could be brillig, baby
Probably I would be better off if I didn't date E women. With me it's always been Laurie, Jenni, Candy, Maggie, Debbi, Stacey—all my life, just me and the cheerleading squad. You should find yourself a nice A girl, Keeno always tells me. I can see myself dating a Sasha. There are plenty of girls out there whose names don't even end in vowels—Megan, Beth, Doris, you name it. I bet I've even slept with a few. A friend of mine in college dated a Sam, and he seemed perfectly happy. One thing's for sure: I should know by now that dating an E girl spells trouble. But then again, I have never been the kind of person who learns lessons.
So I shouldn't be that surprised to find myself at a party with a girl named Evie—Evie Goddard. It's a book party at this underground bar, one of those East Village spots where the only indicator that a bar exists is a tiny night-light of a sign next to a stairwell that's like something out of Goya. If there hadn't been a bunch of people mothing by the door I never would have found it. I am not cool enough to know where these stealth hot spots are.
Inside it is a tired-out exhibit of Manhattan's glitterati in their natural habitat. The scenery is familiar, as is the crowd. Gigless models circulate with hors d'oeuvres and the attitude of overqualified assassins. The usual assortment of slick, black-slipped New York women caress the edges of their martini glasses, trying to achieve the perfect combination of sexual desirability and haughty unattainability. And there are the characteristically coifed and manicured New York men amid all of it, indifferent as gondoliers.
The conversation, too, is familiar. It's like they're all actors trying out for the same part: they all make the same gestures with their Scotches, all display the same phony emphaticness— always a dor ing sweetie the new book or de testing dahling the latest reading—while jockeying around the latest ponytailed/goateed / ski - cap - wearing / body - pierced / dressed - all - in - black / vampiri- cally pale/Buddhistically tattooed/flagitiously alcoholic/piously macrobiotic/contemptuously unfashionable-fashionable author du jour who has just published his memoir about his delinquent youth of incest and driftery.
Please, people. Please. I'm only here because invitations to these events are the only real perk of my alleged job as peon in the editorial department of a big publishing house and because I am subject to the sweet delusional sorcery of the Manhattan evening, like all these people have been secretly preparing for my triumphant eclosion into their world of gossip columns and expense accounts.
Harry Driscoll, they'll say. Where have you been? It's so good to meet you at last. We've had our plutocratic yet benevolent eyes on you for quite some time. You can come with us now.
Right. Want to know what really happens at these affairs? I have a few drinks, start enjoying the feeling of being out with Evie—letting myself buy into the false picture of young happy couple on the scene—when some swollen bigwig takes me by the elbow and tells me to get him a gimlet and make it snappy.
Which is to say: I hate these parties more than life itself.
But I am here because Evie asked me. She appeared this afternoon at my cubicle, arms dangling like fishing lines over my partition, and said, ``Little Harry. I know a girl has to work hard to make your A-list, but come on: let's go rouse the rabble at this so-and-so book party. It will be like life in a Dewar's ad: all high fashion and beautiful people and that fancy kind of no-frost ice in the drinks. You will look the extremist edge of avant-garde in your piece of merde blazer and cravate de Daddy.''
Evie always talks like this. She is the most incandescent person I've ever known. I've seen her use less candlepower with other people, but with me she's always like this—an overeducated auctioneer on speed.
I should have stayed home tonight and gotten some work done. I am behind on several projects at the office, including passing to press the five thousandth annual installment of our Marathoner's Calendar and Logbook. For the book to go forward in a timely manner it's necessary that both design and copyediting get a clean copy of the manuscript by the deadline, and this year I'm late with it. Again. Last year I was late, too, and so the calendar missed its pub date by a whole month. ``How about that?'' I said to Andrew Nadler, my gleefully Old Testament boss. ``An innovation. The world's first calendar that can't keep track of its own time.''
That was a miscalculation. Nadler didn't take it in the playful, ironic spirit I had hoped to convey.
He never does.
Part of the reason why I didn't put the calendar into production on time is that I couldn't bear to edit it. The calendar is, strictly speaking, a book. It's a spiral-bound, semiglossy, handheld number with one essay on joggerly prudence for every month of the year. In July, make sure you don't run barefoot over glass. In January, avoid polar bears. That kind of interesting stuff.
I know, I know: I shouldn't be denigrating it. It's a very flattering first step to promotion for any editorial assistant, and as I'm the very youngest assistant on the floor, I should be grateful for it. There's this guy we all call Slo-Mo who has his Ph.D. from NYU and has been working for this Brahmin editor for eight years and hasn't even handled a cookbook yet. Four years ago, in only my second year at Prestige, I was given the first calendar—way ahead of the usual assistant's schedule. I should have devoted myself to the mundane details and impressed Nadler with my meticulousness. But I just couldn't bring myself to read through those essays—wicking socks and pulmometers and body fat percentage were not why I'd gone into book publishing—and so before I knew it days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and still the manuscript languished in the bottom drawer of my desk.
Last week my friend Keeno asked me why this year's pub date was in jeopardy again. ``What's taking so long? Is it that you just don't care, like last year?''
``It isn't that I don't care.''
``You having trouble with the edits?''
``It isn't the edits.''
``Well what, then? It's going to be late again, isn't it? Aren't you going to be moderately fucked?''
Keeno's wrong, of course. I'm not moderately fucked. I'm immoderately—fantastically—fucked. I'm so fucked I can't even bring myself to talk about the cause of my extravagant fuckage. It's too awful.
I don't even want to think about it.
Any way you look at it, instead of getting blurred at this party I should be taking certain corrective steps so I can pass the calendar Monday so I might have a prayer of getting it pubbed on time. But I've never been able to resist Evie, and considering the general disintegration of our relationship, I began to succumb to her suasions when she appeared at my cubicle earlier this afternoon.
``You could set a trend,'' she continued. ``The waif look is out, the overworked, undercompensated, thoroughly juiced, dead-beat-Brooks-Brothers-hand-me-down WASP look is in. What do you say? Could be brillig, baby.''
—Reprinted from Frog King by Adam Davies by permission of Riverhead, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2002, Adam Davies. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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