Paraíso, Page 8

  Kate

  In early spring I’d gotten a call from my old college roommate, who held a doctorate in physics but was teaching high school math in Mendocino. His daughter, sixteen going on seventeen, had been caught shoplifting for the third time. He was threatened with losing custody to his ex-wife, and his daughter would have to move to Boston.

  “Do you guys ever have sixteen-year-old summer interns?” my old roommate had asked. “My sister and her husband live up on 86th Street on the West Side. She could stay with them. Listen, the kid’s fucking brilliant, tests off the scale, but she’s gotta get out of here for a while.”

  “What’s she interested in?”

  “Interested? Obsessed is more like it. She wants to be a goddamn writer.”

  “Wow,” I’d said. “She really is crazy, hunh?”

  A short silence. “I think she’s good, but what do I know. I can send you some of her stuff if you want.”

  Her stuff was at least college-level, with some surprisingly original twists and turns. Enough to hold one’s attention, or hold mine anyway. She didn’t force it, either. It wasn’t overdone. And it seemed to be all her own.

  That’s how smoldering, nutty Kate had gotten a little space in the corner of my office until her school started again in mid-September. Her job was to read unsolicited manuscripts. I didn’t tell her, but the odds of getting one published were more than a thousand to one. She wrote gushing letters of encouragement to some of the authors, and at first I wondered what they’d do if they knew who was writing them. But then I decided that they needed all the encouragement they could get.

  God, she’s a walking cliché, I’d think as I watched her drift rather gracefully around the office. Tall, pimply, and spectrally thin. Padded bras, some rounded, some pointed (pointed ones favored toward the end of the week). Dirty-blond shoulder-length hair, black tee shirts, jeans, and pink Keds that she never tied. Steel-rimmed glasses. The only item lacking was heavy metal on her teeth. Well, at least the publisher got a kick out of her—she was a whiz at backgammon, and he’d been dropping by to play with her some late afternoons.

  Back at work this Monday she seemed more twitchy and excited than usual, or so it seemed—I was on the phone to ICM, turning down one of their highly touted new writers. She kept looking at me, biting her lips, fiddling with her pen. When I finally got off the phone, she jumped to her feet and practically danced to my desk. She was carrying a bulky manila envelope.

  “You’ve gotta read this. It’s wonderful. I stayed up all night Saturday, could not put it down.”

  I smiled and sat back, the ICM agent’s gravelly voice echoing in my ear: You’re missing the opportunity of a lifetime, Peter. This book could save your miserable has-been ass. “What makes this so different from all the others you wanted me to read? Listen, Kate, enthusiasm’s great but you have to learn to be much more discriminating. This is a rough business. Almost nobody makes it.”

  “You made it. You discovered a fantastic new writer and made this place a fortune. He was on the best-seller list for how long?”

  “Year and a half.” I had to grin. “But that was a while back, and you’re only as good as your latest book. Nothing looms on the horizon. That was ICM on the phone, incidentally. I just passed on yet another of their submissions. And they’re one of the best shops in town.”

  “This is different. It’s really good, I’m telling you. If you don’t like it, well maybe I shouldn’t be working here. I mean, maybe there’s no future for me in this business.”

  I picked up the manila envelope and looked at the return address: a post office box in Steuben, Maine. God, another regional writer? Well, at least it was a woman. And the handwriting in blue roller point was intriguingly unconventional slanted lines.

  When I put the envelope back on the desk, she picked it up, pulled out the manuscript, and selected a single page from the middle. “Totally arbitrary page. Just read one paragraph. Isn’t that what you told me to do?”

  “Kate, I’ve got a meeting with the golden boy in ten minutes. I’m probably going to get fired.”

  “God, why are you always so pessimistic. They’d never fire you, you’re the best they’ve got in this dump. By far.” She shook the page in my face. “One paragraph. It’ll take ten seconds.”

  I took the page impatiently and dropped my eyes to a longish middle paragraph. It was better than I expected, a lot better, a clean simple style with no wasted words and a poignant aftertaste. I read it again, then the paragraphs before and after it, and handed it back. “Give me the first page.” She had it in my hand almost before I stopped talking. “Okay,” I said finally. “I hardly ever read manuscripts during the week, as you know, but just as a favor to you I’ll read it tonight.” A smile and a nod. “You’re right. It does seem good.”

  She clasped her hands over her heart and smiled back, her eyes shining behind her glasses. “You’re sweet.” Leaning over my desk to kiss me on the forehead. The shaven-headed hip publisher was scarily hearty in the meeting, but I told him I might be onto something.

  “Where did you find this?” A few days later, the publisher tapped the manuscript with his pen. “I was reading it in the bathtub until three ayem. My skin almost fell off.”

  “Kate found it.”

  “Ah, the brilliant Kate. So it was in the slush pile?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Who is this woman? Does anyone know anything about her?”

  “She lives in Steuben, Maine. I checked all the sources: she’s never published a word before.”

  “So we don’t know how old she is, whether she’s married or single, where she went to college, what she does for a living, nothing?”

  “Nada. Wasn’t it T. S. Eliot who said the author doesn’t matter?”

  “Don’t get literary on me. Have you talked to her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, my God, she’s probably sent this all over the place. We’ve got to call her.”

  “I did try information. She’s not listed.”

  “Unpublished number?”

  “No number at all.”

  “Where is Steuben, for God’s sake?”

  “On the coast, north of Mount Desert. Way out there.”

  “How the hell do you get there?”

  “Fly to Bangor and rent a car.”

  “Well, Peter, go with God, and congratulations. You’re our star. Feel her out. I don’t know, maybe fifty grand to start with, and if she doesn’t take it, call me.”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” I said. “Got a flight booked for tomorrow.”

  “Oh, take me with you,” Kate implored when I told her about the green light. Eyes huge, hand on my arm. “If you don’t, I’ll never forgive you.”

  Where had I heard those words before? “Kate, this is a business trip, not some kind of junket. Plus if golden boy found out, we’d both be fired. You’re sixteen.”

  “So what? Is there an age limit on business trips? I could pass for twenty and you know it, if I had the right clothes. Plus I found this woman, didn’t I? Doesn’t that entitle me to anything?” Next minute she’d be in tears. “I could be a big help to you. I know this woman like I know her book.”

  The right clothes. That would have to be my job. In the SoHo Bloomingdales after work, Kate modeled a series of dresses, coming out of the fitting room with that shine in her eyes, doing a long-legged twirl for my inspection. I’d never seen her bare legs before.

  Finally she appeared in a black cocktail sheath, stopped short, and just stood there watching my face. I knew I’d gone pale: the dress could have been the same one my sister had worn so proudly that day in Briarcliffe.

  “What’s the matter?” A little smile.

  “Kate, for Christ’s sake, this is not a cocktail party we’re going to.”

  “That woman would like this dress. I tell you I know her.”

  “Forget it.” I clapped my hands. “Okay, I think we’ve seen enough. We’re getting the beig
e one.”

  “The beige one? Omigod, that’s so retro it’s off the scale. I’d rather die than wear that.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. The gray business one then. With the pleats. Très chic.”

  “Shit. That’s for a little Wall Street secretary. It’s mousy.”

  “It’s understated, Kate. It doesn’t come up and scream in your face, but it’s pure silk and expensive as hell. Don’t forget who’s paying for all this.”

  “Okay, okay.” She flounced off to the fitting room, swaying her hips. Over her shoulder: “Don’t blame me if she doesn’t sign.” In the shoe department I bought her a pair of low black heels. Très chic and très cher. She didn’t even look at the price tag.

  She was wearing the gray silk dress and the heels the next morning when we met at LaGuardia for the nine o’clock shuttle to Boston with a connection to Bangor. I was in a Glen plaid suit, one of my father’s that I’d had re-tailored (waist let out, chest taken in). The contract was in my brown leather briefcase. The shuttle was packed with other business people, and I hoped we passed inspection. Of course, I could be a father taking his daughter on a college tour.

  In our seats, she smoothed the dress over her knees and I could see she was wearing stockings. Or pantyhose. I’d avoided the department they sold those in, so she must have had some of her own. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

  “I offer her big bucks, and she signs.”

  “How much?”

  “Too early to say.”

  “But what are you going to start at?”

  “Please leave that to me, okay? You’ll be there. You’ll find out when the time comes.”

  “Aw shucks, boss, I don’t get a say in this?” She was grinning.

  “Your job is to sit there and look brilliant. And businesslike. I’m really going out on a limb for you. For God’s sake, don’t blow it.”

  “Thanks, boss.” She patted my knee. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”

  By the time we got to Ellsworth in the rented Ford Focus, wisps of fog were hanging in the tops of the big white pines and cars coming toward us from the east had their lights on. Visibility near Steuben was so low I almost missed the sign. Buildings loomed, and when I stopped we could hear a foghorn somewhere close by. The neon sign for a clam house turned the atmosphere red.

  In the post office, I showed the lady clerk the manuscript’s manila envelope. “I’m an editor from New York, and this is my assistant. We wanted to take this back to her in person. Can you tell me where she lives?”

  The clerk’s eyes got big. “Oh! I was here when she sent those off.”

  “She sent a lot of them?”

  “Oh yes! Twenty or thirty at least. Some of them have come back already, but you’re the first to actually bring one in person.”

  “Really.” I glanced at Kate. “Does she live far away?”

  “’Bout fifteen miles out past Corea. Boyfriend’s a lobsterman. Oh, won’t she be excited! We could call her, but they don’t even have a phone.”

  “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “Well, sure.” She paused. “Don’t you want to wait till this lifts? I’ve never seen it so thick, and there are some tricky turns. Got lost myself out there more than once.”

  “When is it likely to lift?”

  “Fog like this?” She checked her watch. “Well, it’s past three now. Not going to lift today. Could even get thicker come nightfall.”

  “Can you draw us a map? We’ll take it slow and easy.”

  It was like driving through cotton wool. The gray road was the same color as the fog, and without the dividing line to follow I might have driven off into the spruce woods even with the headlights. We found a turn that might have been on the map, then another. Kate had tuned in Blue Hill Radio, a hippie station that was playing Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet.” Give me a break. Once in a long while, another car would loom toward us like a will-o-the-wisp. Nobody was going faster than ten miles an hour, but the sound of the passing cars seemed deafening.

  The gray road curved left, right, and back again until I’d lost all sense of direction. Sometimes the dark shadow of spruces gave way to a lighter gray and we could smell salt water and seaweed. After a while, we clattered across a wooden trestle bridge.

  “That on the map?”

  “No, and I think we should have come to another turnoff by now.”

  “Shit. Guess we better turn around.”

  On the map, the turnoff we missed would be on the right but the first one we came to went left. “Maybe that’s it. Goddamn it, you’d think there’d be a sign.”

  “Yeah. I remember that one, but I don’t remember seeing any other one for miles.”

  The turnoff was narrower than the road we’d been on, just wide enough for one car. We seemed to be crossing a salt marsh: no trees and the smell of mud on both sides. We were creeping along at five miles an hour—either the light was fading or the fog was thickening or both. Then we were on gravel, a bad sign, but the road was too narrow to turn around. The gravel gave way to dirt, and the dirt became a two-track.

  I stopped the car and got out. The fog was so dense I was damp in a few seconds. The roof light cozily lit up the inside of the car, and Blue Hill Radio was playing Dave Matthews. “Turn that off a minute, will you?” I said. “I want to see if I can hear anything.”

  The foghorn sounded farther away than before. Between its faint moos I could hear the clank of a bell buoy. It sounded almost next to us. The fog hissed and curled in the headlights and began to bead on my hair and eyebrows. Fifty feet up the road I felt as if I were in outer space.

  Back inside, with the window rolled up, the light still on, and Kate watching me inscrutably.

  “Our options at this point are very simple.” I tried a grin. “We either try to back out, or we go forward and hope for a turning place.”

  “It’s an awfully long way to back out,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “It is. And with every foot we go forward it’s even longer. Suppose there’s nothing up there.”

  “God, there you go again. Don’t be such a pessimist. This road has got to lead somewhere. Otherwise it wouldn’t be here, right?”

  “When you get to be my age you’ll understand that roads don’t necessarily go places. Actually, my mother taught me that when I was even younger than you.”

  “She was a pessimist too, hunh?”

  “No, she was a romantic. A hopeless romantic.”

  “I get it. The glamour of the road versus the predictability of the arrival. The trip qua end in itself, and all that Kerouac nonsense.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s not pessimistic. And you’re not old enough to call it nonsense.”

  She didn’t say anything, and I put the car in gear. “Okay, fuck it. We’ll go on then.”

  The grass beside the road grew taller, and the tires began to squelch through puddles. Every once in a while the high center between the tracks scraped against the chassis. There was no backing out now, and I was afraid that if we stopped in this mud we’d never get started again. We went a little faster.

  When the car finally high-centered for good and the wheels began to spin, I took it out of gear and sat back almost in relief. “Shit. What would Kerouac do now?”

  When she didn’t say anything, I turned on the roof light and saw she was crying. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I fucked it up good, didn’t I?”

  “Not your fault. It was my decision.”

  “Oh God, I should never have come.” Snuffling miserably like a little girl.

  The fog curled in the headlights, and I shut them off. After a few minutes I cut the engine and extinguished the roof light. The light outside was gray, like a gray dawn except it was now only a little after five in the evening according to the dashboard clock. With a sob she threw her arms around my neck and pressed her wet face against my chest.

  At first I was tense with remembered parallels … the fog, the little car, the girl next to me. But
gradually I relaxed, put my arm around her, and began to whisper comforting words as I patted her back. It was still not too late for someone to come along.

  Even if they didn’t, the front seats of the Ford folded way back to sleep in. The temperature was comfortable. The fog would lift in the morning. I could put brush under the tires and rock them off the high center. Backing out in daylight would be a piece of cake.

  The dashboard clock read ten past seven. Brilliant halogen lights cut through the dusk and fog behind the Ford and blasted through the rear window. A big truck engine burbled around men’s voices, raced and burbled. Two doors slammed, one after the other, and a flashlight shone into my face. Laughter from one side of the car and whistles from the other. “Well, now. So what hev we here?” A tap on my window. “Lose your way, bub?”

  I rolled down my window. “Yeah, we got lost in the fog. Then we couldn’t turn around.”

  “Well, shit, y’almost made her. Beach is right up close. You could hev turned around thayuh.”

  “Ayuh. But he probly didn’t want to turn around. Didja bub?”

  “The car’s stuck,” I said. “It’s high-centered.”

  “This a rental, ain’t it? Y’should hev rented a real cah stead of one them compac pieces a shit.”

  “But lookit how them seats go back. Now that’s a right handy feature, ain’t it?”

  “Hey, man, take it easy,” I said out my window, although the man who said it was on the other side of the car, looking in at Kate. She took her glasses from the glove compartment and sleepily put them on.

  “Where you frem, Bahstn?” The man outside my window was dressed in a green plaid wool shirt, jeans, and construction boots. His face was invisible behind the flashlight.

  “Can you take that light out of our faces?”

  The beam moved to Kate’s chest (the pointy bra), down to her knees, and back again. “You folks been to a pahty or somethin?”

  “Noah, they were hevin a pahty.”

  I tried to push my door open, but the man outside was in the way. The man put his hands on the top of the door and opened it wider while I got out. The man had dark, curly hair like mine, pale skin, and was about my height. The truck engine burbled quietly behind the headlights, and the fog swirled. “Your friend has a few manners to learn,” I told him.