She had begun to uncoil; she looked around the place slowly, he could see in her eyes her thoughts reassembling it for herself. She lit the cigarette. ‘So what have you been up to?’ she said.
‘You have to tell me,’ he said. ‘A little something.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Listen. If we’re going to be friends, I want to be friends, if we’re going to be friends you can’t ask. If you ask I won’t answer. I just won’t and I won’t be friends.’ She softened. ‘Maybe when it’s an old story.’ She looked up at him; he thought something gaunt, something old, had come into her face, maybe something that had been there before she fled but that he had forgotten, remembering mostly an older, that is a younger face. Or perhaps it was only the December morning. ‘Okay?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
Pierce had begun to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing’s funny. Nothing.’ His breast heaved with chuckles and his knees shook. ‘Chemicals. Laugh-chemicals. I don’t know.’ He drew the envelope out from under his arm and tossed it onto the bed beside her. ‘I don’t want this,’ he said. ‘I don’t need this.’
‘Are you kidding,’ she said. She lowered her eyes. ‘I was just going to leave it. In the mailbox. But I couldn’t force it in the little slot, I lost my key somewhere, I wasn’t even sure you were still here.’ She flicked her cigarette with a painted thumbnail. ‘I know you need it.’
‘I,’ he began to say, but then took her clue. There are needs and needs. He had meant that it was not this that he needed. She had only meant it was all he was to get.
‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Have you come back?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘What are you going to do?’
She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I just got back to town,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay with Effie for a while. Look for a place.’
Far, far back within him he heard his own voice, the voice that had only ten minutes ago been speaking to him of abnegation, of solitude: but all around that voice, and far larger, a machinery had begun to assemble, a machinery of cunning and desire that didn’t even seem to belong to him but which took over him, churning out stratagems, watching his step, planning his moves. He went to the refrigerator, listening, and from the freezer took out a bottle of vodka. A glass. ‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ he said, shielding his pouring from her. ‘I find myself not quite the thing, this morning, is all.’
She laughed. ‘Hey. One for me too.’
He brought her a snifter, an inch of icy fluid in the bottom. ‘All we got,’ he said.
She sipped, and shuddered in heavy spasms. ‘Ugh, wow, good stuff. Good stuff.’
‘Welcome back,’ he said, courtly, and toasted her.
‘Thanks, Pierce,’ she said. ‘Are we still buddies?’ And, imitating Axel’s needful, thrusting style, it had long been a joke between Pierce and her: ‘We’re buddies, aren’t we? Aren’t we, aren’t we, Pierce?’
He laughed, his trembling stilled by drink. ‘Sure. Forever.’
She swallowed the rest of the vodka, and slowly, relaxing, lay back on the bed. Her coat opened, revealing a short dress and glossy stockings. She had grown thin. He studied her thighs and the points of her pelvis with pity and attention. She hasn’t taken the best care of herself, he thought, feeling a connoisseur’s twinge of loss and waste and desire. Not the best care.
‘Oh, boy,’ she said. ‘I’m beat.’
‘Rest,’ he said. ‘Sleep, if you want.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Thanks for keeping my stuff. Not sending it to the Salvation Army or whatever. I want to come get things, if I can. You know. My things.’
‘Sure.’
‘When I have a place.’
‘Sure.’ He couldn’t bear this much longer. ‘Soon, though,’ he said. ‘If you can. Because.’ He turned away again, it was still winter outside the window. ‘Because I’ve been thinking of getting out of here.’
There was a silence from her behind him.
‘Moving away,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah? And going where?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He turned back to her; he could feel his face saying Driven out, what does it matter where, there’s a whole meaningless world out there to wander in. ‘Out of the city, anyway. Maybe to the Faraway Hills. I visited there this summer. I liked it there.’
‘Gee. A big change.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He felt suddenly an intense pity for himself, as though what he had just said, what he had just then thought of saying, were really true. She only lay, looking up into the mirror above the bed. She wiped a dot of makeup from the wick of her eye. ‘It wouldn’t be soon, anyway, actually, I mean not instantly.’
‘I’d like to take this mirror,’ she said. ‘If I can.’
‘No.’
She sat up slowly, smiling but wary. ‘It’s mine,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘It was a gift,’ he said. ‘From me. To us.’
She pulled her fur around her. ‘The country, huh. You’d have to learn to drive a car.’
‘I guess.’
Her smile broadened. ‘Well I think it’s great,’ she said. ‘I think you’re brave.’ From the envelope on the bed she extracted a ten, but in doing so she loosed the packed bills within; they cascaded across the bed. She showed him the bill. ‘Taxi fare,’ she said. ‘Got to go.’
‘No, wait,’ he said. He thought wildly of explaining: If you take the mirror I’ll have nothing of you, a thousand images of you are in it; no one else should ever be in it but you and me, don’t you see? Isn’t that fair, isn’t that reasonable? ‘Wait a sec. Let me shower and get dressed. We’ll go out, get some breakfast. There must be a few stories you can tell me.’
‘I can’t now,’ she said. ‘Soon though. We’ll get together.’ She took a step toward the closet, tempted, but changed her mind. ‘We’ll get together.’ She gestured toward the bed, or the money. ‘You can buy me dinner, we’ll have fun; I got a few stories.’
‘Champagne?’ he said. ‘And . . .’
‘I told you,’ she said, her eyes holding his, there was a long story in them for sure. ‘I’m done with all that. For good and all.’ She laughed, and came to him, reaching up for his embrace; he caught her up, she turned her face away and pressed her cheek to his. He smelled the cold air still trapped in her fur, the heavy warmth of her perfume; snow melted in torrents within him and his heart spoke a thousand things into her ringed ear, all of them silent. The phone rang joltingly, they both jumped.
‘Gee, busy morning,’ she said, extracting herself.
The phone insisted. Pierce followed her toward the door. ‘Call,’ he said. ‘Call soon. I didn’t change the number!’ The phone shrieked in rage. Pierce at last turned and ran to it, hearing behind him his door click closed.
‘Hello!’
A pause, the confused pause of a wrong number.
‘Hello?’ Pierce said again, this time in his own voice.
‘Oh. Pierce?’
‘Yes.’ He had a strange conviction that the woman who spoke was that woman in the country, the river cabin, the boat ride, Rosie.
‘Pierce, it’s Julie. Did I wake you?’
‘Oh. Hi. Hi. Yes, sort of, well I was awake but . . .’
‘Listen,’ Julie said. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ She paused. ‘Are you sitting down?’
‘No. Yes. All right.’ He carried the phone to the bed, and sat there amid the money.
‘We sold it,’ Julie said.
‘What.’
‘Good God Pierce we sold your damn book for Christ’s sake!’
‘Oh. Oh. Good lord. Really?’
‘It’s not terrific money.’
‘No. Oh well.’
She named a figure of money that Pierce had no way of knowing was exiguous or generous. ‘Cockerel, though,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Cockerel Books. Wake up! And listen, listen. They want to do a trade and a mass market
, so even though the advance isn’t huge, it could end up earning lots if it catches on.’
Silence.
‘Pierce. Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to do it. We could take it elsewhere.’ An impatience had crept into her tone.
‘No, hey, listen, let’s talk, let’s talk right away, but I’ll do what you think best.’
‘They want some editorial control.’
‘What?’
‘I mean they think the book could do real well if it could be slightly tailored to a particular audience.’
‘Crackpots.’
‘Now now.’ She laughed. ‘Not that at all. But they did mention some titles that have been big hits lately. Phaeton’s Car. Worlds in Division. Dawn of the Druids. Books like that.’
‘Hm.’
‘They think yours might be like those.’
‘You mean a tissue of lies?’
‘Hey now.’
Not a tissue of lies, no; but it would have to be subtly degraded, almost certainly, in a way that material presented to a classroom, however simplified or schematized or highly colored, did not need to be: he would have to commit not only suppressio veri, but suggestio falsi as well. He saw with sudden clarity how the book he proposed to write would appear to a historian’s (Barr’s?) eyes; how it would have to contain pages that would seem simply fictitious, as fictitious as those pages of disposable novels which are mere transcripts of ordinary (but wholly imaginary) conversation, peppered with real proper names unsubtly altered. All right. Okay.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Okay. Let’s talk.’
‘One other thing,’ she said. ‘They don’t like your title.’
‘No?’
‘They think it would be misleading. And hard to file, too.’
‘All right. Okay.’ Pierce felt, in a general way, shot from a gun; it was hard to know, with the scenery changing so rapidly, what he was supposed to balk at, if at anything. ‘We have to talk.’
‘I thought dinner,’ Julie said, more softly than she had said any of her news. ‘Champagne. Oh Pierce.’ A pause charged (Pierce could feel it through the earpiece, he could see her shining face) with clairvoyance of destiny. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew it.’
When he had stood for a long time beneath a thundering shower, Pierce counted his money, the bills on the bed and what Julie had named to him, and made a few inconclusive calculations. He swept up the cash into its envelope, stripped the sheets, and after donning a T-shirt and a mohair suit (all his clothes were soiled) he filled a laundry bag.
‘Good lord,’ he said aloud, ceasing his gathering to stare into the iron day. ‘Good lord.’
He put his feet into rubber sandals, and fumbled change out of an ashtray; he went out and down, stopping at his mailbox and taking out a small handful of mail.
Didn’t like the title. It was of course the only title the book could have. He supposed that a red herring though could be interposed meanwhile: The Invisible College, how about. The Pneumatics. The Safe-Crackers.
The King of the Cats.
When he had got the wash churning queasily in a soapy sea beyond the porthole window of the machine, he looked at what mail he had, something from Florida, some trash, some booksellers’ catalogues, a letter in a minute and legible hand from the Faraway Hills.
‘Pierce,’ it said. ‘Long time no hear from. Thot you would like a word from out here. Its a quiet month my grandfather called tying down time. Everything is getting put away, tied down, nailed up etc for Winter. This will be my first whole Winter in this cabin. I put in 1 bag beans 1 bag rice 50 lbs spuds 1 bottle brandy powdered milk lamps shotgun etc just in case. Sheep are fine + send their regards. By the way I have heard that down in Blackbury Jambs there is a nice apt. that will be for rent soon. People I know are leaving in Feb for the coast. 2nd floor, nice view sun porch fridge etc. Just thot I would throw that in. Be nice to have you in the county.’
It was signed, ‘All best, Spofford,’ and there was a postscript:
‘The Muchos have filed.’
Pierce read the whole of this letter twice, and then sat in thought with it in his lap until his clothes had to be moved from machine to machine; and then, as he sat watching his empty pants and shirts signaling to him wildly as they were flung around, he realized with a slow-breaking and astonishing certainty that today, this day, was his birthday. He was thirty-four years old.
Pierce Moffett, even back in those days when he had stood on his rooftop on the giddy edge of assenting that the cosmos was in some sense a story – that the universe was a cosmos – still would not have supposed that the story was in any concrete way his story, or believed that his own individual fate might be discernible in the harmonies he began to hear, the geometries he began to see. In fact it had come as a surprise to him to learn that most people who take an interest in auguries, clairvoyances, and astral prophecy do so not in search of some general illumination about the nature of life and thought and time, but in hopes of finding guides in them for action, Cliff’s Notes to the plots of their own lives. Julie Rosengarten, for instance, had always read them so. But Pierce – if, one morning as he walked the city, a safe had fallen on Pierce out of an upper story, cutting off his tale for no apprehensible reason and without the least foreshadowing, he would not, so to speak, have taken it amiss. A profound conviction that his fate was far more subject to accident, blunder, and luck than to any logic, cosmic or mundane, a conviction which long predated his occult studies, had also survived them easily.
On the other hand, sometimes the omens can call out so clearly that even such a one as Pierce has to take notice.
That very day, the day of his birthday (his birthday!) he did make a vow; a vow that he would never have thought himself capable of, but made with all the small strength left him by the morning; a vow of abnegation that was the least he could offer up in exchange for what had so suddenly been showered on him. That’s it, that’s it, that is it: from now on he would dedicate himself to furthering only his own fortunes, and would not fritter away in the hopeless pursuit of love any more of the gifts apparently reserved for him.
A week later, with a vengefulness delicious and vivifying, made more vivifying by the tinge of fear that colored it (for he didn’t really trust his future to remain in sight for long), he returned unsigned to Earl Sacrobosco his contract for the spring semester. He needed time to work on a special project, he said, that would require some difficult research, the right hand of scholarship as teaching was the left; and since sabbaticals were not on offer for the untenured help, he must regretfully etc.
There.
He wrote to Spofford in the Faraways, stating a January date when he might take another jaunt thither, and asking him to telephone the next time he found himself near an instrument, call collect, reverse the charges.
And at Christmas he bought as usual a small bottle of gin and an even smaller bottle of vermouth, and went across the black bridge to Brooklyn, to visit his father Axel: and to break, if he could think of a way to do it that was both clear and not hurtful, the news to him.
EIGHT
Twenty years before, Axel Moffett had won a good amount of money on one of the high-rolling TV quiz shows then popular. His field was Western Civilization, and he had the advantage of knowing and loving deeply all the hoary anecdotes and Great Moments and imaginary Turning Points and romantic incidents in the supposed lives of the supposed heroes of that civilization, from Alexander and Boadicea to Napoleon and Garibaldi; Pierce, schooled in a more scientific history, would have done far less well. There were no essay questions asked, and Axel, though shaky on exact dates, could almost anticipate, as soon as any question was begun, which of the relatively small number of great stories was being fished for. To an uninstructed audience, though, his knowledge must have seemed unimaginably wide; it had seemed so, for that matter, to Pierce, fourteen years old, watching his black-and-white and strangely reduced father answer firmly what Austrian had briefly been emperor
of Mexico (Axel had loved the movie, poor poor Carlotta, and Brian Aherne’s soft and hopeless eyes). Around the TV in Kentucky, they all cheered, except Pierce’s mother, who only shook her head smiling, as though it were only another unfathomable oddity of her husband’s, only another to be forgiven and forgotten.
He got about halfway up the pyramid of cash on offer before being stopped; the producers decided that he was too queer a fish to be allowed the highest prizes (though he had amused for a while, with his antique courtliness and his way of answering with blazing eyes and a loud of-course tone, as though he were being challenged). It wasn’t a question of rigging – Axel could not have been rigged, and ever after could reenact his horror and shame on discovering that others on that very program had been; it was a simple matter of asking him for a fact so obscure, so out-of-the-way, so disconnected from the Great Themes that a specialist would not have known it (and it was tried out on some). To the masses, of course, it seemed no more of a crusher than many others Axel had answered easily or anyway sweated out (What song did the sirens sing? What name did Achilles take when he hid among the women?), but Axel hearing it could only stand stupefied in his glass box without the vaguest guess, until the clock ran out.
What was odd was that Pierce had known the answer to that question.
He had listened to it asked – in the TV lounge at St. Guinefort’s Academy this last time – and had heard the tick-tock music begin which marked the time in which an answer had to be given, syncopated with a distant Ping-Pong game elsewhere in the school hall. He had heard, unbelieving, the answer worth thousands unfold in his own mind while Axel stared. The music stopped; there was a moment’s grace, but it did Axel no good. From his card the host read out the answer, the same answer that had unfolded within Pierce; the studio audience mourned, Pierce’s schoolmates turned from the screen to look at him, some jeering, some curious, some groaning over the lost bucks. Pierce sat silent. Axel was led away after being commiserated with by the gleeful host, his stricken head held high, a look on his face, all lost save honor, that Pierce would never forget: if he had seen his father led to the block it could not have made a more heartrending memory.