He wasn’t in the mood any longer to spar with Lillian. His mind was working, connecting several dots. He looked across the room and found Meredith, who was talking to Lazlo. Lazlo looked at him with a type of suspicion as he whispered something to his wife. Was everyone at this dinner party talking about his reporting from Vietnam? A tough rumor like this was fine—it did something for his reputation—but the implication meant something different to Eastman. If he told Penny, then it was likely that Penny had told her lover. It was therefore a lucky break. His phantom would know just what kind of crazy bastard he was dealing with. Just as likely, it could backfire, and his phantom could conclude that with Eastman out of the picture, Penny was for the taking. With these possibilities in the air, Eastman deduced that it may have been his phantom who let the cat out of the bag, spreading the rumor at a bad literary party. Was she fucking someone in this room? He began suspecting the men in the living room. The phantom loomed in a crowd of publishers. He began to grit his teeth. It made him furious that someone, another writer perhaps, or worse, an editor, was fucking his wife and then rubbing it in his face by talking about Eastman’s private plan (or private lie, rather, as it truly was too early in the game to tell). The situation was like a spy novel in which a mole had infiltrated an intelligence agency. And by pouring some false information down the pipeline, he could track his phantom and flush him out.
Meredith called for the guests to begin heading into the dining room, where the couple had a two-tone red Mark Rothko. She loved this painting. She’d talked about it when they first acquired it. A painter friend of his from 1954, Jean de Franco, had once owned a similar canvas, and he wondered if the Lazlos had bought it off old Jean. Eastman had once taken Barbara to de Franco’s apartment to show it to her. It was the largest painting he had ever seen outside of a museum or gallery. He contemplated the transfer of ownership, how de Franco could have parted with it. If it was the same painting, de Franco must have gotten himself in a bad way and used the Rothko to buy himself out. When life falls apart, use what you have to stay idle.
Just then, Lazlo put his arm around Eastman, giving him a little scare. “Why, Alan,” he said, “I hope you haven’t thought I’ve been ignoring you.”
“Nothing of the sort, Lazlo.”
“Why don’t you come sit by me at dinner. We have much to talk about.”
The two men walked into the dining room, Lazlo’s arm still around his shoulders. Meredith, who was standing at the far end of the table, took notice of them. Both men were hers, she had a right to be nervous, though she hid it well. Lazlo assumed his position at one head of the table, Meredith at the other, and Eastman, guided by Lazlo’s grip, sat to his right.
Out of the twenty or so dinner guests, Eastman narrowed down his prime suspects. There was Peter Kaminsky, usually the funniest man in the room but hard to imagine as Penny’s lover. Kaminsky seemed incapable of stealing her. He was here with his wife, Rose. Kaminsky would usually make a dirty joke or two with Eastman, but he hadn’t tried Eastman this evening. It was out of the ordinary, and therefore Eastman still held him as a suspect no matter how unlikely. There was George Willington, a handsome WASP who was single and always came dressed to the nines. Penny could find him attractive, sure, but Eastman had always suspected George to be homosexual. Forty and single, with never a date on his arm. Eastman watched Willington unfold his dinner napkin and very delicately place it on his lap. He was a prep-school boy, very proper and wet behind the ears. But he had youth. He was closer to Penny’s age. Willington took out a cigarette and began to fumble for a lighter he could not find. Eastman stood up and took the matchbook from the Waverly Inn out of his jacket. He reached over to Willington, offering it faceup. “Allow me, George.”
“Why, thank you, Alan.” Willington took the matchbook. There was no hesitation as he opened it and struck his match. He either did not see the phone number inside, or was too polite to bother. He returned the matchbook without any suspicion. Eastman sat back down. There was a look of ridiculousness on Meredith’s face.
Next to Willington were Virgil and Sylvia Arnold. The Arnolds were both writers he had known since the fifties. Virgil wouldn’t fuck a seventeen-year-old whore if you paid him, and had he done so, Sylvia would have had his prick taken off for good. But Virgil had some sour feelings about Eastman. The two had appeared on a talk show together in 1970 and Eastman had stepped all over Virgil’s chances to express himself. Virgil, the quiet type, wasn’t made for TV, with his smug nose and harsh skin. But being talked over on TV wasn’t a good motive to conduct an affair with Eastman’s wife.
There was bad blood between him and almost everyone in that room of publishers and publishing allies. At some point, he had either put down one of their books or asserted himself over them in public, to steal the spotlight or to turn the topic in his favor. It was merely about keeping hold of the reins. The reins kept him relevant.
To look at Virgil, getting old, next to his Sylvia, his white nose hair popping out of his nostrils, Eastman felt embarrassed for suspecting him. Virgil wasn’t one for gossip; it wasn’t in his nature.
Lazlo began some meaningless conversation. Far from Eastman’s mind was the book he hadn’t delivered and that Lazlo was waiting for patiently. When Lazlo asked him what he was working on, Eastman suspected that Lazlo, too, had heard the rumor his phantom was spreading.
“I’m working on a piece about Vietnam,” he said.
This seemed to bring Lazlo immense pleasure. His reaction was normally hard to gauge. But this time there was no mistaking Lazlo’s enthusiasm.
“Your bravery precedes you,” Lazlo said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I know. I know. There’s no need to say any more. I’m your publisher, I ought to know, shouldn’t I? This is very good news, Alan. Very good news, indeed. I won’t ask you about the book. I know what grand plans you’re capable of were you to get the goods everyone wants. Leave the man be, is what I keep telling them.”
“Who told you? And who is them?” Eastman was careful here and didn’t want to suggest Broadwater or Jay Husskler at the Herald.
Lazlo gave him a wink. “It’s hard to keep news this good under the rug.”
Meredith was talking with Frances Faye, one of her authors, but she had one eye on the conversation between her husband and her lover.
It seems Eastman’s phantom had filled Lazlo’s head with dreams, too. Or could it be that Lazlo himself was his phantom? Lazlo had good enough reason to fuck Penny out of jealousy and retribution. He had more reason than Willington or Kaminsky. He asked Lazlo, “Could you meet next week to talk about the book?”
“Sure. Call the office, we’ll have my girl set it up.”
“No, let’s not go to the office.”
“Nicholson’s?”
“Somewhere downtown. Waverly Inn.”
Eastman wasn’t sure about the connection between the phantom and the Waverly Inn. They were two disparate elements that he’d grouped together. And there was no discernible sign from Lazlo that he had ever been there. Lazlo willingly agreed to meet Eastman wherever it suited his author. Eastman suddenly felt certain that Lazlo could come off the list, though he was still intrigued as to who had tipped him off. He pressed him for a name. “Where’d you hear, David? This is all very hushed at the moment.”
“I didn’t hear. I suspected. I suspected what you were working on and I was right. With the end of a war now in sight, all the best war journalists are in demand. Young reporters have been making their careers over there and garnering Pulitzers. Halberstam, for example. You can’t put one over on me, Alan. I know you too well.”
Meredith got up from the table and excused herself. Eastman wondered if he should get up and follow her, but he felt it would be too suspicious.
“It’s an illegal war in the first place,” Willington was saying to the table. “We’ve never dec
lared war on anyone. We’ve been pouring in troops, but there has never been a declaration of war. Therefore it’s illegal. And now we’re leaving. Training the South Vietnamese army, which is what we were told we were doing there in the first place. Yet they won’t be able to hold their own once we leave. The country will remain divided, as I see it, until the North takes over the whole damn thing. In which case you’ll have one country, united under communism.”
“What’s so bad about that? What do we care?” said Sylvia Arnold.
“Of course we don’t care,” said Willington. “But we aren’t the heartland of the country. We’re New York. The fact remains, though, there is a war. Vietnam’s greatest hope is that the North wins after we withdraw and they end the violence of a civil war. Once we’re out of the way, Americans will cease to be harmed, and we can move on.”
Meredith returned with a full glass of wine and joined the conversation. “Does anyone truly believe the domino theory? That communism will make its way to the West if it gains the whole of Vietnam? I know that I never heard of the place until Kennedy said the words. I still don’t quite know where it is! Cuba, I know. Vietnam?”
“It’s near Thailand,” Eastman said. “Bordering Laos and Cambodia.”
“She knows where it is,” said Lillian. “And not all of us have spent time in Southeast Asia, Alan.”
Meredith finished her point. “Curious, the only time we hear about foreign countries is when they go to war, or we invade them.”
“History is made on the brink of war,” said Eastman. “The idea of history. Recall what you were taught in school. The Napoleonic Wars. The Crusades. The Revolutionary War. The Civil War. We study conflict from a very early age. Why? Because we must justify to ourselves, to our young, that this is the natural course of events. Nations war with each other, we are taught. We’ve always assumed it’s been that way. Freedom is only a concept after it is won on the battlefield. There will always be someone encroaching on another’s freedom, and the encroached will always have to go to war to win that which they didn’t have a word for.”
“Who said that?” asked Willington.
“I did. Just now,” said Eastman.
“It sounds rather eloquent, but it is a pessimist’s view of life,” said Willington.
“Alan Eastman, a pessimist?” said Lillian. The table began to laugh. Eastman politely smiled.
“It’s a pacifist’s view,” he said. “Not a pessimist. I consider myself a pacifist, having been to war myself.”
“I was in the war, too,” said Virgil Arnold. “And I never wanted us to fight one again. That was the promise when we freed Europe from Hitler. At least, it was our hope. And that one only lasted four years. Already it’s 1973 and we’ve been in this damn Vietnam too long. And what for?”
“What we need is for someone to tell us what for,” said Lazlo. “That’s the book I know I’m waiting for. It still hasn’t come across my desk. But maybe it’s about time.”
Although Lazlo made the comment in Virgil’s direction, Eastman took it as a direct challenge and a vote of confidence. Lazlo was excited by the prospect of a book Eastman had no intention of writing.
“Oh my, can we change the subject before we begin eating?” said Meredith. “I just can’t imagine working up an appetite over war.”
Willington agreed. “Of course! What would you like to talk about, Alan?”
“Genitalism,” said Eastman.
“He’s always been the provocateur,” said Lillian.
“I don’t know if that’s a word?” said Willington. “Genitalism. Hmm.”
“It refers to genital excitation,” he said. “And who’s been exciting you in that general area lately?”
This seemed to pull the air out of the room. He was approaching his phantom all wrong. An open declaration against his enemy would not bring him any answers. Meredith seemed appalled by his behavior. Luckily, Lazlo interrupted and quickly made a joke out of it. “I’d like to propose a toast,” said Lazlo. “To genitalism. And to all of you for bringing yourselves uptown on such a hot and humid night.”
“Hear! Hear!” said Willington. The dining table raised their glasses.
Worse than being a joke, Eastman thought, was not being worthy of one. Therefore he accepted his defeat in this joust, knowing he had gone about it all wrong. Lazlo had saved him from embarrassment, that was a publisher’s job, and they weren’t always there when he was about to make a fool of himself. He took a sip of his wine as the scents of cumin and coriander made their way into the dining room. The staff brought in platters and placed them before the guests. He was quite drunk, and his drunkenness gave way to hunger. So much so that he decided he might even try whatever braised and boneless meat was simmering in baths of curried tomato.
“Dinner is served,” said Meredith with quick relief. “The war is over. Genitalism prevails.”
“Shall we talk of publishing?” asked Lillian.
“No!” the group exclaimed.
6.
The amount of food he had consumed at the Lazlos’ was impressive. He hadn’t eaten as much in a week and had lost some needed pounds off his waist. Only his waist now seemed to fill back up. The cuisine was too spicy for his palate, but the oblongs of warm bread took care of his tongue when it felt on fire. Others noticed his appetite, too. He had requested seconds from the waiter. Perhaps this snobbed-up group thought he was a pig, not merely pigheaded. Penny wasn’t there to stop him from overdoing it. Hunched over, feeling his belt buckle with the tip of his belly—his shirt had come untucked—he thought of her cautions whenever they used to dine out. “Please, Alan. All I need is you passing out on the sofa from overeating.”
After dinner he excused himself. The far reaches of the apartment were now quiet and empty. He found the master bedroom and snuck into the Lazlos’ private bathroom. He had to urinate from all the liquor, and rather than lift up the toilet seat he pissed into the bidet. Maybe he was feeling a little jealous of Lazlo’s setup here. He washed his hands in one of the double sinks and toweled off. The towel he neatly placed back on the rack. In the bedroom he gravitated to their bureau. He opened a few drawers and found the one containing Meredith’s underwear. He riffled through her panties. The one he liked most, a black lace, he pressed up to his face and inhaled. Even though it was clean, there was a scent of her on it. He closed the drawer and placed the underwear in his jacket pocket, then went over to the bed, which was made up professionally. Knowing she always slept on the left side, Eastman sat down near the head of the king bed and opened the nightstand. There was a small, Oriental box, and inside he found a number of condoms. He had never used a condom with Meredith. Did she use condoms to fuck her husband? Beneath the condoms was a small vibrator. He twisted its base, which made it shudder in his hand. It fell on the bed and Eastman scrambled to shut it off and place it back in the small box with the condoms. Next, he took the phone on Meredith’s nightstand and brought it onto the bed next to him. He dialed his mother-in-law’s house.
“Hello,” Cathy answered.
“Cathy, it’s Alan.”
“She’s not here, Alan.”
Bingo, he thought. Friday evening. Penny was acting like a teenager. She was out on the town with this phantom fuck and it hadn’t even been a week since their separation.
“That’s not why I’m calling. Put the boys on the phone.”
Cathy called Lee, his oldest.
“Dad?” said Lee.
“How you hanging in there, champ?”
“Grandma has us watching The Girl with Something Extra instead of The Six Million Dollar Man.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s out.”
“With who?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said she was going out.”
“An
d you didn’t ask her where? Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
“Not lately.”
“Did she say what time she’d be back?”
“Grandma said she’d be back late.”
“Has she been out often?”
Lee didn’t answer, because either he didn’t know or he didn’t know how to respond. Eastman realized he was putting his son in an awkward position and let it go.
“All right, never mind,” he said. “How’s your brother?”
“He’s here. Toby! Pop’s on the phone!”
Lee dropped the phone and Toby came running to the line.
“Hi, Pop.” Toby’s voice was solemn. The boy had real empathy, whereas Lee, the oldest, was more physical, an athletic type. Lee was like Penny, independent, hardened. Toby, however, he needed to be mindful about. Like Eastman, he often got depressed.
“Toby, how you doing, kiddo?”
“Not so good, Dad. I wanna come home. Where you been?”
“I’ve been home, waiting for your mother to decide what she’s doing.”
“We’ve been calling the house. No one was there.”
“Well, now I’m out at dinner. I had meetings in the city all day. Listen, I just called to tell you I love you and I’ll see you tomorrow for sure. You need anything from the house? I’ll bring it on over.”
“Nah, I guess not.”
“What about your favorite pillow, you want that?”
“Nah, I guess not.”
“I’ll bring your pillow anyway. Listen, Toby, I want you to know that this stuff between your mother and me isn’t about you guys. We’re gonna figure this one out. Most likely you’ll be home in a few days and this will just be a distant memory. In two weeks you won’t even remember it. We’ll be going to see the ball games at Shea just like always.”
“What if we don’t come home?”
“What do you mean if you don’t come home? Listen to what I’m telling you. Am I ever wrong? You worry too much about the what-ifs. You’re like me. Lee, he’s like Mommy, but you . . . you’re different.” Eastman could hear Toby begin to sniffle, on the verge of tears. “When I was your age your granddad pulled the same thing your mom’s done. Granddad left home and I was left alone with your grandma. I felt really sorry and uncertain like it was my fault. Like it was something I had done. But your granddad, see, he just had a lot of problems. I told you about the gambling. The man couldn’t stay out of debt and we had bookies coming by the house even when he was out. You know what bookies are, right, Toby?”
Eastman Was Here Page 7
