Maggie Darling

by James Howard Kunstler

  Maggie tried to comfort her over the line, inserting phrases between sobs like “poor thing” and “poor Lindy” and “there there.” She wished she could rock Lindy in her arms and felt that all her words were inadequate.

  “I thought I could handle it, but I can’t,” Lindy sobbed.

  “Get on the first plane out of there tomorrow morning,” Maggie said, as though she were giving directions to Nina for a catering job. “And I’ll be at Kennedy Airport to meet you.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you’d say that. Dear, dear Maggie!”

  “Where’s Buddy now?”

  “Who cares? The Sunset Marquis, for all I know, playing kiss the lizard with a valet parking attendant. I threw him out of the house the night he broke the news.” Lindy resumed weeping.

  “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right,” Maggie said.

  “Not if I have AIDS,” Lindy shrieked. “I’ll get covered with sores, okay, and my brain will turn to potato kugel, and I’ll go blind and deaf and have fungus growing out of my—”

  “Lindy! Lindy! Lindy! Darling! You’re going to be here with someone who loves you. That’s the only thing that matters. What time is it in L.A.? Nine o’clock? Start packing pronto. It’ll make you tired. Bring a lot of things for a long stay. Remember, it’s winter here. Call me as soon as you know your ETA.”

  “Maggie, you’re so … you’re the perfect friend,” Lindy said, sniffling now.

  “Funny,” Maggie said, “that’s what I always thought about you.”

  “I didn’t ask you a thing about your life. I’m such a self-involved piece of shit.”

  “Look, you’re the one who’s in a jam. You get the attention now. That’s how it works. Pack up, knock back a vodka, and get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  A chill slowly spread from her center down her arms and legs as she replaced the phone. Scrunching down under the fresh sheets and the wool blankets, she thought, How easily we are reassured, like little children waking from a nightmare. Mommy or Daddy need only be there, invincible, omniscient, eternal. With a stabbing sensation in her stomach, she remembered the very first moment she became aware of mortality. It was during that same childhood illness she’d remembered upon awakening and seeing the sunlight on the ceiling. “Will you die someday, Daddy?” she’d asked during one of the respites from her delirium.

  “Oh, that’s way, way off. Can’t see it from here.”

  “And Mommy too?”

  “Oh, maybe in a thousand years.”

  “And me?”

  “No, not you, honeybear. God made you special.”

  “Does that mean I don’t get to go to heaven?”

  “Y’see that’s just it, this is heaven. You’re already there. That’s the biggest secret of all. This world, and everything in it, was made just for you. Nothing can ever hurt you here.”

  “But I’m so sick, Daddy.”

  “Oh it’s just God’s way of making sure you’ll appreciate things more when you feel good. Now try and get some sleep.”

  Frank had switched off the lamp, whose base was a painted carousel horse he had carved himself. Maggie remembered feeling so sad when he left her in the dark because she knew she wasn’t that special, and even at eight years old, she knew what the darkness really meant.

  Part Three

  Multiple Incivilities

  1

  A Rake in His Lair

  The offices of Trice and Wanker, book publishers, occupied the former Vanderhorne mansion, an impressive Richardsonian heap of red sandstone, at Forty-seventh and Madison Avenue. Harold Hamish, Maggie Darling’s editor, could be found in the third-floor corner office, formerly the bedroom of Horace Vanderhorne (1832–1911), plutocrat, empire builder, and swindler. The large, elegant room was paneled with wainscoting plundered from a cardinal’s palace in Brugge, and Mr. Hamish used the very desk upon which old Horace had schemed to manipulate the stock of the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad to corner the gold market (causing the panic of 1869) and later to secure the vice presidency for his crony Chester A. Arthur in 1880.

  All the dark wood gave the room an air of masculine solidity, and Hamish himself seemed a perfect accessory there. He was dressed this morning in one of his trademark cashmere turtleneck sweaters, charcoal gray, under a herringbone tweed jacket, with taupe moleskin trousers and cordovan riding boots. He often wore boots to the office straight off his morning ride in Central Park, and the room smelled vaguely of horses. Hamish, sixty-one, combed his thinning silver and brown hair straight back. He disapproved of the baldy’s combover technique that other men his age favored. A very robust mustache—“a modified Nietzsche,” he called it—decorated his somewhat thin upper lip, and its points hung down like fangs, lending him a carnivorous look not inconsistent with his reputation in the literature business. It was said of Hal Hamish that he ate authors for breakfast, critics for lunch, and picked his teeth with poets, but like most folklore this was gross over-simplification. He only chewed up (and spit out) authors who failed him, either in volume of sales, diligence to their craft, or flaws of character like alcoholism. Critics, he often observed, were put on earth to be squashed like bugs. Poets—let’s be fair, he would say—should be pitied for pursuing a vocation that offered no hope of material rewards, though he published a few as a sop to the college professors.

  In Maggie Darling, on the other hand, Hamish had everything he could ask for: steady productivity and a motherlode of material, looks that middle-aged women (i.e., most book buyers) would sell their souls for, and a supernatural flair for promotion. He also admired her settled domestic life and he liked to quote Flaubert on the subject: “If you want to be a maniac in your writing, you must be regular in your habits.” That is why Maggie’s startling announcement of impending divorce rocked him like a body blow.

  Seated to the side of his desk in a wine-red leather club chair, wearing a handsome Ralph Lauren faux military tunic and a matching ankle-length navy skirt, Maggie related the salient details of the Laura Wilkie incident during the Christmas Eve extravaganza, including how she’d tossed Kenneth out after all the guests had gone. She omitted the part about Kenneth’s return Christmas morning and the sordid business that had ensued—it still confused and shamed her. Hamish listened attentively with his boots up on the desk—actually resting upon a manuscript of the latest novel by Nobel Prize winner Diego Sangay, peering intently over his tortoiseshell half-glasses in a doctorish way.

  He had always wanted to like Kenneth, without quite succeeding, though Hamish was reflective enough to consider that jealousy might be the obstacle. He admired Kenneth’s dedication to fitness, his taste in clothing, his ability to make enormous sums of money. It was not so easy, he learned, to get inside the fellow’s skull. They shared a proclivity for sports. Hamish leaned toward the blood variety involving guns, rods, and animals, while Kenneth favored activities that called for large and expensive pieces of equipment, for instance, yachting. One year, following the birth of Maggie’s second book (Feasts for All Occasions), Hamish had taken Kenneth trout fishing in the Catskills. Kenneth showed no skill with the rod. They had some lively, if superficial, conversation on the drive up, mostly on the subject of women. Yet Kenneth adroitly avoided tendering any intimate details of his life with Maggie. This frustrated Hamish. Hamish himself was full of juicy morsels about former wives, lady authors, lesbian celebrities, creamy editorial assistants, and select female personae from the performing arts. As they approached the Tappan Zee Bridge on the return, Kenneth fell silent and Hamish found himself nervously holding forth in a way that later embarrassed him. Finally, he could not decide whether Kenneth was just naturally reticent or if there was some central vacancy there. The upshot: they did not become boon companions.

  Yet even while this news from Maggie electrified him with its vague scent of personal opportunity, Hamish felt sorry for Kenneth Darling this bright winter morning. The way he saw it, Kenneth had just blown a great thing with the most desir
able woman in America.

  “Men are baboons,” Hamish declared solemnly while Maggie rifled her handbag for a Kleenex. “We pretend that there is a moral dimension to life and howl when someone violates our inflated sense of honor, yet there comes along the first little kitty cat and off we prance, our ensanguined organs foremost. Pardon the mixed metaphor.” Hamish sounded a bit like a middle-period Orson Welles this morning. “I have but one rule where women are concerned,” he added. “Don’t let the little head do the thinking for the big head.”

  Maggie managed a rueful little laugh through her tears.

  “You’re such a fraud, Hal” she said. “Why, before you even left Clarissa, you were running split sessions between ———”—Maggie cited a much-ballyhooed young authoress of a sensational first novel—“and ———”—she dandled the name of a sexually voracious, slightly over-the-hill movie actress then in New York doing a Broadway play— “and ———”—she dredged up a beautiful but foul-mouthed so-called performance artist, then composing her memoirs of the 1990s downtown art scene under Hamish’s tutelage.

  “I hadn’t thought of that minx in ages,” Hamish reacted, wincing theatrically. He appeared to take the recitation as a backhanded tribute to his virility. “Ye Gods, what a nightmare!”

  “Which one?”

  “The whole horrifying cavalcade, actually. How in hell do you remember all these tramps when I can barely remember what I had for breakfast?”

  “But you never eat breakfast.”

  “Maybe I should start. Probably improves the memory. If only Clarissa could have cooked the way you do, things might have turned out—uh, well. There are few secrets between us, aren’t there, Maggie?”

  “I’m grateful that you’re always there when I need you.”

  “I’d do anything to make you feel better.”

  “Take me to lunch at the Four Seasons.”

  “Done.”

  They walked the five blocks up Madison. A gray velvet sky gave the busy avenue the intimate feel of a low-ceilinged room. Along the way, an impressive number of pedestrians gawked at Maggie, apparently recognizing her from the books and videos, and one Junior Leaguish woman, a perfect stranger in a camel hair coat, pearl earrings, and a helmet of gleaming gold hair, actually accosted her by the arm and said, “Hi, Maggie. Love your balsamic duck. It’s become my main company dish.”

  Maggie was a bit startled by the attention and more surprised at the way it bolstered her spirits. The idea that fame held compensations had always seemed a little indecent to her. But the strange woman’s unalloyed good cheer made the world seem, at least temporarily, a better place. Meanwhile, Hamish beamed at Maggie’s side, as though he were walking the town’s most magnificent show dog up the avenue.

  2

  A Rumpus in the Grill Room

  At the restaurant, they settled into a banquette in the Grill Room. Familiar faces grinned or glowered in every corner: two former cabinet secretaries (state and commerce); a movie actor renowned for his durable good looks and short stature; his powerful agent; a TV network president; the playboy scion of an Italian automobile fortune; the prime minister of Denmark; a deputy mayor; and enough CEOs to fill an issue of Fortune magazine, not to mention several other book biz people of Hamish’s rank who were huddled with their best-selling authors. The room’s graceful geometry and restful lighting affected Maggie like a calming drug. She ordered shrimp and corn cakes with ginger cilantro sauce and a salad of julienned root vegetables. Hamish ordered the hearty ragout of venison with herbed polenta.

  “I want to tell you about my next book,” Maggie said as the waiter delivered their drinks—she, pale Madeira, he, a single-malt Scotch whisky, neat.

  “Your diligence amazes me,” Hamish said, “under the circumstances.”

  “I have a large establishment to run, and Kenneth will have his slimy lawyers pulling every string in the superior court to drag out even a temporary separation agreement. Besides, I have a point to prove. I want to carry on without him and his filthy lucre. Which brings me to the next point. Joyce is apt to ask for a shockingly large advance.”

  “I’d say the money boys at Trice and Wanker understand your value to the firm, both present and future,” Hamish said with a wink. “What’s the book idea?”

  Maggie smoothed the linen tablecloth. “Housekeeping,” she said.

  Hamish drew back in his seat, gazed ruminatively at a distant chandelier, glanced back at Maggie, sipped his whisky, and said, “Houskeeping?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You mean as in cleaning up the house.”

  “Cleaning, redecorating, refurbishing, yes.”

  Hamish fidgeted in his seat, glanced at various points on the ceiling, and pronounced, “It’s brilliant.” The photographic opportunities came to him now in a rush: Maggie on tiptoes with a feather duster, Maggie hanging wallpaper, Maggie somewhat dishabille, on all fours, scrubbing pine planks with a wire brush, the deep cleft between her freckled full breasts exposed by the camera … He knocked back the rest of his drink in one gulp and sucked air in noisily over his teeth. “Clarissa was a bust in the housekeeping department,” he remarked when the whisky fumes cleared his windpipe. “Couldn’t make a bed to save her life. Wouldn’t have known the front end of a vacuum cleaner from the ass end of a hair dryer.”

  Maggie had always wondered why they’d never been invited to Hamish’s apartment during the Clarissa years. The four of them would meet for dinner in the city, of course, but always in restaurants.

  “My boy Hooper found himself a girl who has no idea how to set a table,” she said. “It’s remarkable. I believe a lot of modern women are absolutely lost when it comes to the fundamentals. Even some of the bright ones—”

  “Madame,” a waiter announced, cradling a bottle of Perrier-Jouët, two flutes, and an ice bucket. “From the gentleman behind you.” Maggie turned 180 degrees to see Frederick Swann at a table not ten yards away, the singer’s lean, earnest, smiling face enveloped in its nimbus of golden Renaissance curls. He was seated with Earl Wise, chief of Odeon Records, the Hungarian film director Franz Tesla (Last Train to Graz, This Rotten Earth), and two young women of actressy demeanor. As Maggie’s eyes met his, Swann made a little writing gesture in the air, as though he were wielding a pen. “Ahem. Madame?” the waiter said and proffered a folded message:

  My Dear Ms. Darling,

  Never have I passed a Christmas Eve more agreeable than the gala in your lovely country home. You are a goddess. I shall be recording here in New York the next several months. Might we manage to meet discreetly so that I can admire you at leisure? I am at the Royalton, registered under the name Sir Humphrey Davy.

  Humbly,

  Swann

  Maggie visibly blanched as she read the note, then turned a palpable scarlet, swiveled again in her seat, smiled at Swann, and silently mouthed the words thank you. Swann smiled boyishly in return.

  “What was that all about?” Hamish inquired.

  “He had a good time at my party Christmas Eve.”

  “Let me see the note.”

  “No,” Maggie giggled, thrusting it inside her tunic.

  “It’s a mash note, isn’t it.”

  “Not at all. It’s a thank you.”

  “No secrets, Maggie,” Hamish said. Though waggling a finger at her in a kidding way, he was plainly unamused.

  “Getting back to housekeeping—”

  “Don’t make a fool of yourself with that young man. You could be his mother.”

  “What a sweet thing to say.”

  “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “You’re jealous!”

  “You’re damn right I am,” Hamish said, refilling his champagne glass. “He’s got more hair than I do. And the sonofabitch will still be prancing around up here in the fresh air thirty years from now when I’m in the bone orchard pushing up daisies— What in the hell?”

  A commotion seemed to erupt around the captain’s stati
on near the restaurant’s entrance, harsh words foreign to this serene setting that had silenced the buzz of table conversation. A glass broke. All heads turned to see four figures in paramilitary drag and ski masks rush into the room. They carried automatic machine pistols low at their sides so the weapons were not immediately conspicuous. The quartet posted themselves at equal intervals around the large room with soldierlike precision. Once in position, the figure in the middle hoisted his gun overhead.

  “Yo! Can I have your attention please?” he said.

  As soon as he said that, of course, all the restaurant patrons exclaimed loudly.

  “Shut up! Of course this is a robbery. Listen carefully. Mens, put your wallets and your watches on the table please. If you got one of them plastic Casios, keep the motherfucker. Women, put your handbags and jewelry on the table. There will be no further instructions. Do it right and nobody gets hurt.”

  Three of the figures pulled nylon sacks out of their camouflage jumpsuits and began circulating from table to table, scooping up booty. Maggie carefully removed the rhinestone drops from her earlobes, though they were worth less than fifty dollars. These days, one didn’t dare wear real jewelry on the streets of New York. She was rifling her handbag when one of the robbers arrived at the table.

  “Just give it up lady,” he said, raking Hamish’s billfold and Rolex into his sack. “All of it.”

  “I’m keeping my car keys. They’re of no use to you.”

  “Who said?”

  “Look, it’s parked way down on Forty-third Street.”

  “What kind of wheels it is?”

  “Nineteen ninety-eight Ford Fiesta,” she lied.

  “What’s a nice lady like you drivin’ a piece of shit like that for?”

  “It was my husband’s idea.”