Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  And, more often than usual, given that she is not normally here during the day, she appears by his bedside with pills. He wants to protest, but he is so grateful for the sleep, which provides the hope that this is a nightmare from which he will wake.

  He picks up the letter opener, presses it to his own face, just below the eye. Skin and bone would be no match for it.

  2016

  “YOU MUST HAVE THE UNI.”

  Gerry looked up, skeptical. Already grumpy at being tricked into going to a fancy restaurant—he had thought he was meeting Thiru for soup dumplings, having no idea where Extra Place was, beyond being on the Lower East Side—he was in no mood to be told what he must eat, or drink. He wanted to get out of the restaurant as fast as possible.

  But this Momofuku Ko was not designed for speedy dining, much to Gerry’s dismay. The only option available was a “tasting menu,” dreaded words to Gerry’s ears. Probably Thiru’s reason for choosing it. He had an agenda, one that would take time to lay out. And the service was oversolicitous, which Gerry hated. He preferred the gruff indifference of the city’s diners, places that were disappearing one by one. Where was the New York of the late 1980s, or even the one at the beginning of the twenty-first century? After the second or third course, he stopped the pretense of eating, regarding his food with arms folded, like a grumpy child.

  But the woman who was insisting that he must try the uni was another patron. Tall, thin, stylish. Sexy, frankly. She didn’t linger or try to introduce herself, simply returned to her table, where she was dining with what Gerry assumed was a finance type, based on the pinstripes and the pocket square.

  He didn’t realize he was still looking at her until Thiru snapped his fingers to get his attention. “Gerry.”

  “What?”

  “I was saying Rudin gets things made.” Thiru began ticking off the names of various film and television projects, most of which meant nothing to Gerry.

  “He didn’t get The Corrections made,” he said. Although Gerry disdained most gossip, even literary gossip, there were certain writers whose careers he tracked. He didn’t consider Franzen the gold standard of his generation, but others did, so he kept tabs. And he was sincerely disappointed when the Corrections adaptation fell through. He had hoped the television series would highlight what Gerry considered the novel’s myriad flaws.

  “No one bats a thousand,” Thiru said.

  “Look, it’s not even a good option. It’s insultingly low.”

  Dream Girl had been optioned three times so far. The book was like a trick wallet, tied to a string. Gerry and Thiru put it on the sidewalk and people kept chasing it. But he couldn’t tell Thiru that he would prefer just optioning it over and over. The film production of his first novel had been disappointing, in large part because no one seemed to care that much. Gerry had hoped for either an outstanding adaptation or a total botch that would lead to impassioned tributes to the source material. No one had anything to say about the movie, good or bad. They took his firstborn, in many ways his sweetest and most pliable child, and rendered it dull. Boring, polite, bloodless, with nothing really there in the end. So, no, he didn’t want to see Dream Girl produced. He wanted people to pay him for it over and over again.

  Also, he was miffed that Rudin had bought Franzen’s book, not his, back in 2001. He didn’t want to be anyone’s second choice.

  “Options have changed, Gerry. It’s hard to get that big money now. But an actress is attached, someone who wants to play Aubrey.” Thiru shared a name that meant nothing to Gerry, then showed him a photograph on his phone.

  “Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Too beautiful, in fact. Aubrey isn’t conventionally pretty. That’s central to the book.”

  “Jesus Christ, Gerry, of course she’s going to be beautiful. Have you been to the movies?”

  “Not recently, no. I do like that one television show.”

  “Which one?”

  “That one that people talk about.”

  “You’re going to have to narrow it down, Gerry.”

  “He sells drugs?”

  “Breaking Bad?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Gerry, it’s not even on the air anymore.”

  “I guess I’m watching it on iTunes.”

  He sampled the uni. He had no idea what it was, but he had to admit, it was pretty good.

  “What’s next?” Thiru asked.

  “I want to take something low-culture and elevate it.”

  “Like Zone One or Station Eleven?”

  Gerry frowned. He always insisted he did not begrudge any talented writer his or her success, but he also considered himself an original, marching to the beat of his own drum. He was trying to be a good sport about the attention that Colson Whitehead was getting for The Underground Railroad right now, but it wasn’t always easy.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “I’m not interested in zombies or pandemics. I’m interested in—don’t laugh—soap operas.”

  Thiru’s chopsticks clattered to his plate and came dangerously close to sending up a flume of sauce onto his beautiful lapels. Today’s suit was plaid. Probably a precise kind of plaid, with a special name, but all Gerry knew was that it was gray with subtle crisscrosses of burgundy, gold, and green. Fashion bored Gerry even more than food did. He lived in khakis and oxford cloth shirts, cotton sweaters from the Gap.

  “What?”

  “My mother watched them and then, in the 1970s, when I was a teenager, inevitably I did, too. There was only one television in our house and she had one afternoon off, Thursdays. We watched the ABC shows together. All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital. And even though she could watch only once a week, she never really missed anything. It was amazing, how much happened and yet how slowly it happened.”

  Yes, the horrible lighting, the strange slowness, the fact that it was done daily, that the writers and actors were chained to this vehicle that had to keep hurtling forward. Soap operas dared to take their fucking time even as everything else in culture rushed, pushed, competed. The soap opera, in its slowness, its comfort with redundancy and exposition, had its merits—and now it was dying. If he were a younger writer, one in need of attention, he would write an essay in its defense. As it was, he wanted to take what worked—the pace, the human scale, how huge it could feel to be inside a dying marriage, or an affair—not that he had any knowledge of the latter—and place those problems against the backdrop of something large. Not 9/11 or the 2008 economic collapse, but something truly epic.

  “It sounds”—Thiru took a bite and chewed, making Gerry wait a long time for his adjective—“promising.”

  “I hear the doubt in your voice. Trust me, Thiru. My instincts are good. You know that. I actually have a talent for the—” He did not want to say zeitgeist, a word he loathed. Gerry preferred to say he understood the present’s subtext. He saw the currents, what was going on underneath. His parents’ marriage had trained him to do that.

  “How far along are you?”

  “Writing every day, but I haven’t felt the quickening yet, the moment I know this book is the one.” Gerry had a high fail rate, starting at least three books for every one that came to fruition. It was part of the reason he no longer took advances, instead insisting on selling finished books. Not that there was ever any suspense about his longtime editor making an offer, or whether the offer would be a good one. Still, it made him feel less encumbered, not being under contract. And it gave Thiru the leverage of potential bidding wars, Gerry always being available.

  “Maybe if the soap opera thing was part of a memoir—” Thiru began.

  “No. Never.”

  “Even with your father dead?”

  “With him dead, when my mother is dead, when I am dead—there will never be a memoir.”

  “I can see waiting until your mother is gone—”

  “Wasn’t I right about the uni?”

  The magnificent woman was back at their table, clearly on her way out, a st
riking coat of boiled red wool tossed over her arm. Gerry was doubly grateful for her reappearance. She not only derailed the conversation about the memoir, she was wonderful to behold, sexy yet classy, with long, praying mantis limbs. He had dated desultorily since he and Sarah split. He didn’t like dating. And the women he saw were disappointed in his preferences, which came down to long walks in Central Park, carryout or delivery from his favorite neighborhood places, watching the Orioles on cable.

  “You were,” Gerry said. “It was quite good. I still don’t know what it is.”

  “Sea urchin.” She laughed at the face he made. “Actually it’s even worse—they’re gonads. Not that I mind, but you might.”

  Oh, wasn’t she a saucy one.

  “Anyway, I don’t want to bore you—I’m a fan. We met briefly at that PEN benefit last year, although I doubt you remember. You were mobbed. And I was just another admirer.”

  “I’m not bored. You’d be surprised how not boring it is.” He was sincere. If only all fans simply said this: I won’t bore you, I’m a fan. How lovely that would be. How lovely this woman was. “Remind me of your name?”

  “Margot Chasseur,” she said. “Although it sounds as if I wrote Canterbury Tales, the spelling is French. C-H-A-S-S-E-U-R.” Her hedge fund date had approached and she tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Enjoy.”

  He watched her leave, taking note of the name, which was unusual enough to track down even in what the old television show had called the naked city, with eight million naked stories. From behind, she was practically naked above the waist and, despite the cold night, she kept the coat draped over her arm, so her shoulder blades remained visible. He could see almost to her coccyx, but it was the shoulder blades that caught his attention. They were sharp and beautiful. A man could impale himself on those shoulder blades. It would be worth it.

  “Gerry?” Thiru prodded.

  “No memoir. I’m still living, Thiru. I’m nowhere close to writing a memoir.”

  “I just wanted to know if you were going to finish your gonads.”

  March 15

  “TGIF,” AILEEN SAYS cheerily when she brings him lunch. “With Victoria gone, I have three more days to put everything to rights.”

  She has not left the apartment since Wednesday, except for errands. One of those involved fetching a small suitcase, as she says she needs to be here 24/7 to get everything done. He realizes he has no idea where she lives, or if there is anyone in her life—family, roommates, a partner.

  “I’m sorry you have to, um, work this weekend.”

  “It’s fine,” Aileen says. “I’ll put in for overtime. I’m going to assume no one has access to your checking accounts except you? You can just write me a check for overtime. Which is time and a half, by the way.”

  Part of him wants to object that she is gouging him. But a larger part of him is so relieved that Aileen has taken over that he would gladly pay her anything. Money is for solving problems. Who told him that? Surely not his mother, who had worried constantly about her lack of money. And not his father.

  Margot said that. “Money is for solving problems” was a Margot-ism. Said whenever she wanted Gerry’s money to solve her problems.

  “I think I’ll have to tell my accountant, though,” he said. “So they can calculate the taxes. That’s how it’s always worked with my assistants. There’s withholding so they don’t end up having a big tax bill at year’s end.”

  “You know what? Once we calculate the amount for this weekend, just write on the check ‘Supplies.’ So it looks as if you’re reimbursing me for something I paid out of pocket.”

  “Ooookay,” he says.

  Gerry doesn’t want to be a snob, but it seems to him that Aileen speaks differently since what he has decided to think of as the accident. Of course it was an accident. Gerry has never raised his hands to anyone, except in consensual, mildly kinky moments. Sarah had liked a little light spanking. It was her idea and he had to be persuaded. He had felt mildly ridiculous. He doesn’t like women with daddy issues. He has his own daddy issues and he prefers to keep them out of the bedroom.

  “What are we doing, Aileen?” he asks.

  “Buying time,” Aileen says. “Trying to figure out exactly what happened. Maybe in a day or two you’ll remember and we can take it from there.”

  Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so. Gerry wants to do the right thing and he can’t help believing, childlike, that there is a way out of this dilemma that he just hasn’t been able to envision yet. He simply cannot believe he killed Margot, not even if she attacked him while he was in an Ambien haze. Buying time—yes, that’s all they’re doing. Affording themselves the time to figure out the best way to proceed.

  “I wonder if I will ever remember,” he says.

  “It must have been a horrible shock, something that didn’t even register as a dream,” Aileen says. “That woman sneaking back in here and doing God knows what as you slept. It was only natural to protect yourself. The letter opener was right next to you, as it usually is. What else could you do?”

  “If only I had the presence of mind to call for you.” Had he been terrified of making a scene even while in a fugue state? Luke had always said that decorum was Gerry’s fatal flaw, that it would be his failure to ask for what he wanted that would kill him, in the end. You wouldn’t ask for a glass of water in the desert. Yet it was Luke, who never had any problem demanding what he wanted, who had been dead by the age of thirty-one.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t hear anything,” he says, then feels guilty for implicitly reprimanding the woman who is now trying to save him.

  “I am a sound sleeper,” she says, frowning, as if angry at herself, which makes Gerry feel even worse. This isn’t Aileen’s fault. Margot was crazy. That threat she made—he doesn’t even know what she was talking about. Gerry has an exceptionally clear conscience for a man in his seventh decade. He has hurt some people, yes, who hasn’t? But he did right by his wives; his fortune would be threefold what it is if he had not. Some of the things he has done would not pass muster today, but in the times that he did them they were socially acceptable.

  Had a clear conscience. He had a clear conscience. Now he has a hole in the center of his memory, a lost sequence of events in which he did something horrible, yet he has not even a whisper of recollection. Must he feel guilty for that?

  And what did Margot think she knew about him? Had her threats not been so empty, after all? What if she had told someone else whatever she thinks she knows?

  Thought.

  The service bell, the one on the lower level, rings. “Delivery!” Aileen says. He has never seen her so animated. She goes downstairs and there is the sound of something large-ish being moved around. “Try here,” she instructs someone, who mumbles back in a low, masculine voice. “I know it’s an odd place for a freezer,” Aileen replies. “It’s temporary. My father decided to buy an entire cow on the Internet, lord help him. He read something about climate change and thought ordering a side of beef from a small farmer would reduce his carbon footprint. He thought a side was like, I don’t know, four steaks and some ribs.”

  What is going on? Better not to know.

  He dozes, only to wake later to another ring of the bell. Aileen comes up and gives him an afternoon dose of Ambien, which he takes without protest. He drifts in and out of sleep, aware of a loud buzzing sound, which reminds him of something. And now the leg. Aileen comes in with his dinner, more pills. She seems so much more energetic, flush with purpose. Perhaps babysitting a sixty-one-year-old man has not been the most stimulating of activities. She needed actual problems to solve.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” she says, “what you can find on YouTube. They have a how-to video for everything.”

  2017

  HIS MOTHER ASKED to go to Al Pacino Pizza after the meeting with the neurologist and how could he say no? He certainly didn’t want to remind her that the Al Pacino’s they had loved had been over at Belvedere Squ
are and that they had stopped going there years ago because the quality declined, and then it closed. For now, when possible, he was trying to avoid reminding his mother at any lapse of her memory.

  It was a dull November day. Would Gerry write it that way, in a novel? Or was the weather too on the nose? What kind of weather would work for a scene in which a mother and son eat pizza together after receiving her death sentence?

  “I’ll have the Monzase,” she said. “That was always my favorite.”

  She was right about that, at least, but her syntax made him want to cry. Last week, she’d had a brief moment of confusion in which she thought he was his father, which had fucked with his head on so many levels. For one thing, he never wanted to be confused with Gerald Andersen Sr. Worse still, he did not want his mother, in her confusion, to say urgently: “I still love you, Gerald, and I’m so glad you realized you love me, too. But what will Gerry do when he finds out?” His father had been dead for sixteen years and his mother hadn’t seen him for almost forty years.

  But today had been a good day. It would not be the last good day, the doctor had said. Soon, however, the bad days would outnumber the good. They needed to act quickly, have a plan in place for when she could no longer care for herself. They did not have the luxury of a “normal” meal. There was no more normal.

  He plunged in.

  “Mom—money is no object, not for me. I can afford to give you the best, not one of those grim, overlit places. More like a hotel than—well, like a five-star hotel.”

  “I want to stay in my house, Gerry, until it’s time for hospice. You heard the doctors. It’s not as if it’s going to be a long time.”

  “But the quality of your life—they said in a relatively short time—”

  “I know, I’ll need care. But, Gerry, all I want is to stay in our house for as long as possible. Can’t you move down here? As you said, it’s a relatively short time.”