Up & Out (11 page)

T
here is nothing like having to move that makes you want to give it all up and become a monk or a nun or whatever you could be that requires no earthly possessions. The only point of earthly possessions is to collect dust. And dust brings you down. Apart from the knowledge that magnified dust is actually a killer-looking mite, it gets into your contacts and into your nose and forces you to sneeze and—simultaneously—curse at your ex-boyfriend.

There have been times in my life when I have considered Tommy the funniest person on earth; however, today is not one of them.

“Was it really necessary to buy all these shoes?”

I find it best to avoid speaking to him. I know he is doing me a favor by letting me move in. I must keep telling myself that. I didn’t have any time to pack up during the week, so I had to do it all on Saturday and Sunday and move on Memorial Day. Even though it’s only the end of May it’s already really hot. Tommy has come over to help me. I thought about asking Seamus, but that might entail explaining why I was moving in with Tommy. I stuck to the story that I had hired movers and wouldn’t have a chance to set up my phone for a while.

It isn’t easy to maneuver the bed around the corners and the situation is only exacerbated by Tommy’s insistence on calling me Mrs. Cole because he thinks my glasses (which I had to put on because of dust) make me look like a librarian or something. I have stopped paying attention to what was cracking him up so much. My arms hurt from carrying boxes and I’m in no mood to be trifled with.

I alternate between telling myself he is doing me a favor and reminding myself that it could be worse—I could have to find my own apartment in New York City. And that would really drive me over the edge.

The thing about moving in Manhattan is that it can be very good for getting rid of stuff; for example, I decided to get rid of my little bookcase so I left it in the street, and by the time Tommy and I made our next trip with a couple of boxes it was gone.

There are a certain amount of groupies who seem to follow moving vans around the city. A crowd has formed around ours. I had to shoo people away from my mother’s antique dresser. We left it next to the truck for a second while we got into the back and tried to rearrange our space. A woman and what appeared to be her teenage son pounced, and they were halfway down the block when I caught up with them.

“Hey, that isn’t trash.”

“Oh, I saw it on the street for a while and I figured I would ask you about it,” she says. It was on the street next to the van for all of three minutes and she didn’t ask me about it. I shake my head and she puts it down and walks away. Tommy is right beside me.

“Nice job,” he says. We high-five goofily and stand looking at each other for a strange minute. I think I should have given a lot more thought to moving back with someone who is still so cute to me.

By the end of the day, we have finally driven the van to my “once and again” apartment. My thighs hurt from stair climb
ing and all I want is to get a foot massage from Tommy, but he is not my boyfriend anymore. That is not allowed.

Jordan is over, a little surprise I get when we pull up in the rented van. He is waiting outside smoking a cigarette.

“What’s Jordan doing here?”

“I called him,” Tommy says. “There’s no way I’m hauling all that stuff up five flights with a girl.”

I know Tommy was only teasing and I know that he was smart to call Jordan, but it isn’t easy to hang out with a guy who did your best friend so wrong. I kiss him hello and try to avoid him for the rest of the evening. Not an easy task when you’re moving stuff up five flights of a narrow staircase.

I am on the defense at any mention of Lauryn. At one point he asks me if I’ve had any word from “my friend.” Please.

“I have a lot of friends,” I say. “If any of them wanted you to get word of them they would give it to you themselves.”

I ignore the look I get from Tommy, but later when we’re moving in my dresser, he gets pissy.

“He’s trying, you know. You’re lucky he’s here to carry up all your fucking clothes.”

“You have a short memory,” I say. I wasn’t going to forget the way Jordan treated Lauryn. I feel Tommy let up a little on his side. “Okay, we can talk about it later. Next time, I’ll hire movers.” Although I did that last time I moved out of here and it drove me further into debt. Now I was back, anyway, and it’s all the same, except that I’m poorer.

I buy pizza for the three of us. Jordan insists on getting half pepperoni. I hate pepperoni and some of it crept over on the plain slices. This meant I could only have two, which really pissed me off, especially when Jordan is shocked that I could actually eat two. Lauryn must have been a saint!

“You’ve got quite an appetite,” Jordan says. Is this what Tommy meant by trying? I can’t wait for him to leave. He tries another approach. “Nice glasses, Rebecca.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“She looks like a nerd,” Tommy says.

“Thanks,” I say again, and mouthed
Asshole
at Tommy.

“You want to play some Tony Hawk?” Tommy asks Jordan. Was the purpose of getting me to move in with him so that Tommy could annoy me? What have I got myself into?

“Sure, my call time isn’t until ten,” Jordan says.

Ten!
Now we are going to have an all-night tournament. Soon, Jordan is calling his guy for a pot delivery and Tommy is bringing out the bong.

“Um, I have to get up tomorrow,” I whisper to Tommy while Jordan is on the phone placing his order.

“That’s why you have your own room.”

“Welcome home,” I say to myself—and my cell phone rings. It’s Seamus. I smirk at Tommy and take it in my room.

Of all the executive producers, only Don has e-mailed Delores back. He has replied from the Hamptons—it is Memorial Day weekend, after all!—and even his e-mail implies that he really doesn’t want to be bothered. It seems that Delores has slowly lost her mind, and by mid-Monday, when normal people are enjoying a barbecue and a day off, she is “inviting” us to a mandatory meeting for the entire staff at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning.

My body still aches from moving and it is a miracle that I got in at nine o’clock, but I knew that losing the whole weekend of work was going to be a problem. Even though I could barely lift my arms to put a shirt on, the subway arrived just as I went through the turnstile, so I was feeling pretty good.

Of course that all changes when I go into the meeting. The first twenty minutes consist of Delores dressing us all down for not being accessible all weekend. She wonders aloud if we are at all aware of deadlines. All four-seven of her is filled with rage as she demands we submit our revised production bibles by the end of the day.

Revised? The meeting room is a buzz of activity. She is one step ahead of us. She slams a box on the table and pulls items from large stacks of collated pages.

“I spent my Memorial Day putting these packets together.” She says
Memorial
as if it was the most insidious word in the English language, and begins to distribute the stuff.

“I expect everyone to make this their priority.”

I begin to look through the packet. It was a new format for the production and a lot of rhetoric. Production bibles are giant documents about the show, the characters and storylines. It’s basically the who, what, when, why and how of a series. They take forever to put together. Hackett and I had gone back and forth for about two weeks the first time we did it. If we are on production deadlines, how could we possibly stop what we are doing and rewrite a document that already existed?

I look around; everyone is riffling through the sheets of paper. There are a lot of eye rolls and head shakes, but no one looks like they are actually going to say anything. Were we just going to take this lying down? I can’t afford to lose more time producing the show. I need to keep creating the episodes—not stop and describe them.

I started to raise my hand—but wait! I don’t need permission to talk. I am an executive producer—I had a right to be heard.

“Um.” The whole room turns their eyes to me. “Don’t you think this is a little…” Shit, shit, what is the word?
Redundant? Excessive?
Which would get me in less trouble? I have opened my mouth and now I am getting fucked. “Much?”

I felt pure evil come through Delores’s eyes. I have dared to question her. The word of the day is
retribution
and it will be hers. Up until this point she has toed the line between giddy pretend-a-friend and calculated condescension, but this, this is fire. The mutant is actually a demon.

“It’s interesting that you would bring that up, Rebecca, since Esme is the program with the most discrepancies.”

“What?” I think I might stutter.

“I don’t think this is the forum for all of the issues there are with Esme.” What issues? “But I will say to all of you that it’s going to be Armageddon if we aren’t all buttoned up.”

Arma-fucking-geddon? I don’t know what to say, but at that moment, Janice slams her hand onto the table and gets up and walks out. I feel myself begin to shake.

“I have one more issue I want to discuss with you,” De
lores yammers on. “Summer is here, and with it come summer Fridays. I know you were allowed to leave at one o’clock last year, but Indiana Mutual says the weekend starts at three o’clock. Although, I’m sure you are all quite responsible about finishing your work and therefore we probably won’t ever get to leave at that time.” She giggles, reverting back to giddiness, as if a ruined summer was something to joke about. She manages a sweet “thanks, everybody” and sends us on our way.

I stop by Janice’s cube on the way back to my office. John is already there.

“Are you okay?”

“This sucks, Rebecca. Do you know that they are doing layoffs? Have you seen Claire lately? People at the adult networks have been laid off at random. These people have no idea how to run a network, and yet we have to listen to them. How dare she say that shit about Esme? Fuck her! And if I were you, I’d start getting my résumé together. That woman is clearly threatened by you.”

I look at John and he is looking down at one of his three computers. I feel a mutiny coming on and I don’t know what to do.

“I think you’re overreacting,” I say to Janice, although I really don’t believe it.

“The woman doesn’t even know my name. She sent an e-mail to the entire Esme group and put someone else’s first name on my last name. John forwarded it to me. You weren’t copied. She wants us to lose the glasses.”
What?

“Wait. What?”

“That’s right. No more glasses. I thought that was Esme’s trademark.”

Ten minutes (and one cigarette) later, I make the now-notorious walk down the hall to Delores’s office. She has her shoes off and one of the plush gophers on her head. What the hell is going on?

“Rebecca, I was just going to send you an e-mail.” She is back on the cheerful, “smile while I screw you” trip.

“Really.” I am in no mood for small talk. “I didn’t appreciate your comments in the meeting.”

“Yes, well, I know it was the forum for my grievances, but you seem to have trouble grasping protocol.”

“Protocol? The last thing we need is more forms. This isn’t a fucking bank, this is supposed to be a creative environment.”

“I’m not sure if you are the right person to be managing a team,” she says, obviously trying not to let her mouth turn up in a smile.

“Well, I’m not sure
you
should be managing anything.” I have gone too far, but instead of being upset Delores looks smug.

“The outburst from Janice was really unprofessional.”

“People are getting emotional.”

“Do you know what this channel is about?” Is this a trick question? I think of the slogan we use on-air. We are Explore! Family, after all.

“Family. We Are Family.” She seems downright orgasmic at my answer.

“No, money. We are about money, and if you and your team—” she says
team
like she says Memorial Day, with disdain “—can’t handle that you might want to think about getting a new job.”

“Why, because I disagree with you?”
Because I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about?
I want to say but don’t.

“No, because you’re wrong.” I hold her eye as she says this.

“What is this about Esme losing her glasses?”

“Glasses don’t work. They aren’t cool. They aren’t sexy.”

“She’s not supposed to be sexy, she’s an animated twelve-year-old. And yes, they
are
cool.”

“Glasses don’t sell advertising space,” she says. She is taking a tone with me, as if someone has already authorized her to talk down to me.

“Advertise glasses.”

“It’s not that easy. This is the decision.”

“It’s my show.” She looks me up and down before answering.

“It’s Explore! Family’s show. You developed it for us.” Us?
Now she is an us. I hate her. She is practically frothing at the mouth. I get up.

“I’ll work on that bible.”

“You better. I need to see it ASAP.”

I almost salute her but I fear if I raise my hand it will slip across her cheek.

I
am sitting in my office with the door closed. I lock it now to avoid anyone busting in. My contacts are bothering me. My jaw is clenched. There is a knock at my door. I get up to answer it and realize I’m not wearing any clothes. I grab the pages of the production bible and try to cover myself.

When I open the door, Esme is standing there. She is very short; I have to look down at her. Her shoelaces are white and she isn’t wearing her glasses. She is no longer animated, and as a real girl she looks a lot like me.

“Hi,” I say. I am happy to see her. There are a lot of things I want to ask, but she is mad. She starts to yell.

“I can’t see anything. You made me not be able to see.” She keeps screaming at me and my jaw gets tighter and tighter.

Then I see Seamus and I realize I am in his room.

“Are you okay?” he asks. I’m sweating and wearing nothing beneath the T-shirt he gave me. I fell asleep without taking out my contacts.

“I had a bad dream,” I say.

“I see that. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” I’m a little embarrassed.

“I’ll get you some water.” When he leaves, I get up and go to the bathroom. I pull out my contacts and put them in little plastic cups.

He comes back in with the water. He looks pretty cute in his boxers with his hair messed up. Maybe having a bad dream will be another first for us as a couple. I drink some water.

“Let’s spoon,” he says, and he just cuddles me—no funny stuff. I fall asleep happy and thinking that maybe Seamus really is my boyfriend. It’s better than thinking about how much I disappointed Esme.

In the morning I think about asking for a drawer at his apartment. But when I ask if he wants to go to Nobu Next Door tonight, he tells me he is going to be busy for the next couple of evenings. Hmm. Is it possible that both work and my private life are equally messed up?

To top it off, my contacts have dried out in the cups and I don’t have my glasses with me. I squint through the day at work as we put the finishing touches on a few episodes. Esme still has glasses in these. Delores’s new regime will not begin until the next round. I have a sinking feeling every time I see Esme. She is so happy deducing things in her glasses. They are a part of her. Fuckers!

I think Janice, John and Jen are disappointed in me for losing this battle. Maybe I
am
a sucky manager. This whole thing is making me doubt every aspect of my life.

When I get home, Tommy is on the couch. He has just started watching one of his favorite movies from one of his favorite actors, Tom Hanks.

“
Joe Versus the Volcano
again, huh?” He wasn’t up when I left the apartment yesterday morning. I can’t tell if he knows that I haven’t been home in two days.

“Nice sweater,” he says. It is Seamus’s. Proof that he knows.
We are not together anymore
—only roommates. This is what I must keep reminding myself.

“Did you eat?” I try to sound friendly.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” I order a small mushroom pizza and
straticella
soup from Don Giovanni. I watch a little of the movie as I wait for my food.

I am getting a lot of negative energy from Tommy, but I am too exhausted to get up and go to my room. I don’t think that I have ever watched this whole movie, despite Tommy’s insistence.

There are a number of movies that Tommy thought I must see, but a lot of times I just sort of humored him and read a book or a magazine while he watched his DVDs. In this one, Tom Hanks is in a dingy-looking office that makes rectal probes when he realizes he has a terminal disease called a brain cloud. He starts ranting that he has suffered all these indignities for $300 a week.

He keeps yelling about $300 a week and the next thing I know I am sobbing. I feel so exhausted and spent. I’m not sure what Tommy thinks is going on, but he kind of starts freaking out. Then he does something he rarely does, he stops the movie.

“Rebecca, what the hell is going on? Are you okay?”

I can’t stop crying. Then the bell rings and I know it’s my food. I get up to buzz the guy in, but Tommy stops me.

“It’s okay, I got it.” I try to get my wallet, but Tommy runs to the door. I hear him talking to the delivery guy in the hall and he comes back into the living room. I am trying to pull myself together.

“Um, Rebecca, can you float me five dollars?” I start laughing, the hysterical kind of laughter you have when you’ve been crying too much. I finally get my wallet and toss it to him.

“Just take the money out of there,” I say. “Don’t pay for my pizza.”

He comes back in and gives me change. I wipe my eyes and open up my soup. I am a little bit out of breath. Tommy stares at me.

“Aren’t you going to watch the rest of the movie?”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“It’s nothing,” I say. I want to forget it ever happened.

“Nothing. One minute you’re sitting here normal, as nor
mal as
you
can be, and the next you’re crying. What happened? It’s like fucking science fiction.”

I remember the alien girl he said he would run off with, but I don’t mention it. I just shrug.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m PMS-ing.” Normally any mention of the monthly condition I have would quiet him, but Tom Hanks must have given him some bizarre courage. It was terrifying in a way, as if someone had replaced my ignorant gym teacher with a bizarre female teacher who knew that having my period wasn’t an excuse not to play volleyball.

“If I ever tried to suggest something like that you would tear me a new one.” I hate that expression and he knows it. “What’s going on?”

“Esme lost her glasses.” He swallows and looks confused.

“Is this the plot or something? You want me to help you figure out how she finds them?” In days of yore, when the ratings were high, before we had to jump the shark in our relationship, Tommy used to help me come up with ideas for the sixty-second Esme shorts I created. He was really tied to her, too. Even though we had already broken up when I found out we were turning her into a show, I knew he was really proud. Sometimes I felt like she was our kid. I got custody, but now I had been a bad parent and social services had come to take her away. Except it was an evil force named Delores who was now going to raise her. I start bawling again.

“Jesus, Rebecca. I’ll give you a hand.”

“It’s not a plot. She lost her glasses.”

“I don’t get it.”

“No more glasses. Maybe she’ll get contacts. I don’t know.”

“What?” He is about to give up.

“The fucking peanut that I work for doesn’t want Esme to wear glasses anymore. It’s not sexy enough.”

“She’s what? All of twelve?”

“Yeah. Glasses are not going to sell ad time.”

“Jeez.” He runs a hand through his hair. There was the reason I could never get pissed and not have Tommy in my life.
Whatever went on between us, somehow he always understood the things that were important to me.

I turn the movie back on, eat a couple of slices of my pizza and give him the other two.

Kathy calls me at work the next day. As soon as I hear her voice, I get anxious about finding a way to get off the phone. That feeling is immediately followed by guilt and then defiance. I am making a lot more than $300 a week, but it’s not worth all the stress. If one of my best friends calls, I am damn well going to talk to her.

Kathy is hot by most standards, but the thing that makes her the most striking is the funky-colored glasses she always wears. It’s her trademark and it became Esmes’s. I am envious that she had an object so tied to her identity. She brought me to Selima for the first time, and it was with her that I finally found a pair of glasses that I liked.

If anyone else was going to feel my pain it was Kathy. I tell her the whole sordid tale. When I finish she waits for a long time before speaking.

“That just sends the worst kind of message. If I was a little girl and feeling dorky enough I would love to see a cool character like Esme wearing glasses.”

“What is so obvious to TV watchers is often derived by TV makers only after a series of focus groups and meetings. No one can ever just accept a good thing. When a program is doing well there is this constant need for tweaking. God! I hate my job.”

“Do you know what you need?”

“Rock shrimp tempura.”

“Rebecca!”

“To get sloshed.”

“No, a trip to everyone’s favorite optical store.”

The secret of people who work in TV is that the majority want to work in film. One of the geekiest things Tommy and I ever used to do back when things were good between us was
to film-parody different conversations we would have. For example he would ask me what we should have for dinner and I would say, “spaghetti western,” and then he would have to reask in a certain way.

I might be telling a story about work or something and he’d say, “But how would you direct that like a film noir?” Sometimes I try to imagine my life as a movie and recast certain aspects of it in different genres. It was a lot easier to do when I had more free time.

If ever I get the chance to direct a big-budget Technicolor musical, I am going to shoot one scene of the heroine (because all my protagonists will be women) shopping for glasses in Selima. In fact, the chorus of dancing salespeople and customers who glide around on glass cases and giant optical instruments will do jazz hands and shout “Selima!”

Kathy’s motives for inviting me aren’t as selfless as I originally thought. She is picking up the special mother-of-pearl glasses with yellow accents that she ordered to go with her wedding dress. They look great on her, but after I oohed and aahed about how beautiful she will look with the glasses complementing her dress and bouquet of yellow flowers, I figured it was my turn.

Although Kathy is a CPA she really should be a personal shopper. The bespectacled salespeople at Selima are quite helpful, but they don’t stand a chance against Kathy. You’ve barely adjusted the earpiece when she is declaring, “no,” “maybe” or “fabulous.” She is very sure of herself and of what looks good on her friends. We travel around the cases, followed by the admiring salesperson, and Kathy has me try on various glasses until she is satisfied.

Even though I got a new pair of glasses—black Martine Sitbons that Tommy enjoys ridiculing—last year, Kathy has determined that buying another pair—a funkier pair—is just what the eye doctor ordered to improve my spirits.

We narrow it down to four pairs. I really like a pair of brown glasses that are sort of square. Kathy is having a real quandary over a pair of thick turquoise-and-brown glasses and a red pair.
There are also the titanium frames that the salesperson suggested that I take just to appease her.

Kathy has me try the titanium ones first and then shoos them away with a swipe of her hand.

“I don’t know, Kathy, I think these are the way to go,” I say, holding up my favorites. I look at the salesperson, who shrugs, afraid to speak unless spoken to by Kathy. Kathy looks at me for a long time.

“I just don’t know if they suit the shape of your face.” No one has ever spoken so earnestly about glasses before. Then Kathy closes her eyes as if channeling a spirit. “I’m seeing you in a long camel coat with an ecru cashmere turtleneck peeking out. Yes, I like what I see, but it’s very conservative, very winter. It’s summer now, Rebecca. It’s hot, you’re hot. Try the turquoise.”

I try them. I look in the mirror. They are really nice, but it’s a lot of glasses.

“I’m not sure, Kathy. I like them. They seem like a little too much glasses.” She closes her eyes, as if wounded. She takes this shit seriously. I see the salesperson shake her head.

“I just mean that they are a little thick.” She opens her eyes and nods, giving in a little.

“Okay, if you don’t like them, that’s valid. I’ll defer to you on that.” I appreciate the small victory. “But, I think they look hot. Try the red.”

I try the red. I look at Kathy. Kathy smiles and nods. I look at the salesperson, she agrees with a nod, cocking her head. I look in the mirror.

“I don’t know,” I say. They look good, but red? Kathy sighs.

“Those glasses are like a silk robe or a Prada suit. Those glasses say, ‘I am a children’s television producer, but I give a mean blow job.’”

“Kathy!” I say. I look at the salesperson, who is laughing nervously. “What will they match?”

“They’re red. Everything matches red.”

“Even pink,” offers the salesperson. Now they’re a team. Another customer comes over to us. She’s a woman in her mid-forties with a nice dress, but a bad haircut.

“That’s a great color for you,” she says to me. “I wish I could wear that color.”

Kathy looks at me with her eyebrow raised over her funky purple vintage frames. She told me so.

“Can you help me decide between these two pairs?” she says to Kathy. I feel for the salesperson. I look at myself again in the mirror. Red glasses, red shoelaces, maybe this is solidarity.

“I’ll take them,” I say to the salesperson. I do like them. The woman with the bad haircut is telling Kathy about her Internet dating experiences.

“Well, that’s why you have to get these.” She holds up a pair of midnight-blue frames. “Those tan ones make you look ten years older. I wore a pair of green-and-brown ones that had a similar shape when my fiancé proposed.”

“Oh my goodness,” says the woman in true awe. Kathy holds up her ring.

“Tiffany’s,” she says. The woman gushes over it. Kathy is quite smug. “I know.”

I hear gasps as Kathy recounts the whole story of Ron’s proposal. I rub my temples as I sign the credit card deposit receipt. More debt, yippee!

Kathy turns her attention back to me. “When are they going to be ready?”

“Next week,” I say.

“I want to see them on her again,” she instructs the salesperson. Then she laughs. “And I want to start getting a discount. I bring enough business here. She got those at my behest. And that other lady is getting the ones I suggested.”

The salesperson adjusts the glasses on me and starts writing up a ten-percent-off coupon for Kathy. She changes it to fifteen percent when Kathy clears her throat. I turn to Kathy.