Green Room (2)
2.
By the time Mandy puts up the lunch break sign my hand is aching. The line’s died down which is per usual mid-afternoon. People leave the convention center in search of lunch that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. The queue will pop up again ’round 4 four a couple of hours if I’m lucky, then die off to nothing sometime before closing.
Mandy stays at the booth to field the occasional question, but I’m free. I wiggle through the mass of con-goers. It’s like swimming upstream no matter which direction you’re heading. The Exhibitors Hall is a maze of merchants each crammed into 8×8 cubicles. A few of them know me and wave. I wiggle my fingers in return and thank God I don’t have to make a living selling bobble-headed action figures.
The Exhibitors Hall empties into a massive solarium. Past the glass walls its raining on Manhattan. The Incredible Hulk glowers down from a ginormous banner above my head. The solarium smells of popcorn and boiled hot dogs. People of all sorts perch on three levels of staircase, resting their feet. I have to squeeze between them as I ascend to the first floor. It’s definitely a fire hazard, but no one seems to care. I have to step over Mjolner because Thor’s too busy sorting Pokemon cards to move his hammer out of my way.
The guest green room is on the ground floor, wedged against the north escalator. It’s curtained off from the rest of the con in swathes of black, but anyone riding the escalator can look right down into the make-shift lounge and see what their favorite comic artist is having for lunch. I show the door attendant my badge and slip past the curtains.
It’s lunchtime – the lounge is full. Three full tables are taken up by a bunch of author types. They’re boisterous, and talking George R. R. Martin. In my experience author types are always talking George R. R. Martin, exactly the way my Baptist grandma and her knitting group are always discussing Jesus. Like they’re dying for a healing from the man himself.
The other two tables are a mix of comics industry. I know most of the artists by name. We’re all in the same game, all of us beholden to ink.
Con hospitality has laid out a generous lunch buffet. I’ve got a difficult relationship with food, but my blood sugar will tank if I don’t eat, so I grab a paper plate and scan the goods. Potatoes and some sort of fish in those fancy silver warmers. Sandwiches and slices of cheese on platters. Grapes that actually look fresh and have already been pretty much picked over. And chocolate cake pre-sliced and offered up on little paper doilies.
I choose fish and grapes and two slices of cheese: cheddar and Swiss. I grab a bottle of water and take my forage to an empty chair. I fold the slice of Swiss in half and nibble. A few people riding the escalator are aiming their phones down onto our heads but most pretend they don’t see us enjoying real food for free.
The chair next to me sighs as Deadpool throws herself into it. Like the furry in the deer suit, she’s pulled off her mask so I can see her grin. She positions a plate loaded with mini chocolate cakes on her knee and gives me a two fingered salute.
“Thought I heard your buzz earlier,” she says. “Hard to know for sure if it was you working, past that crowd around your booth. Should have known by the line.”
I turn my slice of cheese sideways, nibble, quirk my brows. “Artic Fox hit Page Six yesterday.”
Deadpool’s name when she’s not cosplaying is Grace, and we used to have sex together, before we decided we were better off as friends without benefits. She inks indy comics when she’s not working her father’s Chelsea art gallery. She’d sell her soul to Marvel if she had half a chance but we both know she’s not good enough quite yet.
“Yeah, well, you’re buying tonight.” She scrapes chocolate frosting off cake with a finger and sticks the finger in her mouth, humming pleasure. I set down my cheese and start in on the grapes. “Cleo’s after close?”
“It’ll be packed.”
“So what?” When Grace smiles she looks like a pixie, all dimples and freckles beneath a bright red fringe. “Extra pickings for moi.”
“You’re insatiable.”
“Too fucking true.” She sighs, and scrapes away more frosting. “Stalked the freight elevator to the celebrity green all morning and never saw anyone interesting, not even once fucking Ryan Reynolds. I need Cleo’s tonight.”
“Okay.” There’s no point in arguing that I’d rather go home, have a beer, and sleep. I’m Grace’s wingman, the guy who keeps her from getting in a cab with the wrong sort after she’s had too many martinis. Some months it’s a full time job.
“Great. See you!” She bounces out of the chair with more energy than she dropped into it, newly revitalized by sugar. I wait until she’s gone back to the comic clique and then stand up and dump my plate. My face looks back at me from a mirror hung on the wall over the trash can – too much eye, too little nose, the cleft in my chin. When I’m working I keep my hair out of my eyes with one of those elastic headbands, and the struggle to grow facial hair is real so the furry wasn’t wrong – I look closer to 18 than 23.
But at 23 I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars already banked, so there’s no real reason for complaint.
SKETCHBOOK is something I’m working on for fun, alongside my other more important deadlines (shhh, don’t tell). I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet. Might be fun to toss it out into the universe and see where it lands. I’ll update here occasionally, when I remember. Because who doesn’t want to read about a trans-masculine semi-famous ink artist named Hemingway, adventures on the SFF con circuit, and scandal in the NYC art world?
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