Hot Properties (42 page)

He tried not to think of the future. He assumed they would get back together, that his current condition was temporary and therefore should be enjoyed rather than wasted in melancholic solitude. He went out every night, spent a fortune on dinners and entertainment (he went to four Broadway shows those first two weeks, swallowing the forty-five-dollar ticket prices without a hard gulp, much less choking), and sublet a one-room office from a friend of Karl’s for four hundred dollars a month, picking up his typewriter and papers while Marion was at work. He spent as though the money he was withdrawing from his and Marion’s joint account was a college allowance from his parents and the consequence was going to be a scolding, not bankruptcy.

In the grand explosion of this drama. Tom Lear reading his pages and telling him they were good, but making some suggestions for changes (which Fred executed in a few days, not showing the revisions to Tom), made only a small noise. Tom spoke casually about the writing, seeming neither too impressed nor too dismayed. And he socialized with Fred just as frequently, even putting him up for a few days.

Bart called him daily when he heard the news, took him to lunch, offered his guest room either to sleep or work in, and asked for the one hundred pages with increasing insistence. After the meeting with the therapist, Fred decided (see, he told himself,
my
self-esteem is okay) to hand them in.

“They’re pretty good, Fred,” Bart said on the phone, with a lack of enthusiasm or despair similar to Tom Lear’s. “They need some work of course, but they’re ready for Bob to see.”

Fred worried during the weekend that Holder was reading his manuscript, but not intensely. He felt a general sense of safety in the world now that Marion had thrown him out. The peculiar rise in his self-confidence puzzled him, made him wonder if he should make any attempt to reconcile with her, whether the marriage was somehow debilitating and dangerous. But even that seemed to be out of his hands, since Marion had all the momentum with her, though why that should be also baffled him. Everything in his life, whether he was married or not, whether he had a place to live or not, whether he had a viable book contract or an income for the year, whether he could stay in the race with his circle of writing friends—everything was in other people’s hands: Marion’s and Bob Holder’s. And yet this absolute lack of control, instead of corrupting his mood and invading his sleep, kept him lighthearted, interested in each day with its surprises and dangers, and let him fall asleep soundly, happily exhausted by the complicated arrangements and busy social life of a tourist in a big city loaded with friends.

Bob Holder phoned Monday morning. “Hi, Fred. How are you?” His voice was pleasant, casual.

“Good. How are you?” Fred asked, feeling more than ever the person he wanted to be.

“Fine, fine. Listen, I think you should come in, maybe this afternoon, and talk about the book.”

“Okay.”

“See if we both feel like continuing with it. I think it may be getting away from us.”

“Un-huh.” Fred was in a stranger’s kitchen, and when, at Fred’s shocked tone, his hosts looked up from their coffee, he smiled bravely at them.

“Can you come in today at three?”

“Sure.”

“Great. See you then.”

“Is everything all right?” he was asked while he returned the phone to the cradle with the slow motions of an accident victim. If the worst were about to happen—a total rejection, a canceling of the contract—everyone would have to be told, but Fred wasn’t sure of the disaster, and if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t want anyone to know that Holder had ever been critical of his work.

He lied, saying that Holder had praised the pages and simply wanted to discuss what lay ahead. Within a half-hour he invented a reason to go out, and called Bart from a phone booth. During the past few months their relationship had progressed to intimacy. Bart got right on. “What’s up, Fred?”

“I heard from Holder. Sounds like he’s dumping the book.”

“What?”

At the surprise in Bart’s tone. Fred already felt relieved. “Well, he said I should come in today to see whether it’s worth continuing with the book at all.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“He said we … he said we should discuss if we want to continue with the book.”

“Well, we do!”

Fred laughed. “Damn right we do.”

“I’ll call him.” Bart spoke as though that would take care of it, a President announcing he was in charge.

“Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I’m making too much of it. I don’t know. It may just be the way he talks.”

“I’ll feel my way around. I have to call him about another project anyway, and I’ll casually bring up your book.”

“That won’t fool him. He’ll know.”

Bart snorted. “You overestimate him. He won’t. When are you meeting him?”

“Three.”

“Okay. Where are you gonna be?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. Call in at two … or, no, call between two and two-thirty.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t worry. Relax.”

“Okay.” Fred said obediently. He wanted to marry Bart after this conversation. The terrible demons that Holder’s conversation had summoned were gone in an instant, their damp invasion of his soul burned off by the heat of Bart’s energy. For a few hours he went about his business without more than a ripple of worry. But as two o’clock approached he began to get a clear image of what it would mean if Holder didn’t proceed with the contract. He would have no immediate income, and unless Marion was willing to take him back, the expense of finding an apartment in New York would be prohibitive without the guarantee of some money. Of course he could probably return to
American Sport
(the newsstand sales hadn’t collapsed on his departure, but still he was pretty sure … ) or some other publication, but that was failure. There would be no more Elaine’s, screenings with Tom, poker games at Karl’s, and so on. Sure, supposedly they were all friends now, but he knew, he just knew, that his standing within the circle he now moved would be compromised. And even if he could keep his new social position, would he enjoy it without the right to it? He had loved being a novelist. Working privately at this great project, being asked about its progress by everyone as though it were a public work, a bridge whose completion was eagerly awaited. That would be gone. The independence, the pride in his achievement, all of it removed from the table of life by a hasty waiter, carrying off plates that still had plenty of nourishment on them.

He called Bart at two. His secretary said he was still out at lunch and would call back. “That’s no good,” Fred said. “He can’t reach me. I’ll phone again in ten minutes.” He decided to get uptown for the meeting and try Bart from there. He took a cab, got stuck in traffic, and wasn’t able to find a telephone until two-twenty-five.

“He just got on a long-distance call to London,” she told him. “Call back in ten minutes.”

He waited six.

“Bart said I should tell you he hasn’t heard back from Holder,” she said this time. “He’ll keep trying. Call back in ten minutes.”

Fred’s confidence in Bart, damning up the stormy waters of fear, broke, washed over him, and smashed him against midtown. The busy streets quavered in his vision. The itemized list of his troubles passed before him, wrapping around the buildings like a stock-market ticker tape recording a crash.

When he phoned again at two-fifty, knowing this would be his last chance, he was sure of defeat. “Hold on, Fred,” the secretary said. Even her tone had become urgent and fearful.

“Fred.” Bart said, anxious, a general pinned by enemy fire, trained to fight off panic, “I’ve tried Bob three times. He hasn’t called me back. I don’t think that means anything. Your meeting’s—what?—in a couple of minutes?”

“Yeah.” The sound of his own voice appalled Fred. It was hoarse with dread.

“Call me after you’re done.”

“But …” he began, and then fell silent. Fred breathed hard, as though he could suck in words and thoughts from the air to fill the vacuum that nervousness had made of his brain.

“Yes?” Bart said after a few moments of silence.

“I don’t know.”

“Look, you’d better get to the meeting. Just don’t commit yourself to anything. Listen to me. Report it to me. We’ll discuss it. You don’t have to make any decisions on the spot. Okay?”

“He’s gonna reject the book.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t think he will. He would have called me first. Don’t assume that. Now, come on. Relax. Get going.”

“Okay,” he said, hanging up without a good-bye, like a doctor on call rushing to an emergency. He hustled across the street and into the lobby. At the reception area he was sweating, relieved that he had gotten there a minute before three.

Then Holder kept him waiting a half-hour. During the slow agony of the minutes passing, Fred passed into a state of hopeless resignation. He considered begging Holder for a chance to do a complete rewrite, but he doubted if even that would be accepted.

Finally he was brought in. Holder got up energetically, saying, “Sorry I kept you waiting. There’s been a disaster here today with a manuscript. It was delivered to the wrong …” He waved his hand at the air, dismissing it. “Sorry. Anyway, I won’t have a chance to talk to you, because I’ve got a meeting in a half-hour and I have to return calls … I’m way behind.” He picked up Fred’s manuscript from his desk, revealing a sweater with the elbow eaten through by the moth of his nervous manner. The first page of Fred’s one hundred pages was marked in numerous places and there were so many yellow flags sticking out (markers placed on the edge of the pages to indicate places where Holder had made changes or queried something) that it looked like a badly made paper duck. “I found a lot of things I didn’t like. I still love the basic idea. I’ve showed where I think things go wrong and what you should do about them. Obviously, you may not agree and want to drop the contract. But read it over, take your time, and let me know if you can make the changes. Then we’ll meet again and I’ll make sure I have plenty of time to talk.” Holder held out the tattered object with a touch of regret, as though he were surrendering something he wanted to hold on to.

Fred stared at it for a second, a skeptical pedestrian peering at a flier thrust at him. He reached for it slowly, took it gingerly, afraid to bend the yellow stickers—there was hardly room to grasp his pages without bending one of them. He looked into Holder’s eyes and said, “I’ll make any changes you want.”

Holder nodded, seeming neither surprised nor confirmed in his expectation. “Good boy,” he said.

In Chico’s siege of Rounder’s job, David Bergman played the role of a keeper of secrets, an overzealous agent of the usurped prince, working to return the just to power. David’s intense dislike of Rounder, this stupid blue-eyed blond who had smiled and blundered his way into a job that rightfully belonged to men who had come up the ladder that David was now climbing, seemed at times greater than Chico’s. David stirred the already churning envy in Chico’s soul on a daily basis. He kept a precise inventory of the institutional injustice that was Chico’s lot and waved it in his face to enrage him further. In return, he learned the last remaining intimacies of Animal Crackers, and was told the status and presumptive fate of every employee, each time sworn to silence.

And though this made him a great friend of Chico’s, his distance from his peers widened. He could not cheerfully drink and joke with men above whom the sword of
Newstime’s
wrath hung, no matter how invisible its presence to the victim. Nor could he resist, through slow hints and comments to Chico, corrupting the good opinion the Marx Brothers held of his rivals, whether their judgments were correct or not. In the dim light of morning, feeling lonely and repentant, David would swear to stop his machinations, but like an addict, he was seduced by Chico’s eager face, promising rewards of power and information and he let the drug flow freely between them.

He was using Chico. Ironically, Chico no doubt believed the reverse was true, that he had made an ally of a bright young talent. Thus even David’s one remaining intimate relationship at the magazine was founded on a lie, that he was a soldier in Chico’s battle to defeat Rounder, while in fact he used his position to keep his rivals down. He didn’t admit any of this to Patty, and lived in the loft, skulking among its painted columns and soaring walls, alone with his loathing for himself.

Nor did he dare tell anyone of his sexual obsession. During late nights at the magazine, he carefully arranged things to be free when the show with the pornographic ads came on, closing his door and turning on his television (a perk of senior editors), watching it with his face only inches from the screen so that he could switch channels instantly if someone knocked on the door.

He began to notice at newsstands that there were magazines with photos of women in leather outfits, standing over chained men who writhed in mock abject pain. He would see words blazoned across the covers: bondage, sex, slave, discipline. They had magic for him, stunning his brain into dumbfounded stares, drying his mouth, awakening his otherwise dulled genitals. He looked for newsstands that carried such magazines and tried to calculate the likelihood that someone he knew might walk in if he were to attempt a purchase. There simply was no way to know. The only measure of safety he could give himself was to do the buying out of both his loft’s and
Newstime’s
neighborhoods. His other temptation was to call Mistress Regina as she ordered her slaves to do. He wanted to laugh at it, the stupid name, the bad camerawork, the lamely delivered lines, but there was no comedy in his desire, no objective higher ground for his mind to climb. He was stuck, transfixed by the secret lust, and paralyzed by its equally covert twin, his self-disgust at giving in.

His job, the actual editing of the sections under him, became increasingly easy in its challenge, and increasingly elaborate and tedious in its execution. He had eased the task of getting story ideas approved by the Marx Brothers because of his intimacy with Chico, but handling the writers got harder. He fought for three weeks to get a story in on the economics of Disney’s amusement parks (it was a growing problem since Wait’s death and the eighty-two recession, and David wanted to do it before national attention was focused by a takeover), and won, largely because Chico backed him, only to be handed a story by a writer under him. Jeff Nelson, that missed the point and was impossibly dull.