John Kenney - Talk to Me

“It’s not a charge. It’s the truth.”

Donna was a born bully and sensed a weakling.

“Well, this is the first I’m hearing of it,” Donna lied.

“Ask the people who were on the set.”

“I did. And—”

“I thought this was the first you were hearing of it,” Natalia snapped.

“I asked them, young lady, to describe what had transpired,” Donna lied again, raising her voice. “And what I was told was that you had the audacity to give Mr. Grayson the middle finger, which people in this country think is a major offense.”

Donna stared at Natalia, challenging her. Natalia felt her throat tighten, her eyes tingle. She’d never been fired from a job in her life. She wanted to pull her phone out, show the video. But Donna was picking up her phone, calling security. A panic-fear came over Natalia. She prided herself on her work ethic. Her father’s work ethic. She had done nothing wrong. Fine, she had given the old man the finger. It had been a reaction, in the moment, because he’d screamed at her. Because he’d frightened her. Because she felt threatened. Her parents wanted her to come home, to find work in Warsaw, meet a nice Polish boy. But she was desperate to make it here.

A large security guard escorted her out of the building. He gently laid his hand on Natalia’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” he said. Which was when she started to cry.

So that night, Laura’s boyfriend, Filip, and his friend came over. They drank beer and rolled cigarettes from a pack of Drum and listened to Laura’s iPad playing A Tribe Called Quest. When she wasn’t working at Polish-owned coffee shops, Laura picked up work as a DJ. She knew hip-hop better than any white girl from Poland should.

Natalia could tell Filip’s friend was hitting on her, but she had no interest and her sister would throw him off the roof if he made a move. She had her iPhone out and was showing pictures from Poland when she scrolled past the video she had taken of Ted. She played it for them and they laughed. She laughed. She played it again and they laughed again. Filip said they should play a drinking game. Play it and every time Ted said “Russian whore” they had to drink. Which they did three or four times. Her battery started to die. They moved on to something else. There was talk of going to a bar but Natalia wanted to find her bed. The others left and Laura and Natalia were alone.

Laura was the only one who hadn’t laughed at the video of Ted. She said, “That guy’s a dick. You should post that to your Facebook page. What are they going to do, fire you?”

Across the East River, in the wide-open spaces of scheisse , Franny and two of her colleagues watched Ted’s new promo. It wasn’t set to launch until Friday but someone had leaked it. They clicked on it and watched. One of them was writing a critique (175 words or less).

He was so young, Franny thought, as they watched. The shot at the end surprised her. She’d remembered that day. Her father and mother had just gotten in a huge fight about whether Franny should return to Northfield Mount Hermon, which Franny had not wanted to do, or move back home, go to school in the city. Ted was against the idea of quitting. Claire said he was being his own pigheaded Irish father. Ted said not everyone had had it as easy as Claire. Franny had watched the toxic verbal ping-pong, hating every second of it.

Now, watching, Franny found herself holding her shoulders high, felt an unpleasant tingling in her belly, a low-grade malaise creeping over her day, the blandness of the night to come, the weeks to come, her life in general. It seemed empty and hopeless. In fact, a few days ago she had received an unwanted email from a former roommate at Northfield Mount Hermon—Lauren—inviting her and her classmates to a reunion. Of course it would be Lauren planning the reunion. The invite, like so much about life these days, annoyed her. She responded no, saying she would be unable to attend, and then went to the class Facebook page, looked at some comments, saw some old classmates, and wrote what Lauren would feel was a mean, snarky, typically Franny Grayson comment. Franny thought she was being funny. Lauren thought she was being a bitch.

“He was hot, your dad,” one of her coworkers said.

“Shut up,” Franny had said. “I want your story in thirty minutes.”

Here was the essence of news. A thing was happening right now, real time, and there were those who knew it and those who didn’t. Most didn’t. It was too new, too small. Those moments, before you know a thing—the spot on the X-ray, the middle-of-the-night phone call, the affair your spouse is having that you are still unaware of—these moments of blissful ignorance. This is where Ted and Claire and Franny lived.

Claire was in the city. She had gone to a SoulCycle class in Union Square, where she felt she more than held her own against the skinny twenty-five-year-olds with their perfect bodies and tight skin. They looked so young. How did they see her?

She left the class and walked through Union Square, past the farmer’s market stalls, the smells of lavender and apples and pretzels and fish. She continued south to University Place, heading like a tourist to the spot Franny had suggested she go for a coffee. Franny had said she would try to meet her mother but that work might get in the way.

What is a mother to make of this? Here she was, in the city, so close to both her husband and her daughter, and she would see neither. A life shared and now this. The time Franny, age four, needed an MRI, Claire lying on her back, holding Franny, covering her ears with her hands for twenty-five minutes, Franny falling asleep. The car trip to Maine, Franny eighteen months old, a nose full of snot, unable to blow. No drugstore nearby. Claire put her own mouth to the child’s nose and sucked, spit the snot out, Ted wide-eyed. Adapt and overcome, as the marines said. And what was a mother if not a marine. What wouldn’t she have done for this girl?

And now, happy for Franny in her new life, her career, Claire still smarted at the selfishness of not meeting for a coffee.

She went in and waited in line. Reclaimed lumber on the floors and halfway up the walls. Exposed brick. Vintage light fixtures. A low techno-beat playing from unseen speakers. Tattooed baristas who looked like people from a photo shoot of people who work in coffee shops tended to high-end Italian espresso machines, calling out people’s names as if it were physically painful to do so, their boredom at Sandra’s and Oshi’s and Brock’s coffee order almost too much for them.

In front of her were two girls, early twenties. Both wore yoga pants. There was, about both of them, an open sexuality so foreign to Claire’s life experience. Their bodies on display. The two girls were talking, almost at the same time, when one of them pulled off a sweatshirt to reveal a formfitting tank top. Claire looked at the girl’s bare shoulder. A purple workout bra just visible under her shirt. Claire watched as the girl listened closely to her friend talk about work, hair falling out of a bun, gold and brown strands creating a veil at her neck. A man will worship your body someday, Claire thought. You will lie in bed one rainy Sunday afternoon in late fall, the day quiet, after an hour of lovemaking. Mostly it will be lust then. A false love. An oxytocin-release love. A hormonal love. Not twenty-plus-years-of-marriage love. Not hold-their-hand-at-their-mother’s-funeral love. But rather lust disguised as love. Youthful lust. Zero body fat lust. Remarkably rigid penis lust. Bright light lust. Not shades down lust. Not hope for barely any light lust. You’ll want to see it all.