The Regulars Read online

  She had to drag the black plastic trash can under the bottom of the ladder and hop up onto the trash inside to reach; unbelievably disgusting. The ladder was rusted into place, but after a few tugs, she got it down. Climbing up onto the fire escape was a certifiable victory, and warranted a brief victory dance.

  The kitchen window was locked. Krista tugged uselessly, mild panic becoming very fucking real panic. She needed to get in. The only other thing on the fire escape was a dead plant.

  In a heavy ceramic pot.

  Her first attempt spidered the glass. The second attempt broke through. Her heart snapped at the sight of the familiar little kitchen, as if she’d been gone for years, not minutes. The third, fourth, and fifth attempts managed to clear the glass.

  She was out of the shower by noon, but outfit selection was a different story. Everything was stained or crumpled or silly or too sexy or not sexy enough. And then came makeup, which was just like cocaine: you always need a little bit more. But somehow, miracle of miracles, she was finally done: 12:40. It was half an hour on the subway into Midtown, maybe a pinch more. She’d only be a few minutes late. She grabbed her tote, slammed the door, and took the stairs two at a time, barreling straight into the two policemen at the bottom of the stairs. They’d received a report from a neighbor about someone breaking in.

  It took Krista forty minutes to convince the cops she had broken into her own apartment. Forty minutes of nervous babble and bills with proof of address and three forms of ID and in the end, straight-out begging.

  By the time she was at the subway it was 1:20. She was supposed to be there twenty minutes ago. Lightning bolt: she’d get an Uber. Four interminably long minutes passed before the black town car rolled up. Once inside, she called Dale, her agent. He picked up on the second ring. “Where the hell are—”

  “I’m in a car.” She lit a cigarette. “Five minutes.”

  “You’re meant to be here now!”

  “No smoking!” called the driver.

  Krista swore and threw her cigarette out the window. “Can you bump me down the list? Tell them I just had surgery. Something elective.”

  “No.” She could practically see him rolling his eyes. “Just get here.”

  Dale hung up. The car swung onto the Williamsburg Bridge. And stopped. Ahead of them, a sea of cars. All motionless.

  “No!” Krista thumped the window.

  “No hitting!” the driver yelled.

  It took forever to get across the bridge. She screened two back-to-back calls from her dad, both times suffering an ax wound of anxiety: she’d pay for that exponentially. To say her parents were disappointed with her decision to ditch law school was like referring to the Incredible Hulk as peeved. Dale texted three times. She could only bring herself to reply to the last: coming!! don’t let them leave

  Dale’s office was on Seventh at Forty-Fourth Street, but by the time they just missed a green light at Thirty-Fifth, she couldn’t take it anymore. After jumping out of the town car, she was off, racing up Seventh Avenue like an action hero en route to stopping a bomb. “It’s okay,” she panted to herself. “I’m only an hour late, they have plenty of people to see, Dale’ll fix this, these things always run late—”

  She burst into the foyer of Dale’s building and jabbed the up button viciously. Clever Casting was on the twenty-fifth floor. She was basically there. She’d made it.

  A handful of high-energy girls in heels jostled into the elevator with her, and hit the button for the twentieth floor.

  “I can’t believe you scored an invite to this,” bubbled one girl.

  “I know, right?” gushed another. “VIP!”

  Krista’s ears instinctively pricked. What was VIP?

  The elevator doors slid open onto the twentieth floor. It was open-plan, like Clever Casting. But it wasn’t an office. The entire floor was filled with mismatched racks of clothes and shoes and buckets of bags and belts. Taped to the open glass doors leading inside was an A4 sheet of paper with the words VIP Gilt City Sample Sale.

  Krista’s mouth went dry. Sweet baby Jeebus. This was not happening.

  The girls squealed, exiting the elevator en masse. A woman with a clipboard was checking their IDs, asking, “You’re all together?”

  The girls chorused, “Yes.”

  Krista was behind them. Holy shit, she didn’t even remember following them out of the elevator.

  The woman with the clipboard wandered off. The girls began snatching at clothes, gasping in delight.

  No. What the hell was she doing here? She had to get to her audition. It didn’t matter that Gilt City curated designer bargains, and that a sample sale would be cheaper still, that was not relevant right now. Krista spun on her heel, determined to leave. And that’s when she saw it. A red silk dress with a flirty flared skirt hitting right above the knee and a scoop neck she could already tell would reveal just the right amount of boob. A Zac Posen. The original price on the tag was $2,590. This was crossed out. The dress was forty dollars. Forty fucking dollars!

  Her credit card debt flashed in her mind’s eye: a gargantuan number that kept increasing with frightening speed. Desire and regret and an uncontrollable naked need collided hard in her chest. She had absolutely no money, so of course she shouldn’t get the dress, and she was already so late.

  Well, exactly. She was already late. And there was no difference between being an hour late and an hour and ten minutes late; none at all. And this was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Literally. From $2,590 down to $40 was a savings of—Krista quickly did the math in her head—98 percent. She was basically making money by buying it. And most important of all, it would be perfect for the audition. Absolutely perfect.

  Fuck it. This would take five minutes, tops. Krista snatched the dress off the rack, head whipping around for a changing room—ooh, shoes!

  Forty-five minutes later, she skidded into Clever Casting, simultaneously ecstatic with her purchases, terrified at facing Dale, and nervous about the audition itself. She was breathless addressing the receptionist. “Hi, I’m here to see—”

  “Krista Kumar.” Dale strode toward her, eyebrows drawn. His shoulder-length hair was slicked back into a ponytail and he had an animal on a leash. Something wiggling and furry and gross.

  “What the hell is that?” Krista backed up a step.

  “This is Willis.” Dale scooped the furry thing up. Its body was distressingly long and overly flexible. “He’s a ferret.”

  “Why do you have a ferret?”

  “My therapist told me to get a dog, but I really identified with a ferret. Didn’t I, Willis?” Dale slipped into baby talk. “Didn’t I identify with you?”

  Krista suppressed the urge to gag. “Where are the Bongo people?”

  Dale made a kissy face at the ferret, which squiggled wildly, tiny claws pawing at the air. “The Bongo people are gone, Krista. The Bongo people are gone.”

  “What?”

  “You’re two hours late. They cast someone else.”

  “But . . . But . . . I was locked out of my apartment. And the car was stuck in traffic. And—”

  “I don’t think this agency is a good fit for you, Krista.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Take Willis. If he wants something, he goes after it. He’s focused. Determined.” He fixed her with a disapproving gaze. “Everything that you’re not. Don’t bother calling me again.”

  Dale and the ferret ambled off, leaving her alone.

  Alone.

  Broke.

  And . . . fired.

  A phone rang, the receptionist answered, and someone rushed past her with a stack of DVDs.

  Krista dropped her tote on the floor and started to cry.

  Even though it was a brilliant late-summer afternoon, the inside of McHale’s Ales was so dark and dingy you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the dead of winter. Krista dragged her sorry ass onto a stool and ordered a whiskey.

  Her head was throbbing.
Her nose was stuffy from crying. She’d fucked the commercial. How was she going to explain it to Evie? Evie. She dropped her face into her hands and groaned as she remembered breaking the kitchen window. Oh god, and she’d gotten an Uber across the bridge. An Uber! She couldn’t even afford toilet paper. And then the shopping . . . And getting fired . . . Her overwhelming stupidity pressed her facedown on the bar. The red dress she was wearing suddenly seemed like a massive red flag. She was a fuckup, no doubt about it. A total and complete—

  “Krista?”

  That’d be right. You never run into anyone you know in Manhattan unless you’ve been crying. Krista squinted wearily in the direction of the voice. An elegant blonde in a low-cut black silk jumpsuit was sitting at the other end of the bar. Full, pink lips were turned up in a smile of recognition. Krista had never met anyone who owned a low-cut black silk jumpsuit, let alone someone who looked like a goddamn supermodel in it. “Yeah?”

  “Krista!” The woman beamed at her. “You don’t remember me.” She slid off her stool, picking up a leather traveling bag that looked as expensive as the jumpsuit. Her smile was generous and forgiving. “Penelope. We took an improv class together at UCB, earlier this year. Oh, you were so funny.”

  “Thanks?” Krista tipped the whiskey that had appeared before her to her lips.

  Penelope alighted next to her. “Do you still do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Improv. Oh, you were such a scream.”

  “Sometimes.” Krista rubbed her eyes. “I can’t really afford classes right now.”

  Penelope cocked her head. “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . Oh man, I am having the worst day. If there is a God, she’s taking a big ol’ dump on Krista Kumar.”

  “Do you want to talk? I’m a good listener.” Penelope’s voice sounded like torn silk.

  Without planning to, Krista unleashed. She started with being late to the commercial, but in no time, it became about everything: the lack of auditions, the crappy temp jobs, the blah blah sex life, the crippling debt that not even her best friend knew about—everything. It felt so good to just talk. Penelope kept listening, making sympathetic little noises that were actually really comforting. “I could’ve seriously banked today,” Krista moaned. “But I blew it. I ruined it, like I ruin everything. I’m such a fucking idiot—”

  “You’re not an idiot.” Penelope squeezed Krista’s shoulder. “You’re not. You’re really sweet. You really helped me in that class, made me feel more confident onstage.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “Not everyone was so nice to me back then.”

  “What class?” Krista peered at the woman, buzzing a little from the whiskey, but feeling certain when she said, “I’ve never taken a class with you. I’d remember.”

  Penelope ran her tongue over her top lip. She was thinking, but it looked sexy. But then again, she’d probably look sexy cleaning a toilet. “I’ve changed since then,” she said finally. “Let me buy you another drink.”

  Krista sat up, now certain she had never met this kind, pretty woman before in her life. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Penelope leaned toward Krista, eyes wide and empathetic. She smelled like roses and champagne. “Someone who’s doing you a favor.”

  4.

  somethingsnarky.net: Your Weekly Shot of Snark

  Greetings Snarksters,

  Riddle me this: Why is spending a weekend eating cheese puffs and casually masturbating while binge-watching OITNB considered “depressing” when you’re single, and “romantic” when it’s with another person? And why can’t I find someone to do it with?

  Not that I haven’t been looking. Like half the US population, Madame Snark is contributing to the trillion-dollar industry that is online dating. But TBH, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Sure, dot-com dating has increased our choices and availability, but aren’t choice and availability the central tenets of capitalism, the siren song of the rich white assholes ruining our planet? And if there are so many people out there to potentially choose me, why aren’t I getting chosen?

  The central paradox of online dating in your twenties is the need to sell yourself while working out who, exactly, you are. No one has any idea who they are, which results in dating profiles that are a confusing mix of projections, sleight of hand, and straight-out lies. But of course, that isn’t necessary if you’re a vanilla blonde with milk-jug tits and a mouth like a raspberry popsicle. You could list your ideal vacay destination as Alcatraz and you’d still fill your, ahem, inbox. The selves we spend so much time cultivating are reduced to the sum total of a profile pic. It’s meritocracy as imagined by Disney. Think I’m exaggerating? In a recent study, 49 percent of online daters said physical characteristics were the most important factor when it came to a potential mate. Which means my lack of pen pals distinctly relates to my visage.

  But a marshmallow stomach and Mole Man eyesight isn’t who I am.

  Evie considered the words on her screen. The tip of her tongue touched her top lip in concentration. Then she added, Or is it?

  Around her, the open-plan Salty offices hummed with afternoon activity. Phones trilled. Hushed conversations were punctuated with occasional squeals. The new Rihanna album played low on the stereo, sexy and threatening.

  Evie’s coworkers were a sleek testament to blowouts and the art of accessorizing. Why the staff of a magazine needed to look as good as the airbrushed models in it, Evie did not know. Nevertheless, today was the monthly features meeting, so she’d made a special effort with a vintage black blouse and her most flattering pencil skirt. Plus the mandatory mask of makeup. When she first started, Evie rarely wore makeup to work. Around week three, the beauty editor, Bethany, dropped off a small pot of concealer and a pink lipstick.

  “Are these for a spread?” Evie asked, blinking behind her thick-rimmed glasses.

  “No,” Bethany replied, smiling indulgently. “For you. From me.”

  “Oh. Thanks. But—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t wear a ton of makeup.” This was delivered in the tone of someone confessing to a small domestic crime: I was the one who ate your ice cream.

  “I know.” Bethany picked up the concealer matter-of-factly. “This is for your dark circles, and it’ll also tone down the redness on your chin. It’s amazing, it’s really expensive. And this”—she tapped the lipstick—“will give you some color. You know, liven your face up a little bit.”

  Evie picked up the products, trying to will away a flush of humiliation. She had a nonlivened face. A dead face.

  “You can take anything you want from the red beauty cupboard,” Bethany added, pointing at it. “That’s where I put things after I’m done. Seriously,” she added. “Anything. Mascara, blush, eyeshadow . . .” She studied Evie’s face with the shamelessness of a plastic surgeon. “Lip liner. Definitely lip liner.”

  “Okay,” Evie said. “I guess I’ll check it out.”

  “You’re more than welcome.” Bethany gave Evie’s arm a squeeze. “We girls have got to look out for each other, right?”

  “Right,” echoed Evie, thoroughly unsure if that was what had just happened.

  Now Evie sat at her computer with semiexpertly applied foundation, concealer, blush, eyeshadow, mascara, and lip gloss, toeing the line of Salty’s professional femininity. The click-clack of heels sounded behind her. Evie switched her screen from her blog to an InDesign file seconds before the deputy editor, Ella-Mae Morris, appeared by her desk. “Hey, Evie.”

  “Hey, Ella-Mae.” Evie smiled uneasily. There was something a little unhinged about Ella-Mae, which Evie put down to perfectionism manifested as a mild eating disorder. Above her computer, the twenty-eight-year-old had a little printed card that read “I can have it if I want it, but do I really want it?” which meant all she wanted was baby carrots.

  “Did you finish those beauty proofs?” Ella-Mae’s voice was high, oddly childish.

  “Yup, finished them last night.” Ev
ie handed her the corrected proofs. “And for the title for the guide to Skype sex, I thought of ‘Girls on Film,’ ‘Lights, Camera, Bedroom Action,’ and ‘Ready for Your Close-Up?’ ”

  “Mmm.” Ella-Mae took the stack delicately. “I can’t remember,” she continued. “Who was going to transcribe the Real Girl story about the woman who had plastic surgery to look like Blue Ivy?”

  “You told me to do it,” Evie said. “But technically it isn’t actually my job to transcribe things, so—”

  “Oh great,” Ella-Mae said, handing Evie a silver dictaphone. “Losing my mind.”

  “Maybe you should eat more,” Evie murmured.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.” Evie smiled brightly. “Hey, did you know ‘huh’ is one of the only words that’s the same in every language?”

  “Huh?”

  “Exactly. It’s basically the same meaning and sound in Mandarin and indigenous Australian languages and a bunch of others. Which makes it an argument for language being a social interaction as opposed to, you know, anything biologically inherent.”

  Ella-Mae regarded Evie curiously, as if she were a baby carrot she wasn’t sure she wanted or not. “That’s interesting,” she said in a way that meant, You are so strange.

  “I’ll email you the Blue Ivy transcript,” Evie said.

  “Thanks,” Ella-Mae said. “I’m going to freshen up before the features meeting.”

  “See you there.” Evie slapped a smile on her face, letting it drop as soon as her deputy editor turned her back. She didn’t want to dislike Ella-Mae. She wasn’t a bad person. Evie just had nothing in common with her, and everything she said and did was irritating. Despite putting hundreds of miles between her sur-blah-ban Chi-Town high school and her current place of employment, somehow the Salty office found Evie back on the playground: invisible and irrelevant.