An Angle on the World

by Bill Barich

  From the start, Bendel and I got along well. There was no point in sending out his old novels, he thought. It would be better to wait until he finished the next one. I agreed and fell into the habit of stopping by his place at the cocktail hour to check on his progress. While jazz played on the stereo, Miles or Monk or some other avatar of midnight cool, we talked about books and took them apart, a practice that was new to me. I’d never studied creative writing or even attended a workshop, so Arthur’s way of analyzing a text was a revelation. Under his benign tutelage, I began to grasp what literature is and what it could be. Though I was a novice, he was kind and treated me as an equal. “It’s promising,” he said, when I had the courage to show him something. “But it needs work.” Ah, work! That was the key lesson I absorbed from Bendel: writing is hard work.

  Sometimes he reversed the procedure and visited Larry’s in the late afternoon. Up the stairs he climbed in his ratty Navy peacoat, with a half-pint stuck in a pocket. If he’d achieved his goal of three decent pages, his mood was jolly, but any shortfall upset him. In either case, I was glad for his company. The liquor, though cheap, was warming, and I remember laughing a lot. About what? Laughter born of being alive, I guess, and realizing how fine we had it there in our boho paradise with the future still ahead—or so it seemed to me, Arthur’s junior by seven years, someone who’d yet to take a serious risk in art or love. I remained blissfully unaware of the blows my friend had suffered, and the damage they’d done to his confidence.

  If we were mellow enough when Hank got home, we joined him on his eternal quest for women. He called them “chicks,” as if they were being hatched for his pleasure. Union Street was his chief hunting ground, where the fern bars attracted young office workers. Bendel and I were a poor fit in our thrift shop clothes, and the women confirmed it by glancing away. We further ruined our chances with our lofty literary talk, resorting to such dreary pickup lines as, “Have you ever read The Magic Mountain?” Tubercular Hans Castorp cut no ice, so we retired to a booth and ordered more whiskey. Who’d want to make it with such stupid chicks anyway? That was our attitude, but we hoped a stupid chick would see through the mask and be sympathetic. It never happened.

  So we moped and drank and watched in envy as Hank performed. Sure, he had looks and charm, but his success depended on his determination. Just as Bendel persisted in the face of rejection, so did Hank in his effort to get laid. He was an artist in his own right, a master of seduction. If a woman failed to respond to his patter, he hit on the next one down the line. Capable of opening with such banalities as, “Hey, that’s a nice dress!” he kept it light and breezy until he connected. He never held out for a great beauty, either. He was a great democrat and liked women of all types, or so I thought when I felt generous toward him. At other times, jealous, I accused him of sleeping with trolls.

  On the rare nights when Hank struck out, Bendel lobbied for a last stop at an African American club on Divisadero, where the object of his affection supposedly hung out. This was a mistake, and yet we committed it often. We’d hear the throb of Motown music as we pulled up, and I’d grit my teeth and follow the others inside. What nerve we had! We shone like beacons in that overheated, dimly lit room. I tried to look harmless, beneath contempt, not worth the price of a bullet. For Bendel, though, the club was a picnic on wheels. He slapped out high fives and danced the Funky Chicken. No doubt he survived because everyone assumed he was crazy. There were muttered threats and once a dust-up that left him with a fat lip, but for all his madness and bravado, he never found the woman he was seeking.

  * * *

  Against the odds, Larry’s Literary continued to flourish. We sold a book or so a month, enough to pay me a small salary, and when we were mentioned prominently in Publishers Weekly, the industry bible, Hank demanded that we clean up our act and move to more suitable quarters. He located a fancy Victorian for us on one of the Haight’s prettiest streets. The owner, an academic, was so desperate to leave on sabbatical that he rented it to us without a quibble. In the lovely garden, where plum and cherry trees grew, we entertained bigwigs from New York, treating them to wine and marijuana and observing with delight as the California poison slowly seeped into their systems.

  The new house improved our image, but it didn’t affect the reception our most gifted clients got, the ones struggling to become real writers. After months on the job, I could define what those two words meant to me at last. A real writer was someone dedicated to expressing a particular vision of life in an absolutely individual way, through an attention to language that raised each sentence to its highest power. However backhandedly, and with plenty of gaps yet to be filled, I’d learned that much at least, so I was more bothered than ever that our best manuscripts went begging. There was too much business in the business of publishing. I was weary of rewarding witches and astrologers. What I craved, of course, was justice.

  Yet my disillusion couldn’t match Bendel’s. I was so enthusiastic about his writing that he’d let a ray of optimism penetrate the depression that was always lurking, but as he battled to complete his new novel, certain it was a failure, his spirits sank. Contrary to our plan, I’d been secretly submitting an old novel of his, and when I showed him a laudatory rejection letter, he flew off the handle. “I’ve had enough ‘encouragement’ to last a lifetime!” he shouted. His paranoia, ordinarily in the high-normal range, cycled out of control. Convinced that his baldness was the cause of all his troubles, he ordered a wig by mail. It was a fluffy concoction fit for the male lead in a ’50s beach movie. “How do I look?” he asked. The answer was, “Like a sorrowful Troy Donahue,” but nobody had the heart to tell him.

  I worried that he was losing his grip. He might have, too, if it hadn’t been for Brianna, who spent the weekends with him and kept him steady. He drank much less bourbon and even carried out the empties. They played checkers and dominoes, and if the Niners had a game, they shared the recliner and watched it together. But here, too, Arthur was stymied. The team had left its former home at Kezar Stadium, exchanging a grass gridiron for the artificial turf of Candlestick Park, and that had led to a slew of knee injuries. For Bendel, every fumble, every dropped pass and missed field goal, seemed to echo his own stuttering fate. A vast conspiracy loomed, he implied to me, and at its core was betrayal.

  Despite his distress, he soldiered on, and when the new novel was done, he presented it to me with a frown, as if to say, “Here’s more water to pour under the bridge.” I believed it was his best book yet, more dramatic and accomplished, and I fully expected to sell it, although I shouldn’t have told him so. But I had no mastery over my wishes then—I wanted what I wanted. I sent the novel to Random House, where Bendel had an admirer renowned for his taste in literary fiction, and we sat down to wait. Only the most sensitive editors understand how time weighs on a writer, and how destructive a long silence can be, and this man wasn’t among them. Ten weeks went by before he returned the manuscript to us, another “near miss.”

  It’s true, as publishing lore holds, that some books are sold on the eighteenth submission, but that was never the case with us. After Arthur was rejected three more times, with each publisher citing reservations about the novel’s commercial viability, I knew the worst and so did he. One editor asked him to consider a rewrite, and he was willing to try if they’d advance him some money—just five hundred dollars, a pittance, but they turned him down.

  That broke him, I think. He got bitter and lashed out at the world. Who could blame him? All his solitary toil had come to nothing. Late at night, drunk and alone, he’d call Larry’s and accuse us of a variety of sins, only to return to his senses in the morning and slip abject (but beautifully written) notes of apology through our mail slot.

  This story should end unhappily, but it doesn’t, not really. Arthur Bendel did publish a book eventually—three of them, in fact. He’d neglected his bank account for months and needed money fast, so he replied to an ad in The Berkeley Barb and started cranking out
porn novels for a smut baron in the San Fernando Valley. His pen name was Dick Drake, and his first venture, an offhand tribute to Hank, was Waterbed Motel. Next came Jennifer’s Awakening and finally Hellcats in Leather, a classic of the stroke trade. Even as a hack, Arthur wrote so ferociously that it must have scared his customers a little. He claimed to be disgusted with himself, but the books were displayed on a shelf next to photos of Brianna, and he inscribed a copy for me.

  His other novels, the blood of his labors, were stored in cartons. Could a committed editor have saved them? I’m still not sure, although I doubt it. Bendel had to find the missing element on his own since that’s how he went at things, freestyle, with an exuberant faith in his work. I can’t say what he might have done differently, either, except perhaps to be even tougher on himself, but that would be asking a lot. He’d done his best, after all. Dejected, he vanished for weeks to lick his wounds, then resurfaced in a brand-new suit. Hank and I were astonished. “I’ve got a job,” Arthur said gloomily. He’d hired on as a computer programmer, and earned enough in his first month to settle all his debts.

  On the other hand, Larry’s Literary had hit a peak. We’d ridden the hippie wave to its logical conclusion and had crashed on the beach. I was bored with being an agent, anyway, and ready for a change, but Hank was still ambitious and negotiated a transfer to his company’s head office in New York. He’d be closer to the Empire State Building, so he could hook up with Superman—that was our joke at his expense. Probably there were jokes about me, as well, but I had no regrets. In my semiconscious fashion, I’d absorbed many valuable lessons, and though I had to run smack into Bendel’s brick wall of rejection before I was humble enough to heed them, my time at Larry’s paid unexpected dividends when I began to write for real.

  Hank failed to make his million in the Big Apple, but Arthur’s stock soared. He attributed it to luck, and maybe he was right, because he got lucky in love, too, and met his wife, Belle, while he and Brianna were at a matinee of Fantasia, believe it or not.

  They’re still together and have a huge house on Lake Tahoe, the product of Bendel’s early retirement. My old pal is portly now and walks rather than jogs. His wig is history. And listen to this—he has hobbies! He grows prize-winning tomatoes, fishes for Mackinac trout, and plays classical piano. After dinner, he’ll pour you a brandy and tap out a Bach sonata for your entertainment. He swears he’s perfectly content, and I have no reason to doubt it, but I can’t shake a feeling that he has a ghost self somewhere, who sits alone in a room and types.

  Narrative, 2005

  Travels

  An Innocent Abroad: Florence

  I am on a cruise ship bound for Italy. I am 20 years old, a wayward student escaping from a small snowbound all-male college in upstate New York. I have never seen so much snow before, in fact. It starts falling in October and continues through the winter and into the spring. Our classrooms border a frozen quadrangle students must reach by hiking up a steep, icy hill. Only young men desperate for a formal education make the climb on a regular basis.

  I am in rebellion myself, desperate to be educated but in a different, less punishing way. Maybe I can find out what I need to know by exploring, through trial-and-error. The world is big, and I want to see it. I imagine my future as a great romance. I have read too much Hemingway and not enough Dostoyevsky.

  The sea has been very calm so far. I stand for hours at the rail and watch the wheeling birds and the spume-dappled water. There is nothing else to watch. We haven’t seen any land for days, not since leaving Manhattan. This creates a curious sensation of being outside time, without a particular destiny.

  When the Azores appear on the horizon at last, every passenger comes out for a look. The islands are hunks of rock in the ocean, nothing more, but everybody gapes and comments. One man even sighs. He will write a postcard home that begins, “Today we saw the Azores …”

  Lisbon is our first port of call. A beautiful beach at Estoril, actual Portuguese people on the boulevards. That excites me. “Yes, I’ve been to Portugal,” I say to myself, practicing. We stop in Morocco the next afternoon, in Tangier. Huckster merchants in fezzes ring the shore, shouting and waving. Oranges, parrots, a tempting strangeness. I wish I could follow them down a dank alley to taste forbidden pleasures, but I am too wary, still too American, unwilling to commit experience.

  Not so Gregor, my roommate. I share a cabin with him and two other guys, all of us headed for Florence and a semester abroad. Gregor grew up in Brooklyn. He is hip to the streets, the first truly cool person I’ve ever met. He has a wonderful voice and sings wherever he is, performing gorgeous front-stoop doo-wop tunes. In Florence, he will sing to the swans in a park one evening, and the swans will rise up and flap their wings in tribute.

  Gregor smokes marijuana. It is 1963, so he keeps this a deep secret. He will later turn me on in Arezzo, after our failed attempt to see some famous frescoes by Piero della Francesca that were being restored. I will ask him, accepting the joint at a crummy pensione, “Am I going to become an addict?” I am still too wary, too American, etc.

  I don’t know about the marijuana yet, not in Tangier. I do know that Gregor is unaccountably happy and singing his brains out as we sail away. He has made some friends among the crew, fellow druggies, and he invites me to join them at a party that night. The prospect thrills me. I, too, am dying to be cool and need all the help I can get.

  The crew deck is down below. Gregor leads the way. As we descend, I hear dance music echoing from a portable record player, some kind of rumba or cha-cha. It’s a merry scene, all right. The crewmen have hung colorful paper lanterns from overhead cables and put out a cut-glass bowl of punch. They have swapped their uniforms for casual clothes, Hawaiian shirts, and neatly pressed khakis. They dance with women in slinky dresses, who have elaborately styled hair and painted, doll-like faces.

  I move closer and see that I’m mistaken. Those aren’t women. Those are crewmen in wigs. In drag! I’ve been at sea for less than a week and already the scales are falling from my eyes. Life in its amazing fullness is reaching out to me, so I grit my teeth and try not to run.

  Beer bottles clink, the engine rumbles. The indigo sky is alive with stars. When a tall sailor in a Rita Hayworth–style wig asks me to dance, I decline politely. I expect to be tossed out for being a spoilsport, but instead the sailor pats my cheek, calls me “honey,” and urges me to enjoy myself. And I do.

  This worries me a little. It goes against my upbringing. My mother, through her psychic powers, can probably see me now. I sense her disappointment. A man in a dress is supposed to be depraved, a monster. So why am I having a good time at a party where half the men are wearing dresses? Because it goes against my upbringing? Yes, it’s possible. Fun may be had in new and unexpected places. That is the traveler’s first lesson.

  * * *

  The ship rolls on. We pass through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Algerian coast to Naples, where we tour the harbor. Cobbled streets, the Tyrrhenian Sea blue and implacable. Sunshine, cottony clouds riding the breeze, a pervasive smell of salt. The city looks ancient to me, historic and filled with mystery. I am aware of barnacles and rotting wood.

  The glassy-eyed fish at an open-air market are arranged precisely, as in a Dutch still life. The fat market women wear wedding rings, the shapely ones do not. Men huddle in doorways nearby and smoke cigarettes with a furious energy. They argue, they gesticulate, they stomp their feet and comb their hair. Their only job is to observe.

  They are the fabled ragazzi, boys forever, even at the age of 45 or 50. They visit their mothers every Sunday unless they live at home, as many do. Priests—black crows—spook them. They’re slow to go to confession. Their fathers work as barbers and listen to opera on the radio. The music drifts from shop windows, sublime arias I hear floating above the racket of the crowd.

  I eat at a pizzeria. I eat a real Italian pizza—no cheese, a sauce of fresh tomatoes, herbs sprinkled on top. The red wine is raw
but good. Gregor is still happy. He imitates Frankie Lymon and sings “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” to a tattered bunch of urchins, who ask him for coins and pretend to steal his wallet. In England, the Beatles are busy being born.

  We get off the ship for good in Genoa, dragging our bags behind us. In the morning, we will go by bus to Florence and settle in for the long haul. The thought of impending study fills me with dread. Professors, classrooms, dead air, responsibility—but there won’t be any snow, at least. That’s a plus, I tell myself. Meanwhile, we have a last night free to wander. I plan to make the most of it. I am a youth with a mission.

  I walk from our hotel at twilight, into another ancient city that seems in a state of perennial decay. The colors are muted and faded, touched with an ashy pallor. Everything human has already happened here, I realize, and it will keep happening, infinitely repeated. The idea is new to me and comforting somehow. Genoa has already witnessed every mistake a young man can make. I count this as a blessing.

  It’s nasty out. The clouds open and rain batters the old stones, but I ignore it. My mission is to find a woman—a prostitute, to be more accurate. This, too, goes against my upbringing, but in Europe, women are part of the deal. It says so in every novel. The hero is always ducking into a bordello with some sleazy tart. I almost expect to see signs that read, “This way to the whorehouse.”

  Cafes, narrow alleys, the reek of gutters. I feel anxious and high on adrenaline, a thief about to pull off a crime. I check the railroad station and the waterfront without success. Maybe it’s too early for the girls to be on duty. What do I know about the rules of whoring? Soon I am hopelessly lost. The rain drenches me to the bone. A driver hurrying home toots his horn and shouts at me, “Cretino!”