“Unless they’re named EJ,” Hal says, and I glare at her. “Justkidding,” she adds hastily. “But I guess that settles it then. We reject the dog proposal by a vote of two to one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to building my business.”
And just like that, she returns to theclickclickclickof her keyboard.
I don’t even bother thinking of a clever retort. I just go and lie down in my bunk bed for a while. They’re probably right; getting a dog was a stupid thing to consider. Having an animal depend on me makes no sense, not when I can’t even depend on myself. I still think I would’ve risen to the occasion, but now we’ll never know.
Some mornings later, I wake up and go out to the kitchen. Tara and Hal are gone for the day already. On the counter, there’s a fishbowl with a little goldfish darting about. A yellow sticky note is tacked onto the bowl.
Let’s start here and work our way up to a dog? Love you lots.—Tara & Hal
My eyes feel dewy, and I blink away my emotions before I have to feel them on my cheeks. I’ve never thought of myself as a fish person, but there’s instant affinity between me and this little swimmer in the bowl.
I text Tara thank you right away. She says it was actually Hal’s idea, which surprises me. Moving over to the Redstocking group chat—Jenni long removed—I thank them both. Then I trot over to the nearest pet store in Williamsburg to buy a second goldfish so the first has a friend. I load up on organic fish food and pebbles and plants for the fishbowl and go a little crazy with all the decorations.
The hypocrisy between being an advocate of freedom and keeping animals captive in a fishbowl is something I’m aware of. I don’t like it, but I’d at least rather have the little fishes be with us thanwith other people who treat them worse. They’re doomed to captivity either way; that’s the sad truth of it.
What should we name them??I ask the group. They tell me I can pick, so I think on it for some time until the names emerge from my thoughts, flapping up like old friends.
Mango and Squid.
Chapter 15
It’s a good spring for my playwriting. I don’t write much in terms of word count, but I conceptualize this whole new genre, unfurl it with my hips and then my fingers. I touch the fabric, cut its shape, design its texture. Gritty like sandpaper. A slippery streak too, the flat side of a skipping stone.
The premise is that all the dialogue comes from one master voice that you hear from behind the curtain but never actually see. Kind of like an Oz figure but the actors onstage don’t speak. They just mime to what the voice is saying.
It’s satire about how the theater industry takes away the individual voices of the actors by making them stick to constrictive scripts and paying them nothing, exploiting their talent and turning them into puppets.
We think about pitching it to some directors, but we know it’s a lost cause. There’s no way they’ll go for something that paints the industry in a shady light, no matter how true it is.
The “we” refers to Elliot, this total smoke show who comes by Kora’s a lot and inhales nitro cold brew, spilling it into the cracks of their keyboard without care. Elliot wears a look that less enlightened people might mistake as constipation. But as I know too well, it’s actually the expression of a virtuoso whose talent is lodged so deeply inside that they can’t quite squeeze it out.
Elliot runs the theater circuit too. We hit it off venting about allthe nepotism and elitist gatekeeper shit that goes on. It’s even worse for the nonbinary community. They gave up on acting because they’d audition for female roles and get told they were too masculine, then get turned down for male roles for being too feminine. And the tricky thing is most of it was this subtle coded language so they wouldn’t have great evidence for a lawsuit even if they could afford a lawyer.
Elliot sees my talent, says I’m the leader the world needs. It’s validating but frustrating too, that everyone doesn’t see it that way. Though maybe some of my charm lies in its controversy.
We find some creative ways to work our disgruntled muscles before they tell me I’ve inspired them so much that they’re moving to LA to conquer the screenwriting scene. I’m pretty relieved by this because I’d probably keep seeing Elliot for a while if they stayed in New York. Not monogamously, but still, it was getting a little too serious. The choking feeling, which begins as a soft tickle in the throat, would soon have become a set of talons clenching my neck.
The day that Elliot leaves, I head over to Lone Wolf, the matchbox-shaped dive bar on the corner of Dodworth and Bushwick Avenue, home to three-dollar picklebacks—a shot of whiskey chased by pickle brine. Picklebacks originated in Bushwick, one of our many claims to fame.
Even at nighttime, it’s nearly always darker inside the bar than outside. The lightbulbs in the ceiling lamps are either too old or too grimy to shine properly. Probably both. Tara has started bartending at Lone Wolf for extra money. I like keeping her company. Hal is here tonight too, on the rickety barstool beside me as Tara pours draft beer and whiskey for the motorcycle-and-Medicare crowd. They’re the kind of people you can rest around, no sleazy pickup lines or anything like that.
“Let’s invent a Redstocking drink to put on the menu,” Hal suggests.
“I don’t think I have the power to make that happen,” Tara says, looking hesitant, as if her manager is going to catch wind and fire her.
“Of course you do,” I say. “A Redstocking cocktail is a good idea. It’ll cement our legacy. Gin, vermouth, and Sprite? With pomegranate for the red color, plus some maple syrup and bitters to make a statement. And excess salt on the rim so it’s nice and crunchy. Tough on the tongue.”
I expect Hal to shoot it down and propose her own grand recipe instead. But she just nods in approval and claps my back. “Nice work, EJ,” she says. “Might hire you to be on my product development team soon enough.”
“Like I’d ever work for you, Hal,” I say, giving her a stern do-you-even-hear-yourself look. The ice breaks, and the two of us fall through into laughter that feels like lake water. Tara joins in too. It’s like we’re hollering extra hard to mask the fact that there are only three of us now, not four.
There’s an old, duct-taped jukebox pressed up against the back wall. Hal and I go over and give it a good shake. We’ve developed a special talent for shaking jukeboxes so hard that the coins they’ve gobbled up fall into place and we get to pick songs for free. If I had a résumé, which I don’t obviously, “Jukebox Pirate” would be front and center in the “Special Skills” section.
Sure enough, things rattle and click into place and we’re able to get “Wild Horses” going. It’s one of our favorite Rolling Stones songs, though it’s on the slower side. Hal and I dance to it together, swaying as we hold each other and twirl this way and that through the narrow bar, cloaked in the liberation that comes from dark lighting and a crowd of heavy drinkers.
Tara won’t come out to dance with us for fear of repercussions while she’s on the clock, so Hal and I have to hop up and over the bar and join her back there. We’re not too unhinged but we’re not tame either.
“Better to be fired and free than employed and tethered,” I say.
