The heavily grated door buzzed, and Dan pushed it open. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants as he mounted the stairs in front of him. Already he could see the glare of office lights, hear the tap, tap, tap of computer keyboards, the hum of fax machines, photocopiers, and printers, and the steady murmur of voices talking on the phone. He reached the top stair and surveyed the open-plan office, full of strange heads bent over desks, talking on the phone and looking busy, busy, busy. Bisecting the white walls was a thin, horizontal red line, making it look like the large room had been wrapped with red ribbon. When he squinted, though, Dan could see that the line was made up of thousands of tiny words painted in red. He wondered what it said, but in order to get close enough he'd have to lean over someone's desk, and he didn't want to be rude.
He waited for someone to greet him and show him around—someone there must have buzzed him in, after all—but no one seemed to notice him.
Even in his fancy new suit?
He shifted from foot to foot and cleared his throat noisily. Nothing.
“Um,” he spoke to the guy sitting nearest him. The guy had dark, slicked-back hair and was wearing a crisp white shirt with French cuffs tucked into neatly pressed black trousers that were probably made by Armani or Gucci or something. There were four unopened minibottles of San Pellegrino mineral water lined up on the desk in front of him. “I'm here to see Siegfried Castle,” Dan told him.
The guy looked up and squinted at Dan. “Pourquoi?”
Dan frowned. Couldn't the guy just speak English?
“Because I'm his new intern?”
The guy stood up. “And I ham your new boss.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Siegfried Castle. Call me Sig—no, actzuelly, I zink you must call me sir.”
Dan wasn't sure how to handle the palm-up scenario. Boldly he put his hand on top of Siegfried Castle's and turned it around, shaking it up and down like a normal person would.
Siegfried Castle grimaced and removed his hand. “You're a poet, no?”
Dan nodded, his eyes shifting nervously to the other people in the office. They were all looking up now, examining him coldly. He noticed now that everyone else had those little green bottles of San Pellegrino lined up on their desks, too.
And they were all dressed in black and white, just like Mr. Castle. Dan felt like a freak in his light blue shirt and gray suit. “Yes. I had a poem in the Valentine's Day issue of The New Yorker last month. Maybe you saw it? It's called ‘Sluts.’”
Siegfried Castle didn't seem to hear him, and Dan wondered if there was some sort of rivalry between Red Letter and The New Yorker. Maybe he'd committed a horrible faux pas by mentioning the competition. “Now. I show you my out box. My in box. My files. Show you the slush pile. Show you the photocopier. The phone. The fax. You sit there. I call you for things. We eat at one-thirty in conference room. You will order our food.” He was pointing around the office, and Dan realized that Mr. Castle wasn't going to show him anything else or introduce him to anyone. The tour was over.
The phone rang, and Siegfried Castle sat down again and pointed at it with a neatly manicured finger. Dan picked up the phone. “Hello?” He winced, realizing he should have said something more professional. “May I help you?”
“Who the fuck are you?” the voice on the other end said in an English accent. “Get me the Zigster, pronto.”
He held the phone out to Mr. Castle, who he noticed had a few gray hairs and was probably older than he looked. “It's for you, I think.”
Dan sat down in what was presumably his chair in the corner, facing the wall. There was nothing on the desk. No computer, no phone. Not even any San Pellegrino. He wondered if he should go around and introduce himself to the other people in the office, but he didn't really want to bother them while they were working. He squinted up at the red line of words running along the wall, but the more he looked at them, the more they seemed to dance and blur together. He glanced sideways at Mr. Castle's out box. It had a letter in it.
“Would you like me to mail that for you?” he asked.
Siegfried popped a cigarette into his mouth and flicked open his silver Zippo lighter. Then he threw the unlit cigarette into the trash can beneath his desk. “Go ahead,” he said spitefully, as if he couldn't wait to get rid of Dan. “Also, I need caviar.” He pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Gourmet Garage on Seventh Avenue. Not beluga. It's zee black one in the blue tin.”
As if anyone would know what he was talking about?
Dan took the money and the letter and went outside. The envelope wasn't stamped, and he had no idea where the post office was, but surely there was one nearby, and he could smoke a cigarette while he was looking for it.
Ten blocks later he still hadn't found the post office, but he'd smoked four cigarettes on a pier overlooking the Hudson River. “I have to get back,” he told himself, and tossed his cigarette into the water. But how could he go back with the envelope in hand, looking like a dope because he couldn't figure out where to buy a stamp?
He leaned against the railing, and before he could stop and think about what he was doing, he tossed the envelope into the swirling brown water. It floated on top for a minute, turned beige and wet-looking, and then sank.
Whoops!
Dan turned quickly around and strode across the pier and up Eleventh Street. Maybe when he got home tonight, he'd look online and locate the nearest post office to the Red Letter headquarters. How important could that one letter have been, anyway?
He shoved his hands in his pockets, felt the crinkle of the hundred-dollar bill, and remembered the caviar.
“Fuck.”
Inside Gourmet Garage, there were stacks of tinned black caviar and about eight different kinds with blue labels. Dan grabbed the most expensive one and headed over to the register.
“Dan?”
He turned around. It was Elise, Jenny's friend. She was carrying a baguette that was about three feet long, and she had flour on her face. She looked sort of cute, actually, except that Dan suddenly noticed she was much taller than he was, by like a foot.
“What are you doing here? Jenny said you were starting your new job today.”
Dan pointed to the little tin of caviar motoring along on the black rubber conveyor belt toward the cashier. How could anything that small cost seventy-four dollars? “My boss sent me out to buy some stuff.”
Elise watched as he paid for the caviar with the hundred-dollar bill and then tucked it and the change into his APC storm coat pocket. “Wow,” she breathed, impressed. “Well, anyway, I just went over to your new office to bring you some cookies. I was bored, and I thought maybe you'd like a treat on your first day.” She smiled shyly as she paid for her baguette. “I always write better when I have something good to munch on.”
Dan wasn't quite sure what to make of this. “I have to get back,” he told her, and pushed open the door to the street.
“Okay.” She walked with him to the corner with the baguette tucked under her arm. There was flour all over her black wool pea coat. “I need a cab. I was just buying my mom some bread. Our family practically lives on Coke and French bread. My dad calls it the Wells Diet.”
Dan smiled. The diet worked. Elise was pretty skinny. He squinted up at her in the cold noon sun. Elise had brought him cookies. She had cute freckles and was gangly and tall and had a baguette under her arm. Standing there in her black pea coat and black ballet flats, she looked extremely French and poetic. He could definitely write a poem about her.
She waved the baguette at a passing cab. “Hey!” The cab stopped, and she turned to say good-bye. “Jenny and I might watch movies or something later. Maybe I'll see you at your house?”
Dan took a step toward her. “You have flour on your cheek.” He daubed at it with his thumb and then kissed the spot. “There.”
The corners of Elise's lips turned up in a tentative smile. “Thanks.” The cabbie honked his horn. She tucked the baguette more snugly under her arm. “I left
the cookies on your desk. They're good, I think. Okay, see you,” she added before hopping into the backseat of the taxi.
Petite mignonette, Dan began to write in his head as he walked back toward the office. Sweet coquette. He wasn't even sure if those were real French words, but they sounded like a flirty little French girl who carried bread under her arm and brought you cookies. The kind you wrote songs and poems about and kissed on the cheek. Elise was only fourteen, after all. She was no Mystery Craze, but she obviously adored him, and at least she was around.
He lit another cigarette and walked back to the office at a leisurely pace. So far this work thing wasn't so bad.
As long as he stayed out of the office.
V helps her parents find art
“Look, dad, an old sled,” Vanessa called. She'd made the mistake of mentioning how much old stuff people in New York leave out on the sidewalk—she'd actually found a pair of perfectly good old-fashioned roller skates that way—and now she was patrolling the streets of Williamsburg, helping them hunt for found-art treasures.
Arlo shuffled over to the red plastic sled and picked it up. It was cracked down the middle and covered with puffy stickers of turtles. The bottom of it was stained and discolored from the days of dog pee it had endured.
“It might smell,” Vanessa warned.
Arlo shrugged and dropped it into Ruby's black metal shopping cart. Already they'd found a blue plastic fishbowl, a white chef's hat, and an ashtray made out of thumbtacks.
“What we really need is something big,” Gabriela said as they continued on. “Something profound.”
Vanessa trailed them grudgingly, wondering what her mother meant. Another horse? A supersized cheese grater? She kicked a crushed empty juice box away with her foot and sat down on a stoop while her mom and dad conversed with the owner of an ancient pickup truck parked outside what looked like a fisherman's shack in the midst of a block of warehouses. Then her mom walked over and sat down next to her.
“Arlo's found a kindred spirit,” she remarked, smiling at her husband from afar. “I think he's going to be a while.”
Today Arlo was wearing his wool poncho over Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes with no socks. His knees were bluish white and knobby, and his shins were bruised from knocking around in his forge up in Vermont, making mobiles out of old wheelbarrow carcasses or deer antlers. Vanessa marveled that her dad had ever found someone who could look at him the way her mom did. Talk about kindred spirits!
“So what happened to that wonderful shaggy little boyfriend of yours?” Gabriela asked. She pulled the rubber band out of the end of her long gray braid and combed her paint-stained fingers through her hair.
Vanessa grimaced. Part of the reason she kept her head shaved was that her mother's hair grossed her out. “You mean Dan?”
Gabriela reached up and began to massage the back of Vanessa's neck. Vanessa winced—she hated to be touched without an invitation—but her mother didn't notice her discomfort. “I always thought you two would wind up getting married or something. You reminded me of Arlo and me.”
Vanessa hugged her knees, enduring the massage. “Dan's joined the police force,” she said, knowing how much her parents resented law enforcement.
“No kidding.” Gabriela let go of Vanessa's neck. She divided her gray hair into three thick clumps and began to braid it again. “He was such a marvelous talent. Such a rare, keen eye for beauty. And so loyal.”
Loyal? Maybe not.
“Ha!” Vanessa fumed. Dan would be nowhere if she hadn't recognized how good his poem was and submitted it to The New Yorker. “Actually, Dan's not becoming a cop,” she admitted. “He just stopped being nice. Like, it's okay to walk all over people as long as he can get a good poem out of it.” She glanced at her mother to see if the comment had registered. “He's an asshole,” she added.
“True artists are forever accused of being assholes,” Gabriela sighed. “You mustn't be so hard on us.” She fastened the end of her ponytail with the elastic band from the bunch of broccoli Ruby had cooked last night. “You know who the real assholes are?”
“Who?” Vanessa asked, standing up. Her father was walking toward them now with a stinky old fishing net in his hands, grinning eagerly, like he couldn't wait for show-and-tell.
“The Rosenfelds,” her mother replied. “That comment Pilar made the other night about how she doesn't even recycle? What kind of person doesn't recycle?!”
Um, lots of us.
“Jordy's nice,” Vanessa ventured quietly.
“But those glasses he was wearing? They probably cost as much as our car! If you ask me, he should have spent the money on a nose job.”
See, even peace-loving hippie freaks can't resist a little nasty gossip.
Vanessa snorted. Considering the fact that her parents drove a Subaru wagon that was older than she was, Jordy's glasses probably cost way more than their car. And if her mom really detested the Rosenfelds so much, Vanessa couldn't wait for her mom to find out whom she'd invited to Ruby's gig later that night.
A certain expensive-glasses-wearing, long-nosed boy, perhaps?
Stroke of brilliance found on intern's desk!
When Dan finally made it back to the office, he was buzzed in again only to find the place completely deserted. He deposited the change for the caviar on Siegfried Castle's desk and continued past the row of desks and down a short hallway. At the end of the hallway was a closed door. Dan could hear voices on the other side of the door. He knocked softly.
“Come in,” Siegfried Castle commanded.
Dan pushed open the door. The Red Letter staff was seated around a conference table, eating cookies and sipping San Pellegrino water out of those little green bottles they all seemed to like so much. A printed copy of Mystery Craze's brand-new memoir translated into German was lying in the middle of the table. The cover was white with a picture of a flamingo on it. Not the whole bird, just the legs, with one leg folded up at the knee.
“We zought if you didn't come back with zee caviar, we could still enjoy your cookies,” Siegfried Castle explained. He nodded at the petite, middle-aged woman seated next to him. “This is Betsy. Zat's Charles. Zat's Thomas. Zat's Rebecca. Bill, another Bill, und Randolph,” he said, continuing around the room and introducing everyone at a ridiculously rapid pace.
Randolph was also Dan's middle name, and he despised it. He nodded and smiled politely. Everyone was dressed exactly like Mr. Castle, in pressed white shirts with French cuffs. It was like they were in some sort of cult.
“Sorry I took so long. There was a really big line at the post office,” he lied. Normally he wasn't into lying or throwing out people's mail, but something about having a job made him want to rebel. “Anyway, here it is.” He set the tin of caviar down on the table in front of Mr. Castle.
The famous editor peeled the label off the tin and stuck it on the table. Then he tossed the caviar into the wastepaper bin near the door.
Hello?
Dan wasn't sure whether to sit down or not. Obviously they were having some sort of meeting, and obviously he'd bought the wrong kind of caviar so—
“So tell us vhat you tink of Mystewy Cwaze,” Mr. Castle interrupted his thoughts. “Everyvun here tinks she's some sort of prophet, even zee vimmen!” The guys around the table laughed lasciviously.
“She's a freaking sex goddess,” Randolph called out, chomping on his cookies.
Dan was still standing, suffocating in his coat. He sat down in the empty seat next to Mr. Castle and stared at the empty plate where Elise's cookies had been. “Mystery and I are pretty good friends,” he said quietly. “She's very … accomplished.”
The guys in the room laughed loudly again. All of a sudden Dan had a feeling he wasn't the only one there who'd slept with Mystery.
“She's a pretty good poet, too,” Rebecca remarked. She had pointy ears, like an elf's. “I can't believe she's never been to school.”
“An orphan zat's never been to school, raised by wo
lves, vill do anything and zen write about it later. No vonder she's already famous,” Siegfried Castle remarked dreamily. He jotted something down on the purple pad lying in front of him on the table.
Dan fiddled with the threads sewn across his suit pants pocket. He wasn't really sure what this meeting was about. What he really needed was a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and to write down the poem about Elise before he forgot what he wanted to say.
He gestured toward the German version of Mystery's memoir. “I haven't read her book yet, but I'm sure it's good.”
Siegfried Castle picked up a pile of papers from off the floor and tossed them on the table in front of Dan. “Zat's all cwap—vee warely take anything from submissions. But I vant to read it, anyway.”
Dan looked at the pile. He'd always thought everything in Red Letter came from submissions. “How do you do it, then?”
Everyone laughed. “Silly boy. Vee just ask our friends to write tings, or maybe vee find something vee like written on zee bathroom wall,” Mr. Castle declared, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Dan picked up the pile of papers. “Do you want me to set aside the ones I think are good?” he asked, confused.
“Just read zem and zen trow dem away!” Siegfried Castle yelled, his face red and angry-looking. “Out! Out!” he cried, pointing at the door. He swiped the empty cookie plate from off the table and shoved it at Dan. “Out!”
Dan hurried out of the room, carrying the plate and the poems back to his empty desk. His entire body was shaking, and he was worried he might cry. Instead, he began flipping through the pile of poems, reading quickly. Some of them were pretty awful, but some of them were original and brilliant. He thought of asking Mr. Castle what he thought was wrong with the poems. Or maybe he could leave the poems he liked in Mr. Castle's in box with a note asking him to reconsider them. But then again, the less he had to do with Siegfried Castle, the better.
When he'd gotten control of himself again, he pulled a blank piece of paper out of the stack near the printer and clicked open his pen, jotting down the first few lines of the poem that had been in his head all afternoon.