Miss Subways: A Novel Read online

  Years later, going through her mom’s apartment after her death, reaching high into a pantry, Emer, surprised by the weight of an open cardboard box on a top shelf, brought the mother lode of stolen tiny red ketchups, yellow mustards, green relishes, and white mayonnaises crashing down on herself. It was true, then: you can’t take it with you, not even the condiments. When Emer had recognized this forgotten stash, the years of mini-stealing and hoarding, the huge hope and fear it represented packed into neat little rectangles, she fell to her knees keening, as if this was all that was left of her mother’s poor grasping soul, the pretty little packets skittering about her on the kitchen linoleum like bait fish spilling out of a net. There had been enough after all—enough money, love, mayonnaise. She needn’t have worried so hard and so long.

  Emer elbowed and weaved her way to Con’s side. “Hey, Alice,” she said, using a secret endearment in public the way people who are suddenly feeling insecure about their place at the table will stake out territory. She noticed the African American woman pull the hand closest to Con back with more speed than one would think was needed, as if she’d been caught in the cookie jar, or more precisely as if she wanted Emer to think she’d been caught touching Con’s hand.

  Con winced microscopically at “Alice,” and planted a terse kiss on Emer’s mouth. He tasted of cheap red wine and smelled of the stale, spent adrenalized fear of public speaking. “I prefer ‘Dr. Cooper.’”

  They all laughed overhard, not because they understood the gag, but because they knew it was supposed to be funny—hahaha.

  “Emer, I want you to meet Alexander Stevens and Steven Alexander from CAA.” He pointed to the two suits, who dutifully extended their soft palms. One ID’d himself as Steven and one as Alexander, and she immediately forgot which was which. Con now waved his hand toward the beautiful black woman. “And this is Nancy. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your last name.”

  The woman seemed gravely insulted, but then smiled brilliantly and said, “Anansi. Not Nancy. Just Anansi. No last name.”

  “Like Cher?” Emer helpfully supplied, adding lamely, “Or Oprah.”

  “No,” the woman said firmly. “Like Anansi.”

  Con jumped in. “Anansi is interested in getting us seed money to develop the movie.”

  “What movie?” asked Emer.

  “Exactly,” said Alex or Steve.

  “Seed money? Is that like magic beans?” No one laughed at Emer’s attempt at humor.

  “I represent certain African interests that are interested in Hollywood, and telling indigenous and representative and affirming stories vis-à-vis other cultures while still remaining firmly in the Judeo-Christian tradition of Christianity.” Emer thought that Anansi’s word salad seemed to contain information and intent, but didn’t really. She replayed it in her head; it was devoid of specific meaning.

  Anansi had an accent that Emer thought might be African and wanted to ask her where she was from, but somehow knew better. She wore her hair in thick dreadlocks haphazardly framing her smooth, makeup-less face, reminding Emer of renderings of Medusa’s head from some of her grade school mythology books, only hot. A hot Medusa. Emer looked closely and determined that it was all real hair, no extensions. Dammit. Like Medusa, Anansi was mesmerizing, too. Con was enthralled; Emer felt him pull imperceptibly away from her as a moon might be captured by a larger planet. It wasn’t humiliating. Yet. Con was beaming, high on his own lecture and attention, however scant, but generally so, not necessarily high on this one riveting younger woman.

  “Steve and Alex want to take us all down to Nobu, to get the ball rolling.”

  “The movie ball? Git it rollin’, git that ol’ movie ball a-rollin’…”

  Emer was surprised that her anger and unease were leaking out as irony and a sudden halfhearted cowboy accent, but the haircuts didn’t seem to notice. Their Hollywood duds had been sprayed with sarcasm retardant.

  “Exactly,” said Steve. Or Alex. One of them said, “The left has had their run in Hollywood since forever.”

  “Don’t know about that,” said Emer.

  “Well, since the ’70s,” countered Steve, or Alex. “There’s a lot of money floating around to make movies that walk on the other side of that street. The Koch brothers want to buy a studio and make films—there’s money to make films on a Star Wars scale with a more fundamental Christian message. Clint to direct, maybe. Mel is in the middle of another comeback. This action Christian stuff is right in his wheelhouse. The window is wide open now. And your man has the goods. We feel like he’s the Joe Campbell of the moment … J. K. Rowling, that New Olympians thing—maybe even set some kind of supernatural war of the gods between the English and Americans, we’ve just been spitballing here, at the time of the Revolution, you know, English gods versus homegrown gods, just claim it and full-on Hamilton that bad boy, right, Con? But without so much politics.”

  Ding-a-ding-ding—a “Joe Campbell moment.” Ding-a-ding-dong—“Tea Party Harry Potter.” And ca-ching—“Hamilton.” Emer felt that she was a contestant on the old Groucho Marx game show when she heard certain buzzwords. She looked up at the ceiling to see if maybe there was a duck descending. No such duck. This must be what Con meant when he said, “I have to create the vocabulary by which I will be discussed.” He had thrown the buzzwords out like a demagogue, and the agents were more than happy to snap at them like trout at flies. Emer realized her mouth had dropped open during that dissertation. She looked over at Con. He was grinning like a fool.

  “May I have a sidebar, counselor?” Emer swallowed the remaining half glass of her third vinegary red. She took Con’s elbow and led him a few feet away for privacy.

  “Have we just entered Penceville?… Population—a fuck of a lot more than you ever thought.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nobu? Really, Nobu? Who are you?”

  “What do you mean? Why can’t I eat at Nobu?”

  “Of course you can eat at Nobu, that’s not, it’s not Nobu, Nobu is … Nobu…” And she started to laugh uncontrollably; Con squinted at her impatiently as she tried to gather herself. “I’m sorry, it was just saying Nobu so many times in a row, started to sound ridiculous … you know, like nonsense Dr. Seuss—Nobunobunobu … hooo … hooooooooohooooohoooo…” She lost herself to another fit.

  Con waited her out and then said, “I would like for once in my life to eat at—”

  She raised a pleading finger and cut him off. “Don’t say it.”

  “Emer.”

  “Please don’t say it, I can’t, just say you wanna … eat insanely overpriced, pretentious, raw, misidentified fish, even though I’ve never seen a pretentious fish, that’s besides the point, just don’t say…”

  “Fuck Nobu. It’s not about No-fucking-bu.”

  She laughed hard enough so that part of the room took notice and even Con, who was pissed and a little embarrassed, was halfway charmed by the tears that were now rolling down his longtime, long-suffering girlfriend’s face.

  Con said, “Now, Emer, dear, I have to go to … you know where, and you’re welcome to join Steve and Alex and Anansi and me at…”

  “Please don’t. Not again. Have pity, I’m an infant.”

  “At the … Japanese restaurant that shall not be named.”

  Con was making a peace offering of sorts. She knew he kind of wanted to be alone, at least to be perceived as being alone tonight, by the Hollywood guys, by Anansi, by the world at large. Though it gave her a twinge, she chalked it up to simple human frailty. She knew who Con was, knew what he was, and loved him in spite of his weakness, maybe in part loved him on account of it even, because she knew how vulnerable a king without a throne feels. And she thought she knew what she was, neither heroine nor doormat, not a queen, but something in between—a hero-mat. A modern-day Miss Subways, it occurred to her. A new woman in an old mold. Another woman might be terrified of sudden success for her man, but Emer had her plan; she was playing a long game.

  She
smirked and gave Con a proprietary kiss on the lips. “No, you go, alone, to Nobu … see, I can say it: you go alone to Noooooo”—she almost lost it there but held, the last syllable a forceless whimper—“bu … and come back with Kristen Stewart’s personal e-mail and a three-picture deal, that’s what they say, right? And an action figure.”

  “Okay. Haha, okay.”

  “And maybe a spicy tuna roll?”

  Con kissed her and said, “Will do. See you later. I love you, Alice.”

  “Love you too, Alice.”

  Emer turned and curtsied, she wasn’t sure why, and waved goodbye to CAA and the beautiful, one-named Anansi, her eyes coming to rest on the floating cheese plate. She took a breath and expelled her impulse to hold on to Con’s reins tonight. She would not be her mother. Or his. She left without stuffing any Brie in her purse.

  JESUS, AND OTHER FAMILIAR STRANGERS

  IT WAS A WARM EVENING for the first day of spring, so Emer was inspired to walk home through Central Park. She loved the park; it retained magic for her even though Con always bad-mouthed it as the “world’s largest prison yard” or a “giant wee-wee pad for the canine one percent” or “Jewrassic Park.” It’s true that, if you focused on it, the stench of dog urine could reach you at almost any point on a midsummer’s journey. But why focus on that? The park itself was a man-made miracle. The wild green heart of a vertical urban sprawl. She knew it wasn’t really untamed, but it sustained a sense of primordial nature to her—as if it had its own hierarchy apart from the city at large, Rousseauian laws, an earlier world unto itself. The park was the city’s vernal atonement for its endless commercialism, hustle, and concrete.

  Manhattan was a rectangular, numbing numbered grid, but once in the park, numbers evaporated. You might say you’re “around Ninety-second Street,” but it was always an approximation; more often you just said, “I’m in the park,” using landmarks like “just south of Sheep Meadow,” “northeast of the Reservoir,” or “I see tennis courts” rather than the digits of streets and avenues. You were figuratively, if not literally, “lost.”

  You would flip from the intensely vertical consciousness of the streets into some kind of spread-out horizontality, emphasis on horizon. And in this vein, Emer felt like she was entering church when she took those first steps off Fifth Avenue. And as you might in a confessional, the park was the only place in the city, outside of your apartment, where you might truly feel alone, in communion with, and even afraid of, not humans, as you might be in the streets, but something else less corporeal. Emer could experience an almost primitive, spiritual fear that she half enjoyed. It expressed for her a yearning she couldn’t quite pinpoint. An emptiness inside her broached and became shadowed, if not filled. She breathed deeply the cut grass and canine ammonia, and felt almost free.

  Exiting the park at Ninety-second Street, but before heading straight home, she stopped at a bodega on Amsterdam Avenue to get some ice cream. She was feeling revved up and jangly, figured maybe she’d watch Fallon or Colbert, and wanted a little treat for herself. She’d been buying ice cream, cereal, milk, unripe bananas, and the occasional lottery ticket from the old Dominican man, Jesus, behind the counter for years. They never spoke, she knew his name only because she’d heard another man call him that, and they barely nodded at each other when she reached up to place her salted caramel gelato on the counter.

  A couple of years ago, riding the subway, she’d seen Jesus get on the train, and was sure she knew him, but didn’t know where from. She felt a strange joy at seeing him, and driven by some impulse, had gone up, smiling, hugged him, and exclaimed, “Hi! How are you?” as if he were an old and intimate friend. He had reacted politely, if a little embarrassed at her intensity, and she backed off slowly as she realized they had nothing at all to say to each other, that he was actually just the dude from the bodega.

  Out of their context, she had behaved out of character. It made one wonder at the independence of character from place and from there to the strange, malleable liquidity of character itself. Now, when she settled her account at the bodega, she always had a small shudder, recoiling at the memory of the hug-mugging and how happy she’d been to see Jesus on the subway that day. She tried not to appear like a jilted lover. She was quite sure that Jesus was aware of none of these gymnastics.

  IZZY

  EMER WAS STILL TROUBLED by Anansi so, a few blocks from home, just off Columbus, she called her good friend Izzy, who worked as a child psychologist. They had met through school connections, Emer the test tutor, Izzy the hand holder, truth teller, discoverer, and assuager of trauma. “We missed you at the Y tonight,” she said.

  “Is this a telephone call? You’re calling me? What are you, a hundred and three years old?”

  “I’m old school.”

  “What up, Guns…”

  “The Y?”

  “Was that tonight?” Izzy lied badly. “I completely spaced. Either that or watching three hours of The Bachelor has broken my brain. Will you accept this rose?”

  Emer laughed. “Well, Con kind of left with a bunch of people.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Kinda sorta yeah.”

  “A bunch?”

  “Kind of a bunch. Bunch-ish.”

  “I guess it went well? For him, at least?”

  “Kind of.”

  “So he was all high on his own self-actualization and thus felt more secure about not satisfying the needs of others. That’ll be two hundred and fifty dollars, please.”

  Emer laughed. “Is that how you would diagnose a kid?”

  “No, that’s how I diagnose Con, as a mild narcissist. On the scale somewhere between Ted and George.”

  “Ted and George?”

  “Bundy and Clooney.”

  “Closer to George, I hope.”

  “Yes, dear, closer to George. Where most men are, on the spectrum, which is why I am where I am, pitching for the girls’ team.”

  “So is that your professional opinion, then?”

  “Well, I’d also recommend he repeat the second grade.”

  Emer laughed again. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, but it seemed like the truth, and while it was sharp and annoying, it wasn’t horrendous. Emer defended her man. “You have to understand Con thinks outside the box.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yeah, he’s an outlier.”

  “I’m sorry, the connection is bad. Did you say ‘liar’?”

  “Come on, you know what I mean, he’s kind of a rebel.”

  “I see him more as an Imperial Stormtrooper.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Star Wars reference. If you work with little boys you have to know their Bible. Look, Inersh…” Izzy sometimes called Emer “Inersh,” short for “Inertia,”’cause she thought it sounded like a Hindu goddess, like Ganesh. Inersh—the goddess of no change, the goddess of doing nothing. Izzy continued—

  “It’s not that he’s hitched his considerable intellect to this right-wing nonsense that bothers me so much…”

  “Easy…”

  “Well, it bothers me a little, but not as much as the hypocrisy of these types of guys who espouse this so-called morality and then go to Cipriani with…”

  “Nobu.”

  “Right, Nobu, with a bunch of good-looking women on a corporate expense account. Jesus would not go to Nobu!”

  “I don’t know. He was a fisherman, he probably liked the fish.”

  “I see Jesus ordering in, though, avoid the paparazzi.”

  “Think they would charge a corking fee for turning water into wine?”

  “Of course, it’s fucking Nobu. Big tipper, I’m thinking, Jesus…”

  “Big tipper.”

  Emer was happy Izzy was airily airing this shit. Emer thought it, and she knew Izzy thought it, but Emer could not say it, so she inspired Izzy to, and Izzy, as a friend, provided. Emer could hear it, and hearing it somehow made it all less deadly, out in the open—it was just some sort of gob
lin, not a big lethal monster. Izzy continued her attempted ventriloquism for her partially mute and selectively blind friend—

  “I get it. I don’t mind Con thinking outside the box, I just don’t like him thinking outside your box. That sound you just heard was a microphone hitting the ground.”

  “Good one, but I don’t know anything for a fact. It’s not really about sex for him.”

  “No? Okay. It’s about sex for me. What about you?”

  “You know—me and sex, we’re friends.”

  “Oh? You and sex are, like, texting buddies?”

  “Yeah, text, e-mail. The occasional dirty phone call.” Emer didn’t really like to talk about sex, even with good friends. It felt private, and maybe she was a bit old-fashioned like those ’50s Miss Subways, but Izzy would light up around the subject.

  “You sext with sex? So meta. That’s probably the future right there.”

  “You know,” said Emer, trying to steer Izzy away, “it’s not even about some other girl, that’s not really his thing.”

  “Not ‘really’ his thing? But kind of his thing?”

  “I don’t know, really. Our sex is fine, it’s great. I don’t really wanna talk about it anymore. It’s making me sad. Saying the word sex so much is making me sad.”

  “I won’t argue, but it’s more that this book, this success is, like, half yours in my estimation—you did so much research, and I’m not sure which ideas were yours and which were Con’s. I’m not sure it wasn’t your idea in the first place and he ran with it, and twisted it in a certain direction to make it worth more or appeal to a niche that would bring him fame or money. For you, it was wisdom, but for him, it was calculation.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s hard to be a man.”

  “It’s harder to be a woman. And this other part does matter. Don’t be surprised that he pushes you away like some goddammed medieval amanuensis. When you’re around, people see the little woman behind the curtain. No man likes that.”