The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (2 page)

Eve shook her head as if to dislodge her fears. She wasn’t going to be forced out. No way.

“Well, well,” said Donald. “We certainly don’t want you going back to the Ohio
suburbs
. Perhaps I can be of some assistance for this interview. So, tell me. What is this evil enterprise of a job?”

This was an awkward question. The truth was, Eve didn’t know. She had no idea what being a writer at
Smell the Coffee
, the nation’s number two morning show, actually entailed. What was there to write at a news program? She’d never watched much television and didn’t even have one in her apartment. But her impression of people who delivered the news was that they just … talked.

Even Vadis didn’t really seem to know what the job involved, and she was the one who’d set up the interview. Vadis Morales
was a college friend with whom Eve had reconnected at a dinner honoring the opening of a fellow alumna’s off-Broadway play. Now in their thirties, nearly all the women present that night had met with rather astonishing levels of professional success. Vadis herself owned her own Manhattan PR firm and seemed to know everyone on the island, including
Smell the Coffee
’s managing editor. She’d taken to calling Eve her first
pro bono
project and, over drinks, had assured Eve that the television job would be both easy and fabulous, a gig where you “read magazines, talk about the articles with your boss, and then go to lunch.” Vadis said all this breezily but Eve sensed her friend was running out of patience with her. True, Eve had lost the first two jobs Vadis had set her up with, but to be fair, party planning and videogame sales had been wildly inappropriate matches.

“Well, let’s start with what we do know,” said Donald. “We know you’ve shown some promise as a writer, yes? All those contests you won.” There had only been one contest, years ago, but Eve didn’t want to dwell on that. “Though they won’t actually expect you to write something
today
, I hope? We’ll have a lot of work to do first.”

“I appreciate that vote of confidence,” said Eve. “No, I won’t be writing today. This is just an interview.” Which was bad enough, though, because Eve had never been on a job interview in her life. Thanks to her father, she hadn’t had to.

She settled on a pair of faceted jet earrings and a cameo necklace, lamenting that New York hadn’t turned out to be the easiest place to take the reins of one’s fate for the first time. It was complicated, fraught, and fast; vital decisions seemed to be made and fortunes won or lost in the time it took for a yellow cab to peel away from the curb.

“You need to start thinking optimistically,” said Donald. “You’ll have a chance at this job, but only if you’re sure of yourself,” he said. “Conviction is the lifeblood of this city, whatever people tell you about money.”

“Great,” said Eve, slipping into a pair of slingbacks. She
yanked the string of the closet light so hard that it came away in her hand. She sank back down on the bed, a sudden attack of nerves robbing her of her vigor.

“Sarcasm and defeat hardly become you, my dear,” Donald advised. “Try this for your interview. Picture how a confident person moves and adopt that posture, even if it’s a complete ruse. Your back is straight, your handshake firm, your voice even.”

This didn’t seem particularly profound. And she’d really have to work on the voice part. Since Eve had arrived in New York, hers had almost gone hoarse from lack of use. She guessed she uttered fewer than fifty words a day, most of them to Hyo behind the counter of the deli, who raised his sparse eyebrows at her request for a “horseshoe sandwich,” a favorite from home, and Mrs. Swan, her retired neighbor next door. Though anytime she was tempted to bemoan her solitude, Eve spared a thought for Donald and how lonely he must have been during the thirty-five years before she moved in.

Eve was touched that he was making an effort. She sat up straight, lifting her chin slightly. “All right.”

“Second: Convince yourself that you belong. This is your city and this job is yours for the taking. Can you manage that?”

Eve exhaled. “I can try.”

And she would. For both of them. Without her, Donald would never finish his story collection; that was clear. He’d tried with most of the previous occupants of Apartment 7, who either couldn’t hear him or who packed their bags the moment they did. (Which explained why the place had been both available and “a deal” when Eve came along.)

What wasn’t clear was whether Donald could write. Eve had minored in English, had studied reams of literature, and still she didn’t know. So far, from the bit of dictation she’d taken, she didn’t care for his quirky style. He wrote about everyday objects that seemed to represent other things or ideas, but what those were was never clear. His work came across as sophomoric and
unnecessarily opaque. Perhaps the best thing for Donald would be to get over his childhood dreams of being a famous author—accept that he just hadn’t had what it took. Move on.

On the other hand, maybe she just didn’t understand his approach. The question nagged at her: What if he was actually brilliant? What if only his premature death, back in the seventies at just forty-three, had prevented him from advancing the short story to a new level and attaining worldwide fame? What if Donald belonged on the same shelves as the great New York authors, the ones whom her mother had so tenderly taught her to love at such an early age? Eve would never forgive herself if he did and she hadn’t helped put him there.

And then there was the little matter of money. Donald assured her his stories would be worth more than she could spend in a lifetime. Hubristic, yes, but what if it was true?

She looked at her watch, startled by the time. Donald always ate more of it than she realized. She was in real danger of being late now, and in this town they got very huffy if you were late. She’d found that out the hard way, when she turned up four minutes past nine on the first day of the party job and nearly wasn’t allowed in “as a matter of principle.” She hurried into the living room, where she gathered up her coat, which was draped over one of the black leather and chrome bar stools. She retrieved her bag from the love seat and tucked it under her arm.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, swinging open the front door.

“Wait,” said Donald. “One more thing.”

“Yes?” said Eve, stepping back inside in case Mrs. Swan entered the hallway and thought she was talking to herself again.

“If all else fails, look this interviewer in the eye and picture him—”

“Her.”

“All right. Picture her—”

“Don’t tell me. In her underwear?”

“I was hardly going to offer something so prosaic.”

“What then?”

“Picture her as a child.”

“A child?” Eve shook her head. “Why?”

“Because that’s who everybody is, inside.”

“Right,” she said. “Well … thanks.” She stepped onto the landing and closed the door behind her. She was off to take on the children of New York, and soon—if she got this job and kept this apartment—she’d be one of them.

As she made her way down the stairs, she felt Donald’s presence growing weaker and weaker inside her, before it disappeared neatly and quietly, like water swirling down a drain.

T
he hunched, sloe-eyed girl behind the front desk put down the phone. “Have a seat,” she said. “It’ll be a couple.” She turned back to a list of some kind, which she attacked with a red pen.

Eve nodded, tucked her hair behind her ears, and tried to make her breathing normal after running the three blocks from the subway. Beyond the desk, the office natives slid by on their errands and drummed on their keyboards, clad in clingy black and self-assurance. After about forty minutes, a young woman so slender that the loops of blond hair piled atop her head made her look like a dandelion, strode into the waiting area.

“Let’s go,” she said, beckoning with fingers flapping against her palm. Eve sprang to her feet and followed the girl through large glass doors and a warren of cubicles and filing cabinets to their destination, a large, glass-fronted office belonging to Orla Knock, Managing Editor. The office lights were off, but the computer screen was emitting a dull glow from the far side of the room. The young woman sat down at an overflowing desk and nodded toward a seat, which Eve took.

“So. I’m Tanya, Orla Knock’s assistant. Unfortunately, Orla had to leave for the day. She sends her apologies.”

Eve felt a mix of disappointment and relief. She needed the job but her attack of nerves began to dissipate nicely the moment she realized the interview was off. “That’s completely fine. These things happen.” She asked, reaching into her purse for her appointment book, “Shall I come back another time?”

“Actually, no. We need you to write a segment for tomorrow’s show.”

Eve’s hand fell out of her bag, hanging limply at her side. “Excuse me?”

“We’re, um, unexpectedly short-staffed today and could really use a pair of hands. Orla says you were referred to her as having lots of experience.”

Eve thought of her résumé with the rather large font and wished Vadis hadn’t oversold her. Again. She’d told the event-planning director that all Eve needed was a phone and two hours to pull together a corporate investor dinner for fifteen, and she’d claimed to the advertising executive that Eve was bursting with ideas about integrating videogame images into high school textbooks. Eve had lasted less than two weeks in each job.

“Well …” she began.

“Yes?” asked Tanya. Eve looked for the child within but saw only probing green eyes and a sharp little crease in the brow between them.

“Well—yes.
Yes
. I have experience. Tons.”

“And you watch the show?”

Eve lowered her chin in a half-nod.

“It’s our hosts that you’ll be writing for. Hap McCutcheon and, of course,
Bliss Jones
.” She said this name with particular emphasis. “So here’s the deal,” she continued. “Our celebrity chef, Zorin, is doing bouillabaisse—just a little four-minute demo at 8:36, after the weather—and we need you to write the intro and block out the segment. Hap’s handling this one. He’s not great at prop spots, so you’ll have to be extra careful. Put each and every step in his script along with the necessary graphics
so he can follow along with Zorin. You’ll also have to go down to the studio and, since the food producer is out sick, put together a sample pot of the finished product so that everyone can taste it in the morning. Better do that first—someone said it needs to simmer a long time. The instructions were sent over by Zorin’s people; they’re on the kitchen counter. Oh, and for the intro, don’t be too clever. Hap hates puns, alliteration, and cute turns of phrase. Questions?”

Eve remembered her mother once telling her that in New York, one minute you were on the sidewalk, the next, through the looking glass. She’d made this sound fun. But graphics? Intro? Prop spot? This did not sound fun.

Tanya widened her eyes and gave her head a little shake. “Hello?”

“No questions,” said Eve.

“Then you should be on your way down to the studio. It’s on the ground level, back of the building. Our director will be around somewhere. She’ll show you where everything is. And when you’re done with the cooking, come back up here and I’ll find you a desk and get you set up on the computer. The system’s a bit tricky, but since I assume you’re familiar with NewsPro you should get the hang of it quickly.”

Vadis’s claim that the
Smell the Coffee
job was most likely a “glam gig,” where you read articles and went out to lunch, now appeared to be well wide of the mark.

Tanya turned to a stack of papers on her desk. If there had been a time for Eve to mention that she knew nothing about software or television or exotic cooking, it had clearly passed. She stood. “Sounds good. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank anybody yet. This is just a tryout.”

In the elevator, as the numbers ticked down toward the ground floor, Eve wondered how complicated bouillabaisse might be. She’d broiled plenty of steaks and chickens for her father in the years since her mother died. She’d never enjoyed it
much, but if she hadn’t cooked for him, he’d have subsisted on the nutrients in canned stew and Arnold Palmer iced tea.

The doors opened and a guard swept his eyes over the temporary ID badge clipped to her lapel and raised an eyebrow. When she explained she was looking for the studio, he directed her leftward and down a scuffed linoleum-floored hallway. As she reached for the double doors at the end, they were pushed open from the inside. Two stocky men in black T-shirts and headsets stopped when they saw her.

“Help you?” the taller one asked.

“I’m supposed to be working on a, um, prop spot? In the studio.”

“You’re in the right place. Go on in,” said the first one.

After going through another set of double doors, she found herself in a cavernous, dark blue space roughly the size of an airplane hangar and cold as an igloo. She moved through the silence, feeling as if she were treading a lunar landscape. Above her, not stars, but a thousand lights of every different color, hanging from the ceiling. In various directions, tiny solar systems hugged their orbits: here a living room set, there an assortment of gym equipment, here the tiny tables and chairs of a children’s playroom, there the counter and appliances of a kitchen. Eve strolled through the parallel universe, finding that its objects bore only a passing similarity to what they appeared to be. “Wood” floors were laminate painted to look like oak, “marble” was plastic, and walls that appeared solid could be knocked over with a breath.

The bookshelves were lined with a beautiful set of classics like
The Collected Shakespeare, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, and
Moby-Dick
. She reached for the Shakespeare, thinking she’d center herself with a sonnet or two, but the binding came away in her hand, revealing nothing more than a book-sized cardboard box.

She approached the gleaming kitchen, its counter big as a bus.

“Hey there. Where’s Kevin?”

Eve turned to find an extremely tall, ebony-skinned woman
with cornrows halfway down her back and white teeth as perfect as subway tiles. “Who?”