Guy Novel

by Michael Ryan

  And sent it. It worked fine. But not Angela’s. I couldn’t reply to it.

  I tried to breathe and calm down a la Mr. Hanh. Where was I now? Same place as before? Angela was somewhere in the world but I didn’t know where. At least she was still alive—as of yesterday, Thursday, the day she sent her e-mail. And she still loved me. But again I couldn’t tell if she was saying hello or good-bye, or if I’d ever hear from her again.

  What could I do? Same answer as before: call Sheed, so he can blow more smoke up my ass. But at least it was smoke and not nothing, and that was my only other option: nothing.

  I dialed his number and to my surprise he answered himself.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wilder.”

  “I got an e-mail from Angela,” I said.

  “I know. I read it.”

  “She sent it to you?” I asked, appalled.

  “All her e-mails go through our office. But nobody else can read them.”

  “That’s comforting,” I said. “This one was a little personal.”

  “I wouldn’t take it too seriously if I were you. I’ve seen this before, Mr. Wilder. It’s built into the job description. You can’t imagine what sort of pressure Angela has been under for a very long time, and, as remarkable as she is, she has clearly snapped, at least temporarily. She needs a vacation and she’s probably taking one, compliments of the Sultan of Brunei.”

  “She’s not in Afghanistan?”

  “Not now anyway. She couldn’t send an e-mail from Afghanistan.”

  “So she’s safe.”

  “Let me be honest with you, Mr. Wilder. I know where she is. And when you deliver the nondisclosure agreement I’ll tell you.”

  “You’ve lied to me at least twice, Mr. Sheed. Why should I believe you?”

  “Did you ever hear of tribal ethics, Mr. Wilder? Anyone outside the tribe is not told the truth unless his interests are the same as the tribe’s. Our interests—yours and mine—have not always been the same. There’s nothing personal in this at all.”

  “Are they the same now? Why would you tell me where Angela is, if in fact you really know where she is?”

  “Because she will tell you she’s finished with you.”

  “You seem to be pretty sure of that.”

  “I’ve been working closely with Angela for ten years. I know her better than she knows herself.”

  “That’s quite a claim, Mr. Sheed. It may be the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.”

  “I look forward to seeing you in my office, Mr. Wilder,” he answered, and hung up.

  Now what? Call Don? Check my e-mail again? Check my e-mail again.

  Sure enough, another message from Angela (Subject: Your Secret Little Theory):

  The night before I was to leave for boarding school my father came into my bedroom. This was an Episcopal priest, a man of God. He was groomed to be a Bishop and ended up as pastor at Our Lady of Malibu church. Our Lady of Malibu, who’s that? Michelle Pfeiffer? He was completely out of his mind. He came into my bedroom, and sat down on the edge of my bed and said he had to tell me a story. This was the story:

  God and The Devil play bones for souls God lets the Devil win a few so he’ll let all the other souls alone and the Devil’s souls are always trying to crawl over to God’s side but the Devil has a thick rubber rope tied around their ankles and sometimes he lets them get almost to God’s side sometimes less than a tenth of an inch away before he snaps them back and no matter what they do or how they try, their souls belong to the Devil until he gets bored with them, or the game, or both, and crushes them one by one like black ants under his thumb.

  Then my father said, “I belong to the Devil. So does your mother. Get away from us, Angela, and stay away.” He got up and left and was nowhere to be found the next day when I went to the airport.

  I was thirteen years old. I loved my parents totally. They were so good to me until they stopped loving each other. That was the one thing they couldn’t do for me. Love each other anymore. I’d hear them fight upstairs, never in my presence, but I’d sneak up and listen outside their door. I heard every horrible word they said to each other, brutal brutal things. They didn’t catch me doing it until I was thirteen, which is when they decided to send me away to Lucerne. I still didn’t want to go. It was awful. I cried and cried. You know I haven’t cried since? Even when they killed themselves. My life since then has been one big Fuck It. It looks like super achiever but it’s really Fuck It.

  Your secret little theory about me is right on the money. I’m a psychoanalytic cliché.

  I can’t do this to you. No one is allowed to burden anyone else with the way I would love you. It’s not going to happen. I don’t care how much I fucking love you. It’s killing me.

  I thought, Angela has snapped. Sheed was right. Then I realized he was the one who planted that reaction in my head. Then I thought he wrote the e-mail himself—if he could read her e-mails maybe he could write them too. It was only after those thoughts that I noticed that this e-mail was sent from a different address: hijabpee@hotmail.com. And I could reply to it.

  Dear Angela,

  What happened to you should never happen to a child. Thank you for telling me about it. I’ll never forget it.

  Hurting each other is unavoidable. We’re human and inconstant. You are beyond wonderful to me, but you’re still a human being. And so am I. Devotion is a practice, not a perfect static condition. My vow to you stands: I will devote myself to you. I will try to love you in everything I say and do with you. Even if I fail sometimes, I will try. Please tell me where you are. I want to marry you and be with you forever.

  I love you,

  Robert

  No jokes. Not one. I hit the Send button and off it went into the ionosphere to I didn’t know where—except probably Sheed’s computer. Or maybe not. It was disturbing to say the least that my most intimate feelings about Angela and hers about me were being monitored and gauged and analyzed for how they could be manipulated. Or even changed entirely. The response she got from me could say, “Fuck you. Don’t ever contact me again.”

  My whole life seemed on the line now, and—more importantly—so did Angela’s. It made me surprisingly happy that this was my response: that she was more important to me than me. It was the first time in my life I felt that someone else mattered more than I do.

  I got into my car and drove straight to Sheed’s.

  24.

  “Buenos días, señor,” my favorite valet said as I stepped from the Z and handed him the ignition key. “Mr. Sheed’s doing big business for us today. Miss Chase was just here too.”

  “What? Where?” I asked.

  “Right there,” he said, pointing to a low steel-blue sedan with quadruple exhaust pipes, just pulling away then roaring off like a cruise missile. “She told me she was signing out, señor. That she wouldn’t be seeing me here again.”

  “Angela!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. My best Marlon Brando/Stanley Kowalski of all time. The people streaming in and out of the office building carrying their Louis Vuitton bags and briefcases all stopped and stared at me. It was as if I hit freeze frame. The whole world stopped. All my agony and desperation was in that scream. But Angela’s car kept going.

  I grabbed the key and jumped back into the Z and followed her car. I hadn’t actually seen Angela herself. Then I did. She had pulled over a block ahead of me and was standing outside her car, dressed in the elegant black suit she wore to the meeting with Clinton. Her power outfit. Her spectacular legs. Even in my distress, her beauty knocked me flat.

  I pulled up behind her and climbed out of the Z, but as I did she shouted, “Follow me, Robert,” and dove back into her car and roared off again.

  I had no idea what she was driving—some foreign turbo V-12 limited edition something—much less where. O for that missed unit of High Speed Evasive Maneuvers in high school driver’s ed. Her car made the Z look like an in-home scooter. She turned up Pico heading toward Santa Monic
a Airport. Off to Toonloonistan again? Or Paris, for another memorable meal at L’Excuse? She turned onto Twenty-Third then shot down an alley and right on Twenty-Fourth then right down the next alley and left onto Twenty-Third again—exactly the little jaunt we had taken to avoid the fictional Republican ninjas in their fictional Black Mercedeses. Then instead of entering the airport gate she performed a nifty u-turn and headed back where we came from.

  If she could be crazy, so could I. I started honking. And kept honking. Let’s step up the volume. Let’s get the police involved and spend the night together in city jail. In response to my honking, she slid back her moon roof and swung a red flag around her finger. Why not? I thought. Next we’ll have the crotchless Donald Duck outfit and Cuban cigar. Then I saw the red flag wasn’t a red flag. It was the butt-floss bottom of her Saudi bikini.

  People once used flag semaphores and smoke signals and all manner of inventions to communicate visually when they couldn’t hear each other. Angela’s message was loud and clear. By this time she had turned onto Ocean Avenue bordering the long skinny park fronting the Pacific where the homeless people bed down in clumps. She was leading me along the exact route we had driven to Santa Monica Airport from my apartment two weeks ago—only in reverse. She was taking me home. Again we hit all the lights green. I honked my joy and she honked back. She waved to me through the moon roof. She swung into the Santa Monica Canyon and into my driveway. I stopped behind her. My driveway was barely long enough for one car, much less two, so most of my Z was sticking out into the street. I didn’t care. We both got out of our cars and she ran into my arms, the mandatory shameless chick flick ending. Fine with me. She kissed me deeply and she kissed me tenderly and Private Wanky miraculously rose from the dead. After a week in the dark and lonely tomb, he stood proudly among us again. Based on this miracle we would found a new religion. It would be called Wankianity.

  “What is that rocket ship you’re driving?” I asked Angela when she allowed me to take a breath. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

  “Remnant of a former life,” she said. “I’m getting married.”

  “This is becoming an interesting day,” I said, trying to imitate her lopsided grin.

  “Let’s make it more interesting,” she replied, and took my hand and led me into my apartment.

  ON MAY 1, 2011, I called Angela’s cell phone from the studio, after I had finished filming yet another edgy pilot in which a stand-up comic plays himself. It had about as much chance of flying as I did if I stood on the cliff behind our house and flapped my arms. Angela was at the gym, on what she called her Sisyphean Stairmaster.

  “They got bin Laden,” I said, when she picked up.

  “Who’s he?” she asked.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re not interested.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Let me guess again: you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Been there, Robert. Done that. Got the T-shirt.”

  “You look great in T-shirts. I still think of that one you wore at Les Deux Magots.”

  “So are you picking up the kids?” she asked.

  “Which ones?”

  “Ours.”

  “All of them?” I asked.

  “Just the cute ones,” she answered.

  “You’re the cute one,” I said.

  “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

  “Someday you might tell me what it is.”

  “I’d rather show you, if you’re not doing anything before school lets out.”

  “You’re on.”

  “Oh yes, I am, my Proud Lion. Thanks to you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, my dear.”

  “Ours, Robert, my love,” Angela said, and what a music it was. “This pleasure is ours.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the Borchard Foundation for a fellowship and residency in Missilac, France, where I wrote the first draft of what turned out many years later to be this book. Thanks also: to Charles Baxter, Tina Bennett, Douglas Brayfield, Stuart Dybek, Ryan Harbage, Martin Shepard, and Chuck Verrill for their sharp, generous responses to earlier drafts; to John Skoyles for introducing me to The Permanent Press; to Judith Shepard and Barbara Anderson for their brilliant, meticulous editing; and to Doreen Gildroy for her insight, love, and patience while listening to more readings of these chapters than anyone should have to endure. Guy Novel is her book.