Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash
There was a time in New York City before iPhones, Instagram, streaming, hash tags.
5:47: Darling balanced a clipboard while checking off the names of The Press—her contacts—arriving for the first screening at 6:00. She was Darlene as a kid, but her first boss at the fashion magazine called everyone Darling and Darling she became. She handed each contact a cast and crew list.
“It’s not final. Something about the writing credit. Yeah and it’s not yet rated. Probably an R.” She kissed a couple of the men, pulled in two women from Mademoiselle for a group hug. She waved them in good-naturedly as if they were guests in her home. The Press streamed up the two small staircases on either side of the auditorium. They would choose from among sixty-nine red plush seats.
The projectionist, Joe Wynn came through a hidden door. “I need a seat, hon. For my friend.” Joe ran the movies most nights. Some weekends he headed for Connecticut to screen at the CEO’s country home. Because of those screenings, Joe was on a first-name basis with a lot of non-movie people like the Mayor, the Jets’ quarterback, the “Prime Minister” Dictator of a small Caribbean nation who spent a lot of time in Manhattan.
Darling nodded. “Might have to be first row, Joe. I think everyone’s here.” Joe pulled his friend out of the file room where he had been waiting, sitting on the steps of the narrow staircase that connected the projection booth on the thirtieth floor to the twenty-ninth. He wore an expensive black leather jacket. The way he fumbled his pack of Marlboros reminded Darling of someone. A sports star. Maybe a Ranger.
Darling liked Joe. They gossiped together. She sometimes watched the film from his booth, shoes off, perched on a stool. Joe would open the small window between the projector and the screening room so Darling could hear what people were saying as they gathered up their stuff. Then she would run down the hidden steps, quick through the door into reception and be standing in front of the screening room when the Press came out.
6:07: Joe started the screening. Not bad. Film ran105 minutes.
Darling stayed in the back to check the sound level and wait for late arrivals—there were none—and then went back to her desk. She hoped there was a candy bar or some chips in her drawer. She was starving. Her phone was blinking. It was probably her boyfriend, confirming he was going to bring dinner and watch the 8:30. They would go home together in a taxi, which the company would pay for. The building, creepy at night, was in a sketchy part of the upper West Side, marooned on a windy island.
“Hello…hello.”
“Darling, is that you?”
It was Casey Beckett, her boss.
“Yes, hi Casey. What’s up?”
“I want to take you to dinner.” Casey Beckett was the VP of Publicity and Promotion. He had never worked in the movie business before. He was from the ad agency world and said, we can buy that to every idea that floated around his corner office. The young women assistants were rotated in and out to take notes at his meetings. They had to sit on the window’s broad ledge that housed the heating and AC unit because the men took all the chairs. Even though Darling wasn't a secretary anymore, she was asked to take notes. She didn't mind. She put her own ideas into the memo.
“I’m working. I just started a screening and then I have another. I can’t leave,” Darling told her boss.
“I’m not far. I’ll come there.”
Darling’s other line rang.
“Gotta put you on hold. Sorry, Beckett.” She shouldn't have called him by his last name. Too friendly.
“Hi, Mason. Oh, ok. I’m not that hungry. See you for the 8:30 then?” Darling jumped back onto the other line. “Casey.”
“I’ll see you in ten minutes.” He hung up. Persistent, wasn’t he?
She walked out to the reception area to waylay him. She loved the carpet’s brown-and-batter-colored squares. She loved the over-sized black-and-white photographs of their Oscar movies that filled two huge walls. She loved the view. As bad as the neighborhood was, the view from twenty-nine floors up was worth a million bucks. The tall, rich East Side sparkled, and the park sprawled forever. On the other side of the floor, the Hudson flowed. New Jersey never looked so good. Sometimes when she killed time during the 8:30 screenings, she would take off her shoes and tights and run her feet over the gold medallion that sat heavy and cold in the center of reception. It used to be in the outer office of the guy who ran the studio in Hollywood in the thirties or forties.
6:40: The elevator opened, and Casey Beckett stepped out. Darling checked her watch.
“Hello, Darling.” He smiled; calling her Darling like she was his fiancé or something.
“Hello, Beckett. What can I do for you?” She crossed her arms and dipped her chin. At night she ran the screenings, answered the questions from Joe or a press person or one the of security guys. One night she had called Steve downstairs to come up and escort an agent out of the building. The agent had arrived twenty minutes late to her screening and when she said he couldn't go in, he pushed her and the top of her clipboard bit into her face. During the day she was a publicist, but at night, she became the highest-ranking person in the nearly deserted skyscraper. What did Beckett want? She couldn’t exactly call Steve to remove her boss, could she? If he wanted to flirt, he could do that during office hours like he had before.
“Let’s go across the street for a drink.” His black hair skimmed his blazer collar.
“Are you kidding me! I wouldn’t go into that dive on a dare.” She had, in fact, been in Flannigan’s many times. Located in a low row of storefronts, between a liquor store and an off-track betting joint, it was the only place around the building to get a burger to go after five. Darling had been in all three many times to fulfill requests for her Press contacts. And for Beckett.
“I want to buy you a drink.” His blue eyes roamed her face for a place to land.
Darling knew he had already started drinking.
He lurched toward her. When his hand touched her shoulder, it was surprisingly tender. She didn't shake it off. He was her boss. She had to do something with him before the screening ended. She didn't want to upset him or make a scene. She had to be standing at the door when the final credits rolled so she could gauge reaction and elicit off-the-record quotes that she would later put in her screening report. First thing in the morning, she would hand deliver copies to her boss, her boss’s boss, the heads of distribution, international, finance and to the office of the president. The guys in charge took her reports seriously and, in part, made decisions about the advertising spend or the number of screens to open on based on what she wrote. Once when she was having lunch with the articles editor at Esquire, the head of the studio in Los Angeles tracked her down. Between the soup and the entrée, he demanded to know why she didn't think a certain movie would get good reviews. He challenged her in an ugly voice. It was the first time she had ever spoken to him on the phone. He liked the movie very much. Darling, stood awkwardly near the entrance to the restaurant. Using the maître d’s phone, she said in a soft voice, “Well, the Press doesn’t like the movie. At all.”
“Let’s go back to my office,” Beckett said.
Darling turned and walked briskly to the door that hid the offices. At night the cubicles and the desks outside of them looked like an ICU unit. Quiet, vibrating blue.
Beckett had moved ahead of her in the hall and was sitting when she reached his office. “Sit down, Darling.” His arm was flung across the back of the small couch. The office was dark like a bar. Darling balanced one hip on his desk.
“I want to take you out. Get to know you . . . date you,” Beckett said.
Darling couldn't tell if this took effort on his part. Usually when guys declared any sort of intention, they acted like they wanted to take it right back or got angry as though the woman had made them say something they didn't want to say in the first place. Casey Beckett sat with hands clasped. Darling thought if his hands came apart, all hell might break loose.
“Will you think about it?” He needed a shave.
“I’ll think about you being married. Think about Mason, my boyfriend. How ‘bout I think about that?” Darling slid off the desk and leaning against it, checked her watch. 7:25. She stared at the carpet. To calm herself she counted the number of squares between her, a small piece of lint on the rug and Beckett’s leg. Her heart was beating fast.
“I think I’m in love with you. Not think...” Casey Beckett started to stand up. Darling stuck out her hand to ease him back down.
“Beckett. Get a hold of yourself. First of all, you’re married. You’re like twenty years older than me. You have three kids. You don't even know me.” Darling walked over to the windows. Maybe the view would rescue her. “You live in New Jersey.”
“You should have my job.”
She could see him in the reflection of the window. For a second her reflection and his fitted together like clothes on a paper doll. She was him—in his office, sitting at his desk.
“I think they’re going to fire me,” he said.
Darling spun around, leaving the purple sun plummeting over the Hudson.
“Don't be silly. I haven’t heard that,” Darling said. Fired? She couldn't believe she hadn’t heard this. Was she out of the loop? And if he was fired, would she be fired too?
She took one last look at New Jersey and silently repeated you should have my job. Maybe he was right. He was terrible at it. She was young, had no experience managing a staff, but being on a first-name basis with important Press people like the editor of the Times’ Arts & Leisure Section or the Business Week writer who covered the industry or the guys at Rolling Stone might be enough to help her soar over the publicity manager and two other publicists. All men.
“I want to buy you dinner. We’ll just talk.” He looked like he might cry.
7:45: Darling stared at her watch. She had exactly five minutes to get her boss on the elevator, pee and be standing in front of the screening room for the end of movie. It would end at 7:52 but most of her contacts wouldn’t stay for the ninety seconds of end credits. She felt like she had sprung a fever.
“Casey, no dinner. Not tonight. You have to go. My screening is about to break.” He had blue eyes to beat the band. Darling hesitated, let herself give him a tight smile and, turning fast, walked down the darkened hall toward reception.
“Wait!” He didn't sound drunk now. He sounded like her boss. She froze. “Just tell me if things were different…if I weren’t married…”
She interrupted him before the litany of what-ifs derailed her timing. “I might.” It was such a little gift to give him.
7:51: She pushed the down elevator button. The film critic for Newsweek ran out of the screening room. “I have to get to another screening. You guys should really talk to studios and not schedule screenings on the same night.” He dropped his notebook.
“Yeah, okay. What’d’ya think of the movie?” Darling bent down to pick up the notebook. Holding it out, she touched his shoulder.
“Want me tell you in front of…?”
Darling nodded. “He’s my boss. Casey Beckett, Bill Jones. Newsweek.”
“Hi, Casey. Good to meet you.” The elevator opened. “I didn't care for it.” The newsweekly critic stuck his thumb down and pumped it a few times. “Coming, Casey?” Darling could tell Mr. Newsweek wanted to ride down with Mr. Beckett. Getting to know someone higher than her on the corporate ladder could be good for him and his magazine— could be a tiny edge over its rival, Time.
“No, you go on. I have to talk to Darling,” Casey said.
Darling walked away. The Press surrounded her, eager to tell her what they thought. She felt Beckett’s eyes on her as she talked and laughed, taking notes, making everyone feel important. She was like a firefly. Darling was relieved to see Casey finally get on the elevator with the managing editor of Vogue.
8:15: The Press poured out of the elevator for the second screening. Her boyfriend pretended to check in while grabbing her under the clipboard before strolling inside. She wanted to tell Mason about Beckett—the part about his thinking she could do his job. Not the part about never getting married, never living in the suburbs and for God’s sake never having three kids.
11:03: They sat knee to knee on high black stools in the employee break room eating cornflakes.
“Why were you so red in the face when I first got here,” Mason asked.
She touched her face. It was still warm.
“I saw Beckett in the lobby. He wouldn't even look at me. The prick,” Mason said.
“It was hot.” She had gotten overheated standing in the darkened office with Casey Beckett. Feverish. Something happened to her. Had Beckett cut her open in some way like when peeling a tangerine, its sweet smell rises up like a surprise? The surprise was she wanted a bigger job. She thought she should have kissed Beckett to seal the deal; to make sure he told his boss she should have his job. Maybe a kiss would have made him more of a conquering hero, less pathetic when he got back late to Montclair. But she couldn’t do it.
11:25: Pouring the last of her cereal down the sink, it struck her that she didn't want to tell Mason anything about her encounter with Casey. She thought of Mason as someone separate from work. It was as though she lived in side-by-side apartments with the same floor plan but with different roommates: one was Work and one was Mason.
Darling didn't know how to explain what she was feeling to herself let alone to Mason. Even though Casey Beckett had been fresh, wrong to put her on the spot, she was certain he had shown her something important. He had shown her she was ambitious. Beckett wasn't good at his job, but he was persistent and expected success. She was very good at her job, but she hadn’t admitted to herself what she wanted. She had to stop comforting men, stop letting them rest against her.
Darling lifted her sleeve and wiped a little sweat off her forehead. The building turned off the air conditioning at eight, leaving it on only in the projection booth and the screening room. The building was awful that way.
Buffy Shutt lives in Los Angeles. A two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her recent work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Dodging the Rain and Lumina. She has marketed many Hollywood movies and documentaries