Wedding Season (5 page)

I
ARRIVE AT WORK
at a reasonable hour—that is, a not unreasonable hour, for a Monday morning. My company’s office occupies the top floor of a very narrow brownstone building on Greenwich Avenue. We have decent views but pay daily for the privilege with a breathtaking march up several flights of steep and crooked stairs, through dim, grimy hallways, past the suites of our fellow tenants: a real estate broker, a small socialist press, a psychologist, and, in the ground-floor storefront, a New Age bookstore. At the uppermost landing is the entrance to our quarters. The front door has a cracked, frosted piece of glass set into it, upon which my partner, Charles Vernon, in the spirit of the genre, hired a graphic designer friend to paint the name of our company, Invisible Inc., with the words hacks at large below it, and a very nice illustration of an old Underwood typewriter.

Invisible Inc. is a slightly odd proposition, a loose consolidation of writers founded one evening a few years ago. Charles and I met while working as content providers on a project developing toddler-friendly software content for Baby’s First Palm Pilot. We bonded as fellow dropouts, he out of a doctoral program in philosophy and I out of law school. One day we went out after work and were discussing the dubious pleasures of the freelance life and the difficulties
of navigating the commercial world solo. It began as a joke, the notion that we could pool our resources and form a merry band of ghostwriters and copy slaves to feed the maw of the market and its appetite for a well-turned phrase. But by evening’s end we had signed declarations of intent on a cocktail napkin, toasted to Necessity, the cunning, desperate mother of invention, and not even formidable hangovers the following day could convince us of the follies of an enterprise so born.

And here we are, four years later. Our hunch paid off and the captains of industry embraced us: a collective of poly-specialized scribes for hire, easy to track down, more reliably talented than temps, asking lower fees than recruitment agencies. We provide an uncomplicated relationship. We’re on call, we do the job right and get out, we’re available without rancor or complication whenever our services are required. We’ve done everything: billboards and brochures, grants and guerrilla marketing projects, autobiographies and ad campaigns, photo captions and political speeches and pornography, leaflets and love letters. Our work is everywhere—simple, nameless, blameless. Occasionally someone calls with a legitimate journalism assignment, and occasionally we’ll take it, but most of our staff have grown so accustomed to and fond of anonymity that they’ll furnish the pieces with anagrammatic bylines. This pleases me; it seems proof that we’re offering a valuable service not only to our corporate clients but also to the strange flotsam of humanity that drift through our doors to offer their writerly talents in exchange for a little filthy lucre, a little camaraderie scarce and avidly sought among our breed of semiprofessionals: grad students moonlighting, novelists with writer’s block, journalists looking for an income supplement, and so on. A few have stayed, our little brood of invisibles.

N
O MATTER HOW
early I make it to the office, Pete is already here, as he is this morning, stuffing a filter into the coffee maker. He ducks his head in greeting and gives me his sweet, sheepish smile. Pete has been with us for over three years; he came as an undergrad and remained after being granted his degree in medieval literature (he did a thesis on something about the troubadours). He still has the look of a child about him, the child you don’t set a play date with. He’s pale and thin, with straggly brown hair that hangs over his face and large dark animal eyes. Tattoos peek from under his garments, a perpetual outfit of solid black and T-shirts featuring the names and slogans of fearsome-sounding punk groups, including his own band, Road Rage. He is a soft-spoken, tender-hearted, and unfailingly polite young man, specializing here as our Cyrano, writing love letters and poetry for the romantically challenged. He has also consulted several times on marriage proposals, all of which were accepted. Naturally, then, he has very little personal success with women.

Our office is just a couple of rooms filled with desks and file cabinets and battered couches that we found on the street; there’s a large main work area up front, and the office I share with Charles is in a smaller room at the rear. Charles has a framed vintage poster for
The Sweet Smell of Success
above his desk, and a photograph of Nietzsche; I have my calendar. My desk is next to the windows at the back of the building, which offer a view of our neighbors in their bathrooms and kitchens, engaged in the serious business of daily life. The fire escape across from our own serves as a balcony for Miss Trixie, a drag queen of some local renown. From time to time, when she hasn’t been up all night performing,
Trixie and Charles and I will take our morning coffee together and converse over the dank gully between our buildings like country gossips at a picket fence. This morning, though, the only sign of our lady is a row of fishnet stockings in shocking neon colors, doing a breezy, ghostly cancan on the clothesline.

A
S I SETTLE
at my desk, Charles drags himself into view and leans heavily, dramatically against the door frame that separates the two rooms. He’s an odd-looking man, in a compelling way: pale brown hair, dark olive skin, and light hazel eyes that could put a snake charmer into a trance. On the short side but sans Napoléon complex. His features are perfect, but slightly askew, as if he had slept on them funny and everything got a little bit rearranged. As usual he’s dressed to kill, but this morning he looks like he’s been backed over by a gallon of vodka. Pete slips a cup of coffee into his hand and puts another on my desk. I thank him, and he eyes Charles sympathetically.

“Want some aspirin?” Pete ducks his head.

“Don’t speak.” Charles places a hand over Pete’s mouth. “It does me harm.”

Pete bobs and departs.

“You are setting a very bad example for our employees,” I tell Charles, who lowers himself into our prized leatherette recliner, trying to move his head as little as possible. He takes a swallow of coffee.

“Good morning, Vern.” He tries a smile on me, which turns into a wince, and puts his face back into the coffee cup.

“Good morning to you, Vern. You look like hell. Have a nice weekend?”

“Please kill me now.”

“Nope. You have a client meeting today. Nice suit, by the way. And here come the troops.” Noises from the next room indicate that the rest of our staff is arriving. “Vern, how about you suffer in silence, and I handle the assignment meeting?”

“Bless you. Job book’s over there,” he gestures to his desk with his empty cup. “Try to get all of your notes on the same piece of paper, not sixteen Post-its, okay? Refill, please?”

“Waitressing. Not in my job description.” I pluck the assignment book from his desk and head into the front room.

M
Y FLOCK OF
B
ARTLEBYS
is settling at our proud alternative to a conference table: a lovely pink 1950s Formica kitchenette set with matching chairs. Besides Pete, there’s Myrna, a Rubenesque, very serious young woman with a mass of dark curly hair and pretty blue eyes set so wide that it seems as though she can look in both directions at once, like a guppy. She has ghostwritten autobiographies, political manifestos, and speeches for some of the nation’s most prominent politicians, but she likes the variety here. And Damon, beloved by advertising agencies and PR firms city-wide for his pithy copy. Damon’s a lanky, hunky ex-surfer with sun-streaked blond locks and a sloth-like Super Dude manner so convincing that I routinely forget he’s actually very bright. He has a background in science, went to grad school for sociology—unlike Charles and me, he actually completed a postgraduate degree, and then, just like Charles and me, found himself with absolutely no idea of what to do next. So here he is, and has been for the last three years. Finally, there’s Tulley, a tiny, perky, pink-cheeked English
girl with a high and tiny voice, chestnut hair that she usually wears in two shiny braids, sparkly eyes the color of maple syrup, and a predilection for profanity that would put a longshoreman to shame. She’s a diplomat’s daughter, speaks seven or eight languages fluently, and has a degree in international finance or something like that, but she was bored out of her mind in the corporate world, and someone referred her to us a couple of years ago. She handles translations, helps out with accounting, and does most of our pornography, including her regular assignment writing the so-called letters from readers for a nudie magazine called
BabyDoll.

I
N THE FRONT ROOM
, Damon is stooping around the table, pouring coffee for everyone.

“Hey, boss,” he greets me with his trademark hair flip, a world-class move that would, I’m sure, cause a swooning epidemic if deployed in the vicinity of any American high school. The other Invisibles turn from their conversations to wave and nod greetings.

“Damon, could you do me a huge favor and go give Vern a warm-up?”

He lopes off, and I put another filter in the coffee maker.

“Everyone survive the weekend?” I ask over my shoulder. A collective grumbling is my answer. Damon comes back into the room and hands me the coffee pot.

“I think Charles is dead,” he tells me, as we sit down at the table.

“We’ll make funeral arrangements after the meeting. Status updates, please.” I feel, as I always do when I preside over these meetings, like an imposter. The idea that I’m the head of a company—that I’m a grown-up, that I have any
legitimate claims to authority—seems patently absurd to me. I’m certain that at any moment someone will discover I’m merely posing as an adult, and expose me for the fraud that I am. Also, as I’ve said, I loathe being the center of attention; it makes me extremely nervous.

“The
BabyDoll
letters are done,” Tulley says. “Could you please have Charles tell the editor that we’re going to drop the account if he doesn’t stop asking me to dinner? And someone from another skin mag got my name and called to ask if I’d do a sex advice column.”

“That was
Cosmo
,” Pete reminds her.

“I’ll do it,” Damon says. “Could be cool.”

“Could be actionable.” Tulley shakes her head. “False pretenses.”

“Right.” I wave my hands. “Okay. Focus, please.”

“I’m nearly finished with the materials for the day spa,” Myrna announces. “They’ve extended an offer of complementary oxygen therapy facials to all our staff members.”

“I’ve always wanted to try one of those.” Pete brightens at this news. “Oh, and remember Hector? He wants something new.”

“What does he want? An anniversary poem?” I ask. Hector was one of the marriages assisted by Pete’s literary talents.

“Sort of. He wants some kind of love letter for his mistress.”

“That lout,” Myrna snaps. “He was married just a year ago. This is insupportable. Joy, we can’t possibly be party to his dalliances.”

“Hey, who are we to judge?” Damon flips his hair. “We’re just the writers, guy, not the Moral Majority.”

“Enough,” I tell Damon and Myrna, who are glowering at each other. “Pete, let’s talk about this later today.” I run my finger along a column in the assignment book. “Damon, we
have a screenplay that needs overhauling. Myrna, someone from City Hall needs a speech for some celebrity fundraiser. I’ll give you the notes when we’re done here. Pete, Tulley, Charles is meeting with the people from Modern Love Press in an hour. They want us to help produce this new twentysomething romance series. I’ll put you guys on that if it comes through.”

Pete and Tulley give each other high fives across the table.

“All set?” I stand, and the group begins to shuffle up. “I’m going to check on Vern.”

C
HARLES IS LOLLING
in the recliner with one hand to his brow.

“Hey.” I slap lightly at his face. “Rise and shine.”

He bats my hands away and glares.

“What did you do to deserve this?” I settle at my desk.

“The road to romance is paved with good intentions and many martinis.” Charles closes his eyes. “I took Derek out for dinner. And drinks. And drinks. Did I mention drinks?”

“Get lucky?”

“Not even a good-night kiss.” Charles sighs.

“Are you sure he’s gay?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Wonder on your way uptown. You have half an hour to get to Modern Love.”

“Anything fun come up at the meeting?” Charles struggles to his feet.

“Porno. Adultery. A little infighting.”

“I love this job.” He straightens his tie. “You’ll have to fill me in when I get back.”

“Good luck,” I tell him. He waves and heads out the door.