The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged.
6.4
Wily, irresponsible Noah Marx, who had given his word not to show the manuscript of Mulligan’s Travels to anyone but his father and stepmother, broke that word by lending his copy to twenty-four-year-old Billy Best, a prose writer and Columbia dropout who earned his living as the superintendent of a four-story walk-up building on East Eighty-ninth Street between First and Second Avenues, a working-class subsection of Yorkville known as the Rhinelander District. Two years earlier, Billy had founded a small publishing house of mimeographed books called Gizmo Press, a noncommercial, anti-commercial operation that had released about a dozen works so far, among them volumes of poetry by Ann Wexler, Lewis Tarkowski, and Tulsa-born Ron Pearson, who had given the author of Mulligan’s Travels a copy of John Cage’s Silence back in October. In those days before the advent of cheap offset printing, mimeo was the only form of book and magazine production available to the young, penniless writers of New York, and far from being a sign of obscurity or a one-way path to terminal neglect, having your work published in mimeo by a house such as Gizmo Press was considered a badge of honor. The print runs averaged around two hundred copies. The titles and illustrations on the cardboard covers were drawn in black and white by Billy’s downtown artist friends (most often by Serge Grieman or Bo Jainard, fluid and inventive draftsmen whose cover work helped set the tone of mid-sixties graphic design, the look of the moment, which was bold and unadorned and tried not to take itself too seriously), and even if there was something ragged and improvisational about books printed on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch typing paper, the contents were unsmudged and readable, as clear as any offset or letterpress book. Billy’s wife, Joanna, prepared the stencils on her large office-sized Remington in single-spaced pica characters with unjustified right-hand margins when the work was in prose, and then the stencils were fed into the mimeograph machine in Billy’s workroom and run off on both the recto and verso of each page, collated by a group of friends and volunteers, and put together with saddle-stitch binding (staples). Most of the copies were given away for free, that is, sent off or handed to fellow writers and artists, and the remaining fifty or so were distributed to the handful of Manhattan booksellers who believed in the next generation of American newness, and for a young person to walk into the Gotham Book Mart or the Eighth Street Bookshop and see his mimeo book among the recent offerings of poetry and fiction was to understand that he was beginning to exist as a writer.
Ferguson should have been furious with his cousin for having gone behind his back and shown the book to someone without permission, but he wasn’t. Noah had run into Billy Best at a Lower East Side gathering in mid-May, one month after Ferguson had finished the manuscript and one week after his third and final visit to Dr. Breuler. Noah had started talking to Billy about his cousin’s work, Billy had expressed an interest in seeing it, and by the last week in May Noah was on the telephone with Ferguson letting the cat out of the bag. Sorry, sorry, he said, he knew he wasn’t supposed to have shown the manuscript around, but he had gone ahead and done it anyway, and now that Billy had been floored by Mulligan’s Travels and wanted to publish it, Ferguson wasn’t going to be dumb enough to try to prevent that from happening, was he? No, Ferguson said, he was all for it, and then he thanked Noah for his help, which launched them into a conversation that lasted for about half an hour, and after they hung up Ferguson understood that it made no difference if he thought the book should be burned and forgotten, he needed the book now because his life was over, and publishing it would perhaps be a way to trick himself into thinking he still had a future, even if no more Fergusons would ever be a part of that future, and how fitting it was that he had chosen to publish his work under the name of a murdered man, his paternal grandfather Isaac, felled by two bullets in a Chicago leather-goods warehouse in 1923, the man who was supposed to have been Rockefeller but wound up being Ferguson, father of a father who had vanished from his son’s life and grandfather of a grandson who would never live to become a father himself.
Billy Best became a good friend and a devoted publisher of Ferguson’s early books, but Noah Marx was the best man there was, and whenever Ferguson tried to imagine who he would have been without him, his mind would shut down and refuse to give an answer.
Nimble Joanna managed to convert the one hundred and thirty-one double-spaced pages of the manuscript into fifty-nine single-spaced pages by eliminating the blanks that preceded each chapter head of Mulligan’s twenty-four journeys and starting the new journeys on the same pages as the old, which reduced the better part of a year’s work to thirty sheets of paper—thin enough to be stapled together without difficulty. Instead of using Bo Jainard or Serge Grieman to design the cover, Ferguson asked Billy if Howard Small could take a shot at it, and because Howard produced such a good drawing (Mulligan sitting at a desk and writing one of his reports in a room crammed with artifacts and souvenirs from his adventures), he too became a part of the Gizmo family and went on contributing covers and illustrations until the press folded in 1970. Fifty-nine pages on thirty sheets of paper—which meant that the last page of the book was empty. Billy asked Ferguson if he would like to write a biographical note about himself to fill that emptiness, and after thinking about it for close to a week, Ferguson submitted the following two sentences:
Nineteen-year-old Isaac Ferguson can often be found wandering the streets of New York. He lives elsewhere.
* * *
NO MORE EVIE. No more visits to the half-house in East Orange after the last visit to Dr. Breuler’s office in Princeton. Ferguson could no longer bring himself to face her. He had let her down and destroyed her hopes, and he didn’t have the courage to look her in the eyes and tell her he would never be the phantom father of the illusory baby she had invented to hold them together in some future world when circumstances would at last have driven them apart. What a tangled business it was. How badly they had both deceived themselves, and now that the words of a doctor had put an end to their deluded aspirations, Ferguson picked up the phone and announced that end as any other coward would have done it, not even daring to sit down in her presence and talk it out and perhaps come to the conclusion that it wasn’t the worst tragedy in the world and that they could go on in spite of it. Evie was shocked by his callousness. Too bad and all that, she said, and I really do feel sorry for you, Archie, but what does it have to do with us?
Everything, he said.
No, you’re wrong, she replied, it makes no difference, and if you don’t understand what I’m saying to you now, then you’re not the person I thought you were.
Ferguson was fighting back tears on the other end of the line.
We weren’t going to last much longer, Evie continued, and maybe I was a fool to drag you into this pregnancy talk, but damnit, Archie, I’ve given you everything I have, and at least you owe me the decency of saying good-bye to me in person.
I can’t, Ferguson said. If I came to see you, I’d break down and cry, and I don’t want you to see me cry.
Would that be so terrible?
It would be for me. Worse than anything.
Grow up, Archie. Try acting like a man.
I am trying.
Not hard enough.
I’ll try harder, I promise. The important thing is that I’ll never stop loving you.
You already have. You’re so sick of us, you don’t even want to look at me anymore.
That’s not true.
Stop lying, please. And while you’re at it, Archie, please, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself, too.
* * *
ON WEDNESDAY, MAY twenty-fifth, two weeks after that hellish conversation with Evie, Noah called with the news that Billy Best wanted to publish Mulligan’s Travels. Ferguson and Billy talked on the twenty-fifth and arranged to meet each other on Saturday, the twenty-eighth, and consequently Ferguson did not remain in Princeton that weekend to study for finals with Howard as he h
ad planned but went to New York on Friday as usual, but having told his grandfather he would not be coming that weekend, and then having forgotten to tell his grandfather that in fact he would be coming, he caught his grandfather by surprise, and the surprise he caused his grandfather was only one one-hundredth as big as the surprise he caused himself.
As far as he knew, he was the only other person who had a key to the apartment. Now that he and Evie were quits, Ferguson had come back twice for solo weekend stays in his grandfather’s spare bedroom, and on both of those Friday afternoons he had let himself into a quiet apartment, walking in to discover his grandfather sitting on the sofa in the living room reading the sports pages of the Post, but this time when he slipped the key into the lock and opened the door, he heard voices coming from the living room, perhaps two or three voices, he couldn’t tell how many, but none of them his grandfather’s voice, and once he was inside the first thing he heard distinctly was a man’s voice saying, That’s right, Al, put your cock in her now, and then another man’s voice was saying, And just when he does that, Georgia, remember to take hold of Ed’s hard-on and put it in your mouth.
There was a short hallway between the front door and the entrance to the living room, and as Ferguson tiptoed past the closed door of the spare bedroom to his right and then past the narrow galley kitchen that was also to his right, he came to the end of the wall and was standing at the edge of the living room, and what he saw in there was his grandfather sitting next to a man operating a sixteen-millimeter camera, three light stands burning brightly at what must have been a thousand watts each, another man in the middle of the room with a clipboard under his arm, and three naked people on the sofa, a woman and two men, a dead-eyed woman of about thirty with bleached-blond hair, large breasts, and a flaccid, protruding stomach, and two nearly indistinguishable men (perhaps twins), chunky, hairy beasts with tumescent cocks and woolly butts carrying out the instructions of the director and the cameraman.
Ferguson’s grandfather was smiling. That was the most jarring element in the whole sordid picture—the smile on his grandfather’s face as the old man watched the woman and the two men sucking and fucking on the sofa.
The director was the first one who saw him, a small young punk in his mid-twenties wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt, the one who had been talking through the action because they weren’t recording sound, which no doubt would be added in later as a series of histrionic moans and groans during the postproduction of this cheapest of cheap cinematic endeavors, and when the young director spotted Ferguson standing in the hall just outside the living room, he said: Who the hell are you?
No, Ferguson said, who the hell are you, and what do you think you’re doing?
Archie! his grandfather yelled out, as the smile vanished and turned into a look of fear. You told me you weren’t coming this weekend!
Well, I changed my plans, Ferguson said, and now I think these people should get their asses out of this apartment.
Calm down, sport, the director said. Mr. Adler is our producer. He’s the one who invited us here, and we’re not leaving until we finish shooting the film.
I’m sorry, Ferguson said, as he walked over to the naked people on the couch, but the fun is over for today. Put on your clothes and get out.
As he reached for the woman’s hand to pull her up and get her on her way, the director rushed toward him from behind and wrapped his arms around Ferguson’s torso, pinning his arms against his sides. One of the naked twins then jumped up from the sofa and threw his right fist into Ferguson’s stomach, a painful jab that so incensed the embattled Ferguson that he broke free of the small director and tossed him to the floor. The woman said: For crying out loud, you assholes. Stop this shit and let’s get on with it.
Before it could develop into a genuine brawl, Ferguson’s grandfather stepped in and said to the director, Too bad, Adam, but I think we should call it a day. This boy is my grandson, and I need to have a word with him. Call me tomorrow and we’ll figure out the next step.
Within ten minutes, the director, the cameraman, and the three actors were gone. Ferguson and his grandfather were in the kitchen by then, sitting across from each other at opposite ends of the table, and the moment Ferguson heard the door bang shut, he said: You stupid old man. I’m so disgusted with you, I don’t ever want to see you again.
His grandfather wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and looked down at the table. The girls mustn’t know, he said, meaning his two daughters. If they ever found out, it would kill them.
You mean it would kill you, his grandson said.
Don’t say a word, Archie. Promise me that.
Ferguson, who had never even considered telling his mother or Aunt Mildred what he had seen that day, refused to make any promises, even though he knew he would never tell anyone.
I’m so lonely, his grandfather said. All I wanted was a little fun.
Some fun. Throwing your money into a third-rate porn flick. What’s wrong with you, anyway?
It’s harmless. No one gets hurt. Everyone has a good time. What’s wrong with that?
If you need to ask that question, then you’re beyond hope.
You’re so hard, Archie. How did you ever get to be so hard?
Not hard. Just shocked, and a little sick to my stomach.
They can’t ever know. As long as you promise not to tell them, I’ll do anything you want.
Just stop, that’s all. Shut down the film and never do it again.
Look, Archie, what if I gave you some money? Would that help? I know you don’t want to stay here with me anymore, but if you had some money, you could go out and find yourself another apartment in New York. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Are you trying to bribe me?
Call it what you want. But if I gave you five … six … no, let’s say … ten thousand dollars … that would help you out a lot, wouldn’t it? You could rent your own little apartment somewhere and spend the summer writing instead of working at that job you told me about. What was it again?
Junk removal.
Junk removal. What a waste of time and energy.
But I don’t want your money.
Of course you do. Everyone wants money. Everyone needs money. Think of it as a gift.
As a bribe, you mean.
No, as a gift.
* * *
FERGUSON TOOK THE money. He accepted his grandfather’s offer with a clear conscience because in point of fact it wasn’t a bribe but a gift, since he never would have said a word to his mother or Aunt Mildred anyway, and if his grandfather was so flush that he could afford to write a check for ten thousand dollars, better that the money should go to his grandson than to finance another woebegone fuck-film. But what a jolt it had been to walk in on that bizarre scene, and how crazy and perverse his grandfather was becoming in his old age—widowed and alone with no restraints on him anymore, free to indulge himself in any debauched whim that caught his fancy, and what further embarrassment would be coming tomorrow? Ferguson still loved his grandfather, but he had lost all respect for him and perhaps even despised him now, enough never to want to stay in the apartment again and yet not half as much as he despised his father, who was altogether gone from his life now, gone for reasons that largely had to do with money, and there he was gladly accepting money from his grandfather and shaking his hand to thank him for it. Another complicated business, another daunting fork in the road, and just as Lazlo Flute had found out in Right, Left, or Straight Ahead?, whatever choice he made was bound to be the wrong one.
Nevertheless, ten thousand dollars was a monumental sum in 1966, a bundle beyond imagining. With small apartments in run-down New York neighborhoods renting for less than a hundred dollars a month, sometimes for as little as fifty or sixty, Ferguson would be able to find something for his escapes from Princeton and still have enough to live on during the summers without having to work at summer jobs. It wasn’t that he had been dreading the prospect of hauling junk in the
interim between his freshman and sophomore years. He knew from his high school summers with Arnie Frazier and Richard Brinkerstaff that menial work had numerous satisfactions to offer and that one could learn valuable lessons about life in the process, but there were many years of that sort of work still in front of him, and the chance to take a pause from heavy lifting during his time in college was an unanticipated lucky break. All because he had walked in on his grandfather and caught him with his pants down. A revolting discovery, yes, but how not to laugh about it at the same time? And he who would have kept his lips sealed until the last breath in his body had exited his lungs was rolling in a pile of hush money. If you couldn’t laugh at that, there was something wrong with you, something not quite right in your head.
Ferguson went out for a dinner of pizza and beer with Noah in the Village, then spent the night on the floor of his cousin’s NYU dorm room, and the next day, when he traveled uptown to meet Billy Best, more startling things kept on happening to him. Billy was so relaxed and genial, so effusive in his praise of Ferguson’s book, which he called the weirdest fucking shit he had read in a long time, that the young author again silently thanked his cousin for having put him in touch with this person, who resembled no other person he had ever known. Billy was both a working-class roughneck and a sophisticated avant-garde writer, born and raised on the block where he still lived, super of his building because he had inherited the job from his father, a street-savvy native son who watched over the neighborhood like a sheriff in a Hollywood Western, but also the author of a complex, hallucinatory novel in progress set during the French and Indian Wars called Crushed Heads (Ferguson adored the title), and to listen to his publisher’s melodious New York Irish-American tenor voice made him feel as if the very bricks of the buildings on East Eighty-ninth Street were vibrating with words. On top of that, Billy’s pregnant wife, Joanna, spoke with the same voice he did, down-to-earth and welcoming, a legal secretary by day, typist–stencil cutter for Gizmo Press by night, she was the one who would be working on Ferguson’s book as her baby grew inside her, bringing Ferguson’s baby to life even if it was only a book and he would never have anything to do with the production of real babies, and when Joanna and Billy asked him to stay for dinner on that first Saturday night of their new friendship, Ferguson mentioned that he would be looking for an apartment in the coming days, just as soon as the check in his wallet had cleared, and because Billy and Joanna knew everything that went on in their small neighborhood, they tipped him off about an apartment six doors down the block, a one-room studio that went on the market just days after their first meal together, and that was how Ferguson wound up renting his third-floor digs on East Eighty-ninth Street for seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents a month.