by Alex Witchel
Her mouth set. “It seems to me, after reading it, that here we are paying a fortune, bowing down to this man’s every desire, and the fact that he’s the top art writer in the country should mean that we at least get part of what we’re paying for.”
“But that wasn’t the assignment,” I persisted. “You knew this wasn’t going to be a piece about art.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t then, but it’s going to be now. Or at least half and half. How will it look for us to have Mark Lewis in the magazine writing about cheese steaks instead of art? We’ll look like suckers.” Her eyes narrowed. “Weren’t you supposed to have been monitoring him?”
“Yes. Except I was monitoring him on the old assignment.”
She said nothing. I knew it was pointless to argue logically, so I changed tactics. “I think if we push him on this, he’ll withdraw the piece,” I said.
“Why should he? We’ve done everything he wanted. Now he needs to do what we want.” I knew from her tone that Miss Belladonna had lost interest in the outcome; three months later, the dinner-party hostess had fallen off her radar screen. So Susie could be as stubborn as a splinter, unmovable. She was going to fight to the death over this newly invented aberration, though it was thoroughly unnecessary and could only further harm the reputation of Jolie! among anyone who considered writing for it.
I excused myself from Susie’s office, skipped the agent, and called Mark directly. “Here’s what’s happening,” I said, explaining everything. I reiterated that I thought he’d done a great job, and that I found him thoroughly cooperative in whatever editing I’d asked him to do. I apologized for having wasted his time. I told him that if he wanted to pull the piece, I felt confident that the magazine would pay him the full fee, anyway, to avoid hard feelings, but of course, that would be between his agent and Susie.
He couldn’t have been nicer. He completely understood. And he wondered if I was free for dinner.
“Well, I guess I can …” I stopped.
“Never mind,” he said, his voice hardening.
“No, I’m sorry, that came out wrong. Let me explain something to you. I wasn’t out sick on Friday. I was back in L.A., seeing Paul.”
“How is he?”
“Awful. He’s going to die.” I tried not to start crying. “So, anyway, it does seem as if this piece is finally over, and yes, I would like to have dinner with you. We’ve already had two great ones, aside from the fact that you dumped me in Philadelphia—”
He cut me off. “Is that why you’re angry with me?”
I was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I knew you were angry about something—I could tell by your tone these last few weeks—but I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to offend you. The reason I didn’t ask you to come to dinner that night was because the friends I ran into are a couple who are still close to my ex-wife. They’re art people; I should have figured they’d be there to see that new exhibit. Anyway, we’d been meaning to get together and sit down to talk, and when we saw each other, we figured we’d just do it then. I mean, it was not a conversation I could have had with you there.”
“Fair enough. And what about the early train back?”
He was quiet a moment. Oh, God. Who was I to grill him this way?
“Um, you made yourself clear about the nightcap and all the rest of it,” he said. “So I thought it was best for us to see each other again in New York. If that’s something you still want to do.”
I felt my face burn. “Yes, of course it is. Look, I … I’m sorry,” I said, lighting a cigarette without even bothering to get up and close the door. “I’ve just been crazy lately, with everything that’s happening. I apologize. I do.” I attempted a lighter tone. “Though I may never forgive you for depriving me of brunch.”
He sounded mollified, somewhat. “I can live with that. So, are we having this damn dinner or not?”
I smiled. “Yes, we are. I’d love to.”
“Good,” he said firmly. “Are you free Wednesday or Thursday?”
We agreed on Wednesday and decided to go back to Orso for spaghetti. “Listen, I apologize again about the piece,” I said.
“It’s fine with me,” he answered, “though I can’t be held accountable for Victoria Segal.”
We said goodbye, and when I put the phone down, I felt swamped with relief—and anxiety. He was such a nice man, honest, straightforward. I had absolutely no experience with someone like that. I would have paid a million dollars for the chance to talk to Paul about it.
The assistant who was helping me tapped cautiously on the door frame, waving her hand at the smoke. “What are you doing?” she whispered loudly, and I snapped to and tamped out the cigarette. I looked at the pile of pink message slips she handed me. Two were from Bucky.
I set them aside and phoned Victoria Segal, who, naturally, pitched a fit, insisting that the full fee be paid since her client had satisfied the terms of the agreement. She seemed taken aback when I agreed, admitting that Susie had changed her mind only in retrospect. “She can do that with everyone else,” Victoria declared, “but not with my client.”
“You certainly don’t need my advice,” I said, “but the piece is ready to run, and you can sell it anywhere.”
“I know my options, thank you,” she said, and hung up.
The phone rang again, and though I was sure it was Bucky, I decided to pick up. The hell with it, I thought. Time to deal and move forward.
It was, in fact, Sally.
“He’s back in the hospital,” she said, sounding uncharacteristically grim. “He started having trouble breathing last night.”
“Cedars-Sinai?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Saint Joseph’s.”
“A Catholic hospital? You know how much Paul hates nuns.”
“I do,” she said evenly. “But he seems to feel differently now. This is his choice to be there, not mine. Let’s face it, medical care isn’t the issue now. Comfort is. And at this point, he finds the nuns comforting. He wants them to pray for him.”
She promised to call back after more tests were done and Paul had settled in. We hung up, and I tried to make sense out of it. Paul Romano, who had spent his entire life rebelling against every religious and social convention he could find, had chosen to die with the nuns? It was the damnedest thing.
I needed to get out of the office. I walked up Fifth Avenue, passing St. Patrick’s. Not today. I kept going, to the Doubleday bookstore a few blocks up. I strode through the aisles, toward the back. “Do you have any books on quilting?” I asked a saleswoman, who directed me to a shelf full.
I read along the spines. My friend was going to die, and I needed to be prepared. I would make him a quilt that would take its place with the thousands of others—all those lives, raucous and daring, now silently arranged in a grid of neat, homey squares. It seemed like the last thing any one of them would have wanted, but the only thing anyone left could think to do.
I found a book that looked right for a beginner and bought it. I would study it later.
Back in the office, Susie Schein was agitatedly pacing the hallway. “They pulled the piece!” she exclaimed angrily. “Did you know about this?”
“No, Susie, but I can’t say I’m surprised. What did you think they were going to do?”
“Rewrite it!” she said.
“He fulfilled the assignment, and you changed it after the fact. There was no reason for him to rewrite it.”
“Is that what you told him? And his agent? Are you playing both sides against the middle here?”
“There is no middle here,” I shouted, a rush of fury pushing up behind my eyes. “The middle moves anywhere it wants to on any given day. I knew from the beginning you couldn’t get away with this crap with someone like Mark Lewis, but you wouldn’t listen. I don’t know what the point was of even hiring him. That piece was never going to run in this magazine—no matter how many fucking boutiques you sent me to.”
&nbs
p; I became aware that I was screaming—and cursing—at my boss in a public space where everyone was listening, even though they were all pretending to be diligently doing something else. I turned around, went into my office, and slammed the door the way I used to when I was thirteen and fighting with my mother over how long I’d been on the phone. I tried steadying myself, but I was shaking with rage. It was a serious error, I knew, to lose my temper and challenge Susie on a day when her authority had been all but demolished by Marti Lyons. I took a few deep breaths, wondering if she was going to charge in behind me. She didn’t.
I paced awhile—picking dead leaves off the plant Coco and Pimm had given me, which I never remembered to water—and finally sat down in my chair. I sorted through my messages and threw the ones from Bucky into the trash. This was not the moment to reminisce about days gone by with the ex–love of my life. I needed to focus on right now. The only hope I had of still being employed by six o’clock was to concentrate on things I could actually fix—even if they were only articles, no matter what Susie had done to them. I put on my glasses, closed my mouth, and got to work.
For the rest of the day, Susie remained scarily silent. I edited pieces and sent them to her electronically, and she accepted them all, without any questions. Maybe I should have screamed a long time ago, I thought in the moments when I wasn’t braced, waiting for the knock on the door with my marching orders. But none came. Finally, around eight-thirty, I packed my bag. Susie had gone; her door was closed. I tried calling Sally, but got the machine. Then I called Saint Joseph’s hospital in L.A. and asked for Paul, but they said the phone in his room had not been turned on.
He couldn’t have died, could he? I worried, waiting for the elevator. Sally would surely have called me. I hated being so far away, not knowing what was happening next.
As I entered the lobby, I saw that the front entrance was closed for the night, so I headed toward the back. There, stationed at the revolving doors, stood Bucky, looking hugely pleased at the shock that must have registered on my face. But his expression changed quickly to concern.
“Sanny, what’s wrong?” he asked, and his voice was so gentle and he seemed so familiar that I suddenly couldn’t remember whether the last time I had seen him was a year ago or yesterday. I looked up at his face and felt mine crumple.
“Hey,” he said softly, gathering me up, and I dropped my bag and sobbed—about everything: Paul dying, Susie plotting to fire me, my willful misreading of Mark’s behavior. I felt Bucky’s arms surround me, and as I breathed in the scent of his shirt, every awful thing he had ever done disappeared. He hugged me and held me close, and it felt as if my bones had melted and the only reason I was even standing was because of him.
I don’t know how long we stayed there, him hushing me and rocking me as I wailed mightily on. Finally, finally, I pulled my head back and looked into his eyes.
“Paul is dying,” I said.
He inhaled sharply, genuinely shocked.
“He has AIDS,” I continued, and he seemed to have the briefest moment of recognition—Paul was gay, so of course he had AIDS, he had brought that on himself—and that’s when I pulled away and leaned over to grab my bag to try to find a tissue—which, of course, I didn’t have.
“Here,” he said, offering me a handkerchief. I took it—when did he start using handkerchiefs?, I wondered, that was something my father did—and I blew my nose and wiped my eyes and realized that I had imprinted three black mascara smudges on Bucky’s white shirt collar.
I started to laugh, and pulled him to the lobby mirror to show him the damage.
“Some things never change,” he said comfortingly, and he put his arm around my shoulders and walked me onto the street. I felt cocooned in a dream.
Once outside, the air snapped me to. It was, technically, spring, but it was still cold, not unlike the night at the Met—could it be?—a year ago. In the harsh white light of the streetlamp, I looked up at Bucky’s face. He was the same, but different. Balder, for starters. And was that silver now in his blond hair? He resembled his father more and more. He also seemed to have lost the bulk of his muscles, as if he’d forsaken his heavy-duty weight lifting for aerobics. The collar of his shirt looked loose.
“Bucky.” Saying his name out loud seemed to help focus me. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, it seems I arrived in the nick of time,” he said pleasantly. When I didn’t respond, he kept going. “I need to talk to you, Sandra, and I thought this might be the best way to make that happen.”
I felt confused—old, suddenly. Nothing was working the way it should. This was a man who had really, really done me wrong. Why was I so glad to see him?
“I’d like us to sit and talk awhile,” he said. “Can you come with me now? Or do you have plans?” He was suddenly solicitous.
“No, I have no plans tonight.”
He hailed a cab and directed the driver to the Landmark Tavern, way over on the West Side. It was a place we had always liked, especially as a refuge on cold nights. And this one qualified.
We sat at a table in the back room, and I ordered a double Scotch and soda. Bucky’s blue eyes were still vivid, I thought, though different from Mark’s, which were darker, graver somehow.
He ordered a beer. “Tell me about Paul,” he said, and I did, the story of these last months pouring out. I told him about Paul’s parents’ house and his father’s real job, and nothing was more gratifying than seeing Bucky’s jaw drop and his eyes widen, and it was like a hundred dinners we had had together when I told him stories and he listened with every fiber. Or seemed to. He asked about Sally, and about Dennis, who I was amazed to discover he remembered, and I don’t know how long we kept at it, but we both had two drinks and finished our burgers by the time we were done.
“Listen,” I said eventually, “I’m sorry. All I’ve done is talk about Paul, and me. I know you wanted to talk, too. Is it about your getting married? Because I heard that. Congratulations.”
“Well,” he said, shifting in his seat, “that’s one of the reasons I’m here tonight, Sandra. The engagement is off. I realized that I was too much on the rebound to have gotten involved again so quickly. And I’ve thought a lot about how much I hurt you, and I was hoping that I could make it up to you somehow.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, only half joking.
“Well, how about giving me another chance? Can you have dinner with me this weekend?”
I sat there, dazed, contemplating his eager smile. He was undoubtedly up to no good. But the odd thing was, I didn’t seem to care. It was almost as if I were watching him on a TV screen—someone who looked like him and sounded like him, but I couldn’t be sure it was him. But none of that mattered as much as how I felt right at that moment—so purged, so heard in telling my story about Paul to someone who had known him as long as I had.
And I realized that I was no different from anyone else I knew who had lost a mate—or a soul mate—and talked about it too much, whether it was my grandmother or a friend my own age. They could talk endlessly, charming themselves backward in time, igniting themselves with the hope of resurrection. It was porn for the mourning, I thought. Nothing was as captivating as the sound of my own voice, rising and falling with the most insignificant memories, painting myself in the center of the picture with the man about to get away.
And somehow, saying it all to the man who did get away made it all the more meaningful. Because look: After all my suffering, my longing, he had come back, just as I was losing Paul. In the nick of time, he had said.
“Yes,” I told him, “I can have dinner this weekend.”
After that tumultuous Monday, things quieted down. Marti Lyons packed up and left, trailed by a blind item in the gossip columns: “Which powerful downtown editor got a little too distracted with the beauty biz for her paramour’s own good? The poor thing is now out of a job.” The poor thing had actually been hired by Vogue, posthaste.
Susie Schein grudg
ingly paid Mark’s agent the full fee, and he left a message saying that they had placed the piece in Condé Nast Traveler, which had outbid Manhattan Week, a new, hip competitor to New York magazine. And Glamour had passed on Buffy Parks, I heard, so my potential career there was safe.
I had my usual amount of copy to edit, plus some of Marti’s writing to do, a task at which I proved hopeless. Since my piece about Idina Lhasa in Acapulco, I had written more, but beauty copy was something else again. I just couldn’t get it up for the glories of peach, unless it was in a pie, and everything I tried was rejected by Miss Belladonna as too flat. Instead, I was put in charge of editing the freelance writers who’d been called in until a replacement for Marti was found.
Surprisingly, Susie Schein never mentioned my blowup in the hallway. She stayed sequestered in her office, interviewing beauty writers. I told her about Mark selling his piece, and she nodded casually, as if it meant nothing to her—and in fact, it probably didn’t. She was already on to a new selection for her Genius-of-the-Month Club, a pseudo-intellectual discountdepartment-store heiress who had begun attending editorial meetings, name-dropping her lunch companions, and promising long pieces, one of which she actually wrote. When it was cut down to little more than a caption, there wasn’t a peep out of her.
On Wednesday, Sally called to say that the doctors had ordered more tests. She would let me know the results as soon as she did.
That night, I met Mark at Orso, as planned.
“How are you?” he asked enthusiastically as I approached the table.
I launched into my story about Paul, replete with minute detail, and though he listened and asked all the right questions, he eventually changed the subject to other things: new assignments he was working on, books he was reading, friends who had called and what their news had been.
I sipped my wine and nodded and laughed in all the right places and felt as if he were on the same TV screen Bucky had been on the other night. Who was this man, exactly? I seemed to have trouble placing him, even in these familiar surroundings, even when I looked into his bright, soulful eyes. The connection seemed gone.