He reaches out his hand. “I’m Chris,” he says, as if I asked forhis name, as if I gave him the faintest sign that I was interested. I am sort of interested, though, not in him, just in how I can press his buttons. It’s not like there’s much else to do at this hoax of an art show.
As I shake his hand, there’s a light shock when our palms touch. It’s not a spark of chemistry, just a by-product of his static-collecting suit. I squeeze his hand as hard as I can, trying to crush every bone in his knuckles to make up for all the women before me who’ve shaken hands too lightly and given men all the power right from the start.
“EJ,” I say.
He asks how I spell that, and I half expect him to take out a fountain pen and write it down. He has that look of someone who’s never caught without his spiral notebook and stack of business cards.
“E-J,” I answer. “Very phonetically difficult, I know.”
A toothy smile tumbles onto his face. Once it has landed, it’s perfectly symmetrical, down to the mini dimples on both sides. I’m filled with an urge to reach out and pull one side of his mouth downward, just so it’s not so balanced.
He asks what EJ stands for.
“Ever Joy,” I say dryly, making it up on the spot and pleased with the outcome.
“You’re lying,” he says. “I can see it in your eyes.”
I’ve got to admit this scares me for a second, especially since I’m wearing colored contacts. But then it fills me with a bizarre relief, the idea that a complete stranger can call me out on my bullshit. Usually people just gobble down whatever feces I feed them.
“Emily Jane,” I tell him because it almost feels like he’s earned it somehow. “But those are the two most boring names ever. My parents lacked a certain creativity.”
“Well, you seem to have inherited a lot of creativity from somewhere.” Chris’s even-keeled voice should lull me right to sleep, butit seems to be waking me up instead. Or maybe I’m just wired from the drink that I guess I’ve chugged in the time we’ve been talking.
“I got it all from my friends,” I say, looking around the gallery to locate the rest of the Redstockings. Three shooting stars in a room full of space junk. I feel a tug to join them, but it’s overridden by the tug to stay and put another wrinkle or two in Chris’s ironed-out life.
“You’re an actress?” Chris asks, not in a way that implies he recognizes me from anything before, but as if he expects to someday.
“Actor,” I correct him, though I’m pleased that he sees the star potential in me. “But no, I’m not. I leave that to my roommate.” I nod over to Tara. “I’m an Uber driver,” I elaborate, which is actually true.
I whiz around the city a few times a week, raking in a hundred dollars a night; it’s not bad. We kept the old Ford Focus that Jenni drove out from Michigan—the Red Rocket, we call her, even though she’s a rusty brunette by now. I love the rush of racing taxi drivers along the avenues, edging them out. Few things are more satisfying than provoking others’ road rage. So many people think they have to sell their souls to corporate America to survive in New York, but there are actually unlimited alternatives if you’re not burdened by the weight of other people’s expectations.
Chris seems to be carrying a lot of expectations. I ask what he does, if he’s a bond trader on Wall Street. He has that look about him.
“Close.” His eyebrows wiggle slightly. Self-effacing or arrogant, it’s hard to tell. “I’m a tax accountant.”
“Even more thrilling,” I deadpan. “How’d you end up in Brooklyn tonight? Did someone kidnap you?”
He says the owner of the gallery is a client of his.
“Yup, checks out,” I mutter.
“You’re a writer,” Chris says, staring at me like he’s trying to pin down the real color of my eyes. I thought he’d let the career topicdrop after I gave the Uber line, but I guess not. Guys like him think that what you do is who you are.
“No, I’m not.” But I grow tired of the lie as soon as it’s out of my mouth, so I backtrack to the truth. “Okay, sure, I write plays but I’ve never sold anything. The theater kings don’t think I’m very good at all.”
I say this with defiant pride, like I’m not scared to look myself in the mirror and see the mascara sinking into the early stages of eye wrinkles that I refuse to buy night cream for because the whole anti-aging industry is rooted in misogyny. The truth is, I actually hate looking at myself in the mirror and nearly always pee in the dark, but that’s not because of the wrinkles. It’s because I don’t want to send the wrong messages to my brain that my looks are tied to my worth.
Chris asks what I’d write about if I was going to come up with a play about tonight.
“That’s easy,” I say. “It would be about a conventional man falling in love with a modern woman who finds monogamy monotonous. And him not hearing her when she says that she doesn’t do commitment, so he tries and fails to get her to change her mind.”
Chris seems to find this answer amusing, which wasn’t the point at all. “And how would the plotline end?” he asks.
“Depends if it’s a comedy or a drama,” I say. “It would probably be the former because my comedic talent is really too good to waste. But either way, it would involve significant pining on the man’s behalf.”
“Nothing like some good male pining to please an audience,” Chris says.
“I don’t care about writing an ending that pleases the audience,” I say, a little more sharply than I mean to because it hits a nerve. “I care about writing an ending that pleases the characters.”
