7
Back at home, I creep up our creaky stairs, letting myself in as quietly as I can so I don’t disturb everybody, but then I remember that it’s just me and Dan in the house since Jane is at work tonight. I take my shoes off in the living room anyway so I don’t disturb the neighbors downstairs, and pad through the kitchen, hovering at Dan’s door for a minute. I put my ear against it, curious to see if he’s still up. I hope he is. I’m not ready to go to sleep yet. I want to share my news.
As if he can hear my thoughts, the door swings open, and I jump back just in time to avoid being smacked in the face.
But it isn’t Dan. There, in a tortoiseshell headband and the pink terry-cloth robe with the green ribbon trim that’s always hanging on the back of Dan’s bathroom door, is Everett.
She lets out a gasp.
“Oh, my gosh!” she says, putting her hand over her heart, and for a moment I think she might actually faint.
“Sorry, it’s just me,” I say, trying not to look like someone whose ear was just touching her bedroom door.
I’m smiling at Everett, but my heart sinks. I must have missed her Chanel bag in its usual place on the dining room table. It’s made of navy-blue quilted leather and has a gold chain instead of a strap, and she told me once it was a college graduation gift from her parents. She usually leaves it out on the table, and she always lays one of our cloth napkins underneath it. I’m fascinated by the bag, because to my knowledge it’s the single most expensive item I’ve ever seen up close, but the napkin thing always bothers me, as if she’s implying our housekeeping isn’t quite up to her standards.
Still, Everett’s perfectly nice, and I want her to feel welcome here. She has an apartment in Manhattan, and she almost never stays here in Brooklyn since she has to be at work in the city so early every day.
“Sorry,” I say again. “Did I wake you guys up?”
“Heavens, no,” Everett says. “Dan sleeps like the dead, but I have an important meeting tomorrow, and I’ve barely shut my eyes. Will you have some tea with me?”
I don’t really drink tea, and didn’t realize we had any in our mostly empty cupboard. Everett was clearly the one who bought the foreign-looking red tin canister, which she brings down from one of the upper kitchen shelves. It’s fascinating to watch her scoop out the loose tea and pour the hot water out of the kettle. I’m mesmerized by her easy way with the awkward-looking spoon-shaped strainer that holds the tiny leaves, and by the diamond engagement ring that glitters on her hand. I wonder if she ever takes it off, and if it has a napkin it rests on at night, too.
“Milk or lemon?” she asks.
“Um, milk, I guess?”
Everett and I are the same age, but something about the formal way she does everything makes me sit up straighter on the sofa, as if I’m at the house of an older relative instead of in my own living room in Brooklyn.
“So, Franny.” She dips her headband down over her eyes and flips it back to its home behind her ears, smoothing a nonexistent stray hair off of her forehead. “How is the whole acting thing going?”
I’m not sure how to explain it to Everett in a way I think she’ll understand. What do I say? “Oh, fine, thanks, today was great, but it doesn’t take away my general fear that I’m not now nor will I ever be good enough.”
“Oh, fine, thanks.”
There’s a silence as we both sip our tea.
“My whole family just went to see The Phantom of the Opera,” Everett says. “Have you seen it?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful. So magical! There’s a giant chandelier that appears right out of the sky. We just loved it.”
I imagine being in the cast of that show and having to listen to people talk about the chandelier as their favorite part. I don’t know how to respond. Then I remember that Everett said she had a meeting the next day.
“I, ah, just found out tonight actually, that I’m going to have some meetings with agents,” I say, trying to bridge the gap.
“Oh, meetings!” she says, like some people might say, “Oh, ice cream!” Or, “Oh, free diamonds!”
“Yep. I’m going to have two of them, actually. Two meetings.”
“Ahhh. Two meetings? For your work? Is that … that’s positive, right?”
“Yes, I—I just got the callbacks, the ah, meetings, tonight. They still have to be set up, though.”
Everett nods but looks concerned, as if she’s suspicious of having meetings with no date attached.
“It’s so hard, isn’t it?” she says, sighing and shaking her head sadly.
“It is hard, I guess. Well, I mean, which part do you mean is hard?”
Everett looks up at the ceiling as if she just noticed it existed, and blinks her large brown eyes at it a few times. Her profile is sharp, her whole body a series of angles that have somehow, improbably, folded themselves on their hinges into the soft chair. There’s something so regal and linear about her. I can’t imagine her ever collapsing into giggles or crying hysterically. She’s taking her time to consider what to say next, in a way that suggests she’s used to people waiting for her. I wonder what that’s like, to never worry about filling the silence. Her eyes eventually float back to me.
“Well, it’s this. Between us girls, when I listen to you, I think about Dan, too, and frankly, I worry. I know he works hard, as hard as if he had a real job, but, how do you know? How can you tell if anything will ever come of it? How can you endure the waiting for someone else to, well, recognize you? How can you stand the not knowing?”
“I don’t know, actually. You just do it, I guess. There isn’t another choice but to wait and see, as long as you can take it.”
“But how do you know when it’s time to give up? I mean, in Dan’s case, no one is telling him no, exactly, and like I said, I know he works hard, but no one’s saying yes either. It’s all sort of a, a vacuum, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It can be, I guess.” Everett isn’t saying anything I haven’t thought before, but there’s something so depressing in her description, something less than comforting in her attempt to be understanding.
“In my work,” Everett says, “in mergers and amalgamations, we’re seeing a real boom. LBOs are still the cornerstone of the business, obviously, but the increase in global capital flows is translating to even more revenue. It’s an exciting time. And there’s real security there. We work hard, and there’s a measurable gain, or, yes, occasionally, a loss, but at the end of the day, win or lose, we can all look at the same numbers and acknowledge we’ve accomplished something. It’s real, you know what I mean?”
I nod vigorously, to show her I agree, but honestly, Everett’s world doesn’t sound like a more measurable one than mine at all, and the closest I can come to picturing what she’s talking about is imagining numbers dancing around gaily on a computer screen while giant piles of cartoon cash rain down from the ceiling at the end of each day. My mind began to wander somewhere around “LBOs.”
Everett is leaning forward now, cheeks flushed, and I’m trying to focus on the point she’s making, yet I’m distracted by her diamond ring and how it catches the light, and her freshly manicured nails. They’re so perfectly even, shiny and buffed. Or is that a gloss? Does nail polish come in the color of natural nail, or is that a clear color, and the skin under her nails just happens to be exceptionally pink? Is hers a style where you’re supposed to look like you’re wearing nail polish, or like you aren’t? Does she use the same color on her toes, or does she go with something bolder? Is it classier in her world to match your fingernail color to your toe color, or would that be considered tacky?
“He really does, you know?” Everett is saying.
Shit. I’ve completely lost the thread of the conversation. I have no idea what she’s asking me. “Sorry, who does what now?”
“Dan. He thinks you’re really talented.”
“He does?”
“Yes. I guess you did a, some kind of television commercial? And he saw you in something on Theatre Row, I think it was, just after he moved in. Is that Off Broadway, or, sorry, is that Broadway? You played two parts: a psychiatrist and something else, a French housekeeper?”
“A cockney maid. It was just a two-night thing. Not really even off Broadway. Very Off Broadway, I guess.”
“Yes! That’s it. He always talks about how he didn’t recognize you as the maid character at first, because the two were so different. He was impressed. So there you go. One fan and counting!”
Everett seems pleased with herself, as though she’s given me the gift of my very first fan, as if I have a jar somewhere to put them all in, and when it’s full I’ll be a legitimate object of the public’s affection.
“Well. Thanks for keeping me company,” she says, setting down her teacup with a delicate little clink. “This was a hoot. I’ve been dying to get to know you girls better. You’re such good friends to my Dan. I’ll leave you my number at the office. Maybe if you’re in the neighborhood sometime we could schedule a lunch.”
I smile in agreement, although I’m distracted by her use of “a” in association with “lunch.” Is “a” lunch what corporate people have, leaving the rest of us stuck with regular old “lunch”?
“It’s so funny,” Everett sighs, as she unfolds herself out of the chair. “When Dan and I met at Princeton, he was pre-med. He was on a real path. But then he gave it all up, for this. I suppose we have to get these things out of our system, right? Like cutting one’s hair too short on a whim, or backpacking through Europe?”
The lights have been out in Frank’s apartment for hours. I should have fallen asleep by now, but I’m wide-awake. I’ve played the details of the Showcase over and over but for some reason, my thoughts have now wandered to trying to picture Dan and Everett in bed together. It’s something I can’t really imagine for some reason, no matter how hard I try. It’s the headband—I’m having trouble picturing Everett without her tortoiseshell headband. I keep seeing her, still wearing it, getting into bed with him, snuggling up to him, whispering “I love you” in the dark. And maybe Dan wakes up a little and turns over and whispers “I love you” back to me.
An ambulance passes by outside, siren blaring, and my eyes fly open.
To her, I mean. He whispers “I love you” back to her.
Even though no one knows what I’ve been thinking, my face burns. I don’t know why I’m having a silly twisted fantasy of wearing someone else’s headband and being told I’m loved by a person I don’t even think of that way, who’s totally wrong for me. I think maybe I’m missing Clark.
Maybe I’ll finally call him back tomorrow to tell him the good news. He left that message awhile ago but I keep putting off calling him, for some reason. Maybe I should wait just a little longer. Maybe he’d feel worse to hear the story of my little triumph—to hear that in some measurable way I might be inching closer to my goal here, which might mean moving farther away from him.
I’ll wait, I think to myself, and for once, instead of the ever-present worry about my deadline bearing down on me, hurtling toward me, ever shrinking, I allow myself a luxurious thought:
I’ve still got time.