“You will.”
“I do actually have an idea for someplace interesting to apply,” she said with surprising coyness.
“Tell me.”
“No. Not yet. It probably won’t become anything, and I have to find out first. But anyway,” she said, directly into the camera, “even if you become an asshole, and even if I become this sanctimonious person, we’ll be doing it in front of each other, for each other. Finally. And doesn’t that count for something?”
He didn’t answer right away. She looked at him hard, and he could swear she seemed to know everything about everything he had ever done, all that was good and all that was shameful. For a second he almost wished the Skype connection would blink out briefly, the way it sometimes did in the middle of an important moment. But it stayed strong, and Greer just smiled at him and placed a single finger on the screen, most likely in the exact place where his mouth was.
PART TWO
Twin Rocket Ships
FOUR
She had come down by bus, staying awake and sitting up straight the whole time so she didn’t inadvertently fall asleep and crease her clothes and face, winding up looking the way she imagined her parents had looked back on the school bus before she was born. She needed to look uncreased and responsible now, like someone who should be hired to work at this modest feminist magazine that had survived long past its peak. Someone who should be hired to work for Faith Frank.
Greer had told very few people about the interview, but even fewer knew that she didn’t really love Bloomer. Though it had started out in life as a tough little readable magazine, after almost forty years it was somewhat soft, and had a hard time competing with blogs such as Fem Fatale, which had shifted away from personal essays and was embracing a radical critique of racism, sexism, capitalism, and homophobia. Recently Fem Fatale had run a cartoon of Amelia Bloomer wearing the bloomers associated with her name, which had words on them that read, “Bloomer magazine,” and in a dialogue bubble she was saying, “Time to give another pep talk to straight white middle-class women.” Fem Fatale’s staff was young, and from their offices in a former candy factory in Seattle they wrote about and organized around issues like queer rights, trans rights, and reproductive justice. Bloomer tried, too, but while the editorial staff was pretty diverse, and diversity was among the topics frequently covered, there was a formal, slightly uneasy quality to the magazine. It hadn’t made a graceful leap forward. Even its website was slightly grainy and sleepy.
Bloomer’s offices were now located in a small commercial building in the far West Thirties. As Greer walked down the narrow hall she could hear the whinny of the dental drill behind the door of a Dr. L. Ragni, DDS. Across the hall she buzzed at the door of Bloomer, but no one answered, so she stood waiting. She coughed, as if that might help, and watched as someone approached Dr. L. Ragni’s door and was buzzed in at once. It was a bright spring workday in New York City, and for whatever reason, no one was answering the door at Bloomer.
Greer turned the knob, but the door was locked. Then she banged, but still no one appeared. She was confused, but more than that the lack of response made her realize how much she really wanted a job there, and that if she didn’t get one she would be very disappointed. Faith Frank had seemed to offer something unusual in the gray light of a ladies’ room three and a half years earlier, so now Greer stood for too long knocking on a door in this hall of dental offices and actuaries and startups. She knew there were people behind the Bloomer door; she could hear them moving around and talking. It was like when you heard mice behind your wall but couldn’t find a way to get to them.
That past Wednesday, Greer had nervously called the number on Faith Frank’s business card, which had spent all of college in a slot in her wallet. During the occasional wallet purges that took place during times of great boredom, the card had always made the cut. Whenever she’d seen it, she’d remembered the night it had been given to her, and she would feel a specific excited and highly alert feeling.
In recent weeks, Greer had been sending various applications to nonprofits, but had received only one interview at an organization that disseminated a lifesaving nutritional supplement in developing countries in Africa. That interview, which took place over Skype, didn’t go well. She had no background for this kind of work, and the pediatrician interviewing her kept being called away, leaving her to sit awkwardly in front of the empty screen for minutes at a time, staring at a poster on his wall of a dying child in her mother’s arms.
Finally, after all the conversations in the dorm about starting out in the world and choosing a particular field, Greer thought to apply for a job at Faith Frank’s magazine. It would be meaningful work where she could use her writing skills. During the day she would essentially be paid to be a feminist, and at night she could work on her own writing. Zee agreed that it was worth trying. “It would be a good fit for you. Me, I’m so bad at anything having to do with the written word,” Zee added. “Which is a shame, because it would be great to work for Faith Frank.”
Greer had explained to the person who answered the phone at Bloomer where and when she’d met Faith. Somehow the next day she had gotten a call back, and the assistant had said, “Faith remembers you.” These words were so startling. Greer didn’t know how it was possible that Faith Frank remembered her after three and a half years, but she actually did.
Now that no one was answering the door at Bloomer, it all seemed like an elaborate, sad prank. Finally, after far too long a time, the door was wrenched open by a young woman who looked at Greer and rudely said, “Yes?”
“I have a job interview with Faith Frank.”
“Well, that’s a shame.”
“Sorry?”
The woman just turned and walked into the warren of offices, past the unoccupied reception desk. In the distance a couple of women clustered in a hallway. Greer looked for Faith, but she didn’t see her. There was something so very wrong here. The unfriendly person at the door, the knot of employees, the atmosphere of loss and worry and shock. Then the cluster of women split in half, so it was like curtains parting, and between the halves Greer got a straight-shot view of a small office at the end of the short hallway, its door open. Inside two women were embracing. One of them was patting the other one on the back. The woman doing the comforting, it was now revealed, was Faith Frank. She was the one they all looked toward in this upsetting moment.
“Did someone die?” Greer asked a middle-aged woman who stood nearby.
The woman regarded her evenly. “Yes. Amelia Bloomer,” she said. When Greer kept looking at her, uncomprehending, the woman explained, “We’re folding. Cormer Publishing is pulling the plug once and for all. Happy deathday to us.”
“Sorry,” was all Greer could say. Her first thought, much to her shame later on, wasn’t about what this meant for the mission of the magazine, or its staff, but what it meant for her.