The Book of Lies

by Felice Picano

  ‘Ruskin wished he said it. It’s all yours, I think. And I really did rummage. I have to tell you, Mr Von Slyke, I pretty much ended up going through every piece of paper in your library and then some. And in fact, I came upon something I wanted to ask you about. It was with …’

  I’d lost him. He was away from the receiver talking to the boyfriend. Then he was back: ‘Puddles just had an inspiration. He was sure he placed it in his jet carry-on bag, but he thinks it could have slipped out while the bag was on the bed. It may have fallen to the floor.’

  I got off the bed and began looking. Under the bed were another few porno videodisks, including the cover for the one still freezeframed on the Sony, titled, I now saw with even more of a pang at bad puns than usual Tom, Dick and Mary.

  What was that? Over there? I used the edge of one videodisk album to nudge the piece of cloth closer and managed to pull it out. Sat up and shook it off, although it seemed clean. A T-shirt reading ‘Cocoa Beach Spa – Where the Dear and the Astronauts play!’ and under the logo of an oddly flesh-colored space-shuttle zooming into the atmosphere, ‘Really Get Your Rock(ets) Off!’ Within the shirt’s chest pocket was a small, worn, burgundy leather telephone book.

  ‘Wait a sec?’ I said. ‘Does the first number read, “Andersson. Erik. Helsingborg, Sweden”?’

  ‘You darling,’ Von Slyke cooed into the receiver, then into the hotel suite, ‘He found it! Naturally! Are you lucky!’ Back into the phone, ‘Was it wedged between the bodies of those two high-school softball stars I forgot under the bed, or just stuffed inside one of Puddle’s “magnum”-sized scumbags?’

  ‘Why don’t I take down the FedEx number?’

  After I had, and assured him I’d get it off to him next morning, I tried once more. ‘Re the papers, Mr Von Slyke …’

  ‘Damon, please! And is all of it as much of a horror show as I said it would be? I assure you, I’m wincing long-distance.’

  ‘Not that bad,’ I lied. ‘It was disorganized, and I think I’ve located pretty much everything. I’ve got several MSS for each major work, and many, many more for nine-tenths of them. However, among them was one completely anomalous …’

  ‘I just remembered!’ he interrupted. ‘Leaving Riverside Drive, is in with my tax papers.’

  ‘Actually, Verbatim is in with your tax papers,’ I said. ‘Leaving Riverside Drive, or at least one version of it, was in among your royalty statements.’

  ‘Oh dear! It really was a mess.’

  ‘But I found everything.’

  ‘I knew you would. I felt it in my coalescing old bones the second we met. I had the greatest faith in you.’

  ‘Thank you. But, you see, among all of your papers, I found something else. Something that I don’t believe is yours. I could be wrong, and if so I naturally don’t want to include it.’

  ‘Why not put it aside, and when I get back …’

  He clearly didn’t want to be bothered.

  ‘Can’t we see if we can straighten it out right now?’ I tried. ‘It’s only a few pages. Typewritten, but not on Jonathan Flitch’s typewriter.’

  ‘It was my typewriter,’ Von Slyke coldly interrupted.

  ‘The Smith-Corona? A mid-’60s model?’

  ‘My mother’s college graduation gift to me. I was supposed to take a typing class too. But when I got to New York, I cashed the check and I used the money to buy a number from Red Hook named Spike and a bottle of B & B Brandy. They each lasted one night!’ He laughed.

  Despite the anecdote (by now I was certain Von Slyke had a million of them stored away in some vast, personal, wetware RAM), I’d felt the coolness begin to creep into his voice and I was trying to be delicate and courteous and not bring up anything questionable or annoying like the estrangement from Flitch, which might make him even cooler at the same time that I got the info I needed.

  ‘I think I still have that typewriter somewhere. If not in storage with you somewhere, then in the place at Kauai. It must be years since anyone’s used it.’

  ‘Great!’ I feigned an enthusiasm I hoped he’d hear as sincere. ‘What you’re telling me confirms what I was only guessing at. I thought the typewriter was used for every manuscript up to DOS: Manuscript in Distress. That naturally was printed up on computer laser jet. But then there are versions of your George Bernard Shaw essay and of the short story “Systematic Betrayal”, both of which I knew to have been written later than the novel, that are typed on the Smith-Corona. Because they were written while you were on vacation?’

  ‘Yes. I found this lovely boy to type for me. Dick long as your arm. Funny thing is, I located him through one of those retiree bulletin boards they put up in the local K-Marts. You are the cleverest thing on earth to have figured out so much from so very little. You’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you? ‘

  He’d warmed up a little, so I moved on, although gingerly. ‘Well, it’s what you took me on to do, and I am trying to do it right,’ I added in further self-defense. ‘For your benefit, naturally, and also of course for future readers and scholars. Which is why I’d like to clear up this business regarding the one little manuscript I found that seems so out of place.’

  When he didn’t moan or say no, please, don’t, I took courage and went on. ‘It’s a short piece. Not even a story. An anecdote really. Perhaps part of a longer work. Two children riding in a car with their parents …’ No response. ‘Francis and Paul are the boys’ names …’ Still no response. ‘It’s not written in what I’d like to think of is any of your styles.’

  No response. So I said, ‘Mr Von Slyke? Damon?’

  ‘I’m trying to think.’

  ‘Well, that confirms what I believe: that it’s not your writing and I won’t have to include it. I had to ask, however, because I did find it between the pages of an early version of Heliotrope Convertible. I realize the Purple Circle was no longer meeting regularly at the time, but you were still seeing most of the members of the group socially. Could it be something one of the others wrote? Dodge? Leo? Weber?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Gosh, I really can’t remember it at all.’ He paused. ‘You know … I taught briefly around that time. You couldn’t possibly give me a year for this?’

  ‘Eighty through eighty-two is as close as I can date it with any accuracy.’

  ‘Well, maybe … I taught writing one year, both fall and spring. Two fiction-writing classes each term. It was at the West Side Y Writers’ Voice Workshop. Too much work for too little pay. But I needed the money and the exposure. Is that still around?’

  I said I didn’t think so.

  ‘My class met near the swimming pool. I would come in and have to fling open the windows no matter how cold it was outside. The room always reeked of chlorine. And this occasional hollow booming – I suppose whenever a swimmer turned under water during laps and hit the side of the pool wall to push off into the other direction. Oh, yes, and this one young man, halfway cute, who wrote about how strongly his girlfriend’s vagina smelled. Not … good … writing! At the end of the term he wanted me to sign a statement he’d prepared saying I wouldn’t steal his work. I told him, “I can guarantee you that a description of any vagina never has and never will appear in my work, save, and only in the rarest of cases, as an expletive.” Imagine the effrontery!’

  ‘Awful lot of nerve,’ I commiserated. ‘So you’re thinking it might have been one of your students?’

  ‘No,’ Von Slyke said. ‘I don’t remember keeping any of their stuff. The thing is, I don’t remember what you’re describing at all. What was the theme of the piece?’

  ‘Theme? I’m not sure … It was more of an anecdote. About … well, about fratricide. Unintentional fratricide.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, more soberly. ‘So if it is by me …’

  ‘Which it may not be!’

  ‘Or one of the other Purples,’ he amended, ‘then it could be a crucial piece of what your brilliant mentor Irian St George calls “internal evidence”.’

 
‘Absolutely crucial.’ I echoed the adjective he’d used.

  ‘I, of course, had no brother,’ Von Slyke said. ‘Only two sisters, neither of whom I cared enough about to speak to after I’d reached the age of twelve, never mind deign to murder. But if, say, Mitchell Leo or Frankie McKewen or Dom De Petrie or Mark Dodge, they all had brothers, wrote it …’ He let it hang.

  ‘I know I must sound to you exactly like one of those “publishing scoundrels” you mentioned when we met, but it could be important. For the Purple Circle!’ I added, trying to let him see it wasn’t just my gain.

  ‘I’d love to help you, Ross dear. But I simply …’

  ‘Could I photocopy the MS on your office machine and put it in the overnight packet with the telephone book?’

  ‘Fabulous! Do that! I’ll look it over and …’

  To change a subject I suspected was growing tiring to him, I said, ‘I didn’t know you’d taught.’

  ‘Just that year. Oh, wait. No! One more term. In Bath of all places. Apple-cheeked British lads and lassies.’

  To bring us closer, I asked, ‘What if, and I’m not saying this ever happened, but what if one of your students sort of, you know, came onto you?’

  ‘Has that happened to you, Ross? Well, of course it must have happened to gorgeous you quite regularly.’

  ‘We’re on-ly sup-posing here,’ I corrected lightly.

  ‘Well, if it happened to me, and it did once, I’d drag the boy home and force him to sodomize me until we passed out.’

  ‘I had that coming.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth. Remember, Ross, dear, to whom you’re speaking. I’ve had, and continue to have, nothing even resembling shame! … And I suggest you do what I did. Except, of course, you’re probably not as utterly flattered by the boy’s attentions as ugly old I was. Instead, you’re probably trying to find a courteous way to get out of his hot little clutches.’

  We went on in that manner until I was surprised by sudden motion in my peripheral vision and turned to see the ‘freeze’ had timed off the TV. Tom, Dick and Mary were going at it full-tilt.

  ‘I’ll send everything tomorrow,’ I assured Von Slyke, when there was a suitable break in his conversation. We signed off.

  I felt as though I’d accomplished a little: at the least, I’d confirmed for myself that the MS wasn’t his, and managed to keep his interest and faith in me as strong as his mercurial temperament allowed.

  After I’d hung up, I didn’t leave the West Wing immediately. I remained on the double bed and watched the sixty-inch video screen as the bisexual scene got more active. Especially when I located the hand-held clicker that allowed me to zoom in for chosen close-ups. The images couldn’t help but remind me that it had been some time since I’d had sex. Finally, I gave in to its unspoken message, shut off the bed lamp, lay back and, watching the three work toward climax, I masturbated. I used Puddles’s Cape Kennedy T-shirt to wipe myself off and threw it into the hamper.

  The letter on the foolscap pad turned out to be the one Von Slyke had been writing when I’d arrived at Casa Herrera y Lopez. He’d put it aside and only later picked it up to finish. It was addressed to Dominic De Petrie, which wasn’t a surprise, as I knew the surviving Purples remained in contact; addressed to him in some town I’d never heard of but later, on a road atlas, did manage to locate, not far from Provincetown, on Cape Cod. I don’t usually read others’ mail, but since I’d been reading so much of Von Slyke’s already, and knew I was mentioned in the letter, I treated it as fair game:

  Dear Dom

  You sounded better on the phone today. Both P. and I think you ought to get away from that dreary shack and come join us a while in Europe. You don’t realize how much you’re adored in France. I’m rat-droppings in comparison. We’ll eat and shop all day, spending the university’s ill-gotten money, and go out everywhere and be atrociously blase all night.

  Yes, Maureen and I agreed on a price for all my papers. So, at last, I’ll join with the rest of the Purples: letters, MSS, everything. Ross Ohrenstedt will catalogue it all. He’s one of St George’s boys at UCLA. A blessed-lad: smart, rich, built and hung! When he first came across the lawn toward me, he so resembled L. in the way he moved and how he held his head and that tight body I thought I was having an ‘eerie’ experience … v. disturbing for Her heart. Closer up, and once he began to speak, the illusion revealed itself, but the sense of ‘deep resemblance’ never quite went away. Despite which, he’ll be living here all summer while I’m gone.

  Come to Europe. Play with us. Love you.

  Dame

  So much for reading other people’s mail. I was left with so many questions after perusing this. Later on, during that summer, as facts long hidden came to light, I would slowly begin to make sense of the various references. All I knew at first was that I’d once more ‘put one over’, this time on the brilliant Damon Von Slyke, who had concluded I was a ‘blessed-lad’.

  I also found out that his very mixed signals during that meeting had not been because he was ‘testing’ me and was too distracted by other matters, as I’d first foolishly supposed, but because I closely physically resembled someone both he and De Petrie knew – initial L – though how and in what context I couldn’t tell; yet enough to make Von Slyke nervous, circumspect. I guessed the L did not stand for Mitch Leo, whom all photos show as being tall and slender, hardly what a wordsmith like Von Slyke would call a ‘tight’ body. Also I also guessed that L was dead. Otherwise why would it have been an ‘eerie’ experience? Something about the way he wrote suggested Von Slyke had had a sensual relationship with L, although I couldn’t be sure if De Petrie had too. And L had not been completely trustworthy.

  The next day I naturally went through both the Fleming and Cummings books on the Purple Circle looking for a Larry, a Les, a Lawrence, a Lance, a Lionel, a Lonny, finding no one who seemed to fit the bill. More desultorily, for I was beginning to think it was something I’d never find out, or would do so only if Von Slyke himself told me, I went back to the two volumes of Reuben Weatherbury’s Purple Circle Reader to see if any L name indexed in McKewen or De Petrie’s selected journals would leap out at me. None did, so I ended up spending a cheerful hour and a half instead enjoying two pieces printed there that I’d not read in a few years: Jeff Weber’s moving story of love and loss, ‘In the Tree Museum’, and the excerpt about the three friends getting drunk and driving wildly in circles around each other by the light of the stars in the abandoned drive-in movie theater from Mark Dodge’s third and final novel, We All Drive Fords.

  ‘In-dub-i-ta-bly you’re thinking, “Why are we meeting here, when surely St George can afford any place in town, including the new Chasens or the Ginger Garden?”’

  This greeting as I arrived and settled into the Merlot-colored leather booth of the Hamburger Hamlet, a sixty-year-old standby in the campus neighborhood, so much a constant I’d hardly registered its existence until the invitation had arrived on my phone-answering machine. The Professor had evidently been sitting here a while -even though I was a minute and a half early – sipping what looked like a Dr Pepper Gingkola out of a tall, ice-filled, old-fashioned malted-type glass, his elbows placed on one of the big old brown leatherette menus splayed in front of him upon the Formica tabletop, staring at the substantial, post-adolescent foot traffic at the populous triple corner of Broxton and Kinross Avenues and Westwood Boulevard.

  ‘My only question,’ I said, ‘is do they actually serve hamburgers here? I don’t mean turkey burgers or tofu burgers or veggie burgers but with, you know, red beef and all?’

  ‘Ac-tu-a-lly’ – one of St George’s picturesquely arched eyebrows raised an eighth of an inch, a feat he’d long perfected in front of seminars and departmental meetings – ‘I believe they do serve them. Although’ – an index finger flew up to specify point one – ‘quite seldom.’ A second finger joined it. ‘Never to anyone under sixty. And only’ – the ring finger joined the others – ‘after they’ve subjected
you to the most intense scrutiny.’

  ‘Screening out potential health risks?’

  ‘Screening out potential FDA inspectors!’ Both arched eyebrows danced in amusement at his witticism.

  ‘No, this place is fine, it’s fun!’ I said, pulling over a menu and looking over its many, many entries.

  ‘Luck-i-ly,’ St George began, ‘you’re young enough to still possess a digestion able to take on equal amounts of tofu and tuna. If you’re not lactose-intolerant, as poor I am despite vats of masticating enzymes and oriental medications, I suggest you try the heav-en-ly … que-sa-dil-las!’

  ‘Good idea!’ A waitress appeared who was dressed like a Yogi and moved with the calm that suggested she’d just completed a session of t’ai chi in the kitchen. I ordered the appetizer, their version of a salade Niçoise and black coffee, which she assured me in a serene voice was not only decaffeinated but without a smidgen of free radicals.

  ‘For-tun-nate-ly!’ St George said. ‘Wouldn’t want any nasty free radicals hovering around the For-mi-ca.’

  After she’d gone, I forced myself to say, ‘You received the letter from that attorney? My student, Raymond Rice’s, father?’

  ‘Nat-ur-al-ly, yes, but that’s all the most ridiculous twaddle. Not worth discussing. And not the reason I wanted to see you … It’s going well with the Von Slyke papers?’

  ‘Very. I found pretty much everything … and then some.’

  ‘Some!’ St George could make even a one-syllable word seem as though it had six syllables.

  ‘Something not by Von Slyke,’ I quickly said, to disabuse him of that idea. ‘Something I found in the middle of a MS of Heliotrope Convertible that Von Slyke didn’t recognize, that he’s never heard of. Not very likely with him. He remembers every comma he ever placed. Possibly by one of the other Purples.’

  St George’s lips pursed. ‘Some-thing fas-cin-at-ing?’

  ‘An anecdote. Probably autobiographical. Freudian. The unintentional killing of an older brother by a younger brother.’