by Sloane Tanen
“Seroquel?” he asked, embarrassed at his fluency in drugs. “That’s not an opiate.”
Vanessa shook her head. Marty shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He hadn’t fallen asleep without a pill in over twenty years. He had a small stash hidden in the lining of his Lakers cap (and another one in the waistband of his sweatpants) but it was going to get dicey.
“You’ll be okay,” Vanessa said. “I have a good feeling about you.” She smiled, looking at him with the sort of compassion he could tolerate only from a complete stranger. He nodded, blinked hard, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his khakis to hide the trembling.
Bunny
Bunny sat at her burled walnut desk, fingering the advance copy of her new book. She looked out on the cold, rainy morning. At least, she thought it was morning. Who could ever tell in London? Her head hurt. She’d had too much to drink last night. How else to get through dinner with an ex-husband and his earnest second wife? She was still friendly with Sam—he was Henry’s father, after all—but why must he always bring that pedantic bore of a wife along? After dinner, Sam had called Bunny a mean drunk. A drunk. The word scraped at the bottom of her stomach. It was shocking, really. She scanned her memory for anything awful she might have said but nothing stood out. It couldn’t have been that bad.
So what if she liked a drink? It wasn’t as if it affected her work, and she knew she could stop if there was a compelling reason to. And she did fine at social events. Hadn’t she made it through that dreadful literary benefit with all those writers a few years back? Something to do with Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now Get Me a Bloody Drink—or so she’d jokingly called the book as she chatted with her then friend Martin Amis.
She couldn’t remember why they didn’t speak anymore.
Bunny’s office was connected to her bedroom by a long hallway that had the advantage of allowing her to travel from her bed to her desk without ever having to get dressed. It also meant she didn’t have to see anyone until hunger or restlessness drove her out of her cozy den and into the stark main rooms. She’d been spending an increasing amount of time in her pajamas the past few weeks, wearing an imperceptible path in the runner that led from the bedroom to the bathroom to her office. For the first time in her career, she couldn’t write. Or she didn’t want to write. The whole thing was ludicrous, of course. Bunny didn’t believe in writer’s block any more than she believed that obesity and fibromyalgia were real diseases. These were just euphemisms for the gluttonous and the lazy, respectively.
Bettina, her maid, came and went, as evidenced by the fact that the bed was always made when Bunny returned to it, the mail was neatly arranged on her desk each day, and the dirty cups and ashtrays were miraculously cleared away when Bunny wasn’t looking.
Where was Bettina? Bunny wondered, pressing the intercom. Probably she was in the laundry room, the one place Bunny hadn’t thought to install a speaker. Bunny wanted a plate of cold pasta Bolognese and a Diet Coke. The thought of traipsing across those chilly limestone floors to the kitchen made her shudder. Her decorator was a fascist. Bunny had said modern, not barren. There was an echo in the living room and a stone pillar in the kitchen. Who wouldn’t be driven to drink living inside a de Chirico painting?
Bunny decided against hunger, lit a cigarette, and turned her attention to the pages on her desk.
“‘Henry Holter and the Heathcoff Family, by Bunny Small,’” she read aloud. Henry Holter and the Winwick Family was considered her best to date, but this new one, Heathcoff, was damn good. She had named the character after her own son, who’d been barely two when the first book was published, and Bunny took pride in the fact that the fictional Henry Holter had evolved into a complex young adult and that his flaws were giving the latest books a dimensionality even the critics appreciated. Her spin-off series had all been wildly successful, of course, but the beauty of Henry’s immortality, not to mention the time-traveling bit, meant she always had her favorite character exactly when and where she wanted him.
Ian had messengered over the advance copy of the book first thing this morning. The cover art was questionable, as always, but Bunny had given up on that quarrel long ago. “Let the art department do their job,” Ian had argued after the ghastly first cover came round for her approval. “They know what they’re doing.” So she’d allowed Henry Holter to be portrayed as a faggy-looking little thing. What did she care as long as the books sold? And they did sell. Only J. K. Rowling’s book sales had surpassed hers. Bunny had been there first! The world was always comparing the two, and Bunny resented easy analogies as much as the press liked gobbling them up.
She had been as surprised as anyone by her initial success but, like most successful people, had grown accustomed to its privileges—primarily the right to be a shit if and when she felt like it.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Bunny said aloud, looking at the swarthy family illustrated on the book jacket and wondering if anybody in the art department ever bothered reading her books. Her newest character, Lucy Heathcoff, was supposed to have red hair! Bunny reached for her reading glasses and lit another cigarette as she read the attached note.
The first copy for my First Lady. And not a peep about the cover. Apparently gingers don’t sell, but I still love Lucy!
Cheers,
I.
Bunny let out a snort. She adored Ian. They’d been together from the start. He was the only taker Bunny didn’t resent. Unlike the others, Ian earned his share, and so what if his devotion to her was as much about his 15 percent as it was about the pleasure he got from her company? Bunny had become a very difficult woman, but at least she’d made Ian a very rich man. Hadn’t he been the only one who even bothered to read her five-hundred-page typewritten manuscript all those years ago? In her twenties and divorced, she’d just returned to England from Los Angeles. That first book (an Orwellian fable of sorts) hadn’t been very good, but Ian had seen her potential. As inspiration, he’d given her an obscure novel called The Shades, by Betty Brock, and encouraged her to dip her pen into the then-pristine waters of young-adult fantasy. Her first Henry Holter novel was published shortly thereafter. So many decades later and there was still nobody else she really trusted.
The phone rang. She was sure it was Ian, calling to see if she’d received the book but also to talk about her birthday party. She didn’t pick up. Bunny usually arranged a small party at Mirabelle, but this year she hadn’t. Seventy wasn’t an easy age. Sixty had been a kind of milestone, but seventy was just old. Nothing good happened after seventy. She’d far exceeded her own career aspirations, been married and divorced twice, and had a son who didn’t seem to like her. What was there left to experience other than cancer or maybe a paralyzing stroke?
She flipped to the last page of the book and stared at her face above the author bio. After all these years, her author photo never failed to perk up her spirits, especially on days like today, when she knew she bore little resemblance to that cheerful, tidy woman. The picture was over twenty years old but she didn’t see the point in updating it.
Her son had taken it. Had she looked so happy then because she’d been with Henry? That was just before he’d decided to throw a decades-long hissy fit because she’d named the little hero in her novels after him, and the books had had the great misfortune of becoming successful. Literary immortality was apparently a great burden.
Certainly she’d aged since, but she was nevertheless quite good-looking even now, especially for a woman of her years. Her eyes still sparkled, and her face, though slackened by gravity, hadn’t wrinkled. It was a face untouched by the sun or a surgeon. If anything, Bunny thought, the years had given her a more commanding appearance, which properly undercut the absolute absurdity of her name. She was much too squeamish for needles and knives, and, my God, didn’t those women all look awful anyway? It was one thing to be vain but quite another to walk around wearing your panic on your face. Bunny had been so disappointed when her best friend, Elaine, took t
he plunge. At first, Bunny had to admit that Elaine looked better. But four years and God knew how many procedures later, Elaine was beginning to look like something cooked up in Michael Jackson’s uterus. Who did she think she was kidding? Bunny understood the foolishness of trying to look young and she had therefore succeeded in not looking old. That was important.
She put out her cigarette and stabbed Bettina’s call buzzer with an impatient index finger. Where the hell had Bettina gone? The phone rang again. Bunny let out an exasperated sigh. How on earth was she expected to get anything done?
“Hello, Ian.”
“Did you get the book?”
“Yes, thank you, darling. Got to dash. I’m busy.”
“Working?” he asked with far too much enthusiasm.
“No, actually. Not working.”
He wheezed. “Oh. I see. Anyway, I wanted to tell you something.”
Bunny sighed, impatient. “I’m listening.”
Ian was silent, obviously concerned about Bunny not working and trying to determine what needed to be done to remedy the situation. He’d lost his ease.
“Right,” he mumbled. “I just…I had…I had some good news is all.”
“Out with it, then. I’ve things to do.”
“Oh. Yes. I wanted to let you know the initial print run. Epic, really.”
“What was hers?” Bunny asked, not missing a beat.
“She Who Shall Not Be Named?” Ian asked lightly, hoping to reestablish their usual intimacy by using their nickname for Bunny’s biggest competitor.
“Mm.”
“W-well,” he stammered. “A bit higher.”
“So what’s your good news?”
“Don’t be impossible,” he said, amused. “It’s a hell of a first printing. Our biggest ever.”
“I suppose.”
“And there’s always your next book,” Ian said, more as a question than a statement.
“We’ll see.”
“It’s just a matter of sitting down and getting to it. You know—”
“Good-bye, Ian.” Bunny could hear him talking as she hung up. Poor Ian. He was a wreck. Tony Elliot, his other cash cow, had pancreatic cancer, and now Bunny was doing God knows what when she should be at her desk typing up his next paycheck. Still, she was irritated. One thing was for sure—she wasn’t about to sit down and get to it. Bunny marched to her closet with an air of defiance. She was going out. Maybe she’d clear the air with Sam. “Mean drunk, indeed!”
Bunny’s mood lifted as she walked down Peel Street, passing one person after the next without being recognized. She relaxed, allowing herself to feel a joyous camaraderie with the hoi polloi. The rain had stopped. It was a gorgeous day now. Sunny. How many days like this had she missed? Bunny wondered with uncharacteristic regret. Was she depressed or just exhausted by the recent unproductiveness of her working hours? It was hard to say. This restlessness was new to her. She’d spent so many years happily enveloped in her own imagination. Her fictional world was all-encompassing. She never gave a thought to the goings-on outside her flat between the hours of seven a.m. and five p.m.
But lately she cared. The sounds of delivery trucks, people shouting, even cars honking would all draw her to the office window. She’d begun to feel suffocated in her flat. So she started venturing out. She’d gone to Hyde Park last Monday and even bought her own fags at the local grocery on Saturday. Nobody had noticed her! If she wore a hat that hid her hair, she found she could get away with these outings. Her hair, as smooth and white as a sheet of paper and cut sharply at her chin, was the giveaway. She’d had the same haircut for thirty years. The other essential thing was to go out in the morning, when young people were in school or taking pictures of themselves at home.
In a rather brave stab at emancipation, she’d even gone to the Tate Modern alone last Thursday. She’d been excited to discuss her impressions of Mark Rothko with Henry, assuming it would give them something to talk about. But that had been a mistake. It was unbearably overheated in the museum so she’d taken off her hat without thinking. She wished that Ian had not e-mailed her the picture of herself that had appeared in the pages of Hello! She looked like a cow at a slaughterhouse staring dumbly into some idiot’s iPhone. Ms. Small in Turbine Hall!!! the caption read. Ridiculous that anybody should care. And the magazine’s overuse of exclamation points was maddening. The copyeditor ought to be incarcerated.
At least she wouldn’t have to worry about Henry seeing Hello! He didn’t pay any more attention to his mother’s press than he did to their strained phone conversations. He was far too busy analyzing trees and clouds in mediocre American landscape paintings to worry about her.
“Sam?” Bunny called out as she pushed open the heavy iron door of his shop, greeted by the chemical bouquet of old varnish and mildew. The walk had softened her mood. She decided to be gracious toward Sam, perhaps even give him the chance to apologize.
“Ah. If it isn’t Sherlock Holmes,” he said, looking sideways at her outfit and rising to give her a kiss.
“Not a word.” She pulled off her deerstalker cap and loosened her scarf. “I’m already cross with you.”
“You?” He laughed. “Cross with me?”
“You called me a mean drunk, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Yes, well…”
“Well what?” She looked at him, always struck by how well he’d aged, his thick white hair contrasting with his still-youthful features. Bunny had never understood why Sam enjoyed rotting in a shop all day fussing with antiquities, no matter how precious and rare they might be. He was tall and industrious-looking, the kind of man you’d expect to see fly-fishing or building something useful outdoors. But decade after decade, there he’d sat, legs crossed, looking like the actor Sam Elliott dropped into a Dickens novel.
“You don’t need to say everything that comes to mind,” he said. “That’s all.”
“I couldn’t have been that bad.” She was rubbing her hand along a lovely blue and gold cloisonné vase she’d picked up.
“You were condescending and patronizing, but I forgive you, if only for the comic relief you’ve provided with today’s…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Ensemble.”
Bunny shrugged. Sam was too sensitive. Always had been.
When they’d first met, Bunny had adored Sam’s rugged good looks and relaxed, easy company. He worked in art restoration but seemed to dislike his job. He’d go on for hours about how overzealous restorers were destroying the entire corpus of Western art. He’d eventually managed to get himself fired from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Bunny admired his integrity for all of ten minutes.
Soon enough, his lack of ambition and copious sentimentality drove her mad. The man couldn’t throw anything away, be it a playbill from a favorite West End show or a brass horse bit he’d found in the garbage bin. “This was in the rubbish!” he’d cry, presenting his latest find to her as if it were a newborn baby. But they’d gotten married, and after she sold her third book (the advance was enormous), she set Sam up in an antiques shop on Portobello Road, where, to everyone’s surprise, he’d done quite well. He accepted her generosity without guilt or excessive gratitude. The shop gave Sam a sense of purpose. Once he began traveling to stock the shop, Bunny thought their marriage might make it. It was just those few months when he was in town that presented a problem. Sam felt couples should talk, and Bunny couldn’t think of anything to say. Her work was the only thing that really interested her and she didn’t care to discuss her ideas with anyone. When Henry was old enough to be more interested in his mates than his parents, Bunny decided she wanted a divorce. Sam was disappointed but agreeable, as always. Much as he loved Bunny, he wanted a wife who looked up from her typewriter when he came home.
Whatever issues they’d had as a couple disappeared after the divorce. They were fond of each other and connected by Henry. Bunny still enjoyed Sam’s company, and now that his shop was so fashionable, they could meet as e
quals. Well, they were hardly equals, but what harm did it do to indulge him a bit?
“Spoken to Henry?” Bunny asked, feeling suddenly weepy. She hadn’t talked to him in weeks. She was an irrational sort of mother and envied Sam’s ease with their son. Fatherhood came as naturally to him as writing came to her. Or used to come, anyway.
Sam clapped his hands together, obviously eager to snap Bunny out of her reverie. “Shall I pick him up at Heathrow or just send a car round?” The moment the words left his mouth, his handsome face went the color of beets.
“Henry’s coming to London?” she asked excitedly as she carefully replaced the vase she’d been holding. “When?”
“Shit.” Sam leaned forward and pressed his thumb and index finger against his eyelids. “Ian’s going to crunch my balls in a nutcracker. Please, please don’t tell him I’ve ruined the surprise party. Really, Bun. Please.”
“Surprise party?” Bunny giggled. “Oh my!”
“Bloody hell.” Sam moaned and mussed his hair with both hands. “Fuck. Fuck.”
Sam never swore. Bunny was delighted. “I’ll pretend I didn’t know a thing. I’m a good actress.”
“You’re a terrible actress.”
“This will give me time to work on it, then.”
“Must you look quite so triumphant and fiendish? I’m cooked if Ian finds out.”
“Forget Ian, would you? It seems to me you should show a bit more concern about ruining my fun. Man up, Sam! Ian won’t ever know.”
“Just promise you won’t tell him I said anything?” he pressed.
Bunny laughed. “Of course I’ll play along. The important thing is that Henry is coming. Oh, and be sure to send a town car for him. Better yet, call one of my secretaries and arrange to send the Bentley, would you? Maybe you can find a girl with a cap to drive it? He’d like that, no? Make it nice for him and he’ll come more often. Put him up at the Lanesborough.”