by Edmund White
He could tell by her phone conversations that she was very deep into many potential projects, but none of them promised to bear fruit anytime soon.
Nor did she want them to. Each Monday the staff had a meeting, the “story conference,” and if someone became excited about a show of Old Masters that had originated at the Hermitage and was traveling to four North American museums, then Harriet lit up one cigarette after another and scrunched in her chair until Gephardt said at last, “And what do you think, Harriet?”
“Well, I can see why Jane is so enthusiastic, and that’s certainly refreshing.”
“But?” Gephardt asked with a touch of malice.
Harriet waved her hands in front of her like windshield wipers. “No buts. Just one tiny word of caution. All we have for these paintings are some pretty weird Kodachromes that the Soviets have sent us and everyone else, and the reds are all sort of orange, and the yellows are too gold, and the dark blues are shading off into black. If we publish these things without being able to correct the color, we’re going to look like the biggest fools on earth. This show went to Belgium first, for some reason, and every color supplement I’ve seen from there is wildly different. I mean it’s a goddamned joke!” After starting mildly enough out of deference, supposedly, to her colleague, Harriet had built up to a shout. “Everyone in town will be laughing at us,” she added darkly, though Jack had a hard time picturing all these four-color-printing connoisseurs chortling together and mocking them.
“Maybe,” Gephardt said, smiling slyly and looking out over his half-moon glasses, “we’ll just have to send someone to Stalingrad with the reproductions in hand and correct them there.”
“Oh no,” Harriet said. “Un-unh, I’ve got way too much to do here. I could never just toss everything aside”—she made it sound like the acme of frivolity—“and go gaily gamboling over to Russia to work out the colors with some numbskull printer.”
Gephardt rejoined with no pause. “I have in mind a very intelligent Swiss-German from Skia who would go with you. With Hans beside you, Harriet, you’d have no fears of being ridiculed for false colors throughout America.”
Jack thought that Harriet looked sick—or maybe just a bit frightened. Her own color needed correcting. Was she afraid of planes? Of letting the whole office live happily without her for an entire week? Jack kept constructing scenarios and then revising them. Everyone around the table started warming to the idea.
“Okay,” Gephardt said, “then it’s settled. This will be our new cover story in the next issue: ‘The Old Masters Come Toddling out of Red Russia.’ That will be our headline.”
“I don’t think mumble mumble,” Harriet mumbled.
“What?”
“I don’t think you know what ‘toddle’ means in English.”
Gephardt’s eyes blazed. To punish Harriet, he said to Donna, his secretary, who was taking notes, “Book Harriet’s flight for first thing next week. And help her with the cultural visa. And coordinate her trip with Hans Drucker. You have his number in Zurich, correct?”
“Yes,” Donna said. “Yes, I do.”
Gephardt added, “We have a bright young face here today, our neophyte staff member, Jack Holmes, who comes directly to us from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and who knows something about art.”
“Send him mumble mumble,” Harriet mumbled with a sick smile. Her hands were trembling when she lit up this time.
“What was that suggestion, Harriet?”
“I just said, Karl, that you could send young Jack here to Stalingrad.”
“Of course now you are the one who’s joking. Since only your expert eye can verify these vagrant colors.”
Gephardt was obviously proud of his English and still offended by Harriet’s objection to “toddling.”
“Are you sure this piece can bear the weight of being a cover story?” Harriet asked skeptically.
Gephardt looked at her for three full beats, then smiled broadly as his glasses fell to his chest. “Very sure.”
“In the mumble.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that in the old days, we couldn’t afford this sort of extravagant boondoggle. I hope we don’t break the bank.”
“I was hired, Harriet, to promote the highest possible quality no matter what it costs.”
Jack was picking up that Gephardt had only come out of retirement two years ago to head up the Northern Review. The conflict, it seemed, was partly old guard versus new guard, but also partly distinguished New England intellectual review versus flashy, lavish picture magazine for a mass readership. But of course, for Gephardt it was mostly a question of everyone submitting to his superior taste and judgment and expertise.
“Phew! That was heavy, wasn’t it?” a Southern guy from the art department whispered to Jack. “Wanna have some coffee?” When Jack glanced toward Harriet, the guy said, “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be out of here in about ten and gone for the rest of the day.”
Jack smiled and said, “Well, in that case.”
They went down to a coffee shop on the subway level of their building, a place that smelled of burned bagels and old bacon and bad coffee. After they’d ordered, Jack said, “What was all that?”
“Sugar, you’ve just seen the most recent installment of our daytime soap, As the Turd Whirls. I thought today’s episode was pretty damn gripping. Old Gephardt really threw Missy Harriet a sidewinder. She’s usually quick on her feet with the put-downs and nasty chuckles and superior airs, but today she didn’t know what hit her. Maybe now Our Lady of the Thousand Obstructions will draw in her fangs just an itty-bit.”
“Do you have names for everyone? I wonder what your name for me will be.”
“My Next Husband, that’s what I will call you.” He said the “you” as if it had an umlaut over it. He was a sort of stage Southerner, Jack figured. He leered at Jack and licked his cherry red lips. His face was plain, but his small blue eyes never stopped boring through Jack. He had a ski jump nose and nearly invisible eyebrows much blonder than his straight, lusterless hair, cut military-short, a look that threw his permanently red ears into relief. His body was thin and flexible, his waist tiny, and his chest not much stouter. His shirt was bright red, as red as his lips, and a size too small for him. He wore black suspenders that fastened to his trouser tops with shiny gold clasps—they looked as if they were from a Paul Smith tuxedo set, whereas all his other clothes could have dressed a large doll from F. A. O. Schwarz.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked. “Your real name.”
“Herschel.” He pronounced it on two crisp descending notes as if to say, “Welcome.”
When Jack looked puzzled, he said, “Herschel?”
Whereas the other members of the Northern Review staff seemed like sluggish etiolated fish who preferred to hide in their slimy miniature castles, Herschel was darting about, all blue neon.
Herschel filled him in on the office personalities. The man on crutches was sleeping with the woman playwright turned copyeditor. The mad, disheveled, but congenial older man in the back office with the missing teeth did nothing but put together anagrams based on Alice in Wonderland.
“Very Dickensian,” Jack said.
“Oh no, not another egghead! Dickens who? Hey hon, we’ll get along fine if you just think of me as the waitress in The Most Happy Fella who sings, ‘Oh my feet, my poor, poor feet.’”
“Aren’t you in the art department—do you do layout?”
“Yeah, what I call slinging hash.”
Everything about Herschel felt dangerous. Jack didn’t want to be pegged as a queer, and he knew he had to avoid Herschel’s company, and yet there was something quick and amusing about this guy, and they were the only people under thirty in the office.
Jack realized every evening that the muscles in his cheeks ached from smiling so much. At the office he didn’t want to disturb other people, but at the same time he wanted to look busy and useful. Impossible task—he felt as if he�
��d been apologizing all day every day for his existence. It was like one of those nightmares where all the other men are in evening clothes and you are big and pink and naked, squirming on a very small piano stool.
The man on crutches suggested he write captions for a picture story on the Via del Babuino in Rome. Jack remembered it vividly from a trip to Italy the summer of his junior year. Herschel, as it turned out, was doing the lavish layouts. There were just a few modest text blocks and one-line captions in very small type to think up. Like an idiot, Jack found himself reading the dummy type that Herschel had pasted in for size, as if it would give him a clue as to what he should write. It said over and over, “This is Baskerville 771,” except for one line that read, “You’re so damn cute. Looks like you’ve got a big one.”
Jack could feel the coffee souring his stomach; he started hiccuping. It would seem as if hours and hours had already trudged around like shackled prisoners—but when he looked up it was still only eleven, and lunch wasn’t until one. He was afraid of rushing through his captions and giving the impression that he wasn’t serious. He found two guidebooks on Rome in the small company library and read them, but even so he was finished with his story a day later. He showed it to C. G., the man with the crutches, who had a handsome face and a poised, ironic manner. They went over every word together. “These descriptions of the azalea pots are very good,” C. G. said, smoking his pipe, “and I like the loafers as soft as chocolate bars left out in the sun. I suspect you have a real writing talent.”
“Thanks,” Jack said heartily.
“But you don’t know how to make one thing follow another seamlessly. That’s called ‘tracking’ in the business. We want everything to flow, to track. You’ll see. Gephardt will write ‘Huh?’ in the margin if he doesn’t get your point, or ‘Make it track.’ Or he’ll think you need more facts or more ‘color’; that’s the lush descriptive prose you’re so good at, but these old macho journalists like what they call ‘nuts and bolts.’ Sometimes they’ll think you’re long-winded and they’ll say, ‘Green 20 characters.’ ‘Greening’ is cutting. Oh, and by the way, don’t use words like ‘therefore’ and ‘thus’ and ‘aforesaid’ and ‘latter’—sounds like school. I suppose the main thing is speed—saying the most in the fewest words. And be sure to identify every place name and foreign word without sounding pedantic, and don’t ever be lofty and say, ‘The well-known such and such,’ because it may not be well known to the reader.”
Every night Jack rushed home and switched into his jeans and loafers and faded blue cowboy shirt. One evening, just to tempt the devil, he didn’t wear underwear; on Greenwich Avenue he got a lot of looks from men. One of them, a guy about forty who’d mastered the preppy look without having learned the manner, said to him, “Let me buy you a drink?” as he held open the door to a bar.
Jack laughed. “Sure.”
A moment later he was sitting on a high stool next to his host, if that was what he should be called. “Do you live around here?” the man asked.
“Yes. On Cornelia. With two girls.”
“Is one of them your girlfriend?”
“Sort of. Not really. I’m not sure, actually.” He laughed, surprised at the truth of his statement.
“Are you usually that vague?” the guy asked. “I mean, about everything? I mean”—and the man gave him a charming smile—“that’s probably good news for me, that you’re not sure whether you’re coming or going.”
Jack smiled back. “I’m not that vague.”
“Are you coming?” the man asked. When Jack looked embarrassed, the man said, “My name is Edward. Now, you can feel free to make up a name, but mine really is Edward. See?” He looked down at the monogram on his dress shirt: EGG. “Edward George Grant.”
“That’s a riot,” Jack said.
They had many drinks together. Edward was buying. “No, come on,” he protested. “I invited you.” It was the sort of thing, Jack thought, that a European might say.
After the seventh highball, Edward said, “It looks like you’re packing a big box there.”
Jack said, “I guess most people are scared of it or think it’s sort of …” He couldn’t believe he was talking about this.
“Call me an old-fashioned size queen, but I like it. What would you say—eight inches? Nine?”
“I’ve never measured it. Where do you measure it from?”
“If you’re gay you measure it from the asshole on up. That’s why we say he’s a gay eight, meaning six.”
“And gay people”—Jack didn’t want to sound too taxonomic—“actually like them big?”
“Leaping lizards,” Edward said, swiveling on his barstool and looking the young man right in the eye. “Yes, Jack. We like them big. C’mon home with me for another drink. I just live on the corner of Eleventh and Fourth.”
Jack said, “Okay,” and he stepped down from his stool and looked astonished that he’d managed the feat. Edward gulped his drink down; he’d obviously not meant right away, but he liked Jack’s enthusiasm.
The man gave Jack his eighth drink at home in his smart apartment, which had chocolate brown walls, gold griffon lamps on dimmers, forest green upholstery with brown piping, and hunting prints under hooded art lights. It was all very “masculine” and fitted with Edward’s profession. He said he was a buyer for Barney’s. They were chatting away when all of a sudden Edward reached across Jack and pulled out three magazines from a side table. “Like porn?” he asked.
“Sure,” Jack said. “Who doesn’t? It’s so hard to get hold of.” He noticed that Edward had offered him two magazines with all men in them and one with men and women. Jack, to show he was broad-minded (and perhaps available), picked up a gay one but looked at it with a supercilious expression.
Jack started getting hard as he studied these young men with their oiled biceps and posing straps, leaning on Greek columns. They all looked like they were sucking in their tummies, and their duck’s ass haircuts didn’t exactly go with the classical shields and spears.
“You’re fabulous,” Edward whispered as, fully clothed, he sank to the crawl space between the couch and the coffee table; the table was covered with dark green Morocco leather. Jack felt Edward tugging at his belt buckle and fly; he didn’t know whether he, Jack, should scooch his pants down or just pretend to be asleep or unaware of this balding blond kneeling at his feet. Like everything in New York, it was a question of etiquette. Finally Jack compromised by closing his eyes and throwing his head back as if dozing but lifting his buttocks so Edward could wriggle his trousers down to below his knees.
Yes, now that’s more like it, Jack thought, as Edward went to work. He felt it was incredibly kind and self-sacrificing that Edward hadn’t undressed and seemed to expect nothing in return. Hardly seemed fair. And frankly Jack was curious about what was going on in Edward’s pants.
In the end, Edward, who had a permanent tan, big, drooping blue eyes, a chipped incisor, and very full lips, swallowed it all and pulled himself together, then stood and said, “Holy moly.” He got up, sat back in a big wing chair, and lit a cigarette. Jack looked around and Edward said, “Over there,” indicating a small door flush with the wall. The tiny bathroom was covered with gold leaf wallpaper. On the toilet top was placed a wicker tray holding twenty bottles of cologne, including one that had white pebbles sunk in the pale brown liquid.
When Jack reemerged, Edward didn’t get up. He extended a hand and a white calling card. “Here’s my number if you ever want a repeat. I have to tell you, I was in heaven!” He was smoking, and the apartment smelled of Kools.
Jack put his jacket back on and mumbled, “Yeah, great,” but down on the street he threw the card away.
He was here in this vast city where the soft hand of anonymity effaced all individual difference. He was free to surrender his nether half to Edward George Grant, EGG on his crotch, or to sleep with Rebekkah, who had pecked him coolly on the cheek just once since their champagne orgy the afternoon he landed
the job. The city swallowed every anecdote and digested it; nothing got remembered or even noticed. Not that Jack minded. He thought he liked it that way. He decided he wasn’t going to let another man blow him; that was too easy, much simpler than seducing a woman and just as pleasurable. It could become addictive. Of course, with a woman you could have a real relationship conducted in the sunlight, whereas this homo thing was just slithering around in the shadows.
4.
After six months in New York, Jack realized that most of the people he knew there were from the University of Michigan. He’d found a one-bedroom apartment of his own on Thirteenth Street, west of Eighth Avenue, but he still took most of his meals with Rebekkah and Alice. They shared expenses. Jack did the dishwashing since he really didn’t know how to cook. For the first time in his life, he realized, he was putting on a bit of weight—they ate a lot of pasta and went to cheap Italian restaurants like Monte’s on MacDougal Street. He decided to walk to work and cut out desserts, and he slimmed down quickly. If he made the slightest effort, the fat melted off him.
The beat movement was just winding down and the hippies were emerging, but Jack didn’t feel connected to either group, though he liked his bohemian girls. They teased him for not being “hip,” which was the new vogue word. Once he let himself in and heard Alice asking Rebekkah, “Isn’t he a queer? Not that I care.”
Rebekkah said, “Take it from me he’s not queer. I mean, he wailed on my body.” Jack thought it made him sound like a trumpet player. “But maybe he’s bi.”
“Oh, come on,” Alice said. “Is anyone bi?”
“People think you are,” Rebekkah blurted out.