happy with a simple apology without a good story to go with it. Sandy wraps her arms around Sarah, pushing her gigantic breasts into Sarah’s back as if to say, “There, there, sweetie.” If she could, however, she would really rather say, “Now hush up, bitch, and let me do my work!”
Looking at Vita and Sandy, Sarah senses bemused contempt beneath their words of sympathy. She can only imagine what these two women who have likely had a rough ride in life truly think of her. Surely, they must see her as another overpaid, fucked-up, drugged-up actress in desperate need of emotional pampering.
“The five greatest love novels of all time,” says Charles Cartwright, large black eyes widening as if experiencing a mystical revelation. “That’s what I’m thinking for the January issue.”
Charlie is famous for his unabashed enthusiasm among this small group of young, hip staff writers whose wardrobes are as limited to black and grey as their temperaments are to unjustified melancholy and cynicism. Charlie, the son of a farmer from Manitoba, is the odd man out among these prematurely disenchanted urbanites. He was the last of the three staff writers to join the magazine two years ago, and his excitement at these story meetings hasn’t diminished with time.
“We can get, oh, I don’t know, five contemporary writers to create lists of their top five love novels of all time and then each writer votes out the other’s pick till we’re left with … the greatest love novel of all time.” Charlie turns to his boss, Zakhariye, his moist, round eyes hungry for approval.
Zakhariye, who has been nodding the whole time, more out of benevolent encouragement than interest, is amazed at Charlie’s ability to find pleasure in coming up with these story ideas. The man grows enthusiasm for his job the way others grow hair, always springing up from some never-ending source. For a fleeting moment Zakhariye hates Charlie for having a love for the job that he has lost and doesn’t know how to regain.
“Why not just ask them to choose their favourite love novel of all time and be done with it?” Daniel Barnum asks with his usual derisive smile that always makes his fellow staff writers fidgety. He has a singular talent for belittling them and their ideas with just a grin, not even bothering to show his nicotine-stained teeth.
“But then it wouldn’t be a list,” Charlie says, avoiding eye contact with Daniel as if merely looking at him might bring tears to his eyes.
“Precisely,” Daniel cuts in. “Haven’t we already done enough lists? The ten greatest Canadian novels of all time. Top five Maritime novels. Top three this, top five that. It’s as if the entire culture has become incapable of judging the value of anything without ranking it, without putting it on a list and pitting it against something else.”
Zakhariye sits up in his chair and clears his throat a little in an attempt to assert his authority before things disintegrate into a shouting match. He shares Daniel’s loathing of lists. Having lists in his magazine reminds him of those “Ten Quick Moves to Flatter Abs” he always sees on the cover of every men’s exercise magazine. Or even worse, the “Eight Ways to Drive Your Man Wild” lists always splashed across the cover of his wife’s Cosmopolitan.
Despite his hatred of lists, at least one ranking of some kind inevitably finds its way into every issue of his magazine. The publisher loves them. For some reason readers respond to lists. But aside from his dislike of lists, Zakhariye doesn’t care. In fact, he hasn’t actually read the magazine out of interest for a long time, in contrast to the old days when he read every page, not only because they had to do a post-mortem after each issue but also because he genuinely enjoyed reading it. He loved what the magazine was about, still about — the art of good storytelling and the people who devote their lives to it.
In a feeble attempt to reduce the combative atmosphere, Zakhariye speaks at last. “What do you have in mind for the January cover?” He glances at Anna Winterbottom, a slender blonde with sharp, birdlike features who has a tendency to sit so low in her chair at these meetings that Zakhariye often wonders if she is even in the room.
“Well …” Anna begins, then clears her throat twice as if to dislodge a giant walnut. “Well, since we have Colm Tóibín as our cover story, I’ve been playing around with images of Henry James and Tóibín, a sort of collage, a superimposed collage, if you will, of …”
As Ms. Winterbottom delves into the details of what is no doubt the fantastical and poetic image she has in mind for the January cover, her slight, quavering voice is lost altogether on Zakhariye. He nods knowingly in all the appropriate places, occasionally saying “Hmm” or “Ah.” Zakhariye can see her lips moving, but all he hears is the screeching, metal-against-metal grinding of a streetcar on Queen Street and the rhythmic thump-a-thump of his heart.
He has been experiencing these odd sensations a lot lately in which he loses his hearing as if walking on an ocean floor like a deep-sea diver and all he can perceive are his breathing and the beating of his heart inside the pressure suit. I should see Dr. Owen, he thinks. Could be a brain tumour. Zakhariye doesn’t know what the particular symptoms of brain tumours are, but he imagines they include this sort of general, indefinable feeling of being submerged. Besides, he recently watched an episode of Medical Miracles about a woman who waited thirty years to have a tiny tumour in her abdomen removed until the thing ballooned to eighty kilograms.
The same thing happens later that day when Zakhariye talks with Virginia Kisor, the senior art director, an over-tanned, over-wrinkled, fifty-something woman famous for her colourful French scarves, which she ties around her neck as if they alone possess the power to give her the easy Parisian elegance she so desperately craves. That unmistakable feeling of submergence washes over him again as Virginia launches into a long justification for why she thinks they should go with a smaller, simpler font for the cover lines against the beautifully stark black-and-white photograph of Ian McEwan — their cover boy for the next issue — rather than the usual large, red, attention-grapping fonts. The longer he ignores the sensation the deeper he feels himself slipping away until he finally says to her, “Excuse me for a minute,” and starts for the door. But he makes sure he pats her back as if to say, “Nothing personal, but I don’t give a shit.”
Slowly, Zakhariye makes his way across the office, passing a line of cubicles full of hard-working interns who get paid nothing and who are frequently reminded how grateful they should be for the chance to be associated with the glamorous world of magazine publishing. As he heads toward the men’s room, his feet make more noise than he likes on the creaky hardwood floor of the sun-drenched, loft-like office with exposed red-brick walls that accentuate the self-conscious aren’t-we-so-hip decor.
Once inside the men’s room, Zakhariye shakes his head vigorously to snap out of the spell or whatever it is that has come over him. He yawns repeatedly in an exaggerated fashion until he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, which prompts him to stop immediately. To give his brain one last good shake, he tilts his head to the side and whacks the top of his skull a couple of times with an open fist the way he did after swimming on the beaches of Mogadishu as a boy to empty his ears of sea water. But the trick that worked for him as child doesn’t do him any good now.
Desperate for a remedy, Zakhariye paces the narrow, grey-tiled space that separates the sinks and stalls. Mysteriously, his head responds well to the pacing, at least better than the violent yawning or the head banging. Zakhariye has noticed that as long as he keeps moving the spells aren’t so bad. When his body is in motion, the numbness isn’t so all-consuming.
Zakhariye got a wonderful jolt of life, however transient, from nicking the two bumps under his chin during shaving, but he has no more bumps to slice and even the last cut
