Where does trouble come from? How do you get into it? It was no trouble to steal any of these things, and the thief was untroubled during the entire easy adventure, her immune system and her skin flushed and glowing. But of course it was a lie. One Universe Green Tea was a soda company in disguise, moving aggressively among young people to get a large share. There was no one in the whole One Universe who was concerned about young girls’ immune systems at this time in American history, and the bottle Octavia held was cool and wet from refrigeration, slipping against the sweat on her hands so when the guard said “Miss?” it shattered on the floor. Instinctively she knelt down to pick up the pieces and a razor fell out of her pocket, and one of the nail polishes, and the guard reached down. For a moment Octavia thought he was going to embrace her. She should have kicked him in the balls. But he unbuttoned her cape and held it up as if he wanted to try it on, several more items clattering to the floor, and then spotted the magazine sticking out of the top of her boot. He took that too, and it unrolled open and her heart cut its elevator cables and plummeted to where the chocolate was seething. She had grabbed the wrong magazine. This wasn’t the stereo thing. This was
Schoolgirls
, with girls too old for school dressed up in plaid skirts and terrible pigtails, with their legs open and lollipops in their mouths. You could see their cunts even on the cover. The slow tide of tea reached Octavia’s knees as the man stood over her in disgust.
She had to say something. “I—”
The guard grabbed her arm by the elbow and wrenched her down the aisle to a door she wasn’t supposed to go in. He forced her through a room where two guys in red vests were eating noodles they had heated up in little cups. They stared as she dragged by, and the guard dropped her coat on the table and
Schoolgirls
too, and then the guys grinned at each other and at the magazine and at her, and the guard shoved open another door and pushed her into a seat that was still warm. There was an empty bag of chips identical to the one she had taken, and a peach iced tea and a bunch of the same markers in a mug with the name of the drugstore on it. It was his chair, the guard’s. She looked up at the TV screens. Of course they had cameras. Of course they had been watching her. She couldn’t even think of how she thought that wouldn’t be so. She had never thought the idea of getting caught was even possible, back when she pushed the door into the store. Ten minutes ago. Now there was nothing else but getting caught. He slammed the door shut and said something to the guys and his footsteps walked away. Octavia shuddered and her throat felt hot. She grabbed one of the markers and wrote
shit
on the back of her hand and then, when she was done staring at it, did not cry. Over her head the big square light told her what it thought of this:
flutter flutter.
She wiped her knee and the door opened again.
“What’s your name?” the guard barked. A man with greasy hair and a white shirt was standing next to him.
“Octavia,” Octavia said.
“Octavia what?”
“Octavia,” Octavia said, “Needle.” She was tired of thinking up things.
“You live around here?”
She didn’t answer. What did it matter? On the television screens, one of the guys was mopping up her mess.
“Sure,” the guy in the shirt said. “She comes in with her mother, her father, and by herself.”
She didn’t answer that either.
“Pretty girl,” the guy in the shirt said. The guard reached down and adjusted his belt. Octavia stopped clasping her hands together and put them down and the two men looked at what she had written on her hand.
“Gwen,” Gwen said. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even explain why she thought of herself as Octavia during the adventure, but she certainly couldn’t do it any longer. Her boots didn’t mean business. She wasn’t taller or sexier than she was. She was Gwen, and she was in trouble.
“Octavia, I could call the police or I could call your parents,” the guard said.
“Memorial Day,” said someone else, one of the guys in vests maybe, Gwen couldn’t see.
“Stay out of this,” said the guy in the shirt.
“I’m just saying the cops aren’t going to come,” said the person who was supposed to stay out of it.
The guard adjusted his belt again, which was gross. “Octavia, what is your parents’ phone number?”
“My dad’s at work,” said Gwen, but the men just looked at her. Even the guy staying out of it leaned his head in. It was the guy she thought it was. Her father at work was not the answer to what these people wanted from her. She was going to cry, as surely as she was going to get caught. They called her dad, Phil Needle, and her dad called her mom and her mom came and got her out of the drugstore. It had all happened so fast that the tourists were still laughing outside—not the same ones, but Gwen swore she recognized them anyway. They were all, everyone out there, the same.
Phil Needle needed a new girl. He had to finish the Belly Jefferson story.
Riding the Rails
was working. Ratings on
Heavy Petting
were solid. Lots of one-time-only repeat business. His engineers were all right, young guys who might come in late or arm-wrestle over the free tickets the promoters sent, but okay. The stringers only talked to him when he didn’t pay them. Dr. Croc was all right. Phil Needle felt confident about America, or whatever he was going to call it, but he had to finish the Belly Jefferson story, and he couldn’t do that without a girl.
His first girl had a sarcastic smile. When Phil Needle would walk out of his office and stop at her desk, whatever he asked her to do, staple things, give her opinion about an idea he just had, wrap up the other half of his sandwich, she always did it. She did everything. But she smiled like she had a better idea, and fled one Friday after only two years, with a note he still kept crumpled in a ball in the bottom of a drawer:
This job is not meeting my needs. As of 5 PM today I resign.
Instead of a signature, she’d left the key to the office at the bottom of the note, and when Phil Needle picked it up, he saw there was an image of a key underneath it. She’d made copies of the whole note, probably to prove she left the key if it ever came up, though of course Phil Needle, on the advice of Leonard Steed, had the locks changed anyway, in case she’d copied the key before she’d copied the key. He never uncrumpled the ball, but he still wrote her letters in his head:
Dear Renée, What are your goddamn needs?
His second girl had cancer, diagnosed just weeks after she was hired. She worked hard enough except when she had tests, or treatment, or was recovering from tests or treatment. The guys all rooted for her, and Phil Needle even sketched out an audio diary, “Jenna’s Story,” which he thank goodness never got around to pitching to the Keep Healthy people, because one day her boyfriend came to pick her up and Phil Needle finally got to shake his hand and say how happy everyone at Phil Needle Productions was to hear that Jenna was in remission, and he wondered what Phil Needle was talking about, and everything you can extrapolate from that story is true. The third girl was the one who walked into Studio B, where Allan was on break from his all-night mixing session for the Sinatra anniversary piece and masturbating. Phil Needle Productions now had a knock-first policy, and Phil Needle had placed an ad in all the necessary places, written with some coaching from Leonard Steed:
Dynamic, re-inventive company looking for smart, energetic, quality-minded person for an administrative support position with limitless possibilities. Meet our needs and we will meet yours.
Phil Needle felt good about the entire final draft except maybe
re-inventive
,
a term Leonard Steed used that hadn’t taken off yet. His consulting company was called Re-Edison. Nineteen people had responded to the ad, but only two of them were girls. Phil Needle wanted a girl at the desk, a pleasant, young girl who would greet people who walked into the offices, like Phil Needle, with a smile and on good days a wink.
The first applicant was a drunk. Or at least she was drunk at the interview, and drunk at the second interview Phil Needle scheduled for her as another chance, because anybody might get drunk at the first interview. In order to project himself as part of a dynamic, re-inventive company, he told the second one, Alma Levine, that he needed her to come in for an interview bright and early Monday morning. She suggested eleven o’clock. He was too embarrassed to get back to her and say he forgot that Monday was going to be Memorial Day, and so now he sat in his office listening to “(Water on a) Drowning Man,” a song by Belly Jefferson, for inspiration and because he wanted to. Belly Jefferson had died in 1970, just when he had been rediscovered. He left behind a number of illegitimate children who became perfectly legitimate businessmen with rights to Belly Jefferson’s image and likeness and any portrayal of him in any media, because at this point in American history they could do such things. They were interfering with the outlaw spirit Phil Needle was trying to embody.
Phil Needle had an idea. It was a huge idea, like a craggy island rising out of the water while the ocean fizzled obsequiously around it. It was a radio show. It would be about America and it would be broadcast everywhere, in people’s cars and homes and computers. The show—he didn’t know what it was called yet—would embody the American outlaw spirit. So far Leonard Steed liked this idea very, very much.
It was his destiny, he knew it was, but if the boat was to reach the destiny, he needed an American story that would launch the boat of the show across the ocean of radio. A practical, smaller version of this was that Phil Needle had to produce a sample episode in order to officially pitch the show to Leonard Steed. Steed had advised this as his consultant and told him this officially as his producing partner. Phil Needle Productions was contractually obligated to split its profits with Leonard Steed, and additionally Phil Needle had hired Leonard Steed as a consultant through Re-Edison. That added up to a substantial investment, but Phil Needle felt with this show he could live up to it. But to live up to it he needed a story, and his story was “Belly Jefferson, an American something.”
Phil Needle hadn’t told Leonard Steed that the episode was about Belly Jefferson. Phil Needle scarcely ever stopped thinking about the day he would fly down to Los Angeles, walk through the lobby of the Steed Building, past the cotton gin, go up the elevator to Leonard Steed’s office and then sit down in front of Leonard Steed and have him listen to an episode he, Phil Needle, had produced about the man who sang “Cotton Gin Blues.” Usually Leonard Steed was the outlaw in that room. That day, it would be him, Phil Needle, and within months of that day his new condo, with the view of the bridge and the water that was supposed to inspire him, would perhaps not seem so unaffordable as to make his stomach sink. Surely that day could come. But to reach this day he had to clear his desk of these papers lily-padding all over one another, and to clear his desk he needed a new girl, and so it was not beyond reason to say that it was his destiny who walked into his office at eleven o’clock. He watched her walk past the desk she’d sit at if the job was hers and knock on his open door.
“Knock, knock,” she said. She seemed like she looked cute, with trendy shoes and a slightly lovely top. “Are you Phil Needle?”
“Yes,” said Phil Needle, and turned the music down.
“I’m here for the interview? I’m Alma Levine.”
“Right,” Phil Needle said, and scurried the papers around his desk for her résumé as she sat down. It was two pages long, but the second page contained just a short list of hobbies. This was possibly the fault of the printer, which Phil Needle hoped never to use, once he had a new girl. She would print it for him. He had assumed her name rhymed with
mine
, but she’d said
mean.
“Alma,” he said.
“Spanish for
soul
, Hebrew for
virgin
,” Alma Levine said, for clearly the millionth time.
Phil Needle blinked. “Virgin?”
“None of your business,” said Alma Levine, the millionth punch line. “I don’t like it either. Everyone calls me Levine.”
“Levine.”
“Right.” Sticking out of her bag was the tube of a rolled-up magazine, and Phil Needle wondered what magazine she read on the streetcar. But he had a first question planned out already. “It’s quiet here today,” she said.
“It’s the holiday,” Phil Needle said.
“Did you forget it was Memorial Day when you scheduled me?” she asked. “I wondered about that.”
Phil Needle flipped over Alma Levine’s hobbies so he could cover Belly Jefferson’s face. It was best not to think of his destiny at this moment. “Yes,” he said, more sharply than he’d planned.
She frowned at him, but it was a sympathetic frown, as if he’d spilled something but she was going to wash the shirt. “You’re the boss,” she said. “You shouldn’t be doing the calendar.”
“That’s right,” Phil Needle said in slow amazement, looking at his desk. He had a list prepared but could not find it in front of him, only another list, from a brainstorming session with Leonard Steed. Perhaps this proved his point. “Managing the calendar is not the half of it,” he said. “Much, much less than half. There’s administrative duties, the phones and the mail and scheduling our engineers—we have three engineers, Allan, Ezra, who we call EZ, and Barry. But all those things aren’t the half of it.”