The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (10 page)

“I’ve made a couple of mistakes,” he says tersely. “Spent some time getting to know myself a little better. Consulted with my priest—”

“Now tell us a little bit about that,” Julian urges. “What do they tell you to do? Kneel down and say Hail Marys? Self-flagellation with rosary beads? Details, please. I’m doing research for my book.”

“What would
Catholics
be doing in the Andromeda Galaxy, twenty-eight thousand years before the birth of Christ?” I wonder loudly, but Julian kicks me under the table with a bruising saddle shoe.

“Wormhole,” he says snappily. I don’t know if he is referring to his book or to me. We are drinking the Champagne straight up now.

The rest of Mitchell’s food arrives, our waitress wilting under the weight of it.

After the food has been laid out, she says, “You’re Mitchell King,” dabbing sweat from the nape of her neck. Her tiny golden nose stud catches the light.

“Please,” Julian sighs. “We’re just trying to enjoy our meal.”

“No,” Mitchell says firmly, giving Julian a stern look. “I’m happy to meet a fan.”

Evelyn is looking on with cool detachment as the brunette twirls a finger in a curl by her left ear while Mitchell signs her order pad. “Amy?” he asks. “With an
A
?”

As I ponder any other ways one might spell the name Amy, I take a bite of my bloody steak and eye Amy’s twirling finger. “Quite fetching,” I mumble to Julian, loud enough for Evelyn to hear. Little flickers of lightning flash behind the grays of her eyes.

“So what’s with the Beckett?” I ask lightly. My positive charge catches her burgeoning negative one, and there is a spark of electricity that recalls many mistakes of nighttimes past, which we never speak of during the day.

“I have an audition tomorrow for a new adaptation of
The Unnameable
.”

Just Jo erupts into a sweet and sultry “I Found a Love,” and for a moment, Mitchell and Julian temporarily exiled from my periphery, I feel as if Evelyn and I were sitting alone. She gushes something about “the Theatre of the Absurd” and I’m arguing against “this idea of the
destitution
of modern man, as if we were ever
better
than this,” even as she’s trying to agree with me because it is “absolutely just so
brave
, ultimately, and all the while just deva
stat
ingly tragic and—” And then there’s this prolonged instant in which I
know
that she is mine—that her mind loves my mind—and all my masks and all her costumes are off, and the great green curtains are drawn back, and it’s the
real
Evelyn and me, just as plain as the noon sun coming in above us.

“So,” Mitchell interrupts, staring at me as if he cannot even remember my name. “Did you and Julian ever write anything together?”

I laugh but not half as loud as Julian does. “Oh, yes,” he says drolly, spinning the little purple prairie aster around in his buttonhole like a clown. “We’ve got a four-picture deal with Paramount. I do all the action sequences and he handles the jokes.”

Mitchell lights up. “A movie? Bad
ass
! I’m a bit of a film buff myself. Have you guys seen the new
Jurassic Park
film? This third one was absolutely the best.”

“Honey,” Evelyn condescends, “they’re joking.”

Mitchell is beginning to look upset and I feel a twinge of benevolence.

“Julian’s very private,” I explain. “We don’t really work well together.”

Julian’s creative process involves drinking three bottles of wine over the course of an afternoon, stalking about the apartment in his old robe from the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, and smoking while leaning precariously out of our windows, until inspiration, or the urge to nap, strikes. I do all my own writing at the New York Public Library.

“What do
you
actually write, then?” Mitchell asks me, pointedly waving a speared chicken-apple sausage in my direction.

“Short fiction now,” I explain, “though I
was
working on this novel last year about an apprentice to a gilder in New York in the 1860s who steals—”

“Wait.
Was?
What happened?” Mitchell asks. Julian flashes an angry look at Evelyn, who tries to pat her beau on the hand to indicate it’s time to shut up, but he goes right on ahead. “Don’t tell me you gave up! Let me tell you something.
Winners never quit
. That’s the
first
piece of advice I talk about in my book.”

“It’s not that I gave up exactly,” I say coolly. “I lost it.”

“You
lost
it?”

“Yes.”

“What, like under a couch cushion or something?” Mitchell laughs, miming a look underneath his own gargantuan seat. Evelyn kicks him now and looks apologetically at me, but I ignore her. Mitchell—no idea what he’s done wrong—struggles to think of something else to ask.

“So I’m working primarily on short fiction again,” I say flatly. “Trying to get back to basics.”

Mitchell smiles as if he understands. “Cool. So are you in the,
uhm
, ‘Paris magazine,’ then, too?” he interrupts.

Julian laughs—a hard, cold laugh—and it is just enough to admit something I hadn’t intended to.

“Actually, I have something coming out next month. In the
Vicksburg Review
.”

Julian stops chewing. Evelyn—God, my heart might stop—is beaming.

“Vicksburg?”
Julian asks, as if unfamiliar with the concept.

“They’re
preeminent
! You should have told us earlier!” Evelyn says, her hand reaching across the table now, daintily crushing mine. “What’s it about?”

Julian’s face has darkened, approaching blackened. “Yes, which is it? That little thing from college about subbing in for the Homecoming King or whatever? Or is it that Ibsen story you wrote about—”

Evelyn gives him a look that could cut diamonds, and even Julian knows to change tacks.

“—that you did at my reading?”

He leans on
my
in a way that makes me itch, but there isn’t time to dwell on it. I think about lying, maybe saying it’s something older, but there’s no way they won’t read it, once it’s out. It’s not like Julian to forget these things.

“It’s based, you know, quite loosely, with all the names changed and everything, on this road trip that Julian and I took to the lake, upstate, last winter. You remember? When you got really sick?”

Julian drops his fork on the plate. He actually drops it. The noise reverberates as the guitar player comes off the end of a long solo.

“You can’t,” he says slowly. “You ab-so-lute-ly can
NOT!
”

He yells this final word so loudly that Just Jo skips a beat in “All I Could Do Was Cry,” and some of the old Long Island ladies turn and stare at him with Death’s own eyes.

Mitchell, all alpha male, slides a meaty paw in between us. “Whoa, fellas,” he says, but Julian slaps his hand away. Well, not so much
away
, but he does slap it.

“Mitchell!” Evelyn snaps. “Don’t get in the middle of this. It has nothing to do with you.” He shrinks back—losing two feet in height to the tone of her voice.

“Didn’t we
agree
? Didn’t we
agree
that we, ourselves . . . that is . . . that, that
one another
. . . well, that it’s off-limits? That it is
absolutely
OFF-FUCKING-LIMITS?”

He’s so upset that he’s grabbing for his pack of cigarettes, and when he realizes that he’s still inside he gets even more furious and downs another flute of Champagne. I say nothing. Not that he has never kept a single promise to me in his entire life. Not that I keep
trying
not to write about him. Not that I always wind up doing it, anyway.

Finally I say, weakly, “I changed your
name
and all that. I gave it a kind of Russian theme. After seeing Ev in
Three Sisters
fifteen times, I think it got under my—”

“You’re moving out,” he declares smugly, as he sets the empty flute down. “And that’s that. I want
nothing
to do with you. No more.” He looks down at his plate and flicks a great blob of his eggs at me. The golden yolk runs down my shirt and leaves a forbidding stain.

“You’re nothing but a petty thief!” he shouts. “LIAR! THIEF!”

The old ladies are getting very upset now. “Young man, would you—”

“Oh, go back to hell!” he cries. “Or Staten Island. Wherever it is you’re from!”

Just Jo has stopped, midsong. Amy, the waitress, is coming over, sliding between tables faster than Mitchell could leap off the starting block. “Please!” she squeaks. “Please! Keep your voices down!”

But Julian is past the point of no return. He overturns his plate. He launches himself out of the chair, shouts that he “will see the
manager
about this!” and propels himself past the other patrons and out of the room.

“Dude . . . ” Mitchell says, scooting back from the table. A camera flashes, somewhere. “This is . . . I’m sorry. Those ladies are taking photos. I can’t . . . I mean, my agent says I can’t afford to be in
Us Weekly
again.”

“Go, go,” Evelyn says, waving her hand in the air dismissively. He promises to call, and she gives him a look that says he’d be a fool to bother. He seems confused, as if he’s still not entirely sure where he’s gone wrong, and then, because there’s still a camera flashing, he strides off, hands hiding his face as though he were some sort of criminal.

“Terribly sorry, everyone,” I say to the room. “Just a small misunderstanding.”

“You know you’ve really done it this time,” Evelyn says softly, as Just Jo begins her song over again.

“He’ll get over it,” I say.

Evelyn looks skeptical. True, I’ve never gotten a story about him
published
before, but I have been down this road with Julian many times. The truth is that without me he has no one—just Evelyn, who gets tired of him without me around, and a long string of wine bottles and a longer string of Simons, each emptier than the last. Without me around he’ll lose what little sanity he has left.

I go on. “He’ll break into my room now. Read it. Spend half an hour figuring out how to delete the file. But that’s fine, the
Vicksburg
people already have it.”

“How many times have I told you to make backups? Don’t you ever learn?”

This I ignore, because what is there to say? No, I don’t. None of us ever learns.

“He’ll drink half our Grey Goose and pass out on the bathroom floor. I’ll bring home some Campari tonight and we’ll do our whole Hemingway-and-Fitzgerald routine. Secretly, he’s flattered already. He
might
even tell me he liked the story.”

“You’d better hope you’re right. Where else would you go?”

I shrug. “Will we be seeing Mitchell King again?”

“No, I don’t think we will.”

It is always this way with her: she brings them here to us once they begin to bore her, and we devour them. It is all routine.

Now that it’s actually just us—just Evelyn and I—strangely, I feel that there is nothing left to say. Or, really, that we’ve said all there is to say, too many times before. What is the point of running through these lines one more time?

She says, “You should start seeing somebody else.”

And I say, “Is this about money?”

She: “Don’t be absurd.”

And I: “You’re the one who’s being absurd.”

“We can’t keep going on like this.”

“Then go.”

We do not move.

She says, “You know you only think you want me.”

And I say, “You know you only think you don’t.”

She sighs. “You’re such a liar.”

“Quit acting.” I grin.

Long silence. Thinking that maybe we can get philosophical about Beckett again, I ask, “What time is your audition tomorrow? I’m sure it will go well. Why don’t I come along and then take you out after to celebrate?”

She sits back. “No. I have to stay focused.”

And that is that. Alone together, we are worse than worthless.

Amy comes by with our bill, still terrified I think, that Julian is going to sic the managers on her, though she’s done nothing wrong. The little faux-leather booklet lies between Evelyn and me for a long, cold moment. Ordinarily Julian pays. I reach for my wallet, which we both know is empty. She reaches for her purse.

“My treat,” she says. “To celebrate. For the story.” She drops two hundreds on the table as if it were nothing. For her, it is.

It is, in fact, more than I’ll be paid for the story.

“I’ll get it next time,” I lie. I’ll never get it. We both know it.

“See you next Sunday,” she says and kisses me gently on the forehead. Then she taps my bluebells with her finger and I’m left to listen to the end of “At Last,” alone.

I can’t go on,
I think to myself, scraping Julian’s eggs off my shirt.
I’ll go on.

Curly-haired Amy comes back with the change. I siphon off an overapologetic tip and slide it back to her. Her nose stud glints as her round face breaks into a smile. “Thanks so much.”

She thinks the money is mine and I don’t correct her. In fact, I tuck the ample remainder into my pocket and pour myself the last of the Champagne. As I do, I notice Evelyn hovering by the mirror at the exit, fixing her makeup. Or pretending to.

“So,” Amy says, beginning to clean up the eggs
sans
Benedict that Julian has splattered, “how do you know Mitchell
King
?”

“Who, Mitch?” I say, fumbling a Savannah accent—I can only fake it now. “Oh, why . . . we went to school together down in North Carolina. Benedictine Academy.
Go Cadets
.”

Amy giggles and eyes the bluebells. “I like your little flowers.”

“Why, thank you kindly, miss. My name’s Simon,” I lie, extending a hand to hers. She grips it, ladylike, and I glance at the mirror before I ask her, “Would you like to come with me to the zoo this afternoon? Have you ever seen the leopards?”

Note: The following is reprinted with permission from the
Vicksburg Review.
—C.E.E-B.