I light up. For a brief, uncomfortable moment, I am still before I reach over and thump her on the back. “You know, you’re doing good work in there,” I tell her. “I probably don’t say that enough. I definitely should say it more with you.”
Cate’s shoulders sag. She puts her hands to her face, her knuckles red and knobby. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve just been feeling really bad about my stuff lately. Like, what else can I do? I don’t do anything but work, you know? I apply to fellowships and I send stuff out to contests, but nothing sticks. It feels like screaming into a void. You know?”
“I know.”
She sniffles. Points to my cigarettes. I slide them over to her. She picks one out and lights up, takes the shy, wincing drag of a nonsmoker. “It makes me feel like shit,” she says, “not being able to be happy for Marlon and Luke. They’re my friends. I should be able to be happy for them, but I can’t. I applied for the Hollingsworth this year, too. And I didn’t get it. Why not me? I’m talented, too. I work just as hard. Right?”
“You’re right,” I say. “You are just as good. It is true.”
She wipes her nose with the crook of her wrist, cigarette cocked up and out in a spidery gesture that suddenly reminds me of Mel. What did Mel and I do, when we were rejected for the Hollingsworth, NEA, NEH, whatever? Went out and got hammered. Bought one of every weird Middle Eastern candy bar at that bodega that kept live chickens in the back, and made each other finish every bite. Held our own private Ren & Stimpy marathons. We kept each other upright, kept each other working. I was lucky, I realize. Luckier than I ever really knew. From age eighteen on, I had a partner, a kindred spirit. I had a friend. Someone bound and determined to keep me from the worst in myself. Someone to keep me from doing what Cate is doing right now. In a roomful of guys who have already partnered up, formed alliances, Cate is alone.
She continues, “My ex-boyfriend just got this huge contract with Marvel. They’re calling him a phenom. And he’s totally mediocre, Sharon. I know that sounds mean. But even he knows it’s true. He’s not worth the money they gave him. I just wish I could stop feeling so bad. I want to stop wanting these things I can’t have. And I wish I were more excited about what I’m working on. It deserves excitement. It deserves, you know. Love. Attention. It deserves to feel as important as it is.”
I put my arms around her and pull her in. She is tiny. A Midwestern girl, probably, perpetually underweight as a kid, with parents who worry about her all the time, even in their sleep. A nurse and a claims adjuster, I imagine. I place them in Kansas. Maybe Missouri.
She huddles into me, shivering. “What do I do?” she says. “I’m getting knocked out so much, I feel like I’m bleeding.”
I tell Cate what I know: That she’s good. That she’s going to get even better. I could tell her that she’s actually better than Luke and Marlon, and when Marlon leaves to take a higher-paying gig at Nickelodeon in a couple of months, he won’t really be missed. But I don’t. I tell her that the little things that break her down, day after day, don’t matter, because she draws like an absolute bastard and because she is in love with this thing that we do. Because it keeps her alive. Because she is the truest version of herself when she does it. The work will always be with you, will come back to you if it leaves, and you will return to it to find that you have, in fact, gotten better, gotten sharper. It happens to you while you are asleep inside. The world in which we work is a place where no one is a ghost, a world in which the potential for anything walks and breathes, alive. And this is reason enough to have faith. To keep going. I tell her, I know what I am talking about.
At six-thirty I clear out, wordlessly holding my hand up in the air as I walk toward the elevator. “Where you goin, boss,” Marlon yells.
“Home.”
“You don’t work late?” he says. “Nothing secret holed up in your office? No Irrefutable Love sequels?”
“Nah.”
Dave shifts in his chair, pushes his glasses up his nose. “What do you do at night?” he says, shy. This is what they talk about, I realize. They wonder about me. If I work on anything anymore.
I smile at Dave. “I plant my ass on the couch and eat a bag of Funyuns. Good evening, gentlemen. Lady.” I nod at Cate and walk out the door.
Danny’s working late. I’ve got our apartment to myself. I’ve put my old drafting board and stool in the mudroom at the rear of our apartment, a hopeful gesture. It comforts me to know that it is there, my station. Ready for me when I’m ready for it.