“Damn, that felt good,” I exclaimed, grinning down at him.
“Is this your style?” he demanded crossly, glowering up at me.
“Generally.”
“We even now?”
“As far as I’m concerned we are.”
I helped him up. We shook hands. We ordered another round of drinks. He drained one of his shots after they came, gazed into his empty glass, and oh-so-casually remarked, “You’ve had it, haven’t you? Writer’s block?”
My stomach muscles tightened involuntarily. They always do when I think about the void. And the fear. I glanced over at him and swallowed. I nodded.
“How do you know when you have it?” he asked, his eyes still on his empty glass.
“You know,” I said softly.
He looked up at me. The twinkle was gone from his eyes. There was only a hollowness, a hurt there now. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Just can’t seem to start anything. Doesn’t matter what it is. The novel. A short story. Even a letter. I keep thinking — hold on, don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget you have to be brilliant, outrageous, natural, hip … You have to be Cam Noyes.’ He ran his hands through his wavy blond hair. “They’ve set this impossibly high standard for me, you know? And they’ll only be happy if I exceed it. I’m not allowed to fail. They won’t let me. So I end up sitting there. And sitting there. And … I don’t know. I feel like I’m … ”
“Exposing yourself in public?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of.”
“That’s what writing is.”
“I suppose it is.” He shook his head. “Christ, how did you survive this?”
“I didn’t. I wrecked myself and my marriage. Drove all of my friends away — except for the real ones, the ones who were there before.”
“I don’t have many friends like that.”
“No one does.”
“And then what? How did you get over it?”
“I stopped caring.”
“About your work?”
“About what everybody in town was going to think of it,” I replied. “Half of them don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about anyway. You can’t write for Tanner Marsh, only for yourself, the way you did before you became the famous Cameron Sheffield Noyes. Just concentrate on the work. Forget about everything else.”
He lit another cigarette. “I can’t.”
“I didn’t say it was easy.”
“This book … what would you do?”
“If it were up to me?”
He sniffled. “Yes.”
“I think the idea of you and Charlie combining forces is dynamite. As for the content … I’d try to get beneath your whole girted and tragic rebel-genius image.”
“Now you’re trying to provoke me again,” he said coldly.
“I’m not. What makes you Cam Noyes? That’s what I’d like to know — who you are. How and why you became a writer. How you made it. What it took. What it has done to you — including give you writer’s block. The average reader still thinks publishing is a word of tweedy, genteel people who sit around waiting to discover great books, and that authors are shy recluses whose sole aim in life is to write those books. Your story can be the story of publishing as it really is today. Unvarnished.”
He scratched his chin thoughtfully, consciously. Portrait of the artist as a young brooder. “In other words, you want dirt.”
“Not necessarily,” I replied, sipping my drink. “Why, what kind of dirt?”
“Did you know Tanner Marsh and Skitsy Held were once married?”
“I seem to recall it.”
“When they got divorced, he sued her for alimony, and won, on the grounds she couldn’t have made it in publishing without him. He gave her her start, steered a lot of important young writers her way.”
“That’s common knowledge.”
He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Is it common knowledge they’re thieves, both of them?”
I leaned forward. “Oh?”
“That is what you call someone who pockets money that doesn’t belong to them, isn’t it?” He waited, somewhat shyly, for my response.
“It is,” I told him.
“Believe me, there’s deliciously sleazy stuff to tell about the way those two do business. Stuff they’d positively kill to keep quiet.”
“And you’re prepared to tell it?”
He nodded eagerly. “It’s perfect! It’s ballsy. Subversive. High profile. It’s Cam Noyes. God, I love it! Let’s do it!”
“Slow down. Boyd may not be quite so enthusiastic.”
“He could care less what people think of him,” Cam scoffed.
“So he said.”
“As long as it makes a splash and big bucks he’ll be happy. And it will. I just know it will.”
“Your editor may want to —”
“All he cares about is what month I turn it in. We turn it in. Will you do it with me, coach? Can we do it? Please?”
Christ, he sounded like a kid brother — one who was begging me to take him bowling with me. “You’ve made up your mind just like that?” I asked.
“Just like that.”
“You’re a snap — I should have asked you for all of your money.”
He grinned. “Then I do know how to say no. Is it a deal?”
I said it was. Couldn’t help myself. See, the truth is I’d always wanted a kid brother.
An involuntary shudder passed through me when we shook on it. A tingle of deep, dark dread, of snakes slithering through the undergrowth. Whatever it was, Cam clearly hadn’t felt it. He was whooping and pounding the bar and buying everyone in the place a round, just a big, agreeable golden retriever puppy of a kid. I half expected him to lick my face.
We drank to our success when our drinks came.
“I do have one favor to ask of you,” I said.
His face darkened. “If it’s about the coke … ”
“Not at all. It’s your life.”
“Glad you see it that way,” he said, relaxing. “What then?”
“I’d like an associate of mine named Vic Early to stay in your guest room for a while. I find he comes in very handy.”
“Sure. No problem. What is he, a typist?”
“Not exactly. You’ll find him easy to get along with. Just don’t get him mad.”
“Why, what happens?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I pulled in at Tony’s on my way home. It’s a neighborhood place on Seventy-ninth off Amsterdam that hasn’t changed its menu or its decor in twenty-five years. They make their own sausages. I had mine with ravioli and a bottle of Chianti. As always, there was a little fried calamari on the side for Lulu.
While I ate, I made notes of my initial conversation with Cameron Noyes. Most of them ended in question marks, such as how much did he really have on Skitsy Held and Tanner Marsh? How would they take to his writing about it? What on earth was I getting myself into?
Merilee’s Woody Allen movie came on the TV over the bar while I was putting away my cannoli and espresso. Lulu scampered in there to watch it. She never misses one of her mommy’s movies. The barman let her sit up on the top of the bar so she could see better. I stayed in the dining room. I knew all of the lines — by heart.
We walked home to Ninety-third Street on Broadway. Upper Broadway was in the intensive care unit now. A solid corridor of new, thirty-story, modern Frigidaire apartment houses was taking form. My old neighborhood merchants were losing their leases daily. In their place were coming the trendy boutiques selling distressed denim jackets and twelve-dollar chocolate chip cookies, the sidewalk cafes serving limp, watery arugula salads and mesquite-grilled snapper as moist and flavorful as chalk. In their place were coming more and more Yushies, who scurried around the neighborhood after dark like cockroaches, that new kind from Florida that the sprays won’t stop.
I was losing my neighborhood. When you lose your neighborhood in New York, you lose your family, and ther
e’s no replacing it.
There was nothing in my mailbox except for another notice from the Racquet Club reminding me I’d forgotten to pay my dues.
I counted the stairs up to the fifth floor. I’d become convinced over the past few weeks that someone had added another flight when I wasn’t looking. They hadn’t.
My apartment was stuffy and smelled of the dried mackerel remains in Lulu’s bowl. As unappetizing as her principal fare is fresh out of the can, it’s even worse when it’s been sitting in a warm room for twenty-four hours. I threw open the windows, scooped it into the trash, and opened a new can for her. There were no messages on my phone machine.
I undressed and brushed my teeth slowly and carefully, using the new circular motion my dentist said just might save my gums provided I also flossed. My jaw was too sore for that. I’d floss tomorrow. I’ve been telling myself I’d floss tomorrow every night for the past seventeen years. My problem is I always find something better to do than standing in front of the bathroom mirror poking a piece of wet string around in my mouth.
I went to bed with a collection of Truman Capote’s early short stories, which I work my way through every couple of years to remind myself what good writing is.
I had just turned out my light — and Lulu had just assumed her favorite position with a satisfied grunt — when I heard it. A dull thud on the roof above me in the darkness. Then another. And another. Footsteps … Lulu growled. I shushed her. The steps quickened, headed toward the big skylight over my kitchen. At the skylight they stopped. Hesitated … checking it out. … The glass was reinforced with steel mesh, but all it would take was a pair of wire cutters and a swift boot and I’d have a visitor. I swallowed, glanced at the phone on the nightstand, thought about calling the police. But that meant moving, and I couldn’t seem to. … The footsteps retreated now. Over toward the steel roof door. That was held shut from the inside by a hook and eye. A crowbar would pop it open easily.
He had a crowbar.
It opened with a sharp crack. Now I heard the footsteps on the stairs from the roof, descending quickly … in the corridor outside my door. Lulu growled again. This time I put a hand over her muzzle. The steps came to a stop at my door. Silence. A rustling sound … something being slid under the door. … The footsteps retreated now. Down the steps. Rapidly. One flight. Another. And then, far below, the street door slammed shut. Gone.
I let go of Lulu and my breath. Then I turned on my light and went to the door. It was a blank white envelope, folded shut. Inside was a three-by-five card that had a warning on it: Write this book and you’ll be very sorry. Get the picture?
The warning was written in those LetraSet press-on letters they sell at artist supply stores. There was something else in the envelope — the ripped-up pieces of a magazine cover. I dumped them onto my bed and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. They formed the cover of a People magazine from six years before. The cover story was on “The Lady Who Has It All.” The face on the cover belonged to Merilee Nash.
I sat down on the bed and cursed. Yeah, I got the picture, all right. I got it just fine. Whoever it was certainly knew how to get my attention. And how to get taken seriously.
I glanced at grandfather’s Rolex. It was after midnight. She’d be home from the theater now. Still wound up. I reached for the phone, stopped myself. Then I reached for it again.
It rang three times before she said hello. My heart started pounding immediately. It always does when I hear that feathery, proper, teenaged-girl’s voice that belongs to her and no one else.
“Hello, Merilee,” I finally got out.
Click.
I sighed, dialed again. She let it ring forever before she answered this time.
“Don’t hang up, Merilee. Please. This is serious.”
“Oh, no, it’s Sweetness!” she cried. “What happened? Was it heartworm? A runaway sanitation truck? Oh, God, don’t drag this out, Hoagy. Please. I can’t stand it.”
“Nothing like that. Lulu’s fine. Obnoxious, but fine.”
Merilee heaved a sigh of relief. “Merciful heavens, Mr. Hoagy. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Lulu whimpered from the floor next to me. She always knows when her mommy’s on the other end of the phone. Don’t ask me how.
“Listen, Merilee. I seem to be in the middle of something … ”
“Not again, Hoagy,” she said wearily. “When are you going to stop this applesauce?”
“I didn’t start it, believe me,” I replied. “I’ve missed your quaint little expressions.”
“Who is it this time?” she asked, sidestepping my attempt at familiarity.
“Cameron Noyes.”
She gasped girlishly. “God, he’s so gorgeous.”
“Extremely well-hung, too.”
“Reeeeally? How do you … No, don’t tell me.”
“You surprise me, Merilee. I wouldn’t think he was your type. Kind of bratty.”
“Meaning he’s a pain?”
I massaged my jaw. “Meaning a lot of him is pose. I get the feeling it’s almost as if he’s performing a role.”
“He’s young,” she said. “People that age are still in the process of inventing themselves. You’re just not used to being around them anymore.”
“Actually, his agent said he’d remind me of me.”
“He is the new you,” she said. “Gifted and handsome and full of doo-dah and vinegar.”
“Ah, the me of my salad days.”
“These are still our salad days, darling.”
“If they are, the lettuce is wilting.”
“Resent him a little?”
“Trying not to,” I replied.
“And?”
“And failing,” I confessed. “Charlie Chu seems like quite a girl.”
“She’s not a girl. She’s a woman.”
“Whatever she is, she’s well aware he cheats on her, and seems to accept it.”
“A lot of us do. We’re afraid if we squawk, we’ll get dumped.” She was silent a second. “At least that’s one thing you never did to me.”
“Why, Merilee, that’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me in —”
“I happen to be a very nice person. I’m not nearly as mean and petty and awful as you seem to think I am — in print.”
“Look, we’ve been over that a hundred times. And that’s not why I called.”
“I’ve been speaking to Sean about us.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a very intelligent man,” she added. “And I think he’s gotten a bum rap from the press.”
“Why should he be different from anyone else?”
“He said you had to do what you did, because you’re an artist, and that you must write about your experiences or you won’t grow from them.”
“Merilee, that’s precisely what I told you myself.”
“I know, I know. I guess I just needed to … So you’re in the middle of something?”
“I am. There’s no reason for you to be alarmed, but they may … well, try to get at me through you.”
“You mean you think a loon might go after me.” She stated it matter-of-factly.
“I’m afraid it’s possible.”
“Not to worry,” she said bravely. “I’m used to them. Come with the territory, I’m afraid.”
“Still, I think you should be careful.”
“I promised myself a long time ago I won’t let them spook me. If I do, I’ll become one of them myself.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” I insisted.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Promise me and mean it.”
“I’ll be fine, Hoagy. I have a great big fierce doorman.”
“Call me if you need me. It’s probably nothing, but call, okay?”
“I shall. And thank you for the warning. It was very civilized of you.”
We were both silent for a moment now.
“Do you ever miss us, Hoagy?” she asked, her voice softer.<
br />
I swallowed. “Only most of the time. You?”
“I miss us right now. When I’ve just crawled home from the theater, from all of the lights and the applause, all the energy, to this dark, still apartment. It’s so quiet here. Hoagy?”
“Yes, Merilee?”
“You broke my heart, Hoagy.”
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copyright © 2006 by David Handler
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