A Dangerous Fiction

by Barbara Rogan

  Tommy gave me a look of fond exasperation, without the fondness. “Let’s make a deal, Jo. I won’t do your job and you don’t do mine.”

  • • •

  “Tommy?” Max said as we walked toward my office.

  “He didn’t mention knowing me when you first spoke?”

  “Not a word. I’d have told you.”

  “How did he get the case?”

  Max shrugged. “I called the precinct commander. He said he’d assign his best detective. Your Tommy was the one who called back.”

  “He’s not my Tommy.”

  “Are you going to talk, or do I need to torture you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. We were friends a long time ago, before I met Hugo.”

  “Friends with benefits?”

  “How rude!”

  “Only half-rude. The other half is relevant.”

  The ground rumbled beneath our feet, and steam rose from a grate. Max took my elbow and steered me away. It was noon, and the office towers were exhaling their inhabitants into the streets. I let the current carry me forward. I didn’t want to talk about Tommy to Max. Max is a true friend; I’d trust him with my life, but not my life story. He’s a writer, after all, and writers can’t help themselves around other people’s stories. But I knew he’d find out about Tommy anyway. If I didn’t tell him, Molly would.

  “We met the summer before my senior year at Vassar. I was interning for Molly and waiting tables in a steak house at night to make ends meet. He worked the bar, a part-time gig while he studied at John Jay.”

  “You dated?”

  “We hung out,” I said. “We had fun. Neither of us saw it as a long-term thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I knew him. The moment he opened his mouth, I knew everything about him, because I grew up with guys like him. Tommy came up a good-old country boy, a big fish in a tiny pond, with all the confidence that comes with it. Prom king, high school football star, major stud. He’d have wreaked havoc in whatever small town he came from.”

  “And yet you were immune?”

  “Early inoculation. And I’d made it to New York, you see; I had the internship with Molly and a good chance at a job when I graduated. My life was opening up, everything I’d dreamed of and worked for. I liked Tommy a lot; everyone did. But I wasn’t about to settle for the boy next door.”

  “And he felt the same way?”

  “Of course. Absolutely. I’m sure he did. We were totally different people. Tommy was gregarious and outgoing, at ease with himself, a social magnet. I was an intense little bookworm whose idea of a fun night was a bubble bath and a Jane Austen novel. We wanted different things. He planned to go back home and be a sheriff like his daddy. I was never going back. We were two kids with no money, exploring the city. It was fun while it lasted, but that’s all.”

  We’d reached my office building. Inside, the elevator disgorged a carful of people. Max and I rode up alone.

  “It can’t hurt, can it,” I said, “that Tommy and I were once friends?”

  “Shouldn’t think so,” he said judiciously. “Might even help, if he takes a personal interest.”

  “Right,” I said, relieved. “There couldn’t be any hard feelings after all this time.”

  “Why should there be?” The elevator juddered to a halt and the doors slid open. “Assuming you didn’t break his heart.”

  Chapter 9

  The wine, a seductive French Burgundy, was outrageously expensive, but I drank it with a clear conscience, for I’d come to be seduced. If someone was going to write Hugo’s biography, which according to Molly was inevitable, better Teddy Pendragon than that gossip-hag Gloria Vogel. At least he respected Hugo’s work; I doubted she’d ever read it.

  Our hors d’oeuvres seemed to appear without human intervention, so discreet was the service. We were dining at Michael’s. At lunchtime it was an upscale publishers’ mess, full of table-hopping and gossip. (Editors might be laid off in droves, production outsourced to India, and lists slashed to the bone, but the publishing lunch will never die.) At night, though, the room took on a warm, intimate glow. Honey-colored walls seemed to pulse in the candlelight. Crystal and silver glistened against snow-white linens, and waiters, gliding soundlessly through the dining room, bore platters so beautifully arranged that the thought of eating them seemed sacrilegious. Tantalizing aromas swirled around us. My senses encountered nothing that did not please them. It’s easy, living in New York and traveling in the circles I do, to take such sights and service as one’s due. But I had grown up poor and sometimes hungry; I took nothing for granted.

  I was hungry now, ravenous, in fact; I’d eaten nothing since breakfast, and no dinner last night. No wonder the wine was having its effect. I savored the foie gras, garnished with Champagne strawberries, while Teddy Pendragon prattled charmingly in his sonorous Southern drawl. He was an old-fashioned dandy with a waistcoat and fob watch, Capote-esque in style but bent the other way; bit of a tomcat whiff about him. A natural raconteur with a wicked gift for mimicry, Teddy knew everyone in publishing, admired them to their faces, and mocked them mercilessly behind their backs. His greatest regret in life, he confided, was never having met Hugo. “And not for lack of trying, I assure you. I wrote him letters worthy of a besotted schoolgirl. I badgered Molly for an introduction. I befriended his friends. Yet somehow he eluded me.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve caught him now.”

  “So I have,” he said, and something crossed his face, a predatory gleam that came and went in an instant; but it woke me to my purpose.

  “We should talk about the book,” I said.

  “Yes, indeed. Shall we have another bottle of that pleasant Burgundy, or would you like something lighter?” Without waiting for an answer, he signaled the waiter. I wondered if tonight’s dinner was on Random House. Teddy’s next words showed his mind moving on a parallel track. “Do you realize that if you and I had an affair, it would be entirely tax-deductible?”

  I laughed so hard I inhaled a bit of strawberry and started to choke. Teddy darted around the table and pounded me on the back until I begged him to stop. No one even looked our way, which is not indifference in New York, but manners.

  “A simple ‘No, thank you’ would have sufficed,” Teddy said as he resumed his seat, looking a bit pink in the face. “Choking seems excessive.”

  “Sorry, Teddy. It really was the most original proposition, and so practical, too, given the tax benefits.”

  “More idle supposition than proposition, though one can always hope. But truthfully, Jo, the intimacy I seek from you is not carnal. It may be harder to give.”

  It could hardly be that, I thought, stifling another laugh. I knew I had to be careful of Teddy. All writers are opportunists, but none more so than biographers. Nevertheless, I felt reckless, giddy. It was the wine, no doubt, combined with stress and lack of sleep; it was the surprise encounter with Tommy Cullen that morning and the unsettling scene in my office that afternoon, full of intrusive detectives and the bewildered faces of my staff. I felt only that I couldn’t allow this biography to become another ordeal; I couldn’t let it become adversarial. A person can fight on only so many fronts at one time.

  I was like a bull weakened by picadors, and Teddy must have scented blood. Dinner was served. We ate and talked and drank. Somewhere around the middle of the second bottle, I started to think old Teddy wasn’t such a bad guy after all. This spirit of harmony pervaded our negotiations. Teddy wanted permission to view and photocopy Hugo’s drafts and manuscripts, which Hugo had left to NYU, his alma mater. “I’ll arrange it,” I said. He wanted introductions to our friends; I promised to write them. He wanted Hugo’s publishing correspondence, and I agreed to provide it. It was only when Teddy brought up Hugo’s personal correspondence that a vestigial sense of caution reasserted itself. My husband was a
great writer of long, old-fashioned letters. He corresponded with most of the important writers in the world, and he’d saved copies of nearly every letter and e-mail he’d ever written or received. Given his oft-stated distaste for biographers, I’d sometimes wondered why he bothered. But Hugo always had a well-honed sense of his place in the literary pantheon, and I supposed he’d known this day would come.

  Here at last I dug in my heels. Hugo may have forfeited his right to privacy by dying, I said, but his correspondents still had theirs.

  The biographer, replete and glowing, seemed indisposed to argue. “We can cross that bridge when we come to it. By that time, Jo, I hope you’ll have come to trust me. After all, we have the same interest at heart.”

  “Have we?” I said, doubting it.

  “You may not have wanted a biography to begin with, but I’m sure you feel that if one is to be written, it should be a true portrait.”

  “And you think you can draw that portrait, Teddy? You think you can encompass Hugo?”

  “Encompass him?” He smiled, but his eyes were wary. “That’s not how I’d put it.”

  “Isn’t that what biographers do? Oh, you pretend to be selfless, a transparent lens on your subject’s life, but really you impose yourself with every choice you make: your values, your theories, your obsessions. You want to cut Hugo down to size and stick him in your pocket. The whole enterprise is shot through with hubris. To the extent that your work succeeds, his is diminished.”

  My voice had grown sharp. The same diners who had tactfully ignored my choking raised eyebrows at my tone. Only Teddy seemed unperturbed.

  “You read my Vonnegut,” he said calmly. “Did it diminish him?”

  “No, it didn’t,” I said, deflating at once. Fair is fair. Teddy’s biography of Vonnegut was a good book; it took nothing away, and it shone a light. I came away from it with a desire to reread Vonnegut, and a bio can’t do more than that.

  “I understand your concerns,” Teddy said. “They’re not uncommon. There’s bound to be a tension between the artist and his family, who want his work to stand and be judged on its own merits, and the biographer, who draws attention to the fingerprints in the clay. But connections do exist between the life and the art, and they’re interesting connections.”

  “Interesting the way gossip is interesting. They don’t explain anything. All the biography in the world can’t explain one line of Hemingway.”

  “And biographers would be the first to admit that. Your husband was a great artist, Jo, and great artists belong to the people.”

  “Why are we even talking about this?” I said. “I’ve already agreed to cooperate.”

  Teddy leaned toward me, and I caught a whiff of musky cologne. “We’re talking because I want more than your grudging cooperation. I want openness, confidence. You’re a big part of Hugo’s life, the last great act. I need to understand your marriage.”

  “I already told you our story when you did the Vanity Fair profile.”

  “You gave me the official version, and a beautiful story it was; but it has the sheen of editing about it.”

  I felt a twinge of dislike penetrate the Burgundy glow. Teddy picked up the bottle of wine and gestured toward my glass. I covered it with my hand. “There’s only one version,” I said.

  His smile was condescending. “There’s never just one version. That’s half the biographer’s job: triangulating the truth.”

  “I told you the truth.”

  “As you recall it, perhaps,” he said.

  “You can take my recollections to the bank. I remember every day of the ten years I spent with Hugo.”

  “And yet others remember things differently.”

  Just then our waiter approached to inquire about dessert. Teddy ordered some chocolate monstrosity; I asked for coffee. The waiter left.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  “Do you remember telling me about the first time you met Hugo?”

  “Yes, of course. You used that story in the Vanity Fair piece.”

  “You said Molly sent you out to Sag Harbor to deliver his manuscript.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You stayed for a drink. Drinks turned into dinner. After dinner the two of you sat up all night talking about his latest book. At dawn you went for a swim.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what happened.”

  “Molly remembers it differently.”

  Coffee appeared before me. I tasted it, strong and bracing. “Molly wasn’t there.”

  “It’s a small detail, but the discrepancy is interesting. According to Molly, she didn’t send you to Sag Harbor. You were supposed to messenger the manuscript, but you chose to go yourself.”

  I stared into the cup. Molly couldn’t have told him that. Teddy had got it wrong. And so had I, when I agreed to allow this biography. Hugo would have hated it. I hated it. Who the hell was Teddy Pendragon to decide what was true?

  “Why don’t you leave Molly alone?” I said. “She doesn’t need you badgering her.”

  “Badgering her?” Teddy looked wounded. “Really, Jo, badgering? Molly was eager to talk to me. She has her own stories to share about Hugo. He was important to her, and she to him.”

  After that I had nothing more to say to him. I’d said too much already, agreed to things I shouldn’t have agreed to. I’d compromised myself, but in the end the seduction had failed, because I was damned if I’d let this travesty proceed.

  • • •

  The next morning I sat in the porch swing while Molly reclined on a chaise, her long legs covered with an afghan despite the heat—close to eighty degrees already, and not yet ten o’clock. A light breeze carried the scent of lavender. Molly’s husband, an avid gardener, had transformed their suburban lawn into an English country garden full of lavender, hollyhocks, pansies, and delphiniums. After he died, she kept it up, first for his sake and then for her own. Gardening became her therapy, and I could tell by the dirt under her nails and the smudge on her nose that she’d been at it earlier that morning.

  I told her about Sam Spade, starting with his appearances outside our office and in Santa Fe. At first Molly wasn’t terribly disturbed, since all agents have tales of overeager writers. She told me one about a friend who was handed a manuscript at his own wife’s funeral.

  But the news about the phony offers shook her. “Oh, kiddo,” she said. “Oh, jeez.” She’d gone pale and shivery under the afghan.

  “Forget it, Moll,” I said. “The police will get him. Let’s go in and I’ll make us some lunch. I brought bagels from Zabar’s and that maple cream cheese you like.”

  “I’m not hungry.” But Molly allowed herself to be led inside and settled in an armchair in her bright, farmhouse-style kitchen, with gingham curtains and pots of basil and thyme on the windowsills. I toasted a bagel, spread on a schmear of cream cheese, and served it to Molly on a plate. It could have been boiled boot for all the interest she showed, but she took a dutiful bite before setting it aside. “I’m worried about you,” she said.

  Her hair, which was starting to grow back, covered her head like a cap of silver down. She’d lost so much weight that the hollows in her cheeks had deepened to gorges. When I first met her, Molly had been a beautiful, bold woman with a raucous laugh, a forthright manner, and a handshake the equal of any man’s. Even now she was beautiful, but it was a haggard, stripped-down sort of beauty that reminded me of the vogue some years back for heroin-chic fashion models. There was a war raging inside her, and we both knew how it was going to end.

  “That’s rich,” I said, “coming from you.”

  “What’s to stop this guy coming after you?”

  “Not gonna happen. There are serious barriers in place.”

  “What barriers?”

  “Lorna, for one,” I said, and Molly smiled, Lorna being
no small impediment. I cast about for some further distraction. “Do you want to hear something funny? I know the detective assigned to the case.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A guy named Tom Cullen.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Your Tommy?”

  “He wasn’t my Tommy. You remember him?”

  “Are you kidding? I never forget a handsome face, and he was some looker. Nice guy, too, and crazy about you. I thought something might come of it. But then you met Hugo and the rest was history.”

  “It was never serious,” I said. “But how weird is it meeting him again under these circumstances?”

  “How’s he look now?”

  “Older, of course. More gravitas. But still damn good.”

  “Married?”

  “Why, you interested?”

  Molly snorted. It was good to hear her laugh, but my heart was still in deep shadow. I told her about the detectives’ visit to the agency the previous afternoon. Two men spent hours going over the computers while Tommy interviewed my staff one by one in my office, which he’d commandeered. Jean-Paul had emerged from his interview red-faced and tight-lipped; for the rest of the day he busied himself in the file room. Chloe came out looking excited, Lorna sullen, Harriet offended. Shelly Rubens, our accountant, schlepped in all the way from Brooklyn, his broad brown face perspiring from the unseasonal heat, and made his usual joke when I introduced him to Tommy. “You were expecting maybe a nice Jewish lady?” When the detectives finished their detecting, Tommy called me and Max into my office and laid out the results in language that was nominally English but Greek to me. Anonymous remailers, masked and spooked IDs, keyloggers, and rats . . . Max translated for me afterward. The detectives had found no sign of tampering or spyware on any of the office computers. They were taking my laptop for further examination. The e-mails had been routed through a service that scrubbed them of identifying markers. The police would try but probably fail to trace their source.

  “A lot of nothing,” Molly summarized.

  “Precisely,” I said. “Which is why this whole biography thing is such a nonstarter at the moment.”