Grub (26 page)

J
ackson Miller, in the middle of one of the strangest nights of his life, felt nothing short of fractured. In a room full of aspiring writers—who the hell else attends a fiction reading—he was a celebrity. But this seemed to elicit only disdain from his friends, or at least from Eddie. Eddie acted pissed off that he’d bargained a reading in order to get them a table, and Jackson was tempted to tell him to grow the fuck up and realize that he’d done it not to show off but for Henry’s sake. Instead he tried to appease Eddie by talking up his book to fans, but those efforts also met with disapproval. All he seemed to be able to do for his once-best-friend was to give him yet another excuse to drink too much.

And then, watching Margot read, Jackson was overwhelmed by tenderness. He toyed with the idea of begging her to marry him but was also taken with the notion that Margot and Henry might be hapless soul mates. Mostly, he worried that he would never be able to have real friends again. As he clapped loudly after Margot’s mostly inaudible reading, he realized anew what she must have known all along: she was better off without him.

What he needed was a woman like himself. He wanted a woman who was successful and good-looking so could he be sure he was truly desired rather than seen as a good trade-up, an opportunity, an object of bragging rights. What he needed was the female equivalent of the Jonathans. He stared at Eddie, whose posture already sagged with the liquor he was knocking back, and resisted the urge to hit him as hard as he could. Eddie had no idea what to do with a woman like Amanda. Jackson should have stopped him from marrying her in the first place.

Whether or not he really would have decked his friend, he would never know. Several women shrieked, and the room seemed to roar. A tall woman in a long, black wig and white cat-suit stalked through the CIA Bar. Jackson measured the perfect but familiar line of arm, the bottom shaped like an inverted heart, the long curve of slender calf. The woman grabbed the microphone.

“I don’t want an introduction,” she said loudly, surveying the crowd. “I
am
an introduction.”

All she needed was a guitar to convince anyone she was a rock star. She even sang her first story: a short-short told from the point of view of a politician’s penis. Her falsetto was confident, and she swayed her ribcage in a snake-like move.

“That one’s titled ‘Little One Eye,’” she said to the raucous room. “And now for something serious.”

She read from a pristine manuscript in an unnaturally low voice. Jackson concentrated on her features, imaging her without the wig and makeup. He glanced at Henry, to his right, whose hands fell to his lap as he leaned forward, staring. To his left, Eddie was scanning the room as he swirled melting ice cubes around his almost-empty drink. Even when he looked toward the podium, his stare was vague.

Clarice Aames continued to read her story about a movie star trapped by her own fame who hires a ghostwriter to pen a fake autobiography. Toward the end of the story, the narrator puts her ghostwriter in his place by calling him an amanuensis. Jackson had not seen nor heard the word since Iowa, when the workshop had argued that Amanda couldn’t use it, that it was too pretentious for fiction. Amanda had been furious, in her subdued way, arguing over post-class drinks that nothing was too pretentious for fiction, that she could use the word if she damn well pleased.

And so it was the theme of the story and that single ridiculous word, even more than the hints of Amanda’s silky voice leaking through Clarice’s low husk, that convinced Jackson that he had been right at first sight. Clarice Aames was Amanda Renfros. Barely hearing the story now, he watched her mouth open and close over her words. He adored her more than ever.

Jackson studied Eddie’s face again and decided that his friend was too far gone, was beyond contempt, if he couldn’t even recognize his own wife’s fabulous limbs under the skin-tight white spandex, her hand in its glove, the shape of her eye under the thick black liner and purple contact lenses. Eddie was a ruined man if he didn’t remember how badly she had wanted to get away with using the word
amanuensis
to distinguish someone who merely copies from someone who writes.

He no longer wanted to punch his friend. As he watched Amanda frenzy the room with rhyming couplets, he wanted to kill him.

As Amanda pushed herself through the rising swarm of fans, Jackson stood and kicked Eddie’s chair out from under him. He grinned, feeling strong. But pity overcame his rage at the sight of his old friend inebriated, knocked back on his can, oblivious to the life he could have claimed for himself. Too drunk to realize why he was ass to the floor, Eddie reached up a hand for help and was pulled to his feet by Jackson’s old basketball hoist.

B
ack at home, Margot Yarborough contemplated the fate of intelligent good girls throughout history: teaching. She accessed the job lists of the Modern Language Association and the Association of Departments of English. Without a terminal degree, she could not hope for a tenure-track professorship, but there were instructorships and lectureships for which a Master’s degree and a published book were sufficient credentials.

One morning, while she was tailoring her application letter to a women’s college in upstate New York and a liberal arts school in Virginia, the phone rang. It was her father’s friend, Mr. Quarmbey.

“I’m afraid he’s not in,” said Margot, realizing that her father had again failed to return from what was supposed to have been a short walk. “Can I take a message?”

“I just wanted to let him know about poor Hinks’s novel.”

“Wasn’t it terrible about his death!” Margot said. “He was a nice man and a very good writer.”

In truth, she felt more than a little guilt over not starting the journal that her father, Quarmbey, and Hinks had advocated. It would have been an economic failure, she knew that, but it would have been no worse than how things had turned out. Hinks might still be alive, and her father would be a happier person.

“I’ve done my best to place
The Great Adirondack Novel
so that his death won’t be a complete waste.”

“That’s a nice thing to do.”

“I’m afraid I’ve had no luck. I thought maybe the publicity angle would help—man dies in service of literature and all that—but the few editors willing to take a second look haven’t changed their minds since they rejected it the first time.”

“It just doesn’t seem fair. I suppose the novel is too well-written and too quiet? Maybe too rural?”

“Apparently the novel is actually quite awful. So many writers of the literary short story write plotless novels, but Hinks overcompensated. Too melodramatic is what I’m hearing back. Not quiet enough. Not literary enough. And his effort to write in a female point of view was apparently dreadful. Lots of talk of menstruation and that sort of thing. I always did view Hinks as a short story writer. Some writers have their form, their length, and that’s that. I should have warned him away from the novel. Anyway, let your father know I tried.”

“It was a good thing to do. Thanks for letting us know.” Margot paused to switch ears. “You should come see us sometime. We miss having you around.”

She was aware that no one came to visit them anymore, not even Quarmbey, and that her father’s notorious irascibility could not be the lone reason. Wondering if her mother had figured out what she had observed, she slipped out to help her ailing father find his way home.

S
itting only a few blocks away from the Frick and the painting that had sparked her wealth and fame, Amanda Renfros stared at the tall case of tortes and tarts in the Café Sabarsky. She made a mental note to ask her copyeditor if it was proper to say ladyfingers or ladiesfinger as she gazed at the Walderbeere torte buried under small, wild strawberries. But the chocolates vied for her attention: the simple, dense sachertorte, the flourless chocolate-walnut cake, the chocolate-rum cake, the German chocolate roulade. That was the problem, really, with Grub—no proper pastry chef. She was glad Jackson had picked this up-town location for their meeting. The world of women readers that could forgive her for being attractive and successful might be less generous about her ability to eat desserts without putting on weight. They might not see it as she did: compensation for living for her first eighteen years with poverty, anxiety, and weirdly colored boxes of generic cake mix.

“I’ll wait to order,” she told the obsequious waiter, “but bring some champagne.”

“Celebrating the end of summer?”

“I’m celebrating everything.” She held her smile as Jackson filled the entryway.

As they neared the end of their first bottle of sparkling wine and waited for her spatzle and his liverwurst and onion confit, Jackson got to the point. “I’m here to blackmail you. I know your secret.”

With Eddie, Amanda always felt a step ahead, in charge, the grown up, on top of the game. Part of the excitement of being around Jackson was that he was capable of one-upmanship, the trickier line, the ambush. He could pull her strings.

“I have no secrets from you, Jack.” She pulled back her smile, worked an expression of mild astonishment and light concern.

“From me? Not anymore. But you do have a secret.”

Jackson emptied the last of the champagne into her flute, paused as the waiter set down their food, and nodded that they did indeed want another bottle. As the waiter backed away, Jackson whispered, “Clarice.”

“Oh. That.” Amanda ducked her shoulder under her hair as she speared a piece of wild mushroom with a silver tine. She looked up, lifting her eyebrows, “But you said blackmail?”

“Surely you don’t want Amanda Yule’s legions of women fans to know that she dresses like catgirl and reads to liquored-up irony boys in the West Village? And isn’t Amanda Yule everything that Clarice Aames’s fans find repellent?” He concentrated on his food again, mumbling about the high quality of the liverwurst before saying in a way that sounded at once planned and off-hand, “And then, of course, there’s Eddie.”

Amanda continued to make her way through the mound of spatzle and sweet corn. “But you’re only supposed to blackmail people who are richer than you are. I don’t have anything you don’t.”

“Yes you do.” Jackson’s stare bore through her. “You have exactly what I want.”

Neither of them wanted to flatten the electricity with a long cab ride or spoil the romance with a bed one of them had shared with someone else. And so twenty minutes found them not at Jackson’s apartment but in the lobby of a newly opened East Side luxury hotel.

“Just one night?” the young woman at the desk asked.

“About four hours ought to do.”

“You’ll have to pay for a whole night,” the clerk said flatly, without looking up.

Jackson pushed a credit card across the counter. “Charge me for a week if you want. I intend to get my money’s worth.”

Feeling momentarily shy, Amanda concentrated on the elevator’s paisley carpet as they ascended to the eleventh floor, but Jackson caught her gaze and locked it. As she returned his stare, she felt more vulnerable than she had in years. But unlike in those early years, the vulnerability felt good. She was tired of always being strong.

Everything in their room was pale blue or glass, and Amanda felt as though she were floating in cool light as Jackson kissed her. Eddie’s lips were shallow, and sometimes with him Amanda had felt as though she were kissing his skull. And it had been months and months since Eddie’s mouth hadn’t tasted sour with Jim Beam or the cheapest of Highland malts.

Jackson’s lips were soft and full, the good champagne on his breath had a pleasing mineral taste, and their mouths fit together perfectly. As they stretched out on the king-sized bed in front of mirrored closet doors, Amanda realized that she was finally with the right person. Jackson pulled back from kissing her, stroked her cheek, and then swatted her hard on the rear.

“You’re going to do whatever you want to me, aren’t you?”

“You made me wait a long time,” he answered. “I’ve had a long time to think about it.”

The feeling that she wasn’t in control—that she wasn’t the responsible one, that she would do whatever he wanted—thrilled her. She was at his mercy, and her throat trembled.

At first Jackson’s moves were gentle and smooth. He touched her face, her hair, undressed her slowly, ran his hands down her sides, kissed her more, made love to her with real tenderness. But by the time the room was lit with only the faded, slanted light of dusk, she had, at Jackson’s bidding, submitted to nearly every act she could imagine even the most degraded of courtesans committing. She felt used, exhausted, and happier than she’d ever been.

“Maybe next time I’ll come as Clarice,” Amanda said as she dressed, pleasantly shaky on her feet. “And then we can really have some fun.”

“I love you,” Jackson told her as he put her into a cab. “For years now, I think.”

Traffic was fierce, and Amanda was happy for the long ride. She replayed the afternoon in her mind, holding her hands to her face to breathe in Jackson’s lingering smell.

As the taxi neared her block, though, she felt unsure of herself and embarrassed at the thought of being seen by Eddie. Relieved when she found he wasn’t home, she showered and set to work. By the time her husband had returned to drink and read in their living room, Amanda had complicated the plot of her new novel.

Her protagonist, Amelia—the female writer married to a marginally successful writer—launches an affair with an ambitious writer named Jaspar, who becomes wildly successful after writing a book about a moderately-known painter, an idea he gets from Amelia. His reputation further skyrockets when he refuses to appear on a popular television book club. The talented lovers meet over tiramisu. Unable to resist each other’s fabulous good looks and irresistible charm any longer, they romp in the good linens and over the chairs and ottomans of a near-by luxury hotel. Discussion of the Proustian madeleine ensues. It needed refining, Amanda knew, but the draft read:

Amanda’s warm sense of wellbeing drained as she thought about Eddie, and she put on a cardigan against the chill. There was ugliness and hurt ahead—it couldn’t be avoided—and she wished she was already on the other side of it, already leading the life that would permit no further stain.