The bold red font of the electronic “news crawl” wrapped around the building, disappearing into an adjacent Broadway marquee. Beneath the moving headlines was a pretty, frozen-faced blonde, playing in Technicolor across three enormous television screens. She looked out at me and the Midtown office workers, her over-glossed lips seductive, taunting. The eyes of T.J. Eckleberg, I thought; she’s surveying the emotional wasteland that is Midtown Manhattan.
Is that what I want—my face on the side of a building, my lips reciting scripts of tragedy, death and heartache? One hour before my interview: too much time to sit and wrestle with fate, stare up at the woman whose job I was supposed to covet.
I am a Southerner in the City, an aging debutante, a small town girl cursed with big city aspirations. My grandfather says that I’m at the cusp of feminine failure—I’m as old as a bottle of prime Tennessee whiskey (aged 25 years) and still single. I need to “get on home” and find a nice Southern boy—a doctor, maybe an insurance salesman. At this, I dig in my heels and set out to date every inappropriate man in Manhattan…
No comments:
Post a Comment