41
“Why is divorce so expensive? Because it’s worth every penny.”
After we got dressed in a hurried frenzy and walked out onto Fifth Avenue, Elliot’s pager started going off. “Jeez, I thought the art folk don’t rise until noon! Kiki said Lyle’s always still asleep when she leaves his apartment at ten!” I stuck my arm out, praying I’d get lucky enough to find a taxi.
“Holly, wait one sec—I have to talk to you about something—”
Suddenly a cab pulled up next to a mound of snow and a woman hopped out. I thanked her, which I always did, and then wondered why I always thanked people when they were simply getting out at their destination.
“Yay! Free cab! That was easy.” I turned to kiss Elliot good-bye. “Wait, did you want to tell me something?”
“Come on, lady!” shouted the driver in a thick Middle Eastern accent. He followed his command by leaning on his horn. Nice.
“Go ahead,” Elliot said, kissing me on the cheek. “We’ll talk later.”
On the ride downtown I was so elated from the magical blur of the last forty-eight hours that I wasn’t even nervous about beginning work.
When I arrived I did get a sudden minisurge of anxiety about the unknown new chapter and hoped my audition press release for the job wasn’t the only good one I could pull out. Tristin came out to greet me, wearing a Band-Aid for a skirt, then gave me the grand tour, including the coffee machine, which was very key due to the weekend with Elliot, which had netted me probably four hours of sleep a night. That’s the thing about dating: you’re trying to not snore, not even breathe, or God forbid fart. I drank three cups to get out of my comatose state. Half the people weren’t even there, and as I walked by Randy’s office, my wave to her was greeted with a brisk smile while she talked on the phone.
We arrived at my desk, which was against a huge window and right next to Tristin’s. My giant clear iMac was such a vision of joy, I almost hugged it—I almost didn’t trust people who preferred PCs. After I pounded the java, we hit the supply room. Move over, Staples. I got excited just looking at the reams of colored paper, notebooks, pens galore, tape, even Magic Markers. I got so much loot, it took three trips up the aluminum staircase to get it to my desk. And on the last journey, I could not fit by the guy who was heading down as I headed up.
“You must be Holly Talbott,” he said in a serious tone, all business. “Sean Greene.”
“Yes, hi, nice to meet you,” I said, managing to shake his hand, despite the piles of stuff in my arms. “I’m so sorry, I’m raiding your supply closet, it’s like the first day of school.”
“Let me help you,” he said, relieving me of three boxes of rainbow paper clips, fluorescent Post-Its, and a desk calendar.
“Thank you so much, you are such a rock star,” I said, suddenly feeling dumb. “I guess I have to stop saying that as a substitute for ‘you’re the best’ now, since you actually know real rock stars.”
We landed at my desk and plopped my loot on the table. He smiled at me, said, “See you around,” and walked down the hall.
“Holly, we have our staff meeting now and you’re gonna get all your artists including The Saints, that new hot hot hot Brooklyn band,” said Tristin. “You are gonna love love love them.”
After the meeting, which seemed to last an eternity, I left with the files and stacks of demos for my three new bands and hit the phones, calling all the managers to introduce myself and make appointments to meet them for lunch. I also phoned all the tour managers to get dates for New York shows so I could invite all my editor friends and get the ball rolling.
Just then, Noah Greene, el presidente and cofounder of the label with Sean, walked by me and stopped to look me over.
“Soooo, you’re the new Dartmouth chick we hired. I thought it was a barnyard up there in New Hampshire! Who knew a smartypants could be so cute?” He walked off before I could say a word. I was in a state of shock. I think that was some form of un-kosher sexual harassment or at the very least extremely unprofessional behavior, but since I hadn’t heard talk of a pube in his Coke or whatever Clarence Thomas did, I went back to work, semi-weirded out, but also flattered. I drafted a release for The Saints, whose album was “dropping” in three months but who already had a rising hit leaked on the Internet, making my job cake. The day flew by and I called my friend Maggie, who had been in production with me at Paper and was now at Spin.
“Mag-dogs!”
“Holland? Holy shit, how are you?”
“I’m in PR for Celestial.”
“No way!”
“Way. I switched to the other side. I know it’s like D.A.s who sell out and go defend rapists. But not.”
“No, I meant no way that you’re working at all. Didn’t you marry some hedge fund dude?”
“Um . . . yeah, well, we actually split up. My son’s in school, so I thought I’d get back to work. It’s just three days, so it’s really great.”
“Awesome! But wait—how are the creepy Greene brothers?”
“They may be slimeballs, but they have a killer ear.”
We ended up talking for thirty minutes, and by the wrap-up, she had agreed to run a piece. Success!
I came home exhausted to find gorgeous flowers waiting.
“I miss you already. I’ll call you when I’m back from the red state. Dinner on Friday? Or Saturday? Or both? Elliot.”
I smiled, elated. Despite my insanely busy day, whenever I had a nanosecond of downtime, I’d think of him and get that incredible jolt all over again. It was so much fun to remember and re-remember those moments, drawing from a memory bank of something better than gold bars. I was so enamored I couldn’t wait to refill my stash of Elliot memories by making new ones that weekend.
Before bed, Miles called again for a chat, long-distance tuck-in, and songs.
“You sound happy, Mom!” I was amazed he could notice a change in me through the phone wire. Maybe I’d been too mopey before.
“I do? Well, I am happy.”
The next day I was swamped again and the morning flew. I hadn’t even thought of lunch the day before, and I couldn’t believe a chowhound like moi had become one of those losers who claimed they “forgot to eat,” but I did. But the first-day nerves had subsided by the second day, and by 2:00 p.m. I was starving. I walked by Randy’s office; she was eating a cheese danish (I rarely saw her without one), sitting with Tristin reviewing album cover photography for Rotting Corpses, a Brazilian death-metal act whose single was called “Dig Up (My Grave).” I nervously crept in the doorway and they both looked up as if to say What?
“Um, Randy, could I ever, do you mind if I um, just . . . dash across the street and grab a sandwich?” Their brows furrowed as if I were speaking Farsi. I felt stupid or, as Kiki used to write, stoopid.
“Uh, why don’t you just take your lunch hour?” said Randy.
I’d been out of the workforce for so long, that I only remembered my assistant days when I’d been forced to eat at my keyboard or starve. But even though I’d been doing nothing but mommying for six years, my position was high level enough to merit a real lunch. I grabbed a falafel and walked the streets, wandering into cool little shops I’d never seen before. Thinking of Elliot and his cute note, the harsh pavement beneath my boots might as well have been clouds.
At work the next day Noah Greene came in and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey you—come in my office.”
I nervously followed him up to the third floor to the brothers’ lair, which I hadn’t seen yet.
“Wow, this is amazing,” I said, scanning the Warhols and Lichtensteins on the wall. “Your art is fantastic.”
“Thanks. We hired a top consultant. She gets us the best shit,” he bragged, gesturing to an amazing Motherwell behind his couch. Then he walked to his bathroom door and opened it. “Check it out, I got a Jasper Johns over the pot.” Nice.
Back in his office, he flopped onto a big Eames lounge chair, his crocodile boots up on the matching ottoman.
“I know this great art adviser, Elliot Smith. Do you know him?” I asked.
“Like the singer? No. And I know everyone in the biz.”
“Really? I know he works with Lyle Spence a lot.”
“I’ve bought tons and tons of shit from Lyle. But never heard of Smith.”
Oh, well. I thought I could score Elliot a new fat-cat client. But before I could butter him up further, Noah changed the subject.
“So, good job with this Spin piece. How’d you pull that off? I had some broad here two years who barely got what you got in three days.”
“I know this guy Matt Sevin and suspected he’d like the album, and he did.” While there clearly weren’t fireworks love-wise with the golden sneaker-clad hipster, I had definitely still felt comfortable sending him the tunes. “It’s a small world, you know.”
“I like you. You can write, too—the press release is terrific. The chick in the marketing department copied parts of it verbatim for the sales force.”
“I saw. I’m flattered.”
“They like you, these people. Editors, people around here. I want you to take on another act. We’re signing this young broad, she’ll be our Britney, but not a fucking thing like her—she’s like an anti-Britney. Thinking chick. Like you. She’s called Casey Sinclair, and she’s a beauty. Hot little body on her. You’re gonna help us make her a star.”
“Wow, that is great, thank you so much.”
“You better kick ass for me.”
“I will, Noah, I swear. I will kick ass.”
The following day Noah gave me the still-unfinished demo; he was grasping it in his little pig-in-a-blanket-sized fingers and slid it conspicuously across my desk and walked off.