Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel (30 page)

“I figure, why not let myself be happy?”

“Totally. Plus, you can never have enough pairs of khakis.”

“You’re bad, friend. Bad to the bone!” Fred laughed, her incongruous boom. “So, how’s our guy treating you out there?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Fred groaned. “Out with it: What did the grouch do?”

“Nothing. Literally he’s done nothing. He’s at his place or maybe out to dinner with some trashy studio chick and I’m here at the hotel. It’s fine.”

The phone line crackled like damp Pop Rocks. When Fred finally spoke, her tone was carefully neutral. “Are you saying you
want
him to
do
something?”

“Are we speaking in code?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to say it out loud?”

“No, don’t!” Marjorie looked away from her own reflection. “I just got lonely for a sec. He’s been a gentleman.”

“A gentleman, huh? That sounds lame.”

“No. It’s exactly as it should be. In fact, I should probably call Mac.”

“Have you figured out what to do about that?”

“About…?”

“Moving in with your boyfriend.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes,
that.
”

“I dunno. I don’t want to leave you high and dry with no roommate.”

“I was roommate free before. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh. Okay. Then I just need to wrap my mind around moving again so soon.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I think so.”

“Up to you, girl. It’s your life.” Fred gasped. “OMG! I buried the lead: Elmo and Lou got engaged!”

“What?!”

“They decided, ‘When you know, you know!’ And apparently they know. Of course, Elmo wants to seal the deal before Lou realizes she’s totally out of his league.”

Love was in the air: Lou and Elmo, Belly and Snarls, Fred and James, her and Mac. So why did Marjorie feel like she swallowed an inflated balloon? People talk about love at first sight, about
knowing.
Marjorie didn’t even
know
where her left sneaker had gone.

She was suddenly exhausted. There’s nothing so tiring as a case of the shoulds.

35

Just before 10:00 the next morning, Marjorie and Gus found a winner. They were in what had become their respective screening room spots; he, with his arms and legs outstretched, as if the rolling desk chair was a beach lounge; she, curled into a ball against the corner of the couch.

Throughout the last few days, they had discovered some decent filmmakers to keep on their radar, but no truly memorable films. At least not in a good way.

The morning drive had been quiet; Marjorie stole glances at Gus as he drove. The edges of his mouth were downturned, dark circles had emerged under his eyes, and his stubble had graduated from five o’clock shadow to near beard. She wondered if he was hungover. Where had he gone last night after they parted ways?

“How was your evening?”

“Good. It was good.”

“You look exhausted.”

He flashed her a wry smile. Tired or not, he still looked good. “My dinner ran late and turned into drinks.”

“With Susan?”

Gus looked confused. Then, as recognition set in, he tried to cover a laugh with a cough. “That’s sort of none of your business, right?”

Marjorie stared ahead, missing the humor in Gus’s eyes. “Just making conversation. Like a normal person. Do they not make emotional IQ flashcards for that?”

The rest of the drive was silent.

Their first film of the morning was
Writing on the Wall,
a documentary about a Hasidic graffiti artist in Williamsburg called Talmud (his tag). Gus and Marjorie were hooked by the notion of an Orthodox hipster—his Ray-Ban Wayfarers obscured on the sides by curling payos, his beard in keeping with his secularist peers but with meaning beyond style. He was a symbol of the neighborhood’s spirit: Williamsburg might be the epicenter of cool, but the Hasidim were there first in long black coats and hats.

This ultra-Orthodox Jewish community had no relationship to Marjorie’s Reformed one. But, during her childhood on the Upper West Side, the cultures coexisted and collided—all part of the “melting pot.” Often she’d wondered what the Hasidic kids thought of passing bus ads for TV shows like
The Real World
and
Sex and the City,
nonkosher pizza joints hocking pepperoni slices, boutiques displaying short, tight, exposing clothing. Sometimes she saw the older men engaged in behavior that seemed antithetical to religious life: in strip clubs, for instance. (Marjorie had gone to “gentlemen’s clubs” with male friends in her early twenties and pretended to feel blasé when confronted with the gyrating girls’ open legs.)

Talmud’s family did not understand his passion for graffiti. He was an artist, he explained. He had to create
artwork.
He followed their religious rules, never tagging on the Sabbath. Wary of depicting graven images, his pieces contained only words. But under the cover of night, he slipped outside and “threw up” masterpieces on city walls, an increasingly difficult act in recent, more policed years. Decades before, subway cars were like communal artworks, telling stories of dueling gangs and lost loves in bubbly text. But the trains had been rebuilt in graffiti-proof materials with conveniences like air-conditioning and digital signs.

Talmud’s father, who was offended most profoundly by his son’s tag name, reminded his son regularly of the book of Daniel, chapter 5, in which King Belshazzar disrespected sacred vessels from the Jerusalem Temple at his feast and, thus, writing appeared on the wall, spelling out the leader’s death and the fall of Babylonian rule. Writing on walls was sacrilegious, he insisted. And the viewer empathized with both the artist’s need for acceptance and a creative outlet and his father’s panic amid a changing world.
Writing on the Wall
was about generation gaps, about art, identity, family, and the existence of God. As the credits rolled, so did Marjorie’s tears; she missed her parents horribly. She resolved to make more time for them when she got home.

As always, Gus watched the credits until the end, a meditative ritual. He pressed Stop and looked at Marjorie.

“Are you crying?”

“It was so good!” she wept.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with
you,
Tin Man?” She leaned across the couch’s arm and flipped on the lights, catching Gus as he wiped his own eye.

“Allergies.” He shrugged.

“Right.” Marjorie fell back onto the love seat, its loose springs reverberating. “We
have
to get this movie.”

“We’ll try. A lot of people are going to want it.”

“Yes, but you
need
it. You guys will do right by it.”

“Yeah. We could really use this. Between you and me, it’s been awhile since we got a great film. I’ve been stressed about it. We just have to convince the filmmaker.” He studied the clear plastic DVD case. “Danny Hellerman.”

“Let’s call him right now! Before other people see it!”

“I’ll see if he can meet tonight.”

“That’s too late!”

“Okay, Train Wreck. I think you’re being a little dramatic. The official festival screenings start tomorrow. No one is going to see it before then.”

“You don’t understand!” Marjorie reached over and picked up Gus’s iPad from a wooden side table, her shirt riding up. She yanked it back down, but not before catching Gus watching her. She pulled up the festival’s site and clicked through to the film’s profile page. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Gus, the filmmaker isn’t Hasidic, but he’s Orthodox. Look, he’s wearing a yarmulke in the photo.”

“So?”

“So it’s Friday, and if we don’t speak to him before sundown, we’re not going to be able to get to him until tomorrow night, and by then everyone will have seen it.”

Gus considered that. “You’re right.”

“Would you mind repeating that?”

“There’s a luncheon today for the out-of-towners. I’ll call Benny and tell him we’re coming.” Gus stood and opened the door to the suite. “Ladies first.”

Marjorie grabbed her bag and slid past, within an inch of him; his chest rose and fell. In the doorway, she paused and looked up, as he looked down at her, their eyes meeting. A weightless sensation worked its way from the tips of her fingers to her toes, stealing her breath. A long second passed, as they stood, frozen.

He cleared his throat, his voice thick, “I guess we should go.”

She nodded and walked out. She felt strange, unbalanced. In the car, sitting beside Gus, she texted Mac:

Hey. Just thinking about you.

He responded right away:

Wish you were here, wearing a pair of my socks and nothing else.

You’re a strange one, O’Shea.

When are you gonna move in with me already, Madgesty?

Just like that, a tidal wave of anxiety crashed over Marjorie. Her mind tumbled over her choices—which felt epic though they should have been simple—and the brackish tsunami grew fiercer, flooding her bloodstream with debris and threatening her feeble rationality. What was wrong with her? She was getting what she wanted! Her throat constricted, her knee thumped against the glove compartment door. She pulled at her fringed scarf. She was trapped in this car, in this strange city, in her body.

At a red light, she felt Gus glance over, as if he could sense her unease. He noted her pallor, the way she white-knuckled her phone but typed nothing.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m—fine.”

“You sure?” She managed a nod. “Because you look like you’re freaking out.”

“I’m probably—it’s just low blood sugar.” Her voice sounded hoarse.

Gus considered her for a beat, not buying it. “Okay. I’ll pull over at that gas station and get you peanuts or something. That helps, right?”

Not being hypoglycemic, Marjorie had no clue whether peanuts “helped.” She was confident they wouldn’t solve her current problem. “That’s okay. We’re going to lunch. I can make it.”

The light turned green and the beat-up metallic blue Mitsubishi Galant in front of them glided forward, setting a snail’s pace for traffic.

“Look, Marjorie, I saw you panic like this at the party, remember? On the off chance that this is anxiety, maybe take some deep breaths? Inhale for a count of five and then exhale for the same, a few times.”

Marjorie didn’t bother protesting. She took a first uneven breath in and exhaled, then repeated that over again. She wasn’t cured, but she felt calmer, maybe just by virtue of his understanding.

“It’s biofeedback,” Gus explained. “It slows down your heart rate, stops the adrenaline from intensifying.”

She took a few more breaths. “Why do you know about this?”

He shrugged. “My mom. She has these attacks, way worse than yours. She has fears that get in the way of her living her life.”

“Oh. That’s terrible. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Gus looked at Marjorie with earnest concern. “Oh no, no. That won’t happen to you. She’s a wonderful person, but with real problems. She can’t see the world clearly. You’re fine. Just in flux. Happens to the best of us. I once went to the hospital in college for chest pains: I-don’t-want-to-be-a-lawyer syndrome.”

Gus was a private person. Marjorie understood how unnatural it must be for him to confide in her.
This is a car, this is Gus, someone who I trust to take care of me, this is a safe place.
She felt the floodwaters draw back, crisis averted. For now.

“Do you know what triggered this?”

“No,” she lied.

“Maybe it’s this lunch? Your first big filmmaker meeting? Don’t worry. You’ll be great.”

She nodded, amused by the idea that she would panic in anticipation of meeting a fledgling filmmaker. As a PR person, she’d defused diva designers and actors, bipolar event planners, and anal Fortune 500 CEOs and their heavily drugged spouses.

Mac texted again:

Hello? Bueller? Were you kidnapped by Russ?

She bit her lip and typed:

Gotta run, ok? Off to film fest. Call you tonight.

Look at you, Jet Set. Ok. Later

Within ten minutes (an LA miracle!), Marjorie and Gus arrived at the tiered garage at the Sunset Boulevard festival location, at the intersection of Denial and Subtext.

They pulled into a narrow spot, delineated by fat yellow lines. Stepping out of the car, Marjorie was sturdier on her feet than she expected. It was a clear day, blue skies, little smog. Through the gap in the cement guardrails, she could see the city laid out before her. Embedded in hills was the Hollywood sign, spotted with tufts of brush. They started down the steps to the building’s entrance.

The lobby was abuzz. Organizers and staff wore laminated badges that dangled around their necks from red lanyards. Many were baby-faced college kids with telltale slept-on hair and USC and Cal Arts sweatshirts. Their focused expressions—as they unpacked and stacked schedules, brochures, and promotional postcards on folding tables—demonstrated a commitment that far outweighed the task. Perhaps creating an attractive display of complimentary pens would ensure their futures as studio executives or filmmakers! Their overseers looked unimpressed and worried, as they were every year, that the event would not resolve itself in time.

“That’s it. I’m going to be fired,” said a gangly male organizer in tortoiseshell glasses, raising a backhand to his forehead in despair. “It’s the Omaha Horror Festival for me.”

“I’d—
They’d
be lost without you,” promised his squat female coworker.

Marjorie and Gus were directed to a carpeted banquet hall, where a lunch buffet included everything from gluten-free, veggie wraps to kosher hot dogs and fruit salad, a step above the East Coast honeydew, grapes, and cantaloupe norm. Metal buckets held tropical neuro drinks, advertised to improve brain function—an event sponsor. Rushing attendees would imbibe these in place of water over the next days, so much that the flavors would become sense memory, tasting of the festival itself.

Benny introduced a pretty woman of ambiguous ethnicity, whom he described as his “counterpart, Kayla.” They shook hands.

“I understand you’re interested in meeting Danny Hellerman?”