My Salinger Year (6 page)

A few minutes later, he and Leigh disappeared. First him, then her. “I’m going to change,” she said. “I’ve been in these clothes all day.”

“Hey,” I called after her. “Guess who’s a client of my Agency?”

“Thomas Pynchon,” answered Allison, sipping wine out of a large blue goblet. It was the only vessel in the apartment resembling an actual wineglass, and Allison always claimed it when she came to visit.

“Close,” I said. “J. D. Salinger.”

The room fell into stunned silence. Allison, Marc, and Don stared at me, openmouthed. “Here,” Marc said finally, pushing a beer in my direction.

“
J. D. Salinger?”
asked Don, finally, shaking his head in disbelief. “For real?”

I nodded. “He’s my boss’s client.”

Suddenly everyone was talking at once.

“Did you speak to him?” asked Marc. “Did he call?”

“Is he working on a new novel?” asked Allison, her lips ghoulishly purple with wine. “I’ve heard stories—”

“How
old
is your boss?” asked Don. “Didn’t Salinger start writing stories in, like, the ’40s?”

“Was he nice?” asked Allison. “People get so angry about him, but I always got the feeling that he was really nice, that he truly just wanted to be left alone.”

“He’s a fucking phony,” said Don with a smile.

Marc narrowed his eyes, annoyed. “You’re kidding, right?” he said, taking a swig of beer. “Just because he wants to be left alone doesn’t mean he’s some kind of fraud.” Like Don, Marc was short and muscular and possessed of a certain intensity. He had the looks of a 1970s film star: blue eyes, chiseled jaw, long nose, wavy blond hair. Looks so stunning that even men commented on them. His fiancée, Lisa, was oddly plain—unusually plain—and as silent and reserved as Marc was garrulous and open. These were just a few of the grounds on which Don objected to her. He was convinced Marc would call off the wedding.

“My friend Jess worked at Little, Brown a few years ago”—Allison looked at Marc—“Salinger’s publisher you know?” Marc nodded. “She was just an assistant and she had nothing to do with Salinger, with the Salinger books. But her desk was near the reception area, and one night she was working late and the main phone line just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. It was like nine thirty at night. Who calls an office at nine thirty, right? So finally she picked it up and there was someone screaming—like
screaming
—on the other end. Screaming, ‘THE MANUSCRIPT IS OKAY! I SAVED THE MANUSCRIPT!’ And something about a fire, and other stuff that she couldn’t understand. Just
screaming
. So she thought this was a crazy person, right?” We nodded. “The next day, she got to work and it turns out—”

“It was Salinger,” said Don.

“It was Salinger,” confirmed Allison, her cheeks hollowing in annoyance. “There’d been a fire at his house. His whole house had burned down. Or half his house. Anyway, his house was actually
on fire
when he called, but somehow he thought the most important thing was to call his publisher and let them know that his new book was okay. Like before even saving his family or calling the fire department.”

“How do you know he didn’t save his family or call the fire department first?” asked Don.

“Jess told me,” said Allison.

“Why is it crazy to call your publisher and let them know your manuscript hasn’t been destroyed in a fire?” Don persisted.

“That’s not the crazy part, Don,” Allison groaned. “He called in the middle of the night, when no one was there. He assumed that the people at Little, Brown
knew
that there was a fire in some small town in New Hampshire—”

“You know what?” Don’s gravelly voice had grown raspier with drink. “This sounds like bullshit to me. Salinger’s not working on another book. Why should he? What is he now, a millionaire how many times over? Your friend just made this all up.”

“
Oh my God
, Don!” Allison shrieked, her dark eyes glassy, her cheeks flushed red. “Why would she make this up?
How
would she make this up? There was a fire. Everyone knew about it. I remember my mom talking about it. It was in the paper. I read about it.
She
read about it.”

“Exactly,” said Don, grinning.

“I read about it, too,” said Marc, brushing back an errant lock of hair. “Or I read something. I’m trying to remember. Was it in the
Times
? He says he’s writing but that he never wants to publish. That he writes for himself now. He doesn’t need to publish.”

Again, the room fell silent. Don’s face had grown slack and earnest. He looked at me and smiled. I knew that this accorded with his own ideas about writing. “Writing makes you a writer,” he’d told me. “If you get up every morning and write, then you’re a writer. Publishing doesn’t make you a writer. That’s just commerce.”

“Hey,” came a voice from the hallway. We turned to find Leigh, alone, now clad in her usual bathrobe, a tattered, sateen affair in maroons and blues. Her makeup was still in place, but she seemed to be moving in slow motion. “What’s going on?” she said, her speech ever so slightly slurred.
She’s drunk
, I thought, with a sudden clarity. I’d seen her like this many times before, I realized, but I’d never thought about it. Or I’d thought her simply tired.
I
was tired. And hungry, very hungry. Though I’d drunk just half my beer—if that—my head suddenly began to spin. An irresistible urge to lie down came over me.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, carefully rising from my chair. I made my way down the hallway, past the room of sad, crumpled dresses, and opened the door to the bathroom, where I found Pankaj, sitting on the toilet. “Oh!” I cried. “I’m sorry.” He looked at me strangely, blankly, and it was then that I saw his arm, which was wrapped with the sort of rubber tubing used in hospitals, a needle inserted in the crook below. His face, as I watched, arranged itself in an expression of both pain and the absence of pain. “Oh!” I cried again, stupidly.

For a moment we stared at each other, the blank remove on his face turning to sadness, then anger, until I left, returning not to the kitchen table, to Don and Leigh and the others, but to Don’s room, where I sat down heavily on his bed, a futon without a frame, then lay back and stared at the ceiling.

When Don came in to check on me, I rolled to face him. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s take the apartment.”

Late the next morning, I rapped softly on my boss’s half-open door and handed over the rest of her dictation. She had come in, again, without so much as a hello. And she’d not yet mentioned my letters from the day before. They sat on her desk, still neatly piled, awaiting signature. “Sit down for a second,” she said. I sat. Pulling a pack of cigarettes from her desk drawer, she began to slowly peel off the plastic. “Some people,” she began, shooting me a significant look, “take this job thinking they’re going to meet Jerry. Or even”—she smiled—“become friends with him. They think he’s going to call every day.” She peered at me over the tops of her glasses. “He’s
not
going to call. And if he does, Pam will put the call directly through to me. If I’m not here and by some chance he gets put through to you, don’t keep him on the phone. He’s not calling to chat with you. Understand?” I nodded. “I don’t want you thinking you’re going to be on the phone with him every day or you’re going to be”—she laughed—“
having lunch with him
or something. Some assistants have even made excuses to call him. Without checking with me, of course. That is something you can never, ever do. Our job is
not
to bother him. We take care of his business so he doesn’t have to be bothered with it. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“So, you’re never, ever to call him. If something arises that you think needs his attention—though I can’t imagine what that would be—you tell me, and I’ll decide if he needs to know. You
never
call him. You
never
write to him. If he calls, you just say, ‘Yes, Jerry. I’ll let my boss know.’ Got it?”

I nodded, trying not to smile. I would never have thought to needlessly keep J. D. Salinger on the phone, much less pick up the receiver and call him.

My boss looked at me seriously and emitted one of her
odd, low laughs. “He doesn’t want to read your stories. Or hear how much you loved
The Catcher in the Rye
.”

“I don’t have any stories,” I told her, half truthfully. I had stories. Just not finished ones.

“Good,” she said. “Writers always make the worst assistants.”

Everything was wrong. The two days of typing, the piles and piles of letters. Margins, tabs, proper names, everything. Every single letter had to be retyped. “You’ll be more careful this time, won’t you?” my boss said, and I smiled, holding back tears.

Trying now for competence rather than speed, I began again, checking my work after every line, as the phone in my boss’s office rang and rang. “Happy New Year,” she cried, again and again. “How was your holiday?” These one-sided conversations were somehow more distracting than plain old two-sided ones. I found myself filling in the other end of the dialogue and speculating on the parts I could hear. Motifs began to appear. My boss spoke frequently of someone named Daniel, who seemed to have been ill—perhaps gravely so—but was now doing better thanks to a change in medication.
Her husband?
I wondered.
Her brother?
Someone named Helen arose with slightly less frequency and less detail. But I couldn’t figure out who this person might be. Regardless, her words began to insert themselves in the letters. “Thank you for sending on the countersigned sandwich,” I typed. “I’ll be in touch in two weeks to discuss the details of the upholstery.” Again and again, I ripped a half-finished letter out and started all over.
Please close your door
, I silently begged my boss.
Please stop ringing
, I begged the phone. On cue, it rang again.

“Jerry,” my boss shouted. Why was she shouting? Her
voice had grown louder as the day progressed.
Please stop shouting
, I thought. “Jerry, it’s so good to hear from you. How are you?”

At precisely that moment, my wish came true: my boss got up and closed her door.

Boom. The door burst open and my boss was yelling. “Hugh,” she called, appearing in the doorway, cigarette poised dramatically in one hand. “
Hugh! HUGH!”
She marched toward his door, more quickly than I’d previously seen her move. “Where
is
he?” she muttered. I was pretty certain he was in his office, but said nothing.

“One second,” he called calmly.

“I don’t have a second,” said my boss, tittering with discomfort at her own testiness. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hugh!”

“Okay.” He appeared in the doorway. “You
rang
?”

“Oh,
Hugh
,” my boss said, laughing against her will. “Jerry just called.”

“Jerry called?” Hugh’s face immediately lost its levity. It was as if my boss had told him that his parole officer was sitting in the reception area.

“Yes.” She nodded with satisfaction. “He wants to see his royalty statements”—she looked down at a slip of paper in her hand—“for
Nine Stories
and
Raise High the Roof Beam
. From 1979 through 1988.”

“Okay.” Hugh shuffled on his feet a little. “Paperback? Or hardback? Or trade paperback?”

My boss shook her head impatiently. “I don’t know. Just pull them all. How quickly can you get the numbers together?”

For a moment, Hugh stared off into the middle distance, his mind presumably drifting to some better place, where he could sit eternally and sift his papers without being called to perform tedious tasks for an unseen master. My boss tapped
her foot, which was surprisingly tiny, almost hooflike, and shod in a beige orthopedic-style shoe. “End of the day tomorrow,” Hugh told her. “Maybe sooner. Why does he want them? What does he need them for?”

“Who knows?” my boss said. “He’s always wanting to check up on Little, Brown. You know. He’s convinced they’re making mistakes. And they
do
make mistakes.” Suddenly she noticed the cigarette in her hand, which had burned down to the filter. Just as the ash began to fall on the carpet, she dropped it into a small black ashtray on the credenza outside Hugh’s office, specks of gray softly depositing themselves on her shoes and the carpet around them. “Darn it,” she said quietly. “Just get them. Don’t worry about why he needs them.”

“Okay,” said Hugh, glancing at me for the first time and offering a small smile. “Whatever Jerry wants.”

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