Blue Angel

by Francine Prose

  “Better not,” he says.

  “It’s too good not to try,” Len says.

  “Just one glass,” concedes Swenson.

  Len savors his wine contemplatively. “I’m glad we did this,” he says. “I would have gone nuts if I’d spent the whole day at home, and work is the only excuse, the only way I can get away. God forbid I want to go for a walk, or worse yet, take in a movie….”

  If Swenson lets the subject of Angela’s book drop now, he’ll never get back to it again. “The novel this student’s writing…it’s hard to describe how good it is. To say that it’s about a high school girl who has an affair with her teacher is hardly—”

  “Well!” says Len. “No wonder you’ve got child abuse on the brain.”

  “No,” Swenson says, “Trust me. It’s not like that at all. The girl wants it to happen. She seduces him. You rarely see that written about, it’s always the guy who’s some kind of pervert, but in this case the girl…. It’s like Lolita rewritten from Lolita’s point of view.”

  “That’s quite a claim,” says Len.

  “Well, maybe I’m overstating it. But listen—”

  “What’s she like?” interrupts Len.

  “The character?” says Swenson.

  “Please,” says Len. “The writer.”

  “Spacey. Punky. Facial piercing. You know.”

  “Watch out for the spacey ones,” Len says. “With women writers, I mean. They’re the killers. Without half trying, we could come up with the names of a half-dozen women, household names, you’d swear they had molasses for brains till they sit down at the computer, and then it’s watch out world. Better hang onto your balls. Did I say computer? I meant typewriter. Half these women would have you believing the electric typewriter’s still way beyond their technological skills, so they must be dipping their quill pens in little wells of poison.”

  It’s not as if Swenson wouldn’t like to share this moment of male bonding at the expense of these famous women writers, whoever they are. But Angela’s book is the reason he’s here, ditching his daughter for the sake of a kid who will do fine without him.

  “It’s not just that she’s spacey,” he says. “It’s weirder than that. She may be a pathological liar. About the strangest things. Why would someone tell you that her father is her stepfather and that she has epilepsy when she hasn’t? I don’t know if she has or hasn’t. Why would a kid lie about that?”

  “Is she from California?” Len asks.

  “No, why? New Jersey,” says Swenson.

  “Your wife’s from New Jersey, no?”

  “Brooklyn,” Swenson says.

  “Are you fucking her?”

  “My wife?” says Swenson, cagily.

  “Ha ha, very funny,” Len says. “I mean the girl. The student. The writer.”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Sorry to hear that,” says Len, who in fact doesn’t want to hear that Swenson is toeing the politically correct line on sexual harassment. He would have respected Swenson more if he were screwing the entire female student population.

  “But you want to,” Len says.

  Swenson drains the final drop of his wine.

  “Len,” he says wearily. “It’s not about sex. The girl’s got talent. Believe me.”

  “Oh, I do,” says Len. “And I’m sure she’s very good. The thing is, to be perfectly honest with you, I simply don’t have time to look at some chick novel about a girl with the hots for her high school teacher.”

  “Please,” Swenson says. “Just read the first few pages….”

  He’s begging. So it’s decided. What he wants will never happen. Swenson picks up the orange envelope from the chair beside him and holds it out to Len, who pushes it lightly away, as if it were a credit card with which Swenson was offering to pay for lunch. Swenson puts the envelope down.

  “Ted,” says Len. “Do yourself a favor. Take the manuscript back. Tell the kid you’ll show it to me if she lets you fuck her. After that…well, you can tell her I told you I wasn’t looking at first novels. More wine?”

  “Sure,” says Swenson.

  Len pours two glasses. Swenson drains his in three swallows.

  “What about your book?” Len says. “Let’s get serious here. Because if there’s really a problem with the novel…You know, I’ve been thinking about your work. In fact, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”

  “You have?” says Swenson. “Really?”

  “Have you considered a memoir?” says Len. “You don’t need me to tell you that what’s selling these days has to have the juicy gleam, the bloody smell of the truth. And half the people writing them, well, nothing ever happened to them. Maybe Mom got drunk once or twice, smacked them around a little. But you, my friend, you watched your father incinerate himself on national TV. Writers with childhoods not half so dysfunctional as yours are turning them into gold mines.”

  “I already wrote the novel.” Not just any novel, Swenson thinks. Angela’s favorite novel. What would he tell Angela? What would Angela think if he betrayed everything they believe in to crank out some cheesy memoir? And what about all those other Angelas, his ideal readers, stranded, as she once was, imagining that no one else had ever had troubles like theirs? “You published it, remember?”

  “Why should that stop you? It’s not the same. Face it, Ted. Novels just don’t give the reader the same kind of hard-on. You know how many people read a novel? Ten thousand’s good for a novel. Eight, nine thousand in the stores, we’re breaking out the champagne. And of the ten thousand—well, let’s say the five thousand—people who read your novel, two thousand of them are probably dead and the other three have forgottten. You could start fresh, you’re lucky. It’s better to start over. Better a hot new memoirist than a middle-aged midlist novelist.”

  Swenson pushes his knife and fork to the side of his plate. Chewing’s out of the question. As it is, he can hardly swallow. A hunk of steak would be suicide.

  Len stares liquidly into Swenson’s eyes. “I’m not doing this for the sake of the publishing house. I’m doing it as your friend.”

  “I appreciate that,” Swenson says.

  “Don’t answer now,” says Len. “Think about it. Look. I don’t know you that well. We’ve been out of touch. But the best thing—the really good thing—would be if there were something that had been going on since your father’s death, some ongoing problem, an update, dues you’ve paid later on….”

  “What kind of something?” Swenson says.

  “Bad behavior. Drinking, drugs, gambling, spousal abuse. Sex addiction. Compulsively fucking students. That would be great. Maybe you could make it up. Just because it’s a so-called memoir doesn’t mean….Anyway, something directly traceable to your dysfunctional childhood. And something, of course, you’ve recovered from.”

  What would Hemingway have done? Thrown his drink in Len’s face. Swenson’s glass is empty. Anyway, a gesture like that is way beyond his range.

  He lets the silence linger. Then he leans back and says, “So, Len, are the medications still working? Is Denny doing better?”

  Sitting in the LaGuardia departure area, Swenson opens his briefcase to take out his copy of My Dog Tulip and knows at once: something’s missing. His heart starts to pound as he scrabbles frantically through his papers. He pauses briefly to glare at the elderly couple choosing the entertainment he’s providing over their boring magazines, then resumes his futile search. He’s lost Angela’s manuscript. It isn’t anywhere. He must have left it on the seat beside him in the restaurant.

  He’s got twenty minutes before the flight—enough time to find a phone, call information, get the restaurant’s number, ask them to send it to him. Then he’ll have to watch the mail so Sherrie won’t casually open a package from New York.

  As the phone rings and rings, Swenson pictures the empty restaurant bathed in golden late-afternoon light. At last a male voice says, “Hello,” and Swenson breathlessly explains his problem into the silence be
fore a tape recording tells him, in its unhurried bass, the restaurant’s address, hours, its policy on smoking. Swenson knows all that and no thank you, he doesn’t want to press one to be connected to the reservationist. He’ll stay on the line all day until he reaches someone who can help.

  A young woman answers. Finally. A sympathetic voice. She asks what’s in the envelope. What business is it of hers? He supposes she has to look inside to find out which one of the dozen tangerine-colored envelopes left there that day is his. He should say it’s a contract, something important, official. But suppose she does look inside….

  “It’s my novel,” he says.

  “Oh, dear. Your novel! Let me see.” He hears high heels clicking, then silence. She’s taking forever! He’ll miss his plane and get stuck here overnight while she flirts with the bartender. But now, at last, she’s back, to say, Sorry, nothing like that’s turned up. Would he care to leave his phone number? No, he wouldn’t care to, he wouldn’t care to stave off a panic attack every time Sherrie answers the phone.

  He hangs up and grimly boards the plane, having the usual fantasy about his imminent death, his loved ones’ grief. Today it expands to include the scene of Len appearing at the graveside to tell Sherrie how noble and unselfish her late husband was. Why the very last time they talked, he was trying to sell him some girl’s novel. Len would never say that. And what if he did? It won’t be Swenson’s problem. He’ll be in hell, a blessing compared to this.

  Halfway to Burlington, the light drops out of the sky. Swenson’s alarmed, then remembers. Winter. Sunset. Time passes quickly when you’re wrecking your life. He’s scared to go home, afraid he’ll find that Ruby’s decided it wasn’t okay for him to go to New York. He wills himself into a sort of trance, in which he manages to get off the plane, find his car, and drive.

  The house is dark. Where are they? Has some tragedy occurred? Wait. There’s a light in Ruby’s room. What could be nicer? Swenson imagines the women talking, sitting on Ruby’s bed, the murmuring altos of their voices rising in splashes of laughter.

  How thankful he is for his family, for his solid, inviting house, for not being Mr. Lonely Guy pacing the bleak chapped solitude of those wintry Manhattan streets. He grateful he is, and how well he knows that he doesn’t deserve what he has. At least he’s mature enough to have stayed in control and not totally alienated Len—that is, if you don’t count that unfortunate exchange about the overmedicated kid. So why does he think something awful did happen? Because something awful did.

  He left Angela’s manuscript in a restaurant. Talk about acting out! Why not leave your adulterous love letters on the kitchen table? But now, with safety—refuge—in sight, it occurs to Swenson that he needn’t be so upset. Finding someone’s lost manuscript is not exactly the same as surprising that person in bed with its author.

  Groping through the living room, Swenson feels as if he’s burglarizing his own home. He flips on the light—and jumps when he sees Sherrie in her chair.

  “What are you doing?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Sitting here, thinking.”

  “Is everything all right? With Ruby?” How ironic, how perfect if some disaster had happened while he was off trying to peddle his undergraduate paramour’s novel.

  “It’s fine,” says Sherrie. “Everything’s fine. I thought you’d call from the airport.”

  “I just got there in time for my plane,” Swenson lies, and now it seems like a miracle that some catastrophe didn’t occur to punish him for all the small, incremental lies like this one. Swenson probes his tooth with his tongue. He’s got to see a dentist.

  “Is Ruby really okay?” Swenson says. “Was it all right with her that I went?”

  “She’s fine,” says Sherrie. “I told you. Everyone would like to see you get this book done, Ted. Believe me. Oh…Ruby needs you to do her a favor? She needs a new computer. We can spring for it, right? She wants you to drive her to Burlington and help her pick one out.”

  There’s a lag before Swenson understands what’s being asked. He says, “Sure. That’d be great. I can use a drink about now.” He means he can use the activity, the corkscrew, bottle, glasses, breathing space, a reason to leave the room.

  “Me, too,” Sherrie says.

  He pries a bottle loose from the rack in the pantry, then opens the kitchen drawer and roots around for the corkscrew, all the while pretending to be a normal husband pouring wine instead of a madman slipping irretrievably into insanity. Shouldn’t he be happy that his prodigal daughter wants his company, his advice, his two thousand dollars, that she’s offering him the chance to win her love, to buy it back for the modest price of some home electronics?

  So what if he has to take the same trip he took with Angela? Is he afraid he’ll get caught? For what? No one’s going to report you to the authorities for buying computers for two young women. Besides which, he didn’t buy Angela’s. He just went along for the ride. It’s good that he went with Angela. Practice, in a way. Ironing out the bugs before he makes the trip—the real one—with his daughter.

  He fills two glasses, gulps from his. Not a moment too soon. His hands stop shaking just as Sherrie appears in the kitchen doorway. “What about the computer she already has?”

  “Christ, Ted. She’s been using her desktop from high school. She told me it takes fifteen minutes to save a file.”

  It pleases Swenson to think of Sherrie and Ruby talking about something so normal as saving a file. “Fine. I’d love to. They’re open tomorrow? Right?”

  “They’re open Saturday,” Sherrie says, with the exasperation that must creep into her voice when a student makes her repeat medication directions. “By the way, one of your students called.”

  “Oh? Want some wine?” Swenson passes her a glass without turning around, so he won’t have to meet her eyes, an avoidance he justifies by pretending that the cork is in urgent need of unskewering from the corkscrew. No reason to assume that “one of your students” means Angela.

  “She sounded upset,” Sherrie says. That narrows the list of suspects. But it could be…Jonelle Brevard, who hasn’t handed in the story they were supposed to do after vacation; Claris had to volunteer to bring in something instead. He wishes it were Jonelle. The range of what Jonelle could want is so much narrower than the possibilities of Angela’s phone conversation with his wife.

  “Did she leave her name?” asks Swenson.

  “No,” says Sherrie. “She didn’t. She just said she was one of your students, and that she needed to talk to you about her novel.”

  “Great,” says Swenson, dully. “Her novel.” A sudden updraft of happiness threatens to float him away. He didn’t really wish the caller was Jonelle. Then he thinks, I lost Angela’s novel.

  “She left a number,” Sherrie says. “Her home number. In New Jersey. She said to call her. Anytime tonight. Is she the one who’s so talented?”

  Swenson says. “Students! They suck you dry, call any hour, day or night, Friday, Thanksgiving weekend, you’re constantly on duty, at their beck and call….”

  It would look extremely strange if he rushed off to his study to return a student’s call. Besides, he doesn’t want to talk to Angela. He’s just pleased that she called. If he reaches her, he’ll have to say that Len doesn’t want to see her book, and oh, by the way, he lost it somewhere in Manhattan.

  “She can wait till Monday,” Swenson says.

  “So can you take Ruby tomorrow?” she says.

  “Where?” Swenson knows that he knows. He just can’t recall.

  Sherrie frowns. “Computer City.”

  “Absolutely,” says Swenson.

  In Swenson’s dream, he’s standing before a table in the middle of nowhere, a void with a certain resemblance to a De Chirico painting. On the table are two goblets, a comb, a feather, a book, and an egg. He knows he’s supposed to choose, and he picks up the egg, and the egg explodes in a hail of fire and pain that rockets him out of his nightmare and back
into his bed, from which he looks up to see Sherrie standing over him, saying, “She’s out there, waiting.”

  “Who is?” asks Swenson groggily.

  “Jesus, Ted. Ruby’s in the car. It’s after nine. You slept late.”

  Swenson looks out his bedroom window and down into the driveway. “It’s Saturday morning. Are we on some kind of tight schedule?”

  “We’re on Ruby’s,” says Sherrie. “Please.”

  There she is in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield. No point asking her to come inside, have a cup of coffee while he takes a shower. Naturally, Ruby will agree, but with a certain disappointment, an accusatory resignation. Swenson will fail all over again at the job of being her father.

  But why should he feel guilty? He’s giving up his Saturday and blowing a small fortune. And to compound his sacrifice, he’s foregoing a shower, a shave. It’s a miracle he doesn’t throw out his back as he hops into the same pants he wore down to the city, then squirms into a black sweater he finds over a chair.

  Last night, gazing into the fridge, he noticed that Sherrie had bought bagels and smoked salmon, which he’s been savoring in his mind, a reward in advance for having to drive to Burlington. Well, there’s no time for breakfast now. Anyway, he doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t need breakfast to console himself when he went with Angela Argo.

  He throws on his jacket and rushes outside, jumps into the driver’s seat. Ruby turns to look at him. She’s gathered her hair in rubber bands, a little spray over each ear. Pigtails—an unfortunate choice for her full pink face. Swenson sees too much of his own face in hers, and not enough of Sherrie’s, as well as that rabbity underbite that’s always reminded him of his mother. Still, Ruby could be pretty if she’d just stop telegraphing her wish to disappear. She’s dressed in blue jeans several sizes too large, and a baggy sweatshirt.

  Ruby says, “You didn’t have to rush.”