The Book of Lies

by Felice Picano

  As she withdrew from the open truck window, Conchita’s hand lingered on the face of the man she’d just kissed. Thus I saw not only who the driver of the black pickup was, but I also understood in a flash all of what had happened and why. For the man driving the black pickup and whose profile I now realized was the same as the driver’s profile I’d not quite been able to place last night was – Waterford Machado. My rival for Fusumi’s chair at UCLA. Who had followed me from the airport. Who had doubtless been screwing Conchita for a while, or at least long enough to have seen his chance to do me in when I’d first moved into Von Slyke’s house. He or maybe she or maybe the two together had taken advantage of Ray Rice jumping into the hot tub with me and had snapped those photos of us and sent them to Rice Senior. There had been no good reason why Ray would do it. But a very good reason why Machado would. Machado and Conchita had then made sure Von Slyke received my divorce papers. And who knew, but late last night had also been part of the plot too. They probably had photos, perhaps videos, of Conchita riding me in bed. Just to be certain, in case Von Slyke hadn’t been totally offended by the news of my divorce and its implications, just in case he hadn’t instantly kicked me out. They’d done it. The two of them together. And why was obvious: to get rid of me so Machado would be left in line for Fusumi’s job

  Upset as I was by all this, I still had to wonder how it had come about. Had Machado already known Conchita? Or had he approached her knowing she worked for Von Slyke? The maid had worked some years there, so she couldn’t be a plant, could she? Well, hell, yes, anything was possible now. That Machado was putting out for Irian St George, for example. Much as we two got along, that had always been a problem; as I waited that moment when he’d put a hand on my knee or say something too clearly suggestive. But then if Machado and St George were more intimate, then did that mean St George was telling Machado what I was doing? Where I was going? Had this entire weekend trip East been part of that set-up? St George had, after all, paid for it. And what other things had occurred between him and my nemesis while I’d been blissfully unaware and out of their way?

  I had to stop. I simply couldn’t afford to become paranoiac. I had to keep my feet somewhere near the ground, despite the fact that it had so repeatedly opened up beneath my feet. I mustn’t allow myself to go off on every tangent that lay so enticingly there, spelling out my doom. No. I had to think positively. I wasn’t doomed. It wasn’t by any means over yet! There was still my thesis! My brilliant thesis! That would stop them!

  Machado drew away from the gate with a light horn beep of goodbye and a few minutes later Conchita stepped into her car and turned on the ignition. As she was entering the circular drive, I was already at the wheel and gunned the Celica. I zoomed past her so recklessly fast, so close, she had to sharply swerve to miss a head-on collision. The Corolla skidded onto the grass island and abraded the side of the fountain as she braked to a cacophonous halt. Every one of the scores of birds nearby rose into the air with a great screeching. I didn’t see what damage was done to the fountain or the grass or her car, I was already hauling by too quickly. I was fairly sure she hadn’t had time to recognize me. When I spun around and outside and past the wrought-iron gates of Casa Herrera y Lopez for the last time in my life, Conchita was slowly opening the Corolla’s passenger side door, stumbling onto the grass. She looked as though she didn’t know what had hit her. Got ya, bitch!

  I made it to the Westwood Arms Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard a dozen blocks from UCLA as though gliding on air, without hitting a single red light.

  I was in the nearly empty dark oak wood first-floor dining room of the hotel having breakfast and perusing the Los Angeles Times three mornings later, when one of the desk clerks I’d befriended found me and dropped an envelope from UCLA onto my table. I tipped him and opened it.

  It was my thesis and documentation, as I’d assumed.

  Also a covering letter from Irian St George, dated the night before:

  What can one say? I’d hoped for so much, but this must be considered a complete and utter disaster. It’s partly my fault. I’ve been so busy. And I’d feared that without close guidance you might go a bit awry. I never had a clue you’d end up so catastrophically in error.

  You’ve obviously not read all of the De Petrie journal entries as I have or surely you would have seen the attached and not fallen into such folly.

  Take a vacation. Rethink your commitment to the Purple Circle. To literature. To academia. Rethink everything! Then, and only perhaps then, contact me again.

  Sadly

  St George

  I signed my breakfast bill and walked out of the dining room and over to the elevator and took it up to my room without feeling my body, without feeling or thinking a single thing. Once I got upstairs into the little room. I sat at the desk chair looking out the window for the longest time. Naturally, I thought of jumping. It was twenty floors up. I’d end up a smear of corporeal paste on the street below before speeding autos further mangled the remains.

  After a very long time, maybe hours later. I at last came to enough and then found the courage to read the attached entries from Dominic De Petrie’s journals. What in the hell had St George meant by writing that I’d not read all the De Petrie journals. I certainly had read them. I’d read every journal entry that had been published, two volumes full of them. As well as reading everything that the Timrod Collection had put in its ‘open’ files over the past two years. Surely I would have noticed anything odd or relevant. Especially from these early dates when the Purple Circle was meeting regularly. There could only be one explanation for why I had not read them: these entries St George was not only citing but now throwing at me had to have been previously edited out of the finished books. Only De Petrie, their author, and, who knew, perhaps also Maureen at the Timrod Collection if she had bothered, knew that they had existed, and of course St George, the journals’ editor, he also would know that they had already been edited out before publication.

  This is what the deeply perfidious St George had attached:

  April 17th, 1980

  A rainy morning. I hate April rain. Have to go out and food shop today. Hate food shopping. I hate everything today.

  Don’t know why I’m in such a bad humor. Last night I was in a great mood. The Purple Circle met at Dame’s place and we had a good reading session. First Axey read, a short story titled ‘Plaid Flannel’ a hysterically funny piece about urban disco queens trying to grow up and make it in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. Then it was Mark’s turn and he read a section from the new novel he’s been working on forever and seems afraid to finish, lest he actually have to publish it. After dessert, Dame himself read a proto-story/essay titled ‘Instigations’ which he thinks will be in his new novel. Three of us. Cammy, myself and Rowland, all thought it strong and unusual enough that he should open the new book with it. I read last, the opening chapter of A Summer’s Lease, which everyone said was utterly new and different and which they all claimed to love. At least I was encouraged.

  We all hung around a bit afterwards, having another go at finishing the peach and pear pies Axey had baked for the occasion. We got to talking about writing novels in which the protagonists are artists other than writers. We’re all determined not to fall into the writer-as-hero trap. Mitch Leo said he thought I’d found an answer by making the hero of my new novel a painter. He spoke of Henry James making Roderick Hudson a sculptor, etc. Then Axey got a brilliant idea. He suggested we not write about writers, but actually create a fictional writer and write about him. All of us.

  I leapt into the fray and said, sure, why not? After all, what is fiction anyway, right, but what we say it is? Dame and Rowland wanted to know how it could possibly work. Axey and Frankie made some suggestions. Say Axey would do a story and mention this fictional person along with other real people. Cammy might do an essay also mentioning him. I could do the chapter of one of his unfinished novels. Dame could then mention the fake author in a review of some other book
he was reviewing. We’d begin mentioning the author to others in letters. While to each other we could keep the fiction going by saying in letters to each other that we’d seen him at so and so’s party with such and such a number. Or that Mitch and Frankie in Florence had bumped into him at the opera or at the Farnese or Duomo. Dame could include the fictional name in his new book, in his acknowledgment page, along with real people, his editor, agent, favorite hustler, sister-in-law.

  The conversation became more detailed and more rococo. We went on for over an hour about it. Such fun.

  The next entry was a month later.

  May 22nd, 1980

  I woke up late. Kicked out a very cute trick after sucking his dick a half-hour till he finally – jaw ache – came. He wanted to stay and ‘play’ all day. Mother told him she had work to do. Have to try that stupid new chapter of Summer’s Lease before I forget what the hell I intended with it. I think Rowland is wrong when he says sex doesn’t feed but instead derails the creative process. I always work better after hot ’n’ dirty sex.

  Speaking of creative processes, last night the Purple Circle met at Mitch and Frankie’s and it was a so-so reading session, but with another fun after-session. First Rowland read, a scene from his play Mustang Sally. An obvious rip-off of Sam Shephard, and awfully dreary. Hated it! Nor was I alone. But we were all relatively kind. All but Dame, who said, with his usual languorous delivery, ‘I don’t know. I still think the theater is dead.’ Good thing Rowland didn’t hear or Dame would have been dead.

  Next was Frankie reading a chapter about a bar fight with broken bottles in some Midwestern saloon, a scene from this autobiographical novel about his childhood in Iowa that he’s continually pulling out of mothballs a month or so at a time to polish, add to, and then put back into the drawer. (Ed. note: the scene would appear in the finished version of McKewen’s posthumous A Boy from Quad Cities.)

  After dessert and coffee – ice-cream cake from the local store, gloppy and messy, I adored it – Mitch read a really lovely piece about his grandmother from the new book. With Refitting Tom Devere such a (relative) hit, he’s moving ahead with confidence and the writing shows it. Much applause. Then Cammy read a very Eudora Weltyish short piece that he believes will be part of Via Appia, if that book is ever completed in any of our lifetimes.

  Dame and Axey both brought up my novel opening from our last meeting. Partly because of Cammy’s piece. Then I brought up our wonderful idea from last meeting about inventing a fictional character. And Jeff Weber said why invent one, when he already had a perfect character, one some of us already knew but not well enough to allow reality to intervene.

  The person was his ex – a difficult break-up – of six months ago, whom it turns out also dated Mark a while back and whom all of us but, it seems, Rowland have met, mostly because of this guy’s recent association with photographer Mapplethorpe and his sugar daddy Sam Wagstaff at their Robert Samuel Gallery, where Len for two months ‘worked’ (meaning where he got regularly sucked off by cock-crazy Robert). His name: Len Spurgeon. An attractive guy with all kinds of odd and haphazard background but also of sufficient mystery and that all-important element of being seductively attractive to each and every one of us, including Mark and Jeff, which is saying a lot since they’ve actually possessed the glorious Lenflesh. So he’s got more than enough moxie to make him our Official Purple Circle Fictional Author/Person/Character. Rowland abstaining (out of sheer ignorance – the first time, in my presence or knowledge, he’s ever admitted to ignorance of any subject) – we all voted Len S as our real-life model for the fictional person.

  The question now is how much we’ve actually got to do to make him fictional. I mean, we’re overworked as it is, doing what we’re doing. Axey said that if we were smart, we’d take our time, not leap into it, and that way ensure the ‘reality quotient’, whatever that might be. But Dame agreed (for once! Whenever did they before this agree?) and said it could be a lifelong project. We were all thrilled by the prospect. But as I was walking to the subway with Rowland – both of us headed for the same subway line downtown – he said it would never happen. Why not? ‘We’re too lazy and too egotistical,’ he said. Cammy joined up with us in the station and he agreed with Rowland. He wondered if we should tell Len of our plans for him. ‘After all,’ Cammy argued, ‘we’re making him sort of our mascot, aren’t we?’

  I love Cammy’s choice of word. Mascot! Vey es mir!

  Two months later was the third and final entry.

  July 14th, 1980

  A long and extremely boring phone call from my editor this morning. Boring despite the main topics being me and my books: normally intriguing subjects. What is this guy’s problem? At any rate after a great deal of digging and sleuthing I at last discovered that Prowl is doing well on all fronts. The fourth edition is out and shipped, the book club has mailed out over 20,000 copies! The British sale has gone through. A German sale is ready to be signed. The paperback will be our in October, a month earlier than anticipated, etc. etc.

  I tried mentioning the new book to him, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Work on A Summer’s Lease is going along steadily. I know my jerk of an editor wants another book like Prowl. But that’s it, folks! No more like that am I ever going to write. So they’ll just have to settle for this.

  Read another chapter from it last night to the Purples. We met at Mark Dodge’s super glamoro townhouse on West 24th Street. It was a beautiful not too hot night, so he kept half of the dozen or so French doors that lead onto that enormous terrace open, and we stepped out there during our intermission and after the readings. God, it’s gorgeous! Views of the Hudson up to the George Washington Bridge and down to the Verazzano Bridge. All of the West Village in view. Parts of midtown etc. He’d had his ‘houseboy’ fix us canapes beforehand and make two kinds of mousse for dessert. If I didn’t adore Mark I swear I could easily murder him out of sheer jealousy. But he’s such a puppy about it all. Takes it as silly fun. Never is snotty or anything.

  At any rate, the readings. I did the early break-up scene chapter from the novel and that was well received, though a somber bit. Before me Rowland read something that looks like it might be a novel. And since we were all thrilled it wasn’t that dumb play, we were enthusiastic. Jeff read an essay about gay lit. he’s trying to get into Atlantic Monthly -very smart, mentioning us all, but good luck, Marie!! And Axey read more of his new novel, which we adored, asking us all for possible titles. When he explained to Dame how this book was ‘different in kind if not in type’ from the last one, I suggested that be the title. He pshawed this idea. (Ed. note: Axenfeld did adopt the suggested title, Different in Kind, for his second published novel.)

  Afterwards, all sitting around on the terrace, we once more discussed the fictional Len Spurgeon and his oeuvre. We all agreed to write one piece each, which we would then put together into a book at some unknown future date. ‘A sort of group novel,’ Dame said, ‘like – what was that lurid bestseller a few years ago? Naked Came the Stranger.’

  We’ve yet to figure out a plot, or character, but might do the book a la the game Rumor. You know, one person begins and another adds to it. So we drew lots and figured out who’d do it first, then second, then etc. No title for it yet. Though we all came up with several names, Cammy actually with the best of the lot, The Book of Lies, since, as he said, ‘It will be one hundred percent lies!’ We all liked that title, but it wasn’t officially ratified. Yet.

  Then the question of how we’d do it. Dame had chosen first so he’ll write the first piece. Then Mark. Next Axey, Cammy, Mitch, Frankie, and finally myself. I’m glad I’m last, but I frankly don’t think it’ll ever be written.

  Meanwhile, as Dame brought up, what do we do about Len if we ever do finish it? Give him the MS and have him pretend to have authored it? Mark and Jeff and Dame all think he’d really go for the idea, and actually enjoy being an ‘author’, so long as he doesn’t have to do anything yucky like actually write.

&n
bsp; What about publicity? Photos? Interviews? Len could do all that ‘fun part’, Mitch and Frankie argued. ‘We’d train him,’ Dame said. He sounded as though he’d be personally pleased to train Len, which got up Cammy’s ire and they began arguing and so we soon broke up for the night. As we were getting into taxis etc. on the street, Dame told us, ‘I’m doing it. I know exactly how to begin!’ Mark said he’d do his part too. So maybe this group of disorganized, overextended queens will actually complete it.

  A note from the editor of the entries (St George himself) read, ‘This topic never arises in the journals. There’s no proof Von Slyke began, Dodge seconded, or the others continued the project of the completely bogus novel. So this jeu d’esprit was never written, nor sections of it published anywhere under anyone’s name.’

  Except, of course, we both now knew differently. Von Slyke must have at some time begun the novel, writing the fragment about rhe boys in the car. Mark Dodge must have continued it, with that part of a story about the youth Paul in Manhattan on Christmas Eve. Aaron Axenfeld had to have written a third section, the strange, imagistic piece about the flamingos. While the most amazing of all sections, and the longest, the cable-car disaster, had been written by, of all them, the Purple Circle member least associated with fiction, Frankie McKewen. The other Purple Circlers had failed to play the game, or had been unable to bring to the book any kind of publishable manuscript: there was no indication that Jeff Weber, Rowland Etheridge, or Mitch Leo had produced any part of it at all. But then they’d all four barely lived long enough to write their own work. While the prolific Dominic De Petrie had done what he said he would and had completed the pseudo-book with the fable about the little boy and the Ice Queen. Having known Len the longest and, I assumed, the best, he’d written what I supposed was probably the most personal, possibly the most appropriate, section.