All My Colors

by David Quantick

  He got back in the Volvo, arranged his maps on the front seat, and nosed out onto the highway. He had time to find out where he was appearing and—he thought with a sudden, unusual thrill—time to hit a truck stop, pick up a New York Times and see just exactly how famous he was.

  One of the great mysteries in life is that you can never find the newspaper you want when you really need it. It seemed to Todd as he scoured the periodical section of the truck stop that they had every paper and magazine known to mankind apart from the one he actually wanted. There were local papers, national papers, even foreign papers—Todd was convinced he saw a lone copy of Pravda in among the USA Todays—but no New York Times.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the clerk. “Do you have the New York Times?”

  The clerk stared at him.

  “No, then,” said Todd, and left.

  It was the same wherever he went. No truck stop, no roadside diner—Todd even searched a drive-in McDonald’s from top to bottom for a discarded copy—nothing, and nowhere. Perhaps there was some turf war between the Chicago papers and New York. Perhaps there was an East Coast newspaper strike. Todd had, frankly, no idea. He got back in the Volvo and drove on.

  By the time he reached Chicago, his unspoken fantasies—A tickertape parade? For me? You shouldn’t have!—were packed away, and all he could think about was the bathroom break he should have taken forty minutes ago. At the first stop light, Todd glanced at his map. He was only a few blocks from his hotel. Todd hoped it was a decent hotel and not some motel that had somehow crawled into the city to die.

  The Randall wasn’t a fleapit and it didn’t look like it had ever crawled anywhere. Even as Todd pulled up outside to see if there was somewhere to park, a man in a top hat was tapping on the Volvo’s window to get his attention.

  “May we park your car, sir?” said the man.

  “Okay,” said Todd, wondering how the man was going to get his top hat inside the car. But as he stepped out, Top Hat gave his keys to a much smaller man, who slid into the Volvo and drove away with enviable ease.

  “Is this your only bag?” said Top Hat, and, without waiting for an answer, picked up Todd’s grip and strode into the hotel with it. Todd followed, nearly losing an arm in the revolving door.

  * * *

  Reception was a huge counter. It reminded Todd of a late night movie he’d seen where the gateway to Heaven was like a huge hotel lobby. The counter seemed to stretch from one side of the street to the other, and was occupied, apparently, by former models. One of them smiled at Todd as he shambled up to her. He gave her his name and she ran a fountain pen down a list of printed names.

  “Oh,” she said. “There appears to be a—one moment please.”

  She picked up a phone and, still smiling at Todd without actually making eye contact, said, “Hello, this is reception. I have a Mr. Milstead here but—I see.”

  She put the phone down and cranked up her smile to such a degree that Todd wondered if her face would actually split in half.

  “Your room has been changed,” she said. “Please follow Michael.”

  Todd turned to see a smiling man with one hand on a huge baggage trolley. On the trolley, looking ashamed to be there, was Todd’s grip. Todd followed Michael to the lift.

  After a very long time, the lift stopped and the doors opened. The corridor in front of Todd was a testament to the power of carpet. There was a lot of it, and it went on for miles. Eventually, just when Todd thought all he would ever hear was the soft hiss of the baggage cart’s wheels, Michael took out a key, opened a door and led the way into a tiny room.

  Todd inhaled until his ribs were creaking as he tried to squeeze in next to Michael and the baggage cart.

  “If you could just wait here in the anteroom,” said Michael, “I’ll take the cart in first.” And he pushed open another door.

  Todd stepped in after Michael, and found himself in the largest room he’d ever seen that didn’t actually have a sports game taking place inside it. There were several sofas dotted about, as if grazing, some escritoires in case the guest wanted to invite a few pals back to do some writing, and a huge TV that looked more like a glass-fronted truck than an actual television.

  Todd noticed something.

  “There’s no bed,” he said.

  Michael gave him an odd look, and extended an arm like a graceful traffic cop. He was pointing at yet another doorway, inside which was a bedroom containing a bed so large, so wide and—Todd soon discovered—so deep that it seemed to compel sleep rather than encourage it.

  Michael showed Todd how a few things worked—the TV, the curtains, the air conditioning—and would, Todd felt, have gone on showing Todd how things worked—the windows, the bath, the pen and pad—if Todd hadn’t suddenly remembered something and hastily pulled out his wallet.

  “Thanks,” he said and stuffed a crumpled note into Michael’s hand. Michael nodded and was gone before Todd could register that he had just given him his last fifty dollars.

  * * *

  Todd did all the things people do in penthouse suites. He ran the bath, and emptied all the little bottles in the bathroom into it. He changed channels on the TV while eating pretzels in a toweling robe. He took a tiny bottle of bourbon out of the minibar, looked at the tariff and put it back again. Finally he unpacked his clothes, filled the washbasin with hot soapy water and dropped in a pair of dirty socks and his boxer shorts. It was only then that he felt able to lie down on the enormous bed and, before his head sank into the squashy grip of the enormous pillows, remember to pick up the phone and call Sara.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Todd? Is that you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I recognized the heavy breathing.”

  Todd laughed.

  “How are you, Sara?”

  “Oh, you know. Just trying to make my house look like a home again. I swear, I haven’t been outside all day.”

  “I wish you were here.”

  “Believe me, I wish I was there too. How’s it going?”

  Todd looked around the room. It seemed to have no horizon.

  “Okay, I think,” he said. “All right so far, anyway.”

  Then he saw it. A low table, with a stack of magazines on it. Magazines, and newspapers.

  “Good, I’m glad. So where are you now? Chicago, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Todd, vaguely. He was on his feet now, still holding the phone but moving toward the table.

  “How’s the hotel?”

  “Good. It’s good,” said Todd. He could almost reach the table, but the phone cord was too short. He lay the receiver on the bed and crossed the short distance to the table. On top of the pile were a couple of newspapers.

  The top one was the Chicago Sun-Tribune, but the one below it… Yes, thought Todd. The New York Times. He sat on the bed and was about to open it when he remembered the telephone.

  “—not sure if I’m actually going to go ahead with it,” Sara was saying. “What do you think?”

  “Um,” said Todd. “What do you think you should do?”

  Silence for a second.

  “You’re tired,” said Sara. “Maybe I should call back later.”

  “No!” Todd almost shouted. “I got distracted. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you alone in there?” asked Sara, teasingly.

  “Of course,” said Todd. “There’s nobody here but me. I swear. Listen.”

  And he held the telephone mouthpiece up high.

  “Well, that’d stand up in court,” Sara said.

  “Ho ho,” said Todd. His eyes lit on the New York Times again.

  “Listen, seriously, we should talk about the house,” Sara said. “But not now. You’re tired and I know you have an event.”

  “Sure thing,” said Todd. “I better go. I—”

  Another pause.

  “You what?” said Sara.

  “I… will see you soon,” said Todd.

  “And I will see y
ou soon,” Sara said, good-humouredly. “Bye, Todd.”

  She put the phone down.

  “Okay then,” said Todd, and opened the New York Times.

  The book reviews were snuggled away in the heart of the paper, but it wasn’t too hard for Todd to find what he was looking for. It was opposite a full page ad for a stage production of Blithe Spirit, and it was easy for Todd to find because right in the middle of the page was the same photograph of Todd that had been in the Beacon (the same, except that in the Beaconfused, the image had looked cool and stylish, whereas in the Times, Todd’s picture looked like a hick who’d recently tunneled out of a hay bale). There was a large headline—”A Different Rainbow”—and a whole lot of words. In all his years of reading reviews, essays, and theses, Todd had never seen so many words aimed at just one book. He set about consuming the piece.

  Ten minutes later, his mind ticking over, Todd was sated. According to the reviewer, All My Colors was the book of the year, if not the decade. It combined a modern attitude to life and society with an almost arch 1950s feel, “almost as if,” the reviewer had written, “Mr. Milstead’s novel had been transported from an earlier time, with a frank contemporary take on the war between men and women running through it like a seam of anachronistic yet fitting iron.” Todd wasn’t sure if iron could be anachronistic yet fitting but he didn’t really mind. The short gist of the very long review was as Nora had said: the reviewer thought the book was great, and wanted everyone to know that. Todd didn’t know the circulation figures of the Times, but he guessed that an awful lot of people would know about All My Colors now.

  Todd looked at his watch. He had just enough time to shower and change before walking to the venue for his event that night. As he dressed afterward, he thought of calling Sara back—hey, if you get a moment, you might want to step out and pick up a New York Times for yourself. Oh, no reason—but decided she’d find out soon enough. Besides, he could pick up a few copies of the paper before tomorrow, as souvenirs.

  Todd took the elevator down to street level and walked across the lobby. He wondered if anybody was looking at him and thinking, hey, I just saw a picture of that guy in the paper or even wow, isn’t that Todd Milstead, America’s hottest new author? He doubted it, but it was fun to imagine.

  * * *

  Tonight’s venue was a bookstore by the name of Volume, and it was apparently not far from the old Water Tower. Todd located it easily. Volume lived up to its name by being enormous, at least four storeys high and dominating the small plaza that it overlooked. Todd strolled in, feeling reasonably relaxed. Volume had a large magazine section and Todd couldn’t help walking past the newspapers and directing a mental hello at them, like an old friend seen out of the corner of one’s eye.

  Taped to a pillar was a picture of Todd—the usual one, he thought, mock-jaded—with the words TODD MILSTEAD AUTHOR OF ALL MY COLORS 7:30 MEZZANINE. Todd located a map of the store, found an escalator, and ascended to the mezzanine.

  Todd had always thought that a mezzanine was a kind of half floor, more like a landing that had got slightly ahead of itself. But this mezzanine was almost regal in its ambitions. Bookshelf after bookshelf stretched out in front of Todd, interrupted only by outbreaks of couches. There was, Todd noted, a sort of canteen area, serving coffee and pastries for the benefit of people who liked to get food on their reading matter. And at the back of the mezzanine, in front of a large picture window overlooking the Tower, some people were setting up a microphone in front of a lectern.

  Todd looked at his watch. Seven P.M. Guess some people don’t read the papers, part of his brain grouchily announced to itself. Oh, have you been in the paper? responded another part of his brain. Wondering where everybody—anybody—was, Todd walked over to the lectern.

  “He’s here!” cried a young woman in enormous red glasses, walking toward him at the same time. Her companions stopped what they were doing, and moved toward Todd almost as if they planned to throw him to the ground. Instead they merely surrounded him and—it seemed to Todd—just stood there and admired him somehow.

  “I’m Leah Hansen,” said the woman in red glasses, “and I am so glad you could make it.”

  “Yeah,” said a chubby man in a Cars T-shirt, “some of us thought that you’d get a better offer. On account of the Times review.”

  “It wasn’t that bad a review, was it?” said Todd.

  Everyone laughed as soon as they realized Todd was making a joke.

  “We better get you in the office before the masses descend,” said Leah.

  “Where are they?” asked Todd. “These masses? I didn’t see anyone as I came in.”

  Leah smiled. She led Todd to a large window on their right.

  “That’s because you used the front entrance,” she said. “The cops told us to make everyone stand in line by the side entrance. Look down.”

  Todd looked down. There were at least a hundred people down there.

  “That’s a lot of people,” he said.

  If Leah thought the author of All My Colors might have had something more insightful to add, she didn’t say anything.

  “That’s just the advance ticket holders,” she said. “People have been calling all day. We’re also expecting a big walkup. Which brings me on to my final point—”

  Leah nodded at a large table nearby. Todd took a moment to let it sink in. It was piled to chest height with hardback copies of All My Colors.

  “I really hope you like signing books,” she said.

  * * *

  Todd sat in the office with Leah’s copy of the new Joan Didion, which he found confusing, but the only other reading matter was his New York Times, and he was damned if he was going to be seen reading that in public (besides, his eidetic memory was almost back at full strength now, and he found himself quite able to recall whole chunks of the review).

  Leah brought him a Coke and said, “I’m going to say a few words to introduce you and then you’re on, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure,” said Todd. “When?”

  “Now,” Leah said.

  * * *

  Later, Todd could only think of the evening as a movie, the kind where everything unfolds in slow motion with elegiac music underneath all of the action.

  As he walked across the carpet, the bookstore staff moved back to let him through, applauding as he neared the lectern. Leah said a few words and, at the sound of his name, there was a small eruption of clapping and cheering.

  It was the best moment of his short career.

  Todd took his place behind the lectern, smiled, pulled his notes from his pocket, and held them up semi-humorously as if to signal to the audience that this wasn’t going to take all night. He looked over at Leah.

  “I left my darn book at home,” he said, and got a burst of this guy’s all right laughter.

  Then he placed his hands on either side of the lectern, and took a good look at the audience. There were plenty of them, mostly young, which was good, but one or two older people, a real mixture of men and women, and not all white faces either.

  “I guess you all get the New York Times in Chicago,” he said, and earned himself an easy, but warm, shot of laughter. “Okay,” he went on, after the laughing died down. “I promise not to keep mentioning my full-page rave review.”

  There was more laughter, which Todd could see was also enough laughter.

  “Good evening,” he said. “My name is Todd Milstead, I’m from DeKalb, Illinois”—he paused for, and got, a whoop from a college boy—”and I am here tonight to read from my novel, All My Colors.”

  The mention of the book’s title created a sudden stillness in the room. A snatch of poetry came into Todd’s head, some bit of Victorian English nonsense. There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night. Todd had no idea what a close was, but tonight, in this room, there was definitely a breathless hush. And it was all for him.

  “I’m going to begin tonight by assuming that not everybody has had a chance to read the boo
k,” he said. “So, instead of standing up here and explaining the whole thing, scene by scene, I’m just going to read the opening pages. If that’s all right with everyone.”

  The room nodded.

  “Okay,” said Todd, and opened the book. “All My Colors, Chapter One…”

  * * *

  He finished the first reading. The audience was quiet, and for a moment, Todd thought he’d lost them, or maybe they just hated him and his book. But then he realized some people were smiling, and some were even crying, and then the room was swamped in a wave, that was exactly the right word, a rolling wave of applause, and cheering, and foot-stamping (and, of course, whooping from Whooping Guy).

  “Wow,” said Todd. “I can’t wait to hear what you think of Chapter Two.”

  Warm, relaxed laughter followed that remark, as though everybody in the room was an old friend. First we take Chicago, thought Todd.

  “I’m kidding, of course,” he said. “I have no intention of reading the whole book. That’s your job. What I’m going to do now is—”

  Todd consulted his notes. They were long, and detailed, and, if he was being honest, incoherent. He made a snap decision, and raised his eyes from the paper.

  “Talk about stuff,” Todd said. “By which I mean, what this book is to me. Where it came from, how it came into existence, and how it fits into the world today.”

  If there was one thing Todd was good at, it was talking. Which is what he did, and did it so well that some of the audience that night wondered how he was able to keep such a distance from his subject matter. Why, they might have said to themselves as they lined up for Todd’s autograph on their books, it was almost as if he was talking about someone else’s book.

  Todd talked. And talked. And talked, until Leah looked in his direction and tapped her watch.

  “Wow,” said Todd. “It seems I have gabbed away half the night. I better read my second extract.”