The Fortress of Solitude

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Nice,” I lied. At the table Zelmo still barked, his voice shockingly large. And he was master of the sudden conversational stop which demands tribute, his whole face and chest near to bursting with his readiness to resume once he’d been endorsed with a No kidding? or You devil, you!

  “Dinner and real conversation,” he said now. “Real life. That hotel is full of mummies. God love ’em.”

  Yes, and aren’t you the King of the Mummies? I wanted to ask. But I understood it was precisely Zelmo’s superiority to the gathering at the Marriott that our candlelit dinner was meant to authenticate.

  “Also, I knew Madame Cassini would appreciate the best Italian food in southern California.”

  Francesca, seated to Zelmo’s right, twinkled at the flattery. I was pretty sure her Italian heritage went not much deeper than knowing the difference between a Neapolitan slice and a Sicilian square in the pizzerias of outermost Brooklyn. But then I was pretty sure this wouldn’t be the best Italian food in southern California. Maybe in Anaheim.

  Zelmo’s costume and manner had initially disguised the fact that he was, like me, and like Jared Orthman, in his thirties. It was the second time in a long day I’d been forced to see that my dress and affect, contrasted with peers in other professions, was less that of a grown, employed man than of a gas-station attendant or homeless person. The scruffy credibility my gear signified in my native habitat was lost on the Jareds and Zelmos, my antique wire-frame glasses only suggesting I couldn’t afford contacts. Los Angeles held this lesson around every corner, I suspected. Berkeley, still in its dream bubble of the sixties, never did.

  The wine arrived, and Zelmo tasted it. “That’s the one,” he proclaimed. Then he confided in me specially: “You’ll love this.” Apparently the son wouldn’t be allowed to float in a funk through the meal. I required winning over.

  My father sat beside me, separated from Zelmo by Francesca. Inserted between Zelmo and myself sat Zelmo’s date, Leslie Cunningham. That Leslie in her gray suit perfectly resembled an actress playing a legal intern on a certain television show didn’t prevent Zelmo’s announcing that she actually was a legal intern, one who worked in Zelmo’s firm. At Bongiorno’s we were past irony’s county line. I didn’t trouble myself to wonder what nestled behind the trim tailoring; I refused to desire Zelmo’s woman. In Berkeley I wouldn’t have glanced at her, I told myself. She’d have been a bank teller, an office manager, just another style-deaf California blonde. I also didn’t trouble wondering what she was doing on Zelmo’s arm, figuring the best things in life are free, but, as well, you can leave that to the birds and bees.

  The women on either side of Zelmo bubbled along on his stream. My father sat in grave silence. I suppose we made two of a kind, only he’d earned his supper by two decades of service to the field. I was expected to at least act impressed and grateful. It was Abraham’s trademark, I’d learned at the panel, that he wouldn’t.

  The sommelier filled our glasses. I had mine to my lips when Zelmo said: “A toast.”

  “To you!” said Francesca. “Your generosity!”

  Zelmo shook his head. “I have a toast. When I invited Abe to be ForbiddenCon 7’s artist guest of honor, I could have hoped the man would be as wonderful as his work. He is. But how could I have known he’d bring along a beautiful, magical lady! Francesca and Abraham, your story touches me. To have found one another, so late in life.” Zelmo was nearly bellowing by the time he raised his glass to the table’s center. “To the human heart! ” Diners at other tables glanced to see what the matter was.

  We clinked, a plate of fried calamari was set down, and the celebrated couple fell to some low squabbling. Zelmo put his arm across Leslie Cunningham’s shoulders and leaned to face me. “So how was it growing up in the home of the great man?”

  I’m sure the look on my face was awful, and Zelmo said, “You don’t have to answer that. Abraham’s a tough bastard. That’s the only way anything gets done in this world. Too few people understand what toughness is. Nobody back at that hotel has any idea.” He laughed. “Leslie here doesn’t know why I bother running the convention year after year. She wouldn’t set foot in a place like that. Isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t like science fiction,” she obliged.

  “Well, I grew up loving it, honey. I didn’t discriminate. Star Wars, Star Trek, I loved it all. Abraham wouldn’t want to hear it, but it’s true. Later, I developed taste. That’s how it happens, Les—it develops, like film. And in the great men of the field I saw the same toughness that got me where I am. Only nobody pays your father six hundred thou a year—do they?”

  “No,” I agreed, just to kick him loose again.

  “I wanted to give something back. So I created ForbiddenCon. It’s my puppy. Seven years. You think I need this, dealing with the committee, those types? They hate me but they need me. A night like this is what makes it worthwhile.” He was still making certain I knew he mostly despised his puppy.

  “Why ForbiddenCon?” I asked.

  “You’ll find this hard to believe, but ours is the classiest of the conventions. Real talent goes begging at a majority of these things. Your father, he’d be pearls before swine.”

  “I mean why the name? What’s forbidden?”

  “It stands for things hidden, occult, revealed. The rare, the taboo, the seldom seen. Elusive or neglected wisdom. Acquired tastes, like caviar, or single-malt scotch.”

  “I see.”

  “Also it’s a reference to Forbidden Planet, the greatest science-fiction film bar none. Many people would catch that implication.”

  “Ah.”

  “I go all out. You think Fred Vundane has been to a convention in the last twenty years? He couldn’t afford the badge to get in, let alone the plane ticket. I had him flown out here, just for the privilege of Abe saying he never read the book.”

  “A painful moment,” I suggested.

  Zelmo waved his hand. “A man like your father should have whatever he wants.”

  I couldn’t disagree, but I wasn’t sure Vundane’s public shaming had been high on the list.

  “What do you do?” asked Leslie, leaping into the breach.

  Zelmo took charge of this, too. “Dylan’s a writer,” he said proudly. “A journalist.”

  “I write about music,” I said. “Lately I package collections for Remnant Records.”

  I gazed into Leslie’s blue, stupefied eyes. I wished to have met her in a singles bar on my last night on earth, not in this moronic conversation.

  “Remnant’s a reissue label. I put together collections on various themes, write the liner notes, stuff like that.”

  “Give us an example,” said Zelmo, gesturing with his wineglass munificently, as though if I said the right words he’d whip out his checkbook and bankroll something. Again I was pitching.

  “Well, The Falsetto Box is one you might have seen. It got some press. Four CDs of, you know, the history of falsetto soul—Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, Eddie Holman. And some unexpected stuff. Van Morrison. Prince.”

  “We missed that,” said Zelmo, speaking for Leslie. “What’s another one?”

  “Some of it’s pretty gimmicky,” I admitted. “Remnant has sort of a novelty slant. So, uh, one example is we did a disc called Your So-Called Friends —all the songs that have that phrase.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Leslie flatly.

  “It’s just a vernacular phrase that shows up in different lyrics— so-called friends. Like, you and your so-called friends. Elvis sings it in ‘High Heel Sneakers,’ Gladys Knight in ‘Come See About Me,’ Albert King in ‘Don’t Burn Down the Bridge,’ and so on. It’s like a meme, a word virus that carries a certain idea or emotion . . .” I trailed off, humiliated.

  Our entrées were set in front of us. “I’ll want to hear more about this,” Zelmo warned, wagging a finger at me.

  But the lawyer was too busy presiding over the women’s meals, and I slipped his bonds for the time being. Instead
I turned to my father, and over our twin plates of spaghetti and meatballs—had Abraham and I had the same instinct, to deflate the pomposity of Bongiorno’s list of specials with the downscale entrée?—we at last shared a moment of privacy.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

  “Sure. You?”

  He only raised his eyebrows. “Before I forget, this is something I wanted you to read.” He palmed me a triple-folded sheet from his inner jacket pocket and passed it to me covertly, at the level of the table. I unfolded it in my lap. It was a photocopy of a clipping from Artforum. “Epic Crawl: The Hidden Journey of an American Titan,” by Willard Amato. It began:

  What chance that the most dedicated abstract painter in the United States abandoned canvas in 1972? Or last showed in 1967, in a two-man show of figurative work which was barely reviewed? As likely that the most profound avant-garde filmmaker of our time would never receive a single screening in his native burg of New York, or that the last monumental modernist artifact should be eked out secretly, in an unnameable medium, through the long heyday of modernism’s toppling. Each of these improbabilities leads to the same place, an attic studio in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, where—

  “Read it later,” he begged. “Keep the copy, I’ve got others.”

  So the forgotten man, the nobody, wasn’t quite content to be. It wasn’t news that Abraham’s aspirations still burned, but the clipping was a surprise. I stuffed it into my pocket.

  “Tell me, how is Abby?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Too bad she couldn’t be along.” I suddenly saw our table in another light: two couples and a broken third. I had no idea where Abby was tonight.

  “She’s got school,” I said, hearing my own defensiveness, unable to stop it.

  Francesca overheard and announced, “I wish we could have seen her, Dylan. She’s such a sweet girl!” This drew Zelmo and Leslie’s attention. “She’s a black American,” Francesca explained, wide-eyed in sincerity. Francesca and Abby had met just once, when Abby and I passed through New York on our way to a music conference in Montreal. “You should meet her,” she gasped to Leslie. “Such lovely skin.” Francesca’s good intentions vaporized conversation. We were left seated at our pasta and veal like obedient soldiers.

  “Still in school?” said Zelmo at last, with pious sympathy: yes, my absent black girlfriend was underage too. Count a grown-up, employable blonde in the same category as bow ties, contact lenses, and wing tips: appurtenances Dylan Ebdus was not yet mature enough to brandish.

  “Graduate school,” I said. “She’s completing her dissertation.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Zelmo, turning it into a congratulation to Abby’s race that she should be in such a position. I understood it was impossible to squirm from beneath Zelmo’s patronage. Artists were his broken, defective flock, and he’d herd as many as he could into the safety of his care—a plate of meatballs and a ticket to ForbiddenCon. And black people were pretty much artists by definition.

  “Darling,” said Francesca to Abraham. “Tell him about his friend’s father.”

  “Eh?”

  “That poor man down the street, Abe. You said he’d want to know.”

  Abraham nodded. “Your old friend Mingus—you remember his father, Barry? Our neighbor?”

  Barrett Rude Junior, I corrected silently. Francesca’s logic was endearingly bare: Dylan has a liking for black Americans lead directly to That poor man down the street. I promised myself I’d be patient, though hearing Abraham begin so ploddingly made me want to scream. Our neighbor! Mr. Rogers has neighbors—we had a block. I merely grew up in that house, I wanted to say. I merely wrote the man’s biography in my liner note to the Distinctions’ box set. But the first I wouldn’t mention because Abraham would feel it as a rebuke. And the latter he didn’t know of, because I hadn’t mentioned it or sent him a copy.

  Barrett Rude Junior couldn’t be dead, I was certain of that. I’d have heard. Rolling Stone would have called on me to write the obit—my guess was they’d ask for about four hundred words.

  “His kidneys collapsed,” said Abraham simply. “Awful. They came in an ambulance. He was on a machine to keep him alive.”

  The subject was too remote, and perhaps too vivid, for Zelmo Swift. He threw another conversational gambit at Leslie and Francesca, and my father and I were left to ourselves.

  “He’d been alone in the place for weeks, basically dying there. Nobody on the street had any idea. He’s lived among us so long, but since the shooting, he’s very rarely out of the house.”

  Abraham and I had never discussed what he called the shooting, either in the two weeks of summer that remained before I decamped to Vermont for college, or after. Mingus and Barrett had left my name out of any conversations with the police. My presence in their house that day had been kept secret from anyone but themselves, so far as I knew.

  I recalled for the thousandth time those heaps of white powder— of course his kidneys collapsed. What had they been waiting for? I began writing those four hundred words in my head.

  “At that point a miracle occurred. Your friend Mingus was found. In a prison upstate. They got a court order, and he was released to a hospital, to give a kidney.”

  “What? ”

  “They made a special provision—Mingus was the only possible donor. He saved his father’s life by submitting to the operation. And was returned to prison.”

  I brought my wineglass up, a phantom toast, then sucked down what remained inside. Behind the glass my head was heating, and my throat tightening, so I nearly choked on the mouthful of Burgundy.

  “So, Mingus is back inside,” I said.

  “You thought he wasn’t?”

  “Last I knew, Arthur said he was out. But that was maybe ten years ago, more. I don’t know what I thought, honestly.”

  “Barry is a very sweet man,” said Francesca, leaning in, selecting her moment. “Very quiet. I think he’s awfully sad.”

  “You know him?” I managed. Why shouldn’t she? It all seemed equally likely now. A mist fogged my glasses.

  She nodded at Abraham. “Your father and I bring him food sometimes. Soup, chicken, whatever we’ve got extra. He doesn’t eat. Sometimes he just sits, out on the stoop. Sometimes he sits in the rain. The people on the block don’t know him. Nobody talks to him. Only your father.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, and tossed my napkin on my chair. I was able to reach the men’s toilet before I wept or vomited into my meatballs. I was unwilling to brandish this new misery of mine before the lawyer who appreciated single-malt scotch and Forbidden Planet. Let my tears remain occult, elusive, seldom seen, ineligible for display in Zelmo’s Museum of the Pathetic alongside R. Fred Vundane.

  He saved his father’s life by submitting to the operation. Every once in a while, every decade or so, I was forced to know that Dean Street still existed. That Mingus Rude wasn’t a person I’d only imagined into being. I took a minute to be shamed and then I pushed Mingus back to where he’d been, where he always was whether I bothered to contemplate him or not, among the millions of destroyed men who were not my brothers.

  Then I rinsed my glasses, blew my nose, and returned to the table, where through the latter courses I ignored my father and Francesca, though they were my only reason for being there. Instead I did my honest best to get potted on expensive cognac and to demolish Leslie Cunningham with my wit and charm, my roguish innuendo. I think I might even have made an impression on her, but it was all wasted on Zelmo Swift. I would have had to bend her over the table to dent his implacability.

  Zelmo took me aside as we rose from the table. My father had wandered off to the men’s room. “You’re staying for the film tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  “It means a lot to your dad.”

  It must be hard to strangle a man using a bow tie. That might be the reason for them. “I’ll try not to do anything embarrassing,” I said.

  Zelmo frowned as if
to suggest he hadn’t been worried, but now would reconsider. “What time is your flight?”

  “Right after.”

  “LAX?”

  “No, my flight’s out of Disneyland. Goofy Air.” The joke soured in my mouth; it was indebted to one of Abby’s, earlier this endless day.

  “Har har. I’ll drive you, if you’ll let me.”

  Maybe I’d had more to drink than I realized, but this confused me. “I can take a cab,” I said angrily.

  “Let me save you the fare. We can talk.”

  Then Francesca was beside me, whispering. “Go with him, Dylan.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Shhhh,” said Francesca.

  I lay on one of the Marriott’s twin doubles in my underwear and spun channels, watched crocodiles fucking and Lenny Kravitz. Twice I rolled over to the phone and punched in my number in Berkeley; twice I hung up on my own voice on the machine. I tried to focus my eyes on the Artforum photocopy.

  —Ebdus abjures the comparison to the Wittgenstein-like protagonist of Thomas Bernhard’s Correction , who labors for years in the forest constructing a mysterious, unseen “cone,” just as he rejects any conceptual or philosophical reduction of the essentially material, “painterly” nature of his exploration. All in Ebdus’s work proceeds from the purely physical nature of pigment on celluloid, and of light through the gate of a projector. A more fertile comparison might be made to the decades-long, meditative (not to say obsessive) journey of modernist composer Conlon Nancarrow, who during a blacklist-inspired exile in Mexico explored the unique compositional possibilities of the player piano, developing a unique and painstaking method of hand-punching the rolls which operate the mechanical keyboard. Two or three years of Nancarrow’s effort was required to produce a five- or ten-minute composition, a rate only marginally slower than that of Ebdus in his painted film . . .