Interior Design (15 page)

Then Fern notices the woman's clothes are inside out: loose threads hang from her shoulders, the broad, inner seams of her blouse are exposed, and from her pants the hidden flaps of pockets hang like wide, pale tongues. The inside white label on her blouse seems to shine out. Fern steps closer and leans forward, wanting to read the instructions, but instead she's suddenly recalling her dream. She was nude and walking along a crowded beach, but no one noticed because her tan had somehow reversed. Her body was pale white except for one horizontal strip of brown across her hips that blended in with her pubic hair, and another tan line across her breasts that hid her nipples.

The woman is facing her. “Are you trying to read my label? I
so
much like curiosity.”

Fern nods, unable to speak, certain that everyone around them is watching. She resists the impulse to cover her chest, her crotch.

“One hundred percent cotton. I'm all-natural. And I like to be washed in warm water.”

Like a guilty child, Fern nods again.

The woman eyes her carefully. “A bit bland. But I don't think you'll
film
bland. Your name is?”

“Fern…”

“My god, what a name!” the woman laughs. “You'll be perfect.” The man beside her scribbles away.

They lead her through the crowd and Fern realizes this has been an interview of sorts. The woman whispers to her lanky assistant. “All right, everybody,” he calls out, “we've found our girl. Time to go home.” Fern is almost alarmed to hear this—she had begun to think of Happy Shrimp as a career.

“What the fuck was this all about, anyway?” someone shouts.

The woman turns to her assistant. “Mick, dear, would you turn that off?” He slips through the crowd, murmuring apologies.

She turns to Fern. “I'm Marjorie, your director du jour. Now Fern, I know this sounds a bit
unorthodox
, but we're going to improvise our commercial. And we're going to do it right now.”

No script? Fern thinks, but she doesn't have time to be relieved, because before the last actress has gone, she is standing in front of a stark blue screen backdrop and the makeup man is already blushing her cheekbones. “Nothing fancy,” Marjorie says, “just give her a touch-up.” She waves her hand at the backdrop, but Fern can't turn to look. “Don't worry about all that nothing behind you. The deal is, a downtown artist will draw the background later. Then we program it into a computer and everything will get, ah, frisky. But you, my dear, come first.”

Marjorie turns and slaps her palms against her dangling pants pockets and shouts, “Where's the love interest?” She turns and whispers to Fern, “He's a redhead. Think lots of kiss-kiss.”

Within minutes the lights are on Fern and her costar, but there's nothing to work with, no set, no script, no product. “Get to know each other, kids,” Marjorie calls out. “Don't mind us. Or the lights. Or the cameras.”

The redhead's face is as blank as a plate. He must have been the worst at his audition, Fern thinks—maybe we've both been selected as a joke. She tries a sidelong grin as they draw closer, but when they embrace she can feel the knots in his stiff shoulders. His arms hang limp at his sides. But he's the same height and build as David, so Fern closes her eyes and runs her finger slowly down his spine.

“Hold it,” Marjorie calls out.

“I'm sorry. I just thought that…”

“No, I
like
it,” she says, out of her chair and striding toward them. “It's tender and sexy, and that's the kind of identification we need for a drain cleaner, which
is
, by the way, what we're selling here. When your finger slips down his back it gives a subliminal message of water running down a pipe.”

Fern's chin still rests, idiotically, on the redhead's shoulder, and she can only stare at Marjorie, afraid to admit she was merely thinking about her boyfriend.

Marjorie steps back a moment. “I think we'll take a close-up of those fingers first, then one of your face.” She takes the comb from her hair, the thin chain jangling, and brushes back Fern's bangs. “Keep your eyes closed first. And then open them so all our housewives at home can imagine what he's rubbing against you down there, okay?”

*

When they're finally done Marjorie shouts out, “All right, strike the set!” A few technicians laugh, and they gather up cords and lights.

“Thanks,” the redhead whispers to Fern before walking off, and she stands alone, still not quite believing what has happened. Marjorie approaches, talking to Mick: “Remind Pascal again that I want the animation sloppy, not slick, okay?”

Then Marjorie is beside her. “Impressive. I
knew
you'd be the one to come through. Really, all I wanted from that fella was the back of his head, all those nice red curls. And now, dear, there are these little annoyances called forms…”

While Fern finishes signing. Marjorie asks, “So, do you always read other people's labels? Wait, don't answer that. Can I give you a lift?”

“Sure,” Fern says, though she'd rather take the subway and stop at David's station with the good news, tell him how he was her unseen partner. But Marjorie is already strolling away and Fern follows.

They walk up the block, the wind ruffling their hair. “So,” Marjorie says, the stray strings of her exposed seams fluttering, “you want to know all about me. You've heard about Conceptual Art? Well, I invented Conceptual Radio. I deejayed for an early morning radio program I designed, called
Alarm Clock Music
. ‘This show is a public service,' I'd whisper in a husky voice that really got the letters coming in, ‘featuring music so awful it
makes
you get up.' I'd flip on the Rice Krispies Snap! Crackle! Pop! theme song arranged for string quartet—the scherzo version—and then segue into a piano roll made from the Braille version of Joyce's
Ulysses
. Ah, here's my car,” she says. Fern is disappointed that it's an ordinary tan import.

They get in and Marjorie presses the lighter on the dashboard before driving off. “I woke up the whole city. Absenteeism was zip, the Chamber of Commerce threw a banquet in my honor. And then,” she pauses, lighting her cigarette, “I quit.” Marjorie shifts gears, silent, and Fern understands she's supposed to respond.

“Why?”

“Why, you ask? Never keep dancing while the termites are eating through the floorboards, I always say. Anyway, I hustled arts grants with the usual performance art scam. Finally I got this idea for a project on the American housewife, an adventure domestica in fifteen- and thirty-second installments, in collaboration with major corporate sponsors. I figure, what with cable, video rentals, CD-ROMs, and the Internet, it's clear the networks' ratings are going bow-wow, so we're at a point where anything is possible. And I was right, because you
know
a company's desperate if they hired me with complete creative control. Actually, they think they need a huge loss—all that computer stuff will
cost
, y'know—something that'll help them when they file for Chapter Eleven. Ha—just wait.”

Fern wishes they weren't nearing her block, now she just wants to listen and listen. Marjorie looks at her and grins. “You don't talk much, but you don't need to. Look, when I get an impulse, I follow it, and that's what you did today. Twice. But you didn't know it. Well, Fern, you're going to be my ordinary housewife with hidden depths.”

*

Fern sits in her agent's office, waiting, wishing Marjorie wasn't so late. While Dougie reads the long-term contract Marjorie has offered, Fern glances at the walls and all the framed and signed photos of stars who seem to stare past her dreamily.

Dougie waves the pages at her. “You've read this carefully, Fran?” Fern nods and doesn't correct him. Just a week ago he didn't return her phone calls.

Dougie takes off his horn-rimmed glasses and pokes them at the contract. “This is unortho, very unortho. No script, everything improv? Only one commercial per sponsor and you don't even know what you're selling until right before the first take?”

She wishes he wouldn't clip his words like that, it's so annoying, but Fern only stares at his pinched lips and says nothing. There's more he could question—no outside work or interviews for the term of the contract—but she doesn't want trouble. She wants to sign.

He puts his glasses back on and sighs, his eyes larger as he stares at her silence. She can see he doesn't think this will fly at all. “But it
is
your first break,” he says, “so I don't want to push too hard, she might change her mind.” And when Marjorie finally arrives and sits before them Dougie only manages a lackluster, “Y'know, Fran and I have a teeny question about the interview clause…”

“Donnie,
Donnie,”
Marjorie says, “for this project to work we need to stay mysterious,
nest-ce pas?
So no one gives interviews. Trust me, I know.” She points to her earrings: little plastic garbage cans, the lids bulging up with bright refuse. “I can hear America singing.”

Fern giggles.

“Don't,” Marjorie says. “It's bad luck to laugh at earrings, didn't your mommy ever teach you anything?”

*

“Fern, Fern!” David shouts out, and she runs down the hall to the living room, in time to see herself in the center of the television screen. Her chin is resting on the redhead's shoulder, surrounded by a wild, animated kitchen: the edges of the cabinets and the refrigerator door are off-balance, almost ready to fly away, but Fern is the still, steady center.

As she watches the close-up of her large gleaming eyes, her little squiggle of a smile, Fern feels oddly fragile and she's glad when the commercial ends. But David has long anticipated his invisible influence in this little drama, and he slaps a blank tape in the VCR and he won't stop watching TV until her commercial finally returns. Then he can't stop replaying Fern's hand moving down that back, the widening of her excited eyes.

The commercial becomes hugely popular. Soon Fern stands again before another blue backdrop, facing the cameras. Marjorie saunters up to her wearing cut-off jeans over white panty hose, and there are stick figures painted on the bright nylon fabric, engaged in awkward intimate acts like some child's uninformed dream of sex.

Marjorie whispers, “Liquid cleanser.” Then she sits back down by the cameras, her legs crossed. The raised arms of an ecstatic figure span her shin and one painted hand, spread across her knee, seems to be waving.

Everyone waits. Fern's own arm rises, her hand first circling in the air as if waving back, whether at that figure or at Marjorie, she's not sure. Then she's rubbing her palm against the air, scrubbing at a nothing that seems to surround her. She twists about, both hands now billowing, and she's surprised at how easy it is to move in an acrobatic, widening circle until whatever she's washing away is finally gone.

“My, my, some
great
close-ups,” Marjorie calls out, and she walks over to Fern. “Now I'd like to work out some different angles.” She turns suddenly, back to the cameras. “Mick, dear, would you be a good shadow and follow me?” He just stands there by her empty chair, staring furiously at his pad. But Marjorie doesn't see this, she is looking at Fern with admiration, and then she laughs, her lips round with pleasure. “This is just what the gals out there will like, they won't know what you'll do next.”

*

Fern turns off the faucet and lets the plate slip into the suds. “What?” she asks.

“I said if that wasn't enough…” David sips his beer and leans back in his chair, “this old guy jumps the turnstile—he can barely do it—and the cop on the beat chases after him. And ‘cuffs him. An
old
guy.” David looks at the ceiling, sips some more. “And then some turd mouths off because I won't take a Canadian quarter.”

Fern goes to him and tickles his knee with her damp fingers. “Poor sweetie, how are you ever going to write your great song with rotten days like this? I'm sure tomorrow will be better.”

But David is in one of his moods: he cups an ear and mouths a silent response, as if he's still inside his glass booth. Then he wanders down the hall and hums aimlessly, jiggling coins in his pocket—his usual rhythm section—but he can't seem to find an opening into a new melody.

Eventually he joins Fern on the couch and watches TV: two fat people wisecracking over a smoking barbecue grill. The laugh track laughs and then on the screen an acrobatic Fern is scrubbing away a malevolent cloud of grime.

David rushes to the VCR and presses the Record button. He catches her last elastic movements as the bedraggled, illustrated kitchen around her becomes almost painfully pristine. “Jeez, what gave you the idea to do that?” David asks, pressing Rewind.

Fern hesitates, wishing she had another romantic tale to tell him. “You,” she says, surprising herself. “I imagined we were washing each other in the shower.”

David watches a few seconds of the replay and then he shouts, “Okey
do-key!”
He jumps up and dances with Fern's peculiar scouring motions on the screen.

The phone rings and Fern gets it. “Hello, doll,” Dougie says. “I think I can get you a spot on Letterman.”

“But Dougie, no interviews, remember?”

“What interview? There's no interview. He just makes fun of you for five minutes.”

Fern hears David pacing in the hall, jangling coins again. “I'm just not sure it's possible,” she says.

“You're worried about that wacky contract you signed, right?”

“
We
signed.”

“Who knew, who knew?”

Fern can hear David singing. “Don't scrub the floor, scrub me,” he begins. It's his first new song after a month of silence.

“Dougie, look, I have to go, okay? Bye.” She listens to the unpredictable wavering of David's voice, and she s pleased that her little lie has made him so happy.