Iris the Mighty

The view from Maggie’s grimy window was worth getting up at 7:00 on a Sunday morning for. She stood still in her small New York apartment, shivering slightly despite her three layers of clothing and a steaming mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hands. A smile crept onto her face as she watched the city begin its day below her. You’d be with them right now, she thought as she watched people bustle along through the gray city streets before her. You’d be on your way to the theater, with two extra-hot soy lattes with extra foam balanced in one arm and Iris’s insane poodle in the other. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, trying to focus her attention back to the view. There was something about the wintery skeleton trees and hard yellow sun that settled her nerves. Tiny snowflakes gently blew past her window in the cold air, and for a moment she saw her whole life stretch itself out in front of her: she’d quit her job in the spring, when the show closed, and then go somewhere. Anywhere but here. Somewhere with glittering skeleton trees and snow that blankets everything. She’d move there and practice. For the first time, it would be just her and her violin. The two of them would practice together and breathe together, until she was good enough to come home and do it for real. With this thought, Maggie turned away from the window and contentedly took a sip of her coffee, which was already beginning to cool. She walked past the pictures her mother had insisted she hang up when she first moved in: a black and white one of her and her sister; one of her at age 9 at a school orchestra concert; one of Mickey, her dog back home. She thought of Iris’s dog; that tiny, white poodle with its own closet and fifteen different leashes. Iris had named him Stanford, after one of her childhood drivers. The poodle was an old, finicky thing, and always seemed to be trembling, whether from the cold or fear, Maggie didn’t know. Shaking her head, she turned away from the pictures, clinging tighter to her coffee mug. She lived in a damp box in New York City, but for the moment she felt lucky. She thought of the small bands of people hurrying along on the sidewalks below her, thick scarves pulled taught across their frosty faces. She was glad that, for at least a day, she wouldn’t be one of them. Today, she would eat everything in her fridge and watch all those movies she’d never gotten around to seeing. She would turn off her phone and push away all thoughts of work, of rabid poodles, and of Dame Iris Keene, who, she thought in spite of herself, was probably at that moment barking complicated coffee orders at a cowering intern, who had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. Laughing to herself, Maggie reached into her bag to turn off her cell phone. Right as her hand brushed against the smooth screen of her phone, it began to ring. The sound echoed shrilly around her quiet apartment. It reminded her of microphone feedback in an empty theater, and the sound hurt her ears just as much. With a hot feeling of dread churning in her stomach, she picked up her phone.                      “Hello?”                               “Maggie, hey. It’s Sam.”     “Oh, God,” Maggie groaned, closing her eyes. Visions of movies and snacks melted away like snow as her co-worker’s voice filled her ear. “You know I’m off today, right, Sam?”                      “Sorry,” Sam said, his voice pitying. “But it’s an emergency. It’s-"                       “-Iris,” Maggie finished, rubbing her temple with her free hand. “What did she do, now? Rip up her script? Throw her coffee at the wall? Kill an intern?”                              “No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that. That’s the problem.”                                   “What do you mean?”                                              “I mean, none of that happened because she’s not here.”                             Maggie stared blankly at the phone in her hand.                               “What do you mean, ‘she’s not here?’ Where is she? Is she sick, or something?”                             “No, she didn’t call in sick or anything. She just…never showed up.”                                             “But…but this is Iris we’re talking about. Dame Iris Keene, with the Tony awards and 7 ex-husbands and insane coffee orders. She hasn’t missed a day of work in her life.”                                “Well, she’s not here,” Sam said stupidly, and Maggie could almost see him scratching his head with the pencil he always had tucked behind his ear. “That’s why I called you. Tickets aren’t selling, you know. If she misses even one show because she’s having one of her signature temper tantrums…” He trailed off. Maggie knew what he was getting at. “Look, you’re her First Assistant. Any ideas?” He finished lamely.                                                                                                        “Um…” Maggie hurried to the window and gazed out at the city stretched out before her like a living map. Once the fact of Iris’s disappearance sunk in, Maggie found that she really wasn’t that surprised. Iris Keene thought she was the Queen of Drama, and Maggie certainly wasn’t going to question that. Her disappearance only strengthened that fact. But what had made her run off? The sounds of the crowds below seeped through Maggie’s thick window; people shouting, talking, laughing, coughing. Iris Keene’s audience, unaware of their favorite star’s disappearance. She imagined Iris, alone somewhere among the faceless crowds who didn’t know her name. It would probably kill her.                                                     “Well?” Sam was beginning to sound panicked. “Maggie?”             She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t stop thinking about Iris all alone in the cold New York City streets. It was all so gray out there, outside her window. For the first time, the trees in the distance looked dead. The streets were caked with piles of sediment and ice, and the people below hurried across it as if the thought of slipping never once entered their minds. Maggie wanted to throw open her window and scream, “Stop running! Stop running! You’ll fall!” She pictured Iris shuffling along the sidewalks, shouting at innocent children and shrieking orders at anybody with ears. She could see Iris dragging tiny Stanford in a huge fluffy sweater past corner stores and delis, unsure of where she was and taking down everyone who dared cross her path. Maggie placed her coffee mug on the table next to her and tried to think rationally.                                  “She can’t be just wandering the streets aimlessly, or anything,” Maggie said into her phone.                                                 “What?”                               “Has anyone checked her apartment yet?”               “Oh,” Sam said, a little quietly. He paused, and Maggie could hear the muffled sounds of him talking to someone nearby. “No, no one has checked the apartment. And, honestly, I’m not sure we’d be able to find anyone willing to-"                            “I’ll do it,” Maggie said, already hurrying over to her closet and pulling out her boots. “I don’t mind. I’ll do it.”                                                                “Alright,” Sam said, obviously relieved. “But it’ll be our heads if she’s not back by show time, Maggie.”                                                                Maggie paused before replying. “Yeah,” she said quietly, and pressed the red ‘end call’ button before Sam could even say goodbye. She threw on her winter coat, wound a woolen scarf tightly around her neck, grabbed her bag from the kitchen table, and headed out the front door.                         The wind clawed at her face as she walked carefully down her front stoop and onto the streets she had been observing all morning. With a small trickle of fear, she realized that she had no idea what she was doing. She must have been crazy, saying she’d go to Iris’s apartment. It was like every horrible thing Iris had ever said to her-about her clothes, her hobbies, her hopes, her dreams- had vanished from her mind and was replaced with the disturbing image of Iris, alone. Iris was not meant to be alone. Maggie knew that for sure. Of all the things she didn’t know in the world, the one thing she did know was that while Dame Iris Keene may be a phenomenally talented old b***h, she was still human.                                           The journey uptown seemed to take forever. Although she had traversed the way to Iris’s apartment hundreds of times before, the trip felt different this time. Maggie felt an incredible weight on her chest, as if every worry she ever had had piled onto her heart. All the way, Maggie tried to push images of Iris’s possible fate from her mind: Iris, draped dramatically across her velvet fainting couch, one hand on her heart, another hand barely clutching an empty pill bottle; Iris, lying stick-still on the ground in a pool of her own blood, her door pushed in and all of her jewelry missing; Iris, face down in her bathtub; Iris, bound to a chair with Stanford’s leashes, Stanford himself barking weakly from under the bed…or, worst of all, Iris, wandering the city alone, hopeless beyond all reason, finally defeated by the scathing reviews of her most recent performance.                         She couldn’t get to Iris’s apartment building fast enough. Panting despite the bitter cold, she flew through the front doors and stopped, rather abruptly, in front of the security guard’s desk.               “ISDAMEIRISKEENEIN?” she blurted out, shoving her Staff ID across the desk toward the security guard. He blinked down at her.                 “Excuse me, miss?” He squinted and turned his head so his right ear was facing her. “Didn’t quite catch what you said.”                                        Letting out an exasperated huff, Maggie dropped her ID onto the desk and ran up the stairs leading to Iris’s apartment. With every step she took, another ten, twenty steps seemed to follow. She knew she was being illogical, but she had to know. For some reason even she couldn’t explain, the thought of never seeing the annoyed look on a barista’s face when asking for one of Iris’s coffee orders again filled her with a kind of sadness she didn’t know she possessed.                                      Finally, the polished door came into view. It was everything Maggie could do not to slam into the front door as she approached it. Knocking loudly, she called, “Hello? Ms. Keene? It’s me, Margaret.”                                                                  There was no answer from inside the apartment. An eerie silence pervaded the empty hallway. Panic pierced Maggie’s chest as she fumbled in her bag for the spare key Iris had given her. With a shaking hand she plunged it into the key hole and ripped open the door.                             She didn’t recognize it immediately, the crying. At first she thought that Stanford was choking on something, but as she slowly walked further into the apartment it hit her with a jolt of realization: Dame Iris Keene was huddled in her nightdress in the corner of her bedroom, rocking softly, cradling a small white object and sobbing as Maggie had never heard anyone sob before. “Ms.-Ms. Keene?”                                                    Iris Keene suddenly stopped rocking. Outside her bedroom window, a hush seemed to befall the streets below, as if the people outside knew that something horrible had happened and were just as speechless as Iris seemed to be. Maggie didn’t know what to do. She just stared at Iris, floored by the woman huddled on the ground in front of her.                                 Iris was the kind of woman who always gave off the impression that she belonged in the black-and-white movies of the past, where she had gotten her start. She was a mighty woman, praised by the Queen of England, known for her grace in the theater and her lack of grace everywhere else. She was a force of nature, certifiably insane, and almost impossible to work for. She was also cradling a dead dog in her arms.                                                               Quickly realizing this, Maggie pushed aside her shock and stepped forward towards Iris’s lumpy shape. Looking into her eyes, Maggie saw they were wide and raw. Her skin was pale and wrinkled, hanging loosely under her eyes. This was an Iris Keene Maggie had never seen before, perhaps this was an Iris no one, not even Iris’s 7 ex-husbands, had seen before. Maggie knelt down gently in front of Iris’s trembling form, and said, “Iris?” Iris’s eyes bored into Maggie’s.                 “He’s d-dead.”                                 “I know.”                                                                  They were silent for a minute. Then Iris spoke.                                     “I woke up this morning to feed him and he-he…” She started rocking again. “…and he wasn’t moving. I shook him, but he wasn’t moving. I whistled and made him his favorite meal and called out to him but he still wasn’t moving.”                                                Maggie slowly unwound her scarf from around her neck. “He was very old, Ms. Keene,” she said softly. Iris sniffed.                    “I know. But he was my baby, Margaret. He’s all I had.” She looked down at the unmoving mass in her arms, and fresh tears began to drip down her cheeks. “I’m not meant to be alone.”                    Maggie crawled over to Iris, slowly, unsure of what this new Iris would do if approached. Outside, the sounds of people shouting, talking, laughing, and living once more floated up and through the window. A light snow was drifting through the slate-gray sky, each snowflake blowing in its own direction and melting wherever it landed. Maggie put her arm around the mightiest woman in show business and watched the snow fall, thinking about her violin, her world travels, and the dreams she wasn’t even sure she wanted to come true.

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[Emma Joy]

By the way, I'm totally aware that the format got all messed up. Hope you like it regardless!