Iris Has Free Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

off my back, finished pouring my “coffee,” and left to hand out the faxes.
    Later that day, Emily charged me with the difficult task of handwriting the addresses on a whole pile of outgoing mail. As I drank more “coffee,” my voice grew louder and my handwriting larger and loopier. After laughing at my description of Jed’s “proposal” in the kitchen earlier, she gently suggested that I write a little smaller.
    “Perhaps you could write the address on only the middle of the envelope,” she said sweetly, “rather than using all 8 x 11 inches.”
    “No problem!” I said, scrutinizing her envelope, the one she’d just addressed to serve as a model. It looked much different then my previous twenty-five, which, when I looked again, well resembled the crumpled bar napkins ruined with poems that always turned up in purse and pocket after a night out. “If that’s how you like it,” I said, as if it were a discrepancy in taste and not sanity.
7
    Most students take on internships as a means of gaining professional experience while making a good impression on a prospective boss, hoping to leave with the promise of a future job, if not a recommendation for a comparable job elsewhere. During my brief time at The New Yorker , I was careful to aquire no new skills and stealthily avoided all of my superiors, behaving instead as if I were crashing a party.
    Though I’d worked really hard to get my internship at The New Yorker, I’m not sure what my purpose was once I actually got there. I had no interest in publishing, really. It just seemed like a cool place to hang out for a semester, an interesting alternative to another literature or philosophy class, maybe a new spot to meet guys.
    Though I thought often about the future—spinning fantasies, my favorite pastime—it was never something I planned. I would be a great writer, a famous actress, a cartoonist on the side.... I didn’t need to worry about how, because destiny would take care of that for me. “Fate is character,” the ancient Greeks said, and people were always remarking on what a character I was.
    In the meantime, I enjoyed drawing cartoons—what I did in class while everyone else took notes—so I figured the cartoon department would be a fun place to kill time. I did not try to get the attention of Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor who, had he liked me, might have offered me a job upon graduation, or at least offered to glance at my cartoons. Instead, I avoided him.
    Though he seemed a genial man, he was solid while I was all shadow. And when he entered the room, it was as if someone had cut in front of the light or removed the screen on which I had been casting my fabulous sillhouette. He’d come in, and my illusions would vanish, my useless hands curling into knots at my sides. Reduced to who I was, I was nothing like who I would be. I was not great, not noteworthy. I was just Iris, the shy intern, sneaking around the office in gold lamé.
    When not drinking or cavorting in nightclubs and at parties, my self-esteem—so prodigious, so grand—all but evaporated. Indeed, my daytime self—the one who’d made it home the night before, got dressed in the morning, and was not still drunk—stood in such stark contrast to my nightlife persona that one afternoon, going up the elevator at 4 Times Square, an employee from one of the women’s magazines could not stop staring. “Excuse me,” she said at last, “but do you know you have an evil twin running around Manhattan singing karaoke?”
    I blushed violently before I managed to get out, “Actually, that’s me. I’m my evil twin.”

III
1
    All of this is why, freshly graduated from college a year later, applying to The New Yorker was not even a consideration. What should I do? I asked myself, during my long walk following the disastrous job fair. I wanted to be a writer. Of that I was certain. But in the meantime, I needed a job.
    I did briefly consider becoming a movie star to support myself. I