Iris Has Free Time Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER 1 - THE BASTARD FELIX

  I

  II

  III

  CHAPTER 2 - THE CAPTAIN

  CHAPTER 3 - AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER 4 - DISPATCHES FROM MY OFFICE

  CHAPTER 5 - CHINESE FINGER CUFFS

  BOOK III

  CHAPTER 6 - EUROPE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  CHAPTER 7 - “IRIS’S MOVIE CORNER”

  CHAPTER 8 - SCIENCE FICTION

  CHAPTER 9 - SMYLES’ GAMES

  CHAPTER 10 - OUT OF HELL’S KITCHEN

  V

  IV

  III

  II

  I

  OVERTURE

  Copyright Page

  To my parents, Arthur and Popy Smyles

  +

  To Frederic Tuten, my Virgil, for seeing me through the fire

  Because Dante the character is a fictional creation of Dante the poet, the reader should remember that the character’s feelings do not always correspond to those of the poet.... Indeed, on a general level, the kindness and compassion of Dante the character often contrasts with the feelings of Dante the poet, who, after all, has devised excruciating torments with which to punish his characters, many of whom are historical individuals with whom Dante was acquainted in life.

  SPARKNOTES: THE INFERNO

  PROLOGUE

  AT SEA

  To be an old man and finished at twenty-three . . .

  STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, LETTER 1864

  I

  1

  Looking back, the vintage 1930s red and green tartan suit may have been a touch too much. But it was the most conservative thing I owned. And I did look great in it, I noted, crouching down on the ledge of the bathtub to check myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. Just like Rosalind Russell at the news desk in His Girl Friday. There was no way they wouldn’t hire me!

  I skipped out the door, walking briskly to generate my own heat. I’d not worn a jacket for fear of corrupting my look and the sun was all but ignoring me. In the corner of the sky there it stood, aloof and cold, as if the lavish heat of summer were suddenly an embarrassment. Everywhere there is heartbreak, I thought, looking up at a thin tree, its leaves clinging desperately to branches that wanted no more to do with them. What a cad the fall is.

  At the corner, I opened my newspaper. A reporter had solicited job-seeking advice from human resources personnel all over Manhattan. “Confidence is everything. You need to sell yourself!” one said. “The biggest mistake job-seekers make is not adequately preparing for the interview,” said another. “Ask yourself before you get there, ‘Would I hire me?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’ you’ve dramatically increased your chances.” The light changed. I turned the page to see what advice they gave if the answer was “No,” but the article was over.

  I arrived at the convention center, at the head of a long line of applicants dressed somberly in gray and blue. I lifted my mesh veil. “Is this whole line for the job fair?”

  “It starts around the corner,” a gray and blue man answered, in a voice that was also gray and blue. He motioned far behind him.

  “I’m on the list,” I said, biting my lip. This is code in Manhattan: That you’re not on the list doesn’t matter; you should be.

  He looked at me blankly. “What list?”

  I walked the whole block and half the next one before finding the end, then took out my résumé and began looking it over. Four years in the city only to end up out in the cold.... I sighed and unpinned my pillbox hat; it was pulling my hair too tightly and the bobby pins were giving me a headache.

  Two hours later, I was ushered into a great bustling hall. Booths! Banners! Balloons! “Free Gifts!” The Hearst table was doling out York Peppermint Patties. Hachette Filipacchi Media, pencils etched with the company’s name. Star was offering back issues, pencils etched with the company’s name, and York Peppermint Patties. I dug my hand into a bowl of caramels at Us Weekly, popped one into my mouth, and surveyed the room—always my first move when attending a party.

  I got on line for the men’s magazine Maxim, behind a slightly nerdy yet well-put-together Yale grad. I knew he’d gone to Yale because the reporter who was interviewing people for a story on the current recession and its effect on recent college graduates, asked him.

  The summer after Yale, he interned at a local newspaper in Connecticut, he told her, and went on to explain how difficult his job search had been even with his three languages and two internships at distinguished publishing houses here in New York and in Shanghai—he said something in Chinese, they both laughed—because the job market was just that bad right now, and so he was willing to try anything. This fair seemed like a good opportunity. He sighed. Perhaps talking to someone face-to-face, rather than just blindly sending out his résumé and performing millions of follow-up phone calls, would make the difference.

  “And what about you?” the reporter asked, turning her attention to me. “What brings you to the job fair?”

  “My mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. “She saw the ad in the Times and suggested I come. Parents, you know?” I began to laugh and waited for the two of them to join in.

  The reporter stared, then thanked the Yale grad and disappeared into the crowd. The Yale grad turned away, too. Nervously, I worked to straighten the seams on my stockings. What had I been thinking when I put this on?

  When my turn came fifteen minutes later, I removed my kidskin glove and gave the HR rep a firm hand. “Etiquette guides don’t require women to remove their gloves prior to shaking hands, but if women and men are to share the workplace, I believe they should be held to the same standards. I’m Iris.”

  A pale, bespectacled boy a few years my senior, looked back. “How modern.”

  He rattled off a list of stock questions, which I answered the same I would any man asking to buy me a drink. The key is not to appear too interested, while not suggesting complete indifference either. I flashed him a look that said, We both know what you want, a look that said, No, I’m not that kind of girl—how dare you!—but I’d be happy to exchange a little witty banter while I down the whiskey you’ve so generously provided.

  He looked down at my résumé. “Wow, you interned at The New Yorker. Did you apply there?”

  “Nope.”

  He looked up.

  I gave the line a tug.

  “I just felt like, ‘been there, done that,’ you know? Also, I dated a few guys in the office so it would’ve been awkward.”

  He adjusted his glasses.

  “This is actually my first interview,” I added, and flashed a reassuring smile. I could tell he was nervous.

  “What have you been doing since graduation?”

  “I was in Greece. My mom is Greek and I have family there so I go every summer. I stayed longer this year though, figuring I probably wouldn’t be able to get away much once I get a job. What did you do for the summer?”

  “I worked.”

  “Cool. Where at?”

  “Maxim,” he said, looking down. “It says you went to NYU.”

  “Yes, I started out studying Acting at The Tisch School of the Arts, but then in my junior year decided I wanted something more practical, so I transferred to the Gallatin School for Individualized Study and designed an interdisciplinary concentration in Literature and Philosophy. Also, I write poetry. Mostly free verse.” I guided him to that line on my résumé and to the three directly below it: “make my own paper,” “Reiki massage,” “fourt
een years tap dancing.”

  “Wow.”

  “I also play the saxophone, but had to cut a few things in order to keep my résumé under three pages.” I directed him to the list of plays from which I’d performed scenes and monologues while still at Tisch.

  “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” he read aloud. “What’s ‘Alexander Technique?’”

  “Theory of standing.”

  “Sense Memory, Voice . . .” he went on, reading the names of NYU’s most competitive, invitation-only drama workshops, classes I’d had to audition for, classes that cost my parents upwards of twenty thousand dollars a year, classes that suddenly sounded preposterous. “Advanced Movement, Speech. . . .” Apparently, in order to master the basic skills most humans pick up during infancy—walking and talking—I had had to undergo elaborate and expensive training while at college. I blushed.

  “Do you type?”

  “Not well,” I said, trying to smile. I had lied before, but in this context where a little white lying was expected, my desire always to defy expectations prevented me.

  “Do you know Excel?”

  “No.”

  “Could you learn?”

  “Probably not. I find it very difficult to learn things I don’t already know.” Then, remembering the advice that I try to sell myself, I added, “But I’m sure I’d pick it up eventually.”

  At last he lowered my résumé. “So, tell me. Why do you think we should hire you?”

  Here was the big question. The one I’d worried about the whole walk over. I summoned all of what remained of my confidence and did my best to answer without crying.

  “You shouldn’t,” I said. Perhaps he might hire me for my refreshing honesty? I laughed faintly, then added, “Just kidding,” and gave him jazz hands.

  “Fair enough. So why do you want to work for Maxim?”

  I played it cool. “I just went to the booth with the shortest line.”

  “Is there anything you like about the magazine?”

  “Couldn’t say as I’ve never read it. To be honest I don’t really read magazines. They’re expensive, and for the same price I’d much rather read a classic like Madame Bovary.”

  “Yes, that’s a good book,” he answered politely. “Given your interests, Iris, I’m wondering why you want to work at a magazine at all.”

  “That’s a good question . . .” I heard myself say, for at some point during the conversation, I’d lost control of the vehicle. It was like the way survivors of car crashes describe the moments leading up to impact. Everything slows down, your senses become keen, and while you are completely aware of the impending collision, you are also unable to stop it. “. . . I suppose I feel about working the way Thomas Paine felt about government, ‘at its best, being but a necessary evil; at its worst, an intolerable one.’” I paused. “A magazine job just seemed like the least bad. I’m actually working on a novel right now. That’s my main thing. Also, I draw cartoons. Does Maxim publish cartoons?”

  He thanked me for coming and moved to file my résumé. Then he invited me to arm-wrestle The Maxim Man. “That’s our little gimmick for the fair,” he said smiling, and motioned to a small card table set up just next to his booth, behind which stood a man, six-foot-two, covered in red and blue lycra.

  2

  The Maxim Man’s superhero costume stretched over his whole face and body, so I couldn’t actually see him, though I was able to make out the contour of his nose and cast of his eyes. He held out his hand. I raised mine to say, “I’ll pass,” but he grabbed it firmly and wouldn’t let go. “Okay, okay,” I sighed and, like a good sport, planted my elbow on the table.

  There, dressed like a 1939 career-gal and struggling arm-to-arm with a superhero, I reviewed the details of my disastrous interview, consoling myself that at least no one I knew had witnessed it. Forget it, Iris! I told myself, blinking back tears and gazing up into the shady hollows behind The Maxim Man’s lycra-covered eyes. I was looking directly into them, wondering what I was going to do with my life, now that it had officially started, when it hit me: The Maxim Man was Donald.

  Donald, the boy I had loved all through college. Donald—my Beatrice!—about whom I’d written so many of my free-verse poems. Donald, whom I still always hoped I’d run into somewhere—he’d see me first, across the room; I’d be drinking a martini and chatting with a handsome man in my thrall....

  By the time the back of my wrist hit the table, I was all but convinced that I was arm-wrestling the then love-of-my-life Donald and that those were his all-seeing eyes staring out at me from behind the mask. And what disturbed me most about this revelation was that I couldn’t decide for whom the situation was more humiliating. I cringed thinking Donald had just witnessed my interview, but then, if he had, he’d done so covered in red and blue lycra. Of course, he at least had a job, which was more than I could say. Though it wasn’t quite the job in publishing he’d bragged about last I saw him.

  He let go of my hand and offered a theatrical salute.

  I looked up, smiled, and staggered away.

  It was all so confusing. Only five months earlier, I was being congratulated—“It is my great pleasure to present the Class of 2000!” I’d stood up to a round of applause.

  I floated among the crowd of applicants, their conversations merging into a boisterous hum. I looked around, visited a few more booths, and filled the free laminated folder I got from Scholastic with pencil erasers and tiny Kit Kats. Heavy with “gifts,” I decided to head home.

  3

  Where do ideas come from? The ancient Greeks believed inspiration to be divine, that one of nine muses whispered into the ear of the artist, who was not himself a genius but a conduit. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end,” Homer begins The Odyssey.

  I was almost home when I realized I didn’t want to be. My roommate May and her boyfriend Felix would be there—they were always there—and I wanted to be alone. So when I saw the subway entrance on Fifty-third and Seventh, I decided to head downtown.

  I got out at West Fourth and walked toward NYU but veered south when I came upon Washington Square. I’d spent so much time in the park during college; to go there now would mean a retreat. I continued around it, past NYU’s administrative buildings, where I imagined committees busily deciding whom to admit next year, whom to give my freshly vacant spot.

  I walked down into Soho, past bars I’d frequented as a freshman, past plain, unmarked doors, which at midnight opened onto chic nightclubs, past phone booths decorated with ads for the upcoming season of Sex and the City—a glamorous photo of Carrie Bradshaw in a black T-shirt covered with rhinestones spelling her name.

  I headed east toward Broadway and then down again, bobbing along the rushing river of shoppers, past windows behind which mannequins stood silently, posed in body-hugging T-shirts—“Hottie,” “Fabulous,” “Sexy,” written across the bust.

  I turned east again wandering deeper into the Lower East Side, looking in at the displays of small designer boutiques along the way. A $150 T-shirt with the words, “Gold Digger,” hung in one window. Another, “Page Six Six Six.” Another, “Thank You Thank You Thank You,” written three times vertically the way it appears on plastic shopping bags.

  I walked on, past a walled-up construction site plastered with ads for new albums, new movies, new stores, and past a newsstand where I paused, recognizing the faces of Justin, Shawn, and Richie staring out from the cover of New York Magazine.

  I went in. A bell rang as I entered. A middle-aged Pakistani, with three long hairs combed across the top of his head, looked up. He followed me with his eyes as I walked the length of the store, which was covered floor to ceiling with new issues of popular glossies. Giving up, I returned to the front and asked about the magazine in the window.

  He hopped down from his perch behind the register and, cutting in front, beckoned me to follow. Scanning the wall quickly, he
handed me a different issue.

  “No. The one in the window,” I repeated.

  “Is old. This one you want,” he said, pressing it into my hand.

  “No,” I said, handing it back. “That one. I know the guys on the cover!”

  He sighed and went outside to have a look, then came back in and knelt down to untape it from the display.

  “Two dollar,” he said, as he handed it to me.

  The three had been profiled for “Models Suck,” the logo decorating their popular line of T-shirts. I hadn’t known about their fashion venture. I flipped back to the cover to see the date. August 24, 1998, a year before I met them in Atlantic City with Lex.

  “This is not a library,” the clerk announced.

  I paid for the magazine and left.

  I walked a few more blocks—aimless, adrift—when, looking into another window, I was startled by my own image reflected back. The late-afternoon light had cast a mirror-like glare, so I could not see in but only myself trying to. There I was, the whole of me, paused in a Depression-era suit—a woman lost in time.

  What do you know about PowerPoint? About Excel spreadsheets? About answering the phone? I interviewed my reflection. And what do you care? I went on, as a song in my head started up, grew louder, and was backed by a beat to which I could dance. The song my muse was singing was clear:

  Forget corporate America, Iris! Selling T-shirts! That’s your game! Why worry over all the things you don’t know, when there are obviously so many more important things that you do? That a T-shirt with the words, “Second Base” would be capital! That underwear featuring the words, “Bad Ass” could go with it! And the great thing about T-shirts is you don’t even need to know how to sew! The really great thing is you don’t need to know anything! All you need is one good idea.... Staring into the window, at a T-shirt just visible behind my own reflection, I discovered I had many.