“Smoker now, huh?”
“Oh, not really,” I said. He looked at the nightstand with its four packs of cigarettes and burial mound of stubs.
I lit this new one, cupping my free hand around the lighter, a gratuitous gesture given the total lack of wind but helpful in that the act, as a part of the larger process of lighting the cigarette, furnished me with a way of speaking — urgent, no-nonsense — as if the cig itself were talking through me. “In all seriousness, I’m glad you found me.”
He sighed, looking around, and then raised his arm and slapped the side of his thigh. He seemed not yet ready to acknowledge me conversationally. “I checked the Communiqué, even Lucy’s. The Hotel San Pierre, just in case. I checked the Ambassador, the Belvedere, all the way down to Zephyr House, but then the old wheels started turning.” He tapped his temple. “And I thought, well, if the boy’s hiding, he certainly wouldn’t do it under his own name now, would he? Bernard maybe? Nope, no Apaches. Anthony Vandaline, perhaps? Came up empty. It took several hours, but I got it.” He eased into the chair and saluted gravely with his finger. “Mr. Jesse Unheim, I presume.”
I opened my arms, trying desperately to attain some levity. “In the flesh.”
“Were you planning to come to the Communiqué tonight?”
“What’s tonight?”
“I don’t know. Our show?”
“Ah.” I sat down on the corner of the bed, exaggerating a certain mope in my shoulders.
“Officially you have the flu.” He shook his head. “You know your mom’s worried out of her skull.”
“I appreciate you two exerting such parental concern, but, really, I’m doing okay.”
“You look it, this looks great.”
“Well, I’m upset, man, yeah. Is that a crime?”
“No, it isn’t.” He was lightly picking through the contents of the nightstand. Then, as if he’d given me enough of a hard time, added, “I heard what happened.”
I continued to play it somber. “You did, huh?”
“Bernard’s a bastard.” Looking not at him but at the cherrywood dresser in front of me, I nodded in the jaunty, unserious way of a drug person, that is to say, as if some jazz, audible only to me, were playing in a nearby room. I held the cigarette in a slightly scissoring grip between my index and middle fingers, raising it up to my head. Who was this? Where did these gestures come from? “Your mom thinks you should take a break, go back home for a bit.”
Sea View. The words alone turned my gut to fricassee. I pictured a sort of antiparade, pictured myself being dragged through the street before a panorama of inbred scowls; Mama bringing her pointed finger up and down, like a judge’s gavel; and only as I began to shake my head saying, “No way, man. Can’t do it,” did I realize that I had been doing Jesse Unheim, the name on my reservation, ever since Max arrived.
I remembered Jesse’s cadence well enough (rushed, muttering) and his voice, too, flinty even by the eighth grade. In what gaps there were I injected the standard hustler’s body language, gestures I knew from cinematic visions of light degradation, the kind set in roadside motels and two-bit horse tracks. An alloy like this one (taking parts from one and adding to another) often stirred in me a clenched, wired feeling, like an upper at the tail end of its effect, and I was about ready to jump out of my skin. I was standing up again, pacing. I needed to get Max out of there. Needed to get the suit.
“No, no. I want to work. I’ve got an idea for a new set.”
“Slow down, boy. You seem quite—”
“Excited? Well, I am. Look, Max. I holed up here because I’m working on something, okay? Yes, I’m down. Yes, I’m heartbroken, and I should’ve told you, but I’m channeling it, or whatever you want to call it. I’m pouring it into this thing. I can’t talk about it now, but this is going to be big, Max. Huge.”
I saw his skepticism, like some boxing challenger, putting up a fight and being slowly pummeled by his natural enthusiasm. He extended both arms, ostensibly to calm me.
“That sounds potentially exciting.”
“It is, I’m telling you. Hell, you’re the one who’s always saying to catch inspiration while it’s in the room. Well, it’s in the room, and I’m just trying to catch it!”
“Gotta catch it. Catch it like a little fly. Can’t deny that.”
“I know I should’ve called you and my mom — and I will call her — but I just needed some time. A couple days.”
“Couple days?” He stood, Max again. “I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that’s unreasonable.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“Channeling, yes. Some of the best work can come from sorrow, boy. Intensity — that’s what matters! Sometimes I believe the intensity trumps the tone of a feeling. Better to be totally devastated than mildly contented, no? I think so, yes!”
“Yes, for the love of God, yes!” I had my hand on his back, ushering him to the door.
Just then he stopped. He seemed to peer through the cracked door of the bathroom. Could he somehow see the boots in a parting of the shower curtain? “I’ll give you two days, but tell me something about it. Something to nibble on.”
“It will be…” I thought of the word as I ushered him out the door. “Total.”
• • •
Marco unzipped the canvas garment bag, handling the suit with the unsparing intimacy of those in his trade. Physicists describe tiny particles of mammoth density. That’s how I felt as he delivered it — so compressed I might burst. Awkwardly I walked in my cowboy boots to the changing room. There it happened, in that small wooden space. As if a trapdoor had opened, and I fell through it, out of this world, leaving behind only this lanky image in the mirror.
“Keep the change,” I told him. A bell jingled as I left.
Outside, in the humid afternoon, a mortal fear of rain seemed to grip each passerby. Some furrowed their brows as if already soaked. Others walked with needless pace, upraising their palms every few seconds or patting their heads to check for the first proof of wetness. I purchased a street umbrella and walked west. When the cloudburst came, I opened it, the rain making a great sound against it, like thick grass being cut.
The hall maintained its own internal climate, a zone both airless and bright. Hands scrubbed the copper bar tops, others swept. A concerted, preparatory hour. There was the brushing of brooms, the light knocking of chairs. The empty stage imbued it all with unity and imminence, like some warship prepped before a grave setting off. “Glad to see you’re feeling better!” a voice called.
The red velvet steps seemed a material confirmation of the gliding I felt with each movement forward. The knob was just the right shape for my hand. Unlocked.
When I entered, he was pacing behind the desk, the receiver in one hand, the phone nestled against his shoulder. A cigarette hung in the corner of his mouth. Behind him stood an elaborate painted screen depicting a charge of soldiers shouldering their way vertically and left, through clots of gun smoke, toward a pink moated castle.
“I don’t disagree, Tom.” When he saw me, he opened his mouth and closed it very suddenly. In a low clear voice he said, “Sorry, Tom. I’ll have to call you back,” hung up the phone, and set it on the desk. He smiled. “Look at you.”