Until I Find You

by John Irving

  The summer following their graduation from the University of New Hampshire, Claudia and Jack finally went their separate ways. She was going the graduate-student route--an MFA theater program at one of the Big Ten universities. (Jack would make a point of forgetting which one.) It seemed sensible for them to apply to different summer-stock playhouses that summer. Claudia was at a Shakespeare festival in New Jersey. Jack did a Beauty and the Beast and a Peter Pan and Wendy at a children's theater workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  He might have been feeling nostalgic about his lost friend Noah Rosen--or Noah's more irrevocably lost sister, Leah--but Jack fondly recalled those foreign films in the movie theaters around Harvard Square. A summer of subtitles--and audiences of children, and their young mothers--somehow suited him.

  Claudia said--and if these weren't truly her last spoken words to him, they were the last words he would remember--"What do you want to perform for children for? You don't want any."

  Jack played the Beast to an older-woman Belle; she was also one of the founders of the children's theater workshop, and she'd hired him. Yes, he slept with her--they had a summer-long affair, not a day longer. She was way too old to play Wendy to Jack's Peter Pan, but she was a reasonably youthful-looking Mrs. Darling--Wendy's mom. (Imagine Peter Pan screwing Wendy's mother, if only for a summer.)

  Jack needed to go to graduate school, to continue to be a student, or else get a real job--hence a green card--if he didn't want to go back to Canada, and he didn't. Emma, once again, would save him. She'd been out of Iowa for two years, living in Los Angeles and writing her first novel, which sounded like a contradiction in terms. Who went to L.A. to write a novel? But being an outsider had always suited Emma.

  She'd found a job reading scripts at one of the studios; like Jack, she was still a Canadian citizen and had only a Canadian passport, but Emma also had a green card. The script-reading job was more the result of her year as a comedy writer for New York television than it was anything she'd prepared herself to do at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She was writing her novel, which Emma said was to be her revenge on the time she'd wasted as a film major--and all the while she was, as she put it, "working for the enemy and getting paid for it."

  Why didn't he come live with her? Emma asked Jack. She'd find him a job in the movie business. "There are some good-looking guys out here, baby cakes--it's tougher competition than you'd have in Toronto. But there aren't that many good-looking guys who can act as well as you."

  So that was Jack's plan, to the extent that he had one. He'd had it with the theater--and no wonder, when you consider the preponderance of musicals. It was fine with him if his last onstage performance was as Peter Pan, taking Wendy Darling and her brothers off to Neverland--while in the wee hours of the morning, long after the curtain fell, he was banging Wendy's mom, Mrs. Darling.

  "What would J. M. Barrie say?" Claudia might have asked, had she known. It made Jack sad to think about her.

  The thing about Los Angeles, Jack would learn, is that it's unimpressed by you--no matter who you are. Eventually, the city tells you, your comeuppance will come; exclusivity fades. But Jack Burns wasn't moving in exclusive circles when he first went to L.A.--he wasn't famous yet. In the fall of 1987, when he moved in with Emma, the nearest landmark representing the sundry entertainments that the future held in store was that garish playground of possibilities, the Santa Monica Pier.

  All that Jack and Emma really cared about was that they were bathed in the warm Pacific air; it didn't matter that they were breathing in an ocean spiked with smog. They were living together again--not in Toronto, and not with their mothers.

  Emma, who was twenty-nine, looked considerably older. Her struggles with her weight were apparent to anyone who knew her, but a different, interior battle had been more costly to her; her shifting ambitions were at war with her obdurate determination. That Emma was a restless soul was obvious, but not even Jack (not even Emma) was aware that something was seriously wrong with her.

  Numbers were never Jack's strong suit. Living with Emma in L.A., he couldn't remember how much their rent was, or what day of the month they were supposed to pay it.

  "Your math sucks, honey pie, but what do you need to know math for? You're gonna be an actor!"

  At St. Hilda's, Jack had needed Miss Wurtz bending over him--as if breathing her in were a substitute for learning his numbers. And while it's true that Mrs. McQuat had helped him, even more than Miss Wurtz, he had never mastered math.

  Mrs. Adkins had assisted him with his algebra at Redding--she who'd dressed him in her old clothes, she who'd made love to him with such a morbid air of resignation. (It was as if Mrs. Adkins were undressing to drown herself in the Nezinscot, or at least practicing for that loneliest of moments in her future.)

  "You shouldn't trust yourself to count past ten," Noah Rosen had once cautioned Jack.

  Mr. Warren, Jack's faculty adviser at Exeter, had been more kind but no less pessimistic. "I would advise you, Jack, never to rely on your numerical evaluation of a situation."

  Jack Burns would live in Los Angeles for sixteen years. He liked all the driving. He and Emma first shared one half of a rat-eaten duplex in Venice. It was on Windward Avenue, downwind of a sushi place on the corner of Windward and Main--more to the point, downwind of the restaurant's Dumpster. Hama Sushi was good. Emma and Jack ate there a lot. The fish was really fresh--less fresh, alas, was whatever ended up in the Dumpster.

  Jack's first girlfriend in L.A. was a waitress he met at Hama Sushi. She shared an overused house with some other girls on one of those small streets off Ocean Front Walk--Eighteenth, Nineteenth, or Twentieth Avenue. He could never remember the number. He went one night to the wrong house, possibly on the wrong avenue. There were a bunch of girls who welcomed him inside when he pushed the buzzer, but his waitress friend was not among them. By the time Jack realized it was the wrong bunch of girls, he'd met someone who interested him more than the sushi waitress. Numbers, once again, had misled him.

  "You oughta carry a calculator," Emma told him, "or at least write everything down."

  He liked Venice--the beach, the gyms, the underlying grubbiness of it. After Emma had a bad experience at Gold's Gym--she'd met a bodybuilder there who had beaten her up--she got Jack and herself a membership at World Gym; she said she liked the gorilla on the World Gym Tshirts and tank tops. A big gorilla standing on the planet Earth, the size of a beach ball, with a barbell in his hairy hands--the barbell had to weigh three or four hundred pounds, not that this was a credible explanation for why the bar was bending.

  The World Gym tank tops were cut low; they had a scoop neck and a lot of space under the arms. They weren't made for women to wear--at least not the ones Emma bought, which were all in workout-gray with Day-Glo orange lettering. The tank tops showed a lot of cleavage, and Emma's breasts would occasionally fall out at the sides, but she only got the World Gym tank tops to wear as nightshirts or when she was writing.

  Emma and Jack had their own bedrooms in the duplex, but most nights, when they didn't have "dates," they slept in the same bed--not really doing anything. Emma would hold Jack's penis until one of them fell asleep--that is, if they even went to bed at the same time, which they didn't often. Jack would occasionally hold her breasts, nothing more. He never once masturbated in the bed when she was there.

  Emma and Jack had had their one time; they seemed to know this without discussing it. She had taught him how to beat off; she'd even invited him to imagine her when he did it. But this was entirely for Jack's self-preservation in prep school, especially at Redding, and although she'd sent him photographs of herself naked--and, unbeknownst to Emma, Jack still had one of them--it was their mutual understanding in Los Angeles that they were more than friends, and certainly a little different from other brothers and sisters, but they were not lovers. (The penis-holding notwithstanding--and no matter how many times they were undressed in each other's company, without seeming to think twice about it.)
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  Emma met another bodybuilder--this one at World Gym--and he didn't beat her up. He worked as a waiter at Stan's, which was on the corner of Rose and Main.

  Stan's was one of those places that wouldn't last long in Venice. The waiters weren't as brash as they were in a New York steakhouse, like Smith & Wollensky, and for steaks and chops and Maine lobsters, which was all they served, the white tablecloths seemed out of place; yet the waiters wore white dress shirts with their sleeves rolled up, and no ties, and those starched white aprons that made them look like butchers who'd not yet made contact with any meat. It's hard to feel superior in a steakhouse, but the waiters at Stan's (there were no waitresses) took naturally to superiority. It was as if they'd been born in those starched white aprons--remarkably, without a drop of blood being shed in the process.

  The waiter Emma knew who worked at Stan's had a name like Giorgio or Guido; he could bench-press three hundred pounds. Emma managed to persuade him that Jack was an experienced waiter, and Giorgio or Guido reluctantly introduced Jack to Donald, the maitre d' at Stan's--a headwaiter of intimidating snottiness.

  Admittedly, Jack had had no experience as a waiter, but Emma had skillfully revised Mr. Ramsey's written recommendation of Jack's training as an actor, which repeatedly cited his "vast potential." The studio in West Hollywood where, every morning, Emma turned in her notes and picked up an armload of new screenplays--she read and critiqued three or four scripts a day--had lots of fancy copying equipment, with which Emma slickly executed Mr. Ramsey's edited recommendation of Jack.

  The word actor was replaced with waiter, and the names of certain plays or dramatizations (even the musicals) were presented to the clueless American reader as the names of trendy Toronto restaurants, in which Mr. Ramsey extolled the virtue of Jack's "performance"--an oft-repeated word, which Emma left unaltered, except she sometimes changed it to a verb.

  Hence Jack had "performed" superbly at an alleged bistro called Mail-Order Bride (there was another restaurant called Northwest Territories) and at what was probably a French place, d'Urbervilles, and at several restaurants of note in the northeastern United States, among them The Restaurant of Notre Dame and Peter and Wendy's--not to mention what must have been a Spanish eatery, Bernarda Alba.

  Mr. Ramsey's letterhead--namely, that of St. Hilda's--which stated he was Chairman of English and Drama, had been tweaked to identify him as Chairman of the Hotel and Restaurant of that oddly religious-sounding name. Mr. Ramsey's opening sentence described St. Hilda's (he meant, of course, the school) as "one of Toronto's best."

  But Donald was an imperious prick--a headwaiter from Hell. "When I'm recommending a hotel with a good restaurant in Toronto, I always recommend the Four Seasons," he told Jack. He then challenged Jack to take a minute or two to memorize the specials.

  "If you give me ten minutes, I can memorize the whole menu," Jack told him.

  But Donald didn't give him the chance. The maitre d' later told Giorgio or Guido that Jack's attitude had offended him. He had sized up Jack as "a hick from Toronto via New Hampshire"--or so he said to Giorgio or Guido. Jack had already decided he didn't want the waiter job--not in such a self-important steakhouse. But when Donald offered him an opportunity in the restaurant's valet-parking department, Jack accepted. He was a good driver.

  It wasn't that Emma thought the job was beneath him; her objection was political. "You can't be a parking valet, baby cakes. English is your first language. You're taking a job from some unfortunate illegal alien."

  But Giorgio or Guido looked relieved. He didn't want Jack to be a fellow waiter at Stan's. He'd had enough difficulty accepting Jack as Emma's roommate, no matter how many times Emma had told him that she and Jack didn't have sex together. (Jack wondered what Giorgio or Guido's problem was. How could you bench-press three hundred pounds and be that insecure?)

  Jack didn't last long as a parking valet; he was fired from the job his first night--in fact, he never got to park his first car.

  It was a silver Audi with gunmetal-gray leather seats, and the guy who flipped Jack the keys was a young, arty type who appeared to have been quarreling with his young, arty wife--or his girlfriend, Jack had thought, before he'd driven less than a block and the little girl sat up in the backseat. Her face, which was streaked with tears, was perfectly framed in the rearview mirror. She was maybe four, at the most five, years old, and she wasn't sitting in a booster seat. Evidently the backseat was her bed for the evening, because she was wearing pajamas and clutching both a blanket and a teddy bear to her chest. Jack saw a pillow propped against the armrest on the passenger side of the backseat; the booster seat was on the floor, kicked out of the way.

  "Are you parking in a garage or outdoors?" the little girl asked him, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her pajamas.

  "You can't stay in the car," Jack told her. He stopped the Audi and put on the hazard blinkers; she had scared the shit out of him and his heart was pounding.

  "I'm not well enough behaved to eat in a grown-up restaurant," the little girl said.

  Jack didn't know what to do. Maybe the young, arty couple had been arguing about leaving the little girl in the backseat, but he thought not. The girl had the look of a valet-parking veteran. "I like the garages better than parking on the street," she explained. "It will be dark soon," the little girl observed.

  Jack drove down Main to Windward, where a gang of rowdies--noisy singles, though it was early in the evening--were crowding the entrance to Hama Sushi, waiting for tables. He left the Audi running at the curb and rang the buzzer to the half of the ratty duplex he shared with Emma; then he went back to the car and waited beside it. The little girl was never out of his sight.

  "Is this where we're parking?" she asked.

  "I'm not leaving you alone, not anywhere," he told her.

  Emma opened the door and came out on the sidewalk; she was wearing one of her World Gym tank tops and nothing else. Because she looked more than usually pissed off, Jack guessed she'd been writing her novel.

  "Nice car, honey pie. Does it come with the kid?" Jack explained the situation while the little girl observed them from the backseat. She'd probably never seen anyone quite like Emma in her World Gym tank top. "I told you--you shouldn't be parking cars," Emma said. She kept looking at the little girl. "I'm not babysitter material, Jack."

  "I usually sleep on the floor, if I think anyone can see me sleeping on the backseat," the little girl said.

  The "usually" made up Jack's mind for him--that and what Emma said before she walked back inside to continue what must have been one of the angrier passages in her novel-in-progress. "Nothing good can come of this job, baby cakes."

  Jack put the little girl in the middle of the backseat and fastened a seat belt around her, because he couldn't figure out how the stupid booster seat worked. "It's probably hard to understand if you don't have children," the little girl told him forgivingly. Her name was Lucy. "I'm almost five," she said.

  When Jack returned to the corner of Rose and Main, he pulled up at the curb in front of Stan's; his fellow valet parkers looked surprised to see him. "?Que pasa?" Roberto asked, when Jack handed him the keys.

  "Better not park the Audi just yet," Jack told him, taking Lucy into the restaurant. She wanted to bring her blanket and her teddy bear, but not the pillow, which was okay with Jack.

  The asshole maitre d', Donald, was standing at his desk as if it were a pulpit and the book of reservations a Bible. Lucy, seeing all the people, wanted Jack to pick her up, which he did. "Now we're going to get in trouble," the child whispered in his ear.

  "You're going to be fine, Lucy," Jack told her. "I'm the one who's going to get in trouble."

  "You're already in trouble, Burns," Donald said, but Jack walked past him into the restaurant. Lucy spotted her parents before Jack did. It was still early, a soft light outside; the tables weren't full yet. (Maybe the tables were never full at Stan's.)

  Lucy's mother got up from her chair and met them halfway to h
er table. "Is something wrong?" she asked Jack. What a question. And women (not only Claudia) gave Jack a hard time when he said he wasn't ready to be a parent!

  "You forgot something," Jack said to the young, arty mom. "You left Lucy in the car." The woman just stared at him, but Lucy held out her arms and her mother took her from Jack--teddy bear and blanket and all.

  Jack hoped that would be the end of it, but Donald, the headwaiter from Hell, wouldn't let him leave. "There is no St. Hilda's, hotel or restaurant, in Toronto," he hissed. "There is no Mail-Order Bride--"

  "So you're from Toronto," Jack interrupted him. The way Donald had said, "T'ronto," had given him away. Jack should have known. Donald was another undiscovered Canadian working as a waiter in L.A.

  Naturally, the young, arty husband and bad father wouldn't let Jack leave Stan's without giving him his two cents' worth. "I'm gonna get you fired, pretty boy," the guy said.

  "It's a good job to lose," Jack told him, making note of the line.

  Giorgio or Guido was hovering around, to the extent that a bodybuilder who can bench-press three hundred pounds can hover. "You better get outta here, Jack," he was saying.

  "I'm trying to get out of here," Jack said.

  He was abreast of the reservation desk when he spotted the telephone; it occurred to him to call 911 and report a clear case of child neglect, but he thought better of it. Jack didn't know the license plate of the silver Audi. He would have to write it down if he wanted to remember it--damn numbers again.

  But the bad father was too angry to let Jack go. He stepped in front of Jack and blocked his way; he was a medium-tall young man, and his chin was level to Jack's eyes. Jack waited for the guy to touch him. When he grabbed Jack's shoulders, Jack stepped back a little and the young man pulled Jack toward him. Jack let him pull, head-butting him in the lips. Jack didn't butt him all that hard, but the guy was a big bleeder.

  "I'm calling nine-one-one the second I'm home," Jack said to Giorgio or Guido. "Tell Donald."