Eastman Was Here

by Alex Gilvarry

  He went out into the hall to find Nestor, who was carrying a load of towels.

  “Nestor, drop what you’re doing. This is important.”

  Nestor immediately placed his towels down on a cart and came running over to Eastman, who waited by his door.

  “I need you to find me some flowers. Roses or whatever they have. Get two dozen, as many as you can carry. We gotta repair some damage I’ve done with Channing. Send them to her room.” Eastman wrote an apology on the back of one of his business cards.

  Forgive me, I’ve acted out of line.

  Foolishly,

  Eastman

  He handed the card and a handful of piastres to the boy and sent him off.

  When Nestor left, Eastman went back into his room. He thought it strange that it hadn’t occurred to him to send flowers to Penny after the breakup. Not after she left, none in the past few years. He could have sent a bouquet to her mother’s house, a gesture that there was still love to be salvaged. Even when Eastman was miserable, desperate, there was too much pride in him to admit he was down. He wouldn’t come crawling to Penny. He had to keep up the impression that if this was what Penny wanted, then he would be able to live with it. A man without respect wasn’t what women wanted to love, at least that’s what he had always assumed.

  It occurred to him that Channing was right and that he didn’t understand the world at all. Or he didn’t understand her world. His world he understood meticulously, and it was full of people he could relate to, people who listened. His children, for one. His beloved Helen, the boys, Toby and Lee. They looked up to him. There was his mother, Fran, still alive and strong like her father was before her. And for a decade there was Penny, his life, his soul, his unicorn! The center of it all. She had understood his ways and ambitions and took his advice from time to time. She admired who he was, or she had once. The shellac had worn.

  He passed the rest of the day writing and rewriting another letter to Penny, expressing the bit about the flowers, how he should have sent a bouquet, how he realized that she was right about outward signs of passion. He had grown too comfortable, took her for granted, all the nonsense he could come up with until he realized it was far too dramatic. Remember, he was going to win her back not with pity, but heroism. That’s what she’d admired in him before. That’s what will get her to turn.

  In the evening there was a knock on his door. It was Channing.

  “Don’t send any more flowers,” she said. “I don’t need anyone thinking I’m being wooed. It’s hard enough being taken seriously as it is. Even by you, as you made clear this afternoon.”

  “That’s what I mean to apologize for. Will you come in?”

  “I don’t see why I should.”

  “So that I may apologize. Allow me to apologize. Please.”

  She looked around, and seeing that no one was in the hall watching her, she went into his room and quickly shut the door.

  “I got your note,” she said. “There’s no need to apologize again.”

  “Look, I spoke out of turn. I don’t know why I said those things to you. This is my own fault. I’ve always seen women writers differently for many years and I see how closed off I’ve been. It’s shortsighted. If a woman can do a correspondent’s job, such as you’ve been doing, there really is no difference. I think you’re solid, Channing.”

  “You haven’t read my work.”

  “Yes, I have. I remember now. I think you’re very, very good. You’re someone who has the chops. Anyone can see that.” He was relieved, getting all of that out in the open. “I haven’t changed my mind about profiling you. Think about it. It could be a win for women everywhere.”

  Eastman could see that he was getting through to her. She was beginning to relax and she finally sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he said.

  “I’m still not interested in being in your book and you don’t have my permission. And yes, a whiskey and water if you have it.”

  “I do.” Eastman went to the minibar. There were little bottles of scotch and gin inside and he went about pouring two bottles into glasses with a splash of water.

  “Thank you.” She drank the whiskey quickly. “Have you really read any of my work?”

  “I have,” he said, though he couldn’t remember an exact story. He did read the Times and the Herald back home, daily. “What did you write about last?”

  “The withdrawal. The last GIs to leave South Vietnam. After that probably the marine guards at the embassy. They’re the last ones.”

  “Then I’ve read your work without a doubt. But it’s my sense of you. That and what I saw the other night. I know you’re good. I don’t need to read much to see that.”

  Channing was adjusting into this rather well. She took out her cigarette pack and began to smoke. “You’re looking for something to write about?” she asked.

  “Something good, something Norman Heimish and the rest of the Times won’t have.”

  “I’m going to Cambodia, to Phnom Penh. That’s where I’m going next. A reporter can get a Pulitzer for what’s happening over there now. Nixon has a covert war going on and it’s getting heavy.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Some of it, maybe. I’m asking you if you want to come along and do some real reporting. The kind of reporting you ought to be doing.”

  He hadn’t thought of Cambodia at all. He didn’t know much about Vietnam and he knew even less about Cambodia. He didn’t see a prospect of a story there. She would know better than him, of course. Still it’s not what he was hired to do. He was hired to write the situation in Vietnam, not America’s pivot into Cambodia.

  “What about Dak Pek?” he said. “I can get us transport to Dak Pek near the Laos border. I hear from General Burke things are going on there. The Herald wants impressions on Vietnam from me, not on Cambodia. Covert war or not.”

  “Dak Pek is too far north. That’s nowhere near where I need to be.”

  The prospect of traveling and working with Channing was enticing. He could certainly learn something from her. But Eastman didn’t want to be following anyone around. He wanted to be the leader, the one who gets the scoop, the star correspondent. That’s what this trip was supposed to be about. For his wife to open the front page and see his dispatch from Vietnam, the biggest story on the longest war. He’d still need to write his first dispatch from Saigon, but he could have his second piece be from Cambodia as he worked his way up to Hanoi. Still, there was no possibility of securing a North Vietnam visa and he didn’t know what the consequences would be if he were to go direct from Phnom Penh without it. He could get stuck following her around, and would that grow tiresome?

  “Let me consider it,” he said. “I’d very much like to go with you, but I may need to rearrange some of my plans.”

  “Think about it,” she said. “You can send me one of your famous notes.” Channing put out her cigarette in the bedside ashtray and got up to leave.

  “I have the feeling there’s a lot of risk,” he said. “Going to Cambodia.”

  “Really?” She cocked her head at him. “And you—what have you risked by coming here?”

  Everything, he thought. But nothing that mattered to anyone else but him.

  16.

  A few days passed and Eastman neither saw nor heard from Channing. He was hoping they might run into each other on the terrasse or in the hotel lobby. He appreciated her company and he had enjoyed sparring with her. Yet his mind was made up on the subject of Cambodia, probably as soon as she had left his room the other night. He wouldn’t be going. He wasn’t moving a muscle in the direction of that civil war, not even with her. He delayed telling her, and the more he delayed, the more absurd it felt to send her a note: “I can’t go to Cambodia, but what do you say to dinner for two?” The idea of seducing her began to seem far-fetc
hed as he began playing and replaying rejection scenarios in his head. For she would reject him, he felt sure; yet, like a dog with a bone, he couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop himself from wanting it.

  He was spending most of his time in the room, ordering room service. Steaks and fries, club sandwiches, beef noodle soup, eggs over easy. He billed it to the bureau, tipped generously. Nestor was beginning to know Eastman’s quirks and gave instructions to the bellhop bringing up the carted meals, “Put by bed.”

  He listened to the radio, only got an hour of jazz per day. The rest was rock and roll, a genre that bugged him. He couldn’t think while listening to rock music, the lyrics were too boundless, they didn’t sit well in the background and took over portions of his mind he needed to concentrate. Other stations played Vietnamese music, which he preferred because he couldn’t understand what was being said, and the language, although sharp and tedious, allowed him the mental space to compose his letters.

  He wrote Helen at Vassar, and then his mother-in-law, Cathy, explaining his intentions to save his marriage. To Helen he wrote: You’ve needed me at times and it seems we find ourselves in a role reversal. It’s now me needing you. What a burden I’m placing on you when you should be hammering out schoolwork, allowing boys to take you out, everything but caring for an emotionally crippled father. When I’m back I want to make it up to you. I’ll come up to Poughkeepsie for a few days, bring you some supplies, whatever you need. Cathy he pressed with guilt: You may allow Penny to do whatever she wants. I know, Cath, I know. You can’t stand in her way and you can’t tell her how to live her life. We’re in the same lifeboat. But please just watch out for my boys and make sure they aren’t exposed to too much of her nonsense affair with the Frenchman. I’m afraid they won’t know what to think of their mother and why she’s banished me (figuratively—I went to Southeast Asia of my own accord). Nor do we want them exposed to the shitheel (excuse my French) who is sleeping with their mother—what corrupted morals he must have. It takes a bitter man, a sick, envious man, to steal another man’s wife. Harold would have never approved of what Penny’s doing to me, God rest his beautiful soul. Good, reference the dead husband, Cathy’s beloved—that should get her steaming.

  He wrote Meredith, his mistress, a kind thanks for the dinner party and an apology for ruining it with his announcement. I’ve done worse, much, much worse, and you’ve been lucky enough not to have witnessed it over the years, only to hear about it after. Now you see what kind of attitude I’m up against and the altitude I’ll plummet from, professionally, personally, romantically. Lately I feel as if I have a black hole deep in the pit of my stomach, blooming inside me, enveloping me in sadness from the inside. He didn’t mention Lazlo, because there was still the book looming over his head.

  Most of his time went into his letters to Penny. He scrawled on hotel stationery updates of things he only half believed, impressions of the country he had not even explored yet. There’s another reporter here, a young woman named Channing who writes for the Herald (look her up, dear, she’s quite good), and she’s invited me to tag along to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It took some convincing, but part of this vile Vietnam narrative has spilled over the border into Cambodia, where we (U.S.) are bombing the North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, and the Cambodian communists. With the war slowed down here except for a few terrorist attacks on Americans in Saigon (extreme caution has been recommended), I’ve decided to follow Channing into Cambodia to see what the situation there is on the ground. My safety isn’t guaranteed, but when is it ever? And what do I have to return to there but the mess we’ve made, my darling? I’m being pulled by larger forces over the border, a prodigal man, magnetized, drawn into Phnom Penh, the center of this magnetic field—his letters to Penny were some of the best writing he’d done in years. They were written with passion and persuasion and at least partial honesty. Through them, he began to sense the core of his purpose in Asia, which inspired thoughts about his book, the elusive book he owed Lazlo and that now began to take shape. It would be in a new style—less analytical, more emotional—different from his previous works. He would be the central character, Eastman. He would eviscerate himself to write the book. With Vietnam as the backdrop, he would tell his personal story and interweave it with the story of a country under siege. The political and the personal would come together and reflect off each other, becoming both a journey to the heart of a war-torn country and to the soul of a man who’d lost everything he had believed in. Loss would be its theme, loss and the regaining of value in the world. It would take his original invention (history in a novelistic style) as executed in The American War, but he would be the book’s protagonist, its hero. It would be about Penny and the phantom, and the state she left him in. Broadwater, gutless and manipulative, would be in the book, too. So would Channing. Meredith he would leave out, same with Lazlo; he wasn’t absolutely mad. He still planned to rescue his marriage, not ruin his life and those around him. It would be a major book, ahead of any of his contemporaries.

  The draft of his letter to Penny had the voice he wanted, it presented him the way he would appear at the start . . . a wounded man, a marriage on the outs, yes, yes, this was brilliant stuff. I’ve done it, I’ve cracked the bastard! he thought. This could be major.

  Eastman went down to the bureau to send off a telex to Broadwater and mail his letters to Helen and Meredith. He held back the letters to Penny and her mother. He would place those with the outgoing mail at the front desk, not wanting to send a letter to his wife and mistress in the same bundle. The bureau had news of his visa to Hanoi. Denied. It wouldn’t be happening. The North had rejected his application on the basis of his reputation and Broadwater couldn’t grease the wheels enough. With the cease-fire in effect, it seemed unlikely that he would have had a problem. If he still wanted to go up to Hanoi to see what it was like, he’d have to find other means. He told Broadwater he needed more time and that he would file a dispatch within a week. “Scratch the Hanoi part of the story,” he instructed him. “I’m not about to hang my neck out while there are good things right here in Saigon.”

  Downstairs he dropped the letters to Penny and her mother with Mrs. Nguyen to be sent at once.

  He went shopping that afternoon, thinking he would be making a move somewhere into the countryside soon. He found a tailor, recommended by the bureau, who was able to provide him with the proper military garb he needed to report in the field. The combat boots he already had. In a few days’ time his clothes would be ready. While he waited he felt he would have to start making some tough calls. Either get busy making plans to move out or do nothing. If he were to do nothing, he had the feeling that this would weigh on him and that it might force him into an uncomfortable situation—like following Channing into Cambodia.

  He went back to the hotel with the intention of going straight to Channing’s room to tell her he wasn’t going to Cambodia and to invite her to have dinner with him. He strolled through the lobby, imagining the surprise on Channing’s face. “Oh, Mr. Eastman!” called Mrs. Nguyen, getting his attention. “Mr. Eastman, we have wonderful news for you. I hope you will be most delighted.”

  “Go on.”

  She came out from behind the front desk and stood in front of his path to the elevator. “How has your stay been with us? Is there anything we can accommodate you with?”

  “My stay has been just fine. More than adequate.”

  “Then I am proud to hear it, Mr. Eastman. Again, if there is anything at all that you will be needing, I’m sure you will not hesitate to ask.”

  “You had something to tell me.”

  “Yes, a wonderful surprise for you. Your wife has arrived. We went ahead and let her into your room and provided her with her own key.”

  “My wife?” Of all the things that could have come out of this woman’s mouth. He was confused and looked around the lobby, trying to get his bearings on where he was, the day, the hour. How long had he been
asleep? Could his letters have already arrived in New York? Impossible, he had just brought them down to send off. “You said my wife. My wife is here?”

  “Yes, she arrived this afternoon.” Mrs. Nguyen was smiling.

  “I wasn’t expecting my wife. What did she look like?”

  “Your wife? She was white. American. Very beautiful. You are a very lucky man, Mr. Eastman.”

  He had a deep impression of déjà vu. This had happened to him before. He remembered walking into a hotel on a boulevard in Madrid, blindsided by Meredith. Was it her, once again? Impossible, the very thought of Vietnam scared her. Besides, he wasn’t on good terms with Penny, and with things so up in the air Meredith would know better than to come all this way to surprise him. It was understood that when there was real turmoil in their marriages, the affair was put on hold.

  Eastman ran up the steps, not even bothering to wait for the elevator. Three flights up and he was out of breath. He fumbled for his damn keys. There had to be some sort of mistake. They let a stranger into his room, someone posing as his wife. A thief, a good one. He was being robbed. In Madrid, Meredith had been taking a shower when he walked into his room. He had hoped it was Penny. What if it really was Penny now? Come to reconcile. She was the only one who knew his exact whereabouts. She had all of his contact details, even his room number. Had she broken it off with Fleishman and come immediately to repair the damage? If that was the case, all of his troubles would have been worth it. He put the key into the keyhole and turned the knob. No one in the bathroom. Empty. No shower was running. He took a breath and then he went into the bedroom. All of his praying and pleading for Penny, and wouldn’t this be a merciful ending to a horrible journey.