Hot Properties

by Rafael Yglesias

  “You’re not about to suggest we kidnap him and hand him over to the Israelis?” Harpo said with aloof sarcasm.

  “Let David talk,” Rounder said. “His is a point of view we haven’t considered.” He folded his arms and leaned back, his cool blue eyes glistening with challenge. “Go ahead.”

  “I think we’re going to be criticized. For paying him, for doing nothing to alert the authorities, and even for writing about him in a way that tends to glamorize him.”

  Chico moved behind Rounder and shook his head no at David. Harpo looked at the signal and laughed. Rounder glanced at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” Harpo said with a sneering smile. “My mind was wandering. Go on, David, I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve said it. I don’t think you can get around it. We’ll be accused, and it will be hard to answer, of abetting the escape of one of the great criminals in history.”

  “I can answer it!” Chico said. “David, I’m surprised at you. We’re a news organization. Someone offers us a story, no matter who they are, we aren’t police officials. You know that—”

  “This is a little different,” David said quietly.

  “No it’s not!”

  “And what happens if he’s a phony?” Harpo asked. “Then we get all the heat and we don’t even have a story.”

  “Sure we have a story!” Chico shouted. David looked at the floor. Rounder closed his eyes at the sound, pained. Harpo went on looking at Chico with an air of amusement. “We have an imposter story!” Chico insisted, his tone aggrieved. “People love that.”

  Harpo laughed. “Terrific,” he said to no one in particular.

  “What the hell do you suggest we do?” Chico said, leaning in toward Harpo oppressively, his face thrust at him like a kid making a dare. “You having fun shooting down all the suggestions? What the fuck do you want us to do?”

  “Pass on the story,” Harpo said angrily. “Just a nice, simple polite no, we’re not interested.”

  Chico’s mouth opened, his eyes wide. He looked comically baffled, a cartoon caricature of a man flabbergasted. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “If we had a real guarantee that it is Gott, I’d say do it—”

  “Oh, that’s very courageous! Gee whiz, I’m impressed!” Chico’s sarcasm shuddered through his body. Harpo looked away in disgust. Rounder seemed to be elsewhere now, staring off at some point beyond David.

  “We’re supposed to cover news, not make it,” Harpo said.

  “Oh, that’s original,” Chico answered.

  “Look, if all you have to offer is sarcasm—”

  “Have you ever heard of investigative reporting?” Chico demanded.

  “This isn’t investigative reporting,” Harpo shot back. “This is buying a pig in a poke.”

  “If he’s a phony, we won’t run any story, all right?” Chico argued, sure now that he had this disagreement won. “What does it cost to find out? Ten thousand dollars, three plane tickets, and a couple nights in a hotel. If he’s real, then we’ve got a story you just said you would run.”

  Harpo nodded reluctantly. “That’s true,” he said. He looked suspicious about his agreement, though, as if he’d been mugged by his own words.

  “Mrs. Thorn will be the one to make the final decision. But I’m prepared to recommend it,” Rounder said suddenly. Chico and Harpo both seemed startled by the reminder that he was in the room—and in charge to boot. “All right, then, we’re set. Except for your decision whether you want to do the interview,” he added, staring at David.

  “Of course he’s going to do the story,” Chico blurted. “My God. David, this is a once-in-a-lifetime piece for you. This is what being a newsman is all about.”

  David wanted to turn it off. Change the channel. Type over the page. Remove himself from the moment and contemplate it distantly, like an interesting tableau that didn’t require movement or participation. In a way it didn’t. He had to say yes. It was the logic of his position, the only sensible climax to his life. He’d been handed his chance. All the years of service were paying off. To refuse would have meant making nonsense of his life. He nodded slowly at first. Chico smiled encouragingly.

  “You’ll do a great job,” he urged. “You’re perfect for it.”

  “Thank you,” David said.

  “I’m going to leave my wife.” Gelb pursed his lips. He stared off at the Hudson River, squinting at the gray water, the hard impenetrable surface looking like liquid steel boiling beside Manhattan. They were meeting in Riverside Park in the late afternoon at his request. She hadn’t seen him for two months. She had called off their affair at the worst possible time (from the point of view of her novel’s success). Indeed, she assumed it had hurt her book already. Fred Tatter had gotten a book-club deal, his first printing was four times the size of hers—obviously it was Garlands big first-novel of the season. Betty hadn’t even gotten an assurance of a single dollar to run an ad for Patty’s novel, though she claimed Patty had had just as good a shot at the book clubs.

  “They make an objective choice, Patty,” Betty argued. “They read the books. The publisher doesn’t get to pick who’s a book-club selection.”

  “Come on! If they know the publisher is pushing a book, they pay attention. Who are you kidding? I was Gelb’s assistant! He had those people hopping for weeks ahead of time! One word from him and I’d be dead, and you know it.”

  “I don’t think he’d do that. He’s not angry at you. He under—”

  “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then how do you know whether he’s angry!”

  Betty lectured her then, saying that she had to calm down or she’d be dead by the time her novel came out. “It’s not going to be a bestseller, Patty. You have to face that.”

  “And Fred’s is? That piece of shit!”

  “You’ve read it?” Betty sounded surprised.

  “Of course I haven’t read it,” Patty said, laughing. “But it has to be a piece of shit.”

  Betty laughed. “It is,” she said, and laughed harder. “But it’s shit that moves,” she added.

  “Really,” Patty said, dismayed. “I can’t believe Fred Tatter is going to have a best selling novel.”

  “I didn’t say it was going to be a bestseller, for God’s sake,” Betty protested. “It’ll do well. Anyway, what do you care? What’s the point?”

  “I should have had an affair with him!” Patty cried out. “He at least would give me a blurb.”

  Betty roared with laughter. “You’re terrible.”

  “Why can’t I do anything right!” she screamed, only half-serious.

  “Your book is wonderful. You have a great career ahead of you. What are you so desperate about?”

  She didn’t want to explain herself to Betty, tell her that she couldn’t go on living with David. She apologized for her hysterics and went on feeling desperate. She had broken up with Gelb so she could give their relationship a chance. But it seemed dead. David never fucked her. Indeed, on some days he shrank from her touch guiltily. She wondered at times whether he was having an affair, his manner was so distant and worried. But he had no time to: he worked at the magazine sixty hours a week (she knew he was really there); and the rest of the time he sulked in the loft reading and watching television. She wanted out of their life together. But if her novel didn’t make money, she couldn’t afford to leave without getting a job, and that meant the end of her writing. She loathed herself for her weakness, her dread of being alone in the world, but she couldn’t break free of it. So when Gelb called and begged, literally, to see her for an hour, she agreed.

  “I’m going to leave my wife,” he said. She watched his profile after this opening shot. He had his chin in the air, bravely, his full cheeks darkening with stubble—he looked like a weary victorious general gazing over the cost of his triumph. He glanced at her after a long silence. “Well?” he said.

  “How come?” she asked
.

  He snorted. “You know why.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We haven’t seen each other for two months,” Patty protested. “You hate my guts.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You said you did.”

  “I was angry! You broke up with me. Don’t tease it out of me. I love you. I’ve missed you horribly. I tried to hate you. I can’t. I tried to convince myself you were just an opportunistic bitch—”

  “I am,” she interrupted.

  “I don’t care. That’s what I’ve come up with. I don’t care what your motives are. I want you. If I”—he nodded toward the monolithic Riverside Drive buildings that stood like mute gods frowning down on the dull oppressed river— “have to divorce and lose my kids, I will.”

  “Jesus!” Patty turned away. She felt tears in her eyes. “Great! If we destroy your children’s lives I can have you.” She began to walk, the broad space of the sky scaring her. The river’s motion nauseated her. She walked quickly away. She heard him run behind her. She expected him to grab her, but he only moved in front, blocking her path.

  “I don’t mean it that way. I don’t like admitting I’m beaten—that I need you. I’ll see my kids as much as I ever have. Even if you say no, I’ll leave her. I can’t stand living there. She’s miserable, and I’ve gone from being bored by her to hating her. I have to get out. It has nothing to do with you.”

  She was crying. The damn tears were coming out of her and she had no idea why. She felt acutely nervous. Her breath was short. Gelb seemed so big and awkward, looming over her as though he were another of Riverside Drive’s buildings, his words cold and restless like the river: she skidded on its slick surface waiting to drown. She couldn’t love him—being with him never felt wholesome; sometimes thrilling, often morally disgusting, but never simple and pleasant.

  Gelb tentatively put his arms out, coaxing her to him. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so great to be with. I can’t stop thinking about you—you have to say yes. I love you. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before—”

  “Shut up,” Patty said while blubbering into his chest. “I can’t take this. I’m not strong enough.” She tried to pull away, but he stopped her, effortlessly, with one hand. She felt so weak pulling against him. She was stuck out there in deep water, helpless against his invisible relentless undertow. The memory of the peace of the shore had faded— there was only this water rising up to choke her, while below she was steadily seduced out into the overwhelming ocean.

  She wanted fame. She wanted money. She wanted power: to strengthen her, to allow her to break the iron grip of his fingers with an easy gesture. Either that—or surrender: to stop the pathetic flailing of her arms and let the drowning come, fill her ears and nose and mouth with their oppressive demands and possession. “What do you want me to say?” she pleaded, sobbing. “What am I supposed to say? I love you! I love you!” she shouted. “Is that enough?”

  She saw a face clearly. It belonged to a middle-aged woman, twenty feet away, walking a white terrier. She looked at Patty with horror and longing in her eyes, as though she were empathetically feeling each of her emotions. When they made contact with their eyes, the woman looked down at the dog.

  Gelb suddenly became yielding. He hugged her, whispering, “It’s all right, it’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry. I’ve put too much pressure on you. I just wanted to tell you how I felt. You don’t have to respond.”

  She trembled in his arms. He held her for a while, rubbing her shoulders and back as though drying her after a dip in the ocean. When she stopped shivering she leaned her head against his chest and felt sleepy. She could close her eyes and rest there, let him make the decisions and move her through life, abandoning thought, effort, and will.

  “I have to go,” he whispered finally in her ear.

  “Okay,” she said weakly, beginning to move.

  “I’m going to tell her tonight,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, not wanting to hear it. All the fuss and fury had been a waste.

  “I really am going to leave her,” he insisted.

  A waste. There they were, back at the beginning. All the upheaval was merely noise and nonsense. Nothing had been settled.

  Paula Kramer answered the door herself. The apartment was huge, decorated sparsely—to Fred’s mind, like a museum. A few superb antiques were in each room, set far apart from each other, the enormous Oriental rug stretching across the living-room floor with only a single object on it— a coffee table that seemed to be some sort of chest—the beautiful Victorian couches way off, beyond the border of the rug. Paula greeted him warmly. She was thin and energetic, her long frizzy hair sprouting off her head as though her brain were electrifying it, her wide mouth flashing big bright teeth in a cheerful, welcoming smile.

  Life had been dreamily successful since the end of summer and his return to New York. Holder was on the phone almost every other day with more talk of how hot Fred’s book was becoming. Using the hook that The Locker Room was a statement of the “new man’s” sexuality. Holder seemed to have created the possibility of a book tour (making the rounds of television and radio talk shows), a common promotional technique with nonaction, but rare or nonexistent with novels. In the midst of these bulletins, Paula Kramer had phoned to say she loved his book, was fascinated by its frank revelation of the male response to feminism. She had talked to New York Times Book Review about doing a piece on the emerging novelists under thirty-five, had gotten approval for the piece, and she wanted to use Fred as the central focus, since she felt his book was the most dynamic and important of the first-novels of the season.

  Holder’s reaction to this news was unrestrained: “Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Unfucking-believable! Do you know how much free publicity that is! Fred, I’ve got to tell the people here now! Right away! This is going to affect the entire campaign.”

  Paula asked him if he wanted coffee and went to get him some when he said yes. He felt intimidated by her and her living room. He also had no idea what to say about his book. Obviously she expected some sort of intellectual discussion, that his novel had a point to make. Did it? Men aren’t monogamous, women are. That had been his original idea. But Holder’s changes had occupied him during the writing, alterations that concentrated on keeping the story lively and sexy, with surprising twists and turns of fortune.

  “My husband,” she said, entering with the coffee in a large china cup and saucer, “is a fan of your sportswriting.” Her husband, Brian Stoppard, was one of the most famous criminal lawyers in the country. “So many good American novelists began as sportswriters—why do you think that is?”

  She was so charming and friendly that he forgot his nervousness. “’Cause it pays steady,” he answered.

  She laughed, a quick ringing chime. He guffawed back at her. “I thought it was an interesting arena—pardon the pun—for you to come out of, given The Locker Room’s theme. You know, the machismo of sports, modern male sexuality.”

  “You know, the athletes aren’t really macho. They’re little boys putting it on. ‘Mine is bigger than yours.’ The biggest shock you get when you first meet a team, first time you meet an athlete face to face, is that they’re kids!” She nodded eagerly at this observation, her eyes opening with surprise. “You know, twenty, twenty-one. Babies. And they stay babies, ’cause their life is playing.”

  “Fascinating,” she said. “Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?”

  “No, I always use one.”

  Paula walked to built-in shelves (they were so discreet, painted the same white as the walls, that he hadn’t noticed them) and brought out a machine, turning it on and placing it on the table between them. “Is your book autobiographical?”

  Fred smiled worriedly. He had expected this question, but still hadn’t settled on a satisfactory answer.

  Paula smiled back. “Terrible question. I hate it when I’m asked. I know that
all characters, in a way, are autobiographical, but some are more than others, if you know what I mean. I feel a lot of you in this book. It’s very honest. I really admire that kind of courage.”

  “Thank you. You gotta put a lot of yourself into something to make it real and meaningful, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” She nodded. “How does your wife feel about it?” she said in a mild wondering tone.

  “She loves the book.” Fred answered, telling the truth insofar as he knew it. He suspected Marion thought it was too sensational, but she had made no criticisms.

  “I’m sure. It’s wonderful. But … I know that Brian sometimes is sensitive about my work. Does she feel at all exposed—the affairs the character has and so on.”

  “Oh, none of that’s true!” Fred said quickly, horrified. “I didn’t mean it was autobiographical that way. I’ve never had any affairs.”

  “Your fans will be so disappointed,” Paula answered, smiling. “Sure you’re not being modest?”

  “No, no. Honest.”

  “So how is it autobiographical? The affairs are a substantial portion of the narrative.”

  “The feelings. You know, I … uh … uh …”

  “Extrapolated?”

  “Yeah, I extrapolated fantasies into reality.”

  “Hmmmm.” She looked let-down. Almost cool to him now. Maybe she had been hot for him, he suddenly thought. The sex scenes were pretty steamy. Maybe she figured he was a good lay and this was all a prelude to … No, impossible. She looked up at him quickly, as though she had made a decision, and turned off the tape recorder. My God, she’s gonna end the interview, throw me out, Fred thought. “Off the record, Fred—I don’t want to screw up your marriage. But just for my own curiosity—it’s not all fantasies, is it? The whole book is about faithfulness, how difficult it is for a man to sustain. Why would somebody who’s managed to do it write about its being impossible? If it’s possible for you, doesn’t that make nonsense of the whole book?”