“Honey, I can have them at my feet anyway. I want you,” he said in a dramatic, ominous tone. “You want me to leave her? Before you’ll start anything with me?”
“No!” she exclaimed, horrified that he seemed to think she was taking him seriously. “I’m just babbling, you know—”
“Will you leave David for me? I’d leave Elaine if that’s the only way I can have you. But then I want all of you. I’m not sharing you with a Newstime wunderkind.”
Patty gripped the soft cushion of her chair, feeling herself loosened from the surface of reality. Any moment, she feared, she might spin off into the madness of space, with no up or down, no gravity to restore balance. “I have to go,” she said. She needed distance from his baffling presence, fast, before she made a fatal error in responding to his outrageous and incredible proposals. “Please,” she begged, almost crying. “Please. I have to go.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “But you have to promise you’ll call.”
“I will.”
“Soon.”
She had to breathe deeply to speak. “I will. Okay? I really have to go.” She moved to get up.
“Wait,” he said, signaling for the waiter. “I’ll get you a cab.”
“You have to eat your lunch,” she pleaded.
“Fuck it,” he said, and asked for the check.
She couldn’t protest, afraid of another round of losing to his insistence on doing things his way. She sagged against the chair weakly and waited patiently until he finished, allowing him to take her by the elbow on the way outside.
On the street, the city was too bright—the sunlight shimmering on the blank rising towers of glass, harshly iluminating every curb and gutter, examining all the crumpled papers and trails of urine, nakedly exposing each suit’s wrinkle, every stocking’s tear. The wan pale faces of harried pass-ersby seemed bleached, cruelly open to the flooding rays. Gelb moved her through it all without any cooperation on her part, as though he had levitated her above the sidewalk and could push her like a store mannequin, face frozen in expression, legs stiff, eyes blank and lifeless.
When he got in the taxi with her, she made no protest, although it was unexpected and made little sense. He was only a few blocks from his office, she thought; walking it would be much quicker. But her mind’s observations were heard only faintly: she was still in shock from the awful bad luck of her life. Only that morning she had had the book and a way to get it published and now these prizes were being snatched from her with terrible precision, as though a malicious intelligence was against her.
Gelb gave the two addresses and, when he leaned back, put his arm around her. She didn’t look up at him, or away; she kept her eyes down, seeing the flowing line of his pants leg, the big, very adult shoes straddling either side of the transmission’s hump. After some moments of dreadful heavy silence, she felt his head move near hers, his lips brush her ear, and then a whisper. “I’ve missed you.” He kissed her neck. Shivers ran down one side of her body— the rest of her was numb. “I’ve wanted to do this for so many years,” he whispered again, his voice breathy, his tone desperate.
Now, rapidly, as though he had to quickly finish the ice cream before it melted, he kissed her cheek, just next to her mouth, her eyes (she closed them dutifully, like a toy doll), and then her lips, his wine-hot mouth busy and angry.
She didn’t respond.
She didn’t fight it, either.
He would get out soon, she knew. She needed time and freedom from his presence to escape this trap fate had baited, to stop the steel jaws from snapping her in two. He said more things, more wildly romantic things, before getting out. She nodded and managed to croak out, ” ’Bye,” to satisfy him so that he would shut the door and let her go.
CHAPTER 12
Fred enjoyed sleeping on the couches of his friends. He liked waking up in other house-holds, whether bachelor or married. With the single men he had the fun of sloppiness and adolescent talk. With the couples there were the pleasures of studying the wife in T-shirt and panties or nightgown at the breakfast table and receiving her sweetly feminine attentions. Having been thrown out by Marion turned out to be an enhancement of his image. People seemed to like him all of a sudden, especially the more he talked of his regret over his failed marriage, the difficulty he had talking openly with Marion. As soon as Fred noticed that the more he blamed himself for not being receptive to Marion’s feelings, not giving her room for her desires, the more he portrayed himself as a man chained by the traditions of male chauvinism, trying to break free but discovering new bonds with each success; the more he attacked himself, excusing Marion, the more people believed the opposite, felt sorry for him, and seemed to enjoy his company.
He stayed with Karl for a few days, and then Tom Lear, and then he began to be passed about among their set, like an adorable puppy whom everybody wants to cuddle and hold, but finds, after a few days, that walking him every night is too much of a bother.
Fred understood that he could wear out his welcome quickly, and he made sure to be scrupulous in leaving money for groceries and the telephone, as well as an expensive bottle of wine or something the house needed, on departure. When he felt guilty that he was deceiving these people, pretending to tragic emotions, assuming an air of melancholy and loneliness that in fact was nonexistent, he reminded himself of how they had lied to him. He discovered, as a by-product of living in these so-called friends’ apartments, that they all had active and intertwined social lives from which he and Marion had been excluded. He also discovered a lot of contempt for Marion. The talk about her—begun in an effort to convince him he wasn’t all to blame, but continuing with an unseemly relish—the disdain for her intellect, her lack of style, her provincial background, and so on, were things that Fred, in his heart, knew could also be said about him. He smiled and accepted the criticism of his wife as though it pleased. He did nothing to stop them, indeed he often provoked more, but he loathed them for it, and felt sorry for her. And, ultimately, for himself.
They were terrible snobs, just as Marion had always said. Because she wasn’t pretty, because she didn’t know how to dress, because she wasn’t glib or flattering, because she didn’t apologize for editing cookbooks, and claimed no desire to be more than a hack editor, she was disdained. The truth, it seemed to him, was that she possessed a realism they were incapable of. She knew that they were all less than they thought they were—she had listened to their fantasies of becoming major writers or whatever, without the proper amount of awe and seriousness. It was a bargain they had all made with each other: I’ll pretend you’re great, and you pretend I am too.
People are never who they say they are, Marion had once complained about them. It was true. Every journalist was really a novelist, every editor really a writer, every art director really a painter, every graduate student really a professional. And they combined this fantasy life with an astonishing arrogance toward the famous. Philip Roth was a narcissistic bore, Meryl Streep was too technical and unemotional, the New York Times critics were always wrong, successful books always bad, hit plays always trivial, and so on, in a joyless competition with the greats of their day, the whole discussion conducted in a tone as though they were equals, people whose obscurity was only a temporary condition and certainly unmerited.
He lied so much about the drama of his marriage, he exaggerated it into such a complicated and difficult problem that the reality bored him. When he phoned Marion at the office the day after she threw him out, she suggested they go to a marriage counselor and live separately for a while. He agreed, furious at her, but after a few nights of his journeying among friends, he was glad for the arrangement. It took more than two weeks before they saw each other at all, meeting for a cup of coffee half an hour before an appointment with a therapist that Marion had arranged.
The session with the psychologist was dull. Mostly they each covered the facts of their relationship and made their complaints about the marriage in formal, almost sociologica
l terms. Fred made much of the fifty minutes when telling his friends, saying it was good to air the feelings and have a referee to prevent the conversation from turning into meaningless shouting. Actually there had never been such a danger. At one point Marion began to cry while attempting to say that she thought Fred considered her unattractive and then Fred was glad for the presence of the psychologist since that complaint had always presented him with insuperable difficulties. Instead of Fred’s having to deny the truth of her charge, the psychologist was there to ask Marion solemnly. “Do you think you’re unattractive?” Fred guessed immediately that the therapist wouldn’t ask him if she was right (psychology has a wonderful way of ignoring the obvious, Fred thought) and stay focused on Marion’s low self-esteem. The whole thing seemed overdramatic to him. Not that he didn’t believe in psychiatry, or felt the counseling wouldn’t work, simply that it seemed of a piece with the overcrowding of the New York world. Two people couldn’t even fall in and out of love by themselves.
He tried not to think of the future. He assumed they would get back together, that his current condition was temporary and therefore should be enjoyed rather than wasted in melancholic solitude. He went out every night, spent a fortune on dinners and entertainment (he went to four Broadway shows those first two weeks, swallowing the forty-five-dollar ticket prices without a hard gulp, much less choking), and sublet a one-room office from a friend of Karl’s for four hundred dollars a month, picking up his typewriter and papers while Marion was at work. He spent as though the money he was withdrawing from his and Marion’s joint account was a college allowance from his parents and the consequence was going to be a scolding, not bankruptcy.
In the grand explosion of this drama. Tom Lear reading his pages and telling him they were good, but making some suggestions for changes (which Fred executed in a few days, not showing the revisions to Tom), made only a small noise. Tom spoke casually about the writing, seeming neither too impressed nor too dismayed. And he socialized with Fred just as frequently, even putting him up for a few days.
Bart called him daily when he heard the news, took him to lunch, offered his guest room either to sleep or work in, and asked for the one hundred pages with increasing insistence. After the meeting with the therapist, Fred decided (see, he told himself, my self-esteem is okay) to hand them in.
“They’re pretty good, Fred,” Bart said on the phone, with a lack of enthusiasm or despair similar to Tom Lear’s. “They need some work of course, but they’re ready for Bob to see.”
Fred worried during the weekend that Holder was reading his manuscript, but not intensely. He felt a general sense of safety in the world now that Marion had thrown him out. The peculiar rise in his self-confidence puzzled him, made him wonder if he should make any attempt to reconcile with her, whether the marriage was somehow debilitating and dangerous. But even that seemed to be out of his hands, since Marion had all the momentum with her, though why that should be also baffled him. Everything in his life, whether he was married or not, whether he had a place to live or not, whether he had a viable book contract or an income for the year, whether he could stay in the race with his circle of writing friends—everything was in other people’s hands: Marion’s and Bob Holder’s. And yet this absolute lack of control, instead of corrupting his mood and invading his sleep, kept him lighthearted, interested in each day with its surprises and dangers, and let him fall asleep soundly, happily exhausted by the complicated arrangements and busy social life of a tourist in a big city loaded with friends.
Bob Holder phoned Monday morning. “Hi, Fred. How are you?” His voice was pleasant, casual.
“Good. How are you?” Fred asked, feeling more than ever the person he wanted to be.
“Fine, fine. Listen, I think you should come in, maybe this afternoon, and talk about the book.”
“Okay.”
“See if we both feel like continuing with it. I think it may be getting away from us.”
“Un-huh.” Fred was in a stranger’s kitchen, and when, at Fred’s shocked tone, his hosts looked up from their coffee, he smiled bravely at them.
“Can you come in today at three?”
“Sure.”
“Great. See you then.”
“Is everything all right?” he was asked while he returned the phone to the cradle with the slow motions of an accident victim. If the worst were about to happen—a total rejection, a canceling of the contract—everyone would have to be told, but Fred wasn’t sure of the disaster, and if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t want anyone to know that Holder had ever been critical of his work.
He lied, saying that Holder had praised the pages and simply wanted to discuss what lay ahead. Within a half-hour he invented a reason to go out, and called Bart from a phone booth. During the past few months their relationship had progressed to intimacy. Bart got right on. “What’s up, Fred?”
“I heard from Holder. Sounds like he’s dumping the book.”
“What?”
At the surprise in Bart’s tone. Fred already felt relieved. “Well, he said I should come in today to see whether it’s worth continuing with the book at all.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“He said we … he said we should discuss if we want to continue with the book.”
“Well, we do!”
Fred laughed. “Damn right we do.”
“I’ll call him.” Bart spoke as though that would take care of it, a President announcing he was in charge.
“Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I’m making too much of it. I don’t know. It may just be the way he talks.”
“I’ll feel my way around. I have to call him about another project anyway, and I’ll casually bring up your book.”
“That won’t fool him. He’ll know.”
Bart snorted. “You overestimate him. He won’t. When are you meeting him?”
“Three.”
“Okay. Where are you gonna be?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. Call in at two … or, no, call between two and two-thirty.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry. Relax.”
“Okay.” Fred said obediently. He wanted to marry Bart after this conversation. The terrible demons that Holder’s conversation had summoned were gone in an instant, their damp invasion of his soul burned off by the heat of Bart’s energy. For a few hours he went about his business without more than a ripple of worry. But as two o’clock approached he began to get a clear image of what it would mean if Holder didn’t proceed with the contract. He would have no immediate income, and unless Marion was willing to take him back, the expense of finding an apartment in New York would be prohibitive without the guarantee of some money. Of course he could probably return to American Sport (the newsstand sales hadn’t collapsed on his departure, but still he was pretty sure … ) or some other publication, but that was failure. There would be no more Elaine’s, screenings with Tom, poker games at Karl’s, and so on. Sure, supposedly they were all friends now, but he knew, he just knew, that his standing within the circle he now moved would be compromised. And even if he could keep his new social position, would he enjoy it without the right to it? He had loved being a novelist. Working privately at this great project, being asked about its progress by everyone as though it were a public work, a bridge whose completion was eagerly awaited. That would be gone. The independence, the pride in his achievement, all of it removed from the table of life by a hasty waiter, carrying off plates that still had plenty of nourishment on them.
He called Bart at two. His secretary said he was still out at lunch and would call back. “That’s no good,” Fred said. “He can’t reach me. I’ll phone again in ten minutes.” He decided to get uptown for the meeting and try Bart from there. He took a cab, got stuck in traffic, and wasn’t able to find a telephone until two-twenty-five.
“He just got on a long-distance call to London,” she told him. “Call back in ten minutes.”
He waited six.
“Bart said I should tell you he hasn’t heard back from Holder,” she said this time. “He’ll keep trying. Call back in ten minutes.”
Fred’s confidence in Bart, damning up the stormy waters of fear, broke, washed over him, and smashed him against midtown. The busy streets quavered in his vision. The itemized list of his troubles passed before him, wrapping around the buildings like a stock-market ticker tape recording a crash.
When he phoned again at two-fifty, knowing this would be his last chance, he was sure of defeat. “Hold on, Fred,” the secretary said. Even her tone had become urgent and fearful.
“Fred.” Bart said, anxious, a general pinned by enemy fire, trained to fight off panic, “I’ve tried Bob three times. He hasn’t called me back. I don’t think that means anything. Your meeting’s—what?—in a couple of minutes?”
“Yeah.” The sound of his own voice appalled Fred. It was hoarse with dread.
“Call me after you’re done.”
“But …” he began, and then fell silent. Fred breathed hard, as though he could suck in words and thoughts from the air to fill the vacuum that nervousness had made of his brain.
“Yes?” Bart said after a few moments of silence.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, you’d better get to the meeting. Just don’t commit yourself to anything. Listen to me. Report it to me. We’ll discuss it. You don’t have to make any decisions on the spot. Okay?”
“He’s gonna reject the book.”
“You don’t know that. I don’t think he will. He would have called me first. Don’t assume that. Now, come on. Relax. Get going.”
“Okay,” he said, hanging up without a good-bye, like a doctor on call rushing to an emergency. He hustled across the street and into the lobby. At the reception area he was sweating, relieved that he had gotten there a minute before three.
Then Holder kept him waiting a half-hour. During the slow agony of the minutes passing, Fred passed into a state of hopeless resignation. He considered begging Holder for a chance to do a complete rewrite, but he doubted if even that would be accepted.
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