Changing the Past

by Thomas Berger

  He turned to Philbin. “What would you like?”

  “Pernod,” said his host, then, with an impatient movement of his knobbed wrist, “the green bottle…that’s it. Now pour about an inch and a half into one of those tumblers. Then add some ice water from that jug—just till it turns milky…. Good. Now taste it.”

  The flavor was reminiscent of licorice, but strange and unpleasant. Having sipped of this one, however, he kept it for himself and made another for Philbin.

  The editor smiled up at him when he delivered the glass. “May I call you—uh, what?”

  “John.”

  “Yes, you did say that when you shouted up, didn’t you?” He sipped at the Pernod. “I’m Jamie.”

  John had returned to the uncomfortable chair. “Uh,” he asked cautiously, “is that a nickname?”

  “No.”

  Tired of feeling so awkward in every way, John came right out and asked, “Aren’t you Ross Philbin?”

  “Ross had another appointment,” said Jamie. “Anyway, I’m the fiction editor. He likes your story, of course, or we wouldn’t have accepted it. But he takes my word for what’s good in fiction.”

  After a few more sips, John began to get the point of Pernod. He hoisted the glass. “This isn’t bad.”

  “In a more civilized place and time,” said Jamie, gesturing with his own tumbler, “it would be real absinthe, wormwood and all.”

  John nodded. “I’ve written some other stories as well. I don’t want to ruin my welcome, but if you’d like to see them…”

  “As soon as we put this one in shape,” said Jamie, who rose abruptly and left the room in a swift glide. He returned more slowly, wearing a pair of hornrimmed glasses and peering at the manuscript in his uplifted hands. “I’ve taken the liberty of deleting the first two pages and beginning in the middle of things.”

  He extended the sheaf of paper towards John, but stayed so far away that the latter, fearful that the butterfly chair would tip over if he leaned so far to the side, felt obliged to rise and take two steps.

  John sat down and examined his story, the first two pages of which bore each a vast X in blue pencil, touching each corner of the sheet. Page 3 had not been excised in toto but looked radically rewritten, the interlinear spaces filled with blue handscript. He turned to page 4, of which an entire paragraph had been marked for deletion. He looked no further, but put his glass on the floor and stood up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as coldly as he could. “I’m going to withdraw the story. If you want to publish your own work, why not just write something from scratch? You don’t need a manuscript of mine.”

  Jamie made a sly smile. “I was just trying to help. You’ve got talent, but you lack discipline. All writers worth their salt begin that way and need the help of people like me. That’s professionalism. If you reject all assistance, you will remain a tourist.”

  “No thanks,” said John, going to the door.

  Jamie came after him. “I hope you reconsider. I’m really eager to work with you!”

  John again declined with thanks and turned to seize the doorknob. Jamie’s hand swooped around his hip and closed gently on the lump of his genitalia.

  John literally had to struggle for freedom against a man who was stronger than he looked.

  He complained bitterly to Daphne that evening. “You got me into that.”

  “Well,” said Daphne, “I could hardly have known.”

  “You ought to have been able to tell from reading the magazine.”

  She frowned. “I did read a couple of issues. I didn’t see anything suspicious.”

  John sawed off and forked up a segment of rubbery frankfurter. He gestured with it before dipping it into the ketchup he preferred over the local mustard. “That’s because all your favorites are fairies: Proust and Gide and so on.”

  What he really couldn’t stand about her was that she suddenly wouldn’t fight back, but rose above such mean matters, preserving herself for better things: putting in a full day’s work, preparing to be a mother, and thinking about highbrow literature.

  “This pansy wasn’t even the editor-in-chief. I guess he’s his boyfriend. Jesus.”

  Daphne contritely served him more cole slaw from the container in which it came from the delicatessen. She herself had quite a small appetite for someone who was pregnant: he thought such women were supposed to eat more than usual, but what he then assumed was his pride (and only in time to come understood was rather vanity) kept him from inquiring.

  Two days later he got a letter from Ross Philbin.

  Dear Mr. Kellog,

  Will you please accept my apology for the unfortunate experience you were obliged to endure on Tuesday? Jamie Quill, I’m afraid, while being a superb fiction editor, has a nervous problem. Be assured we would be pleased to publish your fine story exactly as you have written it, and in view of the inconvenience you have suffered, raise the fee to $50, payable on publication. This is twice our usual rate and at a time when we are hard-pressed financially, but it should be taken to represent our sincere apologies to you.

  Furthermore, I hope I can persuade you to be my guest at lunch on Tuesday next. If you agree, simply meet me at 12:30 at Yolanda’s on Cornelia Street. Afraid I don’t know the number, but it’s in the book.

  John was conquered by the note, and when the day came he found the restaurant and entered it some twenty minutes early. He waited at the bar while one by one all the tables were claimed by other customers. Apparently there was only one room in the establishment, and a modestly proportioned one at that. The bar was only about eight feet long, with no seating facilities whatever. Soon it too was fully occupied, and next a second rank had formed behind the first. By one o’clock Philbin still had not arrived, and as the bartender assumed a surly expression, John could nurse his glass of Pernod no further. He paid the tab: seventy-five cents, for God’s sake. He had brought along only two dollars. It was a good thing he had not taken a table and eaten any food.

  When he had maneuvered himself through the people standing at the bar and was about to leave the restaurant, he collided with the entering Jamie Quill, who poked an index finger at him.

  ‘John Kellog.”

  John acknowledged him with a cool nod. “I was supposed to meet Ross Philbin here for lunch. I’m sure it’s the right day, but he hasn’t shown up.”

  “Ah,” Quill said excitedly, “that’s why I came! Ross alas is all tied up and can’t get away. He sent me instead, with his apologies.”

  John could not help showing his disappointment, but Quill proceeded strenuously to seek his favor, using the most effective means.

  “I thought we might talk seriously about your future. You know, you’re such an exciting discovery that we’re thinking of exploiting our opportunity: maybe devoting an entire issue of Budding to your work, several stories, along with assessments of your talent by some well-known critics, Maxwell Wholey, Louis T. Klein, people of that caliber.”

  John had never heard of these persons, but necessarily believed them to be renowned, and Quill was making sense today. Furthermore, he was not likely to make sexual importunities in a crowded restaurant.

  “It looks like we’ll have a long wait.”

  “Oh, not here,” petulantly said Quill. “We never eat in this dump!”

  John followed him out the door. Today Jamie wore a sweater under which was no shirt. The tips of both his elbows could be seen through the holes that had been perforated by long use. His feet were naked in strap sandals. Moving rapidly, he led John for several blocks and around more than one corner, eventually plunging into the doorway of another little restaurant of similar size to that of Yolanda’s, as crowded, and with much the same aroma, though judging from the name, Au Milieu De, it was French.

  Quill went to the bar, at which two places were suddenly made available by a pair of persons who departed for a table in the dining area.

  “I’m on the wagon,” said he. “But you get what you want.
”

  John ordered a Pernod. Quill turned up his nose at it when it was delivered. “I’m on aitch two oh,” said he, gulping at a tall iced tumbler. “Now,” slapping his free hand on the bar-top, “let’s get to work. I trust you know your story as well as I do: page eight, second paragraph, I really insist on deleting in its entirety. Paragraph three can get by with extensive rewriting.” He thirstily consumed, in one long swallow, the remainder of his glass. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first two pages, really, should be moved from the beginning to the very end of the story! Just think, and you’ll realize I am spectacularly right about this.”

  John had hardly touched his Pernod. Eventually he said, quietly, “Aren’t you aware that Ross Philbin wrote me a letter promising to print my story without any changes whatever?”

  Jamie Quill nodded judiciously. “I changed his mind.”

  John retained a calm exterior. “Why are you doing this to my story?”

  The bartender had brought Quill a new glass of water, of which Jamie had already drunk a third. “Because I want to make it better!” he cried. “I want to display your talent in the best light possible. That’s the point of Budding, to find and launch new people in the best possible way. And, believe me, Ross and I are authorities on that process. Look at Maynard Means, Harvey Speck, Timothy James Wine.” He smiled angelically. “Timmy’s work was a real mess. You had to dig to find the diamonds.”

  John had decided at least to pose as being more patient this time. He asked who Timothy Wine was, and Quill identified him as the winner of some literary prize that was presumably of great prestige.

  “And it’s not just the work,” Jamie added. “Far from it! It’s how it is presented. For example, we’ve decided to print your story as a prose poem, in stanzas of no more than three sentences each, separated by white spaces of varying widths.” He gulped more water and almost screamed, causing some other people at the bar to glance their way in the mirror and the bartender to shrug. “No, I’ve got it! We’ll do another marvelous story, by someone else, in the same way, in the spaces between the segments of yours: Willi Mülhausen’s. They’ll be perfect complements to each other. Willi’s a young German protégé of Ross’s.”

  John was very hungry by now, but he decided he was being so badly dealt with that he must forgo a free lunch. He was somewhat tipsy from the two Pernods, though certainly not sufficiently drunk to lose his temper in public.

  “Sorry,” said he, leaving the bar stool. “I really don’t see much point in continuing this discussion.”

  Quill seized his wrist, and for a moment John believed he must once again fight for his freedom. But he was soon released.

  “All right,” Jamie said, showing a wide though somewhat asymetrical smile. “I thought I’d try. I know I’m right, but a deal’s a deal. I’ll print your story as written, every jot and tittle of it.” He finished off his current glass of water. “Now, if you’ll pay the tab here, we’ll go and eat.”

  The bartender went to work with a pencil. “Okay,” said he, “that’s one Pernod and three double vodkas…”

  It was now John who seized the retreating Quill. “I don’t have the money for anything but my own drink,” said he. But he was really more bitter about the hoax. “You told me you were drinking water!” He slammed his only remaining dollar onto the bartop and left the establishment: if it wasn’t enough to cover his own part of the bill, let them call the police.

  Quill overtook him several blocks later, and then only by having sprinted so strenuously that he could speak only in interstices between gasps.

  “Please…I forgot…wallet…in other pants.” He was sweating, and one dirty-blond lock of hair hung across his right eye. “So I left my Patek Philippe. Ross gave it to me for my last birthday…. Please don’t be angry with me. I’ve had the most atrocious morning. At the moment I’m playing hooky from my analyst. I really need someone to talk to. Please come and break bread with me.”

  “Neither of us has any money.”

  “Home, I mean. The fridge is loaded with food. Really! It’s right around the corner.”

  “All right,” John said with conspicuous reluctance, “but I don’t—”

  “Oh, please!” Quill lifted his long-wristed hands towards the sky and started off at his usual rapid pace.

  By this time John was so starved he had no alternative but to follow. At the apartment Jamie invited him into the kitchen, which was very generously proportioned when compared with the niches of both the places John and Daphne had called home in Manhattan, and handsomely furnished with a table the top of which looked like one large chopping block. Copper vessels hung from an overhead rack of ornamental ironwork. A honeycombed arrangement held countless bottles of wine, all properly on their sides, as John had once read fine vintages should be maintained.

  Quill took a frosted bottle from the refrigerator and poured them each a glass. It was delicious stuff. John decided that it would be gauche for him to examine the label, so he did not do so. Jamie opened an unusually shaped tin, a kind of long wedge, of what he called just foie gras, without the “pâté”: John was taking careful mental notes of everything new to him, should he need material for his future stories, even though by now he was feeling the effects of the alcohol.

  Quill delivered a basketful of chunks of French bread. “Excuse me while I make the omelettes, which will be fines herbes, if that’s okay with you. We’re out of cheese, et cetera.”

  Of omelettes John had had experience only of “Spanish,” so-called, covered with an acid tomato sauce, and the Western, containing diced ingredients difficult to identify, both dry and brown as leather, as prepared at New York lunch counters. Jamie Quill’s product was lemon yellow, light and moist, and exotically though subtly flavored.

  That was about it for the menu. No dessert was forthcoming, unless the array of brandies and liqueurs offered by Quill was intended to serve that function. Nor was coffee mentioned. Still, it had been one of the most interesting meals John had ever eaten.

  And Quill was behaving impeccably, though by now he had drunk a great deal more than John, who was himself woozy. It was Jamie who brought up the matter of the previous visit.

  “You deserve an explanation,” said he, swirling cognac in one of those balloon glasses seen in the movies. “Obviously, from your story, I am aware that you are sophisticated in psychopathology. Well then! I am that type of heterosexual who has a need, under certain special conditions, to shock and disgust myself by entertaining fantasies of deviate activity.”

  What an extraordinary confession for a man to make! John had no idea of how to respond. He could hardly take offense: Quill wasn’t making a pass at him. He shook his head and sipped some of the Grand Marnier he had requested purely because of its name. “That sounds like a real problem.”

  “I think it’s probably due to my unusual powers of empathy,” Quill said. “I’m quite a lecher, you know.” He winked roguishly. “I do so enjoy mounting a wench and having at her with vigor. But no doubt all the while in some cranny of my consciousness I am putting myself in her situation.” He made a startled, wide-eyed grin.

  John found the grin somewhat disquieting, but as they were still seated at the kitchen table, he could hardly be in danger. He nodded and said, “Uh-huh…. Do you suppose I’ll ever get the chance to meet Ross Philbin?”

  Jamie Quill’s smile turned ugly. “You would be sorry if you did! He’s as queer as a three-dollar bill. He’s not our kind of man. Don’t think he’ll want to talk about literature: he’ll just see you as somebody to go down on.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “Actually,” said Quill in a solemn voice, “we’re enemies. I don’t know why I still talk to him—yes I do: it’s because he’s got the money, whereas like you I have never been given anything. We’re fighters, you and I.” His stare was now fixed on John’s nose. “Oh, please. I must have you!”

  As the appeal was accompanied by no physical movement,
John stayed seated. “I thought you just insisted you were not—”

  Quill looked desperate. “I can’t believe that came out of me! I must have a demon dwelling inside my head.” He leaped to his feet. “I swear that men disgust me. Now be fair. Let me prove that conclusively.” He loped out of the kitchen at high speed.

  John sat there for a long time, though his internal clock was somewhat out of order owing to the alcohol he had ingested, and it may have been only a few moments. But Quill persisted in not returning, and at last John struggled to his feet and went to look for his host, if only to bid him a mannerly good-bye.

  He tracked him to a bedroom. Quill had stripped. He was scrawny and seemed even taller when naked.

  “Get your clothes off,” he said levelly to John, “and I’ll prove that the sight of your nude body will revolt me. I’m so confident that I’ll make you a guarantee: if I become the least bit excited, I’ll pay you a forfeit. Say that fifty dollars right now, instead of on publication of the story.”

  John suddenly received a magical insight, perhaps simply through having become unbearably bored with his own naïveté. “The fact is,” he told Quill, “you are Ross Philbin, aren’t you?…Thanks for lunch. Let’s drop the idea of publishing my story, if you ever had any serious intention of doing it.”

  “Just a moment.” Philbin (if it was he) seized a dingy pair of underpants from the chair where he had hurled them. He snorted. “I might have said don’t go off half-cocked, had I not feared that you would misinterpret that too! You love to think the worst of me. Well so be it!” He dressed as swiftly as he had doffed his clothes, but then there were only three items of such. He went up the hall and into the front room, sat down at the glossy black table that only now John identified as a desk, and withdrew from a shallow drawer a checkbook the size of a magazine.

  He wrote a check and gave it to John. The amount was twenty-five dollars, and the signature was “Ross Philbin.”