How to Be a Grown-up (8 page)

Boy, did I get it.

The next afternoon, holding my completed deck, I took a spot in the line forming outside Taylor’s office behind the guy who directed the Savor vertical. I’d assumed it was about artisanal PB&J until I saw him compiling Deepak meditations. How
were
toddlers remembering their spirits?

I texted with Jessica while the other directors and I shuffled forward in DMV-like increments.

“There was a time I’d have brought in doughnuts to make everyone here love me.”

“There was a time when my boss asking me to get ‘noisier’ would have given me a panic attack,”
she texted back.
“Now I just ignore him.”

I checked to see if I’d somehow missed something from Blake. I hadn’t. I was restraining myself from jumping up and down like Yosemite Sam.

“I’m wai-ting,” I heard Taylor.

“You guys are fast,” I said as I tucked my phone in my pocket.

“Our viewers are faster.” Taylor was perched on the front of her desk, a stripe of purple panties visible between her legs. She crossed them, leaving a patent heel dangling. Kimmy sat in Taylor’s desk chair like a king who’d just lost the war. The combined tableaux conjured that iconic photo of Larry Flynt and his stripper girlfriend—the one played by Courtney Love—back in the hot minute we wanted to look like her.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Kimmy.

“It’s moved into my ears.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” I looked for somewhere to prop my Halloween storyboard, but my only option was Taylor’s desk.

“What’s that?” she asked, jumping up as if it’d bitten her.

“My deck.” I flipped back the velum to show them the spread. “Ranked as requested. The numbers next to each item show the uniques it’s getting at its current points of sale.”

“Where’s the final?”

“The final?”

“First of all.” Taylor slapped her palm on the board. “No. This format is just—no. Second, JeuneBug is not about decorations. Decorations flag ‘temporary.’ We want the consumer who’s going to commit. And, third, anyone can go to Party City.”

I took a breath. “This is an $8,000 skeleton made from Tahitian lava. They don’t sell those at Party City, Taylor. They don’t even sell them in North America.”

Taylor flared her surgically adjusted nostrils and stared hard at me. “Your vertical is
Be
. How is our JeuneBug consumer going to
live
Halloween in its most luxurious, exclusive, unprecedented incarnation?” I still had no idea what she wanted. I suspected she didn’t entirely either. “I think we just need to decide this never happened. I mean, we’re seeing a lot of shit, but this is—”

“Yeah,” Kimmy summarized.

I was speechless. The worst? Really? Worse than the guy who sucked a lollipop ring? “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, but I’m just not following.”

“No, that’s
exactly
what you’re doing. You know who she is?” Taylor asked Kimmy.

Kimmy nodded. “The gopher.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“In school, on the project. Everyone has their role, the skill they bring to the assignment. But there’s always the gopher. That guy who lies low, makes all the coffee runs, and then shares the grade.”

“Let me be clear,” I strained. “I am not phoning this in. If you want my proposal in a different format, or would prefer not to use a party setup, both are easily addressed.”

“We’re going live in a week, Rory. We don’t have the bandwidth to babysit. And let
me
be clear: I’m not putting to market what’s already fucking out there. If that’s all you know how to do, I feel sorry for you. I seriously do. Next!”

Stunned, I walked back to my desk, eyes going to Merrill, who had her windbreaker tented over her head. Making sad kitten sounds, she felt for a napkin to blow her nose, then took the flash drive sitting by her laptop and flung it across the room.

No one else had presented a board. No one else had even gone in with paper.

I made it seem as if I was stepping out for coffee, which turned into walking the twenty blocks home. I needed to think—away from the low din of everyone’s headphones. I didn’t know which was making my heart pound more: the fact that they’d talked to me like I was an asshole—or feeling like one.

But I also knew what I fucking knew. Successful interiors, even in editorial, are perfectly calibrated advancements on the current aesthetic. Who on earth would want to live Halloween? But then I’d been in enough homes to realize that somewhere out there was someone who wanted to live just about everything.

I just needed to lie on my bathroom floor and hyperventilate. Really quick, then I’d get right back out there. I turned onto our block—and that’s when I spotted Blake walking out of our building.

The first time we’d ever spoken, I’d been sent behind the theater to paint props and unexpectedly rounded into him running lines by himself. Despite the frigid November temperature, all I had on was a rayon sack dress and come-hither Doc Martens. He offered me his down vest.

He was one of the first guys from New York City I’d met, so I couldn’t have known that his bundling was not unique. I’d come from a town where teenagers denied the interminable winters, where local boys postured in open jackets and sleet-filled Jordans. Their ears tingeing purple, they looked as comfortable as pop stars lip-synching through chattering teeth in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Not only do City Boys zip up their coats; they own hats, plural. They pull up hoods. They layer. They even wear their backpacks strapped onto both shoulders. I mistook this preparedness as confidence, an ability to face things as they were. In truth, it was just a necessity from growing up without a car. As with the other cool things I assumed Blake invented (e.g., the Urban Outfitters Look Book), I wouldn’t be able to contextualize that aspect of his appeal for years.

Now there he was, under our awning, hooking his Oakleys, a souvenir from
The Bourne Ultimatum
, into his collar. He slung a bulging duffel over his shoulder and turned his prized ten-speed in the opposite direction.

“Blake?” I called and then, “Blake?!”

He stopped but didn’t turn around. I ran after him, my mules slapping the pavement. “What the fuck?” I panted, catching up. “When did you get home? Where are you going? Why haven’t you called me back?!”

“They wrapped my part early.” He regripped his handlebars, his hair in his eyes. “I’m going to crash at Jack’s.”

“Crash?” I was shaking. “This isn’t college, Blake. Real shit is going down. You need to call Richard and apologize—”

“No,” he said with such force it propelled me back. “I didn’t fire Richard, Rory. He fired me.”

“What?”

“He just doesn’t see it picking up.” He brushed the sidewalk with the tow of his Converse. In his absence, Blake had become a caricature of himself, his feelings oafish. But now I saw he was as terrified as I was.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

He pursed his lips, looking away. From five floors above, our home seemed to be watching us. I imagined the rooms slipping into a Havisham-esque decay as we failed them, the idea of us that I cherished receding. Suddenly Living Halloween clicked. “Blake, please. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t deal with this in front of me. This is
our
problem,
our
life. What if we got someone to help us sort this out?”

His head dipped in a concessionary nod.

“Really?” I leaned forward to catch his eyes. “You’d be up for that?” I loved those eyes, had loved them since I taped them over my bed in seventh grade.

“Sure.”

I took a few steps closer. Our faces almost touching. “Please, Blake, just come upstairs. The kids miss you so much.” I reached out, my fingertips touching his bare arm, making contact for all of a second before he withdrew.

“I’m trying to get a lot of things straight in my head. I’m no good for them to be around right now, Rory. I’m sorry.” And he kicked his leg over the bike and propelled himself down the block. Away from me.

Chapter Six

I called Jessica the second I got up to the apartment.

“Oh, God, are you separating?” she asked.

“No!” I said vehemently. I took a breath. It was a fair question. “No,” I added, my conviction returning. “He’s just—he’s put himself in Think Time.”

“Oh.”

“It’s so painful for him to face that—wow—I guess . . . his acting career is over.” I slid against the cabinets down to the kitchen floor. I knew that my wanting him to repair the relationship with his agent was inconsistent, but right now he had one way to make money—one—and maybe I was as scared as he was to let go. “I think he needs the conversation to be facilitated by a professional.”

“So he’s going to see a therapist? That’s great.”

I held the can of coffee beans I could no longer figure out how to turn into a beverage. “No, we are. I have to find someone who can help us talk about this transition productively. Or, you know, at all.”

“Good for you.”

“And in the meantime, I’m just going to keep telling myself he’s away on location.”

“Right.”

“Jess?” I asked quietly.

“Yes?”

“Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh?”

“I’m sneaking out to come hug you right now, Rory.”

“Right now I have to find a therapist who takes insurance and figure out if the Children of the Corn took a nap, what their crib would look like. Rain check on that hug, but thank you.”

“You’re my hero,” she said. “Okay, going to post more pictures of puppies spooning with babies.”

By the end of the afternoon, therapists had quoted me enough three-figure hourly rates that I had to actively restrain myself from calling Blake and saying,
“Really? You can’t sit down with me and have this conversation like a normal person? Because for the same price we could fly to Europe.”
Forget the other Grown-Up Careers I fantasized my kids would pursue; it was now couples counseling or bust.

And back to The Hills Have Eyelet coverlets.

When I got into work the next morning I stopped by Taylor’s office to find her with her chin resting on her desk like my parents’ retriever begging for scraps. Her arms extended in a diamond shape, she held her phone in front of her while she typed.