Those were Fred’s polite words for his love life: passive, needs, servicing. They were new. Actually, his old vocabulary was more honest, though crude, when he thought privately: she doesn’t give good blow-jobs.
Lately he had tried to censure even his private feelings about Marion in bed. He now thought to himself in the jargon of popular psychology: servicing, needs, caring, experimentation, spontaneity. The last, spontaneity, was Fred’s new favorite for lunches with male friends. Marion and I aren’t spontaneous in bed anymore, he’d say, hoping, while honestly confessing how bad it was now, to give the impression that he and Marion used to screw in various rooms, in tortured positions, using exotic objects, playing roles. Thus Fred aggrandized his past sexual history while telling the truth about the present. He was glad to have so clever and handy a line available and there wasn’t a friend invited to tonight’s dinner who hadn’t heard him say, “We aren’t spontaneous in bed anymore.”
The line occurred to him now as he pulled the cork out of a new bottle of wine. “I didn’t mean to yell,” Marion said in a whisper. “I just don’t like Tony sitting alone in our living room. I can imagine him making up witticisms about our furniture.”
Tony called out to them while Marion was whispering to Fred. “Who’s coming tonight?”
“David Bergman, my buddy from college who’s a big shot at Newstime, Karl Stein, the novelist, and my new agent, Bart Cullen.” Fred said this as he began to exit from the kitchen. He whispered to Marion as he passed her: “It’s okay. I understand.”
Tony took the glass of wine. “Do they have dates?”
Patty entered. “Mmmm, wine,” she said.
“Hello again,” Tony said to Patty with such vehement cheerfulness that one might imagine he knew Patty well. In fact, they had met only a few times, through her friendship with his wife, Betty.
“Hi, Tony,” Patty said. “I was in a state when you arrived!”
Fred poured wine into a glass for her, ashamed to look her in the eyes.
“Really? Why?” Tony’s questions were disarming, his voice almost squeaked with curiosity and good will.
He’s handsome, Patty thought. “Oh! I’m so miserable. I’ve bored Fred—”
At the mention of his name, Fred lost track of the rim of the glass and pointed the nozzle past it, spilling wine on the table. He caught it quickly. Tony’s light blue eyes took in Fred’s embarrassed movements while he mopped up the wine and then handed Patty her glass. Tony’s eyes, while observing Fred, were cold and intelligent. Patty paid no attention to Fred’s actions, but she did observe the sudden transformation in Tony’s look, from empty-headed attention and charm to the clinical, almost heartless stare with which he evaluated Fred’s state of mind. “I have no job, I’m broke, I don’t know any good men,” she was saying.
Shut up, Fred thought, and nervously watched Marion enter with another plate of cold vegetables and dip.
“You don’t?” Tony said. “How shocking!”
“All the decent men,” Patty said—her small pouting lips attacked the word—“are married.”
“Or gay,” Marion said.
“That’s right!” Patty said. “Tony! Why are all the men”—she lowered her voice and even managed to peek about as if the walls were bugged—“fags? Why don’t you do something about it, Tony!”
Tony and Fred roared, or so it seemed to Marion, at this speech of Patty’s. Marion was irritated by their amusement. After all, she had said the witty thing first.
“Well,” Tony answered, “the Moral Majority has already done something for you.”
“They have?” Patty said in a tone so awed that Tony had to laugh at it.
“Yes! They invented AIDS.”
“Don’t joke about AIDS,” Marion said, almost wincing. “Someone I know has it.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t joke,” Tony said, transforming his face into a solemn mask, like a chastened schoolboy. “I also know two people who’ve got it. You know”—and he couldn’t help but start to laugh—“in the theater world it really could be like the Black Death. It’s possible it could finish theater.”
Fred, who had been embarrassed by Marion’s correction of Tony (her attitude might seem unsophisticated to Tony), laughed hard at this, hoping to defuse the bomb of seriousness she had dropped.
“Is everybody in the theater gay, Tony?” Patty asked, again with an innocent awe that provoked laughter.
“No, no,” Tony said with great conviction. “Only half. The problem is, that half are all the males. Only the women are heterosexual and naturally after a few years in the theater, they become intensely frustrated and start screwing movie executives or owners of baseball teams.”
Patty and Fred laughed, but Marion frowned, leaned toward Tony, and said in a scolding tone, “I really don’t think it’s funny. This twenty-three-old editorial assistant has it. He was told to take a permanent sick leave—they’re paying him so they won’t get sued. His lover, his family, no one will see him. And the people who worked with him are busy making jokes about replacing all the coffee cups in the office. Jokes that aren’t so funny, and maybe aren’t even jokes, because somebody did buy new coffee cups and even a new coffeepot.”
Tony leaned forward eagerly, smiling. “You’re kidding! Who?”
Fred had felt his stomach tighten while Marion reproved Tony—he wished briefly she was dead and he had Patty hosting the party—but Tony’s response, completely ignoring the criticism and enjoying the facts, calmed him. Not only calmed him, but impressed Fred once again with Tony’s social skills. Tony deflected his wife’s crabby middle-class criticism into an anecdote in which other people were the villains and Tony became a partner in her disapproval.
“We don’t know who,” Marion answered. “Yesterday we came in and somebody had thrown out all the old stuff and bought new things.”
“Incredible,” Tony agreed, shaking his head. “It’s incredible how primitive people’s reactions are. An actor I went to Yale with got it and I visited him in the hospital last week …”
Fred met Marion’s eyes, his look telling her what a fool she’d made of herself. Marion returned the glance defiantly and looked back to Tony.
“… and even though I argued with close friends of his who refused to visit, I must admit it, when I walked in I was scared to even sit down, much less shake his hand.”
“You didn’t shake his hand!” Patty said.
“Patty!” Marion warned.
“Well, we don’t know. They don’t know how people get it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—” Marion started.
But Tony cut her off. “Patty,” he said gently, “if AIDS could be communicated by a handshake, millions of people would have it. And not only that, there would be no way to protect against getting it. The world would have to sit back, let those who die, die, and like the Black Plague, only those with natural resistance would survive.” Tony leaned close to Patty. “Nevertheless, I didn’t shake his hand.”
At this Fred and Patty laughed hard. Marion leaned back with a disgusted look, as if giving up on all of them.
The intercom buzzed. Marion got up and answered it. They all heard the amplified voice of the doorman. “Bart Cullen to see you.”
“I didn’t know you had a new agent.” Tony said to Fred.
“Yeah, Bart Cullen. He handles Fredericka Young.”
Patty whistled.
“Who’s Fredericka Young?” Tony asked.
“You don’t know?” Fred said, amazed. “I guess she doesn’t go to Elaine’s.”
“Maybe she does,” Tony said dryly. Fred, envious of Tony’s ability to be seated at Elaine’s (the renowned show-business, literary, and amorphous-celebrity restaurant), often teased Tony about his regular attendance there. The kidding irritated Tony because he knew Fred’s real complaint was that Tony didn’t invite him along. “Doesn’t mean I know her. Who is she?”
“She wrote All My Sins.”
Marion, at th
e door, called into the hallway, “This way, Bart.”
Tony, recognizing the title as the number-one bestseller of last year, said in a whisper, “My God, and he got ten percent?”
Fred nodded solemnly.
“Fred!” Patty said with excitement. “He’ll make you rich.”
Fred guffawed nervously, getting up to greet Bart, who at that moment appeared at the front door. “That’s the idea,” he said to Patty and Tony.
They turned to look at Fred’s hope for success. Bart was the opposite of the caricature of the agent: he was tall, thin, with a full head of red hair. His long nose, pale blue eyes, and thin unsmiling mouth made him look like a Flemish painting: a mournful, industrious, and religious man. But his companion fit the image of a wheeling-and-dealing agent: she was a tall blond model with the perfect features of modern surgery and the brilliant white teeth of industrial enamel.
While Fred introduced them (the model’s name was Brett, which Tony thought was probably acquired at the same time as her teeth), the intercom buzzed again and soon they were joined by Karl Stein. Karl was also represented by Bart— indeed. Karl had provided the introduction that led to Fred becoming a client. Karl was a short, sad man with black and gray hair that hung from the center of his head like draperies. His thick black beard gave the impression of religious commitment: a martyr.
In a sense he was a monk of the Order of Novelists. After college, Karl had begun his first book, finished it within a year, and sent it to publishers. He got fifteen rejections. Meanwhile, he began work on another novel. Over the next ten years he wrote six manuscripts, none of them finding a publisher. A friend persuaded him to meet someone he knew at Penthouse magazine and Karl wrote a piece for them on a sex club in New York that led to the first check he received as a writer. After a few more pieces for Penthouse, other assignments followed—from Playboy, then Esquire, and so on. A piece for Playboy on stewardesses attracted Bart’s attention. Bart called Karl, suggested he fire his current agent, hirt Bart, and write an outline based on the notion of tracing three generations of a family of stewardesses, from the prop age to the Concorde. Karl’s ten-page proposal on this idea won for him the book contract that his six devotions did not. He had finished Stewardess by the time he walked into Fred’s dinner party and had only five months to wait for his first novel to appear.
The last guest to arrive was David Bergman, someone Fred knew slightly in college and had cultivated after he spotted David’s name listed on the masthead at Newstime as a senior writer. Marion had invited Patty partly because of David. He was single and a good catch. To be a senior writer at his age was a remarkable achievement, and besides, Marion liked David. He looked responsible and decent. In his double-breasted pin-striped suit, white shirt, and red tie, he didn’t look at all like a writer, she thought, without any irony or self-consciousness that she, the wife of a writer, was so impressed by that.
Other than David, who asked for bourbon, the new arrivals asked for white wine. Fred couldn’t resist a gibe. “Well, I’m glad I read the Living Section of the Times this month.”
Blank looks.
“Everybody’s drinking wine!” Fred said with the tone of Sherlock Holmes naming the murderer.
“I’m not,” David said mildly.
The rest looked puzzled and there was an awkward silence. Tony broke the tableau: “Fred, this is a most provocative remark. But we don’t understand it.”
Patty laughed violently, mostly at Tony’s tone of utter contempt and the embarrassed look on Fred’s face. She started to cough and choke, trying to stop herself, knowing her laughter was insulting—indeed, Fred’s face turned red.
“I didn’t mean it as a put-down,” Fred stammered. “Don’t you remember the piece a couple of weeks ago saying that hard liquor before dinner was passé?” Fred said this, appealed it really, to Karl, who (generally worried by any gathering larger than three) peered about in a bewildered and suspicious manner. He looked startled by Fred’s question. In fact, he was made nervous by Fred including him in something that seemed to be an embarrassing mistake.
“No—I didn’t hear what you said,” Karl answered in so guilty and halting a manner that when Tony leaned forward and patted Karl on the knee, saying, “Don’t worry, Karl, we’ll give you a makeup test later,” everybody laughed. They laughed nervously, because they were acquaintances burdened with the need to pretend intimacy and friendliness, and the strain needed relief.
Fred, knowing he had somehow made a fool of himself, desperately grabbed at a new subject. “Say, we got to get Patty a job.” Fred’s foot jiggled anxiously. “Come on, this room is full of people with connections. Patty’s terrific. She’s smart, she’s cute, she knows editing.”
Patty wished she was back in the bathroom again—this time to slit her wrists.
Karl frowned at her, increasing her discomfort. “You’re sure you want to go back into publishing?”
“Of course!” Fred answered for her. “We have to make sure all our friends become important editors so they’ll publish our books!” Fred guffawed, scanning the room with glistening eyes for others who would enjoy his open statement of opportunism. Fred suffered from the delusion that to confess to calculation was disarming and sophisticated. He believed it simultaneously revealed himself as aware of such conniving, disapproving of it, and yet showed he was prepared to take advantage of it himself—a combination of attitudes that Fred thought was self-aware and humorous (like a Woody Allen hero, Fred would have said) rather than the tail of the comet of self-doubt that raged constantly throughout the galaxy of his insecurities.
“I guess you’re right, Fred,” Tony Winters said to cover the embarrassed silence that threatened the room. “That’s probably the only way we’ll get any of our stuff published.”
“No!” Patty instantly protested.
“I don’t think you should go back into publishing,” Karl said in a grave and considered tone.
“Hear, hear,” Marion said.
Tony smiled at her. She returned his glance demurely.
“See,” Tony said to Patty. “And Marion’s an editor. Ask her how lucky you are to be out of it.”
“You know the problem with being an editor?” Marion said, leaning forward eagerly.
Fred broke in, flashing a look at his new agent, Bart. “Just don’t say it’s agents who ruin the business.” Again he guffawed.
“Well, they’re not a big help, Fred,” Marion said.
Tony smiled at Marion admiringly.
“Business,” Karl mumbled into his drink, unheard by the others.
“But they’re not the big problem,” Marion continued, looking into Tony’s handsome eyes. She felt encouraged by them: this kind of declamation was difficult for Marion. “It’s the mixed messages. Nothing is straightforward. They hire you and say, ‘Oh, we want you to aggressively acquire books, discover young writers, and demand big printings.’ Then they reject every unknown writer you bring in, while agents only give the track-record authors to the big boys—”
“Well, I don’t know if I can agree with that,” Bart said quietly. His still manner made the words impressive: Marion shut up and the room gave its attention to Bart. “Bob Holder at Garlands & Company is only twenty-eight. I give him a crack at all my six-figure authors.”
“Gosh, doesn’t that sound nice,” Tony Winters interrupted with a show of greed. Patty, Marion, and David Bergman all laughed instantly. Karl also laughed, but so violently that it seemed more like anger. The others looked puzzled, except for Fred, who was torn between appreciating Tony and not offending Bart. “It’s like a chest measurement for women,” Tony went on. “What’s sexier? A high six figures or a low seven?”
Patty’s lips made a small circle. “Oh, a low seven, for sure.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Tony said. “That should be a hint to the National Book Awards, or TABA, or whatever the hell it is now.”
“TABA,” Karl said into his drink.
&
nbsp; “TABA.” Tony nodded. “Well, anyway, they should have a swimsuit competition in the future. Can’t you see Bill Styron in a bikini?”
“How about Mailer?” David Bergman offered.
“No, no. Mailer stays in shape,” Tony argued. “You want the real slobs, the people who have gone to seed.”
“Mailer!” David Bergman called out again, laughing. “His writing fits.”
“That’s not true,” Karl said, so exercised that he raised his head and spoke clearly.
“Despite your joking, that is the idea,” Bart said to Tony. His serious tone again caused everyone to focus on him. Once they had, he continued. “TABA is an attempt to create superstar writers and superstar book events, like the Academy Awards. I think it’s a good thing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Fred said. His leg bounced up and down nervously. “I don’t understand why you guys at the Authors Guild and PEN voted against it,” Fred said to Tony and Karl.
“I’m not a member of the Authors Guild or PEN,” Tony protested.
Karl wasn’t either, but he didn’t like to admit it.
Fred stayed on Tony. “Yeah, but you know the presidents of both of them.”
“You make me sound like Secretary of State,” Tony answered, smiling. He stubbornly resisted Fred’s attempt to link him with a literary establishment, not out of modesty, but fear that if he admitted to Fred he had access to such people, within twenty-four hours he would get a call from Fred requesting introductions.
“It seems to me,” Marion said, “writers objecting to TABA is typical of how hypocritical writers can be. Authors want to be celebrities, they want their books advertised, and all the rest, but God forbid they should participate in the selling, or admit that it’s a business. Only writers can decide who are good writers, is what they’re saying. It’s bullshit.”
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