“I want to thank you. I don’t want to give you all the credit, but you’re definitely, partially responsible for my comeback. At least that’s what the critics are calling it.”
“You don’t need a comeback. You never left,” I said.
“Look, as far as I’m concerned I need a comeback like a hole in the head. But in any case, I want to thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to be thanked. “I exposed you.”
He laughed. “I don’t blame you for that. I opened myself wide up.”
He was right. He had given himself away just as I had given away Thalia. He couldn’t blame me for taking him and I couldn’t blame him for taking her.
“I just want you to know, you, Thalia, gave me something. I hadn’t felt excited like that since I wrote Adopting Alice. It’s like you were Alice coming back to me, or my past, my youth, my inspiration . . . something.”
Now I had to be my own something, I thought. I could be my own Paul Revere.
“If I was your inspiration shouldn’t I have gotten some of the back end?”
“Muses aren’t what they used to be. You didn’t see the muses in Ovid asking for a cut or a producing credit and running around suing everybody. It’s almost not worth having one anymore. You gave me the elephants, I have it in writing, so don’t try to be a little Indian giver now. Did you see it? How’d you like that opening shot?” The rain started lightly again, and his glasses fogged. “You know, I read your novel. The Hard Part—catchy title. I thought it was pretty good. You might have tried it in the third person.”
“I liked it in the first person,” I said.
“When are you going to write another one?”
“I did,” I said. “But you wrote it first. It’s dead in the water.” I grabbed for my manuscript, like a stowaway, and sort of flung it at him, its rubber bands barely containing it.
“Can I read it?” he said, putting it on the seat next to him and giving it a little pat. It was like a baby had floated up next to us in a Moses basket and he had gathered it up in his arms. The gesture was so tender that it took me completely by surprise, and a sound came out of me, a cry from deep in the back of my throat. I felt like I was drowning, like my chest was filled with sloshing canal water. I doubled over in shaking pitiful sobs. The tears just kept coming, splashing somewhere behind my sternum and spilling out of me. I couldn’t stop.
“Jesus, Rebekah, can you cool it?”
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed.
He stood very shakily and moved tentatively with arms outspread to sit next to me on my bench. “I hate riding backwards,” he said. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Jesus, sweetheart. Try to take deep breaths.” He took a deep breath to demonstrate and then started coughing. “No, don’t breathe. There’s hundreds of years of mold in this town, one deep breath can kill you.” He patted my back tenderly through the wet green plastic and then took my chin in his hand and I opened my eyes and looked at him.
But it didn’t feel real. It felt like one of my movie-theater dreams, the angle of my seat was all wrong, and while I knew I was looking at him, I somehow still longed to see him.
I stopped crying, as if the director had yelled cut, and we sat silently for a few minutes, poncho to poncho. I felt filled with fondness for him, like a child.
Then he looked down at my manuscript. “I really would love to read what you wrote,” he said. “Is it double-spaced? My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
If Arthur Weeman read my book, maybe that was enough, I thought. “You have to get started on another one, right away. I’d love to talk to you about it.” He looked so sincere as he said it, like the young Arthur Weeman had in his earliest films. In the moonlight his wrinkles were gone and I hadn’t seen him like this in years, vital and happy. I knew that in the end I was supposed to realize that I didn’t need Arthur Weeman anymore, and maybe it was true. Maybe I didn’t need him, but I still loved him. “What’s wrong?” he asked, when I looked away from him.
“I have to say I’m a little disappointed.”
He looked hurt. “It’s always disappointing when you meet someone you’ve admired.”
“No, not that. I thought Thalia had really gotten you.”
“She did. That’s why I had her looked into. I have had other little stalkers, you know. But of all of them, Thalia was the one who got me.”
The gondola nosed up to the dock and the gondolier pulled us in with his oar.
“We’d like to go around again,” Arthur said.
“I’m sorry Signor Wee-a-man, no.”
Arthur pulled out his wallet and offered a roll of euros.
“No, Signore. I have a new baby and my wife would, how you say, kill me.”
“Jesus, no one in Italy ever wants to make any money. Fine, we’ll walk. Is that okay with you?”
I shrugged. “One if by land, two if by sea,” I said.
“Well put. Either way, during the film festival, the streets and canals are filled with rats. And then there’s also the rodents. I hate getting out of these things.” Practically crawling on his hands and knees, he slowly and carefully disembarked and took a long time to get his land legs back.
“So, let’s talk about your comeback,” he said. He cocked his head toward the bridge. “Shall we?”
We put up our hoods and started off.
“Maybe my next novel should take place in Venice,” I said.
“Big mistake. There is almost never any reason to have your characters leave New York.”
“Maybe you should stick to the movies, and leave the novel writing to me.”
We walked all over Venice, my manuscript, in its I LOVE NEW YORK shopping bag, swinging between us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Belle is the author of Going Down, for which Entertainment Weekly named her best debut novelist of the year; High Maintenance, a national bestseller; and Animal Stackers, a picture book for children. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, The Independent Magazine (London), Harper’s Bazaar, Ms., BlackBook, Mudfish, and many anthologies. She lives in New York City with her husband, Andrew Krents, and their son, Jasper.
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