leave Ted alone with the baby. Olivier is nearly one and Gen has yet to leave him with Ted for more than five minutes. Occasionally she’ll entrust Prince Olivier’s care to one of her newfangled suburban mommy friends I’ve never met, but not Ted. I think that’s fucked up, but I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut about things like mommy-baby codependency and mini mushroom-head penises.
I will take Eva to the restaurant. She bounced up and down on her chair when I asked if she’d like to go. She clapped her hands and said, “Goody!” I suspect it won’t be long before I get that golly-gee I’ve been waiting for.
Eva helps stuff the Trend Essentials swag bags we’ll be giving to the six participants in our Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend that starts Friday. I hate Trend Mecca Bootcamp weekends, but considering that each one of the corporate fucks that signs up pays ten thousand dollars to experience the street life and underground of trendsetting Montreal, I can hardly complain. No one wants to hear from a high-priced whore about the sultan who paid her a million dollars to fuck her up the ass for a weekend and no one wants to hear me gripe about the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend. I don’t even want to know there is such a thing as a Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend, let alone lead it. Maybe I’ll take Eva this time. Maybe I’ll wear a wig. Maybe I’ll bring a rag soaked in chloroform to wipe the smirk off the face of anyone who sees me out with these guys and their pleated pants and patterned sweaters. The people who sign up for the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend are almost always all guys.
Eva says she thinks it sounds fun and that she wants to learn everything she can about the business. She says she’ll carry my coffee or fetch drinks for the Bootcamp suits. Eva is my dream girl until about 2:00 p.m. when she knocks on my door and asks if she can come in. She looks nervous. She’s biting her lower lip again.
“What’s up, Eva? You’re not thinking about going back to that fedora porn guy are you?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just that there’s this Web site—it’s not important, really, but you might want to see….”
I wave her over behind my desk and lean back, letting her type the URL into my computer. The Apples Are Tasty logo comes up. “Yeah, I’ve seen this,” I say, ignoring the screen. There are no DON’Ts walking the streets if one is to buy in to the Apples Are Tasty philosophy. Everyone is a DO in their own special way. Rid the world of negativity, embrace your individuality, pay fifty bucks to attend one of the parties we’re already being paid ten grand to throw, for another thousand one of the Apples Are Tasty crew will spend a day shopping with you. But getting your picture on the Apples Are Tasty Web site is the latest and greatest in hipster validation.
In two months, the site has gone from nothing to a very biggish deal. These party-planners-cum-DJingstyle-setters started getting attention and our clients started asking about them. At first we dismissed them as wannabes—we’ve dealt with copycats before—but when we tried to arrange access to one of their parties as a stop on the upcoming Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend we were rebuffed. That’s how Ted puts it—rebuffed—but what really happened was he lost it in an e-mail exchange with the Tasty ringleader when the guy refused to cough up comp party tickets for the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend. Then he posted Ted’s tirade online and forwarded it to all the clients he knew we had and to every media outlet on the planet. That was two weeks ago. Things have calmed down, but Ted won’t talk about it. And he’s more determined than ever to ferret out whoever put that apple on his desk the day after the whole thing went down and fire their ass. We have security cameras everywhere now. It won’t happen again.
I tell Eva it’s important to know your competition and what they’re doing, but not to get too wrapped up, not to obsessively worry about where they’re going and what they’re doing. There’s room for all of us and we should appreciate each other’s differences because that’s what makes us all unique and wonderful. I’m a raving hypocrite, I know, and I don’t care. I’ve built my career taking pictures of unfortunate-looking people wearing unfortunate-looking outfits. Like Parrot Girl. Like Parrot Girl, who’s staring out at me from my computer, the same Parrot Girl who is the current Apples Are Tasty Look Girl.
Fuck me and stop the presses. But it’s too late—kill me now or let me fall on the sword I bought in Osaka, the one that I had to fill out reams of paperwork to get through customs. Let Parrot Girl’s parrot gnaw at my corpse.
They’re right, they’re right, I know they’re right. I hate Parrot Girl, but twenty-year-old urbanites and suburban scenesters don’t. Laminate my picture, doctor my birth date and make me sixty-five. I’ll eat tiny portions ordered from special menus in restaurants, shop for groceries on certain days and ride the Metro for cheap. Book me into a home where I can be with my kind: wrinkled rock stars and one-time starlets with puffy lips and faces that don’t move when they talk about the good old days, which is all anybody talks about. We talk and talk so we can remember when we knew something and weren’t old and disgusting and had better things to do than clip coupons and play bridge and wait to die.
I don’t want to die. I want to disappear. I want to press Rewind and give Eva a pop quiz. I want to be right. I want to care. I want to leave. I need to stop and I need to rest but the constant ping of my e-mail makes everything impossible. I rap the side of my computer with a curled knuckle. Eva’s still standing behind me, silent but for the quiet shuffle of her feet. I knock on the side of my computer again as a burst of ping-ping-pings signals the arrival of yet more e-mail undoubtedly demanding my resignation. But it hasn’t been twenty-five years: I won’t get a watch or a shitty roast beef dinner buffet at some economy motel that must have a discount rate for seniors.
I don’t need to knock on the computer again. I know they’re all inside. The place is packed with girls with shiny jackets and soccer socks. Their pet birds are shitting everywhere, but they don’t care as long as it’s not on their boots. It’s filthy and the girls are smoking and think it’s all so very funny. They’re talking about me but I can’t hear the words over the laughter. I creep on unnoticed and over the wires and microchips and bird shit until someone drops a lit cigarette on my head and I jerk up, screaming. They all stop and look, but nobody laughs. Someone helps me to the door but I can’t keep a grip on her arm because the satin jacket she’s wearing is so slippery. I stumble and land at the feet of the Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Boy with the mutton chops and the kilt. I get a flash up his skirt and he’s not wearing any underwear. His cock is thick and long and doesn’t have a mushroom head. I smile up at him, but his expression reads nothing but pity. The Slippery Girl gets me to the door and nudges me out. It’s all fine. I have to go anyhow. I have to make a call or have a meeting and buy clothes for my new job. Yes, I have to go. I have to go. I have to go.
I reach into my desk and pull out a spare set of keys for the office front door, the back door, the Swag Shack. I can’t go. I don’t need to go. I have nowhere to go. I still have my keys. I hold them tightly in my hand until the metal edges dig into my skin—not enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt. My e-mail pings and pings and soon it’s the rhythm of an old techno song—no, early Chicago house, which I know is back and that my vinyl is worth maybe thousands to some know-it-all DJ with a cute face and a thousand girlfriends. But he loves Parrot Girl the most and is living in the suburbs with his parents to save enough money to impress her by giving her the rarest, most colorful parrot in the world—one that’s fully bilingual and shits in a toilet and knows how to use a bidet.
There is nothing worse than suburban scenesters who love girls with parrots who try too hard. I force myself to look at Parrot Girl’s photo on my screen. She’s standing in front of the brunch spot that now I’ll truly never, ever return to—and she’s smiling. We have a strict no-smile policy for our DOs and DON’Ts. Perhaps it’s time to revisit that. I make a note on a yellow sticky: Smiles? Eva says nothing, she hovers, frozen behind me.
“I guess people love birds,” I say, which
