The Animators(24)

I look over at Mel. Mouth, Who the fuck is Johnny Seven-Figures?

Glynnis turns to me, and in the bright, loud voice of someone changing the subject: “Your name is quite the draw, Sharon.”

For fuck’s sake. How many times do we have to go through this. I grind my molars. “It’s. Scottish.”

“It’s awesome, is what it is,” Mel says. “I spent two hundred bucks changing my name legally from Melody to Mel and she gets to be Sharon Kisses for free.”

“I wish I could change it,” I mutter.

Mel chortles. “She’ll never change it. It gets her tail. Men shit when they hear the name Sharon Kisses. For serious.”

Mel’s voice dips, goes hoarse. She’s Drunk Mel now. Glynnis pushed her by talking up that goddamn Salon story. Now she’s acting out. Overcompensating. When Mel feels sad—and right now it strikes me that Mel is, in fact, very, very sad, and has been this whole summer—she tries to make up for it by manufacturing joy. I was a moron to hope there was any way of walking into this pretending to be sober.

Glynnis gives a nervous titter. My hand wraps around the microphone perched in front of me. I try to see if I can lift it. It’s nailed down.

Mel slaps my knee. “It’s cool. I got my demons, too. When my mom got knocked up with me, she was real dandy to do a DIY abort job because she was too cheap to go to the clinic, right? And she heard somewhere that an excess of vitamin C could kill a baby in utero. So she took a metric butt-ton of C, like orange juice injections straight up the cooter. As an adult? I almost never get sick. True story. Almost made it into the movie, that bit. But it just ended up making sweet, sweet love to the cutting room floor.”

She’s throttling her microphone now, too. I can see it loosening off the dash, unknowingly making purchase while she talks.

“It’s true,” Mel says. “It’s near impossible to overdose on vitamin C. You just end up shitting it out.”

Glynnis nearly chokes.

“Try that with other vitamins. Vitamin D? You’ll end up with a giant purple eye. Vitamin A? Testicles like pumpkins. But C? Just sluices on through, babe. Like me.”

Mel leans over the table and the microphone rips from the dash. There’s a spark, that electrical spit of a device cutting out. The sound engineer jumps up, waving his arms.

Mel says, “Crap.”

Glynnis freezes. Looks at me. And for the first time in the interview, I laugh. I laugh, and I don’t know what it means or where it’s coming from. But for once, I’m not forcing it.

“Oh ho,” Glynnis says. “You two. I think we’ll wrap it up here.”

—

I don’t talk on the elevator. The silence trails us out onto Sixth Avenue.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” Mel says. “She liked us. Aside from the broken mic. Why are you so moody all of a sudden?”

“My interpretation of a good interview is one where you don’t talk about how much tail I do or don’t get.”

“I was trying to guide her away from that stupid Salon article because I was sick of talking about it. It’s called a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny. No one thought it was funny.”

“Well, congratulations. You’ve finally kicked your sense of humor into submission.”

We go underground. I lead us silently to the Brooklyn-bound track. The news has been threatening a heat wave all week. The air presses down on us. We wait.

“All right,” Mel says. “Fine. Don’t talk.” She walks to the edge of the platform, leans out to look for headlights. Jingles the change in her pockets. Finally tugs her Moleskine from her bag and kneels down. The picture spools out quick and dark: an enormous Hispanic lady in a muumuu. I glance down the platform. The lady is there, flapping a copy of The Watchtower at her face, unaware that Mel is drawing her.

Mel rears back, takes a long look at what she’s done. Retouches something small at the top. I look over. Little men dressed as bank robbers run from the lady’s ear. The lady stares dead-eyed into space. Below her, in bubble letters:


DER.



Mel scratches it out. Tries again:


DURRRR.



I unclench my jaw long enough to say, “Why didn’t you back me up when she said that thing about me being an enigma? About what kind of stake I had in this? What the fuck was that?”

“She wanted to know more about you because you are interesting, Sharon,” she says. “Not that you make that easy for anyone.”

“We’re supposed to be a team. You would have remembered that if you hadn’t walked into NPR so fucked up your blood alcohol level could have powered a commercial jet.”

She snorts. “If your writing was that colorful, I wouldn’t have to live and die in the studio every day.” Her mouth clamps down in regret as soon as she says it.

“I’m sorry. This, coming from someone who hasn’t worked a day in two months?”

She lifts her arms, lets them fall to her sides. “The studio’s not the most welcoming place right now. There’s not much I can say to you that doesn’t piss you off. I can’t win. This is why people don’t get married.”

“This is why people like you don’t get married.”

“Well, hell’s bells. I could have told you that.” She’s standing now, pale and sweaty. I can see cracks in her lips.