12 June 1996
I have been doing shifts at the magazine three days a week, nominally sub-editing listings and theatre notes, actually learning how envy behaves when given a desk. Her name is Caroline. She is younger than I am, which is unnecessary, and has just sold a story to a Sunday paper.
The office loves her in the way offices love efficient miracles. She files clean copy, laughs at the editor's jokes, never has laddered tights, and receives telephone calls from people who use the word "piece" as if it were a key to a private garden. I dislike her most when she is kind.
This is not attractive in me. I know that. It is also not imaginary. Success changes the weather around a person. When Caroline walks past, editors look up. When I walk past, someone asks whether I have checked the comma style on the cabaret listings.
At lunch she asked, with genuine interest, how my manuscript was going. I nearly told the truth. Instead I said, "Slowly, but usefully," which is the sort of sentence writers use when the animal is bleeding under the table.
I am trying to make the envy useful. A clean flame. A propulsion. But some days it is only acid in a cup.