The Animators(126)

I am bone-rattlingly, eye-wateringly envious at first, can feel the dry clutch of loss in my throat as I walk down Broadway to the R train. I try not to think about what I’m missing, try not to remember what it felt like to anticipate the blossoming of an idea. Instead I tell myself to savor the smaller dependables: getting in out of the cold into our warm, safe apartment. Spending an evening with Danny. Cooking a particularly complex soup. I try to appreciate the feeling of neutrality: a quiet, grateful life.

In stride with General Malaise’s Civil War setting, and as my private metaphor for leadership, I put Stonewall Jackson’s farewell quote to Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville on the office bulletin board: “SO GREAT IS MY CONFIDENCE IN GENERAL LEE THAT I AM WILLING TO FOLLOW HIM BLINDFOLDED.”

Then I post a Mathew Brady print of Richmond, Virginia, gutted at the Siege of Petersburg, after which General Lee fled, right underneath.

“There’s something there,” I tell the team. “That’s the end of season two or three. Lee on the run. Maybe pantless. Probably pantless.”

“It’s weird to walk in and see that every day,” Dave says.

“You’re not wrong,” I tell him.

I like spying on them from my office. Dave and Jay are Fart types, big, stolid guys with quick fingers and absolute ease with new CGI programs that resemble NORAD control boards. They don’t work with each other, are not partners, but they are friends. I watch them leave together and return together every day at lunch; once, coming back from the Duane Reade around the corner, I see them walking out of the basement of an Episcopal church. An NA meeting.

Marlon and Luke, on the other hand, are partners. Marlon’s the asshole of the pair, the dandy who buys clothes he can’t afford and toys with girls way out of his league. Luke’s the nerd, the super-studio sketch stud, quiet with stony, solid resolve; skills that will get him hired anywhere he wants later on. Luke puts the ideas to paper. Marlon yells out the scenarios, flapping his hands, pecking on his iPhone, always dancing a little. It’s not until I see them in action that my old ghost, the one that always whispered about the weight of Mel’s talent throwing mine off the scales again and again, is finally put to rest. My God, we were a real team, I think.

Marlon and Luke are on the same side of the room as Cate, facing my office, and they talk more to each other than to her, who doesn’t say much at all. She is delicate and milky, seeming to disappear into her down coat when winter arrives. It’s obvious she works; her work is written all over her body. For hours at a stretch, only the top of her head, dark blond and bent forward in concentration, is visible, occasionally tilting to the left or right to work out a crick in the neck, a single solitary arm coming north to push the sleeve back and reveal her hazardously thin wrists. As the months progress, she wears support cuffs on both. I think of the host of the San Francisco party, his Disney lawsuit, the way he clawed his hands at us. Once or twice I see her eyes come up, above the board, to look at me. When I look back, she ducks down like she’s been shot.

Marlon and Luke have a project in the works and they’re deep into it. They go out for Taco Bell and forty-ouncers of Colt 45 before they start in on the night shift.

They’re weirdly shy about whatever they’re doing. I run into them in the elevator at eight-thirty one morning, fresh from bagels and cigarettes. They have clearly not slept. “You gentlemen look like shit,” I tell them.

They giggle. “Yeah,” Marlon says, “we were working on something way urgent.”

I raise my eyebrows politely. “Were you.”

“It’s early stages,” Luke says quickly, wagging his hands. Marlon shuts up, obedient. Luke gives me a small, pensive smile. “We’re still kind of figuring stuff out.”

“I got you,” I say, and we step out onto the floor. I turn toward my office. “That’s exciting. Let me know if I can help.”

They don’t need my help, as it turns out. They land a Hollingsworth. They are the new wunderkinds, come from out of nowhere. I give them big hugs, tell them I’m springing for pizzas. Search myself for useful advice I could pass along to them.

“Don’t have a stroke,” I tell them. “Or try not to.”

The room is loud with chatter and backslapping—someone has put the press release from the Hollingsworth website up on the projector—and I am the only one to spot Cate out on the balcony, tugging her coat around her shoulders. I slip out into the cold without anyone noticing, pull the door shut behind me. I’m wearing a cardigan I reserve only for work, hanging it on the back of my door at night when I go home. A pack of American Spirits is tucked into the pocket; Danny and I “quit smoking” together. Meaning that now I only smoke at work, out on this little balcony, sometimes with my drafters, sometimes alone.

Cate’s shoulders are hunched. She turns slightly to hide the fact that she is crying. “Hey,” I say. “Is it okay if I—” I pull out my smokes.

“No,” she says. “Go ahead.”

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?”