Bright Lights, Big City, Page 6

  First stop on the present assignment is volume E for Emperor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. No sign of penguins, but there’s a fascinating article about embryology with sequential pix of the human egg changing from a salamander at ten days into a homunculus at ten weeks. Eventually you replace E on the shelf and reach for P, one of your favorites. Paralysis; Paranoid Reactions; Parasitology, for fun and profit, sub-chapters on rhizopods, ciliates, flagellates and sporozoans. Pardubice, a town in the East Bohemian section of Czechoslovakia, an important junction on the Brno-Prague line. Paris, with color pix; Particles;Elementary; Pascal; Pavlov; Peccary, the New World counterpart of the swine (w. pic.); Pedro, the name of five kings of Portugal. Finally, Penguins. Flightless and clumsy on land. You know the feeling. The Emperor reaches a height of four feet. No mention of edibility. In the picture they look like eccentric Polar Explorers dressed for a reception at the Sherry Netherland.

  Your colleagues are abuzz with details from their own pieces. Wade has one about an inventor who has just received his hundredth patent, for a rotary nose-hair clipping device. Wade gets the inventor on the phone and learns that he was also responsible for the automatic toilet-bowl cleaning revolution, although the big companies stole the idea out from under him and made millions. He gives Wade a long account of this injustice and then says he can’t discuss the matter because it’s under litigation. All this should be wonderfully diverting, yet there is a forced quality to your laughter. You find it hard to listen to what other people are saying, or to understand the words of the article on which you are ostensibly working. You read the same paragraph over and over, trying to remember the difference between a matter of fact and a matter of opinion. Should you call up the president of the Polar Explorers and ask if it’s true that someone was wearing a headdress made out of walrus skin? Does it matter? And why does the spelling of Triscuit look so strange? You keep watching the door for Clara. Odd phrases of French run through your brain.

  The first thing to do is call the writer and get from him then umber of someone who can confirm that such a society exists, that it had a reception at the hotel mentioned, on the date mentioned, that this is a matter of fact and not fiction. Names are named. You must find out if these names belong to real people and, if so, how they are spelled.

  Rittenhouse announces that he’s just had a call from Clara, who is sick and won’t be in: the reprieve you have been waiting for. The boa constrictor wrapped around your heart eases its grip. Who knows? The illness might prove serious.

  “Actually,” Rittenhouse continues, “what she said is that she would not be in this morning. She’s not certain if she will be feeling well enough to come in this afternoon. She can’t say at this point.” He pauses and tugs on his glasses, considering whether further qualification is necessary, and then concludes, “Anyone wishing to consult her may call her at home.”

  You ask Rittenhouse if there are any messages.

  “Nothing specific,” he answers.

  Here is your chance to redeem yourself. A day’s work might pull you into the clear with the French piece. You could get the guys in Typesetting to cut you a few hours’ slack on the deadline. You could get the Penguin thing out of the way in half an hour and then buckle down to it.

  Alors! Vite, vite! Allons-y!

  An hour later, the Polar Explorers are put to bed. It’s a little after noon, and your energy is flagging. What you need is some lunch to set you right. Return to the French elections with renewed vigor. Maybe pick up tint baguette with ham and Brie to get you into the proper frame of mind. You ask if anybody wants anything from the outer world. Megan gives you money for a bagel.

  On the way out you see Alex Hardy standing in front of the water cooler staring into the aquamarine glass. He looks up, startled, and then, seeing it’s only you, he says hello. He turns back to the water cooler and says, “I was just thinking it could use some fish.”

  Alex is a Fiction Editor Emeritus, a relic from the early days, a man who speaks of the venerable founders by their nicknames. He started out as an office boy, made his rep as a writer of satiric sketches of Manhattan high life that abruptly stopped appearing for reasons which are still the subject of speculation, and became an editor. He discovered and encouraged some of the writers you grew up on, but he has not discovered anybody in years and his main function seems to be as the totem figure of Continuity and Tradition. Only one story has emerged from his office in the time you have been on the staff. No one can say whether his drinking is a function of his decline or whether it is the other way around. You expect cause and effect are inextricable in these cases. Mornings he is thoughtful and witty, if somewhat ravaged. In the afternoons he sometimes wanders down to the Department of Factual Verification and waxes nostalgic. You believe he likes you, insofar as he likes anyone. He attached detailed memos to several of your short-story submissions, critiques both blunt and encouraging. He took your work seriously, although the fact that it ended up on his desk was perhaps an indication that it was not taken seriously in the Department of Fiction. You are fond of this man. While others view him as a sunken ship, you have a fantasy: Under his tutelage, you begin to write and publish. His exertion on your behalf renews his sense of purpose. You become a team, Fitzgerald and Perkins all over again. Soon he’s promoting a new generation of talent-your disciples-:and you’re evolving from your Early to your Later Period.

  “The old crew would have thought of that,” he says. “Siamese fighting fish in the water cooler.”

  You try to think of a retort along the lines of “a scale off the fish that bit you,” but it doesn’t quite come.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Lunch,” you say, before you can think better of it. The last time you told Alex you were on your way to lunch you needed a stretcher to get you back to the office.

  He consults his watch. “Not a bad idea. Mind if I join you?”

  By the time you compose an excuse it seems too late, indeed rude, to say that you’re meeting a friend. You don’t have to match him drink for drink. You don’t have to drink anything, although one wouldn’t kill you. One pop would cut neatly through this headache. You’ll just tell him you’ve got a big piece going to press. He’ll understand. You could use a friendly presence. You might even confide in him. Tell him some of your problems. Alex is a man familiar with trouble.

  “Have you ever considered getting an MBA?” he asks. He has taken you to a steakhouse off Seventh Avenue, a smoky place favored by Times reporters and other heavy drinkers. He is dropping ashes on his steak, which lies cold and untouched. Already he has informed you that it is impossible to get a good steak anymore. Beef isn’t what it used to be; they force-feed the cattle and inject them with hormones. He is on his third vodka martini. You are trying to stretch your second.

  “I’m not saying necessarily go into business. But write about it. That’s the subject now. The guys who understand business are going to write the new literature. Wally Stevens said money is a kind of poetry, but he didn’t follow his own advice.” He tells you there was the golden age of Papa and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, then a silver age in which he played a modest role. He thinks we’re now in a bronze age, and that fiction has nowhere to go. It can run but it can’t hide. The new writing will be about technology, the global economy, the electronic ebb and flow of wealth. “You’re a smart boy,” he says. “Don’t be seduced by all that crap about garrets and art.”

  He flags down two more martinis, even though your second has yet to run dry.

  “I envy you,” he says.

  “What are you—twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four. Your whole life ahead of you. You’re single, right?”

  First you say no, and then yes. “Yes. Single.”

  “You’ve got it made,” he says, although he has just informed you that the world you are going to inherit will nave neither good beef nor good writing. “My liver’s shot,” he adds. “My liver’s gone to h
ell and I’ve got emphysema.”

  The waiter comes with the drinks and asks about Alex’s weak, if there is anything wrong, if he would prefer something else. Alex says there’s nothing particularly wrong with and tells him to take it away.

  “You know why there’s so much homosexuality now?” he says after the waiter is gone.

  You shake your head.

  “It’s because of all the goddamned hormones they inject into the beef. An entire generation’s grown up on it.” He nods and looks you straight in the eye. You assume a thoughtful, manly expression. “So, who are you reading these days,” he asks. “Tell me who the young hotshots are, the up-and-comers.”

  You mention a couple of your recent enthusiasms, but-presently his attention drifts away and his eyelids flutter. You revive him by asking about Faulkner, with whom he shared an office in Hollywood for a couple of months in the forties. He tells you about a high-speed three-day carouse soaked with bourbon and studded with bons mots.

  Alex hardly notices when you say goodbye to him on the sidewalk. His nose is pointed in the direction of the office, his eyes glazed with alcohol and memories. You are a little glazed yourself and a walk is absolutely necessary by way of clearing the head. It’s early. There is still time. You are standing at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk- staring at Mary O’Brien McCann, the Missing Person poster girl-when somebody taps you on the shoulder.

  “Hey, man, wanna buy a ferret?”

  The guy is about your age, acne scars, skittish eyes. He is holding a leash attached to an animal that looks not unlike a dachshund in a fur coat.

  “That’s a ferret?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Makes a great conversation piece. You’ll meet a lot of chicks, I’m telling you. You got any rats in your apartment, he’ll take care of that. His name’s Fred.”

  Fred is an elegant-looking animal, apparently well behaved, though you have been known to be deceived by first appearances-witness the Austin Healey you bought with a junkyard under the hood and the genuine Carder watch. Or the time you picked out a wife. It occurs to you that this would be the perfect mascot for the Department-a real live ferret for the fact finders. You don’t really need a pet, you can’t even take care of yourself, but perhaps Fred would be the ideal companion for Clara. A parting gift; a token of your affection.

  “How much?”

  “A hundred.”

  “Fifty.”

  “All right, eighty-five. My lowest.”

  You tell him you’ll have to shop around. He gives you a business card with the name of an adult magazine shop. “Ask for Jimmy,” he says. “I got boas and monkeys, too. My prices can’t be beat. I’m insane.”

  You walk across town, east on Forty-seventh, past the windows of the discount jewelry stores. A hawker with an armful of leaflets drones in front of a shop door: “Gold and silver, buy and sell, gold and silver, buy and sell.” No questions asked on the buying end, you presume. Chain-snatchers welcome. You stop to admire an emerald tiara, the perfect gift for your next queen for a day. Fantasy shopping. Of course, when you have money you will not stop here. You’re not going to wow your dream girl with jewelry box that reads Gem-O-Rama. You’ll head straight to Tiffany or Cartier. Sit in a chair in the president’s office and have them fetch the merchandise for your inspection.

  Hasidim hurry up and down the street, holding their hats, stopping to confer with one another, taking care not to eyeball the women in miniskirts. You examine the wares in the window of the Gotham Book Mart, and take note of the sign: wise MEN FISH here.

  At Fifth Avenue you cross and walk up to Saks. You stop in front of a window. Inside the window is a mannequin which is a replica of Amanda-your wife, the model. To form the cast for the mannequin, Amanda lay face down in a vat of latex batter for ninety minutes, breathing through a straw. You haven’t seen her in the flesh since she left for the last trip to Paris, a few days after she did the cast. You stand in front of the window and try to remember if this was how she really looked.

  LES JEUX SONT FAITS

  You met her in Kansas City, where you had gone to work as a reporter after college. You had lived on both coasts and abroad; the heartland was until then a large blank. You felt that some kind of truth and American virtue lurked thereabouts, and as a writer you wanted to tap into it.

  Amanda grew up smack in the heart of the heartland. You met her in a bar and couldn’t believe your luck. You never would have worked up the hair to hit on her, but she came right up and started talking to you. As you talked you thought: She looks like a goddamned model and she doesn’t even know it. You thought of this ingenuousness as being typical of the heartland. You pictured her backlit by a sunset, knee-deep in amber waves of grain. Her lanky, awkward grace put you in mind of a newborn foal. Her hair was the color of wheat, or so you imagined; after two months in Kansas you had yet to see any wheat. You spent most of your time at zoning-board meetings duly reporting on variances for shopping malls and perc tests for new housing developments. At night, because your apartment was too quiet, you went to bars with a book.

  She seemed to think you came from Manhattan. Everyone in Kansas thought you came from New York City, whether you said Massachusetts, New England, or just East Coast. She asked about Fifth Avenue, The Carlyle, Studio 54. Obviously, from her magazine reading she knew more about these places than you did. She had visions of the Northeast as a country club rolling out from the glass and steel towers of Manhattan. She asked about the Ivy League, as if it were some kind of formal organization, and later that night she introduced you to her roommate as a member of it.

  Within a week she moved in with you. She was working for a florist, and thought she might eventually like to attend classes at the university. Your education daunted and excited her. Her desire to educate herself was touching. She asked you for reading lists. She talked about the day your book would be published. All your plans were aimed at Gotham. She wanted to live on Central Park and you wished to join the literary life of the city. She sent away for the catalogues of universities in New York and typed the resumes which you sent out.

  The more you learned of Amanda’s early life, the less surprised you were at her desire to start afresh. Her father left home when she was six. He did something on oil rigs, and the last Amanda heard he was in Libya. She got a Christmas card with a picture of a mosque. When she was ten she moved with her mother to a cousin’s farm in Nebraska. It was not much of a home. Her mother married a feed-and-grain salesman, and they moved to K.C. The salesman wasn’t home often and, when he was, he was either abusive or amorous to both mother and daughter. Amanda had to look after herself; you gathered her mother didn’t much care about her. She left home when she was sixteen and moved in with a boyfriend, who lasted until a few months before she met you. He left a note explaining that he was moving to California.

  Hers was a childhood grimmer than most, and whenever you were inclined to find her lacking, you reminded yourself to give her credit for endurance.

  In the eight months you lived together in Kansas City you visited her mother only once. Amanda was skittish and snappy on the way out. You pulled up to a trailer home on a treeless street. She introduced her mother as Dolly. The feed-and-grain salesman, you surmised, was no longer in the picture. There was tremendous tension in the cramped living room. Dolly chain-smoked Kools, flirted with you, and tossed offhand jabs at Amanda. You could see that Dolly was used to trading on her looks and that she loathed and—envied her daughter’s youth. The resemblance between the two was strong, except that Dolly had a bust—a difference she alluded to several times. You could tell Amanda was ashamed of her, ashamed of the velvet painting on the wall and the unwashed dishes in the sink, ashamed that her mother was a beautician. When Dolly went to the bathroom-“to freshen up,” as she put it-Amanda picked up the souvenir Statue of Liberty on top of the television set and said, “Look at this. It’s my mother all over.” She seemed afraid that
you would think it was her possession, her taste, afraid that you would identify her with Dolly.

  Two years later Dolly was invited to the wedding back East. Amanda was relieved when she couldn’t make it. Her father’s invitation was Returned to Sender bearing a collection of Arabic postmarks, Address Unknown. There was no bride’s side at the church, no one except a distant, aged aunt and uncle to indicate that Amanda’s past extended farther back than the day she arrived with you in New York. That seemed to be just how she wanted it.