Authors: David Gilbert
“My grandson?”
“Richard’s oldest.”
“Right, right,” he said. “The one that was sick.”
“I guess.”
“And Andy was invited to this?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. Eavesdropping had its limits.
Andrew stared into the distance, as if seeing all the way to the back of his head. A goddamn book party. Another young writer. The publishing world. “And at the Frick,” he muttered aloud. It seemed to me he was slipping away, which was certainly the case in retrospect. Sense had broken into too many parts too difficult to handle so he tightened his grip around the few small meanings that remained. “I need to go,” he said, the recoil bigger than the blast. “I need to go find him and bring him back. Get him away from there. Yes, yes, we need to go right now, Philip.”
I have no idea how
I
split into
we
, but he was eager, his face full of cajoling madness. All my life, or most of my life, I desired nothing more than this desperate invitation, but seeing him and feeling the way I did, I was past enchantment. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“It won’t take long.”
“I’m tired.”
“Please, Philip. As a favor to me.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m almost begging.”
I said my final conclusive no and immediately regretted the decision, but the letters on the floor pressed with greater force and I let Andrew turn and leave and curse whatever was left of my name. He sputtered down the stairs, socks sliding. Another drink and another pill and on went the Wellingtons and the overcoat and the wool bucket hat. In the elevator, he almost reversed course for gloves, but once outside was dismayed to find the city benignly cool. I must look like a twit, he thought, prepared to ford a stream rather than a narrow street. But he was on a mission, whether snow or rain or pleasantly mild, and he passed through those smokers and breathed in their sociable exile before heading up the stairs. A young woman greeted him as if he were confused.
“Hello,” she said gently.
“I’m just going in.”
“Are you on the list, sir?”
“List?”
“It’s a private party. You need to be on the list.”
“Am I on the list? That’s the question?”
“Yes,” she said.
“In my day no one wanted to be on a list.”
“But this is a good list.”
“The nice-not-the-naughty list?” Andrew asked.
“Exactly,” she said, smiling.
“Well then, Andrew Dyer.”
She found his name with the earlier check. “You seem to be already here.”
“Hence my presence,” he said.
The woman, and she was young and attractive, and he was feeling old and nasty, but he was once young and attractive, as evidenced by what was inside, and to be honest the difference puzzled him, as embarrassing
as that might seem, to be puzzled by aging, but back to the woman—she repeated his name and the relationship between name and face and literary occasion must have kicked in because she said, “You’re A. N. Dyer.”
“Yes,” he said.
They both felt foolish.
“I’m so sorry, please go right in.”
“Thank you.”
“I love your books, by the way.”
“And I think you’re doing tremendous work as well,” he told her. He was just trying to be clever, just giving her a taste of that old A. N. Dyer drollness, but he could see the injury the remark caused, his good intentions hiding a sharp stone. He continued in without checking his coat and immediately bumped into the mingling crowd, chattery and cheerful. It was hard to be in a hurry here. He envisioned a hundred small catastrophes of spilled drinks and apologies, sorry, excuse me, sorry, if he tried pushing through, overdressed in outerwear. He must resemble a senile farmer searching for his dog, and he was tempted to start calling for Smudge. The absurdity of this image gave him some armor, as everyone within elbow spar seemed to be from the same self-satisfied congregation, a particular brand of New York Calvinism that had strong opinions about predestination and free will, their existence justified by their own success, and while there were similarities with the ghosts of his era, the fundamental fervor burned more intense.
Where the hell was Andy?
Some lesbian offered him a tray of unidentifiable snack and then had the gall to explain said unidentifiable snack with a level of detail that bordered on the perverse. This scene replayed itself four times in five minutes, and there came a moment where Andrew wondered if active pursuit was involved. He waved away all offers until asking the last server if she had seen a dog.
“What’s that?”
“My dog. He’s lost.”
“No, this is a green-market pizzetta topped with upstate micro-farmed vegetables and Old Chatham Camembert cheese drizzled with truffle oil and smoked salt.”
“A shame. My dog would have loved that.”
But Andrew did accept the white wine, which was too sweet and too warm. Arms raised, he waded through a narrow fracture into the Living Hall. Museums, the movies, the theater, when did these institutions become a form of air travel? The Frick used to be one of his favorites. The old director would let him wander around when the collection was closed. “You’re our official writer in residence,” he told him, and he presented Andrew with a laminated card. See, Andrew thought, I once did have friends. The most breathable air circulated near the walls, and Andrew recognized More and Cromwell, Jerome and Aretino. They all looked the same, More particularly well preserved in his fur and velvet, as was the Man in the Red Cap. They whispered to Andrew that paint was finer than flesh. He wandered deeper into the rooms. Nobody noticed him beyond his Magritte-like incongruity, which was magnified by his desire to have a rest in one of those
THIS IS NOT A CHAIR
chairs. In the next room, he gave a nod to Lady Peel and Lady Skipwith, inspirations for Samantha Peel and Valerie Skipwith in
I Saw Her, Waving
. The sight of Lady Hamilton as Nature clutching her spaniel saddened him—my missing dog, he thought, forever lost in art. The truth is, a number of paintings in the Frick show up in A. N. Dyer’s fiction and perhaps being in their midst helps explain what happened next.
It started with an overheard snippet:
I told her, maybe because I was feeling soft from all our kissing, more stuck together than actual kissing, three minutes without a decent breath and I was chafed and recovering from the mugging, and she was saying how nice this was, the kissing, over and over again, how nice, her arm draped over my shoulder yet lacking any actual weight, just an impersonation of touch, but really, Penny was all right and pretty in a big-nosed way and her chest was there for the sacking, still all that talk of niceness made me want to push her to the ground
.
Andrew turned and caught sight of the source not ten feet away. He was in horn-rimmed glasses and a suit with thin lapels and a bowtie gabbing with two women. There was a recognizable insouciance about
him, in his easy if unreliable smile, in the sleepy shagginess, which enhanced his aura. Andrew stared at him, moving closer without moving, part push, part pull.
But instead
,
he continued,
I told her about throwing that baseball at Bobby Hinkler during practice, I told her how I thought he was looking but he wasn’t—he was looking at a bird, I think—and I didn’t have time to yell and the ball smacked him right in the face. I threw it pretty hard too, more pitch than toss. I didn’t tell her that. And maybe I did know about his interest in migrating birds. But anyway, he fellumphed to the ground, and I smiled. I definitely told her how my first reaction was a smile, because it was funny, Bobby Hinkler falling flat on his back, though I caught my smile in my mitt and ran over. He seemed dead to the world. A crowd quickly gathered. I started to shake with laughter and everyone guessed I was upset, even poor Bobby Hinkler, who was now sitting up and wiping blood from his nose, and I said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, through the webbing, I’m so sorry, trying to break my unsettling glee. Even the coaches were concerned with my well-being. They thought I was wracked. I told Penny it was my biggest, most secret shame. Afterwards, I think she expected my hands to slowly travel to the upper decks, but I surprised her by sliding them home
.
It was Edgar Mead straight from chapter 18. Even in his muddled state Andrew knew this was too fantastic to be true, that there must be a good explanation, perhaps within the mixture of pills and alcohol, the overexertion, the long nights rewriting, the possible guilt and the goddamn gout. The last week had been fraught and he was likely hallucinating. Would any other characters drop in? All in all, he was amazed by the magic of his imagination, however delirious, and with curiosity he watched Edgar Mead beaver his teeth at this stand of long-legged women. What would he do next? Possibly something from chapter 23? Instead he spotted someone in the crowd and he went and dragged him over.
Andrew’s gut reversed course.
It was Andy.
“Have you met my new best pal?” Edgar asked the swaying trees.
Before Andrew even considered the consequences, he rushed forward, moving as though properly dressed and every step was a slog through mud and rain. By the time he reached them he was soaked.
“Don’t you touch him,” he said, finger raised.
“Dad?” from a mortified Andy.
“You hear me?”
“Dad!”
Edgar Mead triangled his hands in front of his chest, like he had recently vacationed in the Ramayana. “I just want to say what an absolute thrill it is to meet you, Mr. Dyer.” He gave a shallow bow. “I’m a tremendous admirer.”
“Not another word from you,” Andrew said.
“Dad, stop!”
Edgar played hurt in typical Edgar Mead fashion. “I honestly hope I haven’t offended you. Because I know how annoying it is when strangers think they know you just because of your work. I feel that.”
“You’re not even real,” Andrew said.
“Dad, please.”
Edgar nodded. “I get it. Sometimes I wonder myself.”
“You have to leave me alone,” Andy pleaded.
“Am I just a product?” Edgar continued. “A faceless face?”
“I’m doing this for you, saving you from him,” Andrew said to Andy.
“From him? I’m having like the best time in my life.”
“I get it, the whole disdain for celebrity thing,” Edgar said.
“I want you to be different,” Andrew said to Andy, “a different person, the absolute opposite of me.”
“That’s not something you have to worry about.”
“But I do worry.”
“Trust me, I’m nothing like you.”
“That’s the problem. You’re exactly like me.”
Andy curled his hands into fists and seemed to pound on a willfully locked door. “Just shut up,” he said. “Shut up and leave me alone. Please, Dad. People are starting to stare. Just for now, go home and we can talk in the morning.”
“Or stay.” Edgar suppressed a yawn. “We can have a drink. No hard feelings on my part.”
“Please, Dad.”
“I bet you’re a scotch man,” Edgar said.
Andrew removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His skin clung to his clothes, and this compounded his sense of claustrophobia and introduced an element of vertigo. He needed something to hold. Whatever was in control of him was starting to abandon ship, jumping from a great height into a cold, dark sea. Basic function began to splash about and he thought, I might need help. Andy refused to look at him, while Edgar Mead maintained a freakish eye grip. Could a fictional character take him home? Reality, already taking on water, capsized even further when he saw Jamie approach, all beaten up, and Richard right behind him, along with his teenage grandson—Emile? Abbott?—and that girl who was friends with Andy, all of them appearing as if summoned. For a moment he wondered what he might conjure next.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Richard asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I got hit in the face,” Jamie said. “About time, huh?”
“Andy and I were just going home.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Andy told Richard and Jamie.
“Nobody is going home,” Edgar Mead pronounced. “It’s early still.”
“Does everybody see him,” Andrew asked, “or am I the only one?”
“Have the two of you met?” Richard asked.
“I already know him.”
“Don’t believe what you read in the tabloids,” Edgar said.
“Hence, horrible shadow!” Andrew nearly shouted. “Unreal mockery, hence!”
Jamie and Richard queered their eyes.
“That’s from
Macbeth
, right?” Edgar said. “ ‘You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder.’ ”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Andy said.
“You okay, Dad?” from Jamie.
Edgar was beaming. “When I was seven I played Macduff’s son in La Jolla.”
This bit of backstory Andrew was unaware of. He noticed Andy slinking toward the corner with his grandson, Dermot? “Andy, wait,” Andrew called, his mouth starting to percolate something more sinister than saliva.
“Just let him go, Dad,” Richard said.
“But—”
“They’re having a nice time.”
Edgar Mead put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder and molded his expression toward the beatific. “He’s a good kid. I imagine him someday walking with a limp, which will suit him, the way he’ll scrape the ground with his injured iamb.” This initially threw Andrew until he realized it was from the end of
Ampersand
. “Oh, man,” Edgar went on, now in his own words, “everyone is just stoked by the chance of transposing this book onto film. With your blessing, of course. And with Richard doing the screenplay. Maybe we could get Jamie in on it too. A family affair. And with Rainer Krebs producing—where is Rainer? He’s somewhere around. Anyone? You’ll love Rainer.”
Andrew grimaced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, the saliva situation turning every swallow into a sour meal.
“We can talk about this later,” Richard told him.
Andrew swallowed again. “Strange things are in my head.”
“You really are a
Macbeth
fan, aren’t you?” from Edgar.
“Dad, you okay?” Jamie asked louder.