“So no more threesomes?” said Lillian. “You onto other stuff now? Bondage? Strap-ons? Cosplay?”
I swirled my wine. One night the previous week, I’d come home to a bleach-clean apartment and Michael in an apron standing over the stove. He’d set the table with our good wedding flatware. Candles were lit. A spray of wildflowers filled a vase.
I should not have been surprised. Michael gave me gifts all the time and planned date nights: reservations at trendy new restaurants, third-row seats to see Alvin Ailey at BAM. He meant well, I knew, but I often found myself inflamed at his presumptions. For example: that I would ever wear a floral-print, off-the-shoulder romper; that, after a long day at work, I’d be in the mood to leave the house.
Cooking and cleaning, however, were welcome. He made pan-fried sole in a brown butter sauce. The fish was flaky and moist. We moved to the couch where we drank Côtes du Rhône and listened to records. Michael rubbed my feet. After my second glass of wine, I was convinced to take his arm and practice the waltz we’d learned years ago for our wedding. The waltz seemed like a metaphor. To move as a unit. To create a momentum that would carry us through each other’s mistakes.
The next day we had bedbugs.
I hadn’t told Lillian about that either. Displaying uncharacteristic tact, she hadn’t asked about my face. I think she considered the body a safe space. She refused to acknowledge its betrayals.
“I love making you uncomfortable,” said Lillian. “It’s too easy. I’m sorry. It’s funny to me to watch you squirm. Is that wrong? I should be nicer, right? I’m your boss. I could fire you. Maybe I’ll fire you right now. Ha-ha. Have you noticed that people say ha-ha these days instead of laughing? What’s that about?”
I changed the subject.
“Tell me about Project Pinky,” I said. “Fill me in. There must be more to the story.”
“You ever watch that cartoon show, Pinky and the Brain?”
I told her I’d seen it. I had a proper childhood, cereal and Saturday morning TV. My mother sat beside me and sketched in a notebook. It’s one of my strongest memories. Not anything we said, but the ease of her pose, the piney bouquet of her men’s deodorant. She found the cartoons amusing. Even as a kid, I was more interested in commercials.
“What aw we going to do today, Bwain?” said Lillian, imitating the cartoon rat.
“Today, Pinky,” she continued, now doing Brain’s voice, an operatic tenor, “we are going to take over the world.”
“Sure,” I said.
“That’s the plan, anyway, world domination. I’m not sure how, or why, or what it means, but the money’s real, and for some reason we’ve been tapped for this project. I’m guessing that reason is discretion. They could have any of the big agencies with the kind of contract they’re promising: Ogilvy, Precocious Baby, whoever.”
The client had floated a figure, enough to put us in the black for the coming year. We were a boutique service with a solid reputation, but even during our strongest quarters we spent nearly as much as we made. Precocious Baby had copied our business model and amassed a larger network of freelancers.
“They want to go small. They want someone who knows how to keep their mouth shut. The meeting I had was in a motel on Brighton Beach. At first I thought it was a joke. Then I saw the shoes. I met with a young guy. His shoes, dude. The leather could have been the scrotum on a newborn foal.”
I did my best not to visibly recoil.
“The ten grand came in cash in a fucking briefcase. Could be mafia or Russian mafia, but I don’t think so. The guy was too white. Something sketchy is going on and I want us to be part of it. We get this account and we’ll make a killing. They sent me home in a limo. A motel in Brighton Beach and I’m sent home in a limo.”
“Mysterious.”
Lillian relit the roach.
“There’s another thing. They asked about you.”
“Me?”
The sun was all but gone now, and the air was cooler. I wished I’d thought to bring a sweater.
“You specifically. They said the contract depended on your full availability. I told them no problemo, of course. I guess your reputation precedes you.”
“I have a reputation?”
“You were bang-up on Samsung. Brought them back from the brink. I know you’re being headhunted left and right.”
There had been offers, none I’d considered. I did think about leaving, but not for another agency. Instead, I imagined launching a startup in the Social Impact space, using my skills to do good. But I was comfortable at Communitiv.ly. For years I’d refused direct deposit because I loved receiving an envelope on my desk every other Friday morning. I loved waiting in line at the bank and holding the envelope. I loved handing the check to the teller.
Like most beneficiaries of a bat mitzvah savings account, I had a complex relationship with wealth. On one side was guilt, a dumbbell in the pit of my stomach. My paternal grandfather came through Ellis Island with only a toolbox. He quite literally built his modest empire from brick and mortar, erecting low-income housing on the Lower East Side. I built a wall as well, around the dumbbell. If there’s one thing Manhattan private schools are good for, it’s reminding the children of New Money Jews that, in the grand scheme of savings and loans, they’re relatively deprived. I had classmates who owned helicopters, houses on Mustique.
Then my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Treatment gave her two years. I wouldn’t trade that time, difficult as it was. I spent long hours in her hospital rooms, doing schoolwork and watching trashy TV. My father was there too: pacing, opening and closing the window, staring at his coffee. He took an open-ended leave from work to be at her bedside. Insurance covered certain costs, but treatment was expensive, as was hospice later on. We had no income during that period. When she died, my father was essentially broke.
The personification of money has always made sense to me: money does this, money does that. It’s as if it has legs. It might, at any moment, leave. This is one reason I didn’t pursue writing. In my Advanced Nonfiction workshop, our professor warned against nurturing a fallback plan. He said the problem with a fallback plan is that you’ll fall back. My classmates nodded and wrote this down. Personally, I liked the idea of falling back. I pictured myself in one of those summer camp trust exercises, plummet disrupted by a bed of hands.
“I get it,” said Lillian. “Puma was boring, and you’re sick of explaining Pim-Pam to geriatric CEOs. I am too, Wen. But this client is different. They’re interesting. I don’t know what they are. But as I said, the money’s real. This works out and from now on everything’s pickles and cream if you catch my meaning.”
“I don’t.”