Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (23 page)

The more Claudia listened to herself talk, the more
Hope Valley
became something she wanted, badly. The job had come tapping on her shoulder out of nowhere. This is how destiny worked, Claudia already knew from her collision course with Paul Tate.
Destiny already exists,
she told herself, and we make our way toward it, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly—

Claudia already
was
the second assistant to Executive Producer Shelly Gerson. It was only a matter of circumstances catching up with the inevitable—

She
had
to get this job. The only alternative to commanding these halls, wrestling these mini-muffins, speaking this language of workaday entertainment for the people, raising Phoebe in the lifestyle to which neither of them were remotely accustomed—

Was death.

“And meanwhile,” Claudia was saying, continuing her aria for her rapt audience of one, “in the practical world of making a living, we're a sustaining genre. We continue when other storytelling fads disappear. We are passed down, from generation to generation. Daughters become mothers and mothers become grandmothers, anchored to our stories, sharing them with one another. We sustain the artistic life of the city”—here, she gestured to the wall of glossies that resembled, she realized, those of the dry cleaners, delis, and diners of countless New York neighborhoods—“and, for the fans who consider us family, we are folklore, we are milestone. And, you know. Like the song says. We are family—”

Deedle-eep. Deedle-eep.
The timer on Shelly's bulky diver's watch sounded.
Deedle-eep.
“Sorry,” Shelly fretted, tearing her eyes from Claudia to silence the alarm. “That's eleven-thirty lunch. Hang on.” She leaned forward to press her intercom button.

Eleven-thirty.

Claudia, suddenly stricken, stood, remembering with horror the appointment she'd made with Ms. Krinsky to discuss Phoebe's D-plus during the teacher's lunch break, from 11:10 to twelve. Today.

The floor tipped one way, the marshmallow sofa slumped in opposition.

“Tell Tommy I'll meet him in his dressing room in ten,” Shelly was saying into the intercom, “and have his agent's office holding so we can conference.” Claudia reached for her bomber jacket. “You don't have to go,” Shelly said to Claudia, frowning. She kept her eyes on the girl as she addressed the intercom. “I want you to give Claudia a studio tour when we're done here.” She released the intercom button. “What gives, sugar?”

“I . . . I'm sorry. I have to go.” Claudia slung her messenger back across her chest. “I forgot I have another appointment—”

“If it's not for a kidney transplant, you can call them, can't you? Seeing as you're in the middle of acing a job interview.”

“It's basically a kidney transplant,” Claudia replied.
This,
Claudia reflected briefly, was an entirely new and different way to blow it.
Blowing It,
in fact, might do nicely as a memoir title. Claudia was at the door. “I can come back for the tour,” she said, flatly, “maybe even later today.” Bedford High School was twenty minutes away, and Ms. Krinsky's office hours ended ten minutes after that. No biggie. She would fly there. In her tights and cape. After stripping down in a phone booth.

 

Phoebe had loitered the morning away in Flatbush Junction, then positioned herself at the entrance to the subway to successfully head off Ramona at the pass.
It doesn't hurt to ask,
Ramona had claimed, and so Phoebe asked. Which was how Phoebe Goldberg and Ramona Parker now found themselves together, among the
Moxy
hopefuls at the open casting call Bronwyn had implored Phoebe to attend.

Currently, they were last on the growing queue. It started in a temporary photo studio, installed in a storefront, and ended out here in the cold, populated largely by a narrow margin of artsy Manhattan girls who were privy to opportunities like this one due to their parents' connections. Some were accompanied by their male sidekicks, club boys of lesser means and greater sartorial daring, who had their own thinly veiled schemes to eclipse their patrons and single-handedly return lower Manhattan to a kind of post-Warholian Shangri-La, starring themselves, in, perhaps, a tweed cape over hot pants. A few oddly shaped Long Island pilgrims, whose parents, unlike their Manhattan counterparts, did not consider dermatology a household line item, gave the crowd a lumpy verisimilitude. These bigger, more hesitant girls had heard the brief ad on late-night alternative radio, and wore a series of unfortunate hats at dreadful tilts.

“I can't be late for work,” Ramona warned Phoebe. Her internship at the Tribeca Animal Hospital had been won in a cutthroat application process.

“Can you hang with me until the last possible minute, then run like hell?” Phoebe asked, good-naturedly.

There was a flurry of movement at the top of the line. Bronwyn Tate was causing the minor commotion as she made her way with a Polaroid camera. At Bronwyn's side was her brand-new boss, an older chick, probably close to thirty, in combat boots, thick ribbed tights, cutoff shorts, a leather sweater, a bleached pixie cut, and a megaphone.

“Five minutes,” Ramona replied.

Pixie Cut wrestled the megaphone with a buzz and a drone. “Hey, y'all!” she announced cheerfully after another few seconds. “I'm Holly Platt, editor in chief of
Moxy,
and I just want to thank you guys so much for coming out here on a freezing day! As you know, we're looking for the new face of
Moxy,
as well as other faces we can use in the pages of our super-cool new magazine!” A former West Plano High cheerleader, Holly had shed her pom-poms when she'd fled north. “We are so totally psyched that so many of you have shown up!” Holly continued. “If we take your photo, it means we want to remember your cute faces—and stay in touch.” At this, Holly elbowed Bronwyn, who dutifully snapped a Polaroid of a dreamy lass in a boy's suit, topped by a metallic-silver down vest and a long, striped stocking cap. “And now, my capable assistant, Bronwyn, will break it all down for you!” Holly, the self-protective, self-appointed big sister to stylish girls everywhere, dispatched the dirty work as she shoved her megaphone into Bronwyn's arms. The clipboard promptly clattered to the sidewalk, and Holly stepped over it to stroll the line. As Bronwyn stooped to retrieve it, the megaphone fell, and buzzed unpleasantly. Holly turned and frowned prettily. Bronwyn, cheeks burning, brought the megaphone to her mouth. She cleared her throat as the waiting girls, dubious, considered her.

“If I take your photo and tap you,” Bronwyn began, demonstrating as she tapped the stocking-capped lass firmly on the shoulder, “it means we want to do another round of photos inside, but first you need to sign a release form.” Here, Bronwyn struggled with her clipboard as she shuffled forward to catch up with her boss. She managed to free a single sheet of paper, and waved it, once, before a stiff, downtown wind came along and blew it from her hands. It skidded across Lafayette and ended its life in a dank puddle, barreled over by an H&H Bagels truck, as Holly followed the action, witheringly, with her eyes.

“If we
don't
photograph you or tap you,” Bronwyn continued, “it means we, um . . .” Here, the nervous girl trailed off, looking to an unreadable Holly for more information, but none was forthcoming. “We'll be holding open casting calls again,” Bronwyn faltered, scanning the vulnerable faces stretching before her, “so we want you to come back and bring your friends. For today, we're looking for a certain, um,
Moxy
je ne sais
kumquat,
but we totally don't want you to feel bad if you don't have it.” Although the megaphone squawked, Bronwyn barreled ahead.
“We want you to buy
Moxy
magazine and find out how to get it!”
Keeping her back turned to her new junior editor, Holly ratified the awkward speech with a skyward poke of her thumb. It was then that Bronwyn noticed Phoebe. Her face lit with relief.

Phoebe grabbed Ramona's hand. “Seriously,” she said, as Bronwyn and Holly approached. “Don't go.”

“Ten minutes, tops, and that's my final offer,” said Ramona.

“Hey, ladies!” Bronwyn greeted the girls, casually.

“Yo,” Phoebe replied, with an easy smile that tied her height and her slouch together in an arresting package. The gap between her teeth was always a surprise, and with delighted shock, Holly Platt clocked all of it—the hair and the skin and the dusting of freckles and the moccasins.

The editor in chief tapped the two girls with her signature cheeky authority. “These two,” she declared, grinning.

 

Claudia ran. Her ponytail flew out behind her, and every second she was about to give up, but Bedford High School's cupola, its strong white finger of reason and authority poking skyward among the crummy old apartment buildings clumped along Campus Road, beckoned.

Claudia's former small pond smelled of chalk and cafeteria. It thundered with student traffic making its way between classes. Ms. Krinsky's wavy glass office door opened, and the teacher appeared with a ziplock Baggie of baby carrots in her hand. She'd been trying to conjure Claudia Silver's face. Aggressive Jewish girls were the bedrock of the school, and the record showed that she had taught Claudia AP American History back in 1984, but Elaine Krinsky honestly wasn't sure which particular loudmouth Claudia Silver was.

“Oh!” she now exclaimed, taking in her winded former student. “I remember
you!
” She looked up and down the hall. The flood of students had dissipated quickly. “Where's your sister?” Claudia's guts tightened into a walnut as Krinksy shooed her in. “Have a seat,” Krinsky said, her denim prairie skirt swirling as she crossed her legs. Claudia immediately spotted the unfamiliar man in the corner of the room. He was stout, freckled, and smiling, balding and clipped on top, with a short calico beard and a light band of perspiration framing his temples. His hands were folded in his lap, his plaid flannel shirt strained over his round belly, his jaw worked a wad of cinnamon gum, and one of his feet jittered in its New Balance running shoe. He raised a hand in greeting.

“Hey, Claudia,” he said, perfectly casual. “I'm Dave O'Malley.” A decade or more Ms. Krinsky's junior, his boundless enthusiasm for the youth of New York City still got him out of bed in the morning, and he had just enjoyed a particularly tasty knish with mustard and onions.

“Dave's a social worker for Child Protective Services,” Krinsky explained. So far today Elaine Krinsky had eaten only half a bagel, at 6
A.M.
, and she now pushed her lunch out of her sight line and leaned forward, clog dangling. “And he works here at Bedford and several other high schools in our district.”

O'Malley shifted eagerly in his seat. “I wanted to talk to you and Phoebe about your living situation,” he said. His accent was thick and his manner was friendly. Claudia figured his father had been a drunk cop, permanently chapped from a bitter run of K.P. duty, who'd moved the family from the Bronx to Long Island at some point, and whose regular beatings had sent his youngest son into the helping professions.

“Claudia,” Krinsky asked her, “what's going on, kiddo?”

Fuck me dead,
Claudia reasoned.

Upon further consideration, it occurred to her that this may have been
exactly
what Paul Tate had done.

If only there had been some way to call Phoebe, wherever it was that Phoebe was. If only Claudia could make the correct sidewalk pay phone ring precisely as Phoebe passed it, and Phoebe could duck in and answer. If only Phoebe, like Claudia, were the sort to pick up randomly ringing pay phones just to see who was there. If only they had two Campbell's soup cans strung, pocket-to-pocket, Cream of Mushroom to Chicken Noodle, by an endless filament that traversed the city. If only she hadn't had that pointless fucking exercise at
Hope Valley,
because she hadn't needed a job, because she hadn't gotten fired, and as a result, hadn't needed Paul Tate in the middle of the night, because she, in crisp shirtdress, belted cardigan, and camel-colored pumps, was already married to a rising executive in the family metals business, because nobody had ever left Europe, and she had been raised a pretty princess on some
Strasse
or other with a tiered porcelain platter of marzipan and a French tutor. It was all slightly Paul Tate's fault, and yet he was also the solution, or he once was, and the crater he left was too choked with smoke for Claudia to gauge its diameter. It was maddeningly simple to reconstruct the past so that it added up more satisfactorily. This was clearly a better use of Claudia's time than burning in the eternity of the future, or reckoning with Krinsky's goggle-eyed stare.

For her next trick, Claudia would back out of Krinsky's office. She would do what her people had been engineered to do. She would flee.

With the girl gone, Krinsky offered O'Malley her Baggie of carrots and he accepted. She sighed and pulled her lunch box close. They would call the mother next. But first she would eat her lentil salad.

 

Annie Tate flapped along the frozen Brooklyn side street in her old leather sandals. She was certainly
aware
of the plain row houses, several of which had been desecrated with aluminum siding and rusted awnings, and the questionable individuals hurrying between the ragged main drag on one end and the actual housing project on the other, but she was too determined to be bothered. A fat black crow pimp-rolled recklessly close to a passing gypsy cab that blared a droning beat (
La-da-deeeeee la-da-daaa she's homeless)
as it lurched past.

Annie rang Edith Mendelssohn's bell. The harsh buzzer reminded her of a slaughterhouse, somehow, not that she'd ever been within one hundred miles of one, and she felt strongly that a more dignified and musical doorbell would help tremendously. Annie rang again, and was about to knock on the parlor window when the door opened, just wide enough for Edith to peer out.