“And if I told you I thought you were well on your way to getting pretty much precisely what you described?”
“I’d say it’s tough be certain of anything, because life is what happens when we’re making other plans, and besides that, you’ve never read any of my stories.”
“Poor Mister Lennon. Still a young man, too.”
“Tragic,” I agreed.
“As you said, that’s the best kind of story there is.”
“That wasn’t a story. That was a life. Cut tragically short, considering what he left behind.”
“Yes, his poor wife and their children.”
His response made me hesitate, because: “I hate to say I was thinking of his songs.”
“You shouldn’t hate to say anything, because of course you did. I note you quite conspicuously left out any mention of legacy when you described what you wanted.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s something one should really want, or can. What am I supposed to say, that I want my work to go down in history as great? That I want my stories to be held in the same esteem as Shakespeare’s plays?”
“You don’t?”
He had me there. Hell, if I’ve been telling you that the whole point of recording this story is honesty, it’s time to go full-on: “Higher.”
Angus laughed. “You know you can have that.”
“That’s why I keep writing.”
He nodded. “But my question is whether that’s really all you want.”
“Everything we just mentioned? If it’s not a completely comprehensive list, I think it’s a reasonably fair start to one.”
“But it’s all stories this and reading that and writing down the other. Not to put too fine a point on it, but don’t you fear all work and no play might make you rather dull?”
I thought back to all those Foolish evenings, dancing with Veronica, and to the myriad evenings I’d spent there in that grand City, with my friends, carousing and generally upholding the reputation many before me had so righteously earned. I laughed. “I know how to have a good time.”
“I wasn’t implying you did not. I was merely wondering if such pleasure had any bearing on what you wanted. Because all you mentioned related to your writing.”
“That’s all we were talking about.”
“That’s not all I was talking about. I asked if something was what you wanted, and you responded by enumerating several other desires, none of which were anything not related to your writing and your work.”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything else.”
“You should.”
“What do you want me to say? Maybe I stuck to writing because besides that, I haven’t got the first clue. Long-term? I mean, if I say I just want a good life, what would that even mean? Victorian house with a white picket fence and two and a half kids?”
“I’d presume you’d share those things with a wife.”
“I’m not even dating anyone.”
“But you’d like to be, wouldn’t you? Say, for example, that beautiful young girl to whom you were speaking on the night we met?”
“Veronica? I don’t think—does that—look, not to be rude, but I was under the impression this was about business. And work. Which might be why I focused so much on writing and my books when I answered. So if you don’t mind, can we concentrate on that instead of my personal life? I don’t even know what your business is yet.”
“Of course you do. I’m in futures. I trade them.”
“So, like the stock market?”
“Of course not. I mean futures, my boy. Not random slips of paper, nor shares in companies that may or may not fail depending on the vagaries of supply and demand. Nor gold nor oil nor anything of the sort. If I tell you that the future is my business, I mean the future. Tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow, at that. You’d be amazed what you can accomplish with the right guy in your corner, and I’m the right guy. You’re not here to invest in the stock market, my boy. The only future you’re here to discuss is yours.”
“My own?” I said. I’d say I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice, but it wasn’t as though I tried very hard. Because, honestly, what do you say to something like that? Even if I took him seriously, where would that get me? In the course of ultimately finding Force One, I’d been on more job interviews than I could count, because they all eventually blur together. Someone in a suit, behind a desk, reading over a single sheet of paper that’s supposed to summarize your best attributes as a worker, nevermind that the best measure of any worker, the only measure, in fact, that counts, is the work itself.
“You’re skeptical,” Angus said, but, then, it wasn’t as though I’d tried to hide it.
“Can you blame me? I’m not even sure what you’re talking about yet,” I told him, thinking of a few of those other interviews I’d been to: the debt consolidation firm where some guy whose position and function were never clear spoke like a working-class Hitler-by-way-of-Anthony Robbins about how he had been sick and tired of being sick and tired. The younger-than-me CEO who had asked me, after I’d given him several professional articles, if I had any “relevant” writing samples, and who was proud his company had created a Facebook application to pass a virtual beer to your friends.
“Of course not,” he rose and went to the bookcase to my right. “Truth be told, I’m happier showing you. I’ve always gotten spectacular results, and it’s just going to make my offer to you that much more intriguing.”
“I still don’t know—.”
“Patience, my boy, patience,” he said, as his fingers danced over bookspines. He chose two, one a small pamphlet and one a sort of journal, before he returned to his desk, where he sat, then passed the one that looked like a journal across to me.
It looked like an old newspaper. It might have been an old newspaper, in fact. At the top—
New York Mirror—
with a subtitle
(A Journal of Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts)
I liked if only for its order of priorities.
It was dated January 29, 1845.
I looked at Angus. “It’s old.”
“More than a hundred and fifty years.”
“And you just keep it in your bookcase?”
“Best place for books. Have a glance through it.”
I shrugged as I started to leaf through it. It was slim, so there wasn’t much leafing to be done, but I stopped even before I had seen the whole thing, because I noticed text blocked out in rhythmic lines, the first of which caught my eye—
Once upon a midnight dreary—
I didn’t mean to whisper, “While I pondered, weak and weary,” though the quaint and curious volume of lore I held was quite the opposite of forgotten.
I considered the cover again. “Are you—Seriously? This has to be the earliest publication I’ve ever seen.”
“It was the first.”
I looked up at him. “Are you kidding me? It must have cost a small fortune.”
“What’s it say? Three dollars a year?”
“Surely you paid more than that.”
“I paid nothing for it. It was a gift from one of my clients,” he told me. “As was this.”
With that, he passed across the other book he had chosen, which was, again, more a pamphlet, really: half-folded sheets of paper only barely bound by small pieces of string punched through the fold. The first page was blank, while the second read: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by Wilm Shekspere. The third was a list of dramatis personae, and then the fourth—
Bernardo: Who’s there?
Francisco: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.—
all on pages the ecru of country eggs on a summer morning, and all written in a spidery scrawl clearly written by hand and almost certainly penned using a quill.
“What—what is this?”
“One of the finest plays in the history of literature.”
“I’ve never seen a copy like this.”
“Few have.
Do you let people see your rough drafts?”
“Well, no, but I—wait. Are you—a rough draft? Of Hamlet?”
“In so far as young Will ever wrote rough drafts, of course. Considering the schedule he so often worked under, rough drafts were rare. As you noted, he composed mainly on the fly—.”
“Because he and his actors only had a few weeks to rehearse.”
“Precisely.”
“So this is—what, exactly? It looks hand written.”
“By the bard himself.”
I nearly fucking dropped it. “Excuse me?”
“Shakespeare. Will. The bard of Stratford-on-Avon. He wrote that himself. That’s the copy the actors used to copy their lines from.”
I set it on the desk. Carefully, even though I wasn’t entirely certain I believed him. “Another gift from a client, I take it. You must have rich clients.”
“Not when I start working with them, usually.”
“So, what, you make people rich, and they buy you expensive books bec—?”
“Buy me? Of course not. Neither of those books was bought for me.”
“But you just said—.”
“I said they were gifts. Which they were. One from a young poet in Philadelphia, the other from a young playwright in England.”
“You said they were clients.”
Angus said nothing, just held my eyes, and nodded his head once.
I stared at the books on the desk. I thought I understood pretty clearly what he was telling me, and I was only starting to get around to whether I believed it.
“Your clients,” I said. I didn’t realize how soft my voice would be, nor that there might be awe in it, until I heard it. I set my beer down.
Angus smiled but again said nothing.
And yes, there was a side of me that considered simply getting up and walking away without another word spoken, but the moment I acknowledged that part of me, I also acknowledged it as a rather unexciting part of me. Maybe it’s silly or idealistic, but a bigger part of me had grown up reading stories of boy wizards and tales of high intrigue, then had graduated on to reading about American gods and Anansi’s boys. That bigger part might have been the same part of Jack that had traded the cow for those beans, the same part of Alice that had taken off after the White Rabbit.
I had long ago given up on flying, but that part of me that would have traded his cow for beans or followed after Alice and her rabbit wondered if the simple act of belief was even more powerful a magic than flight. I wasn’t sure, but finding out . . . I didn’t necessarily have to believe him to just sit there and listen a while longer, and why not?
Besides, I hadn’t yet finished my beer.
Angus smiled when I picked it up. “I realize it will be difficult at first to believe, but really it is no different from the idea of Gods and gardens and men walking up mountains to return with constitutions. What I’m telling you, in fact, is a lot less myth and a lot more truth.”
His words reminded of Pilate confronting Jesus behind the closed doors of the Roman consulate, the voice of the crowd so loud it surpassed the stones: “What is truth?”
Angus laughed. “The truth is simple. The truth is that I helped each of those men get what they wanted, and that I can do the same for you. The truth is that Shakespeare wanted his plays about love and madness and death to transcend time and age, and he gave up a happy marriage to his dear Anne to have it. The truth is that Poe wanted to write poetry to shed further light upon the darkest of truths, and so he gave up his own mental health and the health of his beloved Virginia to do so,” Angus told me.
Me? I sipped my beer as he spoke, and it gave me a warm feeling to counteract one of darkness and of depth: the feeling that comes when deciding whether to trust the moment. You know the one I mean—that sense that just deciding to be open to possibility could change your entire life. That was what I felt right then.
Angus snapped his fingers, and suddenly: what starts the fourth movement, the famous Ode to Joy, of Beethoven’s final symphony? I’m reasonably sure it’s the strings section, but those opening notes seem too deep and full to come from violin; I’m thinking a cello, something big and proud enough you have to spread your legs to play it, and my God can those notes catch you there, in the groin, less in lust than in purely physical love. I mean, if falling in love at first sight came with a soundtrack, it would have to be that, wouldn’t it, with that great highness like euphoria, the strings trilling and wriggling up and down scales like water over rocks?
I don’t know what Angus did for those acoustics, but it sounded like I was sitting beside the cellist. I could hear each individual string.
Is there anything in the world like Beethoven to open you? I mentioned that feeling of possibility, of decision, but Jesus, the Ninth Symphony is like a key to what makes us human, not just unlocking those parts of us we have secreted away but convincing us to open ourselves to the possibility of life. It’s like you listen and you feel like someone else gets it, all the pain and all the joy, all the sorrow and all the kindness, all the sadness and all the happiness inherent in every moment you’ve ever been alive. Listening to it is as much like falling in love with music as it is like trusting the world, because for those fifteen or twenty minutes of that final movement, what possible harm could befall you?
Angus made as if to speak, but I stopped him. Maybe it was the buzz I had going from the beer. Or maybe just those fantastic acoustics. Whatever it was, the moment I heard those opening notes I wanted to listen to the rest of them. I knew my eyes might film with tears as the music played, but I discovered I couldn’t care. And so he sat back, and for the next ten or so minutes, we listened to Beethoven’s final symphony and greatest masterpiece.
Silence for a moment when it had finished. When Angus spoke, his voice was quiet in reverence. “He came to me when they still called him Luigi. He wanted to write songs that would touch the heart of anyone who heard them. I asked if he’d mind never hearing them himself.”
I swallowed but didn’t say anything. I don’t think I trusted myself to.
“Without me, Shakespeare would have had a happy marriage and we’d never know what people dream on a midsummer’s night. Without me, Poe would have been healthy until the end, but he never would have hallucinated the raven that would become the subject of the world’s most famous poem. Without me, Beethoven would have passed away listening to his daughter play the piano, and we would never have learned what a sonata full of moonlight sounds like.”
“So, what, without you, I’m going to pass away into obscurity? No one will ever read my books, or at least not on the scale I hope for?” I asked, and even as I did so, I felt the defiance rise in my gut. I know it’s how I am: if Angus wanted to tell me I wouldn’t be able to do it without him, I was going to turn my hat backwards and sit my ass down and try anyway. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe as you will, but you mark my words, my talented young friend, you have it in you to be great.”
“So then I don’t see what I’m doing here. Not that I didn’t enjoy the beer and the Beethoven.”
“Ah, but as we have established, what you want has only partly to do with writing and your work, does it not?”
Maybe I didn’t want to believe I knew what he was saying, or that he was saying it, but I found I suddenly couldn’t pretend. I felt it, dense in the pit of my stomach, as sudden knowledge that something is about to go wrong. Part fear, part denial, part something else entirely and entirely unidentifiable, that same terrible feeling you get when you witness tragedy like you never imagined occur.
Even just the thought hurt, but I gave it voice: “Veronica.”
Angus smiled, but he did me the mercy of allowing some sadness into it. “Precisely her. Because the reason I talked to you, the reason I gave you my card, is not just that it’s plainly and obviously clear how very much in love with her you truly are but also that you will never know her love in return.”
There was only a
sipful of beer left in my glass, and I swallowed it gratefully, mouth gone dry. “Without you,” I said, placing the glass on the desk between us.
Angus said nothing, just a small gesture that somehow managed to include his entire body for participation: yes.
It felt like getting punched in the stomach. It felt like one of those vertigo-inducing shots for which Martin Scorsese is so well known: as if I had to zoom in and hold close to a world from which I had suddenly discovered myself totally detached. When I asked, “Are you—are you the devil?” my voice sounded a long way off.
Angus laughed, perhaps with a bit too much glee. “My boy, I cannot tell you the last time I was mistaken for Old Scratch. But alas, I’m just an old man who knows a thing or two about futures and chance, and who has in his time discovered a way to help certain talented individuals choose what they want in life when they otherwise might not receive such an opportunity. Surely there can be no harm in that.”
“So what happens now?”
“Oh, but I can’t tell you that, my boy. Now you must make a choice. Decide between one or the other.”
“But is it—can I be blind instead, or—,” but I stopped, because Angus was already shaking his head. I breathed out, and my voice, when it came again, was more reedy and panicked than I liked. “I can’t have both.”
“You ever hear that old expression about having your cake and eating it too?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry to say it’s true.”
“But what if—?”
“You stopped dealing in ‘what if’s the moment you walked through my door, my boy. We’re dealing with the future here, and now you must choose your own. Would you write and have your words received as you’ve always wanted? Or would you have the love of a certain young lady with whom you’ve been in love very nearly all your life, and certainly as far back as matters? Do you want your books translated into more languages than you could ever learn? Or do you want to be with Veronica, and know her love?”
“And that’s it?”
“Does anything else matter? It’s simple really,” Angus told me, glancing, as he did so, at his watch. “Now, mind you, I don’t expect you to decide here and now and upon the spot in which you currently sit, but I must note that I am a busy man; there are many people with futures—and even more without them—and I’m the man they talk to. So the deal is simple: all you have to decide is whether Veronica’s love means more to you than telling stories, and you must do so within the next forty-eight hours. After that, this offer expires, and neither of us will be any good to the other.”
Meets Girl: A Novel Page 12
