The Nest(55)
Cheryl (who’d introduced herself as a human capital consultant, getting the first snicker of the morning from Stephanie and her longtime assistant, Pilar) was leading them through the second icebreaker of the morning. The first had not gone well. It was the old classic, Two Truths and a Lie. Stephanie’d endured it on several previous occasions, conferences and meetings, when everyone had to stand in front of the room and read three statements about themselves: two that were true, one a lie, and the rest of the group had to guess which was which. Stephanie always used the same three.
I was in an Academy Award–winning movie. (True. When she was seventeen, she’d worked for a caterer in Queens that provided craft services for the cast and crew of Goodfellas. She noticed Scorsese staring at her from beneath his Panama hat one day as she dumped an enormous bag of lettuce onto a white plastic platter. She smiled at him. He walked over, grabbed four oatmeal cookies from the table, and said, “Wanna be in a movie?” He sent her off to hair and makeup and used her as an extra for the Copacabana scene. Eight takes, all in one day. She stood for hours, tottering on high heels and wearing a tight gold lamé dress and black mink stole, her hair teased into a mile-high twist. It was her red hair that Scorsese liked; he put her front and center in the shot where Ray Liotta guides Lorraine Bracco down the stairs to their table.)
I can butcher a pig. (True. She spent one summer in high school at her uncle’s farm in Vermont. She’d had a summer fling with the son of a local butcher and had spent her afternoons sitting on a metal stool watching his shoulder blades glide beneath his white coat, transfixed by how he could deftly break down a glistening side of beef or pork. He showed her how to slice along the fat line, spatchcock a chicken, separate a pork shoulder into butt and shank. They’d drive around town at night in his truck and drink Wild Turkey from tiny flowered Dixie cups, park near the pond, and touch each other until they were dizzy. She’d bring his substantial hands to her face and inhale, smells she still associated with heady New England nights: Castile soap and pennies, the coppery scent of animal blood.)
I was born in Dublin, Ireland. (Lie. She was born in Bayside, Queens, but between her hair and brownish-greenish eyes she looked like she could have been.) Nobody ever guessed Ireland was the lie; they always went for the pig.
The first participant that morning to stand in front of the room and read his truths and lie was a new hire from the Interactive Group. A gaunt twenty-something, wearing a vintage-looking cardigan and Clark Kent eyeglasses that magnified his smudged eyeliner. He had a tattoo of a squid down his left forearm. He stood, stoop shouldered, and introduced himself.
“Hey. I’m Gideon and okay, well, here goes.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and read from the paper on the table in front of him in a quick, even monotone.
“I nearly died from overdosing on pills. I nearly died from bleeding out. I nearly died from autoerotic asphyxiation.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cheryl jumped up, waving both hands before anyone had a chance to respond. “Thank you, Gideon, for your candor.” She paused for a beat. “But I guess I should have spelled out the guidelines a little more clearly. We want you to reveal something interesting about yourself, but nothing quite that personal in nature and, please, everybody, nothing sexual. Think professional.”
“Sorry,” Gideon had said, shrugging idly. “Clinical depression and suicidal ideation are more common than most people realize, and they’re both a really important part of who I am.”
“I understand.” Cheryl kept a smile affixed to the lower half of her face. “We’re just going for something a little lighter here.”
“The lie was autoerotic asphyxiation,” he’d added. “FYI.”
STEPHANIE OPENED HER MOLESKINE and tried to tune out the rest of the room as Cheryl asked for someone to read their four words. She started making a list of things she needed for dinner.
“You said not to self-edit,” an amiable guy spoke from the other end of the table, “so this is what I’ve got: Fat. Happy. Golfer. Husband.”
Her cell phone, sitting on the table in front of her, started to vibrate. Without even looking at the number, she waved at Cheryl. I have to take this, she mouthed and left the room as quietly as she could. Relief.
She looked down at the incoming ID: Beatrice Plumb.
Standing in the hallway outside the meeting room, Stephanie was surprised to find how happy she was to hear Bea’s voice. She’d begged off the phone quickly, telling Bea she wanted to talk but was in a meeting (true) and couldn’t stay on the phone (true) and that, yes, Leo had mentioned something about new work but they’d both been incredibly busy and maybe they’d talk about it tonight (lie).
Bea sounded so anxious that Stephanie found herself feeling protective, maternal almost. She didn’t know if Leo had read Bea’s stuff; she doubted it, but she could ask. She briefly wondered why Bea had handed the pages to Leo and not her, but then again—they probably weren’t new pages, they were probably old pages that she was passing off as new and Leo wouldn’t know the difference. Stephanie would remind Leo to read them, and she would help him come up with something to say to Bea, something nice and noncommittal. She’d put it on her list.
Back in the conference room Gideon was up again, this time reading his four words (musician, pessimist, wizard, Democrat). A slight wave of nausea roiled her stomach; she sipped the lemon water she’d brought into the meeting. She was going to have to eat something soon.