by Chris Belden
“ ‘Your hand as big as a vulture’s wing on my buttery skin,’ ” Ms. Smithee intoned. “ ‘Fingers long and hairy between the knuckles / their tips rough as a cat’s tongue.’ ”
Simone, Shriver could see, took all this in like it was the Gettysburg Address. He wondered if she would do the same with his story—if he ever got to read it. Then she glanced over and caught him watching her. Surprised, he did not even bother to turn away. She looked at him for a moment with an impenetrable expression, then returned her attention to Gonquin Smithee.
“She’s very intense,” someone whispered into Shriver’s ear. He turned to see Edsel Nixon beside him. Shriver had not even noticed the grad student sitting there. He’d been too busy watching Simone.
“Who?” Shriver asked.
“Why, Gonquin Smithee, of course. Who else?”
As Shriver attempted to digest the poetry—“ ‘Your cock,’ ” Ms. Smithee chanted, “ ‘tastes salty and smells of yeast / and baby powder’ ”—he was suddenly overwhelmed by the abrupt realization that he was in this strange room in a strange town full of strangers. Why on earth was he here? What business did he have consorting with poets who wrote openly about their fathers’ genitals? His heart pounded. Icy sweat erupted on his forehead. He wondered how long it would take him to get back home—to get to the airport, to fly halfway across the country, to take a cab to his building—if he walked out of here right now. He was sure he would die if his heart did not slow down.
He shut his eyes and thought of Mr. Bojangles, who was always able to comfort him at anxious times such as these. The cat would somehow sense his distress and leap daintily onto his lap. Shriver would then stroke Mr. B.’s silky head and ears, feeling the vibrations building up deep inside the animal. He had seen a program on public television about cats in which experts admitted bafflement about the origin of purring—how the noise is manufactured, and even where. Apparently, it remained a pleasant mystery.
“Are you okay?” Edsel Nixon whispered.
Shriver realized that he’d been miming the act of stroking a cat.
“Fine,” he said, shifting in his seat.
He made an effort to pay more attention to the poet’s words, in case he would have to speak with her later on, at dinner. He wanted to be able to say something intelligent and, hopefully, complimentary, and needed a concrete example of her work to talk about.
Ms. Smithee was now reading from her epic poem Menstrual Show: “ ‘You have finally killed me, I thought / when you pulled out your blood-drenched sword / but then disgust spread across your face like a shadow / and I knew it was I who had somehow done wrong.’ ”
Shriver wondered if perhaps he should compliment her vivid imagery but worried that this was not original enough for a writer as sophisticated as the real Shriver seemed to be. He rehearsed to himself various comments—“I particularly enjoyed your comparison of semen to wood glue,” or “How did you come up with so many striking rape metaphors?”—as Gonquin Smithee brought her performance to a well-received climax.
“ ‘Remember this,’ ” she read. “ ‘Though I cannot murder you / though I will not yank the ragged fingernails from your hands / though I dare not take a razor to your dangling scrotum / my words will tear you limb from limb / and I / and thousands of readers / will applaud that some sort of justice has been served.’ ”
After a lengthy amount of justice-serving applause, during which Ms. Smithee stood tall and defiant at the podium, the poet asked if there were any questions. No one raised a hand. Shriver watched as Simone scanned the apparently stunned crowd. Seven hundred people, and no brave volunteers.
Simone stood and said, as loudly as she could manage, “Okay, I’ll get the ball rolling.”
How courageous she is, Shriver thought.
“Is it difficult,” she asked, “to be so open about your personal story in these poems?”
Gonquin Smithee mulled over the question as if it had never been asked before. Then she leaned toward the microphone and said, “Yes.”
There was a pause as the audience awaited further elucidation. None came. Shriver heard a few titters as people realized this. Simone, he could see, was worried. She now stood off to the side of the room, watching for any raised hands. Ms. Smithee, meanwhile, remained proudly at the podium, awaiting the next question.
“Come on,” she said. “I won’t bite you.”
Several people coughed. Shriver felt sorry for Simone, who now seemed embarrassed. No doubt she had played up the audience-participation angle to the author. She wiped at the sheen of sweat on her brow.
Impulsively, Shriver raised his hand.
“Mr. Shriver,” Gonquin Smithee said with an exaggerated nod.
How does she know who I am? Shriver wondered as murmurs spread through the crowd. He could hear his name being whispered all around him. He stood. Simone, obviously relieved and grateful, smiled encouragingly.
“What is the question?” Ms. Smithee asked. He thought he detected a hostile tone to her voice.
Shriver licked his dry lips and tried to think. He looked down at Edsel Nixon, who watched him with great anticipation. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the intense gaze of Delta Malarkey-Jones, who sat as if frozen in the act of taking a sip from a large soda. He said the only thing that came into his mind.
“Have you ever written a poem from the point of view of your father?”
During the long moment that followed, a truck could be heard backing up—beep, beep, beep—somewhere outside the building. Why he’d asked such a question was a mystery to Shriver. He knew nothing of literature, never mind poetry.
The poet looked down at him with an amused expression. “And why would I do that?”
Still standing, Shriver felt 1,398 eyes turn toward him. He cleared his throat. “I just thought it might be interesting.”
The audience buzzed.
“Any other questions?” Ms. Smithee asked, looking around the room.
Shriver glanced over at Simone, who did not meet his gaze. A woman in the rear called out that she too had been abused by a family member, and she’d written six hundred poems about it. Ms. Smithee responded warmly to this information.
When the Q-and-A had ended, Shriver followed Edsel Nixon into the lobby, where hundreds of people now loitered. A few smiled at him; others looked away, embarrassed. One young man, tall and dressed in dark clothes, seemed about to approach him, then turned and hurried away, as if he’d been caught doing something illicit.
“Shriver!”
From across the lobby, a man’s voice.
“Shriver, you old devil!”
A middle-aged man in a cheap suit squeezed his way through the crowd. Rather portly, he wore thick glasses and a gray mustache that contrasted sharply with his brown toupee.
“You haven’t changed a bit, you mischievous old SOB,” the man said, offering his hand. “Jack Blunt. Remember?”
Fate tapped a paradiddle on Shriver’s heart. He tried to brace himself, but it was no use. This man knew the real Shriver. Here was the moment he was to be exposed.
“I interviewed you years ago,” Jack Blunt said. “Your book had just been published. We went out and tied one on.” He laughed. “Jesus, I think I’m still hungover.”
He doesn’t remember, Shriver thought. Relieved, he said, “Of course. Blunt. That was a long, long time ago. I hardly recognize you.”
“You look the same,” Blunt said, sizing Shriver up through cola-bottle glasses.
“I do?”
“Of course not,” the reporter said with a laugh. “None of us do. Listen, how about an interview?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“This is a big occasion. Your first appearance in, what, twenty years? I flew all the way out here for this.”
“I’m not really doing interviews, Mr. Blunt.”
“And it’s only appropriate you talk to me,” the reporter said, “since I was the one who got to you first all
those years ago, when you were a nobody. That article was a big deal for you, Shriver. This will make for a delicious bookend. Plus, I really need the break.”
“But I don’t have anything to say.”
“Look, let’s go to this little hole-in-the-wall around the corner, I’ll buy you a drink or two, and we can just shoot the shit. Off the record. Then you can decide. How about it?”
He felt he was stepping deeper into a quagmire, but a drink sounded very good to Shriver, especially after that reading.
“I think there’s a dinner thing planned,” Edsel Nixon said. “With Gonquin and a few of the others.”
“I’ll have him back in time,” Blunt promised.
“Will Professor Cleverly be there?” Shriver asked Nixon.
“Yes, I think so.”
Shriver turned to the reporter. “I really must be back by—”
“Six,” Nixon said. “At Slander’s Restaurant.”
“No problemo,” Blunt said. “I’ll have him there by then.”
Nixon appeared troubled. “Mr. Shriver—Professor Cleverly will kill me if you get lost or anything.”
“Time’s a-wastin’,” Blunt said, miming the tipping of a bottle to his lips.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Nixon,” Shriver told his handler. “Tell Simone—er, Professor Cleverly—that I’ll be there at six.” Poor Nixon looked stricken as Blunt led Shriver down the stairs and out the front doors.
“Goddamn, it’s good to see you, old man,” the reporter said as they crossed the street. “To be honest, I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?”
“Where else would you be for twenty years? But the minute I heard you were appearing here, I made my plans.”
Shriver had to skip to keep up as the fast-walking Blunt rounded a corner. The change in his jacket pocket jingled with each step, and mosquitoes buzzed noisily around his head.
“And that question of yours,” Blunt said. “Goddamn brilliant! How I despise the self-serving victim crap that dyke ladles out.”
They came to a one-story cinder-block building, painted brown. On the metal door adhesive letters spelled out THe BLoodY DuCk. Inside, thick, gray cigarette smoke fogged the room, though there was only the bartender and a waitress in the place, neither of them smoking.
Blunt led Shriver to a booth and called to the waitress for two double whiskeys. Shriver winced as he sat on the cushionless bench. Initials and names and slogans adorned the wood of the booth. Directly over Blunt’s left shoulder someone had carved NOW THAT I’M ENLIGHTENED, I’M JUST AS MISERABLE AS EVER.
The waitress brought their drinks. She had skin the color and consistency of alabaster, and green-apple eyes. She set the drinks down and walked away with the sultry air of a woman in a black-and-white movie set in a tropical bar frequented by mercenaries.
“Look at the keister on her,” Blunt remarked. “Cheers.” He held up his tumbler and the two men toasted.
Shriver relished the heat that cascaded down his throat.
“What I want to know,” Blunt said, “is what the hell you’ve been up to these past twenty or so years, besides living large off your royalty checks.”
Shriver thought back over the past two decades. They were as hazy as the bar.
“This and that,” he said.
“Have you been writing?”
Shriver patted the yellow pages in his jacket pocket.
“A little.”
“A novel? Stories? What?”
“Not sure.”
Blunt slapped his now-empty tumbler down on the table. “You’re playing games with me, Shriver.” He signaled to the waitress for another round. Shriver hurried to catch up with him, draining his glass and setting it down beside its companion.
“No games,” he said.
“All right. So tell me why you’ve been out of the spotlight for so long. Is it the ol’ sophomore slump?”
“I guess so.”
“Writer’s block?”
“Sort of.”
“I mean, the first book goes nuclear, millions sold, a buttload of awards—who could follow that up?”
“Not me.”
The waitress delivered two more glasses of whiskey. Shriver drained his in one gulp. He felt like a man in an airtight wetsuit slowly submerging into an icy lake.
“Still able to put it away, I see.”
“What is it you want from me, Mr. Blunt?”
“Just talk to me. Tell me where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Oh, come on, Shriver. You need me now, just like you needed me then. You may be a star at this little dog and pony show, but out there”—he waved toward the wall and beyond, toward the rest of the world—“nobody remembers you. I had to explain who you were to my editor. The ignorant twit.”
“Then why bother to talk to me at all?”
“Because as ridiculous and self-serving as these little events are, it is a big deal that you’re coming out of the woodwork, and it’s a great opportunity for me.”
“You want a scoop.”
“Hell yes! And I can help you while I’m at it.”
“Help me how?”
“By getting your name out there! And your face too.”
From his coat pocket Blunt produced a small camera, the kind a spy might use.
“No!” Shriver cried, covering his face. “Absolutely not!”
“Just one shot. No one remembers what you look like.”
“Good!”
“They didn’t even put your photo in your goddamn book.”
“Honest to God, Blunt, if you take a picture of me I will not speak to you at all.”
“Oh, all right.” The reporter slid the tiny camera back into his pocket. “Still cranky. That hasn’t changed.”
As Shriver scratched at the mosquito bite on his hand, the waitress emerged from a wall of smoke with two more drinks.
“On me,” she said. “I’m a big fan.” Then she turned and wiggled away.
“Yum yum,” Blunt said. “Play your cards right, Shriver, and . . .” His eyebrows flapped suggestively.
Shriver ignored him.
“I’m onto you, old boy,” Blunt said, eyeballing him over the rim of his tumbler.
Shriver’s adrenal gland pumped madly away. “What do you mean?”
“You’re up to something.”
“Such as?”
“It’s some sort of stunt. I don’t have it all worked out yet, but . . .”
Shriver’s lips began to quiver a little.
“What I can’t understand,” Blunt said, “is why you would agree to attend this puny little conference.”
“It’s simple. They asked me.”
“Is that all it took?”
Shriver nodded.
“So you’ve been hiding away for two decades because no one asked you out?”
Shriver finished his drink and peered through the foglike smoke at the clock on the wall.
“Sorry, Mr. Blunt, but I really must go. I am expected for dinner.”
“You haven’t changed much, Shriver.”
“You don’t know how pleased I am to hear you say that. Thanks for the drinks.”
“Anytime. How about tomorrow? An on-the-record chat over lunch?”
“I don’t think so. Have a nice trip back home.”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll see you around town, old boy.”
Shriver squeezed himself out of the booth. “Bye!” the waitress called out with a wave. “Come again!”
Shriver walked stiffly from the tavern, trailing a wispy tail of cigarette smoke.
Chapter Four
Shriver stood outside Slander’s Restaurant, peering in through the large plate-glass window. Located on Main Street between the Church of Pornocology and the Dusty Rose Rodeo Museum, the place looked elegant in an old-fashioned way, with dark wood tables and chairs, and sepia-toned historical photographs hanging on the wide-plank walls.
Mosquitoes buzzed madly around Shriver’s ears. They were growing in number now that the sun had started to set. The clock near the entrance read six thirty.
“There you are!”
Shriver turned to see Edsel Nixon standing beside him.
“You have an unnerving habit of materializing out of nowhere,” Shriver shouted over the pounding of his heart.
“Sorry, sir. I’ll try to be more noisy from now on. It’s just that Professor Cleverly is worried about you.”
“I got a little lost.”
It was true. Along the way Shriver had been forced to ask several people for directions, with mixed results. Fortunately, he’d stumbled upon a liquor store, Big Chief’s Liquorarium, where the proprietor, a squat fellow of Native American descent, silently drew a detailed map on a brown paper bag. To thank him, Shriver used part of his per diem to purchase a pint of whiskey, which he now kept inside his jacket pocket.
Nixon led him through the restaurant to a back room where the conference people sat at a long table—seven in all, plus Shriver. Simone sat in the far corner. Unfortunately, the seats on either side of her were spoken for.
“Shriver!” A hatless T. Wätzczesnam sat at the far end of the table, to Simone’s left. He was bald, Shriver now saw, with a graying comb-over made sweaty from all those hours of dank confinement. “Where ya been, buddy?”
Shriver waved hello and sat at the near end of the table, to the left of Edsel Nixon. “Ouch,” he hissed as his sore rump collided with the seat.
“We thought you got lost,” Wätzczesnam said.
“Mr. Shriver was talking to the press,” Simone explained to the group.
“Ah,” the cowboy said with a chuckle, “fraternizing with the enemy, eh?”
The waiter—young, tall, with dark hair and deep-set eyes—arrived with a menu.