The exhilaration she felt in leaving quickly hardened to panic as she found herself trudging along the dark road that led back to the center of the town. What had taken minutes on the bike would take close to an hour on foot, she realized. The white balustrade glowed in the darkness. Along the side of the road, banks of lavender filled the air with their purple fragrance. A pair of headlights appeared ahead; Cleo steeled herself against its glare. Her heart hammered. It could be anyone. No one would know if they stopped and pulled her into the back. The car was just ahead. She clenched her fists and walked. An assault of bright lights, then darkness. It whipped past without slowing down.
Her breath was shallow. The lights from the top of town seemed no closer. It was interminable, unbearable. She thought about laying down amid the lavender to sleep until it was light. But it was chilly and damp in that part of the country at night; in the mornings the lemon trees’ leaves were covered in cool drops of dew that burned away in the sun. Another car was winding toward her. A new thrum of fear in her chest. It slowed as it approached her. She was pinned in the twin beams of its headlights, rigid with fear. A dark head appeared from the back window.
Frank’s curly hair was silhouetted against the purple hillside. Frank’s voice was calling her name. And then she was running toward the lights, and the door was flinging open with the taxi still moving and Frank was stumbling out toward her, and she catapulted herself into his arms, and his lips were pressing hot and quick against her face, her ears, her hair, because it was a miracle, against all the odds he had found her here on this dark patch of road, and now everything else was forgotten, forgiven, all that mattered was that he was here, holding her close against his familiar chest, and she knew what it was to be a miracle.
Later, as they lay naked in each other’s arms, the mosquito net breathing softly around them, Cleo turned to his profile.
“Frankenstein,” she said, tracing his nose with her finger.
“Cleopatra,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
“From the dive? Not a scratch.”
“No, I meant … Generally.”
He turned to face her.
“I’m just stressed about work. We’re over budget for the year already, and I’m being forced to hire this new copywriter because she’s a woman—”
“I wasn’t asking about work.”
“Then what?”
“Never mind.”
She turned to flick off the bedside lamp.
“Why did you take that bet?” she asked in the darkness.
Frank pulled her closer.
“The story, Cley,” he said. “It’s a damn good story.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
October
Miraculously, I have a new job. It’s a freelance gig at an ad agency as a copywriter. My contract is for three months, with the option to extend. They call this “temp to perm.” I love this phrase. Not only is it palindrome adjacent, it is extremely useful. All situations in life fall into one of these two categories. For example, the fact you are thirty-seven years old and currently live with your mother in New Jersey, I remind myself, is temp. But the shape of your chin is, sadly, perm.
*
Until recently I was living in LA, working in the writer’s room of a show about a clairvoyant cat, but due to creative differences I made my departure. In fact, I was departed. The exact words they used were “invited to leave.” Not even the cat saw it coming.
*
To hell with it. I’m relieved to leave LA, that sinkhole of creative ambition masquerading as an industry town. At least in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the first question posed isn’t always “TV or film?,” like getting asked “Still or sparkling?” at a restaurant.
*
I’m being shown around the office by Jacky, the creative director’s assistant. She’s in her fifties, with a pouf of blond hair and large blue eyes, lined, disconcertingly, in more blue. Jacky is like a poodle in that her fluffy exterior belies a keen and cunning intelligence.
“No,” she says when she sees where I’m sitting. “Nu-uh. We’re not keeping you here.” She leans over the desk and taps numbers into a phone with practiced efficiency. “Raoul? Hi hon, it’s Jacky. I’m going to need you to help me move a new hire. We have her at the wrong desk. Yup, see you in a few. Thanks, gorgeous.”
She hangs up and turns to me.
“Is there something wrong with this desk?” I ask.
“You’re our only female writer,” she says. “And an actual adult. You’re not sitting in the boondocks with the interns.”
*
The only object on my new desk when I arrive is a mug that says “Always do what you love.” It goes straight into a drawer.
*
My mother is picking fresh mint from the garden for tea when I get home. Her mugs have different bird species painted onto them. Her favorite is the goldfinch. She gives me the red cardinal. She only gives the blackbird to people she doesn’t like.
*
We kill an evening watching Sing Your Heart Out, a singing competition that seems to demand that the singers have endured a life hardship ranging from the very bad (a dead parent or leukemia) to the kind of sad (a dead grandparent or hoarding) to the really stretching it (a dead pet or mono). The contestants take turns tearfully recounting their stories in front of a wall advertising an energy drink.
“What song would you sing?” asks my mother.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Something about being a woman? You?”
“Oh, some sexy pop song,” she says. “Really give ’em a show.”
*
My mother’s living room has two sofas, the eating couch and the visitor’s couch. An essay I wrote about nature in the fifth grade hangs on the wall. She said she knew I was a sensitive child when she read the first line: “The park is a place of exquisite beauty and extreme danger.”
*
I watch the car headlights stripe the ceiling and try to make a list of everything I want to do with the rest of my life. I get to number three, “Find my rollerblades,” before the rain starts plucking at the roof and I give myself over to sleep.
*
One downside of my upgraded desk is that I now sit next to an editor named Myke. Myke is tall and sandy-haired with a pale, boneless face. He looks like soft serve. He has a miniature basketball hoop above his desk next to a picture of the Karate Kid.
“You meet the creative director yet?” he asks before asking my name.
“Not yet,” I say.
“He’s the best,” he says. “He got drunk at our last holiday party and started giving out hundred-dollar bills. Last year we shot an air freshener ad in Tokyo and he bared his ass to the whole of Shibuya Crossing from a Starbucks window because he lost a bet. All these Japanese people were freaking out.”
“And yet, amazingly, the glass ceiling still exists,” I say.
Myke rolls his eyes and wheels his chair away from my desk. “It’s not because he’s a man he did that stuff,” he says. “It’s because he was drunk.”
*
My brother Levi calls from upstate to tell me he got a new job at the hot food counter of the local supermarket. Levi plays experimental jazz and still lives in the same town he went to college in. It has a gas station and four churches. He shares a house with a litter of his bandmates and his girlfriend, who may or may not have been homeless before they got together. He told me that the only thing she owned when he met her was an industrial-grade hair dryer.
“Congratulations on your job at the food counter, Levi,” I say.
“Hot food counter,” he says.