The Best of Youth

by Michael Dahlie

  Here, Lawrence paused, and then added, “But Henry, and I say this as a culturally ignorant man, your book, it was really good. Really, deeply good. Made me think I need to read more novels, and that’s something. So I think you’ll be all right.”

  “That’s really nice of you to say,” Henry replied, genuinely touched.

  And this last point of Lawrence’s was actually something that Lisa’s article had addressed—concluded with, even, tempering some of the aggression against Kipling. Lisa went to some lengths to point out what an excellent book The Best of Youth was, suggesting that perhaps this was one positive aspect of everything that had transpired—that the book had done well not just because of Kipling’s brand name but also because of its high quality, and that the world could eagerly anticipate more books from Henry.

  Of course, Henry would probably have to wait a while to publish a book of his own—until after he fought off the inevitable lawsuit, for example. After all, Henry didn’t want Kipling to get hold of any of his future earnings. And the fact was that earnings were exactly what Henry would be looking for in the time ahead, although he also knew that even what might be considered a successful novel (should he write one) was surely not going to bring back the money he’d be losing. Still, for unknowable reasons, and despite the mysterious loyalty he felt to his thrifty Yankee ancestors, he really didn’t feel that bad about what might be taken from him. And, as he thought about all this after hanging up with Lawrence, he wondered how much he could put his apartment on the market for, although it didn’t seem like it would have to come to that. Just as he was turning the figures over in his head, though—it was now well into the afternoon—Sasha called while running errands and insisted that she was hungry and that she expected dinner from him soon. “Given my recent kindnesses,” she said.

  “Yeah, I do owe you dinner,” Henry said. “That’s undeniable. Your recent kindnesses. I hardly know what to say. Can’t stop thinking about them. But I’m about to lose a lot of cash. You know this, right? I’m not the man of great means you knew even a few days ago.”

  “We’ll eat cheap!” Sasha replied. “To practice for when you’re poor. Anyway, I don’t need much money. Just a tattoo allowance, but we can work that out later. But dinner! Whatever you can afford, now that you’re getting jacked.”

  “You’re very compassionate,” Henry said. “I’ll come up with something.” And soon Henry was putting on his shoes and thinking that they ought to go that night to a restaurant in Williamsburg that was famous for serving multiple and experimental varieties of lasagna.

  And before long he and Sasha were walking along Bedford Avenue and on their way to dinner, feeling quite happy to be together and very much looking forward to examining the lasagna menu and talking very deeply (with real and intense consideration) about what they’d like to eat that night and what they’d like to drink and where they’d like to go afterward and, still astonishing to Henry, just how happy they were to be with each other.

  26

  AND IN THE NEXT months, that happiness didn’t go away. And life worked out in other ways as well.

  With the money issue, things were a bit tougher on Henry than he had hoped, but by world standards he was still extraordinarily fortunate. The final out-of-court settlement was nearly $11 million, a staggering amount of money (no question), but the $4 million left over was enormous too, all things considered.

  “It’s just enough to keep me around,” Sasha said. It was now five months after the exposure of Kipling’s fraudulence. “Less than four, and I was out of here.”

  “Lawrence came through for me again,” Henry replied. “Now I can afford to get you that new piercing you’ve been wanting.”

  In other news, the third issue of Suckerhead—the stock, that is, the printed version—was destroyed in a warehouse fire in Canada, and since the editors had declined the insurance clause on the contract, issue three disappeared into the wide unknowable ether. They did have a fund-raiser of sorts in someone’s backyard in Greenpoint, but after funds were tallied against expenditures (the food and beer bill was astronomical) they only made $137, which was subsequently spent on another party to mark Suckerhead’s farewell to the world of literature. Henry was invited, with a note on his invitation from the editor-in-chief that perhaps they could talk about a potential resurrection and redemption of all their hard work. Henry did not attend, nor did he RSVP, although his lack of a response to the invitation did make him feel just a bit guilty. It wasn’t the best kind of behavior, he thought. Still, he didn’t tell the editor to go fuck himself, so perhaps he acted with at least some dignity.

  Whitney had made progress of his own as well. He published a translation of a novel by an Italian writer named Christian Frascella to surprising acclaim—he’d done it on his own, with no publication deal, and sold it with the author to an independent press. The novel was initially quite baffling to the literary community, but soon developed a real following, and from there, there was much talk in the city about how the only really interesting things going on in contemporary letters were happening in Italy. Subsequently, Whitney became involved with a string of women and discovered, despite his long experience and exquisite finesse in such situations, that Italian women were far beyond his understanding. Still, there was value to be found in his failure. “If you find out that it’s not possible to date three different Italian women at the same time, then you’ve learned something important about life,” Whitney told Henry one evening as they grilled sausages on Whitney’s balcony. Henry agreed that this was probably something very good to know.

  Most important in all this, Abby decided to have the baby, although with a firm agreement with Kipling that he’d have nothing to do with the child. The commitment came with a financial settlement, though—substantial, in fact, with the threat that, in the interest of providing for her child, Abby would tell her entire story, sucking up her own unwanted tabloid scrutiny, if Kipling tried to back out. Although Henry never learned the exact number, he gathered it was a lump settlement in the millions. So that too deferred some of the pain of the $11 million Henry had lost to Kipling. The money was turning around just as quickly and going toward raising Abby’s child. Cosmic justice, as far as Henry could determine.

  As for his and Sasha’s future, he thought so little about it all (took it so much for granted, maybe) that the relationship could hardly be seen as anything other than one of the best things that had ever happened to him. After they both completed their community service (and vowed to each other never to drink in public or illegally transport firearms again) they made plans—and executed them—to spend the summer in the south of France, near Perpignan, on the Mediterranean and right at the Spanish border. Sasha claimed to have friends there, although it turned out she had none. The strange neighbor she had once known in Grosse Pointe was long dead, as they discovered from a talkative but quite confused nephew. And the family friend from Michigan who lived there had been arrested for some kind of financial fraud just a month earlier and was not around (as he had promised) to take them out and show them the “hot spots.”

  Still, all they wanted was a little place by the water, which was exactly what they got. Despite the highly polished photos sent to them by the rental company, they were given keys to a tiny one-bedroom shack that had windows that wouldn’t close and a shower in the kitchen. But it was right on the beach, which was the important thing, and it had a good, working stove that they could cook their dinners on, and they’d rented a car so they could take provincial excursions whenever they liked. And there was a top-quality fish market less than half a mile away. So what was there to complain about? Nothing, Henry concluded over and over. A man who loses $11 million and disgraces himself in more than one aspect of his life usually flees abroad to disappear or to reassess his future. But Henry felt extremely fortunate with how things were going for him, and he’d even begun work on a novel that he felt was going well—it was about an eighty-year-old journalist who decided to
go back to law school after losing a defamation suit launched by a failing film actor. (The journalist’s ambition with law school was to learn how to help other aged journalists who were being unfairly sued.) The book was ending up to be quite funny, and since this particular journalist was still reasonably wealthy, and (according to the women in the novel) strikingly handsome, he had quite a good time back in the world of academia.

  Sasha hated it. She read his new pages every night after they got into their ancient and comically lumpy French bed, and told Henry that it simply wasn’t plausible that this old man would be so sexually desirable to so many young and attractive law students. Henry nodded and didn’t dispute this argument, although he did often say things like, “I have an artistic vision and I intend to see it to the end,” a response with which Sasha could hardly argue. Likely, the novel wouldn’t work out, but he had a strange kind of patience with his work at this point, and if the novel was abandoned by the time they returned to the U.S., what would he have lost? He’d be back in his McCarren Park apartment, hopefully with Sasha living with him—they’d talked quite seriously about this matter—and he’d begin another book. And then perhaps his career as a writer really would take off, and his role in life would become more concrete. If he was lucky, that is, and if he didn’t kill any more priceless animals, and if he avoided jail, and if he stayed far away from people like Kipling. These things, though, he thought at last, at this point in his life, he might be able to manage.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Dahlie

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dahlie, Michael.

  The best of youth : a novel / Michael Dahlie. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-393-08185-5 (hardcover)

  1. Benefactors—Fiction. 2. Ghostwriters—Fiction. 3. Publishers and

  publishing—Fiction. 4. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. [1. Courtesy—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PS3604.A344B47 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2012029249

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