Like People in History (46 page)

"The point was, I thought, that his name was unpronounceable," Matt corrected me. "At any rate if Mr. Myxtplqztrx were out here in the Pines, that's who I'd screw around with!"

"And here I've been, fool enough to think you loved me for my body."

Matt groaned heavily. "Aaaah! I'm bushed!"

Unsurprisingly. By the clock, we'd been fucking for an hour and a half.

"I guess I won't go out either tonight," I said. "Harte's in L.A., so I have a break. I know what! I'll get up early and make a big breakfast for my honey and for my feminist guest. I'll rush down to the harbor for the Sunday
Times
and fresh scones. It'll all be ter-rib-ly civilized. Ter-rib-ly
Architectural Digest."

Matt hoisted himself into a sitting position. And sighed. "Piss."

"No, thanks, I'm Ml."

He was too exhausted even to laugh. He got off the bed slowly and stood up, swayed left slightly, caught himself on the door joist, went into the john, and urinated loudly.

When he came out again, he held a razor and a fresh emery board and tossed, them onto my lap. "C'mon boy, get up and work. That's all you're here for, you know! That, and because you're a fair piece
of
poontang!"

He lay down again heavily and began to push his denims off his legs. I crawled to the far edge of the bed and pulled them completely off. I removed his boots, the one regular one and, far more gingerly, the other one, with its built-in plastic construction. The socks. And the special nylon stockings over
the
foot. It looked swollen tonight, and while I knew it didn't—couldn't—hurt deeply, I knew he felt the skin, and so I was extra careful pulling down the nylon. I lightly shaved the area so no hairs could treacherously turn inward and fester, used the emery to rub off dead skin, and covered the foot with antibiotic talcum all over. I moved to his other foot and felt at the clipped-back-to-skin toenails and filed them back even more, so he wouldn't scratch himself in his sleep and unknowingly infect himself. I reached down and did the same to the nails on my own toes, so that I wouldn't, in my sleep, next to him, be the agent of harm. I gently massaged his foot—
the
foot—trying not to let any feelings show through my touch, at the missing toes, at the unhealthy plump softness and potentially fetid flesh. Just to be fair, I massaged his other foot too. And finished by pulling the sheet up his legs.

"Matt?"

"Thanks, babe. Come up here, yeah?"

"Okay. But first... about Thaddeus.... You're not..."

Matt was sleepy but still strong enough to pull me up next to him.

"I'm not what?... I told you I wasn't screwing with Thad."

"You're not... you're not falling in love with him, are you?"

His head had rolled over on the pillow. It swerved back to stare.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked—accused, really. "We were having such a good night and you—"

"I have the right to know if you are," I said, feeling myself on shaky ground.

"You know, the next time I want to make love," he mumbled into his pillow, "I'll call your assistant and set up an appointment."

"Exploitative bastard!"

Even turned away, even from in back, he was still strong enough to grab me and pull me close to his face. "Get serious, will you! Who but you would do all this shit for me?" he asked, gesturing at the edge of the bed, referring to our ritual that kept crippling incapacity at bay a few more days.

"They all would!" I said. "Thad! Any one of them!"

"You are Mr. Myxtplqztrx! Sixth-dimensional jerk!"

"All I ask is give me advance warning when you... split...."

"Idiot!" he moaned, letting me go and turning away.

"...So I don't end up looking a complete fool," I finished.

"Anything! Anything you want!" He covered his head with the pillow.

I got in bed next to him, still irritated, and in the dim light I picked up and began to read the novel I kept on the bed table.

Fifteen minutes later, he was lightly snoring and I was involved in the book, but my eyes were beginning to smear the words on the page. When I shut off the light and slid down the mattress, Matt moved next to me in the dark and we assumed our sleep position: me on my back, flat and motionless as a corpse in its coffin, he on one side facing me, one arm thrown over my midsection, one leg thrown over my lower body, effectively trapping me, his other hand lightly gripping my dick.

"Mr. Myxtplqztrx!" he murmured once in his sleep.

Four phones were ringing at once. And all of them were for me.

The Grunt fielded them one after another, writing down messages, then he looked up and pointed to the phone, held up a finger so I'd pick up line one, and picked up his own receiver. Not six feet away, at her own desk, also on the phone, Sydelle Auslander had crossed her long legs, as she was rifling through a folder while on hold. This, I thought, is my staff. God help me.

"Boss wants you!" the Grunt said. "I don't know. He didn't say," he quickly added, cutting me off at the pass.

"Sit on it, Bernard," I said casually, "and rotate! Who were the others?"

I could see him go through the messages. "No one important. No one important. And your dance buddy."

"Jeffrey? I wanted to talk to him! Did you tell him I've been trying to reach him?"

"I did. He said he's been living at the tubs. He met Mr. Wrong from— are you ready?—Cincinnati there and hasn't been home for two days."

"Is he home now?"

"He gave me three phone numbers. Aren't you going in?"

"In... a... minute!"

"Do
you
know what it's about?" the Grunt said.

I didn't. I thought a bit. Maybe... No, I didn't have a clue. But I did know that whenever Harte called me into his office on the afternoon that the magazine was going to bed, it was bound to be trouble—real trouble!

I hung up the receiver. Stood up. Turned toward the door to our publisher's office. And strode instead directly into the art director's studio next door.

Newell Rose was seated on the floor in fall lotus position. The darks of his overlarge pale-blue eyes were hidden somewhere deep in their sockets. Around me, the studio looked unusually spotless, even for such a complete anal-retentive type like Newell. His light board was clear, pristine, shut off. His desk was clean. Rolls of tape and wrapped bunches of rubber bands and stickums were arrayed by size and color to one side. Upon the walls around us, in precise, perfect double-page boards was the entire current issue of the magazine, all neat and clean and finished. Ready to be picked up by our printer in about an hour. Or so I hoped— against hope.

I thought, Newell knows trouble's looming. Or at least he guesses that it's on its way! Otherwise he wouldn't be so intent on centering himself like this. But I couldn't be certain.

"I'm not
even dreaming
of interrupting," I said. "But Harte just called me into his office. So..."

"Shit! Fuck! Piss! Nigger! Kike! Wop!" Newell chanted his mantra aloud without even moving his lips.

"...I just thought I'd warn you," I said and quickly ducked back out of his office.

If Harte wanted to see me, that meant changes would have to be made at the last minute, and any changes to be made at the last minute meant Newell would have to stick around and make them on the boards—painfully make them, since by this stage in the magazine's production, he'd already formed a complete universe of order and beauty and perfection centering around what? The finished issue, of course! Which Harte—with me as his agent—was about to suddenly, mindlessly, demonically destroy.

Back out in the oversized, big-windowed pressroom I could see the Grunt on the phone again. He spotted me, raised the receiver above his head, and shook it from side to side. In the odd if somewhat primitive semiology of Bernard Gunzenhausen's body language as my assistant at
Manifest,
holding the phone up in the air and shaking it like that meant crucial, meant desperate, meant one of only two persons could possibly be on the other end of the line—the President of the United States, whom the Grunt respected for his power yet personally despised, or Matt Loguidice, whom he adored unstintingly and for whose sake he would willingly die the most humiliating and painful death.

I went to an abandoned advertising person's desk with the nearest empty phone and picked up line four. It wasn't Matt. It was:

"Hi, Cuz. Hope I'm not
getting you
at a bad time."

"Alistair? Where are you?"

"Actually I'm at the Pines Harbor public telephone. Reason I'm calling is that something has come up and... Tom and Juerg have decided to continue on to Bar Harbor in the boat and my... the... you know, papers haven't come through yet."

"You checked the post office?"

"Again! I can't really do anything until all this is settled. I was wondering... You have a spare room. Could I possibly stay at your place out here until..."

Gevalt!
Matt would have kittens if I called and asked him.

"You know, it's okay with me," I said. "But I'd have to check with the others. Luis and Patrick and..."

"Matt called them already and they agreed," Alistair amazed me by saying.

"He did?" My Matt did that for Alistair?

"I explained to him that it won't be for long," Alistair said. "Just until I get the papers and the cash draft comes through from our Parisian bank to the little Chemical office out here."

I was still astonished Matt had agreed. He was so finicky about his privacy. Unless... Could he have done it for my sake? To be good to me because he was feeling guilty about spending so much time with Thaddeus? (I knew how much time exactly; I had my acquaintances, my friends, my spies, in and around the harbor and at the Botel.) Whichever it was, I'd have to call Matt later and promise to do something extra nice for him when I flew out.... If I even managed to get out there this weekend.

"Well, if it's okay with Matt and the others...."

"He couldn't have been more gracious about it, " Alistair assured me.

"...I guess it's okay with me."

"That'll be a big help! Thanks. We'll see you tonight, right?"

"Depends upon what happens here."

"The reason I ask is that we decided to cook dinner tonight."

Matt cook? He burned boiled eggs! But Alistair surely must have learned to cook in his years as a French chateau co-owner and house-husband. I told him not to bother. Or at least to wait an hour. "I'll call Matt and tell him my plans for tonight when I know them."

"Thanks again, Cuz. You're a lifesaver."

"Sweet with a hole in my head," I responded, but he'd already hung up.

"I thought you'd want to take that call," the Grunt said. He'd quite shamelessly eavesdropped, leaning on the desk adjacent to where I'd perched.

He was just oozing questions: Who was Alistair really? What was his place, his function, his precise importance in my life?

That's one of the down sides to having a really good, a truly involved, assistant: they give themselves over completely to your life. They adore whom you like. Despise and abhor whom you dislike. Go out of their way to do things you might do for some in your life if you only had the time to do them. Go out of their way to ruin and undo those you'd make trouble for if you only had the time. In short, they help you live your life a bit better, fuller, and more satisfyingly. Yet at the same time they detract from it by always being there and always letting you know that you wouldn't enjoy, say, the latest Broadway hit if they hadn't moved heaven and earth to get you the best seats in the house, or you wouldn't have gotten so spectacularly laid by that cute and terribly grateful number if they hadn't arranged the job interview for him that you'd promised unthinkingly that night, when the head of your dick was running your brain, even though you were meaning actually to follow through and somehow never managed to get around to it. For this, and for his assuming control over things, whether or not I wanted, the Grunt, like all such good assistants, had to be kept in place, even knocked down, reasonably often.

"What is
wrong
with your pants cuffs?" I suddenly asked the Grunt, having just noticed them and seeing an easy way to get back at him. "Is this some sort of play for sympathy so I ask Harte for another raise for you?"

He stood up and smiled his crooked smile, which was the only time the Grunt even remotely approached human standards for cuteness. He knew we'd begun to play the Game; he'd half expected it, even if he'd not known precisely how I'd introduce it this time. Before his basic submissiveness asserted itself, he said, "Frayed denim cuffs is the current style."

"In Bora Bora, perhaps! In Lvov, certainly! Or Ouagadougou!"

"What would a Pines Queen know about style!" he said, lisping saliva all over himself. He grandly spun away and waddled off to his desk, where he sat down primly and picked up the ringing phone. I could read his still-quivering-with-anger lips form the words "Hello, Beverly Hills Hotel, Front Desk!"

At her desk nearby, Sydelle pretended to be too engrossed in searching for something in her purse to notice the Grant's irritation.

I now dared enter the lion's den.

Harte was on the telephone—naturally. He saw me right away and gestured me into the office with that youthful eagerness that convinced me that I—or the magazine—was facing a real problem.

"You're right you're right you're right," Harte was saying into the phone to someone, his surprisingly deep baritone voice sounding totally insincere, at least from this end.

His pale, wildly curling caterpillar eyebrows trembled as he shook his head from side to side, mimicking something silly, the head of a jack-in-the-box perhaps.

"Tell me everything! Every single word!" Harte said, sounding even more insincere to me, but evidently not to whomever he was speaking, who began to tell him just that—everything. Harte now aped a suddenly deflated balloon and almost vanished behind his desk in his airlessness.

I took the time to look around at the office. Despite the fact that it was located not ten feet from my desk, I seldom came in here. Harte's involved approach to
Manifest
meant he was often at my desk or at the ad manager's desk or in Newell's inner sanctum. Even so, the place had its idiosyncrasies—some constant, others changing—by which one might gauge our publisher's mood.