LITMIR.BIZ

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talk about it. And he’s more determined than ever to ferret out whoever put that apple on his desk the day after the whole thing went down and fire their ass. We have security cameras everywhere now. It won’t happen again.

      I tell Eva it’s important to know your competition and what they’re doing, but not to get too wrapped up, not to obsessively worry about where they’re going and what they’re doing. There’s room for all of us and we should appreciate each other’s differences because that’s what makes us all unique and wonderful. I’m a raving hypocrite, I know, and I don’t care. I’ve built my career taking pictures of unfortunate-looking people wearing unfortunate-looking outfits. Like Parrot Girl. Like Parrot Girl, who’s staring out at me from my computer, the same Parrot Girl who is the current Apples Are Tasty Look Girl.

      Fuck me and stop the presses. But it’s too late—kill me now or let me fall on the sword I bought in Osaka, the one that I had to fill out reams of paperwork to get through customs. Let Parrot Girl’s parrot gnaw at my corpse.

      They’re right, they’re right, I know they’re right. I hate Parrot Girl, but twenty-year-old urbanites and suburban scenesters don’t. Laminate my picture, doctor my birth date and make me sixty-five. I’ll eat tiny portions ordered from special menus in restaurants, shop for groceries on certain days and ride the Metro for cheap. Book me into a home where I can be with my kind: wrinkled rock stars and one-time starlets with puffy lips and faces that don’t move when they talk about the good old days, which is all anybody talks about. We talk and talk so we can remember when we knew something and weren’t old and disgusting and had better things to do than clip coupons and play bridge and wait to die.

      I don’t want to die. I want to disappear. I want to press Rewind and give Eva a pop quiz. I want to be right. I want to care. I want to leave. I need to stop and I need to rest but the constant ping of my e-mail makes everything impossible. I rap the side of my computer with a curled knuckle. Eva’s still standing behind me, silent but for the quiet shuffle of her feet. I knock on the side of my computer again as a burst of ping-ping-pings signals the arrival of yet more e-mail undoubtedly demanding my resignation. But it hasn’t been twenty-five years: I won’t get a watch or a shitty roast beef dinner buffet at some economy motel that must have a discount rate for seniors.

      I don’t need to knock on the computer again. I know they’re all inside. The place is packed with girls with shiny jackets and soccer socks. Their pet birds are shitting everywhere, but they don’t care as long as it’s not on their boots. It’s filthy and the girls are smoking and think it’s all so very funny. They’re talking about me but I can’t hear the words over the laughter. I creep on unnoticed and over the wires and microchips and bird shit until someone drops a lit cigarette on my head and I jerk up, screaming. They all stop and look, but nobody laughs. Someone helps me to the door but I can’t keep a grip on her arm because the satin jacket she’s wearing is so slippery. I stumble and land at the feet of the Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Boy with the mutton chops and the kilt. I get a flash up his skirt and he’s not wearing any underwear. His cock is thick and long and doesn’t have a mushroom head. I smile up at him, but his expression reads nothing but pity. The Slippery Girl gets me to the door and nudges me out. It’s all fine. I have to go anyhow. I have to make a call or have a meeting and buy clothes for my new job. Yes, I have to go. I have to go. I have to go.

      I reach into my desk and pull out a spare set of keys for the office front door, the back door, the Swag Shack. I can’t go. I don’t need to go. I have nowhere to go. I still have my keys. I hold them tightly in my hand until the metal edges dig into my skin—not enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt. My e-mail pings and pings and soon it’s the rhythm of an old techno song—no, early Chicago house, which I know is back and that my vinyl is worth maybe thousands to some know-it-all DJ with a cute face and a thousand girlfriends. But he loves Parrot Girl the most and is living in the suburbs with his parents to save enough money to impress her by giving her the rarest, most colorful parrot in the world—one that’s fully bilingual and shits in a toilet and knows how to use a bidet.

      There is nothing worse than suburban scenesters who love girls with parrots who try too hard. I force myself to look at Parrot Girl’s photo on my screen. She’s standing in front of the brunch spot that now I’ll truly never, ever return to—and she’s smiling. We have a strict no-smile policy for our DOs and DON’Ts. Perhaps it’s time to revisit that. I make a note on a yellow sticky: Smiles? Eva says nothing, she hovers, frozen behind me.

      “I guess people love birds,” I say, which is maybe the dumbest thing to come out of my mouth all day. “Hey, why don’t I make a couple of quick calls and we cut out early, do the streets and grab a couple of drinks before dinner?” This is maybe the smartest thing to come out of my mouth all day.

      Eva heads back to her desk and I e-mail Ted that I’m heading out to do the streets, which means going trolling for unfortunate-looking people wearing unfortunate outfits, and call Jack in Toronto on his cell. He’s prepping a video for a New York electro-goth band all week. When he doesn’t pick up on the third ring I hang up and straighten the papers on my desk. A call comes through on my private line.

      “Did you just call?” It’s Jack.

      “Yeah.”

      “Why didn’t you leave a message?”

      “I don’t know.” We’ve had this conversation before.

      “You could at least leave a message.”

      “Next time I will, then.”

      “You sound funny.”

      “I am funny.”

      “Seriously, Sara, are you okay?”

      “Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “I saw Parrot Girl on Apples Are Tasty.”

      “Then why the hell didn’t you call?”

      “I figured you would have seen it.”

      “I just saw it now—Eva showed it to me.” Admitting this is torture. I’m humiliated and bruised. All the blood in my body feels like it’s rushing to my head. My eyes sting. I’m going to cry. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” I whisper into the phone. The tears come.

      “Oh, baby, it’s gonna be okay. We all have off days.”

      “This isn’t about an off day.” My voice is choking; I’m strangled by confession.

      “Are you gonna be home later, sweetheart? We could talk more about this then. Now—it’s not a good time. But I really want to talk to you.”

      “I have a dinner,” I say.

      “Call me when you get in, okay, baby? It doesn’t matter how late.”

      “Okay.” My voice is tiny. I am the crying girlfriend.

      I hold the phone to my ear and face the back wall of my office long after I’ve said goodbye to Jack. I examine in a compact mirror the hot splotches on my face and my swollen eyes. A coat of moisturizer cools my skin and I reapply my eye makeup, all with the phone tucked between my shoulder and ear, listening again and again to the robot operator lady say, Please hang up and try your call again, first in French then in English. I want to call Genevieve, but every time I do she can’t talk, she’s too tired, or I get the feeling that what I want to talk about isn’t anything she wants to hear. I want to call Ted and he’s right next door, but he’s so stressed and serious these days the last thing he needs is me in his office bawling about Apples Are Fucking Tasty and Parrot Girl.

      “You ready to go?” I ask Eva. She’s at her desk arranging the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend files. She’s compiling dossiers for me about each of the participants. One of the men is not terribly discreet about his interest in rubber masks, ball gags and female domination. Eva shows me the online evidence, and scrunches up her face as if she’d discovered a turd in her breakfast cereal instead of a prize. “There’s always one,” I say. “Put it in the file.”

      We park at

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