“I don’t like it,” Paul said. “I don’t want pictures of me floating around on the Internet. I don’t want people to know what I look like or where I am.”
Annalisa laughed. “That’s so paranoid, Paul. Everyone has their picture taken. Even Sandy’s photograph is everywhere.”
“I’m not Sandy.”
“Then you shouldn’t go out,” she said.
“I’m not sure you should, either.”
His remark had infuriated her. “Maybe we should move back to Washington, then,” she’d said sharply.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, frustrated but knowing it was useless to fight with him, which she’d discovered early on in their marriage. When they disagreed, Paul picked apart the exact words she’d used, managing to divert attention away from the topic so it could never be resolved and they could never agree. Paul wouldn’t give in on principle. “Nothing,” she said.
She did stay home three nights in a row, but Paul wouldn’t make any adjustments to his schedule, so she was alone in the big apartment, wandering from room to room until Paul came home at ten o’clock, ate a peanut-butter sandwich that the housekeeper, Maria, prepared, and went upstairs to work. Billy Litchfield was still at his mother’s house, and Annalisa felt the sharp emptiness of being alone in a big city where everyone else seemed to have something important to do. On the fourth night, she gave up and went out with Connie, and the photographers took more pictures, and Annalisa put the prints in her drawer and didn’t tell Paul.
Now one of the women, obsessed with the story in W, turned to Annalisa and casually said, “How did you get on that list? And only having been in New York for six months.”
“I don’t know,” Annalisa said.
“Because she is going to be the next Mrs. Houghton,” Connie said proudly. “Billy Litchfield says so. Annalisa would make a much better Mrs. Houghton than I would.”
“I certainly would not,” Annalisa said.
“Did Billy put you up for it?” asked one of the women.
“I love Billy, but he can be pushy,” said another.
“I don’t know why anyone cares,” Annalisa said, pressing another stamp onto another envelope. She still had a pile of at least a hundred in front of her. “Mrs. Houghton is dead. Let her rest in peace.”
The other women twittered at the outrageousness of this remark. “No, really,” Annalisa said, getting up to ask Maria to bring in lunch. “I don’t understand why it’s a goal.”
“It’s only because you don’t want it,” one of the women replied. “It’s always the people who don’t want things who get them.”
“That’s right,” Connie agreed. “I wouldn’t give Sandy the time of day when I met him, and we ended up getting married.”
“Maria,” Annalisa said, pushing through the swing door into the kitchen. “Could you serve the Waldorf chicken salad and the cheese biscuits, please?” She returned to the table and began to attack the pile of envelopes again.
“Did you get the parking space yet?” Connie asked idly.
“No,” Annalisa said.
“You have to be adamant with the people in your co-op,” said one of the women. “You can’t let them walk all over you. Did you make it clear you’d pay extra money?”
“It’s not that kind of building.” Annalisa felt the beginnings of a headache. The parking space, like the air conditioners, had been yet another disaster. Paul had gone to the resident who had won the lottery for the parking space, a quiet man who was a heart surgeon at Columbia, and asked if he could buy it from him. The doctor had complained to Mindy, and Mindy had sent Paul a note asking him not to bribe the other residents. When Paul saw the note, he turned white. “Where did she get this?” he demanded, indicating the paper on which the note was written. It was a sheet from a notepad from the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok. “She was in our apartment,” Paul said, his voice rising. “That’s where she got the paper. From my desk.”
“Paul, don’t be crazy.”
“Then where did she get this?” Paul demanded.
“I don’t know,” Annalisa said, remembering how she’d given Sam the keys over Christmas. So Sam, who had returned the keys, had given them to his mother after all. But she couldn’t tell Paul that, so she insisted the paper had to be a coincidence. It was another thing she’d had to lie to Paul about, and it made her feel horribly guilty, as if she’d committed a crime. Paul had the locks changed, but it only increased his hatred of Mindy Gooch and made him vow to get “that woman” out of the building one way or another.
Maria brought in the lunch and set it out on the table with silver cutlery from Asprey and the Tiffany china, which Billy said was still the best. “Cheese biscuits,” one of the women exclaimed, looking doubtfully at the golden biscuits piled up on the crystal platter. “Annalisa, you shouldn’t have,” she scolded. “I swear to God, you’re trying to make us all fat.”
14
As if he weren’t neurotic enough to begin with, in the weeks leading up to the publication of his book, James became more so. He hated himself for it, having always disdained writers who checked their Amazon and Barnes & Noble ratings every half hour and scoured the Internet for reviews and mentions. His obsession left him harrowed, as if he were an insane person who believed he was being pursued by imaginary wraiths. And then there was Lola. In his occasional moments of sanity, James concluded that she was some kind of master lure, a shiny bright irresistible thing lined with hooks on both sides. On the surface of things, their relationship was still well within the concept of perfectly innocent, for nothing had happened other than the exchange of text messages and a few impromptu visits to his apartment. About twice a week, she would show up at his place unexpectedly, languishing on the folding chair in his office like a sleek black panther. She would have easily caught him under any circumstances, but in this case, the snare was made doubly secure by the fact that she had immediately read his book and wanted to discuss it while at the same time seeking his advice about Philip.
Should she marry Philip? Of course she loved him, but she didn’t want him to marry her under the wrong circumstances—those being that he felt obligated. On this question, James was as torn as Solomon. He wanted Lola for himself, but he wanted her in the building more, no matter what the circumstances. As he couldn’t kick out his own wife and install Lola, having her upstairs was better than nothing. And so he lied, finding himself in the unexpected position of giving relationship advice to a twenty-two-year-old girl.
“I believe it’s generally understood that one is supposed to give these things a try,” James said, floundering like a fish. “They say you can always get divorced.”
“I could never do that,” she said. “It’s against my religion.”
Which religion was that? James wondered. “But since you say you love Philip…”
“I say I think I do,” she corrected him. “But I’m only twenty-two. How am I supposed to know? For sure?”
“You can never know for sure,” James said, thinking of Mindy. “A marriage is something that goes on and on unless one person really puts an end to it.”
“You’re so lucky.” She sighed. “You’ve made your decision. And you’re a genius. When your book comes out, you’ll make millions of dollars.”
The secret visits continued for several weeks, and then the Wednesday came when James’s publisher was to receive his early review from The New York Times Book Review. Lola came by the apartment bearing a gift—a stuffed teddy bear “for good luck,” she said—but James was too nervous to acknowledge the gift and absentmindedly shoved it in the back of the overcrowded coat closet.
Everything was riding on his review in the Times. As an author whose previous book had sold seventy-five hundred copies, he would need exorbitant praise to smash through the glass ceiling of previous book sales. He pictured this smashing as akin to smashing through the roof of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory in the great glass elevator,
and he wondered what was happening to his brain.
“You must be so excited,” Lola said, following him to his office. “You’re going to get a great review. I just know it.”
James didn’t just know it, but poor Lola was too young to understand that usually, things did not work out as one hoped. His mouth was dry with nerves. All morning, his mood had veered between elation and despair. He was now on the downward cycle of this emotional roller coaster. “Everyone always wants to think he’s a winner,” he said thickly. “Everyone thinks if they only behave the way people do in the movies, or on Oprah, or in those so-called inspiring memoirs, and never give up, that they’ll triumph in the end. But it isn’t true.”
“Why shouldn’t it be true?” Lola said with irritating confidence.
“The only guarantee of success is hard work,” James said. “Statistically speaking, that is. But even then, it’s not a sure bet. The truth is, there are no sure bets.”
“That’s why there’s true love,” Lola said.
James’s mood turned and his emotions began to chug upward like the little train that could. What a darling, he thought, looking at Lola. She didn’t know a thing about life, but still, she believed in herself so purely, it was almost inspirational. “It’s all about the numbers,” he said, nodding at this realization. “Numbers upon numbers upon numbers. Maybe it always was,” he went on musingly.
“Was what?” Lola asked. She was bored. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn not only away from her but into an area she equated with taxes. Meaning something she hoped never to think about.
“Ratings. Bottom lines,” James said, thinking he wouldn’t mind seeing Lola’s bottom line. But he couldn’t exactly say that, could he?
Or could he?
“I have to go,” she said. “Hug your teddy. Kiss him for luck. And text me later. I can’t wait to read the review.”
After she left, James got back on the Internet. He checked and rechecked his e-mails, his Amazon ranking, his Google ranking, and looked up his name on any possible media-related website, including The Huffington Post, Snarker, and Defamer. The next five hours passed in this most unpleasant manner.
Finally, at three-fifteen, his phone rang. “We did it,” Redmon said, his voice filled with triumph. “You got the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And they called you a modern-day Melville.”
At first James was too shocked to speak. But after a moment, he found his voice and, as if he had books on the cover of The New York Times Book Review all the time, said, “I’ll take that.”
“Damn right we’ll take it,” Redmon said. “It couldn’t be better if we’d written it ourselves. I’ll have my assistant e-mail you the review.”
James hung up. For the first time in his life, he was a success. “I am a man of triumph,” he said aloud. Then he began to feel dizzy—with joy, he told himself—and then oddly nauseated. He hadn’t thrown up in years, not since he was a boy, but the nausea increased, and he was finally forced to go into the bathroom to perform that most unmasculine of all rituals—spitting up into the toilet bowl.
Still unsteady on his feet, he went back to his office, opened the attachment on his computer, and printed it out, eagerly reading each page as it shot from the machine. His talent was at last recognized, and no matter how many books he sold, it was this acknowledgment of his place in the literary pantheon that mattered. He had won! But what was he supposed to do now? Ah—sharing the news. That’s what one did next.
He began to dial Mindy’s number but hesitated. Plenty of time to tell her, he thought, and there was one person who would appreciate the news more: Lola. She was the one who ought to hear first, who had sweated out this most fateful of days with him. Grabbing the three pages of the review, he went into the lobby, impatiently waiting for the elevator, planning exactly what he might say to her (“I did it”? “You’re going to be proud of me”? “You were right”?) and what might happen afterward. (She would hug him, naturally, and that hug might turn into a kiss, and the kiss might turn into…? God only knew.) At last the elevator arrived from the top of the building, and he got on and sent it right back up, looking back and forth from the slow ticking off of the floors to the words printed in the review and now imprinted on his brain: “Modern-day Melville.”
Full of brio, he pounded on the door of Apartment 13B. He heard scuffling inside and, expecting Lola, was shocked when Philip Oakland opened the door. Seeing James, Philip’s face became cold and annoyed. “Gooch,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
It was, James thought, a scene straight out of the schoolyard. He tried to peer unobtrusively around Philip, hoping to catch sight of Lola. “Can I help you with something?” Philip asked.
James did his best to recover. “I just got a great review in The New York Times Book Review.” The pages flapped uselessly in his hand.
“Congratulations,” Philip said, making as if to close the door.
“Is Lola home?” James asked in desperation. Philip looked at him and gave a half-sardonic, half-pitying laugh as if he at last understood James’s true mission. “Lola?” he said, calling out behind him.
Lola came to the door, wrapped in a silk robe, her hair wet, as if she’d just come out of the shower. “What?” she said. She casually slipped her hand into the back of Philip’s jeans.
James awkwardly held out the pages. “Here’s the review in the Times,” he said. “I thought you might want to see it.”
“Oh, I do,” she said, as nonchalantly as if she hadn’t been in his apartment hours before, had never been in his apartment ever, and hardly knew him at all.
“It’s a good one,” James said, knowing he was beaten but not wanting to acknowledge defeat. “It’s great, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s so cute of you, James,” she said. “Isn’t that cute?” she asked, addressing Philip.
“Very nice,” Philip said, and this time, he did close the door.
James wondered if he’d ever felt quite so foolish.
Back in his apartment, it took him several minutes to recover from this disquieting scene, and it was only because his phone rang. Mindy was on the line. “I just heard,” she said accusingly.
“About what?” he said, falling into their old married habits like a grown-up visiting his parents.
“The cover of The New York Times Book Review?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me? I have to read about it on a blog?”
James sighed. “I only just found out myself.”
“Aren’t you excited?” Mindy demanded.
“Sure,” he said. He hung up the phone and sat down in his chair. He hadn’t expected the pleasure of his triumph to last forever, but he’d never imagined it would be so short-lived.
Billy Litchfield returned to Manhattan a few days later. His mother was better, but they both understood she’d begun to make the inevitable descent into death. Nevertheless, his month in the remote suburbs on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains had taught him a great deal—namely, how lucky he’d been in life. The reality was that he wasn’t to the manor born, but to the suburb, and the fact that he’d managed to escape the suburbs for over thirty years was extraordinary. His relief at being back in Manhattan, however, was brief. When he walked into his apartment building, he found an eviction notice on his door.
Restitution involved a trip to housing court on State Street, where he mingled among the hoi polloi of Manhattan. This was the real Manhattan, where everyone had a ragged sense of his own importance and his rights as a person. Billy sat among a hundred such people in a molded plastic chair in a windowless room until his case was called.
“What’s your excuse?” the judge asked.
“My mother was sick. I had to leave town to take care of her.”
“That’s negligence.”
“Not from my mother’s point of view.”
The judge frowned but appeared to take pity on him. “Pay the rent due and the fine. And don’t let me see you in here again.
”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Billy said. He waited in another long line to pay cash, then took the subway uptown. The warm, putrid air in the subway car clamped down on his mood like a vise. Scanning the faces around him, he was struck by the pointlessness of so many lives. But perhaps it was his own expectations that were too high. Maybe God hadn’t intended for life to have a point beyond reproduction.
In this mood, he met Annalisa in front of One Fifth and got into her newly purchased green Bentley, complete with a chauffeur, which Billy had helped to arrange through a service. Not having seen her in a while, he was struck by her appearance, thinking how much she’d changed from the tomboyish woman he’d met nine months ago. But she still had that knack for appearing natural, as if she were wearing no makeup and hadn’t had her hair styled and wasn’t wearing five-thousand-dollar trousers, all the while, he knew, putting a great deal of time and effort into her appearance. It was no wonder everyone wanted her at their events and the magazines always featured her photographs. But he found himself feeling surprisingly hesitant about her budding success. This caution was new for him, and he wondered if it was due to recent events or to the realization that his own years of striving had added up to nearly nothing. “A photograph is only an image. Here today, gone tomorrow,” he wanted to say. “It won’t satisfy your soul in the long run.” But he didn’t. Why shouldn’t she have her fun now, while she could? There would be plenty of time for regrets later.
The car took them to the Hammer Galleries on Fifth Avenue, where Billy sat on a bench and took in the recent paintings. In the clean white rarefied air of the gallery, he began to feel better. This was why he did what he did, he thought. Although he couldn’t afford art himself, he could surround himself with it through those who could. Annalisa sat next to him, staring at Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting of a woman in a blue room at the beach. “I’ll never understand how a painting can cost forty million dollars,” she said.