“Title, of. Gideon’s. Paradise. ‘Done Already.’”

Robert rarely went at anybody. (I once blundered by telling Angie I’d just defended her from someone’s insult; Robert gave me such a disappointed [and therefore schooling] glance; Angie went berserk with paranoia.)

But this he’d said to Gideon was truly devastating. Robert knew it. Angie knew it, I did. Marco, eyes lowered, understood. But Gideon, you see, did not.

Job Readiness

ou can be waiting in New York a long time.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find how to stop expecting much or how to keep expecting everything, but with payoff postponed indefinitely.

(Given everybody’s secret hope of at least posthumous discovery, you can hover for decades, more. Maybe Paradise will be stardom’s forestalled “Callback.”)

The lady who took in and dispersed our occasional splurge dry cleaning had become very good at her job, and at the waiting, and she stayed very friendly.

On the mirrored wall behind her overlit counter, under a stylistically outmoded sunburst clock, she’d hung a framed publicity still of herself.

It had been inscribed by her—courteous—to this very shop. It was suspended shoulder to shoulder between the inscribed glossy of Tony Randall, and one Bobby Sherman, just over a sun-faded Mimi Hines. Remember the gifted singer-comedienne Mimi Hines? Does Mimi Hines?

This cleaning receptionist had already aged three decades and forty-two hairstyles past her posted glamour shot; but, to that image, the time-span involved seemed incidental. Fact is, she had sung at the Metropolitan Opera, once.

While you were naming substances in clothes’ stains—chocolate, red wine, and … erotic … some erotic liquidish substance (of the male variety), does that come out easy? … Nina might—after first asking rote encouraging questions about your “emerging” artistic career—again pull forth her own review. She’d got it laminated early on, got it under wraps quick, but it had yellowed to a cigar brown nonetheless. I’d all but memorized it but never acknowledged having seen it before:

“Stepping in for Zinka Milanov was young Nina Fouquet-Marshall, with a supple if as yet unevolved though not un-promising voice. She has genuine beauty, occasional stage presence, and is someone definitely to consider watching up ahead. The scenery, as usual, proved adequate if …”

Nina was lucky. She had sung at the Met, once. She still took lessons, she kept vocalizing daily, she stayed ready for recall. She’d got the photos made, and at prime time. Nina always “dressed” for work. Her haircombs agented a complex French Twist. Her full stage makeup offered no concession to the shop’s and the world’s ungrateful non-Met fluorescence. She hostessed here, auditioning her every dry cleaning customer as part of her ideal comeback audience (and claque). Nina Fouquet-Marshall had got quite used to waiting in New York.