Corkscrew (6 page)

'Uh huh.'

'Well, that must be fun,' she said.

'It is.'

'We live in Yonkers,' Fred told him. 'Our boy Perry went to school with Jack.'

'At Antioch.'

'
That's
right!'

Some people a few rows down called to Fred and Molly, who called back, and farther down below Lucie Proctorr came in by herself and took a seat toward the right end of the first row. Her blond hair glittered like gold shavings in the direct beam of one of the ceiling spotlights. The gray unlit set beyond her looked like a grave.

Wayne felt a little sick.

He had no idea what the play was about, except doors were slammed a lot, people stood four-square to shout at one another, and there was a great deal of laughter and even some applause from the audience along the way. Wayne was mostly aware of that blonde head down there, picking up light from the stage.

The odd thing was, he mainly thought about
The Shadowed Other.
Details about Jim Gregory, the people he would meet when he got to Guatemala, how he would go about his search, all these things ran through his head which they hadn't been doing all week.

Wayne suspected there was more applause at the close tonight than there would be at subsequent performances; everybody here, after all, was connected to somebody involved in the show. The actors got sustained applause, and then 'Author!' was called several times, and a beaming bookish man in pebbly brown sports jacket and navy blue turtleneck came out to receive a standing ovation. He had dark-framed eyeglasses that bounced the stage lights at the audience and a neat Vandyke beard. He held his hands together in front of himself as though he were handcuffed, and bobbed his head a lot, and smiled and smiled.

Then, at what Wayne thought was just the right moment, the man on stage raised his hands for the people to be quiet, and they were, and he said, 'None of this could have happened if it wasn't for our wonderful director, Janet Higgins!' and she came out, and was one of the women Lucie had been talking to in front of the theater. There was another standing ovation, during which Lucie, excitedly jumping in the front row, clasped her hands over her head to let Janet Higgins know she was the champ.

Janet Higgins gave a brief laudatory speech, and introduced the founder and general manager of the theater, a rumpled man in a sweater, who gave one more laudatory speech, and then invited everybody up on stage for 'drinks and goodies.'

It was strange to be at a cocktail party on a stage set. You were in a living room, and yet you weren't. People chattered happily, Fred and Molly seated themselves comfortably on the audience-facing sofa, and a number of people sat on the staircase, which didn't actually go anywhere. The kitchen counter became the bar, complete with tuxedoed bartender, and tuxedoed waiters and waitresses circulated with platters of finger food. Wayne nursed a glass of white wine, wandered between living room and kitchen, and wondered how he was going to meet Lucie Proctorr, who was always in the middle of some conversation.

At last he saw that Jack Wagner was free, so he went over, stuck his hand out, and said, 'Congratulations.'

'Oh, thanks,' Wagner said. 'Thanks.' He was very bright-eyed, and his hand when he grasped Wayne's was vibrating. His other hand held a glass of white wine with wavelets in it.

Wayne said, 'I'm Wayne Prentice, I'm the guy Bryce foisted off on you.'

'Oh,
that's
who you are!' His expressions kept swerving, a kaleidoscope of different kinds of joy. 'I'm so glad you could make it,' he said.

'So am I. It's a terrific play.'

'Thank you.'

Looking around, Wayne said, 'Bryce's ex-wife is here someplace, isn't she?'

'Oh, Lucie! Sure, she's a buddy of Janet's. You don't know Lucie?'

'Bryce and I hadn't seen each other in years, until just recently. I guess he started looking up old friends after the marriage died. Listen, I'd love to meet Lucie Proctorr, but I don't know how to go about it.'

'Easiest thing in the world,' Wagner said. 'It's just, I tell you what, we won't mention you're a friend of Bryce's.'

'Good idea. What if I know you,' Wayne suggested, 'because I called you one time to get some background about journalism for a novel I was writing.'

'Perfect. Come on.'

Lucie was in the kitchen, in a little cluster of people by the refrigerator, next to a door that had a stub of porch outside it and beyond that the darkness of offstage. Wagner waited his moment, and then said, 'Lucie, I want you to meet somebody.'

She had a bird's alertness, Wayne noticed, in the way she turned her head, and in the brightness of her eyes. She stepped out of that conversation like stepping out of a tub. 'Yes?'

'Lucie Proctorr, Wayne Prentice.'

'How do you do?'

'Wayne's a novelist, but he's all right.'

'Oh,
some
novelists are all right,' she said, and grinned slightly at Wayne as she said, 'Are you a famous novelist, Mr Prentice?'

'Oh, no,' he said, 'I'm just a door-to-door novelist, I sell books out of the trunk of my car.'

'You must be a very persuasive salesman.'

'I try to be.'

'Sell me,' she said.

He didn't follow. 'What?'

'Sell me a book,' she said.

'Excuse me,' Wagner said, being called away, but neither paid any attention.

'Sell me your latest book,' she said.

That would have been too complicated. He said, 'No, I'll make it easy on myself. I'll sell you my first book.'

She watched him with amused keenness. 'Why is that easier?'

'I was very enthusiastic then.'

'Aren't you enthusiastic now?'

'Sometimes. My first book was called
The Pollux Perspective,
and it was about two army men whose job is to safe-guard a doomsday machine. One of them decides it's a manifestation of God, and has to be protected at all costs, and the other decides it's Armageddon, and its release should not be thwarted. They both think of themselves as the good guy.'

'Very arty,' she said.

'Actually,' he said, 'I was trying to be very commercial. Blowing everything up, you know.'

She looked thoughtful. 'What did you say that was called?'

'
The Pollux Perspective
.'

'But I've
read
that book!'

Astonished, he said, 'You have?'

'My husband had it. Ex-husband. Had it, probably still has it. Do you know him?'

'Your husband?'

'Ex-husband, or at least eventually. Bryce Proctorr.'

'Oh,
he's
famous,' Wayne said. 'I don't think he sells books out of the trunk of his car.'

'No, it might be better for him if he did,' she said. 'Would you fill my wineglass?'

'Delighted,' he assured her, and carried it away, and filled both glasses.

When he got back, she was in a different conversation, but she left it immediately, took her glass, and said, 'Thank you.
The Pollux Perspective.
Why aren't you famous, Mr Prentice? You're as good a writer as my former. Don't you push yourself?'

'Maybe not enough,' he said.

'Well, you're never going to get anywhere being a shrinking violet,' she told him. 'How many books have you published?'

'Twelve.'

'And still among the great unwashed. I think you should be ashamed of yourself.'

'It might not be entirely my fault.'

'All the losers say that,' she commented.

He could not let her see him become annoyed. 'Have you been around a lot of losers?' he asked her.

'Not for long. What are you working on now?'

'A man whose brother disappears, and he goes looking for him. I think it'll turn out, what he's searching for is himself.'

'Arty but commercial again?'

'Lots of skulduggery,' he said. 'South American generals.'

'Oh, don't we know all that?'

'We don't know my guy and his brother.'

'I'm not sure we need to know them,' she said. 'Sell it to me.'

'Not here. Too much distraction.'

Again, that sharp bird look; a bird of prey? 'Are you asking me for a date?'

He hadn't been. She was so aggressive, so fast, that all he could do was struggle to find immediate answers. Being with her was like being in a tennis match, not having known you'd be expected to play.

'Sure,' he said, because closer to her was where he would have to be, no matter what happened next. He remembered Bryce warning him that he had fallen in love with this woman once, and mightn't Wayne do the same? No. He'd said no before because of Susan, but now he could say no because of Lucie; she wasn't restful enough to fall in love with. You might lust after her, to see if it was possible to pin down with your cock that quicksilver quality, but that wouldn't be love.

He said, 'Dinner next Monday?'

'I'm busy Monday. Why not call me

Tuesday?'

'Because I don't know your number.'

'Oh, you're about to know my number,' she said, laughing at him, 'and I do believe I'm about to know yours.'

Susan was waiting up when he got home.

'I met her,' he said, and went to the kitchen for another glass of wine, and found Susan expectant in the living room when he got back. He sat down and said, 'Susan, I don't think I ought to talk about this from now on.'

'Just tell me,' she said, 'did you like her?'

'She's interesting but repellent,' he said.

'Good.'

He said, 'I think, Susan, it's time for us to go to bed and have a sexual encounter.'

Amused, she said, 'So Lucie turned you on, did she?'

'She reminded me how much you turn me on,' he said, which was almost the truth.

And later, after Susan fell asleep, he lay thinking how that kind of woman could be a strong draw for a confident, high-powered personality like Bryce. She'd be a challenge to him, and he would never give up believing he was up to the challenge. But she would be relentless, there would never be any ceasefires with her, there was no way to bring that war to an end. Well, one.

Next day, in the mail, came four copies of a contract, between Bryce Proctorr and Tim Fleet, resident at this address. The wording was careful but straightforward. It described exactly the agreement Bryce had offered when they'd met. 'I notice,' he told himself, 'I get a quarter of any future earnings, subsidiary rights. Movie sales, see that? But that's okay. This is merely a passage through hell, that's all, like Jim Gregory's passage through Guatemala. If
The Domino Doublet,
or whatever Bryce changes it to, if it makes millions and millions of dollars, so what? Let him have three quarters, let him have it all. It wouldn't make a penny, if it didn't have Bryce's name on it in the first place. And after all, one way or another, it isn't about money anyway, is it?'

Along with the contract had come a note on Bryce's small stationery:

Dear Tim,

Please sign all copies, keep one, send the other three to me. Send them when you think the time is right, and I'll carry them with me when I leave for California for a couple of weeks.

I'm sure this collaboration will be a success for both of us.

Yours,

Bryce

'California for a couple of weeks,' he echoed. 'Of course, to be a continent away when it happens.'

In his office, Wayne had a four-drawer gray metal filing cabinet, man height, beside his desk. He took from its second drawer a fresh unused manila folder and inserted the four copies of the contract and the note into it. Then he took from his wallet the torn off piece of
Playbill
on which, last night, Lucie Proctorr had written her name and phone number and address uptown on Broadway. He copied all that on to a card on his Rolodex, and then the
Playbill
scrap also went into the folder.

He considered the folder for a while, trying to decide what heading to put on the tab, then at last left it blank. He slid it into the drawer between 'LEGAL' and 'MAGAZINES.' He'd know where to find it: 'LUCIE.'

For a week and a half, Bryce worked contentedly on
Two Faces in the Mirror.
It wasn't that he forgot his troubles, merely that they felt far away.

Structurally, the book was quite good, though there was some time-frame business in the middle that could be plainer; he made it plain. Changing the tone and feel of the book from a Wayne Prentice novel to a Bryce Proctorr novel wasn't hard; instantly he knew how to phrase Wayne's thoughts in his own words.

The third chapter, a very powerful mountainside near-death scene, was now the first chapter, with the rest adapted to fit, which was partly because Bryce thought it read better with that strong opening and partly because, if one of the few people who'd seen the book in its original form were to pick it up and start to read it, the story wouldn't seem instantly familiar. If it felt familiar later on, that would be all right; most novels remind us of other novels.

On the weekend, he could be with Isabelle. A divorced woman of thirty-four, soft and round with lustrous black hair, she was the daughter of a Spanish diplomat who'd retired back to Spain not long ago from some sort of long-term post at the United Nations. Isabelle's ex-husband was Spanish, had divorced her in Spain, and had custody of their three children, all under twelve. This was Isabelle's ongoing agony and struggle, the way Lucie was Bryce's, and they could find temporary respite and forgetfulness and comfort with one another. In Madrid, Isabelle's father was doing his best to get the case reopened, but for some reason the Catholic Church seemed to be on the ex-husband's side; Bryce thought it smarter not to delve too deeply into that situation.

They traveled separately to and from Connecticut every week-end, she driving up Friday morning and back Monday afternoon. She was a copywriter for an ad agency, working mostly on catalog copy for manufacturers of faux country-style clothing. Her arrangement with her boss was that she could work at home — at Bryce's home, actually — Fridays and Mondays, so long as she was available to have material faxed to her and to fax copy back. Otherwise, it was merely expected that her long weekends would leave her refreshed, with new copy in hand.