A Window Across the River

by Brian Morton

  The hostess led the man to a table and a waiter immediately brought him a pot of tea. Evidently he was a regular.

  Nora, watching him thank the waiter and pour himself a cup of tea, his movements elegant and precise, felt as if she could learn more of value from him than from any of the people at her table. Maybe he could even fix my arm, she thought.

  She didn’t want to be reductive; she didn’t want to exalt the life of the body over the life of the mind. She didn’t want to engage in some implicitly racist assumption that as a representative of the Ancient East, he was in tune with the unchanging verities. But he did have a quiet grace—in the calm simplicity of his gestures, in the way he’d thanked the waiter who’d brought him his tea. He had the air of someone who had tended his life wisely.

  But of course the people at her table, heaving their abstractions around, had tended their lives as well. Some of them were ardent readers; some of them were gifted and careful writers; almost all of them, she was sure, genuinely cared about the ideas they were discussing. Even if their interest in these ideas was tied up with their own ego-strivings, their obsessive concern for their careers, they were serious people.

  And even if they were to some extent full of shit, who wasn’t? What about the judo guy? Maybe if she knew him she’d discover that he was full of shit himself. She might find out that he spent all his waking hours boiling with envy of some other judo guy who was more famous than he was.

  And what about me? Nora thought. Maybe the biggest fool at this table is the person who sees the foolishness in everyone else, the small hypocrisies, when the significant thing about them is that they’re trying, through their writing, to keep some sort of intelligent cultural conversation alive. Why was the transformation of Peter Anderson, the foot fetishist turned prophet, any less admirable than the transformation that Nora was trying to bring about in her own life? If there’s a joke here, it’s probably on me.

  The discussion broke up; people were standing. Benjamin fell into conversation with a woman Nora had never met. She was almost as small as Nora, and she wasn’t much younger, but Nora felt as if they could have been from different planets. This little thing, you could somehow tell from the quickest glance, had a motor of ambition inside her that never stopped working. Even as she spoke to Benjamin she was scanning the room, making sure she could get rid of him before any of the heavy hitters left.

  She was wearing a tight dress, short and sleeveless, so you could admire her arms and legs, which were, indeed, admirable: you could tell she worked out.

  I should start working out too, Nora thought. That girl over there will never get pump head.

  Nora talked for a minute with one of the few people she felt comfortable with there: Ilya Kaplan, a stooped, gentle guy who worked for an arts foundation.

  “Are you still writing?” he said.

  “Always.”

  “Fiction, I mean. You tend to go back and forth, right?”

  She thought of the thing she’d written that morning: her two or three pages about Gabriel.

  “Right now I’m somewhere in the middle.”

  “Well, I hope you get back to writing fiction soon. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ve always loved your stuff—I guess I’ve only read two or three of your stories, but I loved them.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be telling me that? Everybody should be telling me that.”

  “What I shouldn’t be telling you is that I’m going to be judging a short-story competition this year for the Atlantic. It’s limited to writers who’ve published, I think, at least two stories, but who haven’t put out a book yet. So you’d qualify. The winner gets five thousand dollars, and the story runs in the Atlantic, of course. So if you have anything you haven’t published yet that you feel good about, think about it. The deadline’s pretty far off, so you have some time.”

  “Wow. Thank you.” She’d never published in a magazine with a circulation approaching that of the Atlantic.

  “I can’t guarantee anything, obviously. They’ll probably get about a million submissions, and they only send the thirty finalists on to me. And even if you are one of the finalists, I might end up liking somebody else’s story better. But I’ve loved everything I’ve read of yours, so . . . give it a shot.”

  Nora kept thanking him until he asked her to stop. It would have been a very happy moment, except that she was still suffering in her arm.

  “You’re funny,” he said. “You seem like such a sweetheart—you are such a sweetheart. I’ll never forget the way you were with my daughter when she got that bee sting.” Something that happened at a barbecue a year ago—Nora barely remembered it. “But in your stories, you’re like some—I don’t know what you’re like. But you’re no sweetheart.”

  “I know. When I pick up my pen I become a monster. I don’t really write with a pen. But.”

  “Not a monster. I wouldn’t say a monster.” He was thinking about this seriously. “That story of yours that was in Boulevard a couple of years ago—that had a touch of Adam Halliday in it, didn’t it?”

  “I can’t believe you saw that.”

  “Was it Adam?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t, it was an interesting coincidence. How well do you know him?”

  “I only really met him once or twice.”

  “That’s what I thought. He’s a good friend of mine, and I was amazed at how much of him you got right.”

  “Lucky guess,” Nora said. “Not that I’m admitting it was about him.” Adam was an English writer who’d come to New York to become the fiction editor of the Atlantic—promising to turn the staid old magazine around, to make it brilliant and edgy and snarky and all that—and had slunk back to London in obscure circumstances six months later. Nora had met him a couple of times—he’d rejected two of her stories, but kindly, and they’d met for coffee—and something about him had intrigued her.

  “What did he think of the story?” she said.

  “I don’t think he saw it. I never told him about it. I didn’t think he’d be too pleased.”

  “That’s what I mean. Everything I write turns into a poison-pen letter.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You had some pretty harsh things in that story . . . but you took him seriously. I thought about that story for a long time. You were pitiless, but you didn’t make him a joke—and after he went back to England, everybody was taking him as a joke. I remember thinking that you gave his life the dignity of the tragic.” He smiled what seemed to be a self-deprecating smile, as if he was apologizing for the fancy phrase.

  “I’m glad you think so,” Nora said.

  “On the other hand,” he said, putting on his coat, “I would never, ever, ever want you to write about me.”

  Benjamin was eager to move on to the next event. Nora said good-bye to Ilya Kaplan, and then she said good-bye to the judo guy, though only in her mind, and she and Benjamin left the restaurant.

  The tips of his ears were red; he’d perhaps had too much to drink.

  “Did you have a good time?” Nora said.

  “Fantastic. Did you see that woman I was talking to?”

  “I noticed her.”

  “That was Heather Wolfe. She used to work for Tina Brown at Talk magazine. I asked her what she’s up to now, and she said she’s helping launch a new magazine. But she was very mysterious about it. She told me to send her some clips. Maybe Tina’s starting something new. Wouldn’t that be amazing—to be writing for Tina?”

  He’d never met Tina Brown, but like everyone else in the publishing world, he referred to her by her first name. She was like Madonna for intellectuals.

  Benjamin had his hand on Nora’s elbow—he was half dragging her down the block. It was her left arm, the damaged one, but the pressure was a welcome distraction.

  “That would be great,” she said. “Did you set the VCR, by the way?”

  “What?”

  “The VCR. For my aunt’s
TV show.”

  “No. Sorry. I forgot.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I wish I were. I’m not.”

  She stopped walking. “But you said you would.”

  He raised his eyebrows, a sort of eyebrow-shrug. “Sorry. I was about to. But then I got a call from Marty telling me that Heather was going to be there, and I got so excited I forgot all about it.”

  She should have figured out how to do it herself.

  You can never rely on anybody else. Never.

  It was almost ten. The show had started at nine; it was supposed to end at 11:30.

  “I’m sorry—really,” he said. “But Christ—the Daytime Emmys?”

  “She wanted to watch the Daytime Emmys. She asked me to tape the Daytime Emmys. You mean you would have remembered if she’d wanted us to tape a special about Fritz Lang?”

  Benjamin was an enthusiast of pre-war German cinema. She tried to get in a good sneer as she pronounced the name.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s too late now. We’ll make it up to her. We’ll go to the video store tomorrow and buy her a classic tearjerker. You can pick it out.”

  Benjamin raised his hand for a cab and in a moment they were traveling farther downtown.

  “Shoot,” Nora said.

  The party was being held for a woman Benjamin knew slightly, who’d written a book about her experiences traveling around the world alone in a boat. She was a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, and Benjamin thought he could make some useful contacts at the party.

  The party was being held on a yacht off Battery Park. It had started at eight; at ten, the yacht was going to circle Manhattan.

  Benjamin was probably right: they could make it up to Billie easily. They could get her something that she’d appreciate even more than a tape of the show. Nevertheless, she was counting on having the Daytime Emmys to watch when she got home, and Nora hated the thought of letting her down.

  Nora was heading off to a party that she didn’t even want to go to, when she had a clear responsibility to go home and figure out how to tape the rest of the show.

  Go with the one who needs you.

  They were streaking through the streets in the wrong direction. They arrived at Battery Park City and made their way to the dock. The yacht was easy to find: it was all lit up. You could hear music and laughter and voices in the cool spring night.

  Battery Park City without the World Trade towers. She couldn’t get used to it. She’d never liked those buildings—they’d always reminded her of supermodels, awesome in their way, but blank—but without their vapid glamour it was impossible to be in the area without the feeling that something was happening to your heart.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  There was a clutch of people just behind them, heading for the yacht; an equal number of people, not wanting to be part of the midnight cruise, were streaming off.

  She and Benjamin walked onto the yacht. Everybody there was about three yards taller than Nora. Normally she didn’t mind being small; she thought she owed some of whatever strength of character she had to the fact that she needed to battle for things that other people took for granted. But it could be frustrating in crowds. Benjamin spotted someone he knew, an enormous young man in a black suit and a black T-shirt. Benjamin hurried over to talk to him, and Nora was alone.

  I could just leave, she thought. I don’t even have to say good-bye to Benjamin. He won’t even notice—he’s already networking away!

  But she couldn’t do it.

  It was ten o’clock, and one of the tuxedoed young men who was working at the party—obviously an aspiring actor, so handsome he was like a hologram—was moving toward the gate, about to close it so the yacht could start off on its cutesy cruise.

  Last chance to leave. Benjamin was back at her side. As though he knew what she was thinking, though of course he didn’t, he took her by the hand.

  “I want you to meet Tom,” he said, introducing her to the huge guy.

  “Are you a literary giant?” Nora said, stupid joke, as somewhere inside her a miniature Nora, a Nora homunculus, was stamping its feet in frustration and self-hatred, for not having the guts to get off the yacht and get home and figure out her VCR.

  The only way for her to escape at this point would be to make a scene—break free of Benjamin and make a run for it—and she was too old for that, too old too old too old.

  Someone tossed a bunch of red roses on the water, in the light of the dock you could see them clearly, it was beautiful to see them scattered on the black, but Billie was in the hospital, and she was expecting that when she got home the next day there would be comfort there, comfort and familiarity, in the form of a video, and Nora was trying not to see Benjamin as a villain, it wasn’t that he’d lied, he’d just been too excited to keep his word.

  This is your last chance, she thought. This is your last chance to do what you need to do.

  And it seemed to her that at every moment of your life you know what you need to do; you know, in your deepest heart, what you should choose.

  Go with the one who needs you.

  But that was ridiculous! If you were guided by that idea, you were just making yourself a hostage to other people’s weaknesses.

  “This is great,” Benjamin said, referring to she-didn’t-know-what.

  What to do? Her arm was hurting so much that it was hard to think.

  If only something would happen to stop the boat. If only—

  The day before, at Isaac’s, she’d been wishing for an earthquake.

  You can’t go through life hoping for earthquakes, she thought. You have to be your own earthquake.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Benjamin.

  She walked toward the back end, toward the stern, whatever it was called. Young Mr. Handsome was latching the gate.

  “Excuse me,” Nora said.

  She put her leg over the gate.

  “No, no, no,” the man said. “You can’t leave now. Not on my watch, Ma’am.”

  I’m a Ma’am, am I? Fuck you, she thought. But the boat was moving. There was a yard-long gap between the boat and the dock. Well, here goes. She felt like a detective on TV. Spenser: For Hire, she thought.

  The ledge she was standing on was too narrow for her to make a running start, so she just crouched, readying herself to make a standing broad jump, the way her fourth-grade gym teacher, Mrs. Applebaum, had taught her.

  She landed clean and true, and she thought Things work out in life after all, and she was balanced perfectly on the edge of the dock—She nailed it! Nadia Comaneci!—and then the sky was in front of her, and she was slamming backwards into the water, shit!, she was actually in the Hudson River, the Hudson River was over her head, she gulped a mouthful of the Hudson River, this is how she died. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! I’m dying!

  Everything was dark, and she had taken the river into her mouth, and she was clawing at the water, not knowing whether she was going up or down, and her head was out of the water but it was horrible there too, the air was water too, murky and wet, and this is how you die, when you drink too much air and it explodes you, and there was a railing or something, some thing hard, and she was clutching it more tightly than she’d ever clutched a lover, she loved this railing more than she’d ever known she could love, and her eyes were clear of the river, her eyes were clear of the murk, she was going to live.

  She was able to pull herself back up to the dock, and she lay there, sprawled out, spent. She felt no need to rise. Just lying on the dock was the most beautiful thing she had ever done—the most intelligent, witty, graceful, generous thing she’d ever done.

  But she was happy only for a moment. She’d swallowed the river, all five hundred miles of it. She’d taken the river in her mouth. She’d given the horrible river a blow job. Now she was on her knees, sopping wet and shivering and spitting, spitting convulsively, because who knew what she’d ingested in that horrible moment. PCBs, fecal matter, detergent, toe
snot, snot snot, human corpse jelly, parasites, worms, evil worms from unsanitary countries, rat hairs, rat vomit, pus, pus pudding, penis juice, scabs scrubbed off the scrota of syphilitic Slavic seamen: yes, you will die now; your time is up. She’d gulped up mouthfuls of death from the river. Death was in her belly now, strutting off into her bloodstream, smug about having conquered her so soon. She had given death a gift. Death was in ecstasy.

  The yacht was fifty feet away. It sat unmoving in the water. All because of me.

  Everyone, it seemed, had gathered against the railing to look at her. She could see Benjamin in the crowd, but he was too far away for her to make out his expression. She was shivering, sopping, stringy-haired, humiliated, in the cool and clear spring night.

  15

  SHE WENT HOME ON THE SUBWAY. The train was crowded. A girl-mob of Barnard students was making a lot of noise—they were standing in a circle, singing “Like a Virgin”—so nobody looked twice at Nora. She was just another New York City madwoman making her way uptown.

  When she reached her building, Arthur, the doorman, nodded, taking her in. He had a perpetual air of having seen it all before. You would have thought that Nora was the third stinking and dripping person he’d seen that night.

  “There’s probably a pretty interesting story here,” he said, “but I’m not going to ask what it is.”

  Back in her apartment, she took a quick shower, and then she tried to figure out her VCR. She couldn’t do it, and soon it was too late: the Daytime Emmys were over. She took another shower, much longer, and she was strapping her Polar Pack on her arm when the intercom sounded. Arthur told her that Benjamin was in the lobby. Nora asked Arthur to send him up.

  She hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d follow her home. It didn’t fit the script. The way the script went, in her mind, was that after the heroine makes the big leap from the yacht, she never sees the man again. He goes back to his mother, in Albany.