Jack Holmes and His Friend

by Edmund White

  Will was embarrassed by this idea of novelist as monologist. “Christ, if I thought for a moment I had to hold forth like that before even one person in reality—no, Jack, my boy, it’s a story. I’m a storyteller, and a story is always a kind of group effort, a manifestation of the Volk.” That Will had such an elaborate ready-made response only proved Jack’s point. Will thought of himself as a mouthpiece for the whole fucking race. He’d already worked up his acceptance speech.

  Why not, Jack thought. Even James fucking Joyce had to start somewhere—didn’t he declare himself to be the antennae of the race? Writing was definitely a form of pretentiousness, no way around that. But maybe Will had what it took.

  Maybe. Just.

  One wintry night, Will came over for dinner, not with the girls but at Jack’s place. Jack had said that afternoon, “Hey, if you don’t mind eating leftovers, I cooked my first real dinner last night.” In fact, Will wasn’t being given leftovers, but a beef stew Jack had made the previous night just for Will. “Maybe the girls will come by later,” Jack said, but in fact he hadn’t invited them. After dinner Jack produced a joint, and for the first time they got stoned together. They listened to Dionne Warwick singing, and they kept exchanging cryptic little smiles as if they were decoding secret messages in exactly the same way and at the same moment. Will was sprawling on the couch, and he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. One big hand, ropy with blue veins, the knuckles lightly dusted with gold hairs, rested on the cushion beside him.

  Will looked so sexy and Jack wanted him so badly that it was hard to imagine the feeling wasn’t mutual. What would happen if Jack slipped down onto the floor and put a hand on Will’s crotch, just as Edward had done with him? It was like that afternoon he put the moves on Rebekkah when they were stoned and he felt like a rapist but it turned out that she too was eager to fuck. Or was it? Would Will sit up, alarmed, indignant, horrified? Maybe the situation was more like this music. It sounded so interesting and seductive that Jack was certain Will must be enjoying it too, and yet two weeks ago Will had stated flatly that he hated pop music of all sorts. “It’s not really music. I don’t even know what there is to listen to—loud, banal, rhythmically monotonous, predictable, too short to go anywhere. It doesn’t develop. It’s nothing. Nothing!”

  It was so easy, stoned and looking at Will, to imagine that Dionne Warwick’s slightly flat voice was bewitching him as it moved over those massed strings, just as it was compelling to imagine that Will was horny too, that he wouldn’t mind a buddy’s hot wet mouth engulfing him. Wasn’t that fold in his crotch slowly thickening, ticking heartbeat by heartbeat into an erection? Will was pretending he was dozing, but he knew that Jack could smell his excitement, even from way over there.

  But Jack did nothing and the moment froze like a smile on a chagrined face. Luckily. Because then Will stretched and sat up and spoke out of his severe Gothic face: “I fell asleep for a moment in spite of that treacly music. How can you listen to that garbage?”

  “What music?” Jack asked, disingenuous. “Oh, that. I don’t know who gave me that.”

  “Probably some misty-eyed, waxy-eared girl,” Will said with a harsh little smile.

  “Yeah, some girl,” Jack repeated leadenly. He could see that the presumed erection didn’t exist, that Will’s crotch was as smooth and featureless as a doll’s and the thickening fold had been a wishful invention.

  “Well, Jack, my boy,” Will said, standing and stretching, “it’s time for the Old Masters to go toddling out of Russia.” Jack had told Will about Gephardt’s strange headline (which since appeared in the magazine and disappointingly elicited no response at all, certainly not the anticipated general derision).

  “Maybe the dope wasn’t a good idea,” Jack said. “I’m zonked.”

  “But the beef stew definitely was a good idea,” Will said, adding, “Yum-yum.” He maintained the boarding school pose of licking his lips over any dish that wasn’t actively repulsive.

  Jack realized, lying in bed that night, that Will was guarded in ordinary conversation but more spontaneous and interesting when he talked about books. Suddenly he was no longer the deferential, almost shambling young gentleman, but rather a mind at work. The gentleman—armored in his good shoes and his father’s monogrammed shirts with the turned collars—was a bag of old tricks, but the writer was someone vulnerable and egotistical, living in the moment, unprepared. At the same time, there was no denying that Will the author was pretentious. Sometimes Jack wondered if he’d like Will if he didn’t love him.

  Maybe because Jack had suspected Will of living with someone, he’d been forced to admit to himself how much he depended on the idea of Will’s availability, his indeterminacy—the idea, since the reality was so elusive.

  The next day Gephardt called them both in for a meeting. They sat in captain’s chairs and felt like lieutenants and looked at Gephardt over the collection of obelisks that covered his desk, baby spires that seemed to have been hatched by the skyscrapers outside the window. Gephardt had shed his suit jacket and was showing an old pair of faded burgundy suspenders covered improbably with fading brown mallards.

  “I just have a little idea I want to share with you,” Gephardt said as he fiddled with a pipe cleaner, which came out of the detached pipe stem very brown and oily. “Or maybe it’s more a question.”

  Although Gephardt raised one bushy white eyebrow, Will said nothing, producing a dog smile with a bit of protruding pink tongue between rows of white teeth. Jack didn’t smile, but raised both eyebrows for a second above a mask, as if to indicate a general readiness and a resetting of all dials back to zero.

  In a roundabout way that sounded almost devious, certainly loaded, Gephardt said, “Now I know both of you guys are very ambitious, and I don’t want to be guilty of standing in your way. There are certain decisions higher-ups must make—or in English you say ‘highers-up’? I think that would be better English, like ‘walkers by.’”

  Jack could feel his eyes drifting toward Will’s, but he stopped their migration just in time, since he was afraid of dissolving into a great yawping laugh.

  “In any e-went,” Gephardt said, “I want you both to think of yourself as junior editors. I want you to think of ways you can take on more responsibility. Does that appeal to you, Jack?”

  Jack had no idea what was being discussed, but he had the sickening feeling that whatever it was would lead to longer hours for no more money. He knew people were supposed to be ambitious and aggressive, but he almost wished time could be frozen and he could stay a simple staff writer forever, writing his picture captions and doing the odd bit of research.

  “Yes,” he said brightly, “immensely. I will do anything to—”

  To what? His mind went blank.

  “To become a real editor,” he said, though he’d never thought about it for two seconds, and he hoped he didn’t sound either delusional or dangerously grasping.

  “And you, Will?”

  “I’m not sure what’s being discussed, concretely,” Will said, “but five years from now I’d like to be assigning and editing stories for the magazine.”

  Jack thought that Will sounded much more mature than he did—and Will had obviously envisioned his future. Even in his readiness to say he wasn’t sure what was under discussion, Will dealt with Gephardt more like an equal, more man-to-man. In his elegant way Will was manly.

  Maybe because technically Jack had recommended Will, and had worked a few weeks longer for the Northern Review, he’d slipped into thinking he had a certain seniority on the job. And Jack assumed that because Will was so dedicated to writing fiction, he must see his “job-job” as nothing but a dull means to an exciting end. That’s how the girls on Cornelia Street referred to their various salaried positions, as “job-jobs.” They pretended they didn’t even know what they were doing. Working was just a stopgap measure until they became full-time artists. They were quite clear that they didn’t want jobs for the future, since their o
nly real future would be in the arts, making documentaries or acting.

  And then one night Jack’s college girlfriend Hillary came to town and took Jack to a nice Spanish restaurant, El Faro, on West Fourth Street. At the next table were seated Will and a date and Herr and Frau Gephardt. Jack hadn’t been paying attention when the headwaiter had led Hillary and him to the adjoining table. By the time he noticed, Gephardt had leapt out of his chair and was pumping Jack’s hand heartily. “Oh, this is merry!” he exclaimed. “How gemütlich,” he said. “You must meet my Helga. Liebchen. This is young Jack I’ve told you so much about.” The handsome, gray-haired German woman, her broad face bare of makeup, wrapped Jack’s nervous, bony hand in her well-padded one, its nails clipped short and unpainted. Her face could have been brutal except for the fine dusting of gold hair on her full cheeks, her mild blue eyes, and her general air of peace, as if she were a retired baker once famous for her cherry strudel.

  “Hello, Jack, I am Helga,” and she held onto his hand a second too long. Jack noticed they’d polished off a pitcher of sangria already and hadn’t ordered yet. El Faro was such an old restaurant that the menus all looked tattered and stained.

  Will was so embarrassed that he started braying. “Jack, my boy, who’s your lovely date you’ve been keeping a secret from us?” Just like Will, Jack thought, to accuse me of keeping a secret when he’s the sneaky one going off to dinner with our boss. And wasn’t that clever of him to extend “me” into “us” ever so slyly, to place himself beside the Gephardts. Jack was shocked that Will was out for an evening with Gephardt, as if a student who passed for a regular guy had been seen brown-nosing a prof.

  And who was Will’s girl with the short upper lip pulled back to reveal sparkling teeth and the incongruously low voice and the delicate knobby shoulders and the hair pushed up to uncover a ballerina’s long neck. Lucy? Did Will say her name was Lucy something? She looked like someone’s younger sister, a debutante with lots of smiles and no conversation, remarkable only for her breakable beauty.

  Luckily Hillary had slimmed down a bit, and her hair was golden and shorter, and she was wearing an aquamarine linen dress that had a hundred tiny bone-white buttons running up the front. Not exactly stylish, except perhaps on Martha’s Vineyard or in Maine. She said, in response to Will’s question as they stood around awkwardly, “I live in Maine. Kennebunkport,” and Jack was happy she hadn’t mentioned Ann Arbor.

  All these people he worked with at the Northern Review were Ivy League snobs. Though Jack had said straight out, “I am a Midwestern nobody,” they never believed him. They thought he was one of them, and Jack found their misguided preconceptions rather flattering. He wondered what it was about him that misled them. It certainly wasn’t his accent. He said “warsh” instead of “wash” and “melk” instead of “milk.” And unlike all the Auchinclosses who worked around him, he didn’t say “enuhway” for “anyway” or describe people as “high-larious.”

  Hillary would only add to his myth; she was obviously the right sort. These snobbish ideas vaguely flitted through Jack’s mind without nesting there. He toyed with them rather than embraced them. He felt there was something dangerously alluring about social snobbism—dangerous to him. He was so accommodating to other people that he could easily become a successful social climber without even trying.

  Jack noticed right away that Gephardt was more attracted to Hillary than to Will’s Lucy. Looking at Helga you could see why: Gephardt preferred substantial women. Hillary had a mouth too wide for beauty but just large enough for love. She had a frank, open nature, and perhaps because she was hefty she never thought to play the girly-girly card. She was a guy among guys—and Jack in his ignorance thought that must be how Germans liked their women. A nice big hussar of a woman with a degree of elegance—that was the right combination.

  Gephardt wanted them to pull up chairs to share another pitcher of sangria, but Jack begged off, saying he hadn’t seen Hillary in a long while—“Oh, I see,” Gephardt said with his usual ham-fisted emphasis. “Little secrets to hide from the other.” Jack smiled weakly. He thought it wondrous that they were having a cozy little evening without him and they all accused him of being secretive.

  For Jack, the dinner was excruciating. Every second, he was aware of his colleagues’ proximity. He wanted to tell Hillary that Will was his best friend, but he was afraid that Will would hear and secretly snort with contempt or disagreement. He wanted to tell her how much he liked his job. He wanted to find out what Hillary was doing with her life, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything.

  Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of everything Will was doing. The way he was holding his cigarette between his thumb and middle finger, as if smoking were an unfamiliar practice. The way he lowered his head, widened his eyes, and looked up through his eyebrows each time Lucy said something, as if he needed to demonstrate how charmed he was and how attentive he was being, or maybe he thought he looked sexy that way. Will was playing a bit “young” around Gephardt, laughing recklessly and nodding frequently. With Jack, Will usually listened with a poker face and a million-mile stare, though from time to time he’d emit an unbidden chuckle. That was the look Jack had assumed was Will’s natural one.

  At last he and Hillary were out in the street. When she’d threatened to order coffee, he’d insisted she would never sleep.

  “You seemed awfully nervous in there,” she said now as they headed up West Fourth Street.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jack said. “Of all the places we could’ve chosen.” He remembered that she’d chosen it. “It was wonderful food, but that was torture sitting next to my boss.”

  Hillary seemed slightly miffed about the idea that the whole evening had been torture and said, “I thought your boss was a great guy.”

  “Did you think Will was handsome?”

  “The young guy? Handsome? His girl was cute. Will … is that his name? He looked sort of shy and dim, no personality. You’re a lot cuter.”

  They went back to Jack’s apartment and made out on the corduroy couch, but to his surprise Jack didn’t get hard, and he moved to a chair after he’d “freshened” Hillary’s drink.

  She looked offended and said, “What are you doing way over there?”

  Jack laughed and said, “I can see you better from here.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  He laughed some more. “Good ol’ Ann Arbor honesty. Don’t run up against that much here.”

  She gestured with both hands as if she were pulling it out of him.

  “I wasn’t—jeez, do I have to say?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “I wasn’t getting aroused,” he said. “I was afraid of a fiasco. Even though you—you’re more attractive than ever.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked. “Feeling guilty?”

  “No. No girlfriend.”

  “Maybe I put you off with all my talk about spasmophilia way back then, but I’m good at sex now.”

  “No, really, I liked your honesty. You were so frank. That made me feel closer to you. No, it’s just—”

  “Anyway, I’m over the ol’ spaz,” she said. “A Dr. Teitlebaum psychoanalyzed me out of it. It turns out it was all tied up with that charm bracelet I used to wear. It had been my mother’s, and I thought—unconsciously, of course—that she was watching me. So I threw the bracelet into the Atlantic off Kennebunkport, and some twenty-two-pound lobster must be wearing it now as a very fetching necklace.”

  Jack laughed at the image, but when the laughter subsided he said, “But seriously, that cured you?”

  “Yep. Hundred percent. Instantaneous.” She patted the sofa beside her, but when Jack just raked his nails across his forehead and lowered his eyes (a tic he’d stolen from Will), she stood up. “Okay, I’m pushing off. I’m not desperate or anything.”

  “Hey,” Jack said, standing up. “Come here,” and he opened his arms.

  But she ducked under them and said, “Y
ou take care, Jack.”

  “Want me to walk you over to Eighth to get you a taxi?”

  “No,” she said, “no need.”

  Jack felt a bit panicky when the door closed behind her. He didn’t know whether it was because now he was alone and he was always afraid to be alone or because Hillary was a door he’d just closed—not Hillary in particular but her kind of good-natured girl, this kind of … “woman.” Women. Was he through with women?

  He often thought he’d get married some day. But to be honest, in the last few months whenever he thought of marriage, the woman, his wife, was pretty vague, more a smiling wraith than an actual sharp-featured person, and her main function seemed to be to accompany him on a double date with Will.

  Jack drank two strong bourbons and went to bed and jacked off thinking about the double date, about glancing over his shoulder into the backseat, where Will had his old-fashioned baggy white boxer shorts down around his bony knees and his voluminous pale blue Egyptian-cotton dress shirt ballooning out around him, silk tie at half mast, but there, unmistakable in the dark, shone the hard pure white bone of his desire as his wife’s hand with the big diamond ring held it in a fastidious grip. It was like looking down through the dark of the Forum on that fragment of white stone from which the Romans measured all distances on earth—the milliarium aureum, the golden milestone. All of Jack’s thoughts radiated out from this white stone he’d never seen.

  Jack was determined not to complain about Will’s “date” with Gephardt or even razz him about trying to get ahead. He didn’t want to annoy Will (that’s what girls did), nor did he like to think of Will as grasping and ambitious. If that’s what he was, Jack preferred not to know about it.