Iris Has Free Time. Iris Smyles

great sadness behind my sunglass-covered eyes, a great weariness of spirit that even my heavily insured smile could not mask. I saw bottle upon bottle of prescription painkillers mixed up in my purse. I saw endless afternoons of shoplifting and Pilates; it wasn’t a life I wanted.

      Plus, there were no roles I really wanted to play. What I had disliked most about acting, during my brief time studying it—aside from the other actors, the directors, the set designers, the composers, the playwrights, the stage-hands, the ushers, the box office salesmen, the audiences, the critics, and the drafty theaters themselves—was always having to play someone else. I didn’t want to be a chameleon, but a great personality photographed in black and white, my face framed by long thin fingers wilting gracefully around a cigarette, my hair hidden beneath a marvelous silk turban, my cruel lips—what are cruel lips? I’m always reading novels about characters who have them—on the verge of some pronouncement as quotable as inscrutable: “Where people go wrong is when they sell their soul to the devil; leasing is the thing. This way you’ll have a steady stream of income pouring in annually and can regularly renegotiate a competitive price based on market fluctuations.” To transform, yes. But into myself! Whoever that was.

      And then, after being turned away from an open call for extra work in a Russell Crowe film, I realized I was just too sensitive a creature to handle so much rejection—one. As a result, the other 499 headshots remain untouched in a tightly packed box on a high shelf all the way in the back of my closet. On the same shelf, incidentally, as my stock of unsold T-shirts.

       2

      To begin, I had a few hundred printed at a silk-screen lab downtown where a number of the workers said they absolutely loved my “Crapola” baby-T. “It’s a conversation starter,” one noted. Indeed, all my designs featured similarly charming inducements. “BRAINS” in big capital letters across the bust. “Second Base” on a form-fitting baseball jersey. “Somewhat Attractive” in a flaming script. And on a pair of black underwear—I dabbled in lingerie, too—“Bad Ass” in hot pink across the seat.

      I threw myself into it and a few months later, my apartment—where I was at last living alone; May had moved out—had become my “design studio.” I used the bathtub for dying. With scissors, I slashed the backs open on child-size Hanes—they were cheaper than the American Apparel women’s baby-T and fit roughly the same. I visited the Salvation Army—buying used was cheaper than buying new, and this way, I could call one of my lines “vintage” and have each one be completely unique—and picked up a whole variety of shirts on which I printed, “HUBRIS.”

      “Prozac Whore,” “Free Crazy Eddie,” “Spinster,” “Save the Sluts”—I was coming up with great ideas every day and would dream about my imminent success for the entire shift of the minimum-wage hostessing job I had taken in the meantime.

      Standing there, almost a full year after graduation, I’d remove a pad and pen from my pocket to make notes about new design ideas and all the different ways I might market them. My fantasies, like an intricate tapestry, unfurled before my mind’s eye in a long perfect weave only now and then getting snagged on the jarring call of customers wanting a table for four, or the Mexican cooks caroling, “Hey, mommy,” as I dreamily swept past.

      I could start a website, like a magazine or something, and get everyone I know to write for it. Eventually, I could put out a print edition and publish my cartoons! I could build a merchandising and media empire and strike it rich before I turn twenty-five. At parties, no one would ever again ask me what I do, because they’d already know. And those who didn’t love me for my riches would hate me for them. Strangers would talk about how undeserving I was of so much early success. How unfair it is that I should be so young and beautiful and smart and rich! And all my ex-boyfriends would regret my getting away, especially after seeing me on the cover of New York Magazine in the nude—a clever allusion to my cartoon, for which I’ll have just signed a book deal for an unheard-of advance, and which was already syndicated in newspapers all over the country, next to Marmaduke.

      I’d be like those guys on the cover of New York Magazine, Justin, Shawn, and Richie, who came up with “Models Suck,” but better, because I’d be nice to people when they came up to me at parties and suggested I use a fan instead of wads of hundreds to keep cool. And this uncommon niceness, for which I would be so well known, would only make my enemies hate me more. Websites would be created just to tear me apart: www.IrisSucks.com. There would be stickers and pins. People would think I had it all. And I would.

       Until all the hate would start to wear on me. And feelings of loneliness would start to close in. Tired of people talking to who they think I am, rather than who I really am, I’d start to question everything I once felt I knew, everything I ever cared about. I’d move to Europe to be with the artists and writers I admired as a child, to cultivate my still nascent talents, which I’d abandoned after my early business success. What had become of my novel?

       But none of these artists or writers would take me seriously because, in their eyes, I was a sellout. Because they’d seen pictures of me at grand parties wearing my extra-large, extra-dark sunglasses purchased from Duane Reade. So I’d keep moving, spending my money in casinos all over Europe and becoming dissolute, and in so doing, letting my stateside businesses go to hell. And when it was time to make important decisions, my accountants would not be able to reach me.

       I’d lose all my money. I’d return to New York penniless and with syphilis, caught from my bounder husband who cheated on me constantly and stole my jewelry to give to his mistresses. I’d divorce him; it would be expensive. The lawyers would take everything. The disease would progress. I’d begin suffering hallucinations. Past, present, and future would all exist simultaneously, and I’d watch as distorted visions of my life played out on the disintegrating plaster walls of the women’s rooming house in midtown, Manhattan, where I’d be forced to take residence.

       I’d take my break fast in the dusty parlor, with its windows choked by coarse polyester curtains, in the company of other aged ladies whose lives, whose worlds, had somehow forgotten them. We’d each sit at our own tables across from no one. We’d each dress for dinner in our best jewels and Chanel suits—whatever we had left—trying our best to ignore the fact that our fine clothes were far superior to our shabby surroundings. We’d struggle to keep our backs straight, to keep our dignity in the sneering face of time.

       I’d work mightily to keep a sunny outlook, and I’d say to the concierge, “Good morning, Mr. Paul” (an address we’d settled on by way of a compromise—he asked that I call him by his first name, Paul, as he insisted was common among young people in this day and age, while I insisted that some level of formality be maintained). “Looks like it’s going to be a fine day,” I’d say. And he’d tip his hat, as I’d instructed him. “A good day indeed, Ms. Smyles.”

      I’d grow older. And feeling the desperation of my situation too much to bear, one morning, while going for my ritual walk around the block following breakfast, I’d purchase a small vial of poison and retreat to my room where I’d be found elegantly dressed the next day, or even the next one, or the one after that, by Paul the concierge, “Mr. Paul” as I knew him, who’d ordered housekeeping to unlock my door after I failed to show up, yet again, to breakfast. There I’d lie—my hat pinned artfully, my white gloves pristine, clutching an almost beautiful empty vial in my long hand, a hand too delicate for toil, too delicate for this world and all its corruptions—dead at twenty-three and a half. I took out a vendor’s license from New York State and named my company “The Emperor’s New Shirt” because all was image and image was all. And then I tried to sell them.

      I visited two stores where I was told my price point was too high. Because I had printed only a few hundred, the cost of production had been steep. The fewer you printed, the more they cost to make. If I’d printed more, I could have paid less per shirt, but I couldn’t afford to print more on spec when there was no guarantee I’d be able to sell them in the first place. I was in a bind—I