Mary Gaitskill: Veronica

“The supervisor loves her because she’s a total fucking fag hag,” complained another proofreader. “That’s why she’s here all the time.”

“I get a kick out of her myself,” said a temping actress. “She’s like Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings combined.”

“My God, you’re right,” I said, so loudly and suddenly that the others stared. “That’s exactly what she’s like.”

I cross a little footbridge spanning the canal and pass a giant drugstore that takes up the whole block. There’s an employee standing outside, yelling at someone. “Hey you!” he yells. “I saw that! Come back here!” Then more uncertainly: “Hey! I said come back here!”

Hey you . Veronica sat in a doctor’s office, singing, “We’ve got the horse right here; his name’s Retrovir” to the tune of a big Guys and Dolls number. The receptionist smiled. I didn’t.

Come back here . Veronica burst into laughter. “You’re like a Persian cat, hon.” She made primly crossed paws of her hands and ecstatic blanks of her eyes; she let her tongue peep from her mouth. She laughed again.

More employees come out of the store and watch the guy; he just keeps walking. It’s obvious why. The police can’t get there fast enough and these employees are not going to fight him, because he’d win. This animal reality is just dawning on the employees. It makes them laugh, like an animal shaking its head and trotting away, glad to be alive.

I pass the bus depot, where people are hanging out, even in the rain. I pass closed restaurants, Mexican and French. The knot of traffic at this intersection always seems a little festive, although I don’t know why. The bus depot changes: Sometimes it’s sad, sometimes just businesslike, sometimes seems like it’s about to explode. John’s office is in the next block. He shares it with another photographer, who mostly shoots pets. He seems to be better off than John, who sticks to people.

I let myself in and sit down behind John’s desk for a cigarette. I know I should be grateful to John for letting me clean his office, but I’m not. I hate doing it. It depresses me and it tears up my arm, which was injured in a car accident and then ruined by a doctor. John shares a bathroom with the pet photographer, who has filthy habits, and I have to clean up for both of them. I used to know John; we used to be friends. Even now, he sometimes talks to me about his insecurities, or advises me on my problems — smoking, for example, and how terrible it is.

I have some codeine to prep the arm, then walk around the office smoking. I look at the photographs on the walls; John’s got pictures from three decades. The ones from the seventies are the best. The models aren’t professionals; they are just people John knew. They are male and female and they are all naked except for boots or a hat or underpants, something to give them style. Most of them don’t have good bodies, but they are looking at the camera like they are happy to be naked, either just standing there or posing in the combination of relaxation and sexual nastiness that people had then. They all look like people whose time had given them a perfect style suit to wear, a set of postures and expressions that gave the right shape to what they had inside them, so that even naked, they felt clothed.

I drop ash into the potted plant by the desk and rub it into the dirt with my finger. I get up and go into the bathroom for the cleaning supplies, a yellow bucket full of rags and spray bottles of cleaner so potent, I once killed a giant spider with it. I put the bucket in the sink and run water into it. I spray the mirror with cleaner and fine blue poison twinkles into the filling bucket, bright ammonia and dull smell memories of cafeteria food and public piss, my mother kneeling and cleaning. I wipe the mirror with a store-bought rag and drop it in the bucket.

There is always a style suit, or suits. When I was young, I used to think these suits were just what people were. When styles changed dramatically — people going barefoot, men with long hair, women without bras — I thought the world had changed, that from then on everything would be different. It’s understandable that I thought that; TV and newsmagazines acted like the world had changed, too. I was happy with it, but then five years later it changed again. Again, the TV announced, “Now we’re this instead of that! Now we walk like this, not like that!” Like people were all runny and liquid, running over this surface and that, looking for a container to hold everything in place, trying one thing, then the next, incessantly looking for the right one. Except the containers were only big enough for one personality trait at a time; you had to grab on to one trait, bring it out for a while, then put it back and pull out another one. For a while, “we” were loving; then we were alienated and angry, then ironic, then depressed. Although we are at war with terror, fashion magazines say we are sunny now. We wear bright colors and choose moral clarity. While I was waiting to get a blood test last week, I read in a newsmagazine that terror must not change our sunny dispositions.

Of course, there is a lot of subtlety in all this, and complexity, too. When John took those naked pictures, the most popular singer was a girl with a tiny stick body and a large deferential head, who sang in a delicious lilt of white lace and promises and longing to be close. When she shut herself up in her closet and starved herself to death, people were shocked. But starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming under the door.

I drop the rag in the bucket and smoke some more, ashing into the sink. A tiny piece of movie from the naked time plays on my eyeball: A psychotic killer is blowing up amusement parks. At the head of the crowd clamoring to ride the roller coaster is a slim, lovely man with long blond hair and floppy clothes and big, beautiful eyes fixed on a tiny strip of light that only he can see.

Lift up the toilet lid — filthy again — and drop the cigarette in. Turn off the water and lift the bucket down. I set my teeth as pain tears a hole in my shoulder and I get sucked inside it. The roller coaster roars and everybody screams with joy; the blond man screams in terror as his car flies off into the sky and smashes on the ground. White froth gently disperses on the stirring bucket water as I set it down.

It’s not an easy thing. If you can’t find the right shape, it’s hard for people to identify you. On the other hand, you need to be able to change shape fast; otherwise, you get stuck in one that used to make sense but that people can’t understand anymore. This has been going on for a long time. My father used to make lists of his favorite popular songs, ranked in order of preference. These lists were very nuanced, and they changed every few years. He’d walk around with the list in his hand, explaining why Jo “G.I. Jo” Stafford was ranked just above Doris Day, why Charles Trenet topped Nat King Cole — but by a hair only. It was his way of showing people things about him that were too private to say directly. For a while, everybody had some idea what Doris Day versus Jo Stafford meant; to give a preference for one over the other signaled a mix of feelings that were secret and tender, and people could sense these feelings when they imagined the songs side by side.

“Stafford’s voice is darker and sadder,” he said. “But it’s warmer, too. She holds the song in her voice. Day’s voice is sweet, but it’s heartless — she doesn’t hold it; she touches it and lets go — she doesn’t mean it! Stafford is a lover; Day is a flirt — but what a cute flirt!”