Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt a cold eye from the heavens turn his way and freeze him. He heard a deep voice intone: You are going mad. Just like your mother. Mad, mad, mad.
Patty listened to David tell his story. He was excited about this one. She marveled, when he was done, at the fact that nothing had happened. He was steeled for battle, talking angrily, vehemently, but nothing had happened. Mrs. Thorn had had a talk with his two bosses, and they decided nothing would change. And there David was, knowing this, and yet feeling it was all so thrilling, so important. She wondered if he would really make it in that world. Gelb wasn’t so foolish. She had learned from him that most things in business were much more simple and pure than someone like David imagined. What is, is. If Mrs. Thorn wanted to fire Rounder, she would have accepted the resignation. She didn’t want to. That she would someday was no daring insight on David’s or Chico’s part. Everybody at the top is eventually fired. And once a person reached the zenith, failure no longer existed. Rounder would go on to other jobs, either as well paid or better, his so-called failure at Newstime just last week’s snicker, not forever’s shame.
She hadn’t slept with David for weeks. When she began the affair with Gelb, she had resisted enjoying the sex. Her lack of orgasm had piqued Gelb: he worked extraordinarily hard at the task of breaking her attempt at passive coolness; however, when she stopped fighting him, she was, now to her considerable annoyance, unable to come. Her loins would ache, her hard nipples plead in the air for liberation, but nothing could seem to push her over the plateau of mounting excitement into the blissful free-fall of release.
Finally, after two months of this agony, Gelb accused her of being afraid to give in to the final pleasure of sex because she equated that with love. She laughed at him, told him he was truly from another generation to believe that orgasm depended on emotion. He answered that he didn’t, but she obviously did. She mocked him. But that afternoon, she came, and had ever since. Often Gelb, thrilled at the breakthrough, would continue the lovemaking beyond his penis’ interest, to watch her groan again in his arms, relishing her surrender. Since then, she had been unable to enjoy sex with David, something she had not admitted to Gelb, knowing that he, armed with that information, would claim he had been right—orgasm equals love.
She felt guilt about her lack of desire to make love to David the most keenly of all the specific betrayals her affair involved. That she was fucking this man to insure her career made her hate herself (and certainly the world) but gave her a sense of justification in relation to David. He was so ambitious that she knew, in her spot, he would do the same. But the transfer of her lust to Gelb—an occurrence that she found incredible, despite the ferocious, almost voracious energy he applied to making love, because he was neither handsome nor sexy—was something to abhor and regret. Why was she such a nitwit? Why did she have to convince herself that her screwing Gelb was anything other than ambition? Part of her was attempting to conceal the opportunism behind sentiment. She knew her orgasms were lies. They had to be. Gelb was a contemptible, unscrupulous man—no amount of clitoral stimulation should convince her to feel passion for him.
David finished his monologue on the day, asked her perfunctory questions about her lunch with Betty, showing no interest at the appearance of Gelb. When she complained about his showing up (to be consistent with what she thought he knew of her relationship to him, namely that he had fired her), she discovered, to her disgust, that David had forgotten the story of her dismissal from Goodson Books.
“It was two years ago.” he said when she remarked on it. Shortly afterward he buried himself with business magazines in front of the television, responding only with grunts to her comments on the shows.
Betty phoned late. “I love it,” she said without a hello. “I love it.”
“Really?” Patty asked, pleased, and then wondered why she cared. Since the contract, Betty hadn’t made any criticisms of her pages, which she submitted chapter by chapter.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Betty said, her tone full of serious calculation. “I’m going to give it to Gelb right away. I think there’s some cutting we might do, but I don’t want to wait. He made that offer to read it at lunch— he probably wasn’t too serious, so I want to take him up on it before he has a chance to back out.”
“Cutting?” Patty asked, ignoring the rest. It was simply too absurd. Betty thinking herself brilliant, believing Gelb was simply being polite, missing the whole drama like a silly minor character in a farce.
Betty laughed. “God, you writers are all the same. Can’t touch a precious word.”
“I didn’t say that,” Patty snapped. “I merely wanted to know what we were cutting.”
“Nothing. Just little things. We’ll meet later in the week.” She lowered her voice. “I can’t really talk long. Tony’s in a mood. Just wanted you to know I love it.”
Patty hung up and looked at David, his nose in Forbes. “I’m going to bed,” she said, thinking that if he wanted to
make love, he’d go too.
“Okay,” he mumbled.
I said it too coldly. She softened her tone and smiled. “Sure you don’t want to come too?”
He looked up, his glasses off for reading, and squinted at her. “What?”
“Sure you don’t want to come to bed?” she asked with a broad wink.
“Oh,” he said, as though she had proposed having dinner with her parents. “I’m too …” He paused.
Dull, she decided for him. “Okay,” she interrupted breezily, and walked away, thinking: He doesn’t deserve me.
By nightfall, Fred was excited. His goddamn book was gonna be published. Tom Lear had invited him to a screening, and when Fred announced Holder’s praising reception, which Tom took to be an event that had been in suspense, since no one knew, not even Marion, that Fred had been writing the book virtually in collaboration with Holder, Fred could see in Lear’s response how much fun might lie ahead for him.
“Oh, you know who’s going to be at the screening? A lot of New York Times people. I bet Harry Reynolds will be there. Don’t let me forget to introduce you.”
Reynolds, being one of the Times’s daily book critics, would be a great prize if Fred could impress him enough to get a review. Lear pointed him out when they sat down. He was at the other end of the room. Since the screening was about to begin, Lear whispered, “We’ll get him on the way out.”
His faith in Tom had been borne out, He had stuck by Fred even after reading the original one hundred pages— which Fred now believed had been so bad that the thought of Tom reading them sometimes startled him awake when falling asleep, as though it was a war veteran’s memory of a terrible scrape with death.
While the film credits rolled at the end of the movie (traditionally at screenings everyone remained seated until the last name of the third assistant gaffer rolled by), Fred repeatedly rubbed his right palm against his pants, trying to dry it in anticipation of shaking hands with Reynolds. He closed his eyes to try to relax: he saw an image of Harold Reynolds printed in New York Times type loom and obliterate everything. He sat up and whispered to Lear, “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
“No, I want to introduce you to Reynolds.”
“It won’t do me any good,” Fred said.
“Sure it will,” Tom said, giving him a big wink. “Name recognition. Very important.”
The lights came up moments later. Lear dawdled on their aisle, allowing others to pass them, and surged forward when Harold Reynolds’ row conjoined with the flow out. “Harold!” Lear said as though he had just spotted him.
To Fred’s horror, Reynolds looked balefully at Tom and said in a low voice, “Hi,” in the way one might address a doorman, someone to whom a hello is necessary but certainly not fervently desired.
Lear stepped next to the book critic, walking out shoulder to shoulder. Fred hustled to get himself behind, momentarily relieved by his being out of sight. “I loved your review of Hel
ler’s book. Hilarious.”
This seemed to warm Reynolds. “Piece of junk,” he mumbled.
“Gutsy of you to say so.”
“I don’t care if they fire me. Been here too long anyway.” All this in a whisper so that even Fred, who was standing directly behind them, had to strain to hear.
“Well, it needed to be said,” Lear answered in a solemn tone. They arrived at the elevator bank and Fred found himself facing them. “Oh,” Tom said, looking at Fred as though just discovering him. “Do you know my friend Fred Tatter? This is Harold Reynolds.”
Fred stuck his hand out.
“Hello,” Reynolds said with a nod, his eyes barely lighting on Fred and missing the fact that his hand was out. Fred quickly withdrew it and didn’t hear the conversation continue as he tried to calculate whether or not Harold Reynolds had done it intentionally, cleverly disguising the insult as distraction.
They got into the elevator and everybody fell into the typical post-screening silence, no one daring to make a remark lest it offend someone whose connections or power were unknown to him. Lear, Fred noticed admiringly, made sure he stayed near Reynolds without seeming to. Once out on the street, the three of them broke off from the crowd, Reynolds glancing at the avenue and commenting, “Terrible time for a cab.”
“I think if we head over to Sixth …” Lear pointed, and, to Fred’s surprise, given Reynolds’ aloof attitude, he marched with them. “We’re headed uptown,” Lear said while they walked. “Can we drop you?”
“I’m all the way east on Seventy-second. East River Drive. It’s probably out of your way—”
“No, not at all,” Tom said.
“Oh good,” Reynolds mumbled, and glanced at Fred as though he were an obligation. “Did you like the movie?”
Now Fred wished he had listened more carefully at the elevator bank. He didn’t know what their opinion was. “I can’t say why,” Fred said, “but somehow I didn’t really get involved.”
“Yes,” Reynolds agreed. “I didn’t care whether they were together or not. I feel as though I’ve seen movies like that all my life. Guess I’m tired of them too. Are you in the movie business?”
Here it comes, Fred thought, and swallowed. “No, I’m a …” He wanted to say “novelist,” but in this situation somehow it seemed so bold as to be almost be rude. “… a writer.”
“Journalist?” Reynolds asked.
“I was …” And Fred paused, unable to admit his condition, afraid of how obvious it would then become that he wanted Reynolds to know and remember him.
Tom broke in, his voice tense. “Fred’s publishing his first novel in the fall.”
“Oh,” Reynolds said, utterly without self-consciousness. “Congratulations. Who’s your publisher?”
“Garlands.”
“Good house,” the critic said with a nod, a personnel man checking off items on a résumé. “What’s the title?”
“The Locker Room.”
“About sports?”
“No …” This, more than anything, was the moment he had dreaded. He would now describe the idea and if Reynolds made fun of it, life might simply become too terrible to face. “It’s kind of a response to The Women’s Room.”
“Well,” Reynolds said, smiling, “certainly time for that, isn’t it?”
Fred guffawed, laughing harder than he meant to because of the relief. He noticed that Reynolds glanced at him quizzically, and he cut off the amusement. They had reached Sixth, and to cover the awkwardness, Fred, without looking, stepped out with his hand up, signaling for a cab.
He heard Tom laugh behind him and say, “There are no cars, Fred.”
Now that he really looked at the avenue, he saw that for at least five blocks the avenue was empty. He pulled his hand in. “Gotta start early in this town,” he said, and guffawed again.
Reynolds smiled at him gently, almost mercifully. “That’s true enough.” He turned to Lear and began to question him about his current book. Lear answered the questions effortlessly, joking about his mixed reviews, bitching about his publisher, his manner natural and at ease, speaking no differently than he would to an intimate.
His performance made Fred conscious of how badly he had handled his interrogation. He took out a cigarette to calm himself, but in the curious swirling wind of the city, his first three matches all went out. Reynolds, out of the corner of his eyes, noticed his trouble and brought out a lighter, flicking it on and offering the flame.
“Thanks,” Fred said, humiliated. He brought the end of his cigarette into the fire, inhaling, and in an effort to loosen up, swept his arm away from the light.
For a brief, brief second the gesture had just the right dash and casualness …
… but then, like a victim in a fatal crash, he watched in slow horror as his hand and cigarette went directly into the left sleeve of Harold Reynolds’ pin-striped jacket, the bright red embers scattering in brilliant firefly sparks as they burned a small but quite irrevocable hole into the clothes of one of the country’s most powerful and influential book critics.
CHAPTER 14
Patty looked down at Gelb. He had his hands on her breasts, reaching up for them like a baby wanting succor, his eyes closed in blind, pleading ecstasy.
“I love you,” he said almost in a shout.
She held herself up, supporting herself by pressing down with her palms on his hips, clinging to the tip of his penis. He yearned upward, pathetically raising his buttocks, begging for more of her warmth: “I love you I love you I love you.”
Her arms trembled from the effort and she let herself down on his shaft, to his relieved groans, feeling him fill her, the penetration soothing but not exciting. She felt above both him and the experience, the pleasure coming from her possession of his genitals. She vacuumed him up, nothing touching but the most intimate parts of their bodies. She loved watching him from this distance. Looking down at that usually self-absorbed face and seeing him at her mercy, rolling in a blissful dream, seemed a perfect metaphor for their relationship. She had dominated this man with what had always seemed to be her weakness: sex.
He opened his eyes and saw the smirk of satisfaction on her face. He looked glazed, delirious. He moved a hand to her trimmed bush and searched inside with his finger for her magic button of instant orgasm.
“Don’t bother,” she said contemptuously but gently: not with anger, with knowing patience.
“You bitch,” he said weakly, and his eyes rolled in their sockets. “Ohhhh,” he moaned as she moved up, his butt bucking to stay completely inside.
“Lie still,” she suggested.
“I can’t I can’t,” he said, and then, from his stomach, loud groaning. She felt his penis swell suddenly and then jerk. “No no no no,” he sang, writhing so violently that she had to drop all the way down to prevent being thrown off. She bent forward, running her hands up his hairy, big chest while she felt herself get wet inside from him. The publisher of Garlands squeezed her right nipple hard and whispered over and over: “I love you I love you I love you,” while she, his former assistant, said back in a seductive whisper: “No you don’t no you don’t no you don’t.”
David dialed the numbers. They had become as familiar to him as his own. He must have telephoned her a hundred times, although they had had only two real conversations.
She always answered the same way: “Yes … ?” as though irritated by the interruption.
“Hello, I’ve called you before—”
“Age and occupation?”
“I’m thirty-one. I’m an executive.”
“Name?”
“Bill,” he said quickly, having decided to tell this lie, though he really didn’t see what safety it provided.
“Do you want to make an appointment?”
“Yes,” he said. This time there was no rush of panic, of coursing adrenaline.
“It’s important for you to understand that I offer dominance and submission. There’s no sex.”
“I
understand,” he said.
He could hear a smile in her voice. “My sessions are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don’t have anything open until next week unless you can come today at eleven o’clock.”
Now the pressure began, powerfully present in his system. “Okay,” he said dully, automatically, unable to cry out his fear, his dreadful fear of giving in to this obsession.
“Come to Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. There are phone booths on the corner. Call this number from there at eleven. I’ll give you the address then. I’m a minute away. All right, Bill?”
“Yes,” he hissed like a creature from the dark, from the muddy swirling slime of the underworld.
“See you then.”
His hand trembled while putting the phone back, an addict suffering withdrawal. It was nine-thirty in the morning. He had only an hour to decide if he was going through with it. He had told himself he would make an appointment, because, after all, he didn’t have to keep it. There would be no penalty—except, of course, that if he changed his mind later and wanted to see her she might remember his voice and refuse to give him another chance. He was convinced she already recognized him from their two conversations, both of which ended with her hanging up on him. Each time he had tried to get an assurance that the experience would be pleasurable, that he could control what she would or wouldn’t do. Despite all his cynicism about the world, no matter how often he told himself that she must be a whore who would do what the customer wanted, he couldn’t rid himself of wild and terrible fantasies. That she might be mad and actually beat him mercilessly, perhaps cut off his penis, maybe kill him. How did he know? There would be no Better Business Bureau, no other employees to stop her, nothing, no restraint. It was an illegal act—and at that, an unusual one. Not a visit to a traditional whorehouse with bouncers, a madam, a clientele. This would be in some room, isolated, no one knowing where he had gone. Who would hear his last cry, his final whimper of agony?
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