The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  “I...” He started to pat his jacket. “I—if you...just one moment.” Pat, pat, pat. “Here...” He reached into his inner coat pocket and came out with a pad. “If I could...”

  I saw then, and I shook my head. A reporter. “I’m not interested. No comment.” I headed for the front desk.

  As expected, he jumped after me. “Mr. Rosenkrantz. Sir. Please. I am a reporter. I cover the city council for the Sun. But I just...I mean, I’m a fan. I’m a writer too—”

  That was even worse. I turned, about to lay into him. I could feel it rising, and I wasn’t going to be able to stop it. But he was leaning in towards me, with a stunned expression on his face, an expression I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I paused. “What do you write,” I said.

  “Well, for the paper...”

  I waved him on.

  “I had a play produced last year at the Everyman. Spook. My first. It got some nice notices.”

  “And you are...how did you find me?”

  He looked down as though he were ashamed of doing what reporters do. “I knew your wife’s will was to be read. Your ex-wife’s, excuse me. I waited outside the building where it was to be read, you understand, and when you came out—I knew it was you from the pictures on your dust jackets—I followed you, but I didn’t have the guts to say anything. And I nearly didn’t just now either.”

  “So you’re a fan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Taylor Montgomery, sir.”

  I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.” He shook it with wide-eyed wonder. That was how it should be. That was how it was at one time. If only Joe had met me like that. I’m his father, he should have given me that look. He should have given me a hug, you know, like roughhousing, but it’s a hug. “Buy me a drink,” I said.

  “Oh, no, really...”

  “Look,” I said. I was starting to feel bad for the kid. Nobody should be that paralyzed to talk to me. And suddenly everything seemed better. Of course Auger would send me money. How couldn’t he? I was his client. I made him a lot of money back in the day. Yeah, he’d wire money, and then Vee would come back west with me, and it would all be okay. I might even get a $400 week at one of the studios if I begged hard enough. “Look,” I said again. “You go to the bar. Order yourself a drink. I’ve got to send a cable, and I’ll meet you in there. And if you’re not there, then I understand that too.”

  “Oh, I’ll be there,” he said. “Thanks. Mr. Rosenkrantz. Yeah,” and he stepped backwards, and almost tripped into somebody, said “Excuse me,” righted himself, gave an embarrassed smile, and headed for the bar.

  If only Joseph had met me like that. That was the way it was supposed to be. I had worshipped my father. I would never have turned my back on him, even when he said all of those horrible things about me becoming a writer. He took it all back when I sold my first book too. But Joseph shoots daggers at me, and this kid Montgomery treats me right.

  I started for the front desk. A tall man in a three-piece suit said, “How can I help you, Mr. Rosenkrantz?” Don’t you love that about hotels? They always make you feel important.

  “I need to send a telegram.”

  “All right.” He reached down and came up with a telegram form. “Do you need a pen?”

  I waved at him impatiently, and he handed one over. I wrote Auger’s name and address on the top, and then I wrote:

  IN CALVERT STOP NEED MONEY STOP PLEASE WIRE $200 OR WHATEVER YOU CAN TO SOMERSET HOTEL ROOM 514 STOP

  I paused for a moment, and then added:

  AM WRITING AGAIN STOP I THINK I’VE REALLY GOT SOMETHING STOP

  Then I crossed out that last line, reread the whole thing, and crossed out the line about writing too. I pushed it across the desk, and the deskman, who had been standing off to the side ignoring me in order to give me privacy, came alive and took the telegram and the pen.

  “Charge it to the room, sir?”

  I grinned. “Yes. Charge it to the room.” And then I thought, if Carlton’s paying for it all, I should really send one to Pearson too. Maybe the publishing house could spare a little petty cash. “Actually let me have another.” I wrote out the same message, handed them both over, and then headed straight for the bar. This was good news, and it deserved a celebration. I was still on the wagon, of course. This morning’s drink was for courage, and no one would begrudge me a drink to good fortune.

  4.

  But as I crossed the lobby, the anxiety began to creep back in. Pearson had told me never to cable him for money again. He said he didn’t think he’d publish me again even if I ever wrote anything. And Auger had always been nice to me, but he would only go so far. And Vee was out with another man, and Quinn just teased me with her will to get me in a tight spot, no doubt, and Joseph wouldn’t even look me in the eyes.

  I went into the bar, and Montgomery was sitting on a stool near the entrance with an untouched pint of beer in front of him. He was jiggling his foot on the lower rung of his barstool. Here was a young man who had read my books. I could still reach out and touch someone half my age, younger. There was that. Maybe everything was fine, and I was just worrying for nothing. I came up behind him, put my right hand on his back and leaned into the bar. It was the same bartender from this morning. I caught his eye, and he nodded and then brought over a Gin Rickey.

  “So, you’re a fan,” I said, taking a deep gulp from my drink.

  Montgomery shrugged sheepishly, but once he started talking, he was full of passion, like I had been once, when the writing was still fun. “I read Sweet as Summer when I was fourteen, my uncle who lives in West Virginia gave it to me, and when I finished it the first time, I just turned it over, and read it again.”

  “You like that one? It didn’t sell too well, but it got some good reviews.”

  “Yeah, I like it. But my favorite’s Only ’Til Seven, but everyone probably says that. I’ve read all of your books, most of them more than once.”

  He was starting to come on a little strong, and he ducked his head, realizing it, but I liked hearing it anyway, so I didn’t stop him. Before I knew it, I had finished my drink and the bartender was setting up another one. “So what was this...play you wrote? What’d you say it was called?”

  “Spook.”

  I raised my eyebrows and circled my hand to say, come on.

  “It’s just about a former slave who lives over on the west side, and there’s a ghost living in the house that is actually a white slave owner, and they talk about slavery, and freedom, and really everything. About being a man.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He looked down at his beer, which he still hadn’t touched. “It makes more sense when you see it.”

  I swallowed half of my drink, and patted him on the back again. “Drink up, drink up.” He picked up his glass and took a tentative sip. “So you work for the newspaper. I was never quite able to do that. I did some reporting for a small town paper for maybe it was a year, and that was enough for me.”

  “A man’s got to eat.”

  I nodded, and drank the rest of my Gin Rickey.

  “There’s no money in the theater unless you make it to New York, and even then...” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can make some real dough in the theater in New York. If you’re lucky. Or you know the right people.”

  I waved to the bartender. “I know the right people, I think, but I’m not lucky.” The bartender set down my third drink. There was a part of me that was saying I should take it slow, but there was another part of me that didn’t care. “You know, I wrote a play once.”

  “In Justice.”

  I frowned and nodded my head, impressed. “You are a fan. I didn’t think anyone read me anymore.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “Who?”

  He paused.

  I smiled and shook my head, and then threw an arm around his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. You read me.
You know In Justice.” It felt good to be taken seriously. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have somebody’s respect. It didn’t make it all better, but it sure helped a lot. Or maybe it was only the alcohol. In either case, I felt at ease. I raised my glass. “My wife probably doesn’t even know In Justice.”

  He looked into his drink again, remembered he was supposed to be drinking it, and picked it up in both hands like it were a mug of hot cocoa, and took a sip. He knew about my books, so of course he knew about Clotilde. Everybody knew about Clotilde. I wished I hadn’t brought her up.

  I kneaded his shoulder, and slapped his back. “But go on, tell me. You’re going to write another play.”

  That brought him back. “I’m working on something. It’s just an idea really.”

  “You knew about In Justice,” I said, shaking my head. “What do you think of that? Did you like it?”

  “Oh, sure. It was great to read.” He looked to see if he had insulted me. “I mean, I’ve never seen it done. I’ve only read it, but I’m sure it’s great on stage too, is what I mean.”

  “What’s the new play about?” The bartender set another drink next to the one I hadn’t even finished. I guess he’d decided I was a big spender. And why not? All thanks to Carlton. Or to Vee, my girl. I pointed at Montgomery and called to the bartender, “He’s on my tab too.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Rosenkrantz. I couldn’t...”

  “Of course you can. We’re celebrating. To my only fan.” I raised my drink, and he raised his. We tapped our glasses and both drank up.

  “Mr. Rosenkrantz, sir, could I maybe interview you?”

  “Maybe later, kid. Your editor wouldn’t want to run it anyway. Besides, I thought you said you were on the city desk.”

  He shrugged.

  “What’s this new play about?”

  He took another drink. Now he was loosening up. And it was about time, since I already felt as though I couldn’t stand. “It’s called The Furies, and it’s based on this story I did a little ways back, about a family out in the county, a mom and her three kids. Her husband, if he was her husband, had run off. Her little boy got hit by a tractor one day, crushed his leg, but when she went to the hospital they kept taking other people and so she went home, but the leg rotted and the kid died. So she went back to the hospital with her other two kids and she cut their throats one after the other right there in the emergency room, saying that it was no different than what they’d done to her little boy.”

  “That’s all true?”

  “All up to the killing her other kids. I embellished it a little. The one kid died though.”

  I shook my head. “Nah. No, you can’t kill two kids on stage like that. No one would come. No one would put it on. What if she’s about to kill them and the action stops and the Furies, the actual Furies from the myths came down, and...”

  He was leaning forward on his stool. “And what?”

  “I don’t know maybe they take her around and show her it’s wrong.”

  “Like A Christmas Carol?”

  “I don’t know. It’s your play. You write it. You don’t have to listen to advice from a washed-up old man like me.”

  “No, I like it. The Furies come down, they take her to—”

  “Isaac on the rock,” I said, and punctuated it with a drink. I was sweaty now, that uncomfortable hot feeling that makes you sick to your stomach.

  Montgomery was looking at me even more amazed than when he first found me. “You wouldn’t...I mean, you must only be in town...You wouldn’t want to write this play with me?”

  “No, son, no, you don’t want to do that.”

  He leaned forward. “I do.”

  I considered him. Having a young, hungry, energetic writer alongside of me might be just what I needed to get me going again. I wished I’d left the sentence about the writing on the telegrams after all, because I could see it might just work. It wouldn’t even take long, no more than a week in all likelihood. Hell, I must have written a dozen screenplays in less than a week.

  I slapped him on the back and pulled him close, my arm around his neck, stopping just short of tousling his hair—a man didn’t deserve that kind of disrespect no matter how young he was. I held onto him to prevent me from keeling over, and said, “Why don’t we give it a try? Who the hell knows, maybe we’ll get something. At least we’ll have a few laughs.”

  He went to his pocket and produced the reporter’s pad he had brought out before and a fountain pen, and he started to write. “So they go to Isaac on the rock.” He looked up. “Wait, how do the pagan Furies get to the Old Testament?”

  “Once the Furies come in, the audience is either with us or not, so what does it matter if we mix and match a little.”

  He could see I was right, so he nodded, and started writing, and I started talking and it just came out of me. I don’t know how, but on and on, the two of us throwing ideas back and forth, the bartender setting up drinks, and Montgomery was drinking right alongside me now. We were matching each other drink for drink—he’d switched to rum and Coke—and from what I could tell, he could hold his liquor. I reached that familiar plateau where my mind focused, and my body let go, and some of my best work was in that state. No, all of my best work was in that state. Inebriation. What a wonderful word.

  And it wasn’t just me. Montgomery also. He really had an ear for dialogue. I’d just need to suggest a scene, and in no time, he had it all marked out, and the characters sounded just as natural as we were talking. Every now and then I thought, I should stop drinking. I needed to go to bed. I needed to find some way to get out of here tomorrow. But the idea of the empty hotel room, of what Vee was up to, was too much, and I knew I shouldn’t be alone. This thing with Joseph would start to eat me up if I went upstairs alone. So we kept talking, fleshing it out. And who could blame me if I kept tossing down the drinks. I was in a bar after all. What did anyone expect?

  After a while, I started to notice that Montgomery was slowing down, and was a little green in the gills, hanging over the bar like all he could think about was keeping his head up. And his eyes kept darting to the clock behind the bar. Of course it was ten minutes fast, but that didn’t change that it was almost eight o’clock and we’d been there nearly six hours.

  “Son,” I said, patting him on the back. “It’s time for us to recess. We can resume our composition tomorrow.”

  He tried to shake his head, but it hurt him to do it. “No.”

  “Don’t you have work in the morning?”

  “Work in the morning?” he said as though it were a new concept. As if he had never thought about what it meant to work in the morning. As if he didn’t remember that there was anything outside of that bar.

  “Come on, up.” I pulled him to his feet by the arm. I was steady on my own feet, because like I said, I was in that magic alcoholic plateau where I could function normally, but clean, without the anxiety, without the bothersome thoughts that never seemed to go away, that never let me do any little piece of work or pull myself together, get a job of my own, even if it was washing dishes. It would be a comedown, but I was still a man, after all. Who was that doctor to tell me if I drank much more it would kill me? I knew what would and wouldn’t kill me.

  Well, I had him to his feet, like I said, and I brought him out to the curb, and he was hanging off of me completely now, and maybe I felt a little guilty, but only a little. We’d had a good time.

  The bellman called a cab, and got the back door open for us. I poured Montgomery into the black plastic seat. “Where do you live?” I said.

  “My notebook.”

  “I put it in your pocket. Tell the driver where you live.” I called to the bellman, “Is there a way to put the cab on my room?”

  “Certainly, sir, I’ll work it out.” He went around to the driver’s side, and the driver rolled down his window.

  Montgomery said something about Tudor Street and I felt fairly certain that he would get home all right. I said to th
e driver, “If you can’t get him to tell you where he lives, bring him back here.” He nodded, and turned back to the bellman. I closed the back door, and went back inside.

  But then that empty hotel room began to loom up again. And there was a twinge, and only a twinge thanks to the alcohol, of the panic about the telegrams and Vee leaving me here. But that was silly, I told myself. Someone had recognized me, and worshipped me. If this kid reporter could, then why couldn’t Joseph? But the answer was easy. He could. He just needed a chance to calm down. That was all. And he’d had a chance. All those hours, all afternoon. And it wasn’t too late. Eight o’clock was early for a kid his age. That was just the start of the evening.

  I turned around and went back out the revolving door. “Cab,” I said, and the doorman whistled. He opened the door for me like he’d done before, and closed it when he saw I was settled. The driver had his head cocked, waiting for directions. I gave him Quinn’s address—Joseph’s address—and we pulled out of the circular drive onto Chase Street.

  5.

  The old Hadley mansion was in the neighborhood of Underwood, in the northern part of the city, just above the university. The whole area had been owned by one family up until about sixty or seventy years ago, and when they started to parcel it off and open it to development, the Hadleys took their umbrella fortune and built a four-story brick edifice into the side of a slight hill. There were pitched awnings over all the windows that made the place look like a hotel. A steep multi-tiered set of stairs rose from the street to the main entrance, while the garage and the servants’ entrance was at street level in the back.

  Half the lights in the house were on when the cab pulled up front. I got out and paused for a moment with the cab door still open. I turned to ask the driver to wait, but in the end I closed the door and the cabbie pulled off before I had stepped away from the curb. I started up the steep stairs, which proved to be more difficult than I expected. I mean I had had a few drinks, but it had been over a lot of hours, so there was no reason for it but I leaned a lot of my weight on the iron pipe of a railing.