WESLEY GIBSON

From You Are Here: A Memoir of Arrival (Back Bay Books, 2004)

   (Copyright © 2004 by Wesley Gibson. Reprinted by permission of Little,
     Brown and Company, Inc.)

That afternoon I found myself sitting in an office in Soho next to a woman named Tabitha who dressed like an ice-skater: metallic-looking leotard, dyed blond hair pulled back so tightly I thought her eyebrows would pop off, stage makeup. She was an aspiring actress, about twenty (though she was agelessly hard-bitten), and I had the feeling she'd be aspiring for some time to come.

There were other people sitting around waiting too, and there was a barbed-wire feeling of teeth-gritting determination in the air. We all felt that we had to have this job or die. Tabitha had said as much. Their outfits, mine included, looked mainly befuddled, like we'd all been dressed by children. It had been hard to guess what to wear. The ad had been one of those generalized ones that promised unheard-of wages for virtually no work. There had been talk of flexible hours, vague intimations of unspeakable glamour. It seemed to imply that the right person, a self-starter, a people person, could float to some unnameable top on mighty, mighty clouds of cash.

Anyone who knew me, starting with my mother, could have told you that I was not a self-starter or a people person. I usually couldn't find the ignition. Other people struck me as either terrifying or tragic. But since I couldn't program computers or design interiors or direct accounts, since I was not a laboratory histotechnologist, to name only one of the many things the New York Times Help Wanteds reminded me I was not, since I, more than anything, wanted out of the restaurant business, I was here. What I was was desperate and, in general, a good to excellent liar; but looking around me, I could tell that I had competition on both scores.

The office was militantly spare: plastic chairs for us to sit on, a girl at a desk paging through Allure. Everything was gray. The only signs of personality were the girl's Garfield coffee cup and the gigantic, luridly colored photograph thumb-tacked to the wall, not of Garfield but of another kitty-cat in a ribbon with its head thrown back and a come-hither stare, a JonBenet of a kitty, kitty porn. It made me so nervous I could not look at it, even out of the corner of my eye. It seemed like more than a weird photograph. It seemed like the end of civilization. I talked nonstop to Tabitha so I wouldn't think about it. She confided to me that people had told her she looked like Princess Di. Then she made me run lines with her for an audition she had right after this. I played a psychiatrist. She played a woman who was going to a psychiatrist. I developed an accent and my own motivation for the scene. Tabitha, who wasn't easily impressed, was, and suggested that I take classes with her at HB Studios. In the middle of my acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor, which seemed realistic given that I was probably more of a character actor, a man erupted from the door behind the desk. He was good-looking, with brambly, black hair, and his confidence whacked you from thirty paces. He scanned the dozen or so applications on the desk, frisbeeing most of them to the floor. Then he barked out four names: mine, Tabitha's, two other gaping people.

We stood up and walked, hypnotized, toward the open door, behind which Barry—that turned out to be his name—had already disappeared. The other contestants were gathering up their backpacks and grumbling. The girl behind the desk continued to gaze vacantly at models whose lips looked fatter than their thighs. In a way, they reminded me of John.

We, the elect, sat down in four more plastic chairs. Barry's office was as barren as the rest of the place, except for one extravaganza of a mahogany desk importantly messy with papers. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers templed under his nose, studying us like bugs that had inconveniently smacked against his windshield, a movie pose, really, a pose Dale Carnegie's evil twin would have taught to up-and-coming corporate raiders. I relaxed. Even if he was serious, he had to be kidding.

Barry suddenly pushed back his wheeled throne and jumped onto the desk. The importantly messy papers scattered like storks sensing an alligator on the Discovery Channel. He made jazz hands and said, "Are you prepared to do this? If this is what it takes?"

Well, it was startling. The other two were saucer-eyed. I could feel that my own eyebrows had met with my forehead. Only Tabitha was unimpressed. She sat there, leg crossed over metal-looking leg, like pylons. Defiant chin in bored palm. "Yeah," she said. "What for?"

He lowered himself into a sitting position on the edge of the desk, jeaned ankles crossed and swinging, your basic kid on bridge with fishing pole. "Aaaahhh, but that wouldn't be any fun if I told you, would it?"

"Whatever," Tabitha said.

"This is the kind of job where you've got to be prepared to do anything to get, and to keep, people's interest."

"I'm an actress," Tabitha said flatly.

"It's not glamorous. But it is an opportunity. A potential fucking gold mine. And you guys would be getting in on the ground floor."

Beside me, I thought I could feel Tabitha rolling her eyes, but she said, "Sounds interesting," and it sounded like she meant it. She was either a lot more gullible than I'd given her credit for, or a lot more talented.

"What about you two?" he commanded, pointing with his whole arm at them. They clutched the sides of their plastic chairs and nodded sures, yeahs, uh-huhs, and one absolutely.

"And you?" He cocked a finger at me.

"Sure. Why not?" I'd calmed back down. Unless the moon was dyed the red of blood and the sun now set in the east, there was no way that my nervous system would allow me to even consider a job like this, whatever it was. I was not the type to jump on desks. I was more the type to hide under them.

"You don't sound very sure there, uh, what's your name again?"

"Wesley."

"Right. Gibson. You don't sound so sure there to me, Gibson."

Oh, so he was one of those drill sergeants who called you by your surname. Got it. "Look," I said, rotten with confidence now that I knew this job and I were star-crossed. "I had to hold the attention of a bunch of bored twenty-year-olds when I taught college. I guess I can do this."

"You taught college, huh?" he said, pouting out his lower lip and nodding his head like, hey, pretty impressive.

I was suddenly embarrassed. "It wasn't . . . all that," I said, wondering when I'd start talking like a Ricki Lake audience.

"OK," he said, giving us a final once-over, "you guys seem OK to me, even you, Professor."

Professor. What a fraud. I'd taught adjunct creative writing in a third-rate English department. I winced and turned it into a tight, little smile. "So," I had to know, particularly since I'd never be back, "what are we being hired to do again?"

"Two words. Comedy clubs. And that's all I'm going to tell you. Everybody be back here at eight-thirty sharp. If you're one second late, don't bother."

He hopped off the edge of the desk and up-upped with his hands. Now we slung on our own backpacks, not really looking at one another as we did, like we'd all been a part of something shameful, a circle jerk, an Avon party. Once again I was projecting, at least as far as Tabitha was concerned. She stuck out her hand and he shook it. "I like you," she said.

I continued to struggle with my backpack, which had turned into a cat's cradle. The other two slinked out. Tabitha strode. "Hey, Professor," Barry said, putting his cute hand on my unemployed shoulder, then latching on to me with his even cuter brown eyes. Serious gaze à la camp counselor in a Lifetime Original Movie. "What are you doing here, man?"

"I need a job."

"This is not for you."

"I need a job." All my bravado about not being able to jump on desks steamed away. Even if I couldn't do a job in which I had to possibly make jazz hands, it suddenly seemed vital that he at least think I could. If I could trick him into seeing me as a people person, a person with spunk and initiative, real drive, then maybe I could fool others too. If not, if I couldn't pull off this one minor deception, then I was headed down the chute that led to the bottle-strewn gutter. So I stared back, equally serious, the kid at the camp who had heard him, man, and was now showing his cards too, all of them, faceup, no more bullshit. "I want this job."

Another shoulder pat. Tentative smile. "OK, man," he said. "OK. I'm going to give you a shot."

"You won't regret it," I bald-faced lied, breaking into a Super Bowl of a smile.

"Get out of here," he said, giving me an affectionate shove toward the door.

Yes, it was true, we'd bonded as superior beings, me with all my book learning, him with his street smarts. What a team we'd make, me his second-in-command, as we moved the offices into increasingly impressive digs and I convinced him to get rid of that kitty photograph. Eventually, of course, he'd realize that he loved me, and he'd understand when, increasingly, I'd have to spend time at our place upstate on the Hudson to pursue my artistic passions, until one day he died. Sure, I'd go on, I might even be seen out in the company of desirable young men, but I'd never love again.