Meet Cute Read online

  “I just want to remind you that once school starts I’ll only have later afternoons and evenings and weekends,” I told her.

  “Oh, that’s fine. Alexander rarely arrives before two.”

  And then, two nights before the beginning of the fall semester of my senior year, she called and said they were ready.

  Which brings me to this morning. Picture it: I am standing in the doorway. Everything I’m feeling—nervousness and determination and excitement, the weeks I’ve spent researching printing techniques and the years I’ve spent pinning Alexander’s work to my Pinterest page—it’s all on my face. And so is a carefully blotted coat of red lipstick, a pair of chunky black glasses, and a little mascara. My hair is in a neat bun instead of the usual messy one, and I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt buttoned up to the collar and a pair of nice jeans. It took me ages to get it right. I wanted to feel like I belonged, even though I was two decades younger than the youngest of them.

  So I was standing in the doorway. I was ready to travel back in time, to when people looked into each other’s faces instead of at their phones, and used landlines to place calls, and worked with wood frames and cans of ink and brushes. The bell jangled and the door shut behind me and I heard Neve’s voice, saying, “Ohhhh . . . Principal not principle. Shit. Okay. We thought it was, like, the principle of hope. We were actually a bit perplexed by the phrasing but there was something sort of poetic about it. Welcome Principle Hope.” She spun in her chair, listening to the person on the other side of her call, and waved at me.

  I lifted my hand to wave back, and as my eyes adjusted from the bright summer morning to the dim, dusty clutter of the front office, I saw something. It was like one of those pictures in kids’ activity books: Find the object that doesn’t belong. But instead of blending into the scenery, it leapt out at me. Too silver and too new, too deliberately placed on a newly cleared off patch of desk with a chair right in front of it. A chair that might as well have had my name on it.

  A laptop. My heart sank.

  “I sincerely apologize. We’ll get a new one printed right away. When do you need it? . . . Ah. Hmm. No, no, we can do it. I understand. I’ll call you when I have an ETA.”

  She hung up. “What a shit show. But welcome! Eduardo! She’s here! ”

  Eduardo appeared from the supply closet. “Happy first day,” he said.

  But it was not quite the happy day I had imagined because, at their request, I was soon seated in front of the sole computer in the shop I had chosen for its lack of computers.

  “This is a really exciting day for us,” Neve said. “We’ve been trying to convince Alexander for years that we need to have an online presence. Business is okay, but we rely almost exclusively on repeat customers, and some of our equipment could use updating—”

  “Replacement,” Eduardo said. “More replacement than updating, unfortunately.”

  “So we need to reach a new pool of customers. We’ve been thinking about it, and then you walked in. A real live Millennial. And we knew you could be the one to make it happen for us.”

  “We need to hold on to our image,” Eduardo said. “Analog. Classic. A little . . . quirky.”

  “But also serious. Radical, even,” Neve said, gesturing to the upper wall with a row of framed prints from various resistance efforts. A cluster of them caught my eye. Audre Lorde and James Baldwin and Harvey Milk and Oscar Wilde. “Alexander should be central, but not too prominent. More photos of the shop than the man. He likes to stay behind the scenes. So we need Twitter, Facebook, Instagram . . . What else? Snapchat? Pinterest? Flickr?”

  “Wow,” I said. “I don’t even have all those.”

  “We can start small,” Eduardo said. “Just a couple. What would make the most impact?”

  “Twitter, maybe?”

  They were eager, ready to believe me no matter what I said. Neve was wide-eyed and nodding; Eduardo’s head tilted like a giant bird’s, watching me for guidance. It was not at all what I expected. I thought they would be teaching me. I thought I’d be watching them this way. It was my first day of my first-ever job, and I came ready to take notes and try and make mistakes and learn from them. I was ready to absorb, but instead they were asking me to impart. I was trying not to let the disappointment engulf me. Trying not to think so much of the colors of ink and the techniques I’d been studying. This was not what I wanted, but it was something I knew how to do, so I resolved to make the best of it. If it helped keep this business going, then I would do what I could.

  “Social media is great, but we need something to direct it to,” I said. “We need a website.”

  “Alexander said no website,” Neve said.

  “What about just a landing page?” I asked. “An image, your contact info. That’s all we’d need. Super minimal.”

  Neve glanced at the closed door of Alexander’s office, even though he wasn’t there yet. Eduardo shrugged. “A good compromise,” he said. “What Alexander doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  I set to work. Eduardo showed me how to use the shop’s nice digital camera, and soon I was photographing prints, trying to get the lighting right, figuring out how to position myself so my shadow didn’t get in the way. “This will be a great way to familiarize yourself with the work we do,” Neve had said, and she was right. The shop had some of everything, from letter-pressed wedding invitations to original artwork. There were business cards and monogrammed stationary. There were limited-edition books with thick pages and brilliant colors. But my favorite things were the posters. I couldn’t tell what had been commissioned and what Alexander had decided to do himself. Some of them had his signature stamp in the bottom right corner, and those I realized were his own art. Most of them were intricate geometric designs and they were all editions of twenty-five. At last, I dragged a ladder over to the cluster of images that had caught my eye earlier. I had been saving them as a reward.

  It was a series, each with an image of a person and a quote by them below. They were all familiar to me because of Mr. Leahey, who was my sophomore English teacher and the first person I ever came out to. He’s the one who first told me about Print Shop, actually, after I complimented a framed print that hung over his desk. The coming out was almost accidental, in the form of a love poem in a journal that I thought he would just check off and not read, but instead he wrote, Love this one below it and gave me a check plus. Then, P.S. I have some great queer writers to recommend should you ever want something like that. It took me a couple of months of blushing and not meeting his eye, but then I finally stayed after school to ask, and he handed me a stack of books that he had apparently been saving for me all that time. I devoured them. When I wasn’t sure of myself, those writers were sure of me. I was turning the lens, focusing on Audre Lorde’s words that helped me then and still help me sometimes, because even though my friends and family are fine with who I am, I know that plenty of people in the world and in our country are not. Even if they hide it. Even if they pretend they are saying one thing when they are really saying something else. Now the words were clear through my lens—When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.—and I snapped the picture and climbed down.

  — — — —

  The Print Shop handle was taken—no surprise there—so I added the name of our small California city, and PrintShopMartinez.com and @PrintShopMartinez were born. I found the perfect part of the shop to photograph: a weathered wooden table strewn with printed posters and cards, cast in light from the leaded glass window above it. I used it as the home page for the website and simply added the name, street address, and phone number in small Helvetica type at the bottom. As minimal as it could be. Then I got to work on Twitter. I used the wooden sign with its hand-lettered Print Shop as the profile photo and then the same table-and-window image as the background. Since I wouldn’t be on the clock every day to tweet for them, I wanted to schedule daily tweets out about
a week.

  “What do you want people to know about the shop?” I asked Neve.

  “Well . . .” she said, and I held my pencil to the paper, ready to take notes. “We are not cheap and we are not quick. But we care. A lot. We’re attentive—or at least we try to be when we’re not totally swamped and I’m not eight months pregnant—and Alexander is the absolute best in the business. We’re right for a certain type of client who wants a product that looks truly special. A discerning client. We have a solid reputation and a thirty-year history. We champion progressive causes and Alexander has done a lot of pro-bono work—but maybe don’t advertise that because I don’t want to field a bunch of calls from people wanting things done for free. We use techniques that are almost obsolete not because they should be, but because they take time and care and a level of dedication to master that most people aren’t willing to exert. In other words, we’re special. And we think our customers and their projects are special.” She finished and smiled. “Is that enough to start with?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I had two pages of words and phrases to work with, so I took a seat at my laptop station and began composing our first day’s tweets.

  We’ve been around for thirty years but we’re brand-new here. Please welcome us with a follow!

  We pride ourselves in quality over quantity. With us, you’ll find excellence in both product and customer service.

  Print Shop: A discerning shop for the discerning client.

  Neve heaved herself out of her chair. “Off to pee for the three hundredth time today!”

  Just as she got to the bathroom door, the phone rang. I looked at her, wondering if I should answer, but Eduardo picked up. “Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes, the banner. Well, Alexander isn’t in yet, but I assure you it is our top priority. Right. Yes. Today, yes. I’ll let Neve know you called.”

  A history of progressive printing, I typed, and added the Audre Lorde image. I sat back. How would anyone find us if we had zero followers?

  “It was the banner girl again,” Eduardo said when Neve re-emerged.

  “I really screwed that one up,” she said. “And Alexander has the whole Jenkins order to complete today.” She eased herself back into her chair.

  “One more question,” I said to her. “Do we have any friends? Like, businesses that we partner with?”

  “Take a look at the client list,” she said. “Some of them are well known.” She pointed to a green binder on a shelf near me. “Go ahead and look through that.” So I spent some time searching for our most recent clients on Twitter and following them. Then I flipped through the binder and tweeted directly at the companies that have hired us and have a following. And one by one, people started following us back.

  “Break time,” Neve said to me. “You can take between half an hour and an hour; just make note of the time when you leave and get back and deduct it from your shift hours.”

  “Okay, great,” I said. Before I left, I checked the scheduled tweets. One would go out when I was off and then I’d reply to any others that came in and thank people for the follows when I got back.

  I got a burrito and ate it on the bright sidewalk patio of the restaurant. I ate fast, not wanting to take too long away. I checked my ex’s Instagram and didn’t find anything new, and then saw that I’d only been gone for twenty minutes. So I walked up and down the main streets of downtown, looking into the windows of the new stores that had sprouted up in the old, restored buildings. Things there were changing. A lot of the antiques stores were gone, replaced by a hair salon and a boutique. A former photographer’s studio where we’d had family portraits taken for a few years was now a wine bar. I began to understand why Print Shop needed to step carefully into the present. The town was changing, and the shop didn’t want to be forgotten or left behind.

  I was feeling great about how much I’d already accomplished when I got back. Neve and Eduardo were drinking iced tea from tall glasses, each working in silence at their respective stations. They offered me one and I set it carefully next to the laptop and opened Twitter. There were twenty-seven new follows, and a bunch of people tweeting to welcome us. But then a new reply came in.

  @PrintShopMartinez ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

  I clicked on it. It was in response to the excellence tweet that went out over lunch. Whatever, I thought. The Internet can be a mean place. I clicked the person’s profile. Only three hundred followers, no big deal. But then, a few minutes later, another one came in. Late AND wrong. How exactly is this customer service “excellent”?

  “Hey, Neve?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but . . .”

  She must have heard something in my voice because she was soon next to me, looking at the screen.

  “Hm.”

  “Yeah. Whoever it is, they don’t have a huge following or anything. What should I say?”

  Just then the door bell chimed, and there was Alexander, tall and thin with a slight hunch in his shoulders, gray hair peeking out from under a straw hat and a mug of coffee in hand as though he had come directly from his kitchen table.

  “Good morning,” he said to all of us, giving me an extra nod that sent a bright spark to my stomach. “And a warm welcome to our new addition. Neve, it will be a busy day; let’s get right to the schedule.” With that, he turned and ascended the stairs to his studio.

  Neve smiled at me and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he learns your name.” She waved toward the computer as though she could banish our disgruntled customer’s problem with a single gesture. “Just . . . use your discretion with that. I trust you.”

  Then she was making her way up the steep stairs, and Eduardo was placing a seemingly endless phone order, and the angry tweets were glaring at me from the screen. I searched for a few businesses’ profiles to see how they responded to customers’ complaints. I saw lots of “so sorry!”s, lots of exclamation points, lots of personalizations, with people signing their first names or telling the customers the name of the person who would be getting in touch to fix the problem. One of them wrote, Beth will be getting in touch with you within the hour. She is the BEST! I realized that would feel good, to have a problem and then be told that the best would be helping me fix it.

  I switched back over and wrote, @LaurenInRealLife So sorry to hear about your experience! Please give us a call to talk to Neve. She will make sure your problem is solved!

  A moment later another tweet came through. @PrintShopMartinez I’VE BEEN WAITING FOUR HOURS FOR HER TO CALL ME BACK!

  Then, like the first cracks before an avalanche:

  From someone named @CaliGrrl00: @LaurenInRealLife @PrintShopMartinez What’s going on!? Is this about the banner?

  From @_Micah_Mic: @LaurenInRealLife @PrintShopMartinez @CaliGrrl00 You didn’t hear? They spelled Principal wrong!

  @LaurenInRealLife wrote back, @CaliGrrl00 @_Micah_Mic I understand that they made a mistake but I don’t understand why they aren’t fixing it or returning my calls. UGH!!!

  Then, a new person: @LaurenInRealLife I don’t knw you but this sounds like a terrible business & the way they are handling it is even wrse! @PrintShopMartinez

  They kept coming and coming, and I gave it one more try: @LaurenInRealLife We sincerely apologize for this and are doing all we can to resolve the situation. Please DM or call for updates.

  I shut the computer. Eduardo was finally finished with his call. “This banner thing is becoming a real problem on Twitter,” I told him.

  He showed me his cell phone screen, open to the Twitter app. He’d been following along with everything. “Maybe Alexander was right about all of this. We’re an old-fashioned business. This technology may not suit us.” He shrugged and tossed his phone on the desk. Then he added, “You’ve been doing a great job, though. I wouldn’t have known what to say.”

  “Thanks. Maybe when we get her the banner she’ll delete the tweets. Or at least say it had a happy ending.”

  Eduard
o glanced toward Alexander’s studio. “Maybe,” he said, but his voice lacked optimism. I was about to ask why, when Neve emerged and crossed as swiftly as she could to the phone. She flipped through the green binder and then dialed.

  “Jessica,” she said. “It’s Neve. So lovely to hear your voice! No, it isn’t ready quite yet but that’s why I’m calling. I know we promised it by end of day but Alexander is running a bit behind. I assure you they look gorgeous. We are going to deliver them to your office tomorrow morning. No, we don’t mind at all. That will give you plenty of time to have them for the dinner, right? Wonderful. No, thank you. Say hello to Meg and have a wonderful night. And please don’t worry about a thing.” She hung up and dug her thumb into the space between her brows.

  Eduardo rose and wrapped his arms around her. “All this stress isn’t good for you,” he murmured.

  “I know. I’ll try not to get wrapped up in it.”

  “Unfortunately, there is one thing you should see.” He handed her his phone and she scrolled through.

  “Well, perfect.” She sighed and climbed the stairs again. She tapped on Alexander’s door and opened it but didn’t enter.

  “We have a Twitter problem.”

  “I said I didn’t want the Twitter in the first place. We’ve lived without it for thirty years, so it doesn’t much concern me.”

  “It’s just, the principle/principal banner?”

  “I know. It needs to be done over.”

  “Okay, so it’s on your to-do list? Near the top?”

  I heard some grumbled words and then the door shut. She made her way down again.

  “We have to go,” Neve said to me, hand on her enormous belly. “We have an appointment.”

  So much swarmed through my mind. Like, should I still leave at five even if there was no answer? And how could they leave me alone with Alexander, who didn’t even know my name? But I could only get out the simplest of questions: “What should I tell Lauren?”