Truth in Advertising (20 page)

Phoebe snorts. She snorts when she laughs. “You're a moron.”

“What? It's not an insult. You should see these women. They're lesbian softballers. They'd look at me and say, ‘There's a bland straight white man.'”

“Moron.” But I can tell she's smiling. “I gotta go help make dinner.”

“I'll talk to you later.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I'm about to click off when I say, “He was an idiot.”

“Whatever,” she says, then blows her nose.

“One more thing.”

“What?”

“You are my favorite lesbian softballer.”

She laughs. And hangs up.

•   •   •

The competing voices in my head vie for time.

Go out, Fin! Get laid, for Christ's sake.

Stay in, Fin, read a book, watch a Ken Burns documentary, hang yourself as a result.

I arrive early and stand at the small bar. A place called Prune in the East Village. Couples wait for tables over drinks, wait for friends. Kiss, kiss, you look wonderful. The women in close, talking, making eye contact. The men at a distance, nodding, looking around the room. Rich, seductive scents, women in fitted skirts. Hips and thighs and long, milk-white necks.

A woman's voice says, “You must be Fin.”

“Rachel,” I say. “Hi.”

She kisses my cheek and I go to kiss hers, but she is moving too fast and pulls away so that I appear to be kissing nothing, a Chaplin moment. She is out of breath. She says, “I need a drink, my lips are soooo chapped, I have to pee, I couldn't find a cab, where's the toilet? I'll have whatever you're having as long as that's Tanqueray and tonic on the rocks.” And then she is gone.

I order her drink and wait. It arrives as she returns from the ladies' room.

“How great is
that
timing?” Rachel says, nudging me, wide-eyed, laughing too hard.

Her coat and hat are off. She has an extraordinary mane of dark brown, tightly curled hair. For some reason it dawns on me that
pamplemousse
is one of the only words I know in French, and that I remember it only because it sounds ridiculous.

We are shown to a table. She organizes her coat on the back of her chair, bends to put her bag on the floor. I involuntarily look at her ass. She's talking, perhaps to her bag, possibly to me.

“. . . but that's the only time. So funny that you should pick this place,” she says.

“I know,” I say, smiling. “I really like it.”

“So you know Stefano,” she says, sitting, exhaling.

“I do. A great guy.”

“
Such
a great guy. We worked together years ago. I used to be in advertising. Cheers.”

We both take big pulls from our drinks.

She has taken time to do her makeup, her hair, her outfit. I can tell.
Don't let him be another loser
, she has thought. She called a friend right
before she walked in, for support. “Call me as soon as it's over,” the friend said.

She says, “These things make me tipsy.”

“That's the idea,” I say, smiling.

“Hey. No kidding,” she says and laughs hard.

Why are we talking like this?

“So you write for television,” I say. I make a conscious effort to stop bouncing my left leg. My hands are cold so I place them under my thighs.

She's talking but I am thinking of her hips, her marvelous round ass in that black, clingy skirt.

“. . . and then I hooked up with
Who's That Guy?
in its second season. It's been great. I love that we shoot in New York. Have you seen the show?”

“He's a sewer inspector who wants to be a poet?”

“That's the one,” she says, nodding.

“It's funny,” I lie. Stefano showed it to me online. It was awful. “I like the goat,” I add.

“My idea. Thank you. I just thought it would be funny. Goats are funny.”

“They are funny.”

I don't know where to go from here. I sip my drink.

“That must be exciting, writing for TV,” I say.

“Fin, it's incredibly exciting at times, let me tell you, but there are days where I want to hack people to death with a machete. These stars”—she makes quote signs with her hands—“are brutal. What a spectacular bunch of egotistical assholes, the lot of them, excuse my French.”

Pamplemousse
.

“. . . wouldn't ever get involved with one of them again.
Huge
mistake. What does your father do?”

“My father?”

My father is dead. My father is almost dead. My father left us. My father beat my brothers and drove my mother to death.

“He's . . . retired. He was a police officer.”

“Ohmigod.
So
sexy. What
is
it about those guys?”

“I don't know. But I have to say that my father is incredibly sexy.”

Mid-drink, she spits an ice cube back into her glass as she laughs way too hard for it to be honest.

She says, “My father's a podiatrist. His father sold sturgeon.”

I try to imagine that job.

“. . . and still runs three miles every single day of his
life
.”

“That's awesome.”

“I'm starved. You hungry? I could eat a dog. Let's split the calamari.”

We order food. We order wine. We watch the absurd, awkward wine dance, the new glasses, the small pour, the taste, the search for the right words (“I'm getting a hint of . . . wine?”). She talks. About her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, about her sister's divorce, about TV shows I don't watch, pilot season, the importance of the executive producer credit. I listen. I nod. I drift.

Will we have sex tonight? Will we click and find that animal magnetism that makes one person want to bite another? Will we say things in the night, feel a closeness? Is this the woman who will be my wife?
I love you, Rachel Levin
. Will I one day say these words? Will I send flowers to her office for no other reason than that I love her? Will she keep a photo of me, of us, from that time we went to the vineyard/Costa Rica/Taos, tanned, smiling, on her desk? Will I nurse her through a nasty bout of food poisoning, rampant diarrhea, where her hair is flat and greasy and smells like the inside of a ski hat after a long day, her face pale, her breath horrid? Will we have pet names, use baby talk? Will I sit in shops and watch her try on clothes? Will I meet her friends and family, try and impress them, make them like me? Will I find her friend Tracy, the yoga teacher, sexy? Will Rachel see me looking at her lustfully? Will we argue on our wedding night? Will she cry? Will this be the woman I go to sleep with every night of my life? Will I watch her grow pregnant? Will I watch our child emerge from her body, bloodied, crying, sweat on my wife's face? Will I comfort her when her father dies of a massive heart attack on the golf course? Will I be patient with her grief, months later? Will
I say, instead, “Get over it!” as I wonder what has happened to our marriage, each of us growing distant, building walls. Will I think of taking a rental car and driving to Phoenix, where I will hide inside a Best Western for months? Will she cheat on me on a business trip, with a man twelve years her junior named Chad? “You really want to know? Yes, his penis was much larger than yours.” Will I cheat on her? Will she say, in the fight we have in the kitchen, after the affair is found out about, during the long, drawn-out argument where things are said that can never be taken back, when all our energy is sapped, “I wish I had never married you”? Will we sit in plastic folding chairs on the lawn of a university, exchange a look that cannot be put into words, one of deep connection and understanding, a pure human moment between two people who love and respect each other, a powerful cocktail of pride and melancholy and awe at time itself (“We were changing her diaper
yesterday.
”) as our daughter accepts her diploma? Will I stand over my wife's grave and mourn, cry like a baby, wish myself dead? Will she do the same for me, if I die first? Will she remarry? Will anyone remember me twenty years after I die?

“Does it make me anti-Semitic if I don't want to date Jewish guys?” she asks through a mouthful of sea bass. I open my mouth, as if to answer, but she continues.

“I was seeing someone for a while. Not Jewish. Whatever. I told him he could have a Christmas tree, a small one, but he wouldn't do the Chanukah thing. Can I try that creamed spinach? Another Jew hater, right? My curse in life, being attracted to Jew-hating men. What is it about Irish guys and Jewish girls? Have you ever been to Israel?”

“No,” I say. “Have you?”

She nods, vigorously, gravely, over the lip of her wineglass. Big swallow.

“Mmm. Yeah. I've been. Every Jew
has
to go once, Fin.
Gorgeous
. The people, the country.
Gorgeous
. Paradise. If there were no Arabs. I'm kidding. Sort of. So angry, those people. Let's split a dessert.”

Then, the crucial moment that comes on every first date in New York. A litmus test. The post-dinner drink or coffee or walk. Neither
of us suggests anything. It's over. I'm relieved. And I'm sure she is, too.

We leave and walk to the corner of First Avenue. The cold air feels good. I am not the kind of man she is looking for. I meet very few of the criteria on her checklist. She stamps her feet a few times to keep warm.

“Thank you for dinner. This was fun,” she lies.

“It was my pleasure,” I say. “I enjoyed it.”

A cab sees us and honks. I raise my arm and it pulls to the curb.

“I'm sorry,” I say, without realizing that I was going to say it.

“For what?”

“I didn't try very hard.”

A smile spreads over her face. “No. You didn't. Maybe I tried too hard. I hate these things.”

“Me, too.” We're both smiling. Finally, a real moment. She kisses my cheek. When she pulls back to look at me again, something clicks, a neuron fires. She needs to double-check something. She leans forward and kisses me on the mouth, puts her hand on my shoulder. It is a passionate kiss, sexy and deep. It surprises me, delights me, confuses me. I think of Phoebe. Why do I feel like I'm cheating?

“Okay, then,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, opening the door to the cab for her.

“I'll speak with you.”

“Definitely,” I say, then watch as the cab drives up First Avenue, knowing that we will never see each other again.

•   •   •

I wake early, lie on my side, and look out the window at the blanket of snow that covers the trees and the rooftops. It is still and quiet, except for the wind, the hiss of the radiator. I should go in to work. I should get an early start. Don't think of it as a diaper, Fin. Think of it as a thing that could save humanity. A superhero. A political message. A love story. A comedy. Let's get Jerry Seinfeld/Tina Fey/Al Roker/someone-from-
The-Bachelor
-or-
Dancing-with-the-Stars
.

Excellent, Fin. Brilliant, Fin. Jackass, Fin.

From the next apartment I hear my neighbor's son, Henry, eighteen months, his muffled, high-pitched bird-of-a-boy voice, his parents laughing. I roll over and go back to sleep.

•   •   •

Later in the day. Ian comes into my office holding two coffees, puts one on my desk.

He says, “What's the most famous Super Bowl spot ever?”

I say, “ ‘Mean Joe' Greene.”

“Mean Joe” Greene was a football player known for his, well, meanness. In the spot, a beat-up, limping Mean Joe ambles down the corridor after the game, stadium empty except for a young boy, who is obviously in awe of Mean Joe. The kid holds a Coke. He gives it to Joe, who downs it. The kid turns to walk away, disappointed, and Joe says, “Hey, kid.” And tosses him his filthy jersey, which he's been carrying over his shoulder.

Ian says, “Bigger. The biggest ever. The commercial of commercials.”

I say, “Apple 1984.”

He smiles and says, “Apple 1984.”

He's grinning. It takes me a few seconds.

I say, “Instead of the girl, it's a mother.”

He says, “Instead of the sledgehammer, she hurls a huge doodie diaper at the screen.”

I say, “It's babies in the seats instead of drones.”

He says, “It's either really funny or incredibly dumb.”

The Apple 1984 spot is legend. It only ran once, during the Super Bowl. Some people say it started the big deal about Super Bowl commercials. It was directed by a young Ridley Scott, whose career largely petered out after that, except for directing
Blade Runner
,
Thelma & Louise
,
G.I. Jane
, and
Gladiator
, among others. In the spot, sixty seconds long, drone-ish people march in a gray futuristic world. A talking head—Big-Brother-meets-Stalin—speaks from a giant screen, a kind of indoctrination. Suddenly, something is wrong. A fit, blond-haired woman in red shorts is running with a sledgehammer. She's being chased by scary-looking guys in futuristic suits and helmets.
Very Orwellian. This is early January 1984. Rows and rows of near brain-dead drones sit and watch a big screen. The fit blonde throws her hammer and destroys the screen. A voice-over says, “On January such-and-such, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like
1984
.”

I call Paulie and ask him to come by. He's three offices away. When he gets to my doorway, I say, “Apple 1984. For this.”

Paulie says, “Dude, that's so stupid. I love it. Instead of the sledgehammer, it's a huge doodie diaper.”

I look at Ian.

Ian says, “Great minds.”

I say, “Great or sad?”

Ian says, “Maybe sad.”

•   •   •