Steve Martin - Shopgirl

It is morning, and Ray Porter’s phone rings.

“Hi, it’s me,” says Mirabelle.

“Hang up, I’ll call you back.”

“No, that’s okay,” she says. “Guess what. I’m going to move.” There is a lilt in her voice that Ray is not used to hearing.

“From your apartment?” says Ray.

“To San Francisco.”

There is a short discussion about why she chose San Francisco, which is unrevealing, and there is no discussion about whether it’s a wise move or not, as Mirabelle’s determination is clear and strong. She makes one small request of Ray that he fulfills: she utilizes Ray’s long chain of pull to land an interview with a gallery in San Francisco – not to be an artist with the gallery, but a receptionist. On Del Rey’s ancient computer, she secures an apartment over the Internet and also makes contact with two potential roommates. Within three weeks she leaves Neiman’s, whispers a good-bye to Los Angeles without looking back, and settles into a small flat in the Presidio district near the Golden Gate Bridge. Ray is surprised by her sudden movement, as she had seemed so frozen.

Mirabelle still faces difficulties, but Ray finances her move and eases a situation that even with his aid reduces her bank account to a long string of zeros, put the decimal anywhere. Her new job as receptionist recreates the kind of tedium she endured at the glove counter, but at least she gets to be ambulatory. And the mean age of the customers is lower by twenty years.

Another plus: the San Francisco arts scene is livelier than the intermittent one in L.A. Every third night there’s something going on somewhere, which she can either attend or pass on and curl up in her own bed. The gallery action puts her in the center of a glut of testosterone. Mirabelle is a ripe, relative virgin, and her romantic life starts badly. At an art opening, she meets an artist named Carlo who courts her for a month, fucks her several times, and leaves her cruelly: she calls him on the phone, he says he is on the other line and that he will call her back, but he never does. Ever. She summarizes and explains this event to herself not by saying that she is yet again unwanted, but that she has learned something about her own decisions. She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn’t be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart. She sheathes herself in a protective envelope of caution and learns never to give away more than is being given to her. The mini-disaster of this brief romance accomplishes something else, too: Mirabelle is able to shift her anger from Ray to Carlo, and Ray is then able to become a friend.

While she adjusts to San Francisco Mirabelle’s spirits rise and fall, but she is determined to stay positive. Ray keeps in touch by phone and sends small checks her way when he reads the need in her voice. Mirabelle has long given up her instinct to refuse the aid, as she has no choice but to accept it, which she does with sincere humility and graciousness. She also pursues her art with a steady diligence, and her drawings are accepted in several group shows. The small drawing, not even eight inches square, of her lying nude floating in space is shown as being from the collection of Mr. Ray Porter.

In Mirabelle’s new job, she meets artists and collectors. She is always careful not to promote herself through gallery contacts – her sense of correctness prevents it – but she now enjoys being a relevant person at the openings. She often calls Ray, who immediately calls her back according to plan. One afternoon she announces, “I’m going to an opening tonight and my goal is not to be a wallflower.” Toward the end of each week, she has collected a few stories to report to him: her nights on the scene, who flirted with her, who slighted her. She also monitors the sporadic comings and goings of the vilified Carlo, who popped into one opening with a pregnant girlfriend on his arm, sending the fragile Mirabelle into an angry snit. She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn’t, because he didn’t care.

Mirabelle’s stay in San Francisco stretches into several seasons. The frequency of her calls to Ray Porter diminish. She has a few flirtations, conversations really, that never amount to much. But one night, she takes the walk up the stairs of her new flat and notices on the doormat a small, oblong, clumsily wrapped box with an overly large Hallmark card taped to it. Once inside the apartment, she sets the box down on the kitchen table. She feeds the cats, then untapes the ends of the wrapping and inside finds a plain white box, and inside that, a rather cute Swatch watch. She opens the note and reads, “I would like to have dinner with you, Jeremy.” And quickly scribbled below is the usually tacit implication, “my treat!”

Jeremy has been working around the West Coast for the last six months, during which time he’s made an out-of-proportion six-year psychic leap by funneling the entire contents of the Bodhi Tree bookstore into his brain. He has been commuting to San Francisco ever since he hit the road and now, ready to settle down in L.A. and become a minor lord of amplifiers, he finds himself having to go to Oakland every week on business. Occasionally, Mirabelle’s image floats into his consciousness and hangs there. The image he sees is not from his early pathetic dates with her but from his encounter with her in the parking lot on the night of the art party. Because not until then had he matured enough to recognize her as something beautiful and something worth holding as an object of real desire. He’s found her by calling her old number, then looking up the new number in a reverse-directory on the Internet to find her address.

Mirabelle calls him at the number scrawled on Jeremy’s note, her memories of the awkward night in her apartment also having been diluted by their short walk to the Reynaldo Gallery, now almost a year ago. A date is set several weeks in the future. When the day arrives, he shows up in a taxi, and from her window, Mirabelle sees him tip the driver several generous bucks. They walk to a local restaurant where, upon approaching the hostess, Jeremy announces, “Table for two, Mr. Kraft.” Mirabelle has forgotten his name is Kraft but is aware that this is only the second man in her life who has taken her to a restaurant where a table has been reserved for them.

Mirabelle does most of the talking, and Jeremy listens intently without saying much. Later, Mirabelle will remember the dinner as the time she first found him to be very interesting.

On the walk home, as they warm up to each other and the night, Mirabelle recites the litany of reasons for her move, leaving out the most important one, and gets down to a final summation:

“I’m fixing myself.”

“I’m fixing myself, too,” says Jeremy.

And they know they will forever have something to talk about.

While Jeremy dates Mirabelle and makes tiny inroads into her, Ray continues to occasionally see her. In an act of self-preservation, she no longer makes love to him, and because he finally cares about her fully, he doesn’t try.

Mirabelle takes months to accept Jeremy, and Jeremy patiently waits. And as he stands by, his feelings for Mirabelle grow. One night, she cries in his arms when a recollection of Ray flirts with her memory, and he holds her and doesn’t say a word. Where his insight comes from as he courts her, even he doesn’t know. It might have been that he was ready to grow up, and the knowledge was already in him, like a dormant gene. Whatever it is, she is the perfect recipient of his attention, and he is the perfect recipient of her tenderness. Unlike Ray Porter, his love is fearless and without reservation. As Jeremy offers her more of his heart, she offers equal parts of herself in return. One night, sooner than she would have liked, which made it irresistible, they make love for the second time in two years. But this time, Jeremy holds her for a long while, and they connect in a deep and profound way. At this point, Jeremy surpasses Mr. Ray Porter as a lover of Mirabelle, because as clumsy as he is, what he offers her is tender and true. That night, coming up for air from the unexpected love he is falling in, he gives some opinions on tweeter wholesaling that Mirabelle secretly calls “the second oration.” After he nods off, she pokes her forefinger into his closed fist and falls asleep.