Authors: David Gilbert
“I’m joking. Go and have a good time with Andy.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“I’m sure. Just be back by, how does eleven sound?”
“Sounds good.”
“And don’t do anything stupid. Stupid can happen easily in this city.”
“I won’t.”
“You have money?”
“Forty dollars.”
Richard reached into his wallet and counted out sixty. This kind of generosity was not his habit. He wanted his children to appreciate their role as earners with chores and jobs, unlike his own upbringing, where he had a no-strings-attached allowance, his mother tossing him cash whenever he asked, even giving him a credit card in high school, just in case, those cases often involving dinners for him and his friends so Richard could pay by credit and collect their share and then go buy weed or blow. But Richard was determined that his children should avoid his path, that they should in fact wipe his path clean. But today he handed over the money. Maybe it was the Carlyle and its blithe wealth, or maybe it was a desire to see the boy’s smile, an affecting piece of sleight of hand.
“Wow, thanks,” Emmett said.
“Call me on your phone if you need anything.”
“Yeah, okay.” And before Richard could pardon the lie, Emmett came clean. “I sort of left my phone back in L.A. Probably stupid of me, definitely stupid, but I wanted electronic silence while here, New York without any L.A.”
Richard nodded in total, if compromised, agreement. “I get that,” he said, Emmett’s phone giving consequence to his pocket, like a clapper to a bell. He could have handed it over right then and explained how he saw it in the car and assumed it was left behind by mistake, but the date on that particular explanation had gone past due, and perhaps more problematic, Richard liked receiving those vibrations from the faraway land of his son.
“I’m not looking forward to the emails and texts when I get back,” Emmett said.
“A lot, huh?”
Emmett stared at the ground. “I hate to imagine.”
“Girls?” Richard asked, instantly feeling like a foolish television father.
“A few probably.”
“I always liked Emma,” Richard pushed.
“She’s okay. Kind of young.”
“Isn’t she your age?”
“She’s just young. Her sweetness makes me want to act like a jerk.”
“Yeah?”
“And so then I feel like a jerk.”
“You’re my son all right.”
“Shut up, Dad.”
“Okay,” Richard said. “You can always call me on a pay phone or use Andy’s.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And do me a favor and give me a tap when you get back to the hotel.”
“Will do.”
“Eleven.”
“Got it.”
“Eleven-thirty at the latest.”
“Sure.” Emmett turned to go but then stopped. “I just finished
Ampersand
,” he said.
“Yeah. And what’d you think?”
“Not a masterpiece, but still great. The ending surprised me.”
“I haven’t read it in a long time,” Richard said.
“I knew it was heading toward a dark place, but the way he twists the reader into being an accomplice, like you’re the voice in Edgar Mead’s head, that was pretty cool, like the reader affects what’s being read, kind of a Schrödinger’s cat-and-mouse game.”
“Like I said, it’s been a while,” Richard said.
“Why do you hate him so much?”
Richard touched his chest as if accused. “I don’t know that I hate him, I mean, I hated him when I was younger. He was a …” The right word seemed impossible. “Look, neither one of us was suited to the relationship. I would have hated any father, even the world’s greatest,
and he did his thing to the exclusion of everything else, which is probably why he’s such a great writer. The only time I ever had that kind of focus was with drugs.” This was what Richard wished he had said as he thought about this conversation later in his head, and weeks later, still thinking back, he would remove the drug reference and put in something about fatherhood. “Unlike him I’m happiest as a dad.” Yes, that seemed perfect. But in reality Richard said, “We’re just different.”
“Oh.”
“Very different,” like this clarified his position.
“Oh.”
“Two very different people,” the final absolute clarification.
“Oh,” Emmett said.
“You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
They both stood there, or Emmett stood and Richard sat, a pause opening onto a longer silence that grew in length and pulled at whatever briefly connected them, an uncomfortable force not rendered until goodbye.
It was 5:15
P.M
.
Richard signed his room number to the insanely large check and wandered down to the lobby. Its slick black and white interior, its expanse of marble, begged for a Fred Astaire number. God knows the yearly budget on shine. People, mostly foreign, wandered in from the street with their afternoon purchases, the bags held aloft like they were crossing a finish line. It was also cocktail hour, so while the elevators carried the weary shoppers up, they also brought down the newly refreshed, their fog wiped clean. With nothing pressing and feeling conspicuously without purpose, Richard began to spot small housekeeping duties, like the lampshade that was crooked and the flower petals that had dropped on the table. There was a stubborn stain on one of the upholstered chairs. Richard often controlled his annoyance by cleaning things up. A joke around their house was that a screaming match with Dad often resulted in a reorganization of all the DVDs. But here Richard limited himself to straightening the lampshade near the fireplace. The gas fire briefly fooled him since the wood was strikingly
real, right down to the embers. He imagined a forest of flame-retardant trees. In his jacket pocket was a small notepad for jotting things down, and he ripped out a page—
an office building in New York put under quarantine forever, the workers making a new life of this world
—and balled it up and was getting ready to feed it to the fire, to feed the whole notepad, page by page, into the fire, when Richard heard a voice nearby,
You can never really know something
.
He turned and saw Eric Harke staring at him, hair tight along the sides, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a dark suit with a bow tie. Before Richard could say anything, Eric squinted with self-engrossed schoolboy charm and continued:
My father was a bona fide war hero. He saved lives. He won medals. He got shot. Twice. He died eleven years after my Shearing graduation and a mess of unknown soldiers showed up at the funeral and gripped my hand like a handshake was an essential part of American industry. “A great man,” they told me. How could I answer but yes? This great man who hustled insurance and never made a decent dime, not like the silver dollar dads of my classmates. I’m sure all those stooped GIs carried full policies, even flood. I think my dad wanted me to look at him the way those men looked at his coffin, with brief but undying love, like a drop of dye that colors an entire glass. But I wasn’t in his war. When I was suspended from school he picked me up, a terrible expense coming all the way from San Francisco. In my room he grabbed my suitcase with a point of showing its lightness, either as a reflection of his strength or of my emptiness, I’m not sure. The man was hardly wider than his hat yet stood like the Lone Ranger. In the hallway all the doors were closed, pencils scrabbling math problems or dissecting lines from Tintern Abbey, but I knew ears were listening near the seams. I played up my footsteps and gave them my best Alec Guinness in
Kwai.
To the oven indeed. My father walked a few paces ahead and with clumsy effort unjammed the always jammed red door. I could see past him, to the quad lit by the moon and the desk lamps of studying boys. All was quiet for a second longer
until all was quiet no longer. The fire alarm sounded. Its endless echo pulled us forwards and backwards as doors opened and heads turned in speculation. All of those boys, my father included, none of them saw a goddamn thing
.
Eric broke character and grinned. It was obvious he was accustomed to being happily seen. “Tell me I am not Edgar Mead.”
“You’re late,” Richard said.
“That’s being generous. Try really fucking absurdly late. I did get here almost on time but I suffer from poor vestibular function, and I needed some space to settle my head so I got a suite here, and the attacks always drain me so I ordered room service for some protein and my iPhone’s dead and I don’t have your info on my Droid so I couldn’t get in touch.”
“You could’ve called the restaurant.”
“You know what, I didn’t think of that.” His pupils bled like a felt-tipped pen pressed too long on paper. “I try to do these everyday human-function things all by myself but maybe I’m incapable. Just call the fucking restaurant. Ridiculous.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Richard said.
“No, it’s ridiculous. I get all excited about something—look, I got dressed up, got a haircut, I mean I really got into it, you know, and then I start getting all neurotic and self-conscious and vestibular and I drop the fucking ball. It’s a hell of a way to impress somebody. And I’m glad you’re calling me on it, Richard. Not many people do.”
“You’re just late, that’s all,” Richard said.
As they talked, Eric Harke, the famous actor, started to take magnetic shape, rearranging the compass of the lobby. People came up with reasons to loiter. Checking phones. Inspecting guidebooks. Falling into deep conversation as if whatever they said Had To Be Said Right There. A few bolder ones inched closer as if climbing a fraying rope. All of this residual attention squeezed Richard and reminded him of those enjoyable moments in thrillers when the veteran agent realizes the room is a trap. Even the concierge seemed to be playing along, leaving his station and marching toward them like he had a
pistol in his pocket. “Looks like we have company,” Richard said to Eric.
“Excuse me,
Mr. Mead
?” from the concierge.
“Yeah?”
“Your car has arrived.”
“Okay, great.”
“And
Mr. Mead
, the doorman has informed me of photographers outside.”
Eric wiped his mouth. “Shit.”
“At both entrances, I’m told.”
“Any other option?”
“Unfortunately, they know all the other options.” The concierge spoke with extra formality, perhaps thinking his character should be MI6. “We could try a decoy.”
Richard nearly laughed. “Really? The Carlyle provides a decoy service?”
“We get some boys from the kitchen.”
“And dress them up?”
“To a degree. Not saying it’s perfect.”
A woman near reception brazenly lifted her phone to take a picture.
“Dammit,” Eric Harke said, turning his back like the situation was getting hot, too hot. “I’ve got to get out of here. The longer I wait, the worse it’ll get.”
The concierge suggested an overcoat, or an umbrella, or maybe Mr. Roomer over there, gesturing toward an oversized slab of beef who stood near the entrance. “He’s part of our security team. Very capable in these situations. That ring on his finger is from Super Bowl XXXI.”
“Or you could just wave and leave?” Richard suggested.
Eric Harke placed his hands on the mantel and lowered his head, Kennedyesque. “I can’t get photographed,” he said. “It might sound stupid since my picture’s been taken at least a hundred times today. What’s a few dozen more, huh? Just smile. But I’m done. I’ve reached my fill. Those natives in Fiji, or wherever they’re from, they were right about it taking away your soul, but it happens slowly, like a chisel.” Eric turned his marmoreal head. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Super Bowl.”
The plan was for Mr. Roomer—“Pleasure to meet you,
Mr. Mead
”—to use his old offensive-lineman skills and peacock his three-hundred-pound frame into a shield, and Eric would hang on to the big man’s overcoat and press his mug against the wool and rush into the waiting car. A celebrity sneak. Richard was unsure how he figured into the scheme, but somewhere in the discussion it was decided that he would join
Mr. Mead
—how they loved calling him
Mr. Mead
—in the car. Why not? He had nothing else going on tonight. On the count of three the doors of the Carlyle sprang open and Roomer cut a path toward the waiting car with Harke holding on and Richard covering the rear. Flashes lit like mortars. Voices yelled for
Eric! Hey Eric! Just one, Eric! C’mon, Eric! Fuck you, Eric!
Roomer slid into the back, then Harke, then—Richard saw Emmett leaning against the building, waiting for Andy. Richard waved, but Emmett didn’t see him. A few pedestrians waved back, though, seemingly thrilled.
“C’mon!” Eric yelled.
In jumped Richard and the car sped away, stopping at the light.
Some of the paparazzi pursued.
A scooter pulled up and
snap-snap-snapped
.
Eric went near horizontal. “I appreciate the help, Roomer, but unless you’re holding narcotic or know someone holding narcotic, I suggest you roll out before we go green.” Eric handed him three bills, all hundreds.
“I can’t help you there,
Mr. Mead
. Enjoy your stay at the Carlyle.”
Roomer opened the door, blindsiding a photographer’s knee.
The light changed.
“Where we going?” from the anxious driver.
“Just do whatever fancy jujitsu driving you specialize in.”
The driver—“Yes sir!”—obliged but the traffic was heavy and it took nearly a half hour for him to lose the scooter, the scooter lampooning the concept of chase, pulling up alongside at every red light and giving them a wave. “Just one shot, Eric, please.” Finally, either from boredom or other prey, he abandoned them with a playful
beep-beep
.
“Fucking scooters,” Eric Harke said. Sweat collected along the
ridges of his face, which he wiped away with extreme discomfort, and Richard thought of another scene from a thriller, where the hero tugs the skin around his neck and peels away the latex mask, revealing, well, in this case, an obviously coked-up young man. The particular humidity, the nictitating eyes, the sniffing about for deposits of binge-bundled snot, were all very recognizable. Words no longer tried to pollinate but tumbled into groans, gurgles, sighs, and his breathing was too loud, right, you could hear that, the heavy nose-breathing, which was way too loud—Eric suddenly held his breath as if all that noise was on the verge of capturing him. Yes, Richard knew this movie well.