The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

  And Renn, it seemed, was trying to be magnanimous. He had so far decided not to open the still-healing wound of his and Will’s rivalry over Elise Connor. According to Lucy, his father was sincere about making amends with him. Their relationship would not recover, his mother worried, and apparently Renn worried too, if he and Will didn’t try now, with real purpose, to reconcile their differences. A year and a half of not talking to each other—that was much too long. It could turn into another year and a half, and another after that. She knew how these things went.

  Will walked down the steps to join Jorie and his father and the three strangers, two teenage boys with an athletic blonde woman who looked too young to be their mother. They all turned to watch him approach, five pairs of curious eyes. He had to look away.

  With an accent Will didn’t recognize, the woman exclaimed, “You are his son, yes? This is a most wonderful moment in our lives to meet you and your brilliant father.” She thrust a hand with three ornate silver rings at him, and when he took it, she stood staring at him with adoration. “How wonderful you both are,” she murmured.

  He glanced at Jorie and found her smiling back at him, irony insinuating itself into her expression.

  “Thank you,” said Will, bowing his head to the blonde woman.

  After a long second, she released his hand and turned back to Renn. “Will you sign my notebook for me?” she asked, unzipping a black messenger bag looped crosswise over her chest. A silver chain with a dolphin pendant glittered at the base of her throat.

  “Yes, with pleasure, Mimi,” he said. He glanced at the boys, red Dr. Dre headphones cuffed around the neck of the taller boy, his brown hair gathered into a stubby ponytail. The other boy pretended to be uninterested, but he kept stealing looks at Renn; Will guessed that the boy had seen most of his father’s movies—the one he’d starred in instead of directed—and some more than once.

  Will met Jorie’s eyes again. Mimi, she mouthed, winking at him.

  When they were back on the garden’s perimeter path, Mimi and the two boys having disappeared into the house, Jorie grabbed Will’s hand and pulled him closer. Renn was a step ahead, drifting toward the sculpture of Balzac a few yards away.

  She stood on her toes and kissed Will. “Your dad’s a hoot,” she said softly. “But, wow. He really isn’t ever off work.”

  “You looked like you were having fun,” he said.

  “Oh, I am, but—” She laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  He’d been with her for longer than he’d dated any other woman, but he still wasn’t sure if all of her compliments were sincere. Twenty-eight years as a famous man’s biographical footnote made it difficult for him to believe that anyone other than his mother and sister truly appreciated him.

  “I can’t believe he offered to buy us a bed,” he said, glancing at Renn, who was now looking up into Balzac’s affable face.

  Jorie laughed. “I know. I was a little surprised too.”

  “I thought it was kind of creepy.”

  “No comment.” She chuckled again.

  “What are you two whispering about?” called Renn. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Whenever you are,” said Will.

  “Should we head to the Musée d’Orsay, or do you want to do a little shopping?”

  “Maybe you two should go ahead without me,” said Jorie. “I need to get home and take Poppy out for a walk. With all the rain we had this week, she got shortchanged.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Will. “She’ll be fine for another couple of hours.”

  His father was watching them closely. “Let her go,” he said. “Her dog needs her, Will.”

  “Yes, listen to your father,” said Jorie, grinning, her dimples popping. She laughed, a fluting, rising octave of bright notes.

  “Don’t gang up on me, you guys,” said Will.

  “Don’t get mad,” said Jorie.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m just a little tired. I slept like shit last night.”

  “You can sleep in tomorrow,” she said. “No early-morning run, okay?”

  They put her in a cab, a black Mercedes, its driver appearing not to recognize Renn. Jorie’s lips touched Will’s firmly as they said good-bye, and he and his father took a second cab toward the Quai d’Orsay. When they were almost there, Renn said he’d changed his mind and wanted instead to go to Café de Flore.

  “Let’s have a beer together,” said Renn. “We never do that.”

  “No, I guess we don’t,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  They were climbing out of the taxi, a siren droning in a nearby street, when Renn finally said her name. “Elise is still with Marek Gilson, in case you’re curious.” He looked at Will calmly, his lips parted slightly.

  Will couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t start a quarrel. He stared at his father, unable to reply. All around them the traffic surged, the lights changing from red to green, people moving about with blank faces, avoiding each other’s eyes. He wasn’t sure what he felt, if it was relief or resignation or sorrow.

  “I understand that she was irresistible,” said Renn. “I think I can forgive you for trying to take her away from me. I hope you can forgive me for what I’ve done too.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. There was an ashy taste in his mouth; if he said more, he was sure that his voice would break. He sensed strangers’ eyes on them, his father’s presence releasing its jittery electricity into the atmosphere. People were stirring at the sidewalk tables, faces turned toward them, expectant. A woman spoke his name loudly to her companions; they laughed and tried abruptly to hush each other but couldn’t stop their elated laughter.

  It was at this café, with its overpriced menu and restive tourists who hoped to spot someone famous, or the ghosts of the famous, that Renn’s fans intruded in a large, insistent group. Since childhood Will had found this variety of public worship of his handsome, flawed father deeply enervating. A tour group of a few dozen Germans from Bavaria lined up for his autograph and a photo. His father also permitted the more daring of the giddy, swooning women to kiss his cheek while Will sat a few yards away with their untouched beers. It would probably be another fifteen or twenty years before his father’s fame was likely to fade enough to keep these strangers from flocking to him, hoping that a few minutes with him would change their lives.

  After an hour, Will paid the bill and got up from the table, waving to his father; four Germans, three women, one man, still clustered around Renn.

  “See you tonight,” he called. “Sorry, Will. We’ll catch up at dinner.”

  Will nodded and left the café, turning north toward the river. A few miles away, Jorie was waiting for him, watering their plants or eating an apple while she looked down into the courtyard and wondered again if she should get a bicycle. He was sure that despite her sympathy for him, her steadfast willingness to love him too, she would want to hear every detail of the futile trip to Café de Flore. But she never asked him the kinds of questions a couple of his past girlfriends had, one in particular he hadn’t yet managed to forget. That girlfriend, a sweet but witless acting major who would end up becoming no one but the mistress of a film studio executive, asked who the lucky girl was that his father had lost his virginity to. Will stared at her for a few seconds, wondering why she thought he would have any idea. He opened his mouth to ask her this, but instead found himself making up a lie. “Some girl who lived down the block from him in high school, I think,” he said.

  His girlfriend had believed him, and Will still didn’t know why her gullibility had so infuriated him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my generous and inordinately hardworking editor, Nancy Miller, and to everyone at Bloomsbury; and thank you to Lisa Bankoff, Berni Barta, and Daniel Kirschen at ICM Partners.

  Likewise, my deep gratitude to the editors who first saw merit in these short stories and published them in their literary magazines; especial gratitude goes to Carolyn Kuebler at New Engla
nd Review, who published four of these stories. It is always a privilege to appear in their pages. A heartfelt thank-you also goes to Laura Furman and Heidi Pitlor for their recognition of my work.

  Thank you to my patient and supportive friends and family, particularly to my parents, Susan Sneed and Terry Webb, and to Boppy-dot. Much gratitude to Sheryl Johnston, Randy Albers, Eleanor Jackson, Sara Mercurio, and my colleagues at Northwestern University, DePaul University, Regis University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who have offered me teaching jobs and kept me solvent during the past several years.

  PUBLICATION INFORMATION

  “Beach Vacation” appeared in the Southern Review and received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XXXVII.

  “The First Wife,” “Clear Conscience,” “Older Sister,” and “The Couplehood Jubilee” all appeared in New England Review. “The First Wife” was reprinted in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012, and “Clear Conscience” was named one of the year’s distinguished stories in The Best American Short Stories 2015.

  “The Prettiest Girls” appeared in Ploughshares.

  “The Functionary” appeared in Great Lakes Review.

  “Words That Once Shocked Us” appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal and won the 2012 Fifth Wednesday Editor’s Prize in Fiction.

  “Five Rooms” appeared in New Ohio Review.

  “Roger Weber Would Like to Stay” and “The New, All-True CV” both appeared in the Literary Review.

  “Whatshisname” appeared in LUMINA.

  “The Virginity of Famous Men” appeared in the Southern Review as “Café de Flore.” An earlier story titled “The Virginity of Famous Men” was published in Cream City Review.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Christine Sneed has published the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts, and the story collection Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry. She has received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis First Book Award, the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Adult Fiction in 2013. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

  ALSO AVAILABLE BY CHRISTINE SNEED

  PARIS, HE SAID

  Jayne Marks is questioning the choices she has made in the years since college and is struggling to pay her bills in Manhattan when she is given the opportunity to move to Paris with her wealthy lover and benefactor, Laurent Moller, who owns and operates two art galleries, one in New York, the other in Paris. He offers her the time and financial support she needs to begin her career as a painter and also challenges her to see who and what she will become if she meets her artistic potential.

  Laurent, however, seems to have other women in his life and Jayne, too, has an ex-boyfriend, much closer to her own age, whom she still has feelings for. Bringing Paris gloriously to life, Paris, He Said is a novel about desire, beauty, and its appreciation, and of finding yourself presented with the things you believe you’ve always wanted, only to wonder where true happiness lies.

  “A wry, sexy, clever little gem of a novel, Christine Sneed’s latest lights up the streets of Paris with elegance and wit.”—Jami Attenberg, The New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins

  LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

  The people who orbit around actor Renn Ivins—his girlfriends, his children, his ex-wives, those on the periphery—long to experience the glow of his flame. Meanwhile Anna and Will, his grown children, struggle to be seen authentically as themselves rather than as extensions of their father. They are both drawn to and repelled by the man who overshadows every part of them.

  Little Known Facts is a clear-eyed story about celebrity’s perks as well as its effects—the fallout of fame on family members who can neither fully embrace nor ignore the superstar in their midst. It’s a tale of influence and affluence that forces us to ask ourselves, if we could have anything on earth, would we choose correctly? With it, Christine Sneed has proven herself to be one of the most insightful chroniclers of our celebrity-obsessed age.

  “Juicy enough to appeal to our prurience but smart enough not to make us feel dirty afterward.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times Book Review

  PORTRAITS OF A FEW OF THE PEOPLE I’VE MADE CRY

  The ten stories in this debut collection examine the perils of love and what it means to live during an era when people will offer themselves, almost unthinkingly, to strangers. Risks and repercussions are never fully weighed. People leap and almost always land on rocky ground. May-December romances flourish in these stories, as do self-doubt and, in most cases, serious regret. Mysterious, dangerous benefactors, dead and living artists, movie stars and college professors, plagiarists, and distinguished foreign novelists are among the many different characters. No one is blameless, but villains are difficult to single out-everyone seemingly bears responsibility for his or her desires and for the outcome of difficult choices so often made hopefully and naively.

  “Sneed’s debut story collection was this year’s wake-up call. Simply beautifully written stories.”—Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago (“Best Books of the Year”)

  “If this story collection crackles with the energy of youth, it also feels written by a cool-eyed soul reincarnated at least three times.”—Allan Gurganus, author of The Practical Heart and Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

  Bloomsbury USA

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  First published 2016

  This electronic edition published 2016

  © Christine Sneed, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

  ISBN: HB: 978-1-62040-695-3

  ePub: 978-1-62040-697-7

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.

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