“Why?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Actually, yes. I have bad news. Miss Arnaud has pneumonia.”
“Oh, no! What hospital?”
There was a pause. “I can give you more details in person.”
During the subway ride over, I was filled with sadness. Poor Sylvie, stuck in the hospital, eating Jell-O. She hated being away from her apartment, away from all her musty old crap. I made out a mental list of her favorite things I could put into a hospital care package for her.
When I arrived at the accountant’s office, however, I was hit by a real shocker. Mr. Langley pushed an envelope across the vast oaken plateau that was his desk. “We would like to thank you for your service to Miss Arnaud.”
I gawped at the check, which was for twice the amount I usually received.
“That’s for your last weeks of work, plus two weeks severance,” Langley said. “I’m afraid we have to let you go.”
He kept saying we. “But what about Sylvie?”
“If she recovers—”
“If!” I bleated.
He winced at my outburst. “Miss Arnaud is at a very advanced age, as you know, and her condition is serious. If she survives, it is her wish and the wish of her beneficiaries that she be moved to an assisted living community. You must understand.”
I did not. And who were these beneficiaries? They had certainly not visited her while I had been there.
“I’d like to see Sylvie.”
The wrinkles of studied concern that had creased his brow disappeared. “I don’t think that will be necessary, or even advisable considering her present condition.”
Growing miffed, I asked, “Will you at least tell me where she is?”
“I will take that up with the beneficiaries.”
I stood up, filled with righteous anger. I had a feeling I was talking to the primary beneficiary. Maybe the only one. The weasel. “Fine. Please ask them, Mr. Langley. Please assure the beneficiaries that all I want to do is bring Miss Arnaud a box of her favorite cookies.”
I sailed out of his office, my indignation at full mast.
Needless to say, I never got a call telling me Sylvie’s whereabouts. But to be honest, I didn’t knock myself out trying to find her on my own. I didn’t work at it at all. When it came down to it, I rationalized, I had just been Sylvie’s employee. She wasn’t my responsibility. And if her heirs worried that I would somehow winnow my way into her will, then fine. Let them comb the island of Manhattan for butter mints and hot pickled okra.
It didn’t take long for my severance money to dry up, and no one came forward offering me another cushy job. One of my roommates, an aspiring playwright named Fleishman, was working sporadically at a part-time job with a telemarketing company selling vinyl siding one day and ballet subscriptions the next. My other roommate, Wendy, was studying lighting design at NYU and honing her barista skills at Starbucks. We had known each other since college. We were the three musketeers, but without my paycheck, we were more like three shipwrecked souls on a leaky lifeboat.
Wendy was somewhat worried, but she was too busy to do much to solve our financial conundrum.
Fleishman was not worried, because he never worried, especially about money. He came from serious money—he was a descendent of an established chain of discount shoe store owners. He himself had no interest in shoes (at least not the discount variety), and since his parents did not consider playwriting a good use of their son’s life, at the moment he was supposed to be cut off from the family. His mother, however, would occasionally suffer a wave of maternal guilt and come into the city to take Fleishman out to lunch (and take in the stores, no doubt.) On these days, Fleishman would return to our apartment with a wad of cash in his pockets. Or maybe sporting a new leather jacket. Christmas and birthdays—even in his disinherited state—tended to be accompanied by a thin envelope bearing a fat check. Broke was always a temporary thing to Fleishman. He always had hope.
My dad owned a plumbing supply business, which, while lucrative, did not provide for periodic windfalls. I was the fifth of six kids. My parents bankrolled me through college with the tacit understanding that afterwards I was to be completely on my own. My dad, in his usual self-effacing way, called this kind of generosity paying for the privilege of getting rid of me. Given that they still had my little brother in college, and now grandchildren to juggle, I would have died before I asked them for more money.
In February, my roommates and I were one hundred and forty dollars short on the rent, so I sold my notebook computer on eBay. This was a psychological low-water mark. Not that I actually needed my notebook. When I had come to New York, I had thought I would write something. Sylvie’s memoirs. Maybe short stories; I had done a few of those in college. It had been two years, though, and I hadn’t written anything more taxing than a grocery list.
Unfortunately, my notebook was my only valuable. I couldn’t hock anymore even if I’d wanted to. I needed a job. Fast.
Out flew the resumes. But the expected responses never came pouring in. After three weeks, I’d had exactly two interviews, neither of which had borne fruit. The calendar advanced relentlessly toward the next rent due date. It was nail biting time. So when my phone rang and the person on the other end of the line said she was calling from Candlelight Books and that I had an interview, it felt like a lifeline was being thrown at me. I was ecstatic.
I knew what Candlelight Books was, of course. Who didn’t? They were the colossus of romance, the books everyone’s aunts read but that they never read themselves. You couldn’t walk through a superstore in the heartland or a drugstore anywhere without seeing racks of them, all branded with the flickering candle logo.
I just didn’t remember applying there. Not that I was about to tell that to the woman on the telephone. I wasn’t about to say anything that might risk my chances for getting my foot in the door. She instructed me to appear at the offices on the following day at one o’clock, and I assured her I would be there.
“What’s the job?” Fleishman asked when he saw me dragging my interview suit out of our closet.
A railroad flat is not an ideal setup for communal living. The apartment took up an entire floor of a rowhouse, and there were three rooms, sort of (one had surely been meant to be a hall, or a dining area), but there were no doors between the rooms. It was just one long breezeway. In other words, for having blowout parties or as a roller rink, the place would have been ideal. For trying to section off three bedrooms, it was a challenge. We all had to share the one closet, which during the residency of some previous tenant had lost its sliding door and now was “closed” with a shower curtain with a tropical fish motif.
“It’s with Candlelight Books.”
Fleishman barked out a laugh. “You are kidding me. You’re going to work on romance novels? You? You’ve never had a successful romance in your life.”
I didn’t really need to be reminded of that. Especially since one of my failed romances was with him.
“They aren’t looking for Masters and Johnson,” I said.
“Good.”
