Hadn’t he? Or had he dreamt it?
Unlike Victor, Mark was all neatness and order, so what would be a clue? A tiny bit less girth in the toothpaste tube? An iota less heft to the shared can of lather? A humid towel?
The problem was that for the past three years Mark had been a “poor student,” as he reminded Victor at sundry, increasingly inappropriate moments. He’d left his usual line of more or less commercially lucrative employment and, at the advanced age of thirty-two years, gone to law school, of all things, a decision that Victor had actually supported—no, actually championed, the more fool he.
And the first few years had gone pretty well. Sure, they were suddenly one income less, but it just so happened that Victor was suddenly earning enough for two with his third book, the historical Western Heartache Canyon, which was doing nicely, thank you very much, with amazing reviews and book club sales and several translations. Meanwhile, Justify continued to chug along like the little engine that could. Then Nights in Black Leather came out, and that had moved Victor onto another plane altogether, into the pages of the Sunday New York Times, onto the full front page of the Sunday Long Island Press Arts section with photos. It was reviewed everywhere thereafter, shocking everyone, critics lining up pro and con, as it became the first openly gay title to be a book club alternate selection, a best seller in hardcover and in paperback, making him so famous that within months he couldn’t step out to the local deli for a midnight snack without someone recognizing him as in, “Hey! You’re that . . . leather guy! Right?”
Right.
So who needed Mark’s income?
Even so, Mark was attempting to be “utterly ethical about money,” which meant they would only spend equal amounts: a clear impossibility. Victor put up with this for Mark’s sake, even though it meant far less theater, concerts, movies, and virtually no dinners out, never mind operas, not to mention no vacations together—not for two years. Unless, of course, it meant they wouldn’t be able to take a trip to the Caribbean in the dead of winter between law school terms, where Vic had friends who had a big empty house just waiting for them. When that came up, Vic fliply declared, “We’re going. I’ll shell out now, you’ll pay me later—when you’re a rich lawyer. And you are going to be a rich one, since I surely don’t intend to work the rest of my life.”
That’s pretty much how they’d more or less teeter-tottered in balance until Mark’s final year at The New York School of Law and everything upended suddenly, horribly, and immediately fell to pieces.
First, because Mark was so smart, he was a top scholar, and so he’d been appointed to some kind of honor called “editing notes” at a place called The Law Review. And whatever his work there might be, of course it was on top of his already heavy because-it-was-the-last-year-of-law-school legal courses. Add onto that was added Mark’s brand new, part-time employment after school and weekends clerking in a six-person law office that was interested in hiring Mark when he got out of school. Another honor that couldn’t possibly be turned down, nor cut back, no, not in any way, Mark assured him.
However, that onslaught ended not only the infrequent vacations but also any concerts, operas, movies, theater, or even going out together. It was as though Victor were suddenly impoverished again. And bad as that was, once the third difficult year of classes was over in January, Mark’s work load, which should have lessened a bit, suddenly seemed to double, because of course he had to study for the New York State Law Boards day and night—that is, whenever he wasn’t at the law office near Lincoln Center or at The Law Review!
All Mark’s friends assured Victor that next to these hoary, hairy exams, walking the plank and even SS torture chambers were April larks and the merest of fashion runway piffles.
So Vic had become a detective, having to now daily prove to himself that his lover of six years, the person he felt he’d been waiting for the first thirty-three years of his life, the man that cynical old Victor Regina unstintingly adored, actually still resided with him, by which he meant slept nights in their shared duplex in the chic West Village.
The dead-giveaway, of course, was that Mark unquestionably still ate there. Food vanished from the refrigerator at an alarmingly steady rate. Sometimes—like fruit or yoghurt cups—it was replaced. More often it wasn’t, and instead new food-bearing objects appeared on the second shelf in their place: stark white take-out boxes, colorful packets, dynamically tinted sandwich wrappings. Only to vanish within hours, as though Mark could reach across Manhattan and teleport them from behind a shut GE door without himself being present.
Vic had never been anything more than a serviceable cook, relying on minute steaks, burgers, chicken breasts, an occasional pork or veal chop with one accompanying carb and veggie. But some months before, and under what felt to him like the same kind of intense pressure that metamorphoses coal into diamonds, he’d found himself on the slippery slopes of that suburban culinary purgatory known as The Wonderful World of Casseroles.
He eschewed tuna-noodle on the firmest of principles, but soon enough anything else would do. One of Mark’s closest study partners ate no meat, but despite her size 1 clothing and her weight of about eighty-eight pounds, she did put away surprisingly oceanic quantities of macaroni and cheese, bulgur wheat with chickpeas and walnuts, spinach fettucini with pesto, and virtually anything containing cheese or eggs. Besides vegetarian, there was Victor’s Spanish and Italiano casseroles, even his Greek and eventually German and Russian ones. Love pizza? Vic figured out how to make a casserole taste just like slices of Ray’s Famous on 6th Avenue. Go for Moussaka? Well a semi-mousse is what you’d get. Pork chops and sauerkraut? Red cabbage with apples and wieners? He’d discovered a chuck-wagon special from Utah funnily called “poke in the hole” and something British with cabbage and potatoes more oddly called “toad in the hole.”
They were the perfect solution. Mark was seldom home to appear for the first eating of any dish, but a casserole he could eat cold or heated up later, tomorrow, or the next day. Vic even began making two of each dish per night, one for himself, Gilbert, and his b.f. Jeff, say; another, often larger version for Mark to eat at 2:20 a.m. or tomorrow—and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Visits to Balducci ended. Vic couldn’t bear looking at those prices and that quality only to acknowledge that it would be chopped up tiny, gummed up with some kind of binder, and thrust in the oven for forty-five minutes at three hundred and seventy-five degrees.
But he did make other discoveries: cauliflower and broccoli married nicely with all sorts of weird foodstuffs if you put crust on and called it a pot-pie. Potatoes and red peppers had their own secret lives as ingredients. Tofu went with all kinds of Chinese-esque vegetables the recently sprung up Korean delis all over Manhattan had begun to feature.
Naturally, Vic realized in his heart of hearts that what he was cooking was, in sophistication, about two steps above pureed infant food in small jars. But with casseroles, he would at least have ocular proof that his lover was receiving samples of all the food groups—at rare times, all of them at once. He’d also be able to gauge the depth of his studying (or at least the length of his studying) by how many refrigerated casserole dishes were emptied and left soaking in sudsy water in the sink when Victor woke up the next morning.
“And so,” he’d reflected while speaking to his best friend, Gilbert Onager on the phone, “I have descended rapidly from Authorial God to Beleaguered Hausfrau. And it ain’t over yet. He’s got three more months of this madness to go!”
“Sacrifice is good for the soul” was the usual response Vic received to these complaints.
“Unfortunately, Bertie, as I was certain you knew by now, I don’t believe in the soul. Meaning that sacrifice does nothing but really suck!”
It was the morning after the meeting with Frank Perry, and Vic still hadn’t told his best friend that had happened. Possibly because Vic had another (chronic) sinus headache, and despite three cups of java (the caffeine helped
) and three Excedrin Super Strength tablets, he knew he simply could not possibly abide the high pitched screams sure to greet his news.
So he waited and waited, and it ended up being someone named Angelica Mangotti whom he spoke to for the first time that day who utterred the magic words that tipped his life. She innocently enough phoned looking for Mark to check some page numbers in a legal text. Vic looked at the scribbled schedule Mark had left a month or two before on the refrigerator door, hoping to locate him, and read it to her: “‘Specialized Torts—Morgan’s place.’ I’m assuming you know what all that means,” Vic added.
She’d replied, “Oh, shit! I was supposed to be at that study group.”
Which was how Vic discovered that a new burden had emerged to further muck up his life: heavily structured, scheduled-to-an-inch-of-their-lives study groups for the dreaded Law Boards. Four to sixteen students were now meeting at various places around the city at various times—check the schedule, Victor—some lasting until 4:00 a.m. Meaning he would probably not see Mark again until it was all over months from now, in mid-June.
He gave Angelica the address and phone number she required from the schedule, hung up, and instantly phoned his literary agent.
“Has Trent gotten the Frank Perry contracts yet?” Vic asked.
“Hello. You look lovely today. You sound like shit. My god, Marce, was that really you on the front page of The Post? Those, Victor, are all acceptable ways to open a phone conversation with Marcie Stein Whittaker. ‘Has Trent gotten the Frank Perry contracts yet?’ is not, you may notice, among those choices.”
“I’m desperate. I haven’t laid actual eyes on my lover for about a month, He’s been stolen by Law Board gypsies and exists in some legal Twilight Zone beyond time and space.”
“So you want to give it all up and go to El Lay?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Well, I for one do not blame you one iota. And right after we hang up, I’m calling Laeticia Thwackbottom at Norton and telling her she loses, I win.”
Victor was baffled—and when he understood, furious. “Do you mean to tell me you two had bets on when I’d crack?”
“Bets? We two? Honey, wake up. Half the Manhattan publishing world has put money on the odds. I don’t know if I get the jackpot. All I know was that I did predict it would go down sometime this week.”
He was silent in response. This was beyond callous.
“And so, to answer your question,” Marcie went on, unfazed, “yes, Trent got the papers, and after a first look through the contract seems fine: house and car and WGA Membership included. Those were nice touches. It seems that you’ve finally learned how to ask for what you want.”
“I asked nothing, Marce. I told Perry he was a fool wasting his time and money.”
“I see!” she said. “You told him ‘No go’ and he salivated all the more and offered inducements.” Then: “And now you’re going?”
“He said for you to call and get their travel schedule. He wanted me to go back to California with him and Sam. I said I wouldn’t, I couldn’t possibly. But now I’m not so sure. Keep in mind, Marce, I still think doing this will be a waste of time and money. All I know is that I cannot remain in this duplex, in this city, in this situation with or actually without Mark, for one week more.”
“You loved El Lay the last time, remember?”
“I was single, remember? I got laid twice a day, sometimes more. And I bonded with Mark out there, remember? All reasons why I loved El Lay the last time. Not one in any way applicable this time around.”
“Is it a nice car?” Marcie asked.
“It’s okay. A Datsun Z sport coupe. The house is on Benedict Canyon near Mulholland Drive. Is that nice?”
“God, yes!”
“No pool.”
“You’ll have to go to the Bee-Aitch-Aitch, that’s about a mile away, and use theirs,” Marcie said. “Oh, wait! You couldn’t possibly do that! Since last time you stayed there, you brought back Mister Torture and Maim on a Silver Hog, and now everyone’s sure you’ve got a major case of cooties, the clap, and who knows what other kinds of weird festering wounds.”
“Is that last meant to be a crack about You Know What That’s Going Around in an Epidemic Form?”
“Hell, no. Sorry.” She was suddenly contrite.
“You’re forgiven. But you’re not completely wrong. I might have gotten a bit carried away at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Even so, I still get postcards from that Room Service Waiter I sixty-nined. Seems he’s still there and wondering when I’m coming back.”
“See! It won’t be utterly horrible. Why don’t I call Perry’s assistant and find out when their plane leaves.”
“It’s Sam. Sam Alan Haddad. Does the name sound at all familiar?”
“Should it?”
“He was low man on the totem-pole at Silver Screen Films. Remember them? And no, he didn’t bring the book to Frank.”
“Then it sounds terribly fortuitous to me,” Marcie said.
“Marce, you realize that I’m only saying and doing this out of sheer utter unmitigated panic. You’re supposed to stop me. That’s what agents are supposed to do.”
“No, Victor, that’s your analyst’s job. You would know that if you weren’t so pigheaded that you don’t have an analyst like all the rest of us neurotics. Agents, by contrast, are supposed to make financially lucrative deals with all kinds of ridiculous perks included. And it seems you’ve already very nicely done that all by yourself.”
“I know. I know. So what is this cold shoulder I’ve been getting? It’s been a week since we talked. You have a new favorite client?” Vic asked.
“Never. But I do have some younger new clients who require a lot of my attention. Unlike yourself, Victor, whom, if I may remind you, are a quote, successfully arrived author, unquote and who doesn’t need so much anymore.”
“I don’t feel successfully arrived, with or without quotes,” he whined.
“What you feel doesn’t count as reality, hon. If I’ve learned anything after five years with my analyst, that’s it. My advice? Get out of this town as fast as your feets can move you. You should already be half packed.”
“How much are you winning from predicting my crack up?”
“From predicting your cracking up week,” she corrected. “I don’t know yet. And when I do know, I’m certainly not telling you. If it’s a lot, I’ll buy you a cute gift with some of it. If you don’t wait but instead leave right away with the director man.”
“I’m packing as soon as I hang up.”
She called back twenty minutes later with the time the following evening that Sam and Frank would come by in a limo to pick him up and drive him to JFK.
“Sam was surprised. I did not of course tell him what a crybaby and basket case you are, which is why you’re joining them,”
“You’re a saint, Marcie.”
“I believe Jewish women can aspire to become martyrs, but never saints,” she replied. “By the way Janet Shell was just here in the office. That’s Janet, your fan? From your publisher’s publicity department? Peg here had lunch with her and Janet stopped by to say hello. When she heard you were going to El Lay she reminded me that several big book shops out on the West Coast have repeatedly asked for you to appear for signings. Why don’t I have her call you out there and arrange those?” Marcie said. “If nothing, at least it’ll take your mind off what’s his face.”
“Okay. Fine. Sure.”
“Vic?” Marcie was using her waif-in-distress voice.
“Yes?”
“I’m going to miss you!”
“I may be back sooner than you think.”
“Do not come back till the damn Law Boards are finished.”
“I know. I know.”
After they were done talking, Victor looked around his bedroom.
Packing wouldn’t be all that difficult. In fact, he was probably still three-quarters packe
d from the last two Caribbean vacations that he and Mark had planned in detail and then ended up not taking. It was all summer stuff in those bags, shorts, bathing suits, guinea tees, light shoes, windbreakers: things he’d use in California.
What would be a problem, he suddenly realized, would be figuring out exactly how many casseroles he could possibly cook and freeze for Mark in the less than twenty-four hours he had remaining.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“So! You’ve settled in?” Frank asked Vic when he entered the Canon Drive office.
“Kind of. Sort of. A little.”
Which was all true. He’d gotten all his bags unpacked three days before. But while the house was nicely furnished, it lacked something. Call it culture for lack of another word. Three paperback popular bestsellers and a slew of oversized hard cover titles filled the three bookshelves and various single-shelf book-nooks strategically placed at points all over the very modern two floors of the rented sun-filled house.
Based on the titles of the books he saw laying around, whoever had stayed there previously had feasted on all-protein Lupercalias, become her own best friend, then seen the light and turned vegetarian, taken up power-running, gone on weekend fasts initiated by vegetable juice engorgements and ended with all fruit feasts, turned to “Dream Work,” given up veggies for something called the “super carb-load diet,” gone over to “Shiva-Enlightenment” (whatever that was; something trendily Hindu, he guessed) and at long last had found total comfort in “Financial Freedom.”
Luckily, this morning the box of real books and cassettes Vic sent himself from Manhattan had arrived via UPS. He opened the cardboard carton he’d packed in about eight minutes between doing everything else he’d had to do last week, and then left it for Gilbert to actually send off, not at all remembering what he’d so recently put in.
Justify My Sins Page 13
