The Writing Circle

by Corinne Demas

  “I can think of about fourteen hundred things I’d rather be doing,” said Paul.

  Chris laughed. “You have to hand it to your stepmother,” he said. “She knows how to keep the literary world on its toes.”

  “I guess you don’t like her very much,” said Paul. The champagne hadn’t yet had sufficient time to embolden him, but he felt daring now anyway.

  “I admire her without reservation,” said Chris.

  “My point exactly,” said Paul, echoing a phrase he’d heard from someone. Perhaps it was Gillian herself.

  A plump, older woman who looked familiar came over.

  “Virginia,” said Chris. “What’s become of Nancy? She was coming here, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t imagine she’ll be coming now,” said Virginia.

  “What’s up?” asked Chris.

  “You didn’t see Gillian’s novel yet?” said Virginia.

  “No,” said Chris. “Am I missing something?”

  Virginia gave a great sigh. Then she pointedly turned to Paul, her voice bright. “You probably don’t remember me,” she said. “I’m Virginia, Rachel’s mother. She’s told me all about you.”

  “Now that could be a problem!” said Chris. He obviously thought himself to be a comedian.

  “Oh no, not at all,” said Virginia, seriously. She looked at Paul and smiled. “She’s very fond of you.”

  Paul looked down at the rug. He was afraid that Chris would see his face—he didn’t mind about Virginia—betraying the happiness he felt hearing this. He had sort of guessed that Rachel liked him, but it was different having it said aloud this way. Though maybe Virginia was just being kind—she seemed like the sort of person who would be kind. But when he looked up at her quickly, almost as if to check, she gave him a little nod of confirmation.

  “Is that Rachel’s dad over there?” he asked. A man with long, grey hair and a whiter beard was lecturing and gesticulating, drink in hand.

  “Yes, that’s Bernard,” said Virginia.

  Paul tried to imagine his own two parents at the same party. Both of them having a perfectly good time, content to be in each other’s presence.

  “How’s that ham?” Chris asked Paul, pointing to the half-eaten piece on Paul’s plate.

  “I’ve tasted worse,” said Paul.

  “Oh dear,” said Virginia, and her voice was quick and alarmed, “here’s Nancy.”

  “I wish you’d clue me in to what’s going on,” said Chris. But Virginia didn’t say anything. Paul’s eyes followed where she was looking. He remembered Nancy, too, from Gillian’s Christmas party. She was one of the writers in the group. She looked different, though, her hair ruffled as if she had been caught in the wind and hadn’t had a chance to smooth it down.

  Nancy entered the room and, rather than meandering through the crowd, the established choreography of such parties, headed straight through, like a hockey player cutting across to the puck. She was wielding a copy of Restitution.

  Virginia pursued her. “Nancy!” she called, but Nancy didn’t slow down, and when Virginia reached for her arm, she shook it free. No one except Paul and Chris seemed aware of what was happening. Jerry was a few paces away from Gillian, no longer attached. Gillian was facing them, talking to someone. She noticed Nancy approaching her, but the look on her face was merely curious.

  Nancy went right up to Gillian and stood in front of her. “You stole my book,” she said. Her voice was just loud enough for Paul to hear her words.

  Gillian looked somewhat amused. “What are you talking about, Nancy?” she asked.

  “You stole my novel, and you published it as your own.”

  Jerry swung around now and moved close to Gillian, but Gillian pressed her hand against his chest, as if to hold him away. She gave a little laugh. “Nancy, you obviously haven’t read my novel,” she said.

  “You’re a plagiarist,” said Nancy, and now her voice was louder, or perhaps, Paul thought, it sounded louder because the conversation around them had stopped.

  “Plagiarism’s a serious accusation, Nancy,” said Gillian. “I suggest you be careful of what you say.”

  “I am careful,” said Nancy. “And it’s not just the plagiarism, it’s what you did to my father.”

  “Your father? What does your father have to do with it? I thought we were talking about a novel here. Fiction.”

  “He never made a mistake,” said Nancy. “He was not forced to leave the medical profession, it was entirely his choice.”

  “That’s the plot of your novel,” said Gillian. “If you call it a plot. If you call it a novel. I offered you the plot of my novel, but you refused to take it. It was too good a plot to waste. Restitution is quite different from your novel. Which is perhaps why mine got published, and yours, I believe, still has not.”

  “Oh, God,” said Chris.

  Paul watched Nancy lift her arm, saw the skin pulled taut with tension over the top of her hand as she made ready to strike. He remembered the time his mother had smacked his father. The sound of the flat of her hand against his father’s face. His father’s quick exclamation. He willed Nancy to strike, willed her hand to move through the air, willed those fingers to make contact with Gillian’s cheek. For all the things she had done to him and not done, he wanted suddenly to have skin hit skin. He felt a thrill that he was the one about to strike, that Nancy’s hand was as good as if it were his own hand.

  But Nancy’s hand retreated through the air, descended beside her body and reclaimed its position by her side. Nancy backed away from Gillian, as if she was something too horrible to touch.

  Chris

  AFTER THE BOOK PARTY, CHRIS SPENT THE NIGHT WITH AN old flame, Amelia Sonnenberg, who had an apartment on East Ninety-sixth. She’d been an editorial assistant at Random House when his first book was published there. Now she was in textbooks, an executive editor. She had been too young for him then, and was too young for him still. Their affair had ended when she had fallen in love with a writer from Argentina, but their good feelings for each other had persevered—a rare situation for Chris. They remained in touch, and they reconnected on occasion after the Argentinean had returned to his native terrain and while Amelia was still in turmoil about whether she wanted to follow him there or not.

  When Chris arrived at Amelia’s apartment, they debated about going out for dinner but ended up eating leftover Chinese food and finishing off an almost-stale coffee cake along with the bottle of dessert wine that Chris had brought. Chris was upset by what had happened at the book party, but he was too tired and had had far too much to drink to want to talk about it now. When he and Amelia headed down the hallway to her bedroom, the walls seemed to be leaning in towards him, and the floor seemed to buckle. They took off their clothes and got into bed, and Amelia nuzzled close to Chris, her cheek against his chest. He stroked her hip. She was small and wiry, with a nervous energy that made her sexy, but Chris was relieved when he realized that neither of them really felt like making love. They didn’t want to hurt each other’s feelings, though, so it took some cautious investigation before they discovered this. They lay companionably, in the pleasant proximity of each other’s body. Chris listened to Amelia debate the merits of Buenos Aires, and it wasn’t long before he fell asleep.

  After Nancy’s exit from the party, Chris had snatched a copy of Restitution and ducked into the pantry behind the kitchen to take a look. He saw immediately why Gillian’s novel had provoked Nancy’s astonishing, un-Nancylike behavior. The first chapter was eerily familiar, and even though the book veered off in a fresh direction, he found it unnerving. He was not surprised by Gillian’s cleverness or her deviousness. But he was surprised at the smoothness of what she had done, and the speed. She had produced a novel in less time than it took even him to write one—and he’d always prided himself on his ability to knock things out.

  He wondered how the rest of the Leopardis viewed what had happened. Virginia had left soon afterwards, with Nancy, and he hadn’t had
a chance to talk with her. Bernard had been out of earshot, holding forth on his own, and Adam had merely looked confused. Adam was an odd duck anyway, Chris thought. He was probably pissed that Gillian could turn out a novel in less than a year when he had been working on his for several years and there was no end in sight.

  As for Gillian, she merely shook her head and turned from the sight of Virginia putting her arm around Nancy, and them walking away. Jerry came forward from the crowd and guided her away from the spot as if Nancy had left something still dangerous there. The crowd around Gillian moved in close, protectively, tittering concern.

  “Who was that woman?” someone asked.

  Chris caught a glimpse of Paul. He looked amazed and excited, the same way Ben had looked the time he had gotten a strike at the bowling alley. Chris made his exit from the party without saying good-bye to anyone. A headache was starting behind his eyes, the way it did, moving up across his right temple and progressing over his ear. He grabbed a taxi up to Amelia’s apartment, thrusting a ten at the driver, too depleted to try to figure out a proper tip.

  IN THE MORNING Chris sat on a stool at the counter of Amelia’s small kitchen. She’d inherited the apartment from her parents, who’d bought it back when it was worth a fraction of its current value. From the window he could see a slice of the East River. It probably wouldn’t last long. It was an old brick building, tall for its time, but new, taller buildings were going up all around, claiming the airspace.

  Amelia poured them each a cup of coffee and perched on the stool across from him. She was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, and had her hair clipped up with an oversized barrette. She looked like someone’s kid sister.

  “Why are some women so treacherous?” Chris asked.

  “You’re not talking about me, I hope,” said Amelia.

  “Not you, sweetie,” said Chris. “Someone in my writing group.”

  Amelia stirred her coffee. “Probably starved for success. Has to depend on her wiles.”

  “This is someone successful. Gillian Coit. That book party I went to last night. You must have heard of her.”

  “The poet?”

  Chris nodded. “She’s pretending to be a novelist now, too. Except she lifted part of her book from someone else’s manuscript.”

  “Wow,” said Amelia. “Whose?”

  “Another writer in our group, Nancy Markopolis.”

  “Then she’ll get her comeuppance,” said Amelia. “Yummy.”

  “I hope so,” said Chris. “But Gillian has amazing sangfroid, and I’m not sure Nancy has the guts to really take her on. She freaked out and confronted Gillian, but my guess is that she’s now restored to her genteel, diffident self.”

  “Then you’ll have to come to the rescue,” said Amelia. She clinked her spoon against the edge of her coffee mug and laid it smartly on the counter.

  “Not I,” said Chris.

  “Am I missing something?” asked Amelia. “Are you and Gillian Coit involved?” She made little quotation marks in the air with her fingers.

  “Not on your life,” said Chris.

  “How about this other writer—what did you say her name was?”

  “Nancy. And no, again. Though in her case, not because I don’t find her appealing; she’s very much spoken for.”

  “You’ve always liked to champion a worthy cause,” said Amelia. “And this is a worthy cause, isn’t it?”

  “You bet,” said Chris. “But I’ve got enough crises to deal with in my own life.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Amelia, and she got off her stool and gave him a kiss on the side of his face. “More coffee?” she asked.

  “Thanks, no,” said Chris. “I’d like to try to make it to the boys without having to do a pit stop.”

  THE TREES ALONG THE HIGHWAY were turning their fall colors, more reds and brighter yellows as Chris drove farther north. It energized him, as it always did, this ridiculous display of color, and made him feel optimistic. He had recently sold movie rights to his second novel, and now he decided it would be fun to buy a convertible. Then he could really suck up these fall colors. Not a sports car—he already had that—but a vintage American car like a Cadillac or a Lincoln Continental with cushy seats, the kind of car he would have liked his parents to have owned when he was a kid growing up, but they never did. The boys would love it, he was sure.

  When he drove up to Susan’s house, Ben and Sam weren’t watching for him out the window the way they usually did. After sitting in the driveway ten minutes, he began to get nervous. He gave it five minutes more. When they still hadn’t appeared, he called the house. Susan answered the phone. “They’ll be out shortly,” she said, without waiting for him to speak, and hung up right away.

  When the boys came out to the car, they were strangely sullen. It wasn’t their usual reticence, which wore off quickly, but something else. Chris felt anxiety spread across the muscles of his back, up into his neck. Only fifteen minutes before, he realized, he had been calm and happy.

  Even when they got to Jimmy’s, the boys barely spoke to him. They slung down in their seats. A new waitress, with hair dyed a dark, unnatural red, came to take their order.

  “I don’t see Jimmy around today,” said Chris.

  “He tore a muscle in his shoulder,” said the waitress. “Needs to have surgery on it. His wife won’t let him come in.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Chris. “So, what’ll you have, boys?” he asked.

  “I don’t want anything,” said Sam.

  “Me neither,” said Ben.

  Chris ordered the spanakopita special for himself and then looked at his sons across from him.

  “Should I just order the usual for you guys?”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Sam.

  “How about we start with the ice cream, then?” asked Chris.

  “No thanks,” said Sam, but Ben’s face had brightened a little, and given that inroad, Chris plunged ahead. “One strawberry sundae with chocolate sauce, peanut butter chips, and marshmallow topping.”

  “So you’re really not hungry?” Chris asked Sam.

  “We already ate lunch,” said Ben.

  “Well, then, let’s get you a sundae, too, Sam, and if you can’t finish it, I’ll give you a hand after I’ve eaten my lunch.” He looked up at the waitress. “Two of those sundaes,” he said.

  When she had left, Chris leaned across the table towards his sons. “How come you ate already?” he asked.

  Ben slumped down farther in his seat. “Mom made us,” he said. Sam turned and gave his brother a look of reproach.

  “I see,” said Chris, trying his best to keep his tone light. “Didn’t you know I was taking you out to lunch?”

  “We weren’t sure,” Sam said.

  “Why not?” asked Chris. “We planned it.”

  “We weren’t sure you’d come,” explained Ben.

  “Why wouldn’t I come?” asked Chris. “It’s the highlight of my week.”

  “You didn’t come yesterday,” said Ben.

  “No,” said Chris. “But I wasn’t supposed to come yesterday. We made a date for today.”

  “Mom said you were coming yesterday,” said Ben. “We waited for you. We waited all day, and you never came.”

  “Ben,” Sam said, “sh! We weren’t supposed to say!”

  Chris’s heart lurched. He knew that he hadn’t confused the dates. Trained as a journalist, he’d always been precise about dates, and when it came to the boys, he was obsessively punctual because he didn’t want to give Susan anything legitimate to complain about.

  “Your mother must have made a mistake,” he said. He pulled out his pocket calendar and showed them the week where “Lunch with Sam and Ben” was there, clearly, in ink, under Sunday. “Hey, guys, listen, I would never, never miss a chance to be with you.”

  “Mom said you forgot,” said Ben, “but I thought maybe something happened.” His face quivered; he struggled against tears.

  “If anything happen
ed and I couldn’t get here, I’d call,” said Chris. “I’d never not show up. I promise you that.”

  The waitress came with the spanakopita and the two sundaes. The spanakopita looked as if it had been burnt and someone had scraped away the black filo pastry on the top. The sundaes looked garish; the red strawberries almost glowed.

  Chris forced a smile. “Save some for me!” he said, pointing his fork at the sundaes.

  Ben took a bite of his sundae and smiled up at Chris, a brown mustache of chocolate sauce decorating his face. Sam poked at his sundae but didn’t actually lift the spoon to his mouth.

  Chris tried to catch his eye. “Sam,” he asked, “is there something else going on?”

  Sam shook his head and looked down.

  “Sam?” asked Chris, and when Sam reluctantly looked up at him, he said, “Come on, something’s got you down in the dumps.”

  “Mom got tickets for the circus for today, and now we can’t go,” Sam said.

  “We can’t?” asked Ben. “Why not?”

  “It’s too late,” said Sam, turning to him.

  “What time is the show?” asked Chris. “Maybe we can still make it.” He was ready to bolt up out of his seat.

  Ben shook his head. “No, Mom said we’d have to miss it because you came the wrong day, but we had to go to lunch with you.”

  Chris could barely keep his voice level. “Boy am I sorry about the mix-up, guys,” he said. “That really sucks, doesn’t it? But I’ll figure out a way to get you to the circus next time you come to my house.”

  “It’s just this weekend,” said Ben.

  “I’ll take you into the city to the Big Apple Circus,” said Chris. “You’ll like it even better.”

  When the waitress came to clear the plates, she saw that he had barely touched his spanakopita. “Want me to wrap that up for you to take?” she asked.