I wait for more. I realize he’s waiting for me to respond. I manage, Ah.
“He sat at the breakfast counter. Chatted a little with Steve.”
Yes?
“He just left.” He pauses.
Sam wasn’t there?
“No. I think Howard thought he was, but when I told him he wasn’t, he hung around anyway. He had three cups of coffee.” Paul hesitates. “I don’t think he’s OK.”
I think he knows that, I say.
THE PHONE RINGS. SAM ANSWERS. He listens for a moment, then hangs up. He goes to the door. “Dad wants to talk to me,” he says. “He’s in his car down the driveway.”
OK, I say. I nod.
Sam is gone a long time. I go to the window once and crane my neck, trying to see the car, but I can’t.
When Sam comes back, he is different. The word that comes to mind is soft.
Howard sits before me. The car keys are in his hand. His mouth is closed and I can hear the breath moving in and out and in his nostrils, making a very, very tiny whistling noise. Do you remember “When You Are Old” by Yeats, I ask him. He says, “No.” The breath goes in and out and in.
And bending down beside the glowing coals
I murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars
I’ve done nothing but wait, I say.
He nods briskly. “Well,” he says. And then he starts to cry.
I wake up. It is night and the living room is dark. We are squeezed onto the sofa, fully clothed. Howard has both his shoes on, one of mine has fallen off. He is snoring into my left shoulder. My arm is asleep. I shift it and almost fall off the sofa. He startles awake. He stares blankly, panicked, and when his brain realizes it’s me he clamps me in his arms.
HOWARD IS GOING TO REPLACE the basketball hoop next weekend, although Denise can’t see the point, and I agree with her.
He has gotten phone calls. Some people are vehement, a few plead. They call from the temple, mostly, but they call from elsewhere as well. Howard puts the receiver down slowly, a calm, distant look in his eye, and the voices, still insisting electronically as they pour like birds through the wire, are cut off, leaving us in peace. Against the voices he seems armored. He seems in fact oddly burnished by the friction. He glows. But he doesn’t smile. He hasn’t recently. I asked why not. He thought about it and said maybe people don’t smile after suffering a great fright.
Once, as he lowered the receiver, the only word I heard was “…fuck?” Here, I said, taking his hand, leading him out the French doors to the garden, look at the moon vine. The stars are out, and it’s just the right time for the blossoms to open.
Sam had a few volcanic blowups with Howard. The normal detritus, I said. It will pass. Howard merely nodded; he absorbed the blows.
I told Stuart that Howard and I had escaped from nations. Our own tiny new virtual country is located in a house on a hilltop up a curving drive, the hilltop populated by some lovely palm trees and a well-tended garden, overlooking a large desert valley, high above the 101.
West 85th stopped using my name. Justin called from his new job at Endeavor to let me know. A number of them have not called or spoken to me, but it’s only been a few weeks. It concerns me. “Don’t worry about it,” Ellie says very firmly.
I’m not.
“I know you’re not,” she says. “But don’t anyway. It’ll work out.”
I don’t know, I say, and we leave it there.
Ellie says I am a clairvoyant who can see the past.
Howard marvels at first how easily the system moves on, but then he just shrugs. There is a new star on the cover of Vanity Fair in an ivory sheath, UTA got a director an astronomical deal at TriStar, and Stacey was reported to have a falling-out with Mark Gordon over a property represented by Bruce Vinokour, and the town took sides until the three of them lunched together at a new place in Century City to quell it.
Jennifer has Howard on a 7:20 A.M. to New York next Thursday. A meeting with David on The Afterlife movie. Natan is trying to rearrange his schedule and may be there.
Howard told Paul that his old screenplay was “DOA for obvious reasons, but,” he said, “what else you got?” Paul took a breath and made a pitch and has written sixty-seven pages, mostly in Howard’s office, though a few times Howard and I have gone to Paul’s house, and Steve and I made dinner while the two of them worked. They sit and argue about characterization, but on the plot they are in complete agreement, and that, says Howard, is what will count for the sale. I comment that plot is the least important part.
“Thank you for sharing,” says Howard and exchanges a look with Paul.
“So, Howard,” continues Paul from the sofa as if I haven’t said anything, “this goddamn problem on page thirty-six.”
Sam has gone. He packed and he flew away, as they do. He’s cautiously excited about his roommate. He embraced us both at LAX as they called final boarding, Howard a moment longer than me. Howard’s shoulders didn’t heave until we were just outside the terminal, and I put a hand on the small of his back, gently but firmly, and my hand rode his shoulders as they rose and fell. Sam, who these days has to lean down a bit toward Howard when he hugs him, had whispered “I love you” into his father’s neck.
Howard, I say. Listen:
English words that do not exist in French: Infatuation. Mind. Picture.
Assorted vocabulary: tabescent, coruscating, propinquity (“nearness of relationship or kinship”).
A line from a Walter de la Mare poem: “Our dreams are tales told in dim Eden by Eve’s nightingales, silence and sleep like fields of amaranth.”
Source Notes
The anecdote concerning Samuel Goldwyn and Maurice Maeterlinck is adapted from A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn (New York: Knopf, 1989), p. 96.
Anne’s comments on James Boswell are informed by Adam Gopnick’s “Johnson’s Boswell” (The New Yorker, November 27, 2000).
Aspects of Anne’s Mamet book club and her statements on elitism are paraphrased and quoted from John Lahr’s “Fortress Mamet” (The New Yorker, November 17, 1997) and Calvin Tomkins, “The Importance of Being Elitist” (The New Yorker, November 24, 1997).
Anne’s visit to the Juilliard class and, later, her comments on punctuation to her book club at Orso both use ideas and quotes from John Lahr, “Speaking Across the Divide” (The New Yorker, January 27, 1997).
Anne’s conversation with Howard about her taking U.S. citizenship and her lecture on “Why People Fear Art” adapt ideas and quote from Nicholas Jenkins, “Goodbye, 1939” (The New Yorker, April 1, 1996).
Anne’s book club discussion of homosexual writers adapts sections and quotes from Nicholas Jenkins, “Goodbye, 1939” (The New Yorker, April 1, 1996) and two pieces by Anthony Lane, “Rhyme and Unreason” (The New Yorker, May 29, 1995) and “Lost Horizon” (The New Yorker, February 19 and 26, 2001).
Alex Ross’s comment to Anne regarding the Salzburg Festival is a quote from Ross’s “Portfolio” (The New Yorker, May 25, 1998).
Howard and David Remnick’s discussion of Natan Sharansky is adapted and quotes from David Remnick, “The Afterlife” (The New Yorker, August 11, 1997). The letter from Avital Sharansky to Howard is, with the exception of Howard’s name, a direct quote from this Remnick piece.
Howard guarding the entrance to Hollywood as described by Mark Singer quotes from Mark Singer, “Sal Stabile, for Real” (The New Yorker, August 11, 1997).
Both of Anne’s book clubs on Edward Lear are adapted and use quotes from Anthony Lane’s “Rhyme and Unreason” (The New Yorker, May 29, 1995).
Donald Kuspit’s quotation at the Jewish Museum is from Simon Schama, “Gut Feeling” (The New Yorker, May 25, 1998).
The quotation about Jews being held to a higher moral standard is from Lawrence Weschler, “Mayhem and Monotheism” (The New Yorker, November 24, 1997).
The Ba’al Teshuva text is from: https://w
ww.hineni.org/inspirations_view.asp?id=17&category=15&CatName=Jewish%20 Issues.
Alex Ross’s discussion of anti-Semitic classical composers is adapted and quotes from three pieces by Ross: “The Devil’s Disciple” (The New Yorker, July 21, 1997); “The Unforgiven” (The New Yorker, August 10, 1998); and “The Last Emperor” (The New Yorker, December 20, 1999).
Nancy Franklin’s comments about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman are adapted from Nancy Franklin, “The Cost of Success” (The New Yorker, June 2, 1997).
Discussion of Bibi Netanyahu and Israel is adapted and quotes from David Remnick, “The Outsider” (The New Yorker, May 25, 1998).
The Shidduch profile is from http://www.yibrookline.org/shidduch_profile.html.
Acknowledgments
Much of this novel was written at the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan branch on Fifth and 40th. Thank you, and thank God for the NYPL.
Debbie and Jim Fallows, Scott Baldauf, Aileen Cheatham, Devon Burr, Stephanie Newsom, Richard Pillard, Anne Lester, Norman Carlin, Alexia Brue, Lars Yockel, Jay Marcus, Brett Thorn, and Chetan Raina read various drafts and provided crucial comments.
Jennifer Lyne and Adam Watstein gave crucial moral support. Robert Attanasio and Lee Stein were the warmest of hosts. Yorick Petri was and is a wonderful friend. Joe Tomkiewicz held the lifeline.
Two people took extraordinary roles. Michael Strong both quite literally saved my life and dedicated himself to guiding the text in the right direction. And I had the rare fortune of a thing I’d never actually conceived of, an editor who takes hands-on charge of the development of an evolving novel. It is difficult to know which is greater, the dedication that Lacy Crawford of narrativemagazine.com gave me or the perceptiveness and precision that she applied.
Eric Simonoff, super agent, superduperagent, transparent enigma, beacon of hope, voice of sanity.
Eadie Klemm, superstructure.
Shannon Ceci, production editor, who made it go.
Laurie McGee, copy editor, who sifted it all.
Beth Silfin, Ecco’s dedicated, pointillist, thoroughly professional legal eye.
Allison Saltzman, genius designer.
Greg Mortimer, visionary, architect, and Matt Canale, construction manager.
Dan Halpern, publisher and lover of dark scents.
Abigail Holstein, always there, tireless, without whom? Forget it.
Most important of all, Lee Boudreaux, my editor. The velvet fist in the iron glove. Refiner’s fire. True believer.
About the Author
CHANDLER BURR is the New York Times scent critic and author of The Perfect Scent, The Emperor of Scent, and A Separate Creation. He has written for the Atlantic and the New Yorker. He lives in New York City.
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ALSO BY CHANDLER BURR
The Perfect Scent
The Emperor of Scent
A Separate Creation
Copyright
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint from the following:
“November Songs” by Elaine Feinstein, from Elaine Feinstein: Collected Poems and Translations, Carnacet Press Limited, 2002.
Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations by David Mamet. Copyright © 1974 by David Mamet. Used by permission of Grove/ Atlantic, Inc.
“There Was a Saviour” by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1943 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
With permission of the author, ideas and quotations from “Goodbye, 1939” by Nicholas Jenkins, from The New Yorker, April 1, 1996. “The Sloth,” copyright © 1950 by Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
YOU OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU. Copyright © 2009 by Chandler Burr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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