Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt a cold eye from the heavens turn his way and freeze him. He heard a deep voice intone: You are going mad. Just like your mother. Mad, mad, mad.
Patty listened to David tell his story. He was excited about this one. She marveled, when he was done, at the fact that nothing had happened. He was steeled for battle, talking angrily, vehemently, but nothing had happened. Mrs. Thorn had had a talk with his two bosses, and they decided nothing would change. And there David was, knowing this, and yet feeling it was all so thrilling, so important. She wondered if he would really make it in that world. Gelb wasn’t so foolish. She had learned from him that most things in business were much more simple and pure than someone like David imagined. What is, is. If Mrs. Thorn wanted to fire Rounder, she would have accepted the resignation. She didn’t want to. That she would someday was no daring insight on David’s or Chico’s part. Everybody at the top is eventually fired. And once a person reached the zenith, failure no longer existed. Rounder would go on to other jobs, either as well paid or better, his so-called failure at Newstime just last week’s snicker, not forever’s shame.
She hadn’t slept with David for weeks. When she began the affair with Gelb, she had resisted enjoying the sex. Her lack of orgasm had piqued Gelb: he worked extraordinarily hard at the task of breaking her attempt at passive coolness; however, when she stopped fighting him, she was, now to her considerable annoyance, unable to come. Her loins would ache, her hard nipples plead in the air for liberation, but nothing could seem to push her over the plateau of mounting excitement into the blissful free-fall of release.
Finally, after two months of this agony, Gelb accused her of being afraid to give in to the final pleasure of sex because she equated that with love. She laughed at him, told him he was truly from another generation to believe that orgasm depended on emotion. He answered that he didn’t, but she obviously did. She mocked him. But that afternoon, she came, and had ever since. Often Gelb, thrilled at the breakthrough, would continue the lovemaking beyond his penis’ interest, to watch her groan again in his arms, relishing her surrender. Since then, she had been unable to enjoy sex with David, something she had not admitted to Gelb, knowing that he, armed with that information, would claim he had been right — orgasm equals love.
She felt guilt about her lack of desire to make love to David the most keenly of all the specific betrayals her affair involved. That she was fucking this man to insure her career made her hate herself (and certainly the world) but gave her a sense of justification in relation to David. He was so ambitious that she knew, in her spot, he would do the same. But the transfer of her lust to Gelb — an occurrence that she found incredible, despite the ferocious, almost voracious energy he applied to making love, because he was neither handsome nor sexy—was something to abhor and regret. Why was she such a nitwit? Why did she have to convince herself that her screwing Gelb was anything other than ambition? Part of her was attempting to conceal the opportunism behind sentiment. She knew her orgasms were lies. They had to be. Gelb was a contemptible, unscrupulous man — no amount of clitoral stimulation should convince her to feel passion for him.
David finished his monologue on the day, asked her perfunctory questions about her lunch with Betty, showing no interest at the appearance of Gelb. When she complained about his showing up (to be consistent with what she thought he knew of her relationship to him, namely that he had fired her), she discovered, to her disgust, that David had forgotten the story of her dismissal from Goodson Books.
“It was two years ago.” he said when she remarked on it. Shortly afterward he buried himself with business magazines in front of the television, responding only with grunts to her comments on the shows.
Betty phoned late. “I love it,” she said without a hello. “I love it.”
“Really?” Patty asked, pleased, and then wondered why she cared. Since the contract, Betty hadn’t made any criticisms of her pages, which she submitted chapter by chapter.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Betty said, her tone full of serious calculation. “I’m going to give it to Gelb right away. I think there’s some cutting we might do, but I don’t want to wait. He made that offer to read it at lunch— he probably wasn’t too serious, so I want to take him up on it before he has a chance to back out.”
“Cutting?” Patty asked, ignoring the rest. It was simply too absurd. Betty thinking herself brilliant, believing Gelb was simply being polite, missing the whole drama like a silly minor character in a farce.
Betty laughed. “God, you writers are all the same. Can’t touch a precious word.”
“I didn’t say that,” Patty snapped. “I merely wanted to know what we were cutting.”
“Nothing. Just little things. We’ll meet later in the week.” She lowered her voice. “I can’t really talk long. Tony’s in a mood. Just wanted you to know I love it.”
Patty hung up and looked at David, his nose in Forbes. “I’m going to bed,” she said, thinking that if he wanted to
make love, he’d go too.
“Okay,” he mumbled.
I said it too coldly. She softened her tone and smiled. “Sure you don’t want to come too?”
He looked up, his glasses off for reading, and squinted at her. “What?”
“Sure you don’t want to come to bed?” she asked with a broad wink.
“Oh,” he said, as though she had proposed having dinner with her parents. “I’m too …” He paused.
Dull, she decided for him. “Okay,” she interrupted breezily, and walked away, thinking: He doesn’t deserve me.
By nightfall, Fred was excited. His goddamn book was gonna be published. Tom Lear had invited him to a screening, and when Fred announced Holder’s praising reception, which Tom took to be an event that had been in suspense, since no one knew, not even Marion, that Fred had been writing the book virtually in collaboration with Holder, Fred could see in Lear’s response how much fun might lie ahead for him.
“Oh, you know who’s going to be at the screening? A lot of New York Times people. I bet Harry Reynolds will be there. Don’t let me forget to introduce you.”