And the last of the limousines was waiting, and we let the chauffeur hold the door for us, and we got in and went off to Jimmy’s baronial mansion to hear the reading of the will.
And Kerch, left behind in the rain, went with us.
Jimmy had been having simultaneous affairs with four women, anyone of whom would have been sufficiently daunting to scare even Vlad the Impaler into impotence. One was an Olympic gymnast, no more than twenty years old, what is usually referred to as coltish, natural blonde naturally, and much given to scenes in restaurants where the maitre d’ objected to her carrying a coatimundi on her shoulder. Her name was Muriel. One was an authority on machine intelligence, in her early thirties, with what used to be referred to as “bee-stung” lips, a mass of heavy, thick black, lustrous hair the shade of thoughts for which one can be jailed without bail, and an intellect that made virtually everything she said incomprehensible to all but five or six of the finest minds on the planet. Her name was Andrea. One. was a Cuban actress who had fled Batista’s tyranny mere hours before an order for her arrest on grounds of moral turpitude was issued, whose exiled status in America had been guaranteed by the extension of said warrant whose grounds of moral turpitude had been upheld by Castro; not yet thirty, in appearance no more than twenty-five, she claimed to be Chicana, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan or Castilian, depending on what the casting director was seeking, with a pair of legs usually referred to as “terminating just under her chin,” with a voice and range that could have shamed Yma Sumac, and a temper that frequently manifested itself in a splendid right cross. Her name was Edith. One was a consumer advocate for CBS television, a former runner-up to Miss North Carolina in the Miss America contest, thirty years old, rather puckishly committed to a variation on the original Ann-Margret coiffure which, given all proper due, admirably suited her auburn hair, opinionated, contentious beyond belief, and directly responsible for a Xerox price rollback that had cost the firm nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Her name was Mary Louise.
I had been seeing Leslie for three years.
Not until six years after they’d married did Jimmy bother to ask if I’d been troubled by the heat-death of the universe. Simply never occurred to him to worry about it. Not that he was bone-stick-stone insensitive; no indeed: it was that he moved too fast for consideration of the emotional debacles at any given point along the scenic route.
They were living in Connecticut, near Crown Point, in a stately manse brought over from Thomas Hardy country, somewhere near Dorset, brick-by-brick, in the early 1900s by a Dutch robber baron who’d made his boodle in association with Elisha Otis on the development of the gearless traction elevator. It was one. of those fumed oak, parquet-floored, wine-cellared beauties all writers dream about owning; just the right setting when one receives the word that one has been awarded a Nobel, or a Pulitzer, or an American Book Award, or a high six-figure purchase offer from Paramount. Two, and almost three, of those came to Jimmy in his stately manse. I was writing a lot of book reviews for The Village Voice and Kirkus.
He called late in the afternoon; the last spear of light permitted entrance by the surrounding buildings, had almost vanished from the airshaft, and I sat in gloomy relaxation trying to decipher the Mayan Codex that Doubleday charmingly called a royalty statement.
“What’re you up to?” he said, without identifying himself.
“I’m locked in nonorgasmic congress with Doubleday’s bookkeepers. It’s the first time I’ve ever been fucked by a mindless octopus.”
“How about dinner?”
“When, tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m in the city. You free?”
“According to my royalty statements that’s exactly what I am.”
“The new book isn’t doing well?”
“How could it? They must have taken the entire printing, loaded it on barges, floated it out the Narrows and deep-sixed it. Weighted down, no doubt, by the excess profits from their latest bestselling cookbook.”
“You don’t sound like the man to cheer me up tonight.”
“Sure I am. You can spend my last exuberant evening with me before I establish residency in the nearest leper colony.”
“That would be the Carrville Leprosarium. In Louisiana. And they don’t call it leprosy any more. Hansen’s Disease.”
“Why aren’t I grateful for that information?”
“I could stop off at Abercrombie & Fitch on my way over, and pick up a nice big bell for you. Or maybe a cassette of Frankie Laine singing ‘Unclean, Unclean. ‘ Do wonders for getting you a seat on the subway during rush hour.”
Badinage. Brightalk. Never a discouraging word, and the deer and the antelope play. The ritual incantations of those who had resonated to Salinger. I still had my red baseball cap in the bottom of a carton of old clothes, at the back of the bedroom closet. Nostalgia somehow cannot survive the smell of mothballs.
“I’m here; come on over whenever you’re free.”
“About an hour. We’ll go have a steak. I’m paying.”
I smiled. Naturally, you’re paying. With a five thousand copy printrun of Laurence Bedloe’s most recent astonishment, The Salamander Enchantment, rapidly being carried by salutary sea-currents toward the Bermuda Triangle, naturally you’re paying for steaks. Now if you’re up for Twinkies and Hawaiian Punch, I’m paying.
“See you when you get here.”
“Take care.”
“So long.”
I listened to the dial tone for about two minutes. Then I sat in the growing darkness, thinking about Arctic tundra. somehow it didn’t make the Carrville Leprosarium seem more attractive.
After a while the doorbell buzzed and I put on some lights and let him in. He had the look of a man who had broken some vows.
“I need a drink,” he said. He fell into the rocker with the leather seat, toed off his loafers, and sank down onto his spine, eyes closed. “By the unspeakable name of the slavering hordes of Yog-Sothoth, though Allah be the wiser… I do fiercely need a drink.”
“Can be done, chum. Give it a speakable name and I’ll put it in your paw in moments.”
He rubbed his closed eyes ferociously. From inside his hands he mumbled, “Any damn thing. Largeish, if you will.”
I went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard and gave the cognac a pass. This looked like heavy weather drinking. I poured Wild Turkey into a big water glass without benefit of jigger, tossed in a single ice cube, raised the level with a little tap water, and carried the BomDer’s Moon back into the living room.
Jimmy was sitting on the floor, in the darkness near the window. I couldn’t see him that well, but I could hear him sobbing. I think I grabbed for the doorjamb to steady myself. In the fifteen years we’d been friends, I’d never seen him cry. I’d never known him to cry. I’d never heard anyone mention that they’ d seen him cry. It had never occurred to me that he might one day, in my presence, cry. I didn’t even know if he was able to cry.
He didn’t know I was there, staring at him.
Very quietly, I carried the glass over to him, put it down beside his crossed legs, and I went back across the room and sat just outside a pool of lamplight, my face in darkness. I had, no idea what to do, didn’t want to say something wrong, definitely didn’t want whatever I finally said to be banality or homey homily; so I waited. Eventually, it seemed to me, he’d stop, take a drink, and we’d talk.
Eventually he stopped, noticed the glass, reached for it slowly and drank long and deep; and then he looked around for me.
“Here’s a new one for you,” he said.
I spoke softly. “Not so new; I do it all the time.”
A marvelous waiting silence resumed.
Quite a while later he said, “I never asked you: were you pissed off at me for marrying Leslie?”