Page 44 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
Marlowe slumped against the counter, letting her hand slide from his hold as she flashed through tabloid headlines skimmed at grocery store checkouts or in the margins of websites, sensationalized tales of drugs, stalking, coercion, abuse, alcoholism, sex addiction. The Twitter buzz about her had been uncomfortable enough. The accusation that she’d broken up Angus’s relationship was worse. What was next? Would someone dig into her past? Find embarrassing party photos from grad school? Solicit an angry rant from Kelvin? Pull up the reviews of her design work and mock her failed career?
As if reading her thoughts, Angus set aside the bowl of basil.
“Go get your phone,” he said. “Omelets can wait. Let’s get you started.”
Marlowe ran downstairs and returned with her phone. On Angus’s instructions, she opened the Instagram account she hadn’t checked in months. Her follower count was now in the hundreds and several comments had been added to her meager photos. Somecomments were simple emoji chains or encouragingYou go, girl!–type phrases. Others berated her for being a cheap, ugly bitch who didn’t deserve Angus Gordon’s attention, or anyone else’s. Everyone had an opinion and they shared it freely. People criticized her clothes, her haircut, her complexion, her body. They called her a slut, a whore, a—
“Stop reading them.” Angus shielded her screen with his hand. “Just lock down your account as private. Better yet, delete it entirely. If you’d rather keep it, I can get my media assistant to go through and clean it up for you, delete anything the trolls have taken over, block anyone who lashed out.”
Marlowe rapidly changed her settings to private, following suit with her Facebook and Twitter accounts, neither of which she used often but both of which had received a similar influx of activity over the last forty-eight hours.
“Why are people so mean?” she asked. “They don’t even know me.”
“Cruelty and ignorance aren’t mutually exclusive. More often the opposite. This is why I’ve been steering clear of social media. It has its place as a venue for sharing and connecting. It’s also an open invitation for any wounded soul to question your values or shred your sense of self-worth from behind the safety of their screen. Not worth it.”
Marlowe let her eyes skim over a few tagged Twitter comments.Get your own man, you skanky bitch. How drunk was he? Did you get that dance through the Make-A-Wish Foundation? You must give good head.With a defeated groan, she closed the app and agreed to let Angus’s media assistant handle the cleanup. As a marginal social media user whose interaction usually topped out at a heart-eyed face or a thumbs-up, she hadn’t expected so much random outrage.Granted, her public image was currently that of a sexually charged boyfriend stealer—hardly a magnet for likes—but still…
“Anything else I should check?” she asked.
“Do you have a website? One with personal contact info on it?”
“Oh, god.” She typed the address and pulled up her home page. Her contact form hid all personal information, but her address was on her downloadable résumé. As fast as she could, she pulled her résumé off the site. She’d edit and repost it later, when she and Angus weren’t performing Internet triage. “I can’t believe all of this started with a look.”
“Funny what the camera picks up.” His eyes flicked to hers for the briefest instant before they both looked away. Their mutually diverted attention didn’t prevent her cheeks from flaring, so she circled the island and made a show of setting her phone out of the way. He watched her without moving, other than a slight uptick of his lips she wasn’t entirely sure was really there. “You’re not going to let me see your costumes?”
She tensed, looked at her phone, looked back at Angus, and shook her head.
“I can’t take more criticism right now,” she said.
“Who says I’d criticize?”
“Other people sure have. It’s not out of the question. You might think my work is boring or amateur. You might suggest I stick to arranging bulk shoe deliveries.”
“C’mon.” He joined her on the other side of the island. “Show me. Please?”
“Okay, fine. But if you say anything mean, I’m calling Jeeves and the two of us are working out a truly sadistic revenge plan.” She opened her home page and handed Angus her phone. While she picked at her chipped nail polish, he scrolled through photosand sketches from elaborate Shakespeare productions, modernized Greek tragedies, mid-century classics with tight color palettes and carefully selected accessories, as well as new plays in simple, contemporary dress. Her designs ranged from detailed realism to bold, high abstraction, some shows mostly scavenged and others highly polished with everything built from scratch.
“This is what you really want to be doing?” he asked.
“Yes. And no.” She pulled up theNew York Timesreview of her last show and let Angus read it. The play was an expressionist piece she’d costumed in a mix of period styles, exaggerated in shape and all made from metallic fabrics. TheTimeshad said she missed the mark, too focused on making something that looked cool while completely neglecting the humanity of the characters. “That’s not the only one.Everyonehated the costumes. The show completely flopped. No one on the team directly blamed me, but we all knew I’d contributed to the show’s failure. My choices brought everyone else’s down. I hated that feeling. I never want to go through it again.”
Angus nodded to himself while typing something into the search bar.
“In the rare instances when Gordon keeps his shirt on for an entire scene,” he read, “his performance leaves little to remark upon.” He scrolled down. “Given Jake Hatchet’s penchant for arson, how does Gordon create so little heat with his costars?” He scrolled again. “Every time Gordon appears on-screen, I count the seconds until he drives off on his motorcycle and the real actors can take over.” He let out a breathy laugh as his eye caught on something else. “Here’s a real winner.Angus Gordon is what you get if you cross a rotten carrot with a terrible actor.”
Marlowe grabbed her phone and read the last comment for herself.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to. Like I said, open invitation.”
“Also, you’re a really good actor.”
“And you’re a really talented designer.” He took her phone and set it facedown, out of her reach. “We live in a world of constant criticism. Some of it’s thoughtful and insightful. Most isn’t. But it shouldn’t stop you from doing what you love.”
Marlowe took a deep breath as she gave her phone serious side-eye.I know,she thought.I know, I know, I know.But she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
“Maybe that one show was terrible,” Angus continued. “Maybe it was only terrible to some people. You can’t please everyone, but the cool thing about what I do or what you do”—he nodded toward her phone—“is that we get to try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. We grow. We get better. We toughen up. We take a stab at something new and see if it works. If it doesn’t work, we don’t make that choice again. Fortunately we can make hundreds of other choices.”
