CHAPTER 1
I would be deterred by the length of this line, stretching all the way down East Nineteenth Street, if it weren’t a matter of life and death. Which, considering the severity of my hangover and the healing properties of the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich that awaits me at the end of this string of other grumpy New Yorkers, it is.
“Presley!” I turn at the sound of my name and am relieved to see Isabelle in line, already having made some progress. “You look like hell.”
I groan. Not because of the insult, which is undeniably true, but because her chipper disposition, which I usually appreciate, does the impossible and worsens this already lethal hangover. Then again, that same morning energy is what has already gotten us halfway through the block-long line at Daily Provisions, so the last thing Isabelle deserves from me is attitude.
“What did you get into last night, doll?” Isabelle asks as I slouch over to stand next to her. Only Izzy can get away with calling me shitty little pet names like that, as if it’s 1950 and I’m her secretary. She picks a piece of lint off my black denim jacket. It’s the first time I’ve broken it out this season—fall took its sweet time getting here. Add it to the list of 2017’s insults.
“How did you beat me here?” I ask.
“Oh,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I had to get out of there.”
“Hinge Hannah didn’t live up to the hype?”
“She was sweet,” Isabelle says. “But I could feel her trying to sink the damn hooks in already. She tried to take me to the farmers market this morning.”
I wince. I’m not sure which horrifies me more: the kind of commitment an invitation to the farmers market suggests or the idea of fresh vegetables at this moment in time.
“Yeah,” Isabelle says, clucking her tongue in sympathy for the poor girl, who we both know will get her local-produce-loving little heart broken. Even though Izzy is constantly going on dates, none of her prospects ever really stick. She loves the meeting people part of dating, the commitment part less so, unfortunately for the single queer women of New York. Looking at her, it’s clear how anyone could instantly fall in love with her. Even though she, presumably, had some cocktails last night and came here straight from an apartment that isn’t hers, her blond hair still holds just the right amount of wave, her mascara remains unsmudged, her black tank-top-blousy-dress thing is wrinkle-free. She looks more put together than I would even if I’d spent two hours getting ready. Not that I’ve ever spent more than fifteen minutes getting ready for anything in my life.
She narrows her eyes at me as I massage my temples, willing the tension pounding in my head to release. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?” I ask, fully knowing what question.
“What did you do last night?”
“Oh, just went to a show.”
“You seem awfully hungover for just going to a show.”
“Yeah, well, you would have been pounding drinks, too, if you were there,” I say with a sigh. “It was just Weinstein, Weinstein, Weinstein. Which is great if people are going to, like, say something original or insightful about it. But I don’t know … it somehow already feels like it’s too late to say anything new about it?”
“I get what you mean,” Izzy says. “It’s been just enough time for a subject to be exhausted on Twitter, but not enough for actual societal or cultural thought.”
“You talk smart,” I say.
“I’m quoting a tweet, sadly. Who did you go to the show with?” she asks.
I clear my throat and study my short, jagged fingernails. “Adam. We had some drinks after, so I guess that explains the hangover, too.” Isabelle sighs deeply and looks up to the sky, as if an explanation for my behavior might be written on a Gramercy rooftop.
“Should I even ask?”
“Ask what?” I ask, like I don’t know what.
“I believe you know,” she says, eyebrows wiggling up and down suggestively.
“Jesus, Izzy,” I say, feeling a bizarre twitch in my shoulder. “Of course not, you know that. Adam and I are just coworkers.” Her crazy blue eyes widen like she’s going to yell at me, which I can’t handle in my current state. “Friends!” I correct myself. “Very close friends!”
She shuts her eyes and takes a yoga breath, pressing her hands together at heart center and everything. “Presley?” she says sweetly. “Can we just not with the ‘close friends’ bullshit? You two are just blatantly in love— Ow!” I slug her on the shoulder, which is meant to be gentle. She makes a pouty face and hunches her statuesque five-foot-ten frame. I pat the spot.
“My bad.”
“Violence is never the answer,” she says mock seriously. I crack my neck, which makes Isabelle shudder, and both of us laugh. The line inches forward.
“Should we split a cruller or each get our own?” I ask.
“Good question. All I know is that if they don’t have maple, I will literally—”
“Presley Fry?” I hear someone say. I turn and look into the face of a woman so glamorous she couldn’t possibly know me. She’s wearing a white jacket over this blue dress that looks like it costs more than my rent. She pushes her fancy-looking sunglasses to the top of her head, which helps me recognize her.
“Oh, Mrs. Clark, hi,” I say, clearing my throat and trying to channel Isabelle’s cheery energy.
“Hi, hello!” she says, grinning like we’re old besties and she just can’t believe her good fortune to see my hungover face on this hinting-at-autumn day.
“What, uh, what brings you downtown?” I ask.
She holds up a heavy-looking Daily Provisions bag. “It’s Lawrence’s birthday today. Twenty-six.” She shakes her head and looks down at the ground, smiling. “I can hardly believe it.”
“Right on,” I say. Isabelle shifts next to me. “This is my roommate, Isabelle.”
“Hi,” Isabelle says, giving Mrs. Clark an up-down. “I love your outfit.”
“Thank you! Susan Clark,” she says, shifting the bag to her hip and reaching for a handshake. She turns her attention back to me and her smile falls slowly (even with the considerable amount of Botox she’s clearly had), like a shadow is passing over it. I’ve learned to recognize that look over the last year and a half. The frown, the concerned eyes. There’s pleading in it, too; people’s need for me to smile, laugh, or make a joke is undeniable. They want me to prove I’m all right, so that I can save them from both their own concern for me and the awkwardness of the moment.
“How are you holding up, Presley?” Susan asks, shaking her head, her glossy brown bob brushing against her shoulders. “I’m happy to be running into you, but gosh, I can’t believe I haven’t invited you over for dinner or taken you out or anything since…”
“Oh, all good, Mrs. Clark,” I say, since I guess I’m the one who’s supposed to comfort her here. “I’m doing okay. I just visited my grandparents, actually, and they seem to be holding up pretty well.” This isn’t exactly true, but it does the trick. Susan looks up, visibly relieved. But not for long; that damn shadow returns quickly.
“You know, I really am sorry to have missed the funeral.”
I shake my head, wishing it were my funeral she had missed. Death seems preferable to this conversation. “It wasn’t a big thing. Small. You know…” I rack my throbbing brain for the right word. “Close.” Well, probably not the right word, but it’s what comes out. “Anyway. How’s Mr. Clark?”
She does this weird head twitch, as if a bee were swarming around, and suddenly I feel like I’m the one who said the wrong thing. She clears her throat, takes a breath, and rights herself. “Great, thanks for asking. He’ll be glad to hear I ran into you, and that you’re doing well.”
A wave of nausea passes over me. Every moment of this unfed hangover is worse than the last. “Well, I hope Lawrence has a good birthday.”
She brightens up again at the mention of her son, which irritates me for some reason. “Thank you! You know, he lives down in the West Village now. You two should hook up, what with you being the same age and everything.” Isabelle snorts at Mrs. Clark’s word choice, then tries to cover it with a fake cough.
“Totally,” I say, even though I’m sure the one thing I have in common with Lawrence Clark, native Manhattanite and probable finance bro, is a mutual lack of desire to hang out.
“Well, I’d better be going,” Susan says, to my extreme relief. Which is short-lived, because like some kind of Elmo ninja, Susan comes in quickly for a hug. Her bag full of doughnuts squishes awkwardly against my jacket, and she’s, like, runway thin and very short, so her ribs knife my hip bone. She’s also surprisingly strong, so breathing is no longer an option. I feel Isabelle wince next to me; she knows I’m not big on hugs. Susan trembles and I start to panic that this lady might actually fucking cry.
She pulls back almost as quickly as she dove in, returning her shades to cover her eyes and saving me from having to confirm my suspicion. But I’m thinking she was, in fact, crying, considering how quickly she turns on her sneakers, the kind that come pre-scuffed and I’m pretty sure cost six hundred bucks a pop.
“Strange woman,” Isabelle says, looking after her with something like confusion, something like awe. “Who is she?” she asks wistfully.
“She’s from Eulalia. She and Patty grew up together.”
“Ah.” Isabelle nods, practiced enough to not offer a reassuring hand on my shoulder or some sympathetic look that will inevitably convey not sympathy but an invitation for me to spare her from the awkwardness of having to talk about my dead mother. “You okay?” She bends to retie her shoelace, saving me from eye contact. Because she’s the fucking best.
“Yep,” I say.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.” My evergreen answer to that question.
“Mmkay,” Izzy says, standing back up. “Is it just me, or was she weird when you asked about her husband?”
“Very weird,” I say. “She’s married to Thomas Clark. He runs the American Network. Absolutely loaded. He pushed my résumé for Late Night Show, which is one hundred percent how I got that interview. And the internship, probably.”
“And now look at you, soon-to-be associate producer,” Isabelle says. I nudge her with my shoulder and roll my eyes. I’m still an assistant, the promotion to associate producer just a dim light at the end of a long, underpaid tunnel. Izzy continues, “What’s the deal with her son? Is he hot? I hope so, since you’ll be ‘hooking up’ with him soon.” She slaps her knee in an exaggerated fashion.
“No idea. Mr. and Mrs. Clark had me over for dinner when I first moved to the city, so I guess, like, four years ago. But he wasn’t there. The last time I saw him was when we were both in, like, middle school or something. They came down to Eulalia for Christmas. He was very … chatty. Freaked me out.”
“Ah, southern emo teen freaked out by gregarious, fancy New Yorker. Sounds cute.”
“It wasn’t,” I say.
I picture calling Patty to tell her I ran into Mrs. Clark, then remember that’s not an option. My heart does the jump-start thing it does when I realize I’ve forgotten she’s gone. I read an article about phantom limbs a few years ago, the sensation amputees have where they can feel an itch on an arm that isn’t there, soreness in a long-gone shin. That urge to reach for something that’s no longer part of you. Feeling something impossible.
* * *
My name is Presley because Viva Las Vegas was on in my mom’s hospital room when she gave birth. While I do appreciate that I don’t have some girlie bullshit name, it’s a bit much, I think. Which makes sense, because “a bit much” is what we should have put on my mom’s headstone. But, as it turns out, when your mom suddenly has a stroke (well, as sudden as a stroke can be considering the damage that daily heaping cups of Burnett’s vodka will do to a liver), you don’t exactly have the time or mental capacity to workshop the perfect epitaph.
One evening a year and a half ago I had been walking down First Avenue at night after scouting an up-and-coming comedian. Scouting was a new responsibility I had just been given at work and one that I was psyched to get to do. No pay raise came with this, just reimbursements for tickets and two-drink minimums. Bringing comedians in to do a set on the show is a necessary step in being considered for a promotion. I was feeling distinctly like I had my shit together. Or, almost. Like I was on the right track.
That’s when Grammy called. I knew right when I saw her name on my phone that something bad had happened. I’m always the one to call her, because she says she doesn’t want to bother me or have my phone go off at an inconvenient time. She doesn’t quite get the whole “vibrate” thing.
My mother was in a coma. I needed to get on a plane to Georgia if I wanted to say goodbye to Patty before they pulled the plug. As Grammy told me all this, in her measured, calm southern lilt, I stopped walking abruptly enough to really piss off the gaggle of drunk girls stumbling behind me. Either it was new or I hadn’t noticed it before, but spray-painted on the metal door leading to the speakeasy Isabelle was always suggesting we try was a life-size painting of Elvis, dressed in his iconic all-white Vegas show outfit. Head bent, crooning silently into a mic, pointing to the filthy patch of wall next to it.
In some small corner of my mind, the part that wasn’t numbed with shock, I recognized the irony. But nothing about it was funny.
CHAPTER 2
Mondays have an unfairly bad reputation. I like Mondays at Gary Madden’s Late Night Show, where I’m an assistant in the talent booking department. I like signing off on the expensive boxes of treats we fill the goody bags with for famous guests who absolutely don’t need them. I love looking at the full lineup for the week and anticipating which interviews will go well, which ones will be boring or stilted or uncomfortable. And seeing which comedian will fill the Friday slot.
The Friday show, which is filmed every Thursday afternoon right after the Thursday show, always ends with a stand-up comedian doing a tight five-minute set instead of a musical act. It’s a tradition for any late night show, but we’re the only one still doing it, and according to my boss, Emma, “owning” that Friday-night slot is the best thing I can do to make a case for a promotion. I spend most of my weeknights and weekends bopping around the Village, the Lower East Side, and the various and spread-out clubs in Brooklyn looking for the next stand-up comic who’ll get their shot on TV. This was already my preferred method of spending time; now I just have a new motivation. If someone I pitch ends up on the show, and they do well, I’ll finally be considered for the promotion to associate producer (a job I already do, but without the added responsibilities of Emma’s administrative bullshit and the corresponding meager pay). The assistant to associate producer pipeline usually takes two years, meaning I’m six months out from being considered a geriatric assistant.
I’ve been sitting at Emma’s desk for half an hour, syncing her calendars and going through her mail, when she blazes into her office at ten a.m., glamorous (per usual) with her cropped Afro and navy-blue blazer, intimidating despite the fact that she stands at a puny five foot two. She tends to rush everywhere she goes, which is partially why I was so afraid of her as an intern and for the first few months after she hired me to be her assistant. And while she is undeniably crucial to the show’s success, I now diagnose her constant quick pace as a strategic choice. Acting like she always has somewhere to be casts an aura of importance around her. ...
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