Syrup (24 page)

“Oh,
brother,”
Tina says, shaking her head.

“So help me.” For a moment, the irony of asking Tina for relationship advice is dizzying. “What should I do?”

“Look for a new girl,” Tina says shortly.

“Tina, that’s not very helpful.”

“Okay, fine. You want 6? Be a bastard.”

“I don’t want to be a bastard.”

“Oh, sure you do,” Tina says airily.

“Tina,” I say levelly, “I’m not every man you’ve ever dated, okay?”

“Ooooh,” Tina says. “Look, it’s true. It’s how she is. She won’t respect you unless you don’t let her control you. And that means you have to fight her.”

I boggle. “She’d whip my butt.”

“So, like I said,” Tina says, growing bored of the conversation, “find another girl.”

I watch the street for a moment. “Can’t I just win her admiration and affection by proving to be a spectacular public success?”

“Yeah, well,” Tina says, “whichever you think is easier.”

6 is showered and prowling the kitchen in Tina’s pajamas when we come back up, and she regards us both suspiciously. “Hi, 6,” Tina says flippantly, and 6’s eyes narrow even further.

“So,” I say, a little too heartily. “What do you want to do today? Go see a movie? A real one?”

“We’re going home,” 6 says. “We need to prepare for tomorrow.”

“What? Prepare how?”

“We need to anticipate Sneaky Pete’s attack,” she says, sawing through a loaf of bread. “And prepare our response.”

“Aw, 6 ...” After a whole day of not having to worry about any of this stuff, I’m reluctant to give up my chance at another. “Can’t we leave it until tonight? It’s a beautiful day out there.”

6 doesn’t even bother to answer. I gloomily start getting my stuff together, and by one we’re on the bus.

It feels very different at Synergy. At Tina’s, it was possible to ignore the fact that Sneaky Pete is waiting for us on Monday. Here, it’s not. Here, it feels like Sneaky Pete is oozing out of the walls.

6 settles into her Captain Kirk with a huge notepad. I pace the room and occasionally kick around the crumpled-up bits of paper that 6 throws onto the floor. “So what do you think he’s going to do?”

6 frowns, still writing. “Sabotage the project.”

“What?” I say, genuinely surprised. “But it’s still his movie. He’s VP Marketing.”

6 sighs and runs her fingers through her hair, unexpectedly exposing an expanse of soft, gleaming neck. It’s so abruptly erogenous that I feel a little dizzy. “Sneaky Pete’s already proved himself. If it crashes now, after we start making changes, who do you think will be blamed?”

“Shit,” I say reflectively.

“He’ll disown himself from the movie now. Find something to take him away from it. That way its failure will be entirely our responsibility.”

“Failure? How can it fail?”

6 sighs, not answering.

I cook up some fettuccine in 6’s tiny kitchen while she scribbles late into the night. By the time we’re ready for bed, it’s nearly midnight and Sneaky Pete is just eight hours away.

I’m cleaning my teeth with a brush I stole from Tina’s, ready to retire to my closet space for the night, when 6 pauses outside the door. I look up at her expectantly, but she just hovers there, her red satin pajamas shimmering at me. I stare at her for a second, caught between the pros and cons of trying to speak through a mouthful of paste.

“Scat,” 6 says hesitantly. “We’re partners, right?”

I nod. “Mmm-hmm.”

She nods. “So—we’re in this together.” She nods again.

I wonder if it would be bad etiquette to spit at this juncture, and decide probably yes.

“It’s cold,” 6 says suddenly, apparently deciding to change tack. “Isn’t it? This place gets cold at night.”

“Mmm,” I say noncommittally.

6 stares at me for a moment and she really seems caught up in something. Her brow furrows. “If you wanted,” she begins reluctantly, and it looks as if the words are killing her. “If it made sense to you—” She stops.

I raise my eyebrows encouragingly.

“Oh, fuck it,” 6 says. “You can sleep with me tonight.”

I spit.

Imagine that a huge new billboard is erected along Sunset Drive. And this billboard, instead of carrying an advertisement for Pepsi or American Express or Ray·Ban, sports a naked woman. A very naked woman. Naked, smiling, reclining. A
Playboy
centerfold, splashed across one of the most famous streets in the world.

On the day this billboard went up, massive crowds would surround it. People would hear about it, go, “No way,” and zip down for a look. Protesters would gather within hours. Traffic would back up for five miles (or, at least, five miles further than usual).

Imagine that, for whatever reason, this billboard stays exactly where it is. Congress misfiled the Decency Act 1991 and now they just can’t find it anywhere. That naked woman just stays there.

For the next month, men all over the city would be making unnecessary detours past it. They’d be gathering in groups, saying, “Hey, want to go down to the picture of the naked babe?” A nightclub would immediately spring up on the opposite side of the road.

But it wouldn’t last. It would take a while, but, eventually, no one would notice the billboard at all.

Because sex isn’t sex at all.

It’s marketing.

If you have a men’s magazine in the vicinity, I’d like you to flip to the “model profile” section. You know, the part where the mag quits pretending it’s in the business of producing high-brow fiction and informative reports on the decline of efficient manufacturing processes in America and gets down to the business of showing pictures of naked women.

There will be a few models, so you’ll have to pick one. Stacy. Fine. You’ll notice that the first page shows a picture of Stacy’s face. Just her face. There will be a little text, like: “Stacy is a dental assistant, but wants to travel the world. Her interests include opera, white-water rafting and men with hard cocks.” (Incidentally, I can’t help but wonder if the magazine adds that last bit themselves. I see Stacy at home three weeks later, flipping through her advance copy, going, “ ‘Men with hard cocks’? I just said opera and rafting! Man, that changes the whole context!”)

On the next page, you’ll see Stacy’s face and Stacy’s buttocks. You will probably also see a hint of breast, but only a hint. Stacy will be half out of four different outfits, as if she’s the world’s sloppiest dresser. Then, on the next page, Stacy’s breasts will pop free. You’ll see them from the side and you’ll see them from the front, and there’s a fair bet you’ll also see Stacy cupping them with an expression of utter surprise, as if she’s never noticed them there before.

In one of the pictures, you’ll see a few strands of Stacy’s pubic hair, but you have to turn the page again to get any further. And there it will be: Stacy completely naked, saying, “Okay, I’ve got nothing left now. All my clothes are gone. Go on, you might as well take a look.”

Now, my point is this: What are all the previous pictures for? If you want to see Stacy’s breasts, well, there they are, on the last page. There is, in fact, everything that was peeking out from behind this and half hidden behind that in all the other pictures.

The answer is marketing. Stacy has been marketed to you.

You could produce a magazine with page after page of naked women, just standing there. But it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t even be’erotic. It would be like those articles in
Cosmo
(“Are Your Breasts Normal?”) where six average girls decide to expose themselves to the nation—but even worse, because at least with
Cosmo
there’s the clandestine satisfaction of knowing they didn’t
mean
to be perved at.

What it comes down to, you see, is that a naked body is just a naked body.

But the
possibility
of a naked body is something special.

“You stay on that side,” 6 warns me, gesturing. Her pajamas ripple like a deep, mysterious pool.

“Okay,” I say, slipping under the covers. I discover that 6 has an electric blanket and the bed is like a little furnace.

“And don’t
fidget,”
6 says, frowning at me. “You tend to fidget. Don’t do that.”

“Okay,” I say again, wiggling my toes. So warm.

“Good,” she says, pulling up the covers.

We lie there together on our backs. 6’s Barbie lamp fills the room with soft yellow light, illuminating her miniature TV and vast collection of pop culture posters. Gillian Anderson in particular seems to be eyeing me suspiciously.

“This is really cozy,” I say to the ceiling.

6 says nothing.

“Much warmer than my room. Thanks for letting me move in here.” I glance across, but she’s biting her lip and staring at the ceiling. I sigh. “You know, 6, I understand that right now you’re having some doubts about me being here. Suddenly I’m all over your personal space, and you’re wondering if maybe you made a mistake.”

She turns and regards me. The lamp is behind her, so her face is mostly in darkness. Her eyes are big black lagoons.

“I want you to know that I’m cool with your mixed signals,” I say. “In fact, I’m kind of getting used to it. So don’t worry. I can take it.”

6 is silent.

“I love you.” It’s a little risky, but it comes out okay: casual but sincere. I leave a pause, just in case 6 is inspired to do some declaring of her own, but to tell the truth, I’m never very hopeful. When it’s obvious there will be no new developments tonight, I lean over to kiss her cheek. I go in slowly, in case she’s in a retaliatory mood, but she doesn’t move at all. I plant a gentle kiss, kind of amazed that she’s allowing me to do it, then I roll over so my back is to her. I feel very satisfied.

6 lies there for a long time, maybe five minutes. Then I hear her lean over and flick off the lamp. We both lie awake in the darkness for a while, and when I fall asleep I haven’t once thought about Sneaky Pete.

For some reason this phrase sticks in my head. When I wake, a good thirty minutes before the six A.M. alarm, it’s the first thing that enters my brain. As I lie in the darkness, it’s like an annoying pop song, going around and around. When the radio kicks into the LA traffic report and 6 slowly raises her head from the pillow, her hair like a brewing storm, I see it in her face.

There’s not much conversation: we just get up and get ready. It’s a very still morning, and while we wait for the bus—me in a navy jacket and cream pants, 6 in a truly stunning deep red suit—it’s so quiet that I could almost swear Venice is deserted.

You can see the hulking Coke building from the 10 a good five minutes before we actually get there, and 6 grips my hand. I turn to her, surprised. Her face set in a hard mask.

“We can do this,” she says grimly. “Whatever he tries, we are going to do this.”

Coke is busy and cheerful when we arrive, which is a bit of a clash with our tense moods. A couple of suits catch us in the elevator and enthusiastically congratulate us on last Friday, and 6 fields them with short nods until they get out on the 10th.

The elevator doors slide open on the 14th, and, as if we’re expecting Sneaky Pete to be hiding around the corner, neither of us moves. Finally, 6 takes a deep breath and strides out.

Of course, everything looks normal. There are people gathered around the coffee machine, talking about the Lakers, and the ubiquitous chatter of keyboards is almost mundane. It looks exactly the same as when I was here last, until 6 nods toward an empty office. “Brennan’s. Now Sneaky Pete’s.”

I peer inside. “He’s not here yet?”

“No,” she says, frowning. This obviously bothers her, and that it bothers her scares the hell out of me.

She leads me toward a secretary, a tiny wide-eyed woman with huge golden earrings. “Hi, Pam,” 6 says distractedly. “Where’s my new office?”.

“Oh, I haven’t been told,” Pam says, and I abruptly realize that this is the woman who sounds like my mother. Seeing her in the flesh is something of a relief: she doesn’t look like Mom at all. I have closure. “Maybe Mr. Pete will tell you at the meeting.”

6’s eyebrows rise. “Meeting?”

“Oh, yes,” Pam says. “He’s called a meeting at nine, in the boardroom. To introduce himself.”

“I see,” 6 says slowly. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Pam says, sinking back to her monitor. “And, 6—welcome back.”

6 ignores her, staring at the carpet. “A
meeting.”

To save us from having to hang around the coffee machine, 6 secures a meeting room and we burn the forty-five minutes by pacing, staring out at the cubicles and drinking coffee. I have to also make a pit stop, but 6 displays impressive bladder control by sinking three coffees without leaving the room.