After buzzing twice and hearing nothing, Eddie concluded that the ancient intercom in Henry’s building was busted. He hollered up as he tried to throw a stone, then another, then a small stick, four stories up. After rather too long, Henry’s shaggy head protruded from his window.
“I don’t want to interrupt your work,” Eddie called up.
He couldn’t hear what Henry said, but whatever it was, he was buzzed in.
Henry met him at the door, as breathless as if he’d been the one to hoof up the four flights of banister-free stairs.
“I don’t want to interrupt work on Bailiff,” Eddie repeated.
“It’s fine, fine. I’m due for a break. I’ve been working, well, working too hard. I am very close though, very, very close to having the first perfect New Realist novel.”
“That’s great Henry, just great.” Eddie summoned his enthusiasm and set the bagels on the tiny table. “Here, I’ve brought food.”
“Food,” Henry said, as though it were a new-fangled concept, a curiosity that had yet to be tested by time.
From the looks of him, Eddie could believe that food was so far in Henry’s past that he didn’t remember it. Eddie wished that he’d thought to get cream cheese or had brought his friend a large sandwich or pizza or side of beef.
Spitting poppy seeds, Henry spoke as though he had not had companionship since his last substantial meal. “Great, great, yes, great. Except that now I have every reason to doubt the very foundation and premise on which my New Realism is based.” He tossed Eddie the latest copy of Swanky and held up a cinnamon-raisin bagel. “Do you mind?”
“Knock yourself out,” Eddie said.
On the cover of the magazine was the notorious picture of dogs playing poker, except that semi-human faces had been photoshopped onto the faces of the dogs. Eddie turned to the table of contents and then the letters page. “Your fan letter! Congratulations.”
“But that’s just it. That’s the terrible thing. Reading that letter, enjoying it even, I realized that what I’m trying to do with fiction is utterly superficial. I’m right — but so what? I’m trite. I’ve said nothing more profound than if you mix red paint with yellow you get orange.”
“Not following you, my friend.”
Still chewing, Henry went on. “Don’t you see? I’ve said what everyone already knows. Everyone smart who’s thought about it, I mean. I’ve identified the symptoms of a problem evident to any reader. But I’ve done nothing to root out the problem. I have no solution. I’m nothing but an anodyne.”
“But the person who wrote this letter admired, hell, she adored your essay, your ideas. Look here: she uses the word ‘brilliant.’ And I hope you caught the fact that she signed her name Nancy Horny.”
“Exactly. One can spot an imposter by the absurdity of his fans.” Henry shoved the last quarter of bagel into the pocket of his cheek.
“So a silly and apparently randy girl wants to feel smart by writing Swanky and saying she liked your essay. So what? Accept her flattery and get hold of her email address if they’ll give it to you.”
“It’s not just the letter, Eddie. It’s the fiction in this issue. There’s a story by an emerging writer named Clarice Aames. It is, hands down, the most interesting piece of fiction I have read in a decade.”
“How old are you, Henry?” Eddie cocked his head. “Oh, never mind. Is it really that good?”
“It’s called ‘Bad Dog Séance.’ It does everything, in a dozen or so pages, that I’d hoped New Realism would do in my lifetime. Except that it’s not at all like New Realism. It’s a solution to the problems I merely name.” He paused to let his breathing catch up to his words. “I’ve never heard of this Clarice Aames, but all I can think about now is throwing myself at her feet. If I could just follow her around, just so my eyesight could follow her gaze, see what she sees—”
“I believe that’s called stalking. I take it she’s good-looking, then, this Clarice?”
“I have no idea, nor do I care. Fat or thin, fair or pimpled, eighteen or eighty. I’m in love. Really in love.”
Just as Eddie was about to explain to his friend that his absurd declaration was certainly the product of a famine of both stomach and heart, a rock hit the window hard enough to leave a thin, jagged fracture line in the glass.
Henry ignored the damage to his window and mumbled, “Could you buzz in whoever that is?”
What seemed like a good while later, Whelpdale heaved into the room. As if on cue, he said: “Whatever you do, never trust a woman. Stay away from them. Avoid them at all cost. If you must consort, make it an affair of the genitalia only. Guard your hearts, brothers!”
Hearing the word ‘genitalia’ issue from Whelpdale’s fleshy mouth nauseated Eddie. It was also the case that he had never quite forgiven the fat writer for stealing his stage minutes at the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference. Not to mention the fact that Whelpdale’s goals in life were to make a living as a fiction writer without actually writing any fiction, and to make himself the center of any conversation or situation he was peripheral to. Nevertheless, Whelpdale’s voice held true pain. Eddie rationalized his reluctant sympathy this way: just because I eat steak doesn’t mean I wouldn’t pity the agony of some poor cow. He gave up his chair, the sole comfortable one in the place, and joined Henry on the piece of foam they pretended was a sofa.
Whelpdale wept — real tears and many of them — into his plump hands.
To help him along, help him get it out and then get out, Eddie said, “Girl from Birmingham broke your heart?”
Whelpdale nodded into his cupped palms, his crying still audible.
“Get a little bit of your money along the way?”
Eddie tried to say this in a soft tone that would imply that every man had trodden a few steps in those shoes. And though his own situation was not identical, Eddie’s shoulders lowered at the thought that he could understand woman trouble all too well.
“I’m very sorry. You won’t believe it just now, but you’ll get over her soon and find a much better one.”
Even as he passed along this masculine wisdom, he hated Amanda for being the most attractive woman he would ever have.
“I think I’m through with the softer sex this time.” Whelpdale pulled a creased letter from his coat pocket. “I feel monstrously unlucky. She was my perfect woman. I should never have let her go back to Alabama, not for a week, not for a day. She got back together with an old boyfriend down there. If I had kept her near, captive audience and all, I believe I could have made her love me permanently.” He unfolded the letter and pushed it toward Eddie and Henry. “Read it for yourself.”
Eddie shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. You should burn it so you never read it again.”
“I just want you to see what she’s like. She seems quite torn up about it herself. She blames only herself. Oh God, she’s so gorgeous.”
Eddie listened to him detail the beauty of an apparently anemic and austere-looking young woman with a hick twang. When Whelpdale started to describe her sexual tastes, Eddie held up his hand. “You’ll be sorry later if you go on.”