by Edmund White
Will frowned. “But you know what I mean. You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty neat explanation of your success.”
“Not my beauty and natural charm?” Jack said. “I told her you were a great novelist—now I have proof of your imagination.”
“Speaking of proof—” Will pulled out of his desk drawer a manila envelope containing what was obviously a slender volume. “Look at this when you’re alone. I don’t want people around here yammering about it.”
When he was safely back in his cubicle, Jack opened the envelope. There it was—Will’s novel. The Truth About Sergeant Tavel. How typical of secretive Will to spring it on him this way. No talk about an agent representing him or an editor buying it or anything about those long lunches at the Algonquin, nothing about the proposed cover, the cover copy, the sales campaign and book tour plans—nothing. Jack could remember that on certain days Will had worn a dark blue suit and tab shirt and an unstained silk tie and of course his London shoes, the black ones—those must have been his book business days.
Jack resented Will’s spiritual stinginess. Couldn’t he have shared all or some of these steps? Alexandra had guessed the truth—she had said that Will was an emotional miser. Did he wish to keep things to himself as long as possible out of fear of failing? Or did he think that like Prince Hal he would soon be dropping all of his old, inferior friends?
Jack flipped through the book sacrilegiously and even read the last five pages first. He felt as unnatural in this first, terribly important encounter as someone being introduced to his future in-laws. He wanted to like the book, he needed to like it, he’d be expected to say he liked it, and any hesitation on his part would be detected and magnified. Jack’s enthusiasm was guaranteed but not certain, and it certainly wouldn’t be spontaneous.
Something about the manufacturing of the book felt flimsy, cheap; the paper would turn yellow and shatter in ten years. The cover was a cartoon, one of the first Jack had ever seen associated with a serious novel, which made it seem a bid for whatever was argotic and contemporary. But in fact it was poorly drawn, the colors dull, the printed letters toothless: no bite. Jack could already see the piles and piles of remainders in a store.
Jack wanted it to be good, the novel, because, as he thought, it emanates from my Will, my cold husband, my enigmatic friend. I need it to be good because Will must be talented, intelligent, to justify my devotion and his mysterious confidence in himself. I want it to be bad because Will has disappointed me and now he must pay.
Nor could Jack imagine anything written by someone he knew being good.
He was terrified he wouldn’t be able to judge it. He dithered over it, turning it this way and that, unable to see the picture for the puzzle parts. He caught every third word, as if it were in a new language. As he read it, he saw people from real life materializing behind the shadowy characters like known faces popping into county fair cutouts, two smiling, freckled kids sticking their heads into the holes above the stern farmer and his wife in American Gothic. Or he overheard something he himself had once said, something that he’d gotten wrong—and that Will would have recycled because the error had caught in the filaments of his mind. The Truth About Sergeant Tavel was a patchwork of rehashed stories, filched readings from other books, speculations of the what-if sort, and improvisations in reverse. Then there were the fantasy elements. The young hero, named Hero, had a cat named Intrepid who hopped up into windows or descended into basements, slipped onto the subway and followed a villain through municipal sewers—and reported everything to Hero by typing it all out with his paws on Hero’s new electric typewriter. Hero had learned to leave a blank page in the machine at night and the motor running. When Intrepid returned from his investigations, he could file his report instantly—and many of these hilarious feline screeds made their way into the novel.
Underlying everything was a pure, almost childlike love between Hero and Trumpetta. Yes, it must be Alexandra. He even caught several things that Alex had said to him that Will had copied verbatim. Gosh, Jack thought, I’m going to be in big trouble with her!
A large morning glory vine twined among the bars to their bedroom window and produced more and more blue blossoms that clamored full-throated in the first hours of the day and shriveled to sticky, umbilical sheaths in the afternoon—except that as Trumpetta became ill with some highly aesthetic wasting disease, the plant died. The desperate Hero saw his beloved condemned in the death of the morning glory. Intrepid wrote a final eulogy to Trumpetta, a letter that was strangely spelled but deeply felt, and then the cat vanished into the lower depths of the great, rustling city.
“But it’s nothing,” Jack said out loud to himself when he finished the book at four in the morning. “Sentimental horseshit.” He got up and stretched and realized he’d missed the closing of the bars and only drunks would still be out cruising the streets. He was slightly panicked, but he dismissed the idea of an empty bed and a night without sex as a minor inconvenience. He made himself a meal of toast and scrambled eggs.
The book was tepid, gooey-sweet. Jack resented it and faintly scorned Will: To think I was in love with someone so insipid. I imagined that under all that reticence scalding seas of feeling were bubbling, that Will would be able to express in print all the passion he was too shy to show. At last the drab geode would be cracked open to expose its crystal teeth.
Damn! Jack thought. What would he say to Will? The problem was a social one, the challenge of how to hide his disappointment. If he faked enthusiasm, Will would detect the falseness right away. Nor would even the most outrageous praise come close to the ecstasy the poor young author was anticipating. Even if Jack had been genuinely delighted, some sort of problem would still have existed. And Will would have sniffed out the slightest hesitation, the smallest nuance of criticism. Nothing short of a Nobel Prize would satisfy Will. Jack had nothing genuine to go on.
Jack was sitting in his underpants on a dining room chair. He’d turned off his reading light, and now the only illumination in the room was the faint blue of the approaching dawn seeping through the filmy curtains. He had such conflicting thoughts. In one way he felt free at last of Will the Loser, the witless writer; it wasn’t that Will had been unable to shape his feelings in the book, but rather that he didn’t seem to have any feelings to draw on. A second later Will’s flop made Jack feel protective toward him. Would Will be able to weather the failure of his book? Would he feel crushed and even bleaker than usual? Jack knew that Will had been talking about a second novel—would he go forward with it now? Would anyone want to publish it? Would Will’s art have come and gone in a single night?
Of course Jack wondered if he might be wrong; maybe the book was good and sound—no, not brilliant, no one could say it was brilliant, it was a feeble thing, barely alive. Jack blamed Will’s canniness, his way of playing with his cards close to his chest. Old Will thought he was so shrewd to hide in the margins of life, never to show a strong emotion, always to insist on his amateur status, to hold up his hands as he backed away. Will was the cunning loser with his bland caginess, his refusal to take a stand.
Jack was surprised by the anger pouring off him.
As it turned out, Will was satisfied by Jack’s unconvincing enthusiasm since that very morning he had received a delirious Kirkus pre-pub review: “This charming fairy tale is as whimsical as a Boris Vian novel and as contemporary as Pynchon’s latest. A morning glory becomes a startling symbol of the life force. A heroine, Trumpetta, faces a stylish death but languishes beautifully in her final moments—she is one of the finest and least forgettable female characters in recent memory. Love has never been as tender and childlike—or as grown-up. Good for all ages and library collections. No obscenity.”
Will handed it to Jack and pretended to be annoyed with it. “I’m not sure I like a pastel word like ‘whimsical,’ but at least my character is unforgettable and the review is starred.”
Jack made a nice recovery: “So few reviews are starred. Y
ours is the only starred novel in this issue, isn’t it? Look, it is the only one. They should have said ‘brilliant’ ten times, all caps, but ‘contemporary’ and ‘grown-up’ aren’t too shabby. Nor is ‘least forgettable.’ ”
Jack wondered who could’ve written such a silly review—probably a girl, he thought. Definitely a female French major. Someone who liked Will’s photo, heavily retouched to eliminate the acne scars. She was probably hoping for a date. Jack checked a Boris Vian novel out from the Donnelly library at lunchtime, but when Will saw it on his desk in the afternoon, he picked it up carelessly, thrummed it, and put it down. He said, “Never read the guy.” Which couldn’t have been true since, as Jack discovered, in the Vian novel there was also a flower that wilted in sympathy with the heroine.
Jack couldn’t deny that he’d found Will’s book trivial and thin, but he wondered if he’d failed to register its appeal. Whimsy wasn’t something Jack could pick out in a lineup. It seemed as if The Truth About Sergeant Tavel might be a literary event, and now Jack couldn’t help looking at Will as somebody up-and-coming. He wasn’t the same Will. Some of the journalists who dropped by the offices of the Northern Review had published books of reportage, but no one recognized their names. Journalists weren’t real writers. They had no aura. They weren’t going to be picked out as signals from the background noise. But Will? He might become a contender, someone who would be singled out by the media to speak for a whole generation.
Maybe talent was simply a knack for stealing well, and Jack knew this thief too intimately.
“I’m going to give a copy of your book to Alexandra,” Jack said.
Will put up an anguished hand and then let it drop, as if he recognized he could do nothing now to shape the career of his book. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“She may blame my big mouth, since you’ve obviously taken a lot from her life, from what I’ve told you about her.”
“She’ll be flattered. Do you think she’s intelligent enough to get it? But sure, we can’t choose our readers.”
Jack was slightly shocked by Will’s use of “we.” Not regal so much as a collective pronoun for all writers, the ones who counted.
“I think she’ll be amused by how you’ve idealized her and made her into someone so innocent.”
Will’s lip actually curled. “She’s not innocent?”
They were speaking nearly in whispers because the walls of Jack’s office cubicle didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. “I don’t think I told you about her affairs—I’m so glad I didn’t tell you.”
With a trace of irritation Will said, “I wasn’t exactly taking dictation from you, buddy. You have heard of the imagination?”
“Of course, I know you transformed everything.” Jack looked to see how his ridiculous exaggeration was going over. Will had transformed very little about Alexandra, in fact. Many of the things he’d said, quoting her, he had obviously transcribed verbatim.
“But she’s not innocent?” Will asked again. He was unusually impatient for the answer.
Oh, Jack thought. Her innocence …
“You can tell me now,” Will said. “I’m not going to base another character on her. Has she had many lovers?”
“I should introduce you two. She’s seen too much of life and you too little,” Jack said. “You’d be perfect for each other. You’re afraid of adventures and she’s tired of hers.”
“She is?” Will asked. “She told you that? Specifics! Okay, she’s a big slut—really big?”
“ ‘Slut’ is not a word in my vocabulary,” Jack said. “At least not in discussing a woman.”
Will frowned as a big faggy shadow suddenly flapped past overhead. “You’re no fun,” he said. He’d been sitting on the edge of Jack’s desk, but now he pushed off and headed to the doorway. Since his good review this morning, he had become cooler and more elegant in his movements, as if he were just dropping in on the working world. He had a new way of tilting his head back as if a photographer had instructed him on how to catch the overhead light. Will was being someone else, a pianist in a 1930s Vogue photo, his mouth beautifully carved.
As soon as Jack was back home that evening, he stripped down to his boxer shorts, made a vodka and tonic, sprawled on the couch, and called Alexandra. While he talked to her, he reached into his shorts and cupped his balls. “Well, you’ll never guess what happened today.”
“I give up,” she said.
“Will got a starred review in Kirkus.”
“Is that the one critics read? That’s terrific! Bravo, Will.”
“It is terrific.”
“But you don’t really like the book much?”
“If you ever repeat that …”
Jack sipped his drink—the tonic and lime made him feel marooned in the tropics. The freedom to sprawl and grope himself while chatting with Alexandra was the best argument in favor of the telephone. In a face-to-face conversation he felt too monitored, but on the phone he could roll his eyes, stick out his tongue, nurse his penis into half an erection while his voice remained obediently sympathetic and encouraging.
“I have to admit I was surprised by the girl’s enthusiasm—”
“The girl! Aren’t those reviews unsigned? How do you know a girl wrote it?” Alex demanded.
“I don’t.”
“Aha! You just assumed that girls burble with absurd enthusiasm, especially over a young man’s first novel.”
“Well?”
“Jack Holmes, you’ve really gone too far this time.” She laughed and pretended to be shocked. Half-humorous exasperation was her favorite mode.
“Are you wearing your dark red silk robe?” he asked.
“Yes, and I’m drinking tea from that beautiful cup you gave me and how dare you change the subject.” But she inhaled a little laugh just to prove she was half-teasing him. “I won’t ask what you’re wearing—I’m easily shocked.”
Jack said, “Will seemed happy and calmer than I’ve ever seen him. Alexandra, I have a terrible confession to make.”
“Uh-oh,” she said, her voice still merry and indignant. “What now?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to recognize certain … elements of your life in Will’s heroine.”
“What!” A real indignation overtook the mock one. “Why would I—are you saying—how dare you, Jack Holmes! You mean to say that you fed that man all my secrets for his wretched book, that you ran from my side and seconds later started tattling to that iceberg about the most intimate details of my life that I entrusted you with in a sacred act of friendship, don’t sweat it, I don’t really care.”
Jack swallowed and laughed a little laugh. “I’ll bring it over right now.”
He could hear her rustling around in the background. He resented her—and then realized he resented anyone who made him feel guilty.
He could hear her breathing, then there was the sound of porcelain on porcelain. “You can leave the effing thing with the doorman.” She hung up.
Alexandra had become one of his very closest friends (Fuckin’ rich bitch! an angry, guilty part of his mind shouted), and he couldn’t bear to think he’d betrayed her (East Side cunt!). Until this very moment he hadn’t understood how thoroughly he’d pimped out her secrets to hungry Will—Will had used them both.
As he walked from the subway stop on Lexington over to Alexandra’s building, he said out loud, “How oedipal!” and someone looked at him strangely. Were Will and Alex his parents?
All the time he’d been listening to Alex’s confidences and been relaying them to an indifferent-seeming but actually greedy Will had felt as emotional as his childhood love for his impossible, elusive parents. A shrink would have a field day, he thought. Maybe I’m hoping to bring these attractive new parents together, but this time with me, the beloved son, as the crucial intermediary.
What if Alex liked the book and married Will and they adopted Jack as their sweet, exasperating son?
“It’s not such a big deal,” he sai
d out loud. “Fuck them.” Suddenly he had to face the possibility that he’d lose—he’d lost—her friendship and perhaps Will’s. He still had Alice and Rebekkah as friends, his black-stockinged girls with their wit and talent. Suddenly he despised Alex’s china and satin hostess gown, even her expensive thinness (only a diet of caviar and celery and daily dressage lessons could keep you that thin).
When he arrived at Alex’s address, there she was sitting near the front door looking minuscule and very white, like a sprig of baby’s breath. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail to reveal tiny marsupial ears and the blue veins visibly ticking at her temples. She was wearing carefully ironed jeans and spool heels. Jack pushed past the elderly doorman, dripping Ruritanian braid from his epaulets, and put the manila envelope in her hands.
“Here he is,” Alex said, “the traitor.”
Jack thought of ten different things to say but finally muttered, “Call me when you’ve read it.”
“I’ll walk you to the corner,” she said, and he thought that in spite of it all she really was a nice girl.
Did the doorman think they were having a lovers’ quarrel and that’s why she hadn’t kissed him and they were both so solemn? As they left the building, she took his hand and whispered, “Louse!”
It was a cool, rainy night. “You’ll get wet,” Jack said.
“I don’t care,” Alex replied, “grouch, grouch.”
“We’re doing our own sound effects now?”
Their good-bye at the corner was almost shy; that she’d come down to greet him already suggested a reconciliation.
As he walked along by himself, he decided he was glad he didn’t live up here on the East Side with its banks behind colonial facades and its show windows full of evening dresses and over each doorway a faded green canopy smelling of mildewed canvas. And everyone seemed so sexless and grown-up. No sleazy Village homos; even the ones up here wore chinos and crew necks knotted over their shoulders. And penny loafers without socks and beige windbreakers.