It takes a moment before he can focus on the text, so excited is he. How many years has he waited for this! Sure, it's just a few hundred words, but it's a start. Might Jimmy have a full manuscript in that bag over there in the corner? Herman would never snoop, but how he longs to.
He focuses on the pages before him.
He reads through them.
Herman has worked as an editor for forty years. It doesn't take him long to realize. This article is no good.
It's a sort of editorial, but without any clear argument, touching on life in L.A., on the proliferation of guns in America, on declining civility. The article is full of grammar mistakes and platitudes. It's amateurish. Is this the right document? Maybe this is a rough draft? He goes to check the computer. By the mouse pad, he finds a scrap of scrunched paper and pulls it apart. It bears Jimmy's handwriting and contains a long list of notes, written, rewritten, crossed out, full of scribbles and question marks and lines and dashes and variations. Hours of effort have gone into this, a worthless piece of writing.
Herman can't sleep that night. He keeps sitting up in bed, turning on the lamp, stuffing himself with hard candies, then brushing his teeth all over again. At 6 A.M., he rises for good-he intends to escape the apartment before Jimmy wakes up. That way, Herman can study the article at the office and work out what to do.
But Jimmy appears from the spare room, saying he wanted to catch Herman before he left: there's a spelling mistake in the article.
"Don't worry. I'll fix it," Herman says.
Jimmy insists on doing it himself. He disappears into the computer room, makes his correction, and hands Herman a memory stick containing the article.
At the office, Herman shoots off an email to Kathleen, saying he may have a late addition to the editorial page. He isn't bound by this, but it leaves him the option. Does he have to run the piece? He could tell Jimmy it was good but that it needed more focus. Then again, honestly, can anything be salvaged from it? And the paper isn't his to fill as he pleases. It's not disloyal if he spikes the piece, is it? What about credibility? "Credibility," he mutters, and it is a sodden, fraudulent word on this day.
He resolves to publish the article. He has the power to. And he will. It'll appear in a single edition, down two half-columns, with a bloated headline and a pull quote to fill out the space, deep in the inside pages. He'll show the clipping to Jimmy tomorrow morning, he'll thank him, he'll throw a thick arm around his narrow friend and say, "After all these years, we got to work together."
He plugs the memory stick into his computer and opens Jimmy's document. But the text of the night before is gone. All that appears is a note: "Don't worry, kid. I deleted the thing. Did you know tonight is my last night in town? I'm taking you for dinner, and I pay. No arguments. Jimmy."
Kathleen asks about the editorial, and Herman tells her it was a false alarm. She points out a headline-"Global Warming Good for Ice Creams"-and proposes it for his next edition of Why? She adds, "I find it idiotic on so many levels."
"No, yes, you're right," he says, though he's not listening.
Jimmy chooses a touristy restaurant near the Vatican for their last dinner. Herman wishes he himself had picked-he can see from the curled menu outside that this place isn't serious. Food is not the point, of course, but he's on edge: his friend leaves tomorrow and nothing has been achieved. During dinner, Jimmy drinks three glasses of wine, which is the most he's had since the heart attack. As alcohol seeps into him, he rambles charmingly, like in the old days, when he was legendary for tipsy philosophizing, reciting Yeats or Yevtushenko from memory, blathering on about Joyce, and proclaiming the funniest word in the English language to be "rump." Herman associates Jimmy's drunken chatter with their happiest times.
They don't mention his article at first. But the evening is going so well that Herman says, "This whole thing could be an impetus, don't you think? A little reminder, you know. To really write something now."
Jimmy sits up straighter, clears his throat. "Herman," he says calmly, "I'm not writing anything. I haven't yet, and I'm not going to now. I never was going to. I knew that from, maybe, age twenty. You're the one who kept going on about it."
"I didn't go on about it," Herman says, taken aback. "It's just that I thought-I think-that you are capable of something great. Something outstanding. You always had such talent."
Jimmy taps his friend's earlobe affectionately. "There's no such thing as talent, kid."
Herman pulls away. "I'm serious."
"So am I. I should have made it clear forty years ago that you had the wrong idea about me. But I'm vain. I guess I was trying to make a good impression. Only I'm too old to keep trying. So please stop talking about what I'll do. It only emphasizes what I didn't. I've had a good enough life, an average life. And that's fine."
"It's hardly been average."
"No? If not, then what proof is there to the contrary? I have the proof of sixty-five years."
Herman begins to dispute this, but Jimmy talks over him.
"You know what I liked about that article you had me do?" he says. "I liked working with you, Herman-that I enjoyed. Hearing how you'd get it into print. You really know the world of journalism, boy. See-you do useful work. Hard work. Not the hooey I've done. Standards. That's what you have. And I liked getting a sense of how you do it. That's a real pleasure for me. To see how far you've come."
"Don't be crazy. You're the one who wrote that article. Think how quickly you rolled it out. Professional writers sometimes take days over a piece, weeks even, months. Imagine if you really put some time into it? Doesn't that inspire you? To go back and work on something a bit more permanent?"
"I haven't got it in me," Jimmy says. "And I don't like leaning on you anymore. I take advantage of you too much. Always have. Your generosity. Me sleeping on the floor at Riverside Drive? I never paid a dime of rent in how many years?"
"You weren't my tenant. You were my friend. You didn't owe me anything."
Jimmy smiles. "You got a nutso perspective on certain things, Mr. Herman Cohen."
When they leave, Herman takes a handful of business cards from the restaurant and rests his hand on Jimmy's shoulder. As they emerge onto the street, Herman makes a show of looking around for a taxi to hide the fact that he's choked up.
At Fiumicino Airport the next day, Jimmy mentions that he may move back to Arizona. His adopted daughter, now in her thirties, has a place in Tempe. She works in real estate and lives alone. She'd enjoy the company.
As Herman listens, he envisions this life for his fading friend. He and Jimmy are not, as Herman has always believed, gradations of the same man-he the middling version and Jimmy the superlative one. They are utterly different: Herman would never move in with his daughter, would never let himself fall insolvent at age sixty-five, and never need a place to stay. Even now, the notion of retirement is preposterous to him-his fingers still jab far too well, poking that paper to credibility.
They part at airport security and Herman walks toward the exit, but he pauses at the sliding doors. Perhaps Jimmy still needs him for something. What if there's a problem?
He turns back and spots his old friend in the security line. Jimmy hauls his carry-on luggage, jacket slung over his forearm. He yawns-he never did get over the jet lag. He is jostled from behind and scratches his forehead testily, muttering. He has little hair left, a dusting of snow above each ear. His eyelids hang heavy, his ears are long. How Herman has adored provoking laughter from that face over the years! And how thin it has become. A spindly neck knocking around inside a collar, an abdomen retreating into a spine. The security line inches forward until it is Jimmy's turn. With difficulty, he heaves his bag onto the conveyor belt and Herman's shoulders strain involuntarily as if to help the bag up there. Jimmy raises his arms to be scanned, collects his bag, walks out of sight.