Which was why—perverse as it might have seemed from the outside—Bootie was drawn back to the hidden manuscript. He’d hoped it would prove a vindication, that it would clarify and simplify his vision of his uncle. Seeing the private mind, he’d thought, would be the answer. He’d read it in fervent snatches, over lunch hours when Murray was in restaurants and in a long evening when all the Thwaites were out together. He read it hunched at Murray’s desk, sweating, periodically wiping his hands on his trousers or his shirt to keep the dampness from marking the pages. The deception made him sweat, and its attendant fear; and then reading itself—the words on the page—made him sweat, too, as if he saw the man naked, saw the man’s need and desire, and was repelled both by it and by his physical form. It was a powerful and tremblingly ghastly experience.
He couldn’t have known beforehand how he would feel about it, that the manuscript would seem to him both pretentious and trite, that it would so fully clarify his vision of Murray that all he could see, now, was the small and deformed self, its grander outline vanished. He believed now that the Great Man had been an illusion all along, mere window dressing. Reluctantly, he slid into alignment with Ludovic Seeley: Murray Thwaite was one great con trick, a lazy, self-absorbed, star-fucking con trick.
And to be honest, it made him angry. Not a little bit, but a lifetime’s worth of angry. It wasn’t rational, he knew—Murray Thwaite was who he was; it was presumably all he could be—but Bootie felt betrayed, belittled, nullified. He’d pinned his hopes on a hollow man. And he realized this was the article Marina wanted him to write, even though she didn’t know it. This was the article he’d been sent to Manhattan by some greater power (Emerson, maybe?) to write. This was his fate and his calling—not an essay for himself on Pierre wandering Moscow, but an essay about Murray in New York.
And then, as if he weren’t riled enough, he opened by mistake an e-mail from Danielle to Murray. He hadn’t realized that Murray had left open his personal e-mail account, had thought the mailbox on the screen would contain professional correspondence only. And while the message said nothing scandalous, he just knew, he suddenly knew. From the tone, from its brevity. He was young but he wasn’t a fool. He just knew. And the deformation was irrevocable and complete.
And now, as he worked on his secret piece for Marina, he realized that Marina had been right. Over the better part of a month, a topic had certainly come to him. He wasn’t going to write an ad hominem attack: that wouldn’t be worthy, would betray the very standards to which he wished to hold his uncle. He would, he’d decided, write a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the manuscript, an exposé of the secret book: because it was when Murray drew his own intellectual self-portrait, Bootie believed, that he unwittingly revealed his gaping flaws, and rendered a picture more morally accurate than he knew. Bootie was going to tell this truth, show the world the man as he was. It was going to be devastating; and, as Marina had flippantly suggested, it was going to be great. Telling the truth: what could be more important? There was grandeur in the undertaking, and perhaps sacrifice, too—he knew people might be annoyed about it, angry, even at least at first—but he was called, morally called; and he could feel nothing but swelling excitement about that.
So here he was, washed in sweat, his jockey shorts sticking to his skin, the rest of him palely bare to the ugly room and its oscillating fan, penning the article that would change the world. Or change his world, for sure. This was revolution for you. More Dostoyevksy than Tolstoy (he’d still not made it to the end of War and Peace, but Crime and Punishment, now there was a novel!).
Bootie had contemplated guilt, and rejected it: Murray must have wanted him, if not to read the manuscript then at least to know it was there. Either that, or he’d devised some deliberate test of his nephew’s honor, along the lines of “I shouldn’t have to hide the keys to my desk when I wouldn’t ordinarily. I have to trust, I will trust, that the young man will not abuse his position.” That would be very like Murray: self-serving pomposity in the name of an insouciant high-mindedness. In which case, Bootie had failed the test. But Murray would have known that he would fail it—he had to have known, or else why set it? And although these things were unsaid and unsayable, Bootie fancied that his uncle had been looking at him differently of late, an ironic, inquisitive look, as much as to indicate that he was waiting, good-humoredly, for his nephew’s reaction. When he thought about it, Bootie could imagine that if he had been, as he’d so hoped to be, awed by his uncle’s book, struck by its depths and wisdom, then he would have had to say so, sooner or later. In that circumstance, he would have been scanning for an opening, a way to share his elation and lay praise at the great man’s feet.
What had so disappointed him? He was trying to articulate this sorrow as clearly as he could, but found it slippery. His article, in its first draft at least, was suffering because of this. He didn’t want to come right out with his concomitant discovery—Murray Thwaite’s personal antics might make him a scumbag, but were they relevant?—but this, the e-mails, the knowledge that up in Stockbridge along with the Thwaites, Danielle Minkoff might be putting in an appearance at any moment, under false pretenses, this colored, for Bootie, every sentence of his uncle’s prose, and made it hard for him impartially to dissect the book’s shortcomings.
Bootie ran his hands through his sticky hair, chewed the dusty ice, stood up and circled the tiny room. In addition to its terrible heat, it was ill lit: a puddle of light on the table, a dim, reddish bedside lamp on the floor by the futon, a sickly fluorescent strip over the kitchen counter. He could see a couple of cockroaches, little ones, stretching their antennae in the sink. Out for a walk, like he was. He stuck his head out the window. He could hear yelling and music, salsa music, from one of the other apartments over the way and, seemingly far off, traffic. Few cars came down this street, which stank of sweet rot and old stone. He was all but naked and aware that he could be seen if anyone cared to look, and this unusually didn’t bother him. He had a feeling of being down in it, in the shit, he would’ve said, stuck in the refuse of lower Manhattan, far from anything living but in the thick of life. He heard a cab pull up, and drunken hooting. Bootie breathed deeply, the stink of it, and of himself, his hours of sweat, repelled and impressed in equal measure.
And then there was a clamor and a scuffle on the stairs, and impossibly the door fell open, a sudden burst into the room of limbs and laughter. Bootie cowered, his hands over his near nakedness, and blinked, his back to the window. He felt a new eruption of sweat upon himself, cold this time.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked one of the men, still a blur to Bootie, his arms seemingly entwined with the other man’s torso, but a figure notably pop-eyed, and very gay. “And what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
A light in the fog. “Julian? You must be Julian.”
“Julius. Shit. I know who you are. Shake Your Booty. Marina’s cousin, right?”
Bootie nodded, sidled crabwise toward the futon, his discarded clothes.
“Sorry. What’s your name? I mean, your real name?”
“Frederick.”
“Man, I’m sorry. I totally forgot. I thought it was next week. That you were coming.”
“No. Today.”
“Evidently.” There was a silence, during which Bootie put on his jeans and a T-shirt he had filched from Donald, in Amherst.
“This is Lewis,” Julius offered, indicating the other half of his four-armed creature.
“Hey, man.” Bootie blinked solemnly at the muscular youth, at his fine, shaven head, his mocha skin, his bare biceps. He felt they were engaged in a silent standoff. He couldn’t tell whether Julius was drunk, or high. Bootie didn’t want to get on the wrong side of any potentially volatile cokehead; but then again, he didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said eventually, quietly. “Or I would go there.”
The salsa music from over the way bounced along unperturbed. As much as
to invite him to the party. He could hear voices that went with the music, a gathering.
“That’s okay, Frederick. That’s okay.” But Julius just stood, skinny, staring, bug-eyed.
“Let’s go, man. Julius? Man? Let’s go.” Lewis put his fine arm on Julius’s thinner, paler one.
Julius shook his head slightly, as if waking. “She never mentioned you were fat,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’d never pictured my tenant as fat.”
“Man, that isn’t necessary.” Lewis led Julius back out into the stairwell. “Don’t go harassing the kid like that. He’s done nothing to you.” Bootie heard Lewis say, and then Julius whispered something in return. Lewis stuck his head back through the door. “Sorry about the mix-up, okay? Have a good one.” He closed the door very carefully, almost without a sound. Bootie heard their footsteps retreat down the stairs, and a moment later, in a break between salsa numbers, heard them muttering to each other in the street below as they walked away toward the avenue.
Bootie knew that Lewis was not Julius’s boyfriend. The Conehead. Where was he? And who was Lewis? He took a deep breath. He didn’t need to approve of his landlord’s behavior. Here he was, in the shit of it, in the heart of life, right? When he was sure they were gone, he took off the jeans and the T-shirt, which was already damp, and lay down on the futon. If he didn’t care so much what Marina thought, all this would be easier. If he hadn’t wanted Murray to impress him, perhaps he would have been less disappointed. As it was, he was going to write the article. He would make it so good that in spite of everything, Marina would have to publish it. Would want to publish it. Because the truth will out. Whenever the salsa music stopped, he imagined he heard the cockroaches dancing in the sink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Exposé
It was just before dawn when he left. On his way out in the elevator, Julius rubbed his eyes, coughed. Felt like shit. His heart was thundering, in the back of his head, it seemed. His dick and his thigh muscles and his throat were all sore. And he felt as though the cigarette smoke had settled, along with the sweat, in a film upon him. If he’d known that Lewis lived three blocks from his and David’s apartment, he wouldn’t have pursued him with quite as much gusto. When he’d gone to the bar, almost all the way to his old neighborhood, it hadn’t occurred to him that the day’s catch could live in the building next to David’s gym. Even racing—he’d been up, up last night—he’d had the wit not to foul the nest, he’d headed for Pitt Street—if he were honest, he’d have to admit that he’d planned it all beforehand—only to find that fat naked fuck practically wanking on his futon. He couldn’t really remember what Shake Your Booty looked like, just the glasses and the thin spread of hair on his chest and the womanly spill of flesh over his BVD elastic. The kid had been trying to shrink his bulk into the window frame, hands over his underpants like someone in a torture photo, as if Julius had been wielding a water cannon or a BB gun. He’d been scared. And Julius had been mean to him. Which he felt bad about, in the middle of feeling like shit; but he’d been angry. The whole thing a colossal fuck-up.
Julius wallowed in the despair of his hangover: What the fuck was he doing with his life? With himself? He had meant to be sorting out his career this year; had been diverted—so thoroughly—by love; and now he wasn’t even any good at that. He was an asshole, a selfish, screwed-up jerk. He was supposed to take the ten-thirty train out to Scarsdale for an extended weekend of Cohen-charming. He thought of David’s mother, a far cry from his own delicate parent with her fears and hesitations, her flowery indirection. Mrs. Cohen was small, but a force; and she had plans for this holiday. David, who’d gone out there yesterday to placate her, had snickered down the phone about her new patriotic melamine plates (all stars) and cups (all stripes). She’d bought Chinese lanterns with American flags on them, and the caterer was bringing a kosher feast, including a cake with blue icing. The Cohens didn’t keep kosher, but Adele’s cousins from Albany did, and they were going to be there. “It never hurts to make an effort,” Adele had told David. “What do you think of my manicure?” Which, David had said, gleamed a jingoistic red.
Julius was dreading it all just a little: the goy, the Asian, the fag. They meant well, but couldn’t really be pleased about it, and Adele always manifested her displeasure by failing to hear what Julius said and promptly forgetting all information concerning him.
“Is it Ohio?” she’d ask. “Illinois?”
“Michigan, actually.”
“Come again?”
“Michigan.”
“Of course. I had a boyfriend from Michigan once. But I could never have lived there. No future in it.” And then: “Your mother must have had a hard time adjusting. It’s all so different in Korea, isn’t it?”
“Vietnam, actually.”
And then she’d throw up her hands with their glittering nails: “Of course, doll. Of course, that’s it.” And again: “What does your father do?”
“Coaches.”
“He what?”
“Coaches. Sports. Football, actually.”
“Don’t tell me. We’re not good at sports, none of us. But I thought he drove a bus—coach, bus, you know?”
“Ha. Right, Mrs. Cohen.”
“Adele, Adele. Of course, Adele.”
In order to limit the time with Adele, and with Samuel, her slight and effacing husband, who would once have been handsome like his son but who had, now, the aspect of fruit withered on the vine, a lesser specimen, Julius had pleaded work. He did in fact have a commission of sorts, his first of the summer (he’d been too busy working on his marriage to chase up commissions), vague though it was. Marina had suggested he write something for The Monitor, not for the launch issue (that one was already “sealed.” She’d used the word “sealed” and it had annoyed him. It didn’t seem to him the right word, and he suspected it was Seeley’s) but for one soon after. With a weekly magazine, there was a lot of space to fill. Marina hadn’t said the piece was on spec, but he surmised as much from her vagueness: no set topic, no contract, the promise of emolument unspecified, but certainly less grandiose than he might hope. She wanted some class of cultural exposé, or so she said, although it wasn’t entirely clear that she knew what she meant. Nor, for that matter, did Julius: “exposé” suggested revelation. The sight of Shake Your Booty in his undies was an exposé of an insalubrious kind; or the sight, mercifully unrecorded (except, he thought flinchingly, by said Tubb) of Julius in Lewis’s most capable arms was an exposé, too. But Marina wanted something other, and while he was doing his best to oblige, he hadn’t come up with it yet. In this sense, he’d told a small lie to the Cohen parents, and even—insofar as he had implied he would get started on something—to David. Julius thought David had narrowed his eyes reprovingly; and then, just before he left, had said, “You know, Miss Clarke, that no blow is going to help you write any piece at all, or even to get started.”
“Are you something of a saint, now?” Julius had stuck out his tongue—like a queen, like the bitch he was, he thought. But he’d been genuinely angry, the beginning of the anger that, well fueled, had had him insulting Marina’s stupid cousin.
And now Julius would absolutely have to make the ten-thirty train, to smile for Adele Cohen, to choke down the blue Independence Day cake without a hint of exhaustion on him. Worse still, he’d have to have something to show for his truant night, an article topic at the very least. He sighed, which did nothing to slow the thundering of his blood. He would have to leave the topic to his unconscious. There were still four hours till he had to leave for the station. Or maybe he would do a little more of the stuff and power straight on through.
Exposé. Exposé. Julius sera exposé. Julius a été exposé. Julius a voulu être exposé. There was a man leaning against the wall outside his apartment building who looked at once familiar and unfamiliar. His spiky hair was gray and white, not intermingled but distinctively speckled, like a hen’s, discrete islands of gr
ay and white. He gave Julius a look, worrying to him in its length and intensity. Perhaps he was a spy, hired by David to monitor Julius’s comings and goings? That was an insane thought. Or was it? He reminded Julius of someone. Of whom? Not of Adele. Adele. Scarsdale. Ten-thirty. Grand Central. He must take a shower; he must shave. There was no time. There was plenty of time. Had he left these lights on in the apartment? It would seem that he had. He shouldn’t have insulted the fat boy. He should not have had sex with Lewis. How sore he was. He should not have stayed up all night. All he needed was a topic. Exposé. Not of himself, but of another. And maybe just an hour’s sleep. Just an hour.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Affianced
The fragrant haze of early morning drifted over the pergola at the end of the garden, peculiarly enticing. Marina slipped from her bed—shared, without parental comment, with Ludo, whose lean back was turned against the rising light, a bubbled bony ridge not unlike the late Pope’s—and knelt at the open window, through which breathed a whisper of honeysuckled air. She watched her mother, in her lavender dressing gown, step barefoot across the overgrown lawn, leaving flattened shadows in her wake on the emerald sea. Annabel carried a mug—doubtless tea, probably jasmine—and with her other hand she gathered the hem of her gown to her knee, as if she were a maiden, as if there were dew. The powdery light, promise of heat, seemed from above to soften and cloud her fair hair, so that Marina had the fleeting illusion that her mother was a girl from a storybook, uncorruptible and free; or was, indeed, some avatar of Marina herself, some liberated alternative incarnation. She was tempted to call out, but didn’t want to disturb the morning’s spell. Barefoot also, she threw on the sundress that lay crumpled on the floor, closed the bedroom door behind her, and skittered down the prickly, sisal-covered steps to join her mother outside.
The Emperor's Children Page 25