Foul Matter

by Martha Grimes

  Paul didn’t know, nor had he any intention of finding out. “Are you going to eat that pie?”

  Frowning over his cabin in the woods, Jimmy shoved it toward him.

  “Thanks. Then what?”

  “Finally, I get this stanza written, the analyzed rhyme. Do you know—?”

  “Absolutely. Go on.”

  “Seven or eight writers, so-called, including Marie and the Irish jerks—without the Montecristo because they know they’ll get drinks at the main house—come along and veritably herd me out of the door to go to dinner. I knew there was no way of avoiding all this because I had to get some food inside me even though I wasn’t particularly looking forward to a whole bloody woodsful of writers like these. Off we troop to the main house, where I’m pleasantly surprised—for all of five minutes—to see that the other fifteen or twenty people there are reasonably quiet and reasonably sober. I’m hanging around the drinks table and this really tall fellow who looks like your paradigmatic poet—long scarf, black hair, sleepy eyes as if he can hardly bear to listen to one more person not himself—and I ask him what he’s working on. Turns out he’s not a poet, he’s a sculptor. That pretty much stopped me cold, knowing as much as I do about sculpture, which is zilch. I say to him, ‘I’m surprised this place has, uh, sculpting materials.’ Brilliant, yes? He says, ‘Well, they don’t, do they? One brings one’s own, doesn’t one?’ and walks away.

  “I tried a few more opening ploys with a woman with huge hair, so damned thick it looked as if she’d borrowed other people’s; it stuck out on both sides of her head like wings, and after a banal conversation, me providing the principal banality, I decided I was better off with the rum drinkers and Dylan sayers than the others who were either insufferably snotty or insufferably boring or both. There was another orgy that night to which I just succumbed and Sunday morning, I was out of there. I started back to New York and checked into a Red Roof Inn along the way and slept.”

  Paul, finishing up Jimmy’s apple pie, wondered where the silence had come from. The air had fairly crackled all around him in Jimmy’s flow of talk—ah! He’d stopped! That was it. Paul, having grown unused to the sound of his own voice, then said: “So, I guess the six months at Yaddo won’t work for you.”

  “You’ve got that right, boyo.” Jimmy drank his cold coffee, signaled to the waitress.

  “I guess you’re thinking you’ve learned to appreciate your home more.” Paul was disappointed.

  “Are you kidding? Hell, no. I appreciate it even less. It’s all part of the same thing. What I realized was how much I appreciated being alone. For those few hours right after I got there, I felt weightless. Privacy may be the fucking greatest gift you can find for yourself.” Jimmy moved his head backward. “Behind this booth I’ve got my suitcase and my typewriter. I moved out of the house. I told Lily—that’s my wife—I thought we should do a trial separation. All hell broke loose, which is one of the reasons I wanted a trial separation, come to think of it. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to stay in a hotel while I look for an apartment. All I need is a studio; probably I can find something in lower Manhattan or TriBeCa. My son’s fifteen. Mike. This way I won’t feel like I’m abandoning him because he loves Manhattan and can come to my new digs and sulk instead of just sulking at home. The only danger there is he might want to move in. At any rate, he’ll think he’s got enough to send me on a major guilt trip. Leaving his mother and the homestead, why, that’ll give him more ammunition to resent the hell out of me than he could ever hope for if I stayed. Lily, ditto. Imagine all the lunches and cocktail parties where she can run me down.” Jimmy grinned. “It’s a good move all around. Then I’m going to tell Mort I’ll work three and a half days, no more, so I can be your agent and agent for a few others I respect. If he doesn’t like that”—Jimmy shrugged—“then screw it, I’ll leave. I’ll leave and open my own agency with you as top client. I hope you’ll agree to that, but even if you don’t, I’ll manage with the few writers I think will go along with me.”

  Paul shook and shook his head. “Wow.”

  “So, have you seen it?”

  Paul frowned. “Seen what?”

  “How far I’d go.”

  Paul grinned. “Far enough. Way far.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Paul Giverney sat down in Clive’s office without removing his coat.

  Just to let me know he’s hardly got time for me, Clive thought.

  “So?” said Paul.

  Clive surprised himself by saying, “Look, I just had a very rough weekend. Take it up with Bobby.”

  “I’d sooner take it up with a turnip. Bobby’s always had a very rough weekend. Bobby lives for rough weekends.”

  Clive frowned, thinking Paul Giverney more familiar with the Mackenzie-Haack mode of operation than would be expected of a writer not yet one of Mack-Hack’s own. But of course Bobby’s love affair with Glenlivet and the wines of Puligny-Montrachet was no secret in publishing circles.

  Giverney was waiting for an answer. Clive could hardly tell him about the weekend followers, so they sat for endless seconds, silence soaked.

  Clive broke it; he had never mastered the art of silence as a tool or a weapon. “Paul—” He paused. Were they on a first name basis?

  “Clive?”

  Apparently they were, though Clive seriously doubted they shared wavelengths. If only the arrogant bastard would take his shielding hand away from his mouth. The bastard did so.

  Paul asked, “How long can it take to nullify a fucking contract, Clive?” He mimed the act of tearing up a sheet of paper and tossing the invisible pieces over his shoulder. That done, he took up a pugilistic position with his arms crossed over his chest. He stationed the sole of his shoe against the edge of Clive’s desk. That was really taking liberties!

  Relieved he could at least speak to this point, Clive said, “It’s not that simple. You know his editor is Tom Kidd. We can’t afford to lose Tom—not just for himself alone, but for the writers he edits. You know they’d follow him to kingdom come, and that means another publisher. I’ve told you all this before. Look”—Clive spoke in his best conciliatory tone—“why do you want this?”

  “I told you, you don’t need to know. Anyway, Tom Kidd’s a throwback, a ‘literary’ editor. There aren’t that many left. Replace him with a sharp young acquisitions guy, someone who can pull in commercial writers like me.”

  “We don’t want that many commercial writers. Mackenzie-Haack has always been known for its literary books. We have more NBA’s, Pen/Faulkner, Critics Circle awards than any other publisher.”

  Paul Giverney looked pained. “Stow it, Clive. Your reputation rests on Bobby Mackenzie’s uncanny gift for turning dreck into spun gold on his say-so.”

  “That’s a gross exaggeration.”

  “So is the truth. Take, for one example, Rita-fucking-Aristedes. Black hair, olive eyes, white skin, Greek. The Greeks are in. It used to be Latinos, Central Americans, Portuguese, et cetera. Rita’s been spreading this offal around for years and the one you published isn’t any better than the others—”

  Clive frowned. “How do you know—?”

  “I know it all, Clive. You forget how often I’m asked to spill a little cat sick for the back of the jacket. Rita’s agent sends me this tome for a blurb. Rita’s agent couldn’t sell emeralds in Oz. Now why does this drivel get snapped up by Mackenzie-Haack? Because the man foretold forsooth that Greece is in. Greece hasn’t been in since Larry Durrell.”

  “That wasn’t Greece, was it? The Alexandria Quartet?” Wasn’t it Egypt? Paul Giverney made him uncertain of everything.

  “There’s no question but what Bobby’s a fucking genius, a reader of everything under the sun, and a double-dealing cunt. The only writers this man respects are dead. Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Joseph Conrad.” Paul spouted a few more names that had been included in a classic line they’d just started publishing.

  “That’s why you want us to—”

&nbs
p; “No, that’s not why. I don’t need a fucking genius.”

  Clive’s smile was a sliver, a remnant of moon. “But you want to align yourself with a literary—”

  “No, I don’t. I shouldn’t have got off on this literary tangent.”

  Clive toyed with a knifelike letter opener, beating back the desire to plunge it through Giverney’s heart or at least to torture him until he talked. Then, suddenly, he was startled to hear Paul say, “Okay, get the contract together and I’ll sign. You can tell Mort.”

  Clive dropped the letter opener, stunned. “What? But you just—”

  “Oh, just do it, Clive. Never mind my reasons. Don’t try to understand it.”

  “All right, all right. I’m absolutely—”

  “Thrilled.” Paul rose and bade him good-bye. But at the door, he smiled and asked, “Has Bobby ever gotten into the Old Hotel?”

  “No.” Clive stood behind his desk with that slivered-moon smile. He remembered Bobby’s white-hot rage when he couldn’t make a reservation. He’d tried a dozen times, tried giving a different name and address. Still no. The twelfth time he’d gone there in a little pool of hopeful people, watching a few admitted, a few turned away, including himself and a woman in pavement-touching sable. (They were red in the face, they were outraged, they swore they were going to call the mayor—who, it was rumored, hadn’t got in, either. But no one knew this for a fact.)

  Paul Giverney said, “Me neither.”

  “I have.” Clive felt smug. “I could get you in.” It would be chancy. Clive would be compromised if it was discovered his guest was someone who had tried repeatedly to get in on his own. He had taken a chance with Mort Durban. But he certainly wasn’t going to take another with Bobby.

  “Thanks, but that’s one of those things you gotta do on your own or it doesn’t count.”

  Clive was a bit taken aback by Paul Giverney’s modest admission he had never gotten into the Old Hotel. People had tried to circumvent the Old Hotel’s rules, which was difficult because no one knew what they were.

  The two of them, Clive and Paul, stood silent for a few moments turning this over. What were the rules? It might have been the only time they did share a wavelength. It wasn’t wealth or social position; it wasn’t who your ancestors were. Politics? No. There was sometimes a prominent politician, sometimes a sleazy one, sometimes both. The burning question during Clinton’s siege was not, Should the Big Creep be impeached, but had the B.C. ever got into the Old Hotel. It was rumored that he hadn’t.

  “Maybe,” said Paul, “it’s a working out of chaos theory.”

  Clive, before the Giverney business, had never been introspective; if the surface looked good enough, he’d skate on it. But now he speculated: was the Old Hotel the working out of chaos theory? “How very strange.”

  “Strange indeed,” said Paul Giverney, and he was out the door.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  He really wants you to edit him.”

  Even Tom Kidd liked Jimmy McKinney, but not so much he’d consent to becoming Paul Giverney’s editor. “Come on, Jimmy. You might as well ask me to edit Dwight Staines or Rita Aristedes.”

  Rita was a writer so sorely in need of an editor to bash her head in that the only person Bobby could get to do it was Peter Genero, champion of lost causes. It wasn’t because Peter Genero agreed for humanitarian reasons, but because he was convinced he could do anything, including editing Rita.

  “Oh, you come on, Tom. You know there’s no comparison.”

  “But there is, there is; all three of these writers are at the top in sales. You think Bobby would keep Rita if her books didn’t sell in the zillions?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Okay, I grant you that. But you know Paul Giverney’s a much better writer.”

  Tom gave a cut-off laugh. “That’s not saying much.”

  “Have you read his latest book?”

  “Does it sound as if I’ve read his latest book?”

  “No.” Jimmy laughed.

  “Anyway, what the hell happened that Mort handed Giverney over to you?”

  Jimmy wasn’t sure how much of what had gone on between Paul and him should be bruited about. He looked around at the books Tom had stacked everywhere. Covering two walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and even that was inadequate. Books were stacked on the floor, on the desk, on the wide windowsill. He thought of his own neat office at home, kept that way by Lily. Neat, orderly, compressed. (“Think not, because I wonder where you fled—” )

  “What are you smiling about? You’re the only person I’ve ever known who could actually ‘crack a smile.’ ”

  Jimmy cracked another one. “I was thinking of poetry. Not mine, though. Edwin Arlington Robinson’s. Oh, would it were mine . . .” Jimmy sighed.

  Tom’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you were a poet. You published? Not”—he held up a restraining palm—“that publication is any measure of a work.”

  Jimmy edged closer to Tom’s desk, picked up what looked like a fossil, and studied the ridges. “But it is, Tom; it is a measure. Emily Dickinson thought so despite all that garbage about her not caring, not wanting to see her poems published, at least in her lifetime. When I got my book published it was as if I’d been released from solitary; now, at least, I could mix with the other prisoners.”

  “The ‘other prisoners’ being us, I take it?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I could communicate.” Keeping his eyes on the fossil, still in the palm of his hand, he sat back.

  “That’s fossil bark, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  Tom shrugged. “No idea. I like to rub it around. That’s why it’s so smooth.”

  Jimmy thought of the wood behind his house. (“The woods were golden then. There was a road—”) He loved the suspension of those four words, “road” hanging at the end of the sentence as if it might go on forever. And that was the way he had felt; that was the way Lily had felt, he was sure, a long time ago. “In another year, I’ll probably quit.”

  “Quit writing poetry?”

  “No. Quit being an agent.”

  “Oh, Christ, Jimmy! Don’t tell me that! You’re the only fucking agent around who has the least idea of what it’s all about. You’re the only one who can see the skull beneath the skin.”

  (“Webster was much obsessed by death—”) “ ‘And saw the skull beneath the skin.’ ”

  “Eliot, T.S.” said Tom. “I know my quotations, if not my poets. When do I get to read some of yours?”

  “Anytime you want. I’ll bring you the book next time I come.”

  “Good.” Tom scooted down in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, in the manner of one who expected to find cracks and loosening plaster. “You know, being unselfish about it in one weak moment, I’d say maybe you should get out of this business. I’m happy in it because I do what I want.” He gave Jimmy an earnest look. “I’m considered to be a fairly valuable commodity, see.” He said this earnestly, as if he’d only recently made the discovery.

  “As if everyone didn’t know that, Tom.”

  “The thing is, if you’re seen to be valuable, people—people here being Bobby—don’t try to mess with you. Because if he did, I could just go elsewhere. And probably take a writer or two with me.”

  “They’d all go with you, Tom. Some of the best writers in New York. Bobby would go nuts.” Jimmy rose. “I’d better go.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Looking as if he were about to be given lye to drink, Tom said, “I’ll dig up the Giverney book, but I’m only reading a little of it. That’s all it’ll take, probably.”

  “You’re a good sport, Tom.”

  “No, I just think it would be insulting to you if I didn’t at least try.”

  Jimmy smiled. “Oh, it would be.”

  At the door he turned. “Tom, is Bobby trying to screw up Ned Isaly?”

  Tom got up, frowning. “Why do you say that?”

  “Pau—” Jimmy stopped short of naming hi
m. “Someone warned me I should be looking out for Ned’s interests. That’s all he said, no explanation.”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “I don’t know. Ned has a manuscript due pretty soon, hasn’t he?”

  Tom levered up the top bunch of papers on his desk. “I’ve got it here somewhere. Next week, I think.”

  “Has Bobby ever invoked the clause about failure to deliver?”

  “He better not start now.”

  “You know Bobby enough to know he can do anything he wants. At times I wonder if he’s even got a reason for what he does. Or if he simply does things because he can.” Jimmy nodded. “See you, Tom. Thanks for recommending me as an agent.”

  Tom shrugged. “Who the hell else would I trust?”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Ned had spent the entire morning and some of the afternoon in bed. He couldn’t understand what had made him so tired. He felt as if he were being watched. He felt hounded. Paranoid, that’s what he was.

  It had begun in Pittsburgh, but he was too busy observing things himself to pay much attention to it. It was like ignoring signs of a cold until the cold or flu hit you in earnest. He sat up and took two more Motrin and lay back down again.

  Ghosts. That would explain the sensation, the air hovering around him.

  He thought back; he pictured the places he had been—Schenley Park, watching the kids play kickball. The Isaly’s Ice Cream stores. Shadyside. The stadium across the river. But his problem was that most of what he saw happened inside his mind. He was shamefully unobservant. He didn’t know how he managed. He wondered if the Jardin des Plantes and the Luxembourg Gardens were anything like the way he described them. Which took him back to Nathalie again and the very odd sensation she was gone. He should never have gone to Pittsburgh; it was like walking out on her. He should have stayed here and spent his time trying to right the miserable state he had left her in.