Cleopatra and Frankenstein(45)

*

To hell with it. I’m relieved to leave LA, that sinkhole of creative ambition masquerading as an industry town. At least in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, the first question posed isn’t always “TV or film?,” like getting asked “Still or sparkling?” at a restaurant.

*

I’m being shown around the office by Jacky, the creative director’s assistant. She’s in her fifties, with a pouf of blond hair and large blue eyes, lined, disconcertingly, in more blue. Jacky is like a poodle in that her fluffy exterior belies a keen and cunning intelligence.

“No,” she says when she sees where I’m sitting. “Nu-uh. We’re not keeping you here.” She leans over the desk and taps numbers into a phone with practiced efficiency. “Raoul? Hi hon, it’s Jacky. I’m going to need you to help me move a new hire. We have her at the wrong desk. Yup, see you in a few. Thanks, gorgeous.”

She hangs up and turns to me.

“Is there something wrong with this desk?” I ask.

“You’re our only female writer,” she says. “And an actual adult. You’re not sitting in the boondocks with the interns.”

*

The only object on my new desk when I arrive is a mug that says “Always do what you love.” It goes straight into a drawer.

*

My mother is picking fresh mint from the garden for tea when I get home. Her mugs have different bird species painted onto them. Her favorite is the goldfinch. She gives me the red cardinal. She only gives the blackbird to people she doesn’t like.

*

We kill an evening watching Sing Your Heart Out, a singing competition that seems to demand that the singers have endured a life hardship ranging from the very bad (a dead parent or leukemia) to the kind of sad (a dead grandparent or hoarding) to the really stretching it (a dead pet or mono). The contestants take turns tearfully recounting their stories in front of a wall advertising an energy drink.

“What song would you sing?” asks my mother.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Something about being a woman? You?”

“Oh, some sexy pop song,” she says. “Really give ’em a show.”

*

My mother’s living room has two sofas, the eating couch and the visitor’s couch. An essay I wrote about nature in the fifth grade hangs on the wall. She said she knew I was a sensitive child when she read the first line: “The park is a place of exquisite beauty and extreme danger.”

*

I watch the car headlights stripe the ceiling and try to make a list of everything I want to do with the rest of my life. I get to number three, “Find my rollerblades,” before the rain starts plucking at the roof and I give myself over to sleep.

*

One downside of my upgraded desk is that I now sit next to an editor named Myke. Myke is tall and sandy-haired with a pale, boneless face. He looks like soft serve. He has a miniature basketball hoop above his desk next to a picture of the Karate Kid.

“You meet the creative director yet?” he asks before asking my name.

“Not yet,” I say.

“He’s the best,” he says. “He got drunk at our last holiday party and started giving out hundred-dollar bills. Last year we shot an air freshener ad in Tokyo and he bared his ass to the whole of Shibuya Crossing from a Starbucks window because he lost a bet. All these Japanese people were freaking out.”

“And yet, amazingly, the glass ceiling still exists,” I say.

Myke rolls his eyes and wheels his chair away from my desk. “It’s not because he’s a man he did that stuff,” he says. “It’s because he was drunk.”

*

My brother Levi calls from upstate to tell me he got a new job at the hot food counter of the local supermarket. Levi plays experimental jazz and still lives in the same town he went to college in. It has a gas station and four churches. He shares a house with a litter of his bandmates and his girlfriend, who may or may not have been homeless before they got together. He told me that the only thing she owned when he met her was an industrial-grade hair dryer.

“Congratulations on your job at the food counter, Levi,” I say.

“Hot food counter,” he says.

*

Before I left LA, I started a script about two parasites, Scrip and Scrap, who live in a junk heap at the end of the world. When I close my eyes, I see colorful mountains of trash, skeletal sofas, strollers covered with moss, pigeon-winged books, twisted condom wrappers, crushed paint cans, smashed computers, moldy bedspreads, burned-out TV sets … It’s a kid’s show, I think. Or maybe a comedy. A kid’s comedy. It’s called Human Garbage.

*

I find Jacky making coffee in the office kitchen. She is dressed a bit like a Palm Springs realtor from the 1980s, all sunset hues and shoulder pads.

“So, where were you before this?” she asks. “Another agency?”

I tell her about the clairvoyant cat show, leaving out the part about my ignominious departure.

“My sister has three cats,” says Jacky.

“Any of them clairvoyant?” I ask.

“Not that I know of.” She laughs. “I don’t get the appeal of any animal that shits in a box.”

“More of a dog person?” I ask.

“Dolphin person,” says Jacky.

*