The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel Read online

  She looked at her watch, startled by the time. Donald always ate more of it than she realized. She was in real danger of being late now, and in this town they got very huffy if you were late. She’d found that out the hard way, when she turned up four minutes past nine on the first day of the party job and nearly wasn’t allowed in “as a matter of principle.” She hurried into the living room, where she gathered up her coat, which was draped over one of the black leather and chrome bar stools. She retrieved her bag from the love seat and tucked it under her arm.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, swinging open the front door.

  “Wait,” said Donald. “One more thing.”

  “Yes?” said Eve, stepping back inside in case Mrs. Swan entered the hallway and thought she was talking to herself again.

  “If all else fails, look this interviewer in the eye and picture him—”

  “Her.”

  “All right. Picture her—”

  “Don’t tell me. In her underwear?”

  “I was hardly going to offer something so prosaic.”

  “What then?”

  “Picture her as a child.”

  “A child?” Eve shook her head. “Why?”

  “Because that’s who everybody is, inside.”

  “Right,” she said. “Well … thanks.” She stepped onto the landing and closed the door behind her. She was off to take on the children of New York, and soon—if she got this job and kept this apartment—she’d be one of them.

  As she made her way down the stairs, she felt Donald’s presence growing weaker and weaker inside her, before it disappeared neatly and quietly, like water swirling down a drain.

  Chapter 2

  The hunched, sloe-eyed girl behind the front desk put down the phone. “Have a seat,” she said. “It’ll be a couple.” She turned back to a list of some kind, which she attacked with a red pen.

  Eve nodded, tucked her hair behind her ears, and tried to make her breathing normal after running the three blocks from the subway. Beyond the desk, the office natives slid by on their errands and drummed on their keyboards, clad in clingy black and self-assurance. After about forty minutes, a young woman so slender that the loops of blond hair piled atop her head made her look like a dandelion, strode into the waiting area.

  “Let’s go,” she said, beckoning with fingers flapping against her palm. Eve sprang to her feet and followed the girl through large glass doors and a warren of cubicles and filing cabinets to their destination, a large, glass-fronted office belonging to Orla Knock, Managing Editor. The office lights were off, but the computer screen was emitting a dull glow from the far side of the room. The young woman sat down at an overflowing desk and nodded toward a seat, which Eve took.

  “So. I’m Tanya, Orla Knock’s assistant. Unfortunately, Orla had to leave for the day. She sends her apologies.”

  Eve felt a mix of disappointment and relief. She needed the job but her attack of nerves began to dissipate nicely the moment she realized the interview was off. “That’s completely fine. These things happen.” She asked, reaching into her purse for her appointment book, “Shall I come back another time?”

  “Actually, no. We need you to write a segment for tomorrow’s show.”

  Eve’s hand fell out of her bag, hanging limply at her side. “Excuse me?”

  “We’re, um, unexpectedly short-staffed today and could really use a pair of hands. Orla says you were referred to her as having lots of experience.”

  Eve thought of her résumé with the rather large font and wished Vadis hadn’t oversold her. Again. She’d told the event-planning director that all Eve needed was a phone and two hours to pull together a corporate investor dinner for fifteen, and she’d claimed to the advertising executive that Eve was bursting with ideas about integrating videogame images into high school textbooks. Eve had lasted less than two weeks in each job.

  “Well …” she began.

  “Yes?” asked Tanya. Eve looked for the child within but saw only probing green eyes and a sharp little crease in the brow between them.

  “Well—yes. Yes. I have experience. Tons.”

  “And you watch the show?”

  Eve lowered her chin in a half-nod.

  “It’s our hosts that you’ll be writing for. Hap McCutcheon and, of course, Bliss Jones.” She said this name with particular emphasis. “So here’s the deal,” she continued. “Our celebrity chef, Zorin, is doing bouillabaisse—just a little four-minute demo at 8:36, after the weather—and we need you to write the intro and block out the segment. Hap’s handling this one. He’s not great at prop spots, so you’ll have to be extra careful. Put each and every step in his script along with the necessary graphics so he can follow along with Zorin. You’ll also have to go down to the studio and, since the food producer is out sick, put together a sample pot of the finished product so that everyone can taste it in the morning. Better do that first—someone said it needs to simmer a long time. The instructions were sent over by Zorin’s people; they’re on the kitchen counter. Oh, and for the intro, don’t be too clever. Hap hates puns, alliteration, and cute turns of phrase. Questions?”

  Eve remembered her mother once telling her that in New York, one minute you were on the sidewalk, the next, through the looking glass. She’d made this sound fun. But graphics? Intro? Prop spot? This did not sound fun.

  Tanya widened her eyes and gave her head a little shake. “Hello?”

  “No questions,” said Eve.

  “Then you should be on your way down to the studio. It’s on the ground level, back of the building. Our director will be around somewhere. She’ll show you where everything is. And when you’re done with the cooking, come back up here and I’ll find you a desk and get you set up on the computer. The system’s a bit tricky, but since I assume you’re familiar with NewsPro you should get the hang of it quickly.”

  Vadis’s claim that the Smell the Coffee job was most likely a “glam gig,” where you read articles and went out to lunch, now appeared to be well wide of the mark.

  Tanya turned to a stack of papers on her desk. If there had been a time for Eve to mention that she knew nothing about software or television or exotic cooking, it had clearly passed. She stood. “Sounds good. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank anybody yet. This is just a tryout.”

  In the elevator, as the numbers ticked down toward the ground floor, Eve wondered how complicated bouillabaisse might be. She’d broiled plenty of steaks and chickens for her father in the years since her mother died. She’d never enjoyed it much, but if she hadn’t cooked for him, he’d have subsisted on the nutrients in canned stew and Arnold Palmer iced tea.

  The doors opened and a guard swept his eyes over the temporary ID badge clipped to her lapel and raised an eyebrow. When she explained she was looking for the studio, he directed her leftward and down a scuffed linoleum-floored hallway. As she reached for the double doors at the end, they were pushed open from the inside. Two stocky men in black T-shirts and headsets stopped when they saw her.

  “Help you?” the taller one asked.

  “I’m supposed to be working on a, um, prop spot? In the studio.”

  “You’re in the right place. Go on in,” said the first one.

  After going through another set of double doors, she found herself in a cavernous, dark blue space roughly the size of an airplane hangar and cold as an igloo. She moved through the silence, feeling as if she were treading a lunar landscape. Above her, not stars, but a thousand lights of every different color, hanging from the ceiling. In various directions, tiny solar systems hugged their orbits: here a living room set, there an assortment of gym equipment, here the tiny tables and chairs of a children’s playroom, there the counter and appliances of a kitchen. Eve strolled through the parallel universe, finding that its objects bore only a passing similarity to what they appeared to be. “Wood” floors were laminate painted to look like oak, “marble” was plastic, and walls that appeared solid could be knocked over
with a breath.

  The bookshelves were lined with a beautiful set of classics like The Collected Shakespeare, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Moby-Dick. She reached for the Shakespeare, thinking she’d center herself with a sonnet or two, but the binding came away in her hand, revealing nothing more than a book-sized cardboard box.

  She approached the gleaming kitchen, its counter big as a bus.

  “Hey there. Where’s Kevin?”

  Eve turned to find an extremely tall, ebony-skinned woman with cornrows halfway down her back and white teeth as perfect as subway tiles. “Who?”

  “One of the writers. I thought he was doing this soup mess.”

  “I don’t know. I just got here and Tanya sent me down.”

  “Oh, well. Hey. Welcome, then. What’s your name?”

  “Eve Weldon.”

  “I’m Lark Carmichael. Director. I’d shake your hand but I have a wicked cold,” she said, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “All the stuff is laid out for you. It shouldn’t be too bad. As long as it looks good, that’s all that matters. When Zorin’s done pretending to cook it tomorrow, Bliss and Hap will pretend to taste it and pretend to love it. I’d help you, but I probably shouldn’t handle food right now.” She sneezed twice and turned to go.

  “No problem. Nice to meet you,” said Eve, sorry to lose her fellow space traveler so soon. She ran her eyes across the staggering array of ingredients on the counter: a dozen lobster tails, slabs of red snapper, halibut, and sea bass, and piles of shrimp, crab legs, mussels, oysters, and clams. The recipe said the entire lot was to be cleaned, cracked, de-boned, de-shelled, and de-veined. De-lightful.

  She leaned in close, poked a finger at a set of glistening silver scales, and wrinkled her nose at the smell of raw seafood. She tried breathing through her mouth, but there were other hindrances. The cold slime of the flesh turned her fingers to ice, and the tiny bones hidden deep within put up fierce resistance to separation, driving her nearly mad with frustration. Gradually, she got used to the odor, though the halibut seemed particularly malevolent. Well, raw fish wasn’t exactly known for its pleasant aroma. She briefly considered finding Lark to ask her opinion, then decided against it. If Eve had learned anything during her two forays into the New York City job market, it was that nobody wanted to hear your questions or your problems. They expected you to get on with things. Figure it out.

  When she was finished, she washed her hands and bent over the directions. “Heat oil in large pot.” The pot came up to her neck, but after finding a crate to stand on, this was doable. “Add garlic, onion, leeks, and bay leaf and cook until onion is tender but not browned.” Check. Now, this actually smelled quite lovely, she thought, inhaling the woody steam. She was really cooking now, cooking on the moon. “Add tomatoes, fish stock, wine, fennel, saffron, salt, pepper, and parsley.” Check. Check. “Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer five minutes. Add lobster, snapper, sea bass, and halibut and cook ten minutes. Add shellfish to pot and cook five more minutes or until shells open.” Not difficult, but a little disconcerting to watch the mussels spring apart, as if expressing their horror at this ghastly turn of events with a unified silent scream.

  All right now. It looked fine. Good, even. The deep red-brown broth, glistening with flecks of oil, offered up its treasures in a most inviting way. Even the halibut’s nasty smell had subsided. Now she only had to “write up the segment.” With no alliteration, puns, or “clever” turns of phrase, of course.

  • • •

  Tanya led Eve through the vast open-plan room and down a hall on the far side. They made a right turn, then a left, and then another right. They walked a good minute before going around two more bends, where they were confronted by a locked door. This Tanya opened by punching a code onto a small panel. On the other side lay another long, extremely narrow hallway. At the very end, they came to a windowless office that seemed cut off from the rest of the world. A space capsule for one. The room was a study in corporate cheerlessness: gray walls, gray carpeting, gunmetal shelving. Eve sat down while Tanya silently logged her onto the computer with a few keystrokes. As she turned to leave, Eve looked at the screen’s blank page, which was divided in half vertically by a long black line and looked quite unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

  “Excuse me …?” Tanya turned around. Eve didn’t want to admit she had no idea what to do, but this represented more daunting a challenge than some odorous fish. “Could you maybe just get me started?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What exactly am I supposed to do?”

  “Didn’t you just make the bouillabaisse?” asked Tanya. Eve nodded. “So now, hello, just write the segment.”

  “Sure,” said Eve, improvising. “But you know, each TV station has its own style. I just wanted to know how you do things here.”

  Tanya plunked her hands on her hips. “Um, not really, no. Television scripts look pretty much the same everywhere. And this isn’t a ‘TV station,’ you realize that, right? It’s a network. Jeez.” She headed off down the hall. Eve stared at the strange screen, willing it to make sense. It glared back, brazen. “Okay, look.” Tanya reappeared in the doorway. “The head writer’s next door. His name’s Mark. Maybe he can help you.” As quickly as she’d materialized, she was gone again.

  Eve ventured into the hall. She could hear the man in the next office talking sternly on the phone.

  “Look, Steve, you sound like crap but we really need you in today. Orla Knock had some kind of meeting, so I’m editing. And guess what? Before she left, she canned Kevin.” There was a pause. “No, I’m not joking. Apparently I’m now responsible for helping some new freelancer through the drill and then I’m supposed to report to Orla on how she does. So that’s an extra hour out of my day. We’re spread way too thin and all we need is more grief from Giles about this department. So really, buddy, get your ass in here. Thanks.” He hung up.

  Eve knocked and pushed the door open. “Uh—hello, are you Mark?” she said. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m about to write a—um, segment—and I’m ready to go and everything, but …” Mark shuffled through some newspapers on his desk and seemed intent on ignoring her. “I was wondering if you could just give me a push?”

  Finally, he looked up. He was close to forty, she guessed, with a long, lean frame, pronounced bones in his face, and long dark lashes. He stared a moment before speaking, seemingly thrown, as if her appearance did not match what he’d been expecting.

  “So you’re Kevin’s replacement,” he said. “I couldn’t believe they found someone so fast.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “That’s the thing about the networks, man. They can abuse you any way they want because people are literally lined up to take your place.”

  “I wouldn’t say I was ‘lined up.’ And anyway, Tanya was quick to let me know this is just a tryout.”

  “Well, that’s the way it works around here. Unless you come over from the Today show or GMA. You didn’t, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So.” He pulled a piece of paper off a stack. “By my calculations, you must be bouillabaisse. I knew when I saw Kevin’s name down for that one he was going to have a fit. I didn’t have a clue he’d actually make a stink with Orla, though. Let’s go back to your computer and see what’s what.” He brushed past her and they went back to her office. “So, where have you worked?” he asked, sitting down at her desk. She said nothing. “Damn, this thing’s slow.” He hit the side of the monitor with the flat of his hand. “Which news software are you familiar with?”

  Eve couldn’t look him in the eye, so she settled for his nose. “I can’t remember what it was called.”

  “But you’ve written news scripts before, right?”

  Eve wrapped her arms around her waist.

  He pushed back from the desk. “You’ve got to be kidding. What, you just walked in off the street and said, ‘Hi, I’d like a job in TV’?”

  “Hardly—”

 
“May I assume you’re a print journalist, then?”

  “I was published in my college paper.”

  “This just gets better and better. You had a byline? A column?”

  Did he really need to be this disagreeable? “It was an excerpt of a paper I wrote.”

  “Fabulous. About what?”

  “An examination of Toulouse-Lautrec’s influence on Modigliani. It won second place in a southern Ohio college essay contest.” Eve tried to infuse this line with a sense of relevance.

  He kicked the desk. “Christ, are you for real?”

  Eve looked for the little boy inside her interrogator, but once again, it was only a tetchy adult who glared back at her. A clock on the wall ticked the seconds. She saw it all slipping away—the job, the apartment, everything. “Look, a friend set up this meeting with Orla Knock. That’s how I got in. But I’m here now and you need help,” she said quietly but firmly. “Can we just see how it goes? I really can write.”

  He sighed. “This is nuts,” he said. He looked at his watch and mumbled something. “Fine, whatever. Can’t wait to see what you can do. I’m setting up the page. Here, on the right, is where you’ll write what Hap says to introduce the segment. That’s called the ‘intro.’ ”

  “So let me get this straight,” she said after watching him work for a few moments. “I write what this man is going to say?”

  “Um, yeah. Everything you hear a network anchor say was written by a union writer, except when they ad-lib, which is usually an unmitigated disaster. Sometimes they rewrite what we write, but they almost never start from scratch.”

  “So we’re … their voices?”

  “I suppose, but for God’s sake never say that again.” He pointed to the screen. “Now, see here? At the bottom? The computer will tell you how long your copy runs when spoken. If the rundown—that’s this sheet that has the whole show on it—says your intro should be twenty seconds, write twenty seconds. Exactly. No more, no less.”