His generation had their share of shell shock and misspent youth, but Vietnam had changed the dialogue.
Eastman left the park and the singing and chanting behind him. He walked south along Fourth Avenue, where the booksellers were just opening their doors. So many of them were gone now—Gilman’s, Loon Kramer’s, Schultes’. Weiser’s was still standing on the corner. Eastman stopped in front of the window to gaze at their selection. He saw a Norman Heimish title, his nemesis for the Pulitzer in 1953. He recognized most of the authors, none of note. Then a young woman, not old Sam Weiser, wheeled out a cart of discounted titles to be placed on the twenty-cent rack. She smiled at Eastman then unloaded the books hurriedly and without care. She went back inside and turned over the sign on the glass door to OPEN. Eastman flipped through the fresh stack of used dreck. He had an appointment with his manager in an hour. Maybe he’d find something to read at a café to kill the time. Shuffling through the used paperbacks, he desperately searched for a copy of a Norman Heimish title in order to gloat. He could send it over to Heimish with a note. Sticking out of the twenty-cent bin, plain as day. Good ol’ Weiser’s! Your pal, Eastman. Instead he pulled a copy that was familiar. It was the movie edition of his American War, generically retitled The Pacific. The producers of the film had demanded a title change, and his publisher released this horrific edition with the movie’s poster on the cover. Palm trees, biplanes, tanks, and illustrations of the actors on a poster-white backdrop. For less than a subway token, a masterpiece. Worse still, he was responsible for penning the screenplay in six months’ time in a Hollywood Hills bungalow back in 1958. That damn movie reversed his credibility. But in those years he was too far into fame, pussy, marijuana, Seconal, and bourbon to realize it. Eastman looked around the street as if there had been some mistake. Even the movie edition didn’t deserve to be remaindered into the outdoors.
He stormed into the shop, where the young woman sat behind a desk reading the Herald. “Can I have your pen?” he asked.
She didn’t even look up when she handed him a ballpoint. He took it from her and opened it to the title page, crossed out the dummy title, and restored the original.
The American War
“Man, you’re buying that, right?” The woman’s attention had been gotten.
“No, young lady. I’m restoring it.” He signed the copy with anger, nearly tearing through the page. “Now it’s worth more than two dimes.” He went to the window and reached over the display to pull the copy of Norman Heimish’s book, A Winter in May. What dreck. He threw it over his shoulder and put his book in the window.
The shopkeeper got up from the desk. “What do you think you’re doing, man?”
“I told you. Restoring a masterpiece. Now it’s signed. Sell it for more so you can have an abortion.”
“What the fuck are you even saying?”
He didn’t know. A slight embarrassment overtook him. She was just a lowly bookseller, possibly a student at NYU. His Helen’s age. She hadn’t plucked his book from their shelves to place in the twenty-cent bin. He shouldn’t have taken offense. It was too late now. Eastman stormed out of Weiser’s and continued down the street past the other bookshops. Fourth Avenue Bookstore, Pageant, Raven, Stammer’s. He remembered the fifties, suddenly. When his book had just been released, his friend Claude Forché threw him a party in Claude’s large apartment on Twelfth Street overlooking Book Row: his debut into the New York literary world, a party in his honor, a book of hard labor. His parents were there. His sister, Carla. Aunts and uncles from Brooklyn and New Jersey. Friends from Harvard. His old roommate Lutz came with a date. Elaine Pottsdam, his sister-in-law, who hadn’t yet met Baxter Broadwater. Only Barbara was absent. She was home sick with the flu, and the baby, Helen, had stayed with her.
Eastman wore a three-piece suit for the occasion and got drunk on red wine. People he didn’t know came to congratulate him. He appeared to this new world not the married man he was, but a bachelor. And so that’s the role he played. Women at the party gravitated toward him. They were flirtatious. Once the members of his family left, the party continued into the early morning hours and Eastman continued to drink and flirt, even with his sister-in-law, until Claude put Elaine in a cab. By the bar table he got drunk off bourbon. In the bathroom he smoked marijuana with a hip girl who took her dress off and allowed him to feel her breasts, then threw him out. Later that night, the editor Meredith Chase propositioned him. He was rather drunk and incoherent, lounging on Claude’s sofa. She said she wanted to go to bed with him on the night of his debut. “Let’s make it a night never to be forgotten.” “But I have a wife,” he said. “Where?” “She’s home with the flu.” “Then you’re free. Come over and fuck me. I’ll call in sick. In the morning, you can have me again.” She took his hand and ran it between her legs, where he found only darkness.
In a night, the tone of his life had changed. He had his first affair. Meredith Chase was a powerful, free-spirited woman who commanded attention. She had been piercing him with looks the whole evening. Had she seduced him into it? No, he wanted her. He wanted her from the moment he saw her that night. Moreover, he wanted what she represented. Literary promise. A world he felt he deserved. But in her parkside apartment, somewhat sobered, he had trouble getting a full erection. The phallus was still under the mind’s rule. She was attractive and exciting and knew how to turn a man on. And he was in the wrong, he knew it. He could have stopped himself. But Eastman was helpless to fame. And so he worked against his own conscience in order to achieve what an affair granted. A night of humping. I’m angry. I’m angry, goddamnit. Angry that Barbara wasn’t here to share my success. Damn them! Damn them all! His blood was hot. He convinced himself he needed to be in Meredith’s bedroom and all the bedrooms that fame would demand of him. He was hateful. He fucked Meredith with such abhorrence. His anger eventually helped him achieve an erection. If he fell asleep he was woken by her hand, her mouth, the bristles of her cunt. It all seemed clean, exciting, naughty, defiant, and of course, absent of love.
A thing had died in Eastman. Something he had not even known to protect.
A year later the marriage to Barbara was over.
5.
He would not be put down by a silly used-book store that was just a limb on a dying animal. Weiser’s would soon be gone like the others. And if Norman Heimish was who they were using to bait customers in the door, then he wished them death. He was twice the writer Heimish was. It was a simple fact! Eastman walked north for twenty blocks, hatred spewing out of his mouth like a backed-up sewer. He muttered on about Penny, Heimish, the whole lot of them.
He stopped along the way and entered a phone booth.
Who was the man she was seeing? Who was the man inside the matchbook? He imagined Penny with her lips wrapped halfway around a stranger’s cock and Eastman’s face quivered with repulsion. This most intimate act had happened already, right under his nose. He felt stupid suddenly, for not anticipating it.
He took the matchbook out of his breast pocket. The logo of the Waverly Inn. They had never been there together and he assumed she had gone there with him, the phantom. He imagined them seated across from each other, drinking wine, deciding together on a meal, the beginning of an affair. He opened the matchbook to his phantom’s scribble. The phone number and little heart. He picked up the receiver, put two dimes in the phone, then listened to the dial tone. He hadn’t thought of what to say. Most of the anger was dedicated to Penny, not the mystery man. How could he channel it now and put in a call that would change the course of events? He was always able to rely on his ability to degrade, after which it wasn’t uncommon for his target to take a swing at his furry head. But no . . . a call wouldn’t do. There would be no satisfaction in it. An operator came on the line and said, “City and state please.”
He hung up the phone and retrieved his change. He was scared in that cramped phone booth. Men and women seemed to soar by
around him, each one of them faceless. He let the possibility that she wasn’t coming back sink in. Penny’s most persuasive quality was her absence.
• • •
There was a dinner party at his publisher’s home that evening, which for weeks he had been intent on avoiding. David Lazlo had been unnecessarily kind when extending a deadline on Eastman’s next book, the book Eastman had promised himself would be “major.” (Yet the topic of this “major” book still eluded him.) Eastman had taken further advantage of Lazlo by requesting advance payments against his royalties. Lazlo submitted to the request without much hesitation. He liked Eastman, and must have thought it rather fulfilling to have such a controversial figure on his list. The second point of contention regarding the party thrown by Lazlo: Eastman had been with Lazlo’s wife, Meredith, formerly Ms. Meredith Chase of the old Rhinehart Publishing Company. In fact, it could be said that Mrs. Lazlo, formerly Ms. Chase, was Eastman’s fair-weather mistress.
Now, it was not an affair carried on in the normal fashion. When they were first together back in 1953, the sex did not excite Eastman enough to continue it. He tried to fulfill his obligation as a husband to Barbara and as a father to Helen, and when he failed at this he developed a reputation as a womanizer. The reputation that followed him around suited his new idea of himself.
By the end of the fifties he was coming into his own as a public intellectual. He wrote essays on politics, literature, art, sex, and society. Many of his larger writing projects he put on hold, often indefinitely. In the spring of 1961, Eastman traveled to Munich to give a talk at the German Academy of Fine Arts, something or other on the intellectual situation in America. The academy put him up at the Hotel Laimer Hof, where a literary conference was being held. All the foreign publishers had convened in Munich to exchange manuscripts, and Eastman had set a meeting with his German publisher. It was while talking with his publisher over tea in the hotel lounge that he caught sight of Meredith Chase in the doorway of the hotel lobby. She stopped to look around and then went on to the concierge desk. He wasn’t sure it was Meredith—his eyesight had been getting worse—so he politely excused himself for a moment and went to the lobby, where he carefully approached the concierge desk. He lightly stepped in closer, sideways, close enough for his ear to recognize her voice. When he was certain that this was indeed the Meredith he had once known, it was as if his chest began to inflate with a sense of pride, and he waited for her with contentment. Meredith turned around; her expression at recognizing Eastman registered a welcome surprise. Using a Texas accent he said, “Well, li’l lady, you comin’ or goin’?” They exchanged pleasantries, he dropped the Texan act, and he learned she was indeed there for the literary conference. He playfully called her Miss Chase and she endearingly brought to his attention the ring around her finger, wiggling it in the air. “It’s Mrs. Lazlo, now.”
Eastman explained that he was in town for a talk at the Academy of Fine Arts, and had finished with his obligations. So the two friends made arrangements for dinner. He was pleased to see a friendly face after all these years. He returned to the lounge, where his German publisher was waiting patiently.
“Who was that, Alan?” his publisher asked.
“A very dear acquaintance of mine, chief.”
“American?”
“Yes. She’s an editor. Used to be with the old Rhinehart Company. To be honest I didn’t catch where she is now.”
“Was that Meredith Lazlo?”
Eastman snapped his finger and his hand formed a pistol. With a wink, he brought his thumb down like the hammer and shot his German publisher with what he felt was considerable American charm. “Bang.”
Dinner was simple, the hotel restaurant. They were both due to leave the next day.
He wound up speaking of Barbara much more than he had wanted to. Her moving to Mexico with her new husband, Castle Martinez, a man Eastman liked and trusted. His worries were of Helen growing up in Mexico City. “If I wanted her to grow up in Mexico, I would have brought her there myself. She should be . . .” He stopped himself. “She should be with her mother. That’s fine. I just want her in the same country. A little closer would be nice. I’m not made of money, where I can fly everywhere at any time. Don’t let my being here in Germany fool you. I’m working. This is paid for by the German academy. I live a modest lifestyle.”
“There’s nothing modest about you, Alan.”
“Watch your tongue.”
Apropos of nothing, she said, “I’ve been thinking about that evening we spent together. It was so many years ago now.”
He was struck by her directness. He would never have addressed the night they slept together. Perhaps he would have danced around it a bit and made subtle intimations. But they were having a good time and they were both getting a little drunk. Since that afternoon, when he’d run into her in the lobby, his memory had been going over and over that night in 1953. He had spent the afternoon in his hotel room recalling it with immense pleasure. Meredith was tall, full bodied, with nice breasts and a round, healthy stomach. She once had a bush that was full and mouse colored. They had fucked three times in the course of that night. He remembered her taking his penis and rubbing it around the exterior of her mouth, over her nose and cheeks, between her breasts and over them. She was highly experienced, more so than he had been, and this, perhaps, was intimidating at the time. She had insisted on being the aggressor and would sit on top of him and move her lower torso in a steady rhythm. With the advantage of time, he was no longer guilty about the affair and could enjoy the memory for its details.
“Oh, I remember it well,” he said. “I don’t know why I never called you again. It was perhaps for the benefit of my marriage, which I was trying to patch up. But I thought of you often. It was thrilling. Do you remember how many times?”
She held up three fingers. The alcohol was making her flirty.
“If only you had chased after me like you did the night we met,” he said.
“You dog! It was you who went after me! I liked you, sure. Who didn’t in those days?”
“What do you mean in those days? People like me now.”
“Oh, you know what I mean. I remember being so attracted to the way you treated everyone. And the way everyone treated you. They loved you. But you pursued me that night. You begged me to take you home.”
“That’s simply not true, Meredith.” He smiled and looked away from her, motioned to the waiter to bring him another whiskey. When he brought his gaze back to the table, she was still smiling at him, now with blush in her cheeks.
“You want to hear the truth?” he said.
“Please.” She swigged her wine, spilling a little as she put the glass back down, which made them both erupt into laughter.
“The truth is I had only ever been with one woman before you.” He had used this line on many women as an effective mode of flattery, but in Meredith’s case it was true.
“Oh sure, Alan. And no man had ever made me come before you. I won’t fall for it.”
“No, it’s true. It was 1953. I married the first woman I’d ever been with. And then you came along. I think it’s true if I say that in regard to monogamy . . . you turned me.”
She laughed.
“Go on,” she pleaded. “I adore this topic. But I still don’t believe you.”
“I still think about you. I thought about it this afternoon. It was an awakening to fuck you.” He could tell she was enjoying rehashing their past, and she was telling him what he wanted to hear just the same. The waiter came and refilled their drinks. “Dang-ke,” he said, using his Texas twang. Meredith was in stitches.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said. “What did you think of me then?”
“Why, I told you. Everyone loved you. It was attractive. I watched you from across a crowded room. I desired you.”
“See, you admit it. It wasn’t me who convinced yo
u. Your mind was made up. The difference between a man and a woman, the woman knows if she’s going to fuck. She decides. You decided one night in 1953. I was just a man across a crowded room. Man lives in anticipation, but never certain of fucking.”
“I see you haven’t lost a bit of romanticism. There must be other outcomes. Beautiful men don’t have this problem. The Marlon Brandos and so on.”
“I’ve met Brando and I know he doesn’t decide. This holds true not just for men and women but for animals. Unless we’re talking about rape. But I’m not. I’m talking about consensual fucking. The female decides. Now I can plead my case to you. I can try everything to convince you. But my precision can only take me so far. You already decided before you walked into the room. That’s your innate, God-given power. The incredible weight of the cunt.”
“I didn’t know you had so many ideas about pussy, Alan. The orgasm, I knew.”
“What else do you remember? From that night. Don’t you remember you could have me and it took little convincing.”
“I remember I called in sick in order to stay in bed.”
“How did I make you feel?”
“Dirty.”
Eastman Was Here Page 5