game of Concentration and I’m losing. “What magazines are you going to pitch?”
“It seems like a good idea to start with the ones I copyedit for. I know people there.”
Maya works mostly for women’s magazines such as Glamour and Cosmo and Marie Claire. Their field of interest is small and articles travel a limited circuit from sex and relationship back to beauty and health. I can’t see Maya embracing any of these things. “You know you’re just going to be writing stories about antioxidants and ten ways that it’s okay to change for your man.”
She makes a pained expression. “It’s never okay to change for your man.”
I point a spatula at her. “Terms of reference, August 19— Stop thinking independently.”
“You’re not helping,” she says, rinsing a red, green and yellow plate. Maya’s collection of dishes has been culled from flea markets and thrift stores across the country. No two plates are alike, but they all have pictures of pretty flowers on them.
I am helping. This is what she asked of me: clear-eyed cynicism. “Look, even if you do manage to shrug off the label of copyeditor—and I’m not saying you will; these magazines pigeonhole you early and they pigeonhole you deep—you’ll be bored out of your mind. I know you, Maya. Test-driving sunscreens is not the sort of thing that will get you out of bed in the morning. It’s unsatisfying and dull and so dour and humorless that you might as well be writing stock reports for AT&T,” I say angrily. Service items are fact-gathering missions; they’re black and white. Maya is Technicolor. She’s a Matisse painting and Venetian glass.
This isn’t what she wants to hear, and she takes her anger out on a defenseless whisk. It is bent in all the wrong places by the time she’s done cleaning it. “It’s a beginning,” she says, her temper under control now. She tosses the deformed whisk into the drying rack. “I have to start somewhere and this is it. I’ll cultivate hustle, write a few articles for women’s magazines, put together a portfolio of clips, make a name for myself as an ingenious writer who makes even dull topics interesting and then wait for the good assignments to pour in. A couple of hundred words on which suntan lotion provides the best UVA and UVB protection is a small price to pay. All I have to do is cultivate hustle. It’ll be fine,” she adds in a calm voice, as though she is comforting me and not herself, “you’ll see.”
I’m not so sure I will see but I don’t say anything. I only hold my hand out for a wineglass and wipe it dry with a damp cotton towel. Maya is convinced that small changes ripple across the pond of your existence. She believes that they snowball into massive alterations that affect everything. But life is not like that. You are not an airline. You can’t remove a single olive from every salad served in first class and save one point two million dollars.
An Idea Germinates
R oger’s cell phone is programmed to play the theme song to an obscure Swedish children’s television show that aired for two years in the early seventies. Childish but not Swedish, Roger exuberantly showed off his new ring one night over dinner, playing the quickly grating tune over and over again until the couple at the table next to us quietly asked him to stop. Embarrassed, Maya averted her gaze, I hung my head in shame, and Roger spent the rest of the meal talking with food in his mouth and complaining in between telephone calls that people don’t have manners anymore. It seems that some people never did.
I hear the familiar la-da-do-dada now and cringe. The Met is crowded with summer tourists and the European portrait rooms are thick with sweaty people in fanny packs, but I know that if I turn around I’ll see him. He is right behind me, and between Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Bearded Man, I’m cornered. I hold myself still like a leopard in the underbrush and hope he passes, but I have no
“It seems like a good idea to start with the ones I copyedit for. I know people there.”
Maya works mostly for women’s magazines such as Glamour and Cosmo and Marie Claire. Their field of interest is small and articles travel a limited circuit from sex and relationship back to beauty and health. I can’t see Maya embracing any of these things. “You know you’re just going to be writing stories about antioxidants and ten ways that it’s okay to change for your man.”
She makes a pained expression. “It’s never okay to change for your man.”
I point a spatula at her. “Terms of reference, August 19— Stop thinking independently.”
“You’re not helping,” she says, rinsing a red, green and yellow plate. Maya’s collection of dishes has been culled from flea markets and thrift stores across the country. No two plates are alike, but they all have pictures of pretty flowers on them.
I am helping. This is what she asked of me: clear-eyed cynicism. “Look, even if you do manage to shrug off the label of copyeditor—and I’m not saying you will; these magazines pigeonhole you early and they pigeonhole you deep—you’ll be bored out of your mind. I know you, Maya. Test-driving sunscreens is not the sort of thing that will get you out of bed in the morning. It’s unsatisfying and dull and so dour and humorless that you might as well be writing stock reports for AT&T,” I say angrily. Service items are fact-gathering missions; they’re black and white. Maya is Technicolor. She’s a Matisse painting and Venetian glass.
This isn’t what she wants to hear, and she takes her anger out on a defenseless whisk. It is bent in all the wrong places by the time she’s done cleaning it. “It’s a beginning,” she says, her temper under control now. She tosses the deformed whisk into the drying rack. “I have to start somewhere and this is it. I’ll cultivate hustle, write a few articles for women’s magazines, put together a portfolio of clips, make a name for myself as an ingenious writer who makes even dull topics interesting and then wait for the good assignments to pour in. A couple of hundred words on which suntan lotion provides the best UVA and UVB protection is a small price to pay. All I have to do is cultivate hustle. It’ll be fine,” she adds in a calm voice, as though she is comforting me and not herself, “you’ll see.”
I’m not so sure I will see but I don’t say anything. I only hold my hand out for a wineglass and wipe it dry with a damp cotton towel. Maya is convinced that small changes ripple across the pond of your existence. She believes that they snowball into massive alterations that affect everything. But life is not like that. You are not an airline. You can’t remove a single olive from every salad served in first class and save one point two million dollars.
An Idea Germinates
R oger’s cell phone is programmed to play the theme song to an obscure Swedish children’s television show that aired for two years in the early seventies. Childish but not Swedish, Roger exuberantly showed off his new ring one night over dinner, playing the quickly grating tune over and over again until the couple at the table next to us quietly asked him to stop. Embarrassed, Maya averted her gaze, I hung my head in shame, and Roger spent the rest of the meal talking with food in his mouth and complaining in between telephone calls that people don’t have manners anymore. It seems that some people never did.
I hear the familiar la-da-do-dada now and cringe. The Met is crowded with summer tourists and the European portrait rooms are thick with sweaty people in fanny packs, but I know that if I turn around I’ll see him. He is right behind me, and between Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Bearded Man, I’m cornered. I hold myself still like a leopard in the underbrush and hope he passes, but I have no
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