The Vibrant Years(54)
“Well, I want them to appreciate my looks too, and it’s not just my brain but who I am. The things I like to do, the way I feel about things, the way I treat people, what makes me laugh. So my looks, my brain, and who my particular combination of those things makes me.”
“Okay, so then a man who . . .” Cullie trailed off.
Complete silence. There was no possible way to quantify any of that.
Again Mom broke the silence. “We’re going to have to start with something a little more tangible to come up with this RIP thing.”
“Let’s break it down,” Cullie said, and turned to Binji. “What are the things that you’re happiest doing? What are the things you’d rather die than do?”
Binji nodded. “When am I happiest? Well, this, now, being with you two. Being able to tell you both how I feel but also knowing how you feel. Talking. Really talking. But also shooting the breeze and saying nothing of importance.”
Cullie typed furiously as Binji talked. “What else? Hobbies? Why do you love your films so much?”
“Because I can lie on my couch and escape. Become other people, travel to other places, other times. But also lose myself in the art of it. Especially in old films. Films from simpler times, when less happened in a scene but it pushed harder. Where you had no escape from it. Where everything wasn’t moving, and you could focus on the characters, fall into them—what they were thinking, what their eyes and bodies were trying to tell you.” Her gaze went fuzzy; she was inside those films, lost. “I like to cook but not when someone asks me to,” she went on. “I like to dress but not when there are expectations attached to how I should look.”
Cullie had the urge to apologize: for not knowing these things, for all the countless times Binji had cooked for them.
“So, having your opinion valued. Being taken care of,” Mom recapped.
Binji seemed to be unable to stop, as though a dam had broken. “A man who cooks for me and listens to what I have to say instead of writing sonnets to what he sees when he looks at me. Maybe?”
Cullie’s fingers went wild typing. When Mom opened her mouth to say something, she made a grunting sound to stop her.
“I think I might have a list,” Cullie said after a few minutes of running a search across the hidden data in the top three apps. “I used a sliding scale for some of the things you said. It’s very, very nascent and minimal, but look at these matches now.”
They studied the matches. Mostly men who wanted to take care of others but also seemed to value independence in others. The expected stereotypes: nurses, doctors, chefs. But also men in construction and technology.
Finally, Binji settled on a fifty-seven-year-old chef who proclaimed himself busy and looking for someone who valued her own time and liked being pampered as much as she liked to do the pampering. Also someone who valued the planet and was passionate about reversing the damage humans had done to it. Someone who wished for a simpler time.
Binji grinned, back in her element. “I think I might be in love with him just based on his profile.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ALY
Every time they humiliated her, called her a thief, laughed at the way she pronounced a word, she raised that determined chin and gathered it up into the fire she had inside her. Then she used it when the cameras turned on to burn them all down.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
That was really good, Aly!” Praise from Joyce landed on Aly as it always did. Like droplets landing in the dry well that was Aly’s need for approval.
Aly knew she was not lacking in love. Cullie, Bindu, Radha: that love was deep and solid. Then why she’d let herself turn Joyce into the echoes of her mother, she had no idea. Why did human beings need love from where they wanted it rather than from where they were getting it?
Aly thanked Joyce. She’d reported on a frog farm that a family was cultivating in their backyard. The family’s dog had almost taken a chunk out of Aly’s calf, but other than that it had been as mundane a story as a reporter could find. It was, in fact, the nth in a line of mundane stories Joyce had been assigning to her.
Punishment for putting her in a corner with Meryl? Who knew. But if this was the price for getting in that interviewer’s chair, she’d pay it.
After Aly had tried to be okay with letting the interview go, Cullie and Bindu were so disappointed in her for even considering it that she was unable to do it. So she’d written a show plan so perfect, even Joyce had been unable to do her usual This is nice, but Jess will get more eyes on your work.
Not only were Aly’s production notes impeccable as ever, but she’d taken extra care to make sure her interview questions were based on her deep understanding of Meryl’s work—something neither Bob nor Jess could claim. Then she’d straight-out begged Joyce to let her do the interview. Joyce hadn’t said yes. But she hadn’t said no either. It helped that Joyce had not been able to make contact with Meryl’s team for the interview.
The pride Aly felt at fighting for it bordered on sinful, but she wasn’t Karen Menezes, so she reveled in it. The idea of letting someone else use her hard work yet again made her sick to her stomach.
This time she had Joyce by her Meryl-loving ta-tas. Joyce had been “working through things with the sponsors” for weeks while Aly waited patiently, because it was a concession she’d never before made.