The Editor

by Steven Rowley

  “I . . . sort of figured that.”

  “She wants the emphasis to be on you. On the book.”

  “She didn’t come to yours either?”

  David tosses back the last of his drink. “Ah, no.”

  I see Mark approaching with two glasses of champagne.

  “Say something quick about Jean Harlow. Died young, right?”

  “Twenty-six,” David says, caught off guard by my breakneck change in direction.

  Mark is upon us, so I laugh like something is funny, even though it’s horribly timed: There’s nothing funny about dying at twenty-six. “David, do you know Matt?”

  Mark hands me a glass of champagne, annoyed. “Mark.”

  “Mark. Right.” I feign horror. “This night.” I make a gesture like this is all so wild and I couldn’t possibly be expected to keep anything straight.

  “I know Mark,” David says, and they shake hands.

  “Jean Harlow died at twenty-six,” I tell Mark, employing this new information.

  Mark nods.

  “So young,” David says.

  I turn to Mark. “Jeez, if you were Jean Harlow you’d only have five or six years left.” I grimace, punctuating the thought with a silent yikes.

  David, catching on, leans in and adds, “Harlow was an American film actress from the 1930s.”

  “Yes, yes, I get it. I’m young,” Mark says, already tired of the whole routine. “In many circles that would be considered an asset.”

  “Huh,” I utter, as if the thought of youth being desirable had never occurred to me. A woman who is the spitting image of Alexis Carrington saunters by. It’s only after she passes that I turn to catch a good look at her. “Was that Joan Collins?”

  Mark and David shrug in unison.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to say hi to someone.” David shakes my hand and heads for the makeshift bar.

  When we’re alone, Mark says, “‘Matt’? Very funny.”

  “I thought so.”

  Mark studies me in a way he hasn’t since our first night having drinks at the Royalton. “Who are you tonight?”

  I take a long, slow sip of champagne and give the only answer I have. “Who am I on any night?”

  Mark squints with something adjacent to admiration. Respect, maybe. “I don’t know. But not this.”

  He takes my hand and we weave through the crowd, and as he pulls me forward the room spins and I realize I may be a little bit drunk. Faces pass in a blur, but we are invisible to most of them, the Friends of Jackie. Laughter crescendos and there’s a bizarrely timed cackle. I hear the toasting of glasses, the rustling of uncomfortable clothes, the buzz of gossip, the tap of dress shoes, which may be my own.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Bathroom. You like bathrooms.”

  “I like hotels,” I clarify, worried Mark may have drawn the wrong conclusion from our previous encounter.

  Without looking back, he says, “This is a hotel.”

  I crane my neck to remember where I am. “This is an office building.” Moving forward, looking backward, the champagne further weakens my resolve. Is this an office building? “It’s your office building,” I say, mustering the last bit of certainty I have.

  We reach the men’s room and Mark kicks open the door and gives a final yank that all but twirls me inside like we’re doing some unrehearsed Viennese waltz. I think of the painting of ballerinas in Jackie’s old office and how ungraceful I am in comparison: I almost slam into a sink. The door closes slowly behind us and the party becomes little more than a muffled din. Mark pushes the three stall doors open to make sure we’re alone.

  “Shut up,” he says.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were about to.”

  He’s got me there. All the glorious confidence I’d displayed out there dissipates when we are alone.

  “You like this. Attention,” he continues.

  “From you?”

  “From everyone.”

  I bite my lip and then slowly nod. How do I explain that the people here mean nothing to me? That everyone I want to be here isn’t? I can’t. Not without some sort of dithering reply. He’s standing very close and my heart beats faster and it may be the champagne, or it may be the twenty-five sad push-ups I did before the party, but my chest feels tight and I think of my mother and how she felt on those drives with Frank Latimer, when everything was charged and dynamic, and how easy it is in any given moment to be weak.

  And how much I want to be strong.

  Mark presses against me and it becomes clear the dizziness I feel is from the blood draining from my head and flooding to my groin.

  “This is”—I pause, letting that hang as the most existential of statements before adding—“wrong.”

  “I know. That’s what makes it so fun.”

  Mark kisses my neck and I grab his hair—not mashing him closer, not pulling him away. His lips are soft and his stubble the perfect rough and my dick is now completely hard and I stumble against the sink and when I reach out to brace myself I must hit something because water comes flowing out of the faucet.

  “Oh, God,” I whisper.

  I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him in toward me until we are pressed so tightly together there isn’t even room for air between us. I can feel the stiffness in his pants with my own and I press myself even harder against him and the world is spinning with possibility and I kiss him full on the mouth. For no real reason other than I’m drunk and he’s there. He showed up. He expressed interest.

  The kiss isn’t even that good. His tongue does this overeager lizard thing; I try to kiss by example, but it’s futile to get him to stop. I’m already bored of it when the door opens. Startled, I try to pull back, away from Mark, but I can’t really and I dip the elbow of my sleeve under the water and instead push him forward. I glance at my sopping-wet elbow patch before we both look up, busted.

  It’s Daniel.

  FUCK.

  Mark pulls back and does his best to hide behind the door. But it’s no use.

  “Hi.” My voice drips with guilt.

  “There you are.” Daniel is still trying to register what he’s seen.

  “You made it!” I try to sound both casual and like I’m excited to see him. I hold out my elbow. “I spilled.” As if that lie is any sort of explanation.

  “I’ll come back,” Daniel says, and retreats out the door.

  “No! There’s no . . . Stay!” I’m fumbling with myself, attempting to diminish the obvious bulge in my pants. What fresh hell. I glare at Mark. “Goddammit, Matt.”

  I burst through the door and reenter the party. I can see Daniel across the room, headed for the exit. This time, for whatever reason, I am not invisible. As I race after him, three people stop me to offer congratulations.

  “You’re wonderful.”

  “You must feel so proud.”

  “Tonight is your crowning achievement!”

  Thank you, thank you, thank you; I make gestures promising I’ll return. I literally peel one woman’s hand off my arm as I try to barrel through.

  When I reach the hall, I see the farthest bank of elevator doors start to close. I shove my arm inside the car just as the doors close on my wet elbow before a bell rings indignantly and they are triggered to reopen. Daniel is facing the back of the elevator, but there’s a mirror so I can read the anger on his face.

  “Don’t go. Not like this.”

  “Why should I stay?”

  I furiously backpedal. “It was nothing. A stupid slipup. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Oh, it’s not?”

  “You don’t even believe in monogamy.”

  “That doesn’t mean I believe in being lied to!”

  “You know what? This is partially on you. You never g
ave a damn about this book. Him? At least he’s interested in my work!” For a hot second I actually think I can get away with blaming this on Daniel.

  He meets my gaze in the mirror. “Your work, your work. Always so consumed with fixing your book.”

  “That’s right! What’s wrong with that?”

  Daniel spins around. “Why don’t you fix your life!”

  “What?”

  “I know you’re going through some shit, and I’m sorry about that, I really am. I have given you a wide berth to process it. But really. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “Daniel . . .”

  “Not the man I fell in love with, that’s for sure.”

  “Daniel, please.”

  “YOU’RE NOT!” Daniel yells, and it catches the attention of several partygoers who have spilled out into the hall. I want to protest, to try to explain. I look over at the other guests. I deserve that. I almost say it out loud, but they pretend not to notice me. One man goes as far as to check a pager that hasn’t beeped.

  “Okay.”

  “So why don’t you figure that out.”

  The elevator alarm sounds, I’ve held it open too long. Several other guests appear in the entry to see what all the commotion is about. Daniel spins around to push my hand away from the doors and they start to close. I see him point angrily at me and he looks like Uncle Sam. “Don’t come home tonight.”

  An Uncle Sam who doesn’t want me.

  “Daniel!”

  I leap to press the down button, but it’s too late; Daniel is gone.

  I press the button a dozen more times, hoping it has magical powers to erase the last three minutes, hoping that the doors will reopen and Daniel will arrive fresh from his play and he will be so excited to see me there waiting for him. That what just happened was a cautionary vision, a glimpse from some future party that hasn’t actually been written.

  Of course it isn’t and none of this happens. Pushing an elevator button dozens of times in rapid succession only serves to make you feel like an asshole. I am an asshole. My elbow is wet. I hate my fucking jacket. I hate what I’ve done to Daniel. I hate that no one I care about is here. I hate the excuses I make. I hate that I feel like a prisoner at my own party. Can I leave? Are there rules? Will I be blacklisted? Will I ever publish another book? Do I want to publish another book?

  Ding.

  It’s the elevator behind me. As the doors start to part, before they can fully slide open, I desperately say, “Daniel,” and imagine how happy I would be to see him even if he only came back to yell at me more and tell me what a horrible person I’ve become. I could tell him how much I really do love him, that I realize that now, that these past few months I’ve been an insufferable jerk. That it’s not genetic, that I am responsible for my own choices, that I am deeply, deeply sorry. I spin around, hoping to see his face. But it’s not Daniel who emerges.

  I stand perfectly still, frozen in shock, and everything melts away. I look at the woman standing in front of me, clothes not fresh off the runways of Paris but decidedly off the rack, hair not in a flawless helmet but mussed as if she were lost or confused. She looks just as petrified as I must, and it’s all I can do to whisper.

  “Mom.”

  ◆ THIRTY-THREE ◆

  We walk down the long, empty corridor of my mother’s Midtown hotel in total silence; all I can hear is her dress, the amplified rustling of coarse, synthetic fabric. A lightbulb is out or I’m seeing a dark orbital spot and an imminent migraine will be the price I pay for three hours of nervously pounding champagne and holding in tears. The longer we walk, the lengthier the hallway seems to get and the more I expect to run into the twins from The Shining. “Come play with us, Danny,” they’ll say, and it will make me long for Daniel even more.

  “Where is your room?”

  My mother points to the very end of the hall.

  The walls are beige, the carpet is a darker beige, everything is some sort of beige except for the discarded room service trays placed just outside people’s doors. But even the half-eaten meals are largely in bread bowls or burger buns, or the remnants of some unfortunate chowder, so count them as beige too. It’s not like the party was the height of glamour, but this is some kind of opposite bookend. My mother’s room is the very farthest from the elevator, and when we get to her door she fishes endlessly in her purse for the key. She pulls out everything from a grocery list to a plastic rain bonnet before I intercede.

  “Do you want me to go down to the front desk and ask for another one?”

  “No. I have it here somewhere.” She abandons the purse and nervously pats down her light raincoat and finds it in a pocket. “Here it is.”

  The icemaker in the closet behind us drops a fresh batch of ice with a sound like shattering glass. We both jump. “That’s a nice sound,” I say, already imagining my being jolted awake every ten minutes—if I ever get to sleep at all.

  Inside, the room is dark. My mother hesitates before entering, so I push ahead, saying, “Here, let me.” I fumble for the light switch on the wall. The fluorescent overheads hum and sputter before finally bathing the nondescript room in ugly light. I usher my mother inside and she drops her purse on the desk. I close the door behind her, take a few steps into the room, and then we both shove our hands into our pockets.

  “Well. You sure made a mess of this night,” she says.

  The charge hangs in the air for an awkward moment and then we both bust out laughing. It’s bold for my mother to strike such a tone, but I like this punchy new side of her.

  The moment she stepped off the elevator at the party, I enveloped her in a tight hug—too tight, per our established rules of engagement; she knew immediately something was wrong. I came clean with a litany of wrongdoings, as there was no point in hiding my misdeeds. It was a lot for her to take in, and as soon as she acclimated, she assigned degrees of urgency like we were in triage.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked, and I said I thought I would be.

  “Do you need to go back to the party?” she asked, and I said yes I did.

  “Do you need a moment?” she asked, and I said that it was best to just get it over with before the shock wore off.

  So we reentered the party. Several people asked if everything was all right and I assured them it was (a lie) and introduced them to my mother before they could slip in any follow-up questions.

  “You must be proud of your son,” they would say, and oddly, I think enough people telling her so did make her feel something akin to pride. She smiled and laughed politely and even had a glass of champagne. It had been a long time since I had seen her smile, and even if it was just for show, it was a show I enjoyed watching. It was nice to see my mother out in the world, among other people; she’s lived too much of it cooped up.

  Afterward, our walk through Times Square was mostly quiet, except when I grabbed her arm and asked if she remembered when she and Dad walked me through Manhattan when I was young, her holding on to me tight.

  “We did that?”

  “Dad did that. I’m not sure you were so thrilled. But you did tell me New York is where writers live.”

  “Huh.”

  “It made an impression.”

  She looked up at the neon billboard for Coca-Cola and said, “I guess so.”

  It was clear her recollection wasn’t as sharp as mine, which angered me at first, but then I tried to walk it back by finding something nice to say. “Is that a new dress?” She hates shopping, being fawned over by department-store saleswomen whose makeup and hairstyles might as well make them alien creatures; a new dress would be a big deal.

  My mother looked down at the black dress under her raincoat. “Yes. I didn’t have anything to wear.”

  “It’s pretty,” I said, and we moved on.

  I catch my reflection now in the mirror over the dresser.
The fluorescent light is not doing my skin any favors; is it really possible for a person to look green? Is this how I looked all night? “Thanks for letting me stay.”

  The room has double beds, a dresser, a desk, and a television. By the door, an alcove serves as a closet and an ironing board with a frayed fabric cover pokes out. The one piece of art, a watercolor of daisies in a vase in a field, somehow makes the room sadder. But it’s a step up from my tour through a string of Super 8s earlier this year.

  “This will all be fine,” my mother finally says. “Daniel loves you.”

  “I haven’t been very loveable of late.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “No one is arguing that.”

  “I watch him play with your nephews until they’re tired. No one would do that if they didn’t care.”

  I think about this and even though I know that it’s true I still protest. “They’re less complicated than I am.”

  “You should spend more time with them, if that’s what you think.”

  My mother removes her coat and I reach to take it from her. “I just wish he cared more about the book. I could have used his support.” I wrestle with a hanger from the closet before realizing it’s attached to the bar and my hand slips and I knock all the other hangers about, turning them into the world’s worst chime. I look back at my mother, who opens a nightstand drawer and places her hand on the Bible as if she were about to swear an oath.

  “It’s not that he doesn’t care about your book, it’s just that he cares more about you.”

  I manage to attach her coat even though the hanger itself is alarmingly small; my blazer with its wide shoulders would slip right off. I count one bathrobe. Then it sinks in what my mother is saying and I grab on to the closet bar for support. I have everything in Daniel and haven’t cherished it.

  “Which bed do you prefer?” I ask, when I can finally stand on my own.

  “I think the one by the bathroom is best.”

  I cross and sit on the bed by the window. It feels remarkably intimate, sharing a room. We somehow went from barely speaking to sleeping side by side, a remarkable jump in just a few hours.