Stephanie crossed out literary agent and in its place wrote reader, which was more accurate anyway, describing what she was supposed to be doing all day but never actually had time to do until the evenings or weekends. She was a little stung that she’d written single, was surprised to see it emerge from the spongy ooze of her uncaffeinated subconscious. It had been four days since she surreptitiously switched the coffee beans to decaf (Leo hadn’t even noticed), and she still felt groggy, as if her brain stayed at half-mast for most of the morning. But single was not how she ever thought of herself. She considered her list again, thought about erasing single and replacing it with something else (New Yorker? Foodie? Gardener?), but that would be cheating and everyone else at the table seemed to be finished.
Stephanie very much wanted this day to end, the first of three infuriating, obligatory days of employee orientation. The corporation she’d sold her agency to, a behemoth of entertainment representation—film, television, music—headquartered in Los Angeles and wanting a literary presence for their New York office, insisted on the training. She knew this was just the first of many irritations she would have to endure after running her own office with the beloved, if quirky, group of employees she’d worked with for so long. She was trying to be patient, but this was bullshit—days of icebreakers, group dynamics, and sexual harassment seminars. What did any of this have to do with her or her employees? They already knew how to work together, and they worked together well because each and every one had been handpicked by Stephanie for their specific intellectual gifts, for their discerning taste and, most important, for their ability to work with her.
Cheryl (who’d introduced herself as a human capital consultant, getting the first snicker of the morning from Stephanie and her longtime assistant, Pilar) was leading them through the second icebreaker of the morning. The first had not gone well. It was the old classic, Two Truths and a Lie. Stephanie’d endured it on several previous occasions, conferences and meetings, when everyone had to stand in front of the room and read three statements about themselves: two that were true, one a lie, and the rest of the group had to guess which was which. Stephanie always used the same three.
I was in an Academy Award–winning movie. (True. When she was seventeen, she’d worked for a caterer in Queens that provided craft services for the cast and crew of Goodfellas. She noticed Scorsese staring at her from beneath his Panama hat one day as she dumped an enormous bag of lettuce onto a white plastic platter. She smiled at him. He walked over, grabbed four oatmeal cookies from the table, and said, “Wanna be in a movie?” He sent her off to hair and makeup and used her as an extra for the Copacabana scene. Eight takes, all in one day. She stood for hours, tottering on high heels and wearing a tight gold lamé dress and black mink stole, her hair teased into a mile-high twist. It was her red hair that Scorsese liked; he put her front and center in the shot where Ray Liotta guides Lorraine Bracco down the stairs to their table.)
I can butcher a pig. (True. She spent one summer in high school at her uncle’s farm in Vermont. She’d had a summer fling with the son of a local butcher and had spent her afternoons sitting on a metal stool watching his shoulder blades glide beneath his white coat, transfixed by how he could deftly break down a glistening side of beef or pork. He showed her how to slice along the fat line, spatchcock a chicken, separate a pork shoulder into butt and shank. They’d drive around town at night in his truck and drink Wild Turkey from tiny flowered Dixie cups, park near the pond, and touch each other until they were dizzy. She’d bring his substantial hands to her face and inhale, smells she still associated with heady New England nights: Castile soap and pennies, the coppery scent of animal blood.)
I was born in Dublin, Ireland. (Lie. She was born in Bayside, Queens, but between her hair and brownish-greenish eyes she looked like she could have been.) Nobody ever guessed Ireland was the lie; they always went for the pig.
The first participant that morning to stand in front of the room and read his truths and lie was a new hire from the Interactive Group. A gaunt twenty-something, wearing a vintage-looking cardigan and Clark Kent eyeglasses that magnified his smudged eyeliner. He had a tattoo of a squid down his left forearm. He stood, stoop shouldered, and introduced himself.
“Hey. I’m Gideon and okay, well, here goes.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and read from the paper on the table in front of him in a quick, even monotone.
“I nearly died from overdosing on pills. I nearly died from bleeding out. I nearly died from autoerotic asphyxiation.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cheryl jumped up, waving both hands before anyone had a chance to respond. “Thank you, Gideon, for your candor.” She paused for a beat. “But I guess I should have spelled out the guidelines a little more clearly. We want you to reveal something interesting about yourself, but nothing quite that personal in nature and, please, everybody, nothing sexual. Think professional.”
“Sorry,” Gideon had said, shrugging idly. “Clinical depression and suicidal ideation are more common than most people realize, and they’re both a really important part of who I am.”
“I understand.” Cheryl kept a smile affixed to the lower half of her face. “We’re just going for something a little lighter here.”
“The lie was autoerotic asphyxiation,” he’d added. “FYI.”