The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (26 page)

Gwendolyn was planning to buy Full Circle and was single-minded
in pursuing her goal. Gwendolyn, Alex, Vadis: It struck Eve that young New Yorkers were far more intent on going it alone than Ohioans. Would she ever want to do the same? She wouldn’t even know how to begin.

   • • •

At the library, Mrs. Chin informed Eve that more boxes had come in from the collector.

“I know I promised you these a while ago,” she said, reaching for the books, which she’d put aside under the counter. “But there’s a backlog of material, and with the latest round of budget cuts, we’ve fewer people handling processing. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“That’s okay,” said Eve. “Thanks for flagging them for me.” She carried the stack over to her usual table. The third book she flipped through,
Village Artists and Their Associations, 1940–1970
, sparked an idea. Maybe there was a way to
back
Donald into a memoir without him realizing what she was doing. Maybe she could read up on his contemporaries and ask him about them quite innocently, drawing him out in casual fashion.

The book proved extraordinarily helpful for tracing connections. For instance, she quickly determined that Donald was in something called the Free Voices Brigade, along with William Burroughs and someone named Simon Thuen, who was also in the Unchained Essayists of Eighth Street. And Simon was part of the Village Scribes along with Gregory Corso and someone named Floyd Sommers, whose style was described as “freemodern.” This sounded promising and Eve wrote it down in her notebook. By the end of the afternoon, she had seven pages of names and affiliations.

At home that night, she took up her place at the bar and called out for Donald.

“You rang?” he said. His flash of humor indicated a good mood.

“I’ve been reading about my mother’s times at the library, as you know,” said Eve. “And I was wondering if I could toss out some names I found in a book today to see if any ring a bell. Just for fun.”

Donald grunted a tacit assent. The first ten or so names she mentioned produced either no memory at all or spirited denunciations that were capped by such proclamations as “fink,” “horse’s ass,” or the dreaded “sellout.”

“What about Mike McGuire?” asked Eve. “He was in, let’s see, Unchained Essayists and his name also pops up in several articles about minor Beats. Seems he was sort of the tail end.”

“McGuire … yes,” said Donald.

“What do you remember about him?” asked Eve.

“Poet. A bit younger than I, ten years or so, not the kind of person I would ordinarily notice. But he stood out. He rode just up to the line of brashness. He spoke a lot but also listened well. He possessed boundless energy, too, as if extra blood were pumping through his veins.”

“What else?” Eve flipped the page and kept scribbling.

“I used to see him at El Faro and places like that. Have you been there? I hope it still exists. Marvelously cracked, very bohemian. Anyway, he always had a pencil behind his ear and a handkerchief in his breast pocket. He had a job writing advertising copy, took a lot of ribbing for it from the counterculture set. He also gambled a bit on the ponies. When he was flush, he’d buy the whole room a round. He was quite the glad-hander but he carried poems in his pocket and the only time he grew shy was when he tried to show them to me.”

“Why did he want to show them to you?”

“They were—only vaguely, mind you—an homage to my style.”

“Were they any good?”

There was a beat of silence. “He struggled a bit in terms of adapting my ideas to his own voice, which is what every writer
must do, this dance between influence and the essential self. But I suppose I must admit there was … potential there. And I remember something else.”

“Yes?”

“After a reading I gave on Bedford Street, the hostess took me aside and told me that before I’d arrived, McGuire had addressed the room. He urged those gathered to not only read my stories but to try my theories on for size in their own work. He said something to the effect that for him, nothing had been as freeing as my particular restrictions.”

“He really admired you.”

“Kind, very kind, he was. I wish now I’d paid a bit more attention to him. I was so busy trying to curry favor with those older and more successful than I that I forgot to complete the circle, to support those coming up behind.”

Eve sat up straighter on the bar stool. “I’d love to talk to him. I wonder where he is now.”

“I’m not sure. He left town, as I remember, went traveling probably, as most of us did at one point or another. But perhaps he returned.”

   • • •

The next week at work, Eve kept her head low and said little. Whenever she had a moment, she worked on her résumé, but the rest of the time, her stories ranged from “Perfume for Your Daughter’s Dolls” to “Eating for Seven: Snacks for Moms Expecting Sextuplets” to “Fourteen Kinds of Thanksgiving Relishes.” She did not get to go on the sweeps shopping trip to Chicago with Quirine and Cassandra. And editing sessions with Mark became a daily misery; he was immune to her talent and to any small joke she might offer.

Still, every once in a while she felt compelled to try to improve the atmosphere between them.

“Hey, did you see?” she said, leaning against the doorway of
his office. “They finally moved Orla Knock’s stuff out. After all this time. I guess you’ll be getting her office, right?” The wall-to-wall windows would be a vast improvement over Mark’s airless box.

“No,” said Mark, turning his attention to a stack of folders. “They’ve got some marketing guy they’re giving it to.”

“What? Marketing’s not editorial. That office is the managing editor’s office and you’re the managing editor.”

“I know that, Eve.” Mark said, starting to tap away at his keyboard. “Apparently, they’re reorganizing the floor.”

Eve shook her head. This seemed like yet another slap in the face to the department. She wanted Mark to march into Giles Oberoy’s office and demand the office for himself. But after the embarrassment she’d caused the department, he probably didn’t think he could demand anything.

“Mark, I—” she began.

“Kind of busy here,” he said.

   • • •

Quirine and Russell were being extra nice. Quirine invited her to a play and they had dinner afterward. She made for lively company. She could tell you the best places to go camping in Vietnam as well as a foolproof way to get an annoying song out of your head. And Eve was further surprised when Russell and his wife, Susan, invited her over for dinner at their place on the Upper West Side. Susan, at about thirty, was ten or so years younger than Russell but had a focused air that made her seem if anything more mature. She was a pixielike redhead who worked for a cookbook publisher, and she treated them to a delicious tilapia in banana leaves that she was testing for a new volume. Quirine came too, bringing Victor, a graduate student of historical preservation at Pratt. He was olive-skinned with a halo of corkscrew curls and an easy manner, and when Eve insisted on washing the dishes, he took up a post next to her to dry them, turning the
whole thing into a friendly competition to see who was faster. It ended with the two of them engaged in some playful splashing, and though a few soapy droplets splattered Eve’s Ossie Clark dress, she didn’t mind a bit.

Socially, things finally seemed to be picking up. She even had a date.

Oliver was a musician who played guitar for several bands whenever one of their own members was sick or out of town. He’d been sitting two bar stools over at the Chelsea Corner, where Eve and Klieg had gone for a drink after the LaForge show. When Klieg had excused himself to the restroom, Oliver had leaned across to her.

“Isn’t he a little old for you?”

“He’s my
friend
,” said Eve, irritated.

The young man was handsome, with hair the color of wheat, like many of the boys back home. There were so few blond men in New York; he made for a nice change, if nothing else.

“I was just kidding.” He grabbed at the bowl of popcorn between them. “Seen any good art today?” he asked, nodding at the sheaf of gallery leaflets she’d put on the bar. They chatted about a space they’d both liked and a particular piece there, an impressionistic nude of a water nymph. It was two-for-one happy hour, and he bought Eve another drink. “Cheers,” he said as the bartender put their glasses down. They toasted. Just before Klieg returned, Oliver asked for her number.

It took more than three weeks for him to call, but Eve was prepared for the angst this time and found it easier to bear. She kept her voice casual as they spoke on the phone, a subtle wink that
Yes, yes, we both know this is how the game is played
.

He suggested they go out the following Tuesday night. She’d earned a personal day by now and took pleasure in informing Mark that she was taking it.

Highball took up a post just outside the closet and nodded or shook her head at various outfits Eve tried on. In the end, they
chose a deep rose wool shift from the sixties and paired it with drop pearl earrings and a black satin clutch. Eve knew better than to expect Oliver to be some kind of knight in shining armor, but an evening of pleasant conversation, an evening spent doing what the young and eligible were supposed to do in New York, was more than enough.

Donald groused. “What about ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’? We’re at a critical point in the story. Do you not see that, unlike your quasi-romantic escapades, my work has lasting meaning …?”

Donald was frustratingly inconsistent. One minute he was eager for her to “sow her wild oats,” the next he was irked because she had a date. She assuaged him with a barrage of soothing words until he left, which took far longer than it should have. She was so nervous about being late for Oliver that she dropped her keys twice as she attempted to lock the door.

She arrived at the appointed corner and, confused, checked the address to make sure she was in the right place. Pushing through the glass door, she found herself inside a giant box of an Italian restaurant, a chain establishment, with a salad bar occupying a large central area. Aside from several families with small children dotted around the cavernous room, it was mostly empty.

“Hey, you made it,” Oliver said, rising from a small bench next to a sign saying
Hostess Station
and kissing her on the cheek. He wore jeans and a T-shirt advertising some band called Freak Show, and high-top sneakers. Perhaps he noted some surprise in her expression because he hastily explained, “I know it’s not romantic, but there’s a method to my madness. You’ll see.”

“Ah,” said Eve.

The hostess, in a green uniform, matching visor, and black sneakers, approached. “Table for two?”

“Actually, two tables for one,” said Oliver. When the hostess looked confused, he reached for his wallet, pulled out two orange slips of paper, and handed them over.

“Uh-huh,”
she said, handing them back. “This way.” She grabbed two poster-sized menus and led them across the room.

Oliver whispered to Eve as they walked, “Each coupon is good for a dinner entrée on separate visits on Tuesday nights. I figure if we’re at separate tables, we’re technically on separate ‘visits.’ Starving artists have to be on their toes in this town. Score, huh?”

They spent the next hour and a half at adjacent tables, eating bland manicotti with watery sauce and talking sideways at each other. Between multiple visits to the salad bar, where he seemed interested in nothing but bacon and croutons, Oliver waxed on about a guitar he wanted to buy and how tough the competition was for studio work. He was wildly self-absorbed and failed to ask her even one question about herself. By the end, Eve’s stomach was complaining bitterly and her neck was in spasm.

Oliver suggested dessert but Eve had had enough. She stood and fished some money out of her wallet. When he asked what she was doing, she explained that she had an impatient short-story-dictating ghost waiting at home and really had to go.

   • • •

The following week, Eve suffered through a particularly grueling night at work, her eyes nearly crossed from exhaustion. Every segment she worked on was rebooked after she’d written it, forcing her to start all over again. At eleven-thirty, just as she was gathering up her things, news broke of an avalanche in Colorado, from which six skiers had miraculously escaped.
Damn, damn, damn
. Now she’d have to wait till the bookers tracked down the survivors at the hospital. An hour later, when Sharon, the booker, finally gave her the information on the four survivors willing to talk, Eve placed four calls. Four times she asked, “What did you think when you heard the ski patrol’s voice coming through the snow and you knew you were going to be saved?” And four times she’d heard, recorded, and put into a briefing note, “Uh, um, you know, it was, like, you know, awesome.”

It was after one-thirty by the time she dragged herself up the stairs, dreading having to go right back out again for Highball’s
nightly walk. She braced herself for the usual bombardment of paws about her thighs and cracked open the door. A finger of light shot across the room, fanning out as she kicked the door open, but no dog appeared. Her eyes darted around the living room. “Highball?” Eve’s coat and bag slid down her arms and onto the floor with a plunk. The dog was never
not
by the door to greet her. Eve padded around, looking behind the bar and in the narrow space between the small fridge and the kitchen wall. Heart pounding, she ran into the bedroom, checking the closet and under the bed. “Highball?” No dog. Eve headed toward the bathroom but found her footsteps slowing. She had the feeling there was something terribly wrong. “You here?” she whispered as she pushed the door open and flicked on the light.

There, holding herself eerily still in the corner by the claw-foot tub, sat Highball. She was staring straight ahead with glassy, unseeing eyes. Eve felt an icicle plunge into her stomach. She crouched beside the dog, but Highball didn’t so much as glance at her. As Eve reached out to touch her fur, the dog shook her head violently, her ears flapping like birds’ wings.