The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald

by David Handler

  Not until his phone buzzed. Then he reached for the cordless headset on the desk and put it on. It had a mouthpiece and earphones and an antenna sticking out of it. It looked like a prop left over from an old episode of Star Trek, the one where somebody stole Spock’s brain. Boyd jumped to his feet and paced around the office as he talked, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  “Yo, amigo, you sound like shit in a microwave! Gotta start living clean like me! How’s the little baby? … That’s beautiful, man. Beautiful.” Boyd shifted from chummy to grave. “So, listen, I have a firm offer on the table — buck and a quarter up front.” (Translation: another publisher had offered one of Boyd’s clients an advance of $125,000 for their next book.) He shifted to confidential now — the man worked through the gears as fast and furious as Emerson Fittipaldi. “None of this would be happening if it was up to me. You and me, we’re like family. I want you to have it. And if you’ll just match their figure by the end of today, you’ll get it, okay? … Sure, sure think it over.” He said good-bye, yanked off the headset, and flung it carelessly onto the desk. Then he sat back down, chuckling to himself. “Between you and me, the cheap bastard’s been all alone in the bidding since seventy-five thou. But what he doesn’t know won’t piss him off, right?”

  “I thought that sort of thing wasn’t done,” I said.

  “It wasn’t — yesterday. But that was when publishing was about books. It’s about bucks now, and anyone who says it isn’t is doing a yank on your frank.” He picked up a football from his credenza and gripped it by the seams. “I know, I know. A lot of editors think I’m a douchebag, and guess what — I like it that way. It means I’m doing my job. What’s important to me is that my clients are happy. And believe me, they are.”

  He tossed me the football. It had been autographed by a drug-dependent pro quarterback whose memoir Samuels had peddled for six hundred thousand. Happy indeed.

  He took me in with his nonblinking lasers. “What would you say if I told you I’ve convinced Cam Noyes’s publisher to accept a work of nonfiction for his second book instead of a novel. Exact same money.”

  “I’d say,” I replied, “you’re almost as good an agent as you think you are.”

  “It’s going to be a kind of portrait of his time,” he went on. “His life, his friends, his scene. Charlie Chu is doing original portraits and illustrations for it. An explosive collaboration, really. Like a labor of love for the two of them. Actually, there’s no existing term to describe what it is.”

  “I can think of one — home movie.”

  Boyd’s nostrils quivered, but he kept right on coming. “We’re talking about the top writer and top artist of this generation. There’s no doubt that it’ll be major.” He seemed utterly sure of this. And he was. Like all topflight salesmen, he was his own best customer.

  “What’s happened to his second novel?” I asked.

  “Too soon. Cam has to wait for his ideas to percolate — especially because everybody expects so much of him. In the meantime, he needs product out there. And some help — pulling it together. He needs a good editor is what he needs, only there are maybe three in the whole fucking town and his isn’t one of ’em. You interested in helping him out?”

  “That’s not my specialty. There are plenty of competent free-lance editors out there if you —”

  “You’re not gonna make this easy for me, are you, amigo?”

  “That’s not my specialty either.”

  He sighed, started to nibble irritably on the cuticle of his left thumb. Abruptly, he stopped himself. “Look, Cam Noyes is a cottage industry now. He has promotional commitments, personal appearance tours, speaking engagements — twenty grand a pop on the college campus tour. His time has become too valuable for him to spend it alone in a room generating material. Literary stars of his magnitude, they’re stepping back from the day-to-day writing. Subcontracting it. At least the smart ones are. They’re becoming like the great Renaissance artists. Those guys had a whole staff of studio artists grinding the shit out for ’em. Then they’d sign their name on it. Same thing.”

  “I still don’t see anything here for me.”

  “What, you need to hear the words?”

  “It would help.”

  “Okay. I want to hire you to ghost Cams … ”

  “Labor of love?”

  “I can’t offer you any kind of coauthorship of course. But if you —”

  “Not interested,” I said, getting to my feet. I started for the door.

  “Whoa, hold on, man! If it’s the money —”

  “It’s not. You’re talking about a book I wouldn’t read. No one will. It’ll sell seventy copies. The rest will be recycled into low-cost housing material.”

  “So make it a book people will read.” It was a challenge.

  “How?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t need you, would I?”

  I hesitated. He had a point there. Besides, $657 doesn’t go far these days when you have two mouths to feed. “First, I want you to tell me the part you’re not telling me.”

  He lit a Camel and narrowed his lasers at me. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “You want beating around the bush, get George Will.”

  He let out a short, harsh laugh. “What I’m not telling you … Okay, you got it.”

  I sat.

  “I’ve known Cam Noyes since we were kids,” he began. “I don’t think of him as a client. I think of him as a brother.”

  “You forget, I already know how you treat family,” I pointed out, indicating the headset on his desk.

  “I’m trying to tell you I love this guy, okay?”

  “And?”

  “And … he’s in danger of wearing out his welcome in this town. He’s brought a lot of that on himself with his mouth. Genius or no genius, people are ready to bury him — no shit. And he doesn’t care one bit. All he wants to do is party and chase puss. I keep telling him if he doesn’t deliver some kind of class manuscript and deliver it on time, the party’s gonna be over. But he won’t listen to me.”

  “What makes you think he’d listen to me?”

  “You’ve been there. You know the pitfalls.”

  “I didn’t exactly step around them.”

  “But you understand what he’s going through. He’ll respond to you. You’re what he needs right now. I sure ain’t.” He scratched his beard ruefully. “Will you talk to him?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m not in the market for a kid brother. Especially one who makes more money than I do.”

  “Just talk to him,” Boyd pleaded. “You’re gonna love the guy. I’m sure of it. Want to know why I’m so sure?”

  “Not particularly.”

  He sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, and smiled expansively at me. “Cam Noyes is going to remind you of your favorite person in the whole world.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “You.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN HE GOT DONE groaning and sputtering Cam Noyes asked me what the fuck was going on.

  “What’s going on,” I told him, “is we had a lunch date three hours ago and you stood me up. I don’t like to be stood up.”

  “I noticed. Sorry, I fell asleep.”

  “I noticed.”

  He sniffled and reached for a Marlboro on the nightstand. He seemed unconcerned by his nakedness. Also by the fact that he was sitting in ice water. He lit the cigarette with a silver Tiffany’s lighter, pulled deeply on it, and let the smoke slowly out of his blood-caked nostrils. There was a mannered quality to the way he did it, as if he had practiced it in front of a mirror a few thousand times. When he put the lighter down, he noticed the lipstick Lulu had found. He picked it up and stared at it a moment, gripping it tight enough for his knuckles to whiten. Then he hurled it against the wall. It bounced off, rolled across the floor, and right back under the bed where it came from. Then he yawned, ran his hands through his hair, and smil
ed at me. It was a smile of straight white teeth, gleaming blue eyes, and long blond lashes, an unexpectedly warm and trusting smile with a hint of bashfulness underneath. It was a million-dollar smile.

  “Cam Noyes, Mr. Hoag,” he said.

  “Make it Hoagy.” I shook his big callused hand.

  “As in Carmichael?”

  “As in the cheese steak.”

  “Are you from Philadelphia?”

  “I am not.”

  “Father was,” he said.

  “I suppose someone has to be.”

  Lulu put her two front paws up on the bed and barked.

  “The name is Lulu,” I explained.

  “Of course it is,” he said pleasantly.

  He hoisted her up with one arm. She made a complete circuit around the bed, snuffling happily, flopped down next to him, and immediately began to sneeze like crazy, her big floppy ears pinwheeling around almost fast enough to lift her off the bed.

  He watched her curiously. “Why is she doing that?”

  “She happens to be allergic to a certain perfume.”

  Calvin Klein’s Obsession, to be exact. The bedcovers reeked of it. She had not, I recalled, sneezed when she met Charlie.

  He patted her. “I had a dog when I was a boy,” he said, his voice tinged now with a kind of remote, aristocratic sadness. “A cocker spaniel named Johnny. I loved Johnny more than anything. He died when I was away at camp one summer. Mother was so distressed that I’d not been able to say a proper good-bye that she saved him for me. When I got home, she took me straight to the cellar and opened the freezer door and said, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ And there he was, shoved in there with the Hummel skinless franks and Minute Maid frozen orange juice, teeth bared, his paws all stiff … ” He shuddered at the memory, then looked down and realized he was petting the wet blanket. Lulu was long gone — under the bed. Not her kind of story.

  “Get dressed,” I said. “We’ll put some food and coffee into you. Talk business.”

  He sniffed at his armpits. “Perhaps I ought to shower.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  He came downstairs a few minutes later wearing a stylishly dowdy white planter’s suit, striped tie, pink oxford button-down shirt, and paint-spattered Top-Siders with no socks. His wet hair was slicked straight back. He looked scrubbed and healthy and ready for anything. He was still young enough to not show the effects of the life he was leading. It had been a long time since I was that young.

  At the foot of the stairs he stopped to light a cigarette from his lighter. Again I noticed how self-conscious his gestures seemed. He posed there for me, one hand in his pants pocket, looking as if he were straight out of one of those Ralph Lauren ads, the ones where the members of an ultracivilized master-race family are lounging about their baronial country manse with their hunting dogs and their croquet mallets. There was a good reason for this — he had actually been a Lauren model before he took up writing.

  “Forgot to give your key back,” I said, tossing it to him. “Charlie’s key, I mean.”

  He caught it and looked at it. “You met Charlie?”

  “I did. She seems —”

  “Brilliant? She is.” He sighed. “She’s also in love with me, the poor thing.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m no good for her. Or for anyone. I can’t love them back. You were married to Merilee Nash, weren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “What was it like?”

  “Being married or being married to Merilee Nash?”

  “Being married.”

  I tugged at my ear. “When it’s going well, it’s not the worst thing there is. When it isn’t … it is.”

  “She seems like the perfect woman.”

  “Only because she is.”

  “How do you know when you’re ready for it? Marriage, I mean.”

  “You’re never ready. You just kind of feel it sneaking up on you, like the punch line to a bad joke. Not a terrible house, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Still no kitchen or terrace, as you can see. Charlie can’t seem to get the damned contractor back for more than thirty minutes at a time, and at that only when we’re not here to put our foot down. The man’s uncanny. Friend of hers at Architectural Digest wants to do a spread when it’s all done. He says it’s a breakthrough in Found Minimalism.”

  “Play a lot of golf?” I asked, indicating the putting green. “Or is that the ‘found’ part?”

  He went over to the putter and fingered it fondly. “One of my first loves, actually. As a boy I dreamt of being a pro. Do you play the game?”

  “Some. Javelin was always more my style.”

  “What’s your handicap?”

  “An exceedingly low bullshit threshold. Yours?”

  He grinned. “I don’t know how to say no.”

  “That’s not so hard. I’ll teach you.”

  It was still sunny outside. The air was fragrant from the blossoms on the trees across the street in the park, where a black nanny was pushing a baby in a pram down one of the spotless gravel paths. An elderly couple sat on a bench together reading. They waved to the nanny as she passed. She waved back.

  “Not a terrible neighborhood either,” I observed.

  “And steeped in a tradition of literary greatness,” he agreed enthusiastically. “Henry James lived here in Gramercy Park. So did Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Nathaniel West, S. J. Perelman … and now me.”

  Lulu stopped in her tracks and began to cough. Violently.

  “What’s she allergic to now?” Cam asked, frowning down at her.

  “I’m afraid she got it from me.”

  “Got what?”

  “The low bullshit threshold.”

  He froze, taken aback. Then he laughed and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Boyd always says that if you keep telling people you’re great, they’ll eventually believe you. I take it you think that’s bush.”

  “I think the work speaks for itself.”

  “As do I, coach.” He flashed that disarming smile at me. “But it never hurts to turn up the volume a little, does it?”

  We hopped into his bright-pink Loveboat. It had a white interior and plenty more chrome all over the dash. Also enough room inside to seat six with space for a skating rink left over. He lowered the top as soon as he started her up. I put down my window. Lulu planted her back paws firmly in my groin and stuck her large black nose out.

  “Unassuming little set of wheels,” I observed.

  “Yeah, I try to keep a low profile.”

  He pulled away from the curb without bothering to look and almost got nailed by an onrushing cabbie, who slammed on his brakes and gave us a sample of his horn and his upraised middle finger. Cam seemed quite oblivious of him — he ignored all of the other cars on the road, as well as things like lanes, street signs, and traffic lights. He just rolled along in the giant Olds as if the road were his and his alone.

  “You spoke with Boyd about the book?” he asked.

  “I did,” I replied as he calmly drifted through a red light at Park, cut off three oncoming cars, and made a left onto it. “He wasn’t entirely specific about what your concept is.”

  “Haven’t got one.”

  “That might explain it.”

  He pulled up a whopping two blocks away on Park and Nineteenth in front of the Cafe Iguana and killed the engine and started to get out.

  “Going to leave it right here?” I asked. The car wasn’t exactly double-parked — it was more like in the middle of the street.

  “Too big to take inside with us,” he answered simply as he headed in.

  Cafe Iguana was a big, multilevel Yushie hangout colored in peach and turquoise. Its trademark was a sixteen-foot crystal iguana suspended in the air over the bar, where Rob Lowe stood by himself drinking a beer and trying to look grown-up and deep. Seeing him there reminded me just how much I missed Steve McQueen. It was nearly six o’clock so the place was practically tee
ming with the Young Urban Shitheads — the power-suited male variety displaying plenty of teeth and swagger, the females showing a lot of treadmill-enhanced leg and stony gazes. A few artists and models and record producers were sprinkled around for flavor. There were tables, but no one was eating yet.

  Cam made straight for the bar where he exchanged low-fives and a few lusty whoops with Lowe before finding us a couple of empty stools at the end. The bartender was ready for him with two shot glasses of tequila and a wedge of lime. The man wasn’t unknown here. He took a bite out of the lime and threw one of the shots down his throat. Then a bite. Then the second shot.

  Then the bartender turned to me for my order, his eyes flickering slightly when he heard the soft, low growl coming from under the bar.

  “Make it a bellini,” I said.

  He frowned, shook his head. “Don’t know it.”

  “Three parts champagne, one part fresh peach juice. It was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice in the forties.”

  He nodded. “Sounds perversely good, ace, but where am I gonna get fresh peach juice?”

  I dug into my trench coat. “Where do you think?” I replied, rolling two ripe peaches onto the counter. “And don’t call me ace.”

  Cam grinned at me approvingly as the bartender retreated to make my drink. “I’m beginning to like you, coach. You have style.”

  “Slow down. I’m complex.”

  “Tell me, is Harry’s Bar still there?”

  “Was the last time I looked.”

  “That’s funny,” he said. “I was just out there for the Oscar parties, and we ate down at the beach one night, place called Chinois. Stupendous eats. But I don’t remember seeing any Harry’s.”

  “Italy,” I said tugging at my ear. “It’s in Venice, Italy. Not Venice, California.”

  He nodded. “That explains it. Never been to Italy. Or anywhere in Europe. Would I like it?”

  “There’s nothing not to like.”