“So what do you think of our waitress?” Kipling said, smiling. It was the sort of question to which Henry had grown accustomed—the kindness of others, everyone trying to help him with what they seemed to think was his obvious failing in life.
“Well, I don’t think she’s really right for me,” Henry replied. “And there’s someone I’m interested in at the moment, so I think I’m all set.” These responses usually ended this kind of conversation quickly enough, but Kipling’s next comment was not what Henry was used to.
“Well, she’s right for me,” Kipling said, “and I’m going to fuck her tonight.”
“What?” Henry said abruptly, looking up at his employer with honest confusion.
“I love women like her,” Kipling continued. “Bohemian, bleach-blond hair, that tongue stud. She’s probably got Rilke lines tattooed on her back.”
Henry didn’t know how to react, but at last, just as Kipling finished a line, he said, “Are you joking?”
“No. I like girls like that. Don’t you?”
Henry still wasn’t sure he understood the nature of the discussion they were having. “You’re really going to sleep with her?” he said at last.
“I’m really going to fuck her.”
Henry paused. “Won’t Abby be a little put out by that?”
Kipling lowered his head and then replied, smiling, “Well, Henry, since you’re nice enough to ask, I’d say we have an understanding.”
“You have an understanding?”
“Well, I have an understanding and I assume she understands it. And don’t get pissed at me. You can tell her if you want. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“But she knows you do this kind of thing?”
“She should assume that I do this kind of thing until I tell her otherwise, right?” Kipling was smiling, but his voice had taken an abrasive tone and his coked-up glare was now clearly signaling Henry to back off. Kipling held his gaze for a moment, then looked back at his mirror—it was resting on the translucent blue counter of the bathroom’s sink and Henry suddenly wondered if maybe he ought to reconsider his refusal of the cocaine. Maybe what he really needed was some kind of consciousness-altering experience to ease him through his increasingly confusing world. But then, astonishingly, and without the benefit of the coke, he yelled, “You know, you are such a fucking asshole. Abby’s in love with you. You want to fuck our waitress? Abby’s in love with you. You’re such a horrible person. You are such a fucking horrible person.”
Kipling didn’t look up from the business he’d embarked on until he’d completed another healthy line. After that he turned to Henry and looked at him with the sort of composure Henry had come to expect from his collaborator. In the next instant, though, Kipling suddenly lurched forward, thrusting his face about three inches from Henry’s. And Henry became aware, once again, that Kipling was far taller than him and certainly his actor’s regime of exercise and healthy diet had rendered him quite a bit more fit than Henry. Still, Kipling didn’t throw any punches, as Henry now expected he might. (Henry was suddenly recalling what Kipling had done to their waiter the night his steak was overcooked.) Instead Kipling just glared at Henry, although his lips were pulled into a deliberate and careful smile. Finally Kipling said, “Henry, don’t be such a little fucking cunt. I fucking hate little cunts like you. So don’t be one.” And with that, he turned back to his mirror. Here, Henry took his leave, not concerned what someone might see when he opened the door.
Obviously, it was a confusing exchange, and Henry wasn’t sure what he ought to do in terms of alerting Abby. He decided to keep his mouth shut, but he did manage, later on, to broach with her the more general matter of Kipling’s repulsive character.
The show was over and Abby had packed up her viola and come to their table, and after Kipling made a few customary remarks about the excellence of her performance he said, “I’ve got to meet someone in a little while, and you look utterly beat. Why don’t you head home to get some rest and we’ll reconvene in the morning?”
Abby paused, took a breath, then said, “I am really, really tired, so maybe that’s a good idea.”
As she stepped forward to give Kipling (still seated) a kiss on the cheek, Henry abruptly stood and put on his jacket. “I need to go too,” he said, and a minute later he was walking out the door behind Abby.
As they passed onto the street, Henry looked over at her and could see, despite the comment’s origins, that Kipling had been right. Abby looked completely exhausted, although the weariness seemed psychological as much as physical. And once again, it made Henry furious that she was going out with someone who’d send her home under the pretense of “getting some rest” so he could sleep with the waitress. Still, Henry didn’t bring up his encounter with Kipling, although, now that they were outside, he couldn’t help but abruptly ask, “Why the hell are you going out with such a fucking asshole?”
Abby’s exhaustion suddenly disappeared and now she looked very angry. “Don’t fucking start in with me, Henry,” she yelled, arching her shoulders. “I’m not in the mood for one of your explanations of family lines and irrational sexual taboos. You and me, it’s not going to happen.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Henry said, now horrified. And maybe for the first time in the past year or so he was being honest about this matter—he was shockingly void of romantic inclinations at that moment.
Still, he must have also looked very hurt, because Abby quickly said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m sorry, Henry. Really. I’m sorry. Jonathan was right. I’m exhausted. And on edge. Very on edge. And you’re right that I’ve had better relationships than this. Practically speaking. I’ve had better situations than this. Jonathan is hard. It’s hard.”
Here, Abby paused for more than a few seconds, then continued with a renewed desperation in her voice. “But Henry, I’m so totally fucking whipped. I’m really fucking whipped. And we do have a lot of great things going. He really is brilliant, Henry. You’ve seen his movies. You were the one who told me how much you liked them. And his book. It’s so, so good. I mean, I suppose right now I’m just hoping things steady up some, because, Henry, I really am gone with this one, for whatever reason, so you can’t give me a hard time. You really, really can’t give me a hard time. It’s not going to help. I’m gone. It’s not going to help.”
Henry was silent. His instincts were still to sound the alarm and beg Abby to reconsider. But he also knew that his inclinations in this regard wouldn’t lead anywhere. Abby’s assessment was correct—he really wasn’t going to talk her out of anything. Henry even grasped that if he told Abby that Kipling was back in the bar seducing their waitress she’d probably just tear up and then tell Henry she didn’t mind.
Henry said at last (trying to cast his feelings in a different light), “Look, I’m sorry. I guess we don’t hang out like we used to and it makes me sad. But I know that will change back. I know we’re friends. I don’t have any dismal vision of our future. It’s just a little rocky right now and I miss you.”
Abby really did now seem to be holding back tears. But she didn’t break. She just stepped forward, gave Henry a hug, and said, “Thanks.” Then she turned and headed toward the subway, although from behind (Henry couldn’t entirely tell) it seemed as though she really was now crying.
10
AT ANY RATE, it had been a terrible day, and Henry was barely able to get out of bed the next morning. But the fact was, as he acknowledged with a blanket pulled tight around his neck, he did have dinner that night with Sasha and Whitney to look forward to. Thus, he eventually roused himself and got his coffeemaker going and soon he was even alert enough to turn on his computer and do some work.
And by the time he arrived at Whitney’s girlfriend’s house (this girlfriend was named Katie) he’d nearly put the previous night’s events out of his mind, feeling very excited by what lay ahead. Sasha arrived shortly afterward (she’d rushed over from another friend’s house) and they were all soon drinking b
eer and Henry found himself feeling much better. But, as the conversation progressed, and they had more beer, and then eventually sat down to a dinner of penne made with asparagus and some type of Bulgarian kale, Henry found himself slipping into thoughts about the events of the previous day and again feeling extremely angry. He tried to address these unwanted feelings with wine, but the more he drank, the more sullen and removed from the conversation he became, until, thinking once again about Kipling’s treatment of Abby (and so falsely basking in the glory of The Best of Youth’s success), he did something that he could only regard the next morning and in the days that followed as extremely reckless.
It started at a break in the conversation, just after Whitney described a lecture he’d recently been to at Cooper Union. Henry was lost to his thoughts about Abby and had just swallowed half a glass of wine, and, just as it looked like Katie was going to begin speaking—she’d been telling stories that night about the production company where she worked—Henry announced that he’d been witness to an incredible, outrageous, and absolutely stunning literary fraud and that, if he were at liberty to talk about it, he could “right here, at dinner right now, completely blow everyone’s mind.”
Henry quickly halted, pouring himself another glass of wine and saying that he couldn’t continue because he was pledged to secrecy, “legally and contractually obliged to remain silent,” he added. But then, as the anger began to take hold again, he went on to say that he was directly involved in the fraud, that he was at the heart of the fraud, but that he couldn’t say a single other word about it because his entire inherited fortune, “which is significant,” would be in jeopardy.
And then, as Henry once more began to think about how distressed Abby seemed after her performance, Henry slowly began to lay out to his dinner-mates the details of the matter at hand, the details of his situation—his contractual obligations to Kipling, the work he had done for this horrible person, the nature and actions of this freak (who was tormenting one of his closest friends), and in just under fifteen minutes he’d put forward the bulk of the facts of his entire story. He’d sworn them all to secrecy, and stopped every few minutes to say, “You can’t tell anyone. Not anyone. Not a single person,” to which they all of course agreed. And by the time it was over, his companions were staring at him agape and almost entirely unable to say anything. Sasha managed to break the astounded silence, though. “I can’t believe it,” she said at last. “I love—loved—that guy. I’ve been thinking I wanted to read his book, even. Have you seen The Apartment? It’s one of my favorite movies. He’s so great in it.” (They all agreed—even Henry.) “But that’s the end of my love,” Sasha quickly continued. “What a bad guy.”
This was exactly what Whitney and Katie said as well, and it felt really good for Henry to hear this, to have the scoundrel denounced and find his friends to be on his side. But as the warmth of the catharsis began to ebb, Henry could hardly help but conclude that he’d quite likely made a terrible mistake disclosing what he was not allowed to disclose, and, moreover, disclosing it to people he liked but didn’t actually know well at all (aside from Whitney, that is) and who had no real obligation to him in terms of keeping quiet about what they’d just learned. Henry didn’t suspect any secret malice, but who knew what they’d say at the next drunken dinner party? It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that they might, in a moment of excitement, say something like, You’ll never believe what I heard the other night, and, peppering it with Henry’s own phrases like you can’t tell anyone, divulging the entire story, including a description of Henry’s ironclad agreement not to expose Kipling’s secret.
It was quite alarming since the consequences of this particular story truly could lead to his complete ruin and the dissolution of his family’s entire fortune. Kipling would have a crushing legal case against him if the secret got out, and Henry would have only himself to blame.
11
AND THIS FEELING OF having erred in a catastrophic way continued long into the night, despite the fact that the evening ended in a manner that ordinarily would have left Henry feeling quite exalted. As he and Sasha left the building, she (quite unexpectedly but with charming confidence) put her arm under his, and in the next moment turned him sideways, stood on her toes, and kissed him gently on the lips. The kiss lasted for just a moment and then she leaned back and looked at him with great seriousness. “I love prison guys,” she said. “The whole gun trafficker thing, it makes me crazy.”
Despite Henry’s regrets concerning his confession, he was still able to take enormous pleasure in this. “I’m a dangerous man,” he said at last. “You don’t want to get involved with me.”
“Henry, please, you’re scaring me.”
Sasha kissed him again, and this time she didn’t stop and they kissed for some time. At last, though, Sasha stepped back and said, “Okay, I need to get home. Maybe we can have dinner after work on Tuesday?” She paused, then whispered, “And you can tell me more about what happened to you in prison.”
“All right,” Henry said in what he tried to make a calm tone, despite his happiness. “Some of it. But not all. I can’t tell you everything.”
“I respect that,” Sasha replied. “Tell me whatever you can. Whatever you’re ready to. I can’t imagine how damaged you must be.”
Sasha looked like she wanted to continue like this, but she suddenly spotted an empty cab heading down Bedford and said, “Holy cow, I’ve got to get this.” (It was an easy walk home for Henry, but Sasha lived in Clinton Hill, so he let her go, but not without a last kiss on the cheek just as she turned toward the street.)
“I’ll see you at work!” Sasha said over her shoulder, and in the next instant she was opening the door of the cab and then settling into the back seat.
So, a wonderful time at that point. But the incidents of the evening quickly returned to Henry as he watched Sasha leave, and the fact that he’d confessed such damaging information was once more a crippling burden. As Henry started to walk home, he vowed he would never ever drink anything again, although just after he arrived at his apartment, he found his way to the balcony with a very large glass of Pernod and began looking out at McCarren Park. On this particular night, however, the view wasn’t bringing him any feelings of peace.
12
AND THE NEXT DAY was worse, although his dismal outlook was astonishing. After all, he’d been kissed by a woman he truly liked and who really seemed to like him, and it even seemed as if there could be a future between them. Most times, Henry attributed kissing girls to drunkenness. Even the few longer-term relationships he’d had he attributed to drunkenness, or at least a chronic drinking on his girlfriend’s part. At any rate, it was baffling to wake up in a state of such anxiety when something so good had happened to him.
The fact of the matter was, though, unlike Henry’s normal assortment of anxieties, this one was justified. It was a very real thing to be worried about, given that he’d done the thing he’d promised not to do and that everything that belonged to him was at stake. The worst thing, though, was to whom he’d confessed it all. It was one thing to open up to Whitney, who Henry was sure was totally reliable in the world of secret-keeping. And Sasha too seemed to be completely upstanding, although the truth was that he hadn’t known her for that long, and what if things didn’t work out between them? Was it good that she knew so much damaging information? It was talking to Whitney’s new girlfriend, though (the production company person), that distressed Henry the most. (She’d even mentioned, after the confession, that her company was in the midst of pitching a show to MTV!) Henry didn’t know her at all. And, given Whitney’s track record, they weren’t likely to be together for very long.
It was a fairly deep problem, and it was made worse when Henry received four more links from Abby that morning. “I thought you’d appreciate these because you’re trying to be a writer,” she’d said. The insult of the word “trying” aside, the links were to various print interviews Kipling had given on �
�the writing process” and they were as unbearable as his other interviews, especially since the premise of the discussions (as laid out by the question-askers) seemed to be that Kipling was a brilliant man, a brilliant writer, and almost any information he could give to aspiring young artists would be extremely welcome. And Kipling’s responses were excruciating. As Henry read through them he kept conjuring up terrible images of young writers embarking on diets of cold lentils and purging their manuscripts of parentheses and semicolons, since these were, once again, the genius’s key prescriptions for “true writing.” Kipling also talked about various charitable projects he’d embarked on meant to promote reading and literacy. Along with a new role on a congressional “Literacy Task Force,” he’d also been recruited by several youth-centered nonprofits and by UNICEF, which planned to send him on “missions” to the developing world to talk about “my novel, The Best of Youth,” and how important literacy and reading are to the “human spirit.”
At any rate, Henry paced around his apartment in distress for some time after reading the interviews, waiting till just after noon to call Whitney, who was generally a late sleeper. And although Henry woke him up, he didn’t apologize or even say why he was calling so early and simply announced, “I need to meet. Can we get breakfast? Or lunch at this point?”
The Best of Youth Page 17
