“I don’t want you to have your heart broken,” Redmon said.
“I’m forty-eight years old,” James said. “My heart’s been broken for about forty years.”
“There is good news,” Redmon said. “Very good news. Your agent and I agreed that I should be the one to tell you. I can offer you a million-dollar advance on your next book. Corporations are bad, but they’re also good. They have money, and I intend to spend it.”
James was so shocked, he couldn’t move. Had he heard correctly?
“You’ll get a third on signing,” Redmon continued, as if he gave away million-dollar advances all the time. “With that and the money we’ll get from the iStores’ placement, I think you can expect to have a very good year.”
“Great,” James said. He still wasn’t sure how to react. Should he jump out of his chair and do the watusi?
But Redmon was being calm about it. “What will you do with the money?” he asked.
“Save it. For Sam’s college education,” James said.
“That will about use it up,” Redmon agreed. “Six, seven hundred thousand dollars — what does it get you these days? After taxes ... Christ. And with those guys on Wall Street buying Picassos for fifty million.” He put up his hands as if to push away this reality. “It’s our new world order, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” James agreed. “But one could always pursue the teenage fantasy. Buy a little sailboat in the Caribbean and disappear for a few years.”
“Not me,” Redmon said. “I’d be bored in two days. I can hardly stand to take a vacation. I like cities.”
“Right,” James said. He looked at Redmon. How lucky to know one’s own mind. Redmon was always pleased with himself, James thought.
While James did not, he realized, know his own mind at all.
“I’ll walk you out,” Redmon said. Standing, he made a face and put his hand to his jaw. “Damn tooth,” he said. “Probably needs another root canal. How are your teeth? It’s extraordinary, getting old. It is as hard as people say.” Exiting the office, they came out into a maze of cubicles.
“But there are advantages,” Redmon continued, his overweening confidence firmly back in place. “For instance, we know everything now. We’ve seen it all before. We know there’s nothing new. Have you noticed that?
The only thing that changes is the technology.”
“Except we can’t understand the technology,” James said.
“Bullshit,” Redmon said. “It’s still a bunch of buttons. It’s only a matter of knowing which ones to press.”
“Like the panic button that blows up the world.”
“Wasn’t that disabled?” Redmon said. “Why can’t we have another cold war? It was so much more sensible than a real war.” He pushed the button for the elevator.
“Mankind is going backward,” James said. The elevator came, and he got on.
“Say hi to your family for me,” Redmon called out with genuine urgency as the doors were closing.
Redmon’s admonishment struck James as extraordinary. Family concerns were something Redmon never would have considered ten years ago, when he was out bedding a different woman in publishing every night and drinking and doing cocaine until dawn. For years, people had postulated that something terrible would happen to Redmon — he appeared to deserve it, although what the terrible thing was, no one could say — rehab, maybe? Or some kind of death? But nothing terrible ever did happen to him. Instead, he slid into his new life as a married father and corporate man with the agility of a skier. James had never understood it, but he thought perhaps Redmon, instead of being a source of consternation, ought to be considered an inspiration. If Redmon could change, why not he?
I have money now, James thought, the reality hitting him at the same time as the crisp September air. At least New York appeared to be having a real fall this year. Ordinary occurrences were now a pleasure and a relief to him, a reminder that in some ways, life could go on as before.
But would it now that he had money? Passing the chain stores that lined lower Fifth Avenue with their wares displayed in great glass cases like a middle-class shopper’s dream, he reminded himself that it wasn’t so much money. Not enough even to buy a tiny studio apartment in this great and expensive metropolis. But he had a bit of money. He was no longer — for this moment, anyway — a loser.
At Sixteenth Street, he passed Paul Smith and, out of habit, stopped for a second and gazed into the windows. Paul Smith’s clothing was a status symbol, the choice for the sophisticated, urbane downtown male.
Mindy had bought him a Paul Smith shirt years ago, for Christmas, when she was feeling proud of him and, apparently, had decided he was worth a splurge. Staring into the window at a pair of velvet pants, it occurred to James that for the first time in his life, he could afford anything in this store. This new feeling empowered him, and he went in.
Almost immediately, his phone rang. It was Mindy.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Shopping.”
“You? Shopping?” Mindy said with faux astonishment that was edged ever so slightly with disdain. “What are you buying?”
“I’m in Paul Smith.”
“You’re not going to actually buy anything, are you?” Mindy said.
“I might,” he said.
“You’d better not. That store is too expensive,” she said. James had thought he’d call Mindy first thing about his advance, but he surprised himself by wanting to keep it to himself.
“When are you coming home?” she asked.
“Soon.”
“How did it go? With Redmon?”
“Great,” he said, and hung up. He shook his head. Both he and Mindy had a quaint, puritan approach to money. Like it was always about to run out. Like it shouldn’t be squandered. One’s feelings about money were a gene one inherited. If your parents were afraid about money, then you’d be afraid. Mindy came from New England stock, where it was considered tacky to spend a lot of money. He came from immigrant stock, where money was needed for food and education. They’d survived in New York because they saved and didn’t get their self-esteem from their outward appearances. But maybe that wasn’t the solution. Because, James thought, neither he nor Mindy seemed to have much self-esteem at all.
James looked around the store and, walking to a rack of jackets, fingered a fine cashmere overcoat. He did not know what it was like to have money. Not having money had kept him tied to Mindy’s apron strings.
He knew it, had known it for years, had denied it, had rationalized it, had been ashamed of it, but what was most shameful was that he’d never been willing to do anything about it. Because, he’d told himself, he believed in the purity of his pursuit of literature. He’d been willing to sacrifice his manhood for this higher ideal. He’d taken succor in the fact that he was an honorable struggler.
But he had money now! He looked around the store, inhaling the manly scent of leather and cologne. The shop was like a stage set, with its wood-paneled walls — a cornucopia of anything a man with taste, sophistication, and style might want. And, he thought, looking at the three-thousand-dollar price tag on a cashmere jacket, a sense of irony at how much money it cost to keep warm.
In an act of defiance, he took the jacket off the hanger and carried it into the dressing room. He took off his own jacket, which was a sensible navy wool bought during a sale at Barneys five years ago, and looked at his body. He had the advantage of height, but he was a gangle of limbs with a soft belly. His legs were still firm, but his butt was flat, and his chest was flabby (“man boobs” was the current term, he believed), but all this could be hidden with the right clothing. He slipped his arms into the sleeves and buttoned the jacket across his chest. He was transformed into a man who had something big going on in his life.