, all you had to do was use the f-word and the, uh, the c-word to cause a stir. Now it takes a little more than that.”

Silence. Eve felt slightly guilty. She hadn’t meant to sound so critical. Donald’s writing had some potential, she thought. If only as an early example of a new kind of fiction that had revolutionized
an art form. And if he worked on it now, and accepted a suggestion or two, he might even generate something satisfying in its own right. Maybe.

“Do you mean ‘fuck’? And ‘cunt’?” he hissed.

“Stop it.”

“God, you’re such a prude,” said Donald. “
You can take the girl out of the Midwest …
All the mooning you do over Mark, and that Alex person. You think being such a priss is going to get you a boyfriend?”

Eve put the pen down on the paper. Having a man in her life, if and when it happened, she realized, was going to be yet another thing made more complicated by Donald.

   • • •

That evening, Eve was the last to finish her segments, and by the time she and Mark left the office it was close to one-thirty in the morning. They set off through the hushed streets, the new moon hanging like a glowing eyelash in the sky. Eve took a deep breath of night air and noticed that the streetlights were kinder to Mark than the office fluorescents. They softened the worry lines on his forehead and the shadows beneath his eyes.

As they approached the bar, Eve wondered what the moment would be like when the conversation turned from professional to personal. They worked so closely yet knew so little about one another. She was just pondering why this was when they pushed through the doors and she saw them: Russell, Quirine, Steve, and Cassandra, all piled into a booth together.

“Hey, everyone.” Mark said, squeezing in on the side next to Quirine and Cassandra, while Eve stood awkwardly. She tried to perch on the three available inches of bench not used by Russell and Steve but had to brace herself with her left leg. Her foot slipped on a puddle of spilled beer.

“Whoa, careful now.” Mark hopped up and dragged a chair over from another table. “That’s better,” he said, settling her in it.

“Thanks,” she said, wondering whether he would have done the same for Quirine. She certainly hoped he wouldn’t for Cassandra.

“Next round’s on me. We’re celebrating,” Mark said, waving over the waitress.

“What can I get you?” she asked, giving her nose ring an unappetizing twist. Everyone gave their orders, finding they had to repeat and clarify them, frustrated by this obstacle to hearing the news. Eve was intensely curious; Mark hadn’t even hinted he had anything to announce on the way over, let alone that it was something important enough to warrant summoning the whole department.

“Celebrating what?” asked Russell, as soon as the waitress departed.

“You may have been wondering why Orla Knock has been gone for so long. Turns out she’s been promoted to Vice President of Entertainment Programming,” Mark said, looking around the table. “She’ll be staying in L.A.” A beat of silence was followed by an ebullient eruption.

“Yes! Whoops,” said Steve, slamming his pint of ale on the table and wiping a few errant drops off Eve’s sleeve. “That witch was always out to get me.”

“Me, too,” said Cassandra bitterly, hooded eyes flashing. “Always complaining about the angle of my interviews. Always telling me to focus more on industry news instead of advice for young actors—”

Russell shook his head, cutting off his colleagues’ grievances. “Uh-uh,” he said, pushing his glasses firmly onto his nose with his forefinger. “I know you think that but she wasn’t out to get anybody. She was distrustful of
everybody
, which, let’s face it, is true of a lot of women in management. And understandably so,” he hastened to add when Quirine gave him a look. “Personally, I think that’s why she’s been sent out west. She’d bumped heads with everyone in New York.”

A flood of relief swept over Eve. She’d been carrying a pit in her stomach ever since she’d started at
Smell
, waiting for the day Orla came back.

“But wait,” said Cassandra. “Why would she want to do entertainment? She’s a news person.” Everyone exchanged questioning looks.

“Yes, but she gave that interview to some online place last year where she said her real dream was to do arts programming. Remember?” said Quirine.

Russell smothered a laugh. “Last season, the network ran a sitcom on Friday nights about a family of crickets—played by people. So if she thinks she’s going to be doing
Masterpiece Theatre
out there in L.A., she’s on drugs.”

“Who cares?” cut in Steve. “What I want to know is, what does this mean for us? Mark?”

The waitress reappeared. She placed the glasses on the table in the wrong order and then rearranged them, still incorrectly, in a manner that was less than apologetic. Finally, she toddled off and everyone’s attention refocused on Mark.

“Okay. If you think I’m the new managing editor …” he began, his face betraying nothing. “You’re right. Giles mentioned it might happen last week, and confirmed it yesterday.”

There was a burst of applause and a clinking of glasses. Quirine, elegant as always in a generous cowl-neck that showed off her delicate clavicle, gave Mark a quick kiss on the cheek. “That’s great. You deserve it,” she murmured, patting his hand. If Quirine hadn’t mentioned her boyfriend Victor a number of times, Eve might have wondered if she too had feelings for Mark.

“So maybe this is it? A reordering of the cosmos? Maybe we’ll finally graduate from our status as the bastard children of network news?” asked Steve.

“ ‘Bastard children of network news’—now,
that’s
a shopworn cliché,” chastised Cassandra, who was immediately interrupted by Russell’s “Hello? Ree-dun-dant.”

“What—what do you mean?” asked Eve, wanting very much to join in. “I know the writers get blamed when a segment goes poorly, but ‘bastard children’? Are things really that bad?”

“Let me clue you in to something,” began Steve. “We, the writers, are the dirty little secret of television news. No one,” he held his forefinger up to his mouth and blew a loud
shhhh
, “is to know we exist.”

“Why not?” asked Eve.

“Because,” said Quirine, “the great illusion is that these anchors—who, by the way, are called ‘presenters’ in Europe, where they don’t believe in this kind of pretense—aren’t reading to the viewers, but speaking. We are never supposed to lift the curtain and show how much behind-the-scenes help they have.” Quirine continued, looking at Eve, “It’s probably what you assumed before you got here, no? That they just spoke their own thoughts?”

Eve nodded.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s what they want you to think,” said Quirine. “And it’s silly. There’s no way anyone could anchor a show like ours—with twelve segments a day and who knows how many guests—without someone else doing the writing and interviewing. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“Want to know how far they’ll go to preserve the impression that anchors are solo acts?” asked Russell. “Let me tell you about when we took the show on the road for May sweeps two years ago. We were at Euro Disney—I know, I know. It was hideous, just hideous,” he said as Quirine and Cassandra made gagging noises. “And we were told to fan out across the place and interview employees for tips on how to enjoy the park.”

“I got a tip from this really cute cub from Le Jamboree des Country Bears,” said Steve. “She told me that if you see two lines for a ride, always take the one on the left. Most people gravitate to the one on the right, like driving on the road, so the one on the left moves faster.”