How Could She Read online

  By the time her car eased up outside Jesse’s studio, she’d pulled herself together. Jesse’s studiomates, used to her coming by, waved hello. She walked faster than usual across the cement floor and ran down the ramp to Jesse’s shop. He had on a blue face mask, and he was using a tremendously loud belt sander to smooth a strip of white oak. It took him a moment to notice she was watching from the doorway. He turned the machine off, and the silence that followed felt piercing. He came up to kiss her but stopped when he read her face. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.” Sunny leaned up against him and let him wrap her in his arms. She let off a satisfying exhale and looked up into his eyes. The whites were so bright. They reminded her of the keys on the piano she’d practiced scales on as a girl. “I’m starting to feel better,” she told him.

  “Good.” Jesse bit his lip and sighed.

  “What?” she asked.

  Jesse took her hand and pulled it to his chest. “I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s fucking scary.”

  “Oh,” Sunny said stupidly, and stood motionless. On the one hand, she was so happy. On the other, she was terrified. This could all turn catastrophic. Maybe it already had.

  “You’re a terrible liar. You’re not feeling better.” Jesse said. “Let’s go get you sorted out.”

  Cisco’s was a dump, one level removed from a motorcycle bar, and it was impressively crowded for this early on a Wednesday afternoon. Sunny waited on a bench in the back of the room while Jesse got their drinks. He came over with two bottles of Budweiser and a pair of shot glasses filled with clear liquid.

  “They were out of rosé,” he said to Sunny. She rolled her eyes and gulped from the glass. She shivered at the toxic taste and took a swig of beer. “There you go,” Jesse said. He sat next to her, close. “So what happened?”

  She relaxed and told Jesse everything about her morning—leaving out only the menopause.

  “Sounds like a real opportunity,” he said. “Drawing turds on napkins, for free.”

  Sunny leaned back against the wall. “I guess I had a good run.”

  “It’s not over,” he said. “You just have to evolve.”

  She frowned. “Didn’t Trump just outlaw the word ‘evolu—’” Sunny suddenly stopped speaking. Geraldine came through the door. The figure was far away and in silhouette against the daylight pouring through from behind, but it was unquestionably Geraldine. A guy stood next to her, and when Sunny’s eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed he was cute, and with a strong jaw. The pair hovered by the jukebox and consulted with each other, their body language fluttery and nervous. Sunny shielded her face with her beer bottle.

  “What?” Jesse asked.

  “Geraldine’s here,” Sunny said, sinking lower in her seat. “Don’t look.”

  “Are you sure that’s her?”

  “Yes, totally,” Sunny said in a low voice. “Is there a back exit?”

  “She didn’t see anything scandalous. We’re working together and grabbing a beer,” Jesse reminded her. “She’s heading our way,” he said in an undertone. He rose to his feet and gave Geraldine a hug. Sunny copied him, pretending to be surprised.

  “What the heck are you guys doing here?” Geraldine asked. “I thought you were on Long Island.”

  “In town for the day,” Sunny said quickly.

  “My shop is nearby,” Jesse said.

  “We’re collaborating,” Sunny clarified. “What brings you to Red Hook?”

  “My friend and I were taking a walk,” Geraldine said, pointing toward the entrance. Sunny narrowed her eyes, pretending to be having difficulty fishing out the tall, boyish guy among the day drinkers on their barstools. Geraldine must have read the awkwardness in her face. Instead of motioning for her friend to join them, she said, “I should probably get back to him.”

  Geraldine crossed the room and said something to her companion that made him put his hand on her back and plant a kiss on the crown of her head. Sunny was fascinated by this version of Geraldine, the one who kept a lover in every port. Sunny’s sense of disorientation gave way to one of relief. Peter wasn’t going to destroy Geraldine. If anything, Geraldine might bring ruin on him.

  There was no need to call Peter, no wolf to defang. She wished she could call Rachel and explain what she’d witnessed, but the Jesse factor made that impossible. Sunny lifted her beer to the back of her neck. Her skin prickled at the cold, and she let off a slow exhale. It was the first time she’d felt anything close to pleasure all day. She scooted a couple of inches closer to Jesse and leaned into his golden, solid body.

  25

  There’s something I think we all want to know. What’s your secret?” Linette Alvarez widened her eyes and pursed her lips around the straw jutting from her cup. She was drinking a supersized passion-fruit iced tea that she’d requested in the green room, requiring one of the Brooklyn Ideas Festival volunteers to bike a mile to the nearest Starbucks.

  “You’re looking at her.” Sylvie pointed at Geraldine, who was seated in the swan chair next to her. “Geraldine Despont is my magic canoodles.”

  Most of the questions were for Sylvie, so Geraldine had little to do but adjust the cross of her legs and follow their chatter, interrupting every so often in order to earn her spot on the stage and not seem as nervous as she was. As an interviewer, Linette was pleasant enough, with intelligent eyes and one of those oversmoked voices that had helped her secure a place at the top of the ranks of American public radio. Their conversation would air on Linette’s nationally syndicated NPR program the following week. Geraldine tried not to think about this.

  “Allow me to rephrase,” Linette said. “I know why I enjoy listening to you, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts about your unique appeal. You broke the top ten on iTunes last week—no easy feat.” Geraldine’s neck warmed as the audience applauded, and Linette resumed speaking before the clapping died down. “Take your most recent episode, for example. You interviewed Petra McGill, of Shits and Giggles. I don’t care about celebrity gossip, but I couldn’t stop listening to your conversation. How do you do that?”

  Geraldine surveyed the crowd. Two hundred fifty tickets sold, according to the festival president. The cheap seats blended into the shadows, and there were too many rows to count. It sort of scared her.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvie said. “Talking. That’s the thing, right?”

  “The thing.” Linette knit her brow.

  Geraldine glanced down at the microphone pinned to her blouse. “It’s the medium that people love,” she said. “We all crave intimacy, and podcasting provides that. When Petra came on, she got into her anxiety disorder. The way she described what happens to her when she has a panic attack—I could slip into her skin and feel one coming on myself.” Geraldine paused as she gathered her thoughts. “The human voice is extraordinary.”

  “Some people might say it’s the most ordinary thing ever,” Linette countered, with the ease of somebody who’d spent the last three decades playing devil’s advocate on issues from modest fashion to gun control.

  “No, it’s not,” Geraldine said. “Conversation has become so rare. Not contrived conversation, where the three of us are on a stage in Gowanus pretending to have a natural exchange in front of hundreds of paying strangers, but real . . . you know, conversation.” This basic conviction, that what people really wanted from their media these days wasn’t to feel smarter or more informed but simply to connect, had been the cornerstone of her memo for Elinda. It had been what had inspired Elinda to create a new job for Geraldine, overseeing the revamp of Ffife Media’s “third layer,” which is what they’d agreed to call materials that did not live on a printed page.

  “Some very sexy paying Brooklyn strangers,” Sylvie added, earning a round of cheers.

  “They certainly brought their A-game,” Linette said, elbowing in on Sylvie’
s banter. “But seriously, there is such a thing as the art of an interview. There’s a balance one has to strike between spontaneity and purposefulness. When you sit down with someone, be it a life hacker or a manic-depressive comedian, what is it that you’re going after?”

  “It’s simple,” Geraldine said. “I just want to connect.” Linette glanced down at the notes in her lap.

  “And I fear we’re not one hundred percent succeeding on that front with you,” Sylvie added with a laugh.

  Linette looked startled, then gathered her composure. “That is something I’ve noticed you two do a lot—unpack a conversation while it’s happening.”

  “And you want to unpack that? Okay.” Sylvie shrugged. “I have no experience doing interviews. I’ve worked in city politics, and I did nude modeling in college. Geraldine has more experience in the bigger sense—”

  “By which she means I’m eons older,” Geraldine butted in.

  “And wiser.” Sylvie said to her partner, and turned to Linette. “There’s this thing she does, which you may have noticed. She seems like she’s playing for laughs, but she’s actually—”

  “Taking risks,” Linette filled in. “I can definitely hear that. There is an authenticity to your contributions that is shocking, Geraldine,” Linette said.

  “The new shock jock is a polite Canadian,” Sylvie said to the crowd. “Don’t you love it? In Trump’s America civility and honesty are revolutionary and heroes are from Manitoba.”

  “I’m actually from Toronto,” Geraldine said.

  “Toronto, Manitoba, and all of you who came to Gowanus,” Linette said, glancing at her wristwatch. “Let’s hear it for Sylvie Benghal and Geraldine Despont, extraordinarily talented host and producer of Pod People.”

  After the talk a festival assistant led Linette and her guests to a pair of tables in a back room with a skylight and ivy-covered walls. “You can sign your books here,” he told them.

  “Oh, shit—were we supposed to write one?” Sylvie asked playfully.

  “We don’t have any merch,” Geraldine told him.

  “I’m just following protocol,” he said twitchily.

  “The people want you.” Linette gestured at the crowd queuing up in two lines. The meatier cluster, Geraldine realized as she took her seat, was for the Pod People. They were mostly interested in talking to Sylvie, but a couple of them walked up to Geraldine, who gamely answered questions about distribution channels and posed for selfies. A white-haired man who had his arm in a sling simply wanted to tell her that he grew up in Ottawa and had been a Beaver Scout. Another, dressed in all black and platform boots, wanted to take her to task for something she’d said a few weeks ago, about how she hated horror movies. “Watch this and then see if you still stand by that,” he said, pressing a DVD into her hand. She expected it to be a film he’d made and was trying to promote, and she was heartened to see it was Diabolique. Sylvie, who’d been watching the entire interaction, turned to Geraldine when the guy meandered away. “I wouldn’t even know how to watch a DVD if my life depended on it,” she said. “Thank goddess for all my older women.”

  Nobody else came to take the man’s place, so Geraldine pulled her phone out of her bag. Peter had texted: hi. His persistence was impressive, Geraldine had to give him that. Peter was in Scotland, attending a film festival. He was thinking about making a documentary on a New Brunswick farmer who was obsessed with the nation’s endangered microbats. Geraldine and Peter had been in regular touch. He was working on her to come up to Toronto for his fund-raiser. She wasn’t sure, she kept telling him. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to see him again, she kept telling herself.

  She was dating, for the first time in her life. She’d gone out with John, a book critic whose big shaved head she found both repulsive and weirdly sexy. And there was Duncan, a tenants’-rights lawyer who wore secondhand blazers that smelled of her grandfather’s tobacco. And she and Art had been hanging out, a lot. His conversation had the most vitamins. Plus, he was a gentle and talented kisser. It was all fun in theory, fun in the moment, too. Yet summer had nearly passed, and she worried about how much longer this three-ring circus could go on.

  “Which one of you is the one who killed her pet turtle?” came a voice. Geraldine looked up and bit back a smile when she saw it was Art. They hadn’t seen each other in a little while, but with the exception of Wednesday they’d spoken every night this week. Two nights ago she’d fallen asleep with his voice in her ear.

  “Art School!” Sylvie exclaimed.

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming,” Geraldine said.

  “You guys were really good,” Art said.

  “Please tell me you didn’t buy a ticket,” Geraldine said.

  Art didn’t answer. “You smoked out the competition.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you, but thank you,” Geraldine said. “I’m not used to these things.” She looked through the arched doorway into the main space. The projection over the stage said that the next event was a conversation on technology and voter suppression. A girl who wore her hair in Pippi Longstocking braids bounded over to breathlessly profess out-of-control fandom to Art. “Let me take a picture of you two,” Geraldine offered. Looking at Art through the iPhone viewfinder, Geraldine felt her heart quicken. She wasn’t proud of herself for feeling this way, but it turned her on to see him through Pippi’s eyes.

  Ten minutes later Geraldine and Art were winding down a desolate stretch of Nevins Street in search of a place to get drinks. “I feel bad I didn’t say good-bye to Linette,” Geraldine said. “I should send her a text.”

  It wasn’t until she’d composed her message that she realized she didn’t have Linette’s number. She closed the window and noticed that a photo was attached to Peter’s text from earlier. It was a cluster of women who appeared to be ninety years old drinking pints at an outdoor pub. “I think this is what Sylvie means when she says ‘hashtag goals,’” she muttered, and turned the phone to Art.

  “What’s that?” he asked, and she regretted showing it to him.

  “No idea. My ex is in Glasgow and sent it.”

  “That Peter guy? He’s texting you?” Something inside Art appeared to go inert.

  Geraldine grabbed the phone and mumbled a few words about how she and Peter were on friendly terms now. She remembered some of the things she’d told Sylvie on tape and felt pinpricks of shame. No matter what she was wearing, Peter used to ask her to brush her hair and change into a cardigan when they visited his parents. He berated her while cleaning up after dinner parties for her proclivity of being too honest in group conversations. Art had heard all about it, along with thousands of other listeners.

  “Moving on is dangerous,” Art said. “That’s when we swoop back in.”

  “He sent me a picture of an old lady, not a sext,” Geraldine said, frustration flattening her voice. Art wouldn’t dignify her with an answer. She was glad when they came across a restaurant, a self-consciously chic New American spot on an otherwise unhappening block. A few groups eating early dinner took up the tables in the front of the restaurant. Geraldine and Art settled at the bar and ordered a couple of Cokes. She wished she could erase the last five minutes, wipe out the weirdness setting in between them.

  “So I might be going to L.A. soon,” Art said, in what she couldn’t help suspecting was an attempt at retaliation for her daring to be in touch with Peter.

  She raised her chin. “To visit your family?”

  “It’s a work thing. Someone wants to produce a live-action movie of Furious Curious, and they’re making noises about me directing it.” Art folded his hands together on the bar. “Actually, I’m the one who’s making noises about directing it.”

  Geraldine forced a smile. She had no claim on him. “That would be huge,” she told him. “This would be your first film?”

  “Yeah . . .” Art trailed off. “So I�
�ll be out there till February.”

  “It’s happening for sure?” She took a sip of her drink and felt a wave of sadness.

  “Nothing’s signed yet, but it’s looking very likely.” They were silent for a moment. “I didn’t realize he was back in the picture,” Art finally said. “He hurt you. You know that, right?”

  “That was a long time ago. We’re just friends.”

  “Uh-huh,” Art said.

  Geraldine fiddled with the corners of a cocktail napkin and felt a stirring of indignation. Why was everyone convinced that cutting off Peter was the only answer? Her mother had done that to her father, more or less, and look where it had gotten her.

  “People don’t change,” Art said at last.

  “Isn’t that a bit reductive?” Geraldine asked. “What’s the point of being alive if you can’t change? I’ve changed!”

  “People grow. That’s different. But once an asshat, always an asshat.”

  Geraldine frowned. “Are we British now?”

  Art’s cheeks went pink. “I was really into Monty Python in high school.”

  Geraldine laughed in spite of herself. Who was this guy? Why couldn’t she fall in love with him? Or send him on his way and let him make some other woman happy? The only friend of hers who knew Art was Sylvie. They’d all hung out a couple of times. Sylvie was a huge fan of Art’s, but she was a lesbian and loved him in the way you love people you’re happy to run into on the street.

  Art was now murmuring in a strange accent about land and cows. “What’s the deal?” Geraldine said. “If we keep hanging out, is there a saturation point where you will cease to get weirder and weirder?”

  “Depends how you feel about prog rock.” Art reached across the bar and helped himself to an olive from the garnish basin. Geraldine was about to ask for one when he deposited a green sphere on the cocktail napkin in front of her. “You’re welcome.”