The Silver Age

by Nicholson Gunn

  “I got out?” Stephan asked.

  Nathan shrugged again. “Didn’t you?”

  “And Jenny Wynne? Remember her?”

  “Of course,” Nathan said, shrugged. “She was part of that little scene for a while.”

  “I heard she tied the knot.” That was about all Stephan had heard, more or less deliberately. He could have Googled her, of course, inspected her party photos on any number of social media sites, but he’d wanted a clean break.

  “Yes she did, to Jonny West, the former guitarist from Pooch Troop. Not the brightest move, I’m afraid.”

  Stephan narrowed his eyes. Something about Nathan’s tone had put him on alert. “Why not?”

  “Well, from what I’ve heard, Jonny kind of lost it after the band went out of fashion. He still tours as a solo artist – dive bars in the US, mostly, I’m told. I hear he drinks, sleeps around. He likes to party with the young females.”

  “And Jenny?”

  Nathan stifled a yawn. “She’d rather stay home with the kids, I suppose.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Well, she tweets about it pretty ardently. After she was laid off by the Telegraph, I guess she needed an outlet for her, ah, prose. I may have even dipped into her musings myself, once or twice, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else – she calls it the Poopy Diaries or some such.” He shook his head, a pained expression on his face, as if someone had just placed a soiled diaper in front of him on a bone-China serving plate.

  “Why doesn’t she just divorce him if he’s such an ass?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it could still happen, Steph, or just as likely he’ll divorce her and run off with some 22-year-old tartlet. But for now when he goes on one of his binges she lets it slide, I’m told. Maybe it’s out of love for the twins? Gorgeous little princesses, I hear, perfectly identical – platinum blondes, it goes without saying. They’ve all moved out to the suburbs, to get the backyard swimming pool and the full ensuite. Quite funny. She was such an urbanista, as we used to say. Do you remember that photo Helmut Stumpfl did of her as Becky Sharp?”

  Stephan’s face flushed. “I thought older women were all the rage now... milfs and cougars and... yummy mommies.”

  “Well, sure. All I’m saying is that I ran into her a couple of years ago at a party, and I remember thinking at the time she resembled a sort of… human trout.” Nathan sucked in his cheeks and made a fish face, puckering his lips obscenely.

  “Nathan! Jesus Christ!” Stephan cried, a bark of horrified laughter welling up from his guts.

  Nathan shrugged, sipped his tea. “I’m a homo, remember? I’m allowed to say such things – I’ve a free pass on the political incorrectness front. It’s a fringe benefit.” He sighed. “One of the few.”

  Stephan eyed him. It seemed possible that all of this was payback for some ancient dig that Stephan had once aimed at Nathan and long-since forgotten. Or not. There was an ease to his old colleague’s manner that made him think Nathan had simply forgotten that Stephan’s thing with her had been so serious, back in the day. What did he care, after all?

  “Thy plaintive anthem fades / Past the near meadows, over the still stream,” Nathan recited, shrugged. “You’re an artist, Stephan, if I may put it bluntly – you know this to be true. But don’t mind me. I’m always fluffing things up for effect. Another nasty habit that seems to be getting worse as I age.”

  A few minutes later they were saying their goodbyes. Nathan promised to look Stephan up the next time he was in New York, and Stephan would do the same if he found himself back up north. Stephan doubted they’d be seeing each other anytime soon, but you never knew. Life played such tricks sometimes, darting off on a fresh course like a sparrow in a headwind. He hoped they did keep in touch; sure, they hardly knew each other, but Nathan was family nevertheless. They shook hands, wished each other good luck, and then Stephan was alone again amid the bustle and solitude of Manhattan.

  He set out walking, thinking to make it much of the way back to his apartment on foot, but the cold soon numbed his cheeks, and so he retreated underground and took the subway out to Carroll Gardens.

  His apartment was on the sixth floor of a post-war building in a better-than-fair part of the neighborhood, even if the front door shrieked on its hinges and the elevator was a rattling coffin. When he unlocked the deadbolt and stepped into his own space, Gamblor 2.0 was standing just inside the door to greet him. She slid her soft body up against his calf, then padded off towards the bedroom.

  Gamblor 2.0 was identical to the original Gamblor in most physical respects, but her eyes were yellow instead of green. The original Gamblor, whom he retroactively thought of as Gamblor 1.0, had died of natural causes three years before. Stephan had felt sadness at his old companion’s passing, but it was strange with a cat. They were distant, foreign creatures. You never truly got to know them.

  His apartment was tiny but not uncomfortable, featuring high ceilings and a sliver-like view of Manhattan through a thicket of buildings to the north. The living room: in addition to the couch and standard-issue IKEA coffee table, there was a big bookcase filled with photography texts and binders of old 35-millimetre slides. Photographs and award certificates lined the walls, and there was a MacBook Pro on a tiny desk by the window.

  He kicked off his shoes and flung himself down on the couch. It was barely five, and already the day was winding down like an old-fashioned clock. So went the winter months. He couldn’t see the setting sun with all of the cloud cover, but sensed the light growing gradually dimmer. Golden hour, still, or at least it would have been, if the sun were there. He squinted up at the sky, spotted after a time a faint, pinkish-yellow glow amid the clouds, or maybe he’d just imagined it.

  Jenny Wynne. He had done his best to put her out of his mind – she was ancient history, after all – but now he permitted himself a few recollections. That first, unforgettable photo shoot at Helmut’s studio, and the flush of rage that had come into her cheeks when Stephan had laughed at her. The night on the Stem’s rooftop patio after the magazine awards, watching from the shadows as her smoke rings dissolved into nothingness. Their trip to the country inn, and his stab of fear, standing on the overlook, that she’d fallen into the river. Jenny in bed, asleep, her white shoulder jutting from the sheets like an iceberg. She had brought so much happiness, hope, anger and regret into his life while she’d been in it. Surely all of that had to mean something.

  For a brief taut moment he groped at the feeling he’d had for her back then. That sensation of hope and energy and surprise, driving him forward, egging him on. Almost instantly it began to die away, leaving a cold afterglow in his chest. You heard the same song enough times and the magic leached out of it. He never listened to the Smiths any more – that sound had lost its hold over him. Ultimately, there was a kind of relief in letting go.

  He went to the kitchen, fed Gamblor 2.0, and set about preparing a simple meal for his own dinner. He usually went out to eat these days. There was this one bistro up the street, run by a couple of Mexican guys who hadn’t been able to afford a liquor license. They did a passable steak frites, and since business wasn’t exactly booming, given the lack of wine to accompany it, the place was peaceful. He could always get a table. But in a fit of culinary ambition the day before, Stephan had stocked up at the organic grocery store up the street, and if he didn’t cook now, the vegetables would go to waste. He would make spaghetti, an old standby.

  He chopped up the onions and mushrooms, got some ground beef simmering in a frying pan. Opening a can of tomato sauce, he sliced his finger with the jagged lid. Blood welled up from the puckered gash, and he snatched up a couple of strips of paper towel to stanch the bleeding.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered to himself. “Fucking thing.” He slammed his good hand down on the top of the stove. Gamblor 2.0, who’d been circling in hope of scraps, made a run for the bedroom.

  “Sorry, sweetie, sorry,” he called after her. Stephan Stern: Emotional A
buser of Cats. “It’s okay. I promise. Come back and have your dinner.”

  It was no use, she was gone, and so he went to the freezer, extracted a couple of shrunken ice cubes from their tray, and wrapped them in a clean cloth. Then he turned off the stove, poured himself a large glass of red wine, and stumbled out the the couch, leaving the ruins of his half-cooked dinner to deal with later.

  He took a sip of the wine, let his mind go blank. It was dark now. Across the river, the lights of Manhattan, those he could see through his viewing slit, were twinkling gorgeously. The Manhattan skyline was beautiful, even in this mere fragment so familiar and iconic it was like something out of a nightmare.

  He woke with a start to find that he was still on the couch, his head pounding, his mouth dry. There was a warm, soft lump of something at the back of his knee, and he realized after a moment of confusion that it was Gamblor 2.0, curled up in a tight ball, asleep. Forgiven, then, for his sins. It was cold in the apartment. On the coffee table in front of him stood the empty wine bottle and glass from the night before, the inside of the latter coated with a thin layer of crimson residue.

  He groaned, massaged his forehead, and sat up, much to 2.0’s annoyance. She swatted him a couple of times with her paw, then padded off to the kitchen in a huff. So much for forgiveness.

  Dawn was breaking over the city. In the dim half-light the low clouds that filled the sky looked like plumes of dark smoke. He pulled his smartphone from his hip pocket and checked the forecast. There were cute little cloud icons next to most of the cities on the screen, every single one spewing cartoon snow. Several featured exclamation points as well: winter storm warnings.

  He could send an email to the organizers of tonight’s event in D.C., begging off due to unsafe driving conditions. They’d understand, of course. It wasn’t his fault, the weather being one of the many things he did not have control over. But no, that wouldn’t do. He was a professional, and one of his signature qualities as such was his ability to get the job done despite obstacles. And so he dragged himself to his feet and stumbled off to the bathroom. He would go to the event, put in a good showing. A small but sophisticated crowd would attend to his remarks, applaud respectfully, ask a series of intelligent questions. Some of them would be young students, fresh-faced and hopeful. He would do his best to encourage them.

  He cleared the kitchen of the remains of the previous evening’s aborted supper, scraping the congealed contents of the frying pan into the garbage. The task was both dispiriting and somehow satisfying. Afterwards, under the shower’s hot spray, he found himself musing on his conversation the day before with Nathan. It had been seven years now since Stephan had last seen Jenny Wynne. He wasn’t sure how the news of her decline, if that’s what it was, was supposed to make him feel: saddened by her sorry fate, gleeful that a kind of restitution had been achieved. Did it even matter? Seven years was a long time, and there had been days during that period when he had not thought of her at all.

  He got dressed, zipped a few essentials into a small nylon daypack. Over the years, he had learned to travel light. It was one of the things you picked up as a photojournalist for hire. You had to be able to grab your gear and go at a moment’s notice. It was amazing how little you actually needed when you were on the road, how little remained after you pared away the ballast.

  His stomach gurgled, and he imagined, in his half-conscious state, that it was talking to him in Muppetish growl: “mmmmpleasefeedmemmmmbossssss.” He giggled. A fried egg on toast with salt and pepper, tea with milk and sugar. He gobbled down this basic breakfast with real pleasure, refilled 2.0’s food and water dishes, and headed out.

  He might have taken the train, especially given the worrisome forecast, but was determined to treat himself to the drive. There was something about a rental car. These days, they were almost always new, clean and uncluttered, unencumbered by the detritus of individual ownership. There was never anything in the glove compartment besides the vehicle registration and a copy of the owner’s manual in a translucent plastic sheath. In that sense a rental car was like a hotel room.

  There would in fact be a hotel room waiting for him at the other end of his journey. Not a luxury suite, to be sure, but the chain was respectable and the location close to the Capitol if he felt like a little sightseeing. He would order up room service as soon as he arrived – something high in carbs, the kind of fare Pete approved of, or had used to, some kind of stew or chop. Of course Pete might have changed his ways and become a militant vegan, for all Stephan knew. But no, that was wrong, he wouldn’t have.

  He paced in a circle around his assigned car, a forest green Ford Focus, marked down a couple of dings and scratches for the attendant, the standard wear and tear, then signed off on the contract. The engine gave a satisfying thrum as he started it up. His pack was on the passenger seat beside him, for easy access. He revved the accelerator a couple of times, then shifted into gear and pulled out onto the street.

  Getting out of the city was the usual nightmare, cars bumper to bumper, but on the southbound Turnpike the traffic was moving well, describing a smooth arc along the perimeter of the Lower Bay. It was beginning to snow now, as his technology had promised. Scattered pellets smacked into the rental car’s windshield, pinging off into the void. The windshield began to ice up, but he cranked the defroster and the sheen soon abated. He wasn’t worried. The road was clear and dry, the traffic now as good as could be hoped.

  The Jersey suburbs seemed to go on forever. Thousands upon thousands of squat, boxy houses, their roofs dusted with snow. If there hadn’t been so many of them, he might have thought they’d been sprayed with white foam by a film crew shooting a Christmas movie. Passing through Woodbridge, heading due south now, he tried to picture Jenny Wynne in her new life, the one that Nathan had so casually ridiculed – although what did Nathan know, really? She might have been perfectly happy. Driving her kids to soccer practice in the family SUV. Making meatloaf, the kind with the ketchup sauce on top, the kind he’d eaten himself when he was 10 or 12 years old. He assumed that young moms across the continent still made that meatloaf, albeit with a dash of irony tossed in with the chopped onions.

  Maybe one day she’d be surfing around on her tablet, say, and would happen upon some of his work. She’d flick through a photo album, her eyes skimming over the images, pausing on a shot of a dead tree, a crowd of protesters, a flooded-out New Orleans church, its windows blank as mine shafts, and think... what?

  The scene wasn’t coming to life in his mind. She had always eluded him, and it was happening again now. It didn’t matter. He had other things to worry about, needed to stay focused on the road. He had a long drive ahead, through conditions that were shaping up to be ugly. Snow flurries all across the northeast, blowing down from Canada right through to nightfall. If he drove quickly, and didn’t stop, maybe he could outrun the storm, punch through to sunshine and blue skies – or at least arrive in time to hunker down before the worst of it set in. The snow was coming harder now, big wet flakes that swam over the windshield, fragmenting his view of the road ahead, like film grains, or rather pixels, in a low-resolution photograph.

  He bent like an old man to the windshield, hands locked tight to the wheel, and kept driving.

  @poopychronicles (selected tweets)

  by Jenny Wynne

  My little guy is a Super Duper Pooper. Say that three times fast.

  Superduperpooper, superduperpooper, superduperpooper.

  And yes, he really is. His little bum is like a clown car of poops.

  Hot new edition of #vanityfair with gorgeous sparkly cover. (The novel, not the mag - check Wikipedia if necessary, philistines.)

  Tall iced coffee in grande cup + extra ice + 3 pumps hazelnut + 2 pumps classic + .5 inches of non-fat milk = first mommy orgasm in 2 long.

  RIP Helmut Stumpfl, 1939-2012. Mythmaker, silver fox, Hasselblad aficionado, rubber fetishist. U will be missed, sir.

  So cute when he’s sleeping. Looks a bit
like grandpa minus the condescending facial expression.

  Same to you @Blankton, you gossip-mongering b! Next time it’ll be something much stinkier than champagne.

  @Blankton - PS champers was fun too

  Little dude just spit up on daddy’s vintage Black Flag t-shirt - apparently hates hardcore music as much as mommy does!

  #Urbanist mag says the burbs are the new downtown. Cutting edge once again. #ohyay

  Thinking of writing a Baudrillardian analysis of the modern high-tech baby stroller. Might as well use semiotics MA for something.

  Buff daddy picking up kid at daycare in Merc S600 says this mommy has nice eyes. Hear that, Jonny?

  Civet coffee, #nothanks I have enough poop to deal with in my life already, literally and figuratively.

  Is reality television our culture’s answer to the Tolstoyan novel? Sorry - too deep for 5:30 a.m. diaper call.

  So much polar fleece, so few mountains. Try a move to British Columbia, wannabe ice climbers.

  @poochtroop road crew: please advise Jonny to call immediately.

  @poochtroop - castration will neuter gravelly singing voice thus costing u job. #justsaying

  Baby tried to drink from mommy’s special sippy cup of Grey Goose. Mommy feeling the shame.

  Possible to burn water in the microwave? #godhelpus

  I love the smell of re-excreted SweetPea in the morning. Actually I do not.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a cultural consumer in possession of a good intelligence must be in want of zombie fiction.

  I will say one thing: the man sings a mean Too Ra Loo Ra.