Hope Idiotic | Part 40
Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.
LOU AND MARK DRANK BEERS AT DOUBLE SHOT, the next-best local hole in the wall since Zigler’s Tavern was overrun by the ultra hip. On a Thursday night, Double Shot was busy with the perfect mixture of hipsters, frat boys and after-work stiffs. Lou and Mark liked it for its patron variety—a slice of Chicago life—the food, the affordable drink specials and the friendly waitresses.
It had been three months since Lou last saw and spoke to Michelle, but it seemed that every single conversation he and Mark had somehow led back to her. While Mark debated the benefits of L.A. and New York, Lou managed to connect Mark’s future to Michelle’s past.
“We never went to New York. We talked about it but never went. I wonder whether Michelle will move to L.A. She talked about that all the time; how she wanted to be closer to her parents and where it was warmer. Her firm has an office out there. God, wouldn’t that be weird if you and Michelle both moved to L.A.? I don’t know, I hate to think that Michelle…”
Mark slapped Lou across the face.
“What the fuck!”
“That’s it. No more.”
“No more what?”
“Every time you say her name, I’m going to smack you. Right across the face.”
“What? Michelle?” Mark slapped him again. “Oh, come on!”
“You have got to stop talking about her. You need to start moving on.”
It wasn’t that Lou was hung up on Michelle, it was that the past three years of his life had been so focused around her. She was central to everything, and it was all he had to talk about. Talking about anything before The Age of Michelle seemed entirely out of context. That’s the hardest part about breakups: finding a new definition of yourself. Since the breakup, Lou had continued sinking in a sea of whiskey and cigarette smoke while searching for that new definition among the fragments of the past three years. He didn’t talk about Michelle because he missed her; he talked about her because he didn’t know how not to.
“All right. Jesus,” Lou said. “No more Michelle.” SLAP! The sip of beer he had just taken shot out of his mouth and sprayed across the bar. “Goddammit!”
“Are you boys okay over here?” asked the cute waitress who had been serving them for the past two hours.
“We’re fine,” Mark said. “I’m just breaking my friend of a bad habit.”
“What habit would that be?”
“Talking too much,” he said.
“Okay then. Can I get you boys some more beers? It’ll help keep you quiet.” She looked at Lou and flirtatiously touched his arm. “Maybe some ice for your face?”
“Is it swelling up? Jesus, Mark.”
“No, sweetie, it’s fine. I’m just teasing you. Another round?”
“Yes, please,” Mark said.
“Did you see that? She was flirting with me,” Lou said.
“She flirts with everyone. That’s how she makes her money. Be careful of waitresses and female bartenders. They care less about you than strippers and work twice as hard to get you to like them.”
When she returned with the beers a few moments later, Lou asked her name.
“Niki,” she said.
“Niki, you are the best waitress we’ve ever had here. And we’re here all the time. Are you new?”
“Nope. I’ve been here about a year.”
“How is it possible that we’ve never seen you before?”
“I usually work the day shift. I have another waitressing job across town.”
“I guess we’ll have to start coming in here for lunch.”
“You’re getting creepy,” Mark said.
Niki smiled. “No, he’s fine. But unfortunately, this is my last day. I start a new job tomorrow.”
“Another bar?” Lou asked.
“Nope. A real, big-girl job. I’m going to be an assistant editor for a magazine.”
Lou’s eyes grew wide. “How about that,” Mark said.
“Which magazine?”
“Chicago Style.”
“Sure! I know that rag. It’s all society and fashion and travel.”
“That’s the one,” she said.
“You use freelancers?”
“Of course. That’s how I got the job.”
“Well, look I’m a writer, and if it’s okay I’ll send you some pitches, and you can throw some work my way, or both.” He dug into his wallet and pulled out a sad-looking homemade business card.
“Oh, that’s great! We’re getting ready to start putting together the next issue, so yeah, we’ll need some good story ideas. I’ll definitely email you.”
She asked if she could get them anything else at the moment, then returned to her other tables.
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that nothing good comes out of drinking yourself stupid in a bar,” Lou said.
“You got a story in mind?”
“I don’t know. I did a little blog writing for a minute a while back for this interior-design guy. He does some pretty interesting stuff. Could be something there.” Mark gave him a look of uncertainty. “Hey, it’s not a column in Vanity Fair, but it’s a gig. And it’s a writing gig. Step by step. This wouldn’t have happened if I were still with Mich…” Mark raised his hand. “This wouldn’t have happened if I were still with What’s-her-face.” Mark took hold of his beer glass and raised it up in a toast. Lou did the same. “Shots?”
✶
LOU WAS ABLE TO WRITE HIS STORIES FOR CHICAGO STYLE AT THE SHEET-METAL SHOP since business was so slow—the economy had affected the construction industry, as well; America as a whole, was on hold. The editor in chief loved his first piece on the interior designer. When the magazine hit the stands, Lou grabbed a free copy from one of the kiosks on the street. Seeing his name in a byline again made him feel incredible, like he belonged to the huddled masses. He went home that night and sent an email to every other Chicago magazine editor he could think of with clips of his stuff, including his most recent piece, asking them to keep him in mind for any assignments they have lying around and to forward their editorial calendars along so he could create story pitches to fit with each editor’s plan.
The work slowly came in. There wasn’t a magazine for which he wouldn’t write. There was Chicago Style, Chicago Brides, Chicago Agent, a rag for real estate agents about the real estate business, Avenue Magazine, a high-end society glossy, which seemed to exist solely for the city’s wealthy elite to be able to read stories about themselves. The stories were fluff pieces, advertorial junk, restaurant, bar and hotel reviews, travel stories about golf courses, and B & Bs that he never had visited, profiles of the movers and shakers throughout Chicagoland. It wasn’t the kind of writing for which he wanted to be known when he died, but he was racking up a few extra hundred bucks a month. Lou was back in the game.
And then he received an email from the HR manager at a small marketing/advertising agency called Spark. It did a lot of packaging, product development and brand marketing. The HR manager said she was looking for a copywriter to add to the team. She said she found his résumé on ProCore.
Holy shit, he thought. ProCore actually worked.
The company’s office was located in the West Loop in an old loft building that used to house the world’s leading casket manufacturer. His interview was held inside of a small conference room that had been where the oven that dried the casket’s wood stain had been. The room’s door was a giant metal fire door that required an inordinate amount of effort to open and close it. Lou liked the old industrial look of the office. It inspired the idea of manufacturing creativity—blood and sweat of the mind rather than with the body.
He had called in sick to Don at the shop so he could attend the interview. He managed to avoid drinking anything the night before to make sure he was at his best for the interview. It took him twenty minutes to fix his tie since he wanted to get it perfect. He styled his hair three different ways before settling on the way he usually wore it; casually combed over. Nothing could be out of place. Lou had to give the impression of his life. And he did. Despite his tendency to joke himself out of countless good situations when important matters were on the line, Lou charmed and impressed the HR manager. She pulled in the agency’s creative director, a friendly and confident guy named Ted, to meet with Lou. Ultimately, Lou’s employment was Ted’s decision and after an hour-long conversation, Lou had the job.
The smile never left Lou’s face as he rode the bus back to the apartment. The HR manager was at first impressed with his wide range of experience. Ted was looking for a clever mind to join the small creative team at Spark, which was made up of Ted and two designers. The crash had hurt the agency, and Ted was well aware that his may be the only one hiring creatives, but for it to survive, he said, it needed to provide its remaining clients with the best work possible and be ready when more work began coming in. That, and he wanted a writer who was going to approach the work from a different perspective. Ted was tired of working with copywriters who had spent their careers in advertising and who prayed daily to the almighty power of the Apple brand. Lou’s inexperience as an agency writer was a benefit. The compilation of his media, marketing, corporate communications and journalism was ideal. His starting salary was sixty thousand dollars a year, more than he’d ever made. He would begin as soon as he could gracefully walk away from the sheet-metal shop.
It was late afternoon when he got home, and he was excited to call Don, apologize for lying about being sick, admit to going on an interview and let him know that he would work another two weeks while Don found a replacement estimator. But first, he called Chuck to share the good news. Someone answered in Spanish, and Lou’s gut twisted as he remembered that Chuck wasn’t answering phone calls anymore. He quickly hung up and called me while he poured himself a glass of scotch.
