Aftermath of Dreaming(119)
Driving away from Greeley’s, or Greedy’s as I now think of them, I don’t know if I should be elated or crushed. I’ve heard stories from other designers about the department stores playing hardball, I just never thought it would be this hard. Why didn’t Greeley’s mark the damn jewelry down in a July Fourth sale? Because this way, I realize, they don’t lose a dime, the crooks. It’s like some terrible wedding contract where the man can keep switching brides under his same vows until he hits upon one he decides to like.
All right, this is the reality of playing in this league, so get a game plan. For this order to be ready for the late-September delivery that Linda wants, I’ll have to buy the rest of the materials tomorrow and immediately get them into production, which means that in thirty days I’ll have to pay Dipen and the vendors with no money coming in, so I am looking at being in the red with a checking account that is sliding to zero. Fuck. I’ll have to sell all of the pieces they are shipping back, plus get some commissions fast, if I want to pay my bills. I’ll call Rox, and if she doesn’t want it, I’ll hit every shop on every boulevard where there are boutiques. Something will come up. I hope.
Andrew and I talk pretty frequently when he is in his car or at his office behind a closed door. Small moments that bind us are etched out of the day, a separate time away from the rest of our lives. But it isn’t enough. A hole has been opened in me, a huge gaping desire that bellows and yells from the moment I wake up and continues through my day and into my sleep where, when I’m not screaming, I’m dreaming of him. Being with him, seeing him. Him, him, him. The phone calls we have quench it while making it worse. The days that he doesn’t call—I can’t call him because of his “situation,” there’s a euphemism—drag on and on like some dreadful boot camp where if I just live through the next grueling task, then release will come in the form of his voice on the line, but it never does. Until he calls the next day and I am able to breathe again, but it’s all I can do not to say, “I have to see you right now. I am going to die if I don’t. Get over here.” Instead I ask as casually as I can if he can come over, and the answer is always the same. He wants to and will try, but things are crazy right now, then his voice goes down deep inside me to exactly where I want him to be and he talks to me there and I talk to him from there and it’s like he’s with me and I’m with him and we are together in this perfect place created by our voices that are one and moving together, moving with each other until he and us and this is the only reality there is and it takes over my entire body.
“Broken, Reggie. Probably in transit because it looks like the goddamn salesclerks just threw my jewelry into a box and sent it off. They wrap socks better than this.” I am in my living room with the phone cradled against my shoulder as I look through the boxes that just arrived from Greeley’s. “Okay, some of the pieces have bubble wrap around them, but not all. It’s a f*cking mess. I want to kill these stupid people.”
“Call that Linda woman and yell.”
“Oh, God, I can’t do that. This is like the Mafia I’m dealing with. You play by their rules or they cut you out. I’ve asked around, and all the department stores are like this with small, individual vendors. It’s their retail world; we just want to sell in it.” I sit on the floor with my back against the couch in the middle of boxes and invoices and bubble wrap and jewelry that is whole and jewelry that is broken.
“Fuck that. Don’t let them have your stuff anymore.”
“That’s really not a solution. It’s like…Look, you’re letting someone else direct your script even though that was your dream because you’d rather see it on the big screen than only on your computer.” I automatically look out the window to be comforted by the tree, but am confronted with its brutalized form, so I quickly turn away. “It’s the price of doing business with these people.” I pull out a single pearl earring from the bottom of a box; its match is nowhere near. “Oh, good Christ, one of the pearls even looks pocked—is this insane?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Throw myself off a cliff. No, I’ll try to sell the pieces that are okay and reuse the broken ones. Melt down the gold; put the gems in other things. You know, move on.”
Spending all day going in and out of boutiques on Robertson Boulevard to show them my jewelry reminds me of going around to art galleries years ago in New York City. Cold-calling sucked then and still does. It is the first week of September, and all the managers have told me that they already have their fall inventory; can I come back in January? I want to blow everything off and drive up to Andrew’s office, tell his assistant that I have an appointment, he wouldn’t say no, walk in, get on his desk, and dive into Andrew-sex-oblivion. Oh, God do I want to do that. I need to do that. He called last night about eleven, and it was like all those times years ago when my phone ringing at that hour meant the coast was clear, Stephanie and her fabulous self had left, and I could go up to his house and crawl into bed with him. For a second last night, I thought I would see him because it felt so much like it had been, us connected and seeing each other all the time, but he had to go home.
I almost close my eyes as I walk down the sidewalk on Robertson because thinking of Andrew makes me lose myself in its deliciousness, but I need to get back on track. I’ll get a bite to eat, and drive out to Santa Monica. Maybe the stores there in true beach fashion are more relaxed in their ordering.