Boys & Girls Together (66 page)

Besides, he had his book to think about.

Books, actually, for he had two in mind (both novels; short stories bored him; he was a big boy now) and was undecided which to conquer first. The one was a comic novel, savage, to be sure, biting and pertinent, a modern-day retelling of
Le Cid
by Corneille, in which the hero was an account executive in an advertising agency, the heroine a gym teacher at Brearley, the enemy J. Walter Thompson, who was trying to steal the Buick account. Aaron was confident that
Commentary
and the
Partisan Review
would justly hail him and that Mary McCarthy, Dwight MacDonald and Edmund Wilson (three little maids from school) would outdo each other in affixing superlatives alongside his name.

But would it sell?

A little highbrow acclaim was warming to the soul, but a little Harris tweed was warming to the body, and you couldn’t invade Brooks Brothers with clippings from the
Transatlantic Review
. Aaron wanted the clippings, sure, but he had been poor for a long time.

And
Autumn Wells
, he knew, would make him rich.

Autumn Wells
was a romance (women buy books) that Aaron had constructed during his last days in the Army, cribbed equally from
Rebecca
,
The Great Gatsby
and
Catcher in the Rye
. A slight but winning narrative, it concerned Autumn Wells (Aaron was genuinely proud of the name, easily the best since Thackeray’s Becky), a willowy creature, eerie, vague, troubled, passionate on occasion, and possessed of an altogether breath-catching beauty.

Undecided, torn between the twin clichés of wealth and fame, Aaron wandered the streets of Princeton the next few days, making up his mind. It was remarkable how the place had changed. The Army had deprived him of but six months, and yet the difference. His sexual blossoming was the key. Suddenly he knew such things. The man who ran the interior-decorating place—he was one. And the young druggist with the bad smile who was always so friendly—he was another. And the man who ran the Browse-Around, his mother’s own employer—how could Aaron not have guessed before? And the students. Those seemingly proper young men who bunched together in corners of the music room, who whispered and laughed softly while he had waited on them at the Nassau Food Shoppe, he knew about them now.

And, as he walked by them on the chill streets, Aaron realized that they knew about him too. A quick glance, a stare held too long, and suddenly everything was clear. He knew about them; they knew about him. Everybody relax, we’ve all got blackmail on each other. Once or twice he almost tried to strike up an acquaintance (where would you go? Someplace), for they were tempting, these young men; the standard of male beauty in Princeton is surpassingly high. But he bested the temptation and then they were gone, off for the Christmas holidays. Aaron relaxed and set to work.

On
Autumn Wells
. It was the right choice; no question. The important work would come later, when the belly was properly full. Aaron arose each morning at seven, drank coffee for an hour, showered and cleaned his nails and then, with Charlotte finally gone to the Browse-Around, set to work. He wrote directly on the typewriter (if he had genuinely cared, he would have caressed a pencil during the first draft), demanding of himself a minimum of five hundred words a day (he counted them precisely), but the work went so simply that most times he doubled the minimum. The plot he kept purposely simple. The narrator, a prep-school teacher (the first chapters took place at prep school), was a young man, Willis Mumford, ugly but kind, an extraordinarily gifted painter who, one spring, took his paints and went off by himself to a desolate section of New England. There, by a swift river, he camped and painted, alone and away (he thought) from civilization. But one morning as he followed the river he saw, set deep in the woods, a great bleak castle of a house, seemingly deserted. That day he met Autumn, or saw her rather, briefly, standing in a clearing, watching him paint. When he realized her presence he started to wave but was unable to move, so did her beauty petrify him (Aaron chuckled), and when he was finally able to shout

“Wait!” she was gone. But the next day she was back, closer to him, and finally the day after that they met. Her eyes danced and his breath came hard, but he asked could he paint her and when she assented he did, falling in love with her as the portrait grew. She lived in the castle-house with her father, a cruel man, given to flights of sadism, a hunter who chose only to wound, never to kill (Willis remembered a bird he had seen, crippled and dying, crying out pitifully in lingering pain), and she made Willis promise that never, under any circumstances, would he come to her dwelling place. But even as he promised, Willis doubted his capacity to keep the pledge, for the picture was coming to completion and so was his love. And she loved him too! He knew that. For suddenly, late one perfect day, they kissed and touched, lying together by the rushing stream, and that night, when Willis was close to sleep, she returned to him, tumbling into his arms, and Willis, as the strange wonderful creature quivered beneath him, hesitated a moment before ... (Aaron dragged on his cigarette. Should they go all the way or not? Would
McCall’s
serialize it if they went all the way? Why not? Why not? What the hell!) ... before sating his desires ...

When he awoke the next morning Autumn was gone, and though he waited the entire day, Willis waited in vain. So that night, promise or no promise, his heart pounding with love (Aaron had to laugh), Willis crept through the dark woods toward the great house. It was dark, bleak, somehow evil, and Willis circled it once, skirting from shadow to shadow, before finally planting himself by the wooden front door. It was open and Willis shouted “Hello ... ? Hello ... ?” but there was no reply. He pushed the door open full and stepped into the gigantic entrance hall. Beyond lay a dark sprawling room, lighted only by the flames from the fireplace. “Hello ... ?” Willis said again, and though there was still no reply, he knew, as he stood in the center of the room, that he was not alone. And suddenly there—there!—framed now in the red light of the fire stood Autumn’s father, a giant of a man with thick brutal arms and the face of a gorilla. From the waist up he wore nothing; from the waist down he was clad totally in leather (a little something for the perverts), black leather boots and tight black leather riding pants. From somewhere above them came a scream, and Willis turned, trying to place it, and when he turned back, the half-naked giant had not moved. Except that now there was a gun in his hand, and soon the lovers were thrown together in a room deep in the bowels of the castle where terrible things had once taken place. Willis examined the strange machines set up in various corners, and when he came across a machine with blood still dripping from it he realized the father was a madman, that they had to get out, somehow, he and his beloved Autumn, that or die.

Aaron had a ball with the rest of the book. He threw in a little torture, Autumn naked and writhing, her glorious body glistening, her face pale with pain (they’ll thumb the hell out of this page at Brentano’s), and following the torture came an escape-chase-capture scene, then another escape, then a revelation from Autumn’s bruised red lips that the giant was her husband (It’s really good, Aaron knew. It is. It is!), then a long love scene, graphic: “Willis moaned as he ran his fingers across her body, such was his pleasure, the presence of death serving only to increase his passion ... but sensitively done: no four-letter words, lots of metaphors, and the climax ending with three dots ... and then, finally, the confrontation, high on the roof of the house, with Willis battling the giant, almost losing but somehow summoning the strength of the desperate lover, vanquishing the enemy, grabbing the prize while the villain groaned, and fleeing into the beauty of the woods. As they ran, Willis and Autumn, they turned one last time, and Autumn screamed to see the great bleak house on fire, flames dancing across the roof where, totally mad now, her husband stood, shaking a fist at the heavens until the fire had him and then he ran, a screaming torch, to the edge of the roof and off, falling in flames to his death. Willis held his trembling Autumn, held her with all his might, all his love, and when the sun came they walked off hand in hand into the dawn ...

“Aaron Fire. To see Mr. Boardman.”

The secretary gave him a smile. “Certainly. You have an appointment, Mr. Fire?”

“For ten-thirty,” Aaron said. He showed her his watch. “I’m nothing if not prompt.”

She smiled again. “Please be seated just a moment,” and she started fiddling with the intercom. Aaron stayed by her desk, looking around. He had always envisioned a publishing house as being a small brownstone in an old part of town, with frayed rugs on the floors and walls stuffed with books, with frayed secretaries and pipe-smoking, tweed-clad editors padding softly around chatting softly about Sartre. Kingsway Press, where he stood, looked like a Hollywood version of an advertising agency. Located on the nineteenth and twentieth floors of a new glass-and-white-brick (what else?) building on Madison Avenue in the 40s, it was sterile enough to double as a hospital. The receptionist’s desk was Danish modern, the lighting indirect, the rug one of those bloodless pale colors adored only by designers, the twin waiting sofas clean, new, armless, almost legless, practically backless, defiantly uncomfortable—hostile modern.

And not a book in sight.

“Mr. Fire?”

“Yes.” She was smiling again. What was so funny?

“There seems to have been a mix-up. Mr. Boardman hasn’t—”

“Look. I’m from
Time
. We’re doing a piece and—”

“Hasn’t got you listed for an appointment.”

“I’m going to kill my secretary.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Fire.”

“She called yesterday at twelve-thirty and somebody over here verified the appointment for today.”

“Perhaps Mr. Boardman’s secretary was on her lunch hour and somebody else took the call.”

“Possibly,” Aaron allowed.

“You said you’re from
Time
?”

“Unless they’ve just fired me.”

“Excuse me one moment.”

Aaron watched as she disappeared down the carpeted corridor. Calmly he lit a cigarette, setting it carefully in a corner of his mouth, inhaling deeply. He had never met Dave Boardman, but he knew he was about to. Boardman liked being interviewed; Aaron had read the quotes. Whenever anything newsworthy happened in the publishing business (rarely) Bennett Cerf was the first one called. If Cerf was out of town, then it was Boardman.

“Mr. Boardman can see you,” the receptionist said, coming back down the hall.

“Goody,” Aaron said, and he followed her along the carpet, a turn to the right, one to the left, through a door, another door, and then there he was, alone with Boardman.

At the age of forty-two, Dave Boardman had been chief editor of Kingsway Press for more than a decade and, in a field where competency was equated to brilliance, had the reputation of being a genius, which meant he was probably somewhat better than fair. He was editor for three novelists who had won Pulitzer Prizes, one of whom had a decent shot at eventually taking a Nobel when America’s turn came, plus half a dozen others, three of them ladies who wrote nothing but best-sellers. And if Kingsway resembled an ad agency, Dave Boardman continued the image. His suit was dark and conservative, his tie striped and narrow, his shirt white with a button-down collar. I’ll bet you’re wearing loafers, Aaron thought, studying the face until he could place it. He had seen it thousands of times. It was the face of the white-jacketed television pitchman recommending a laxative. “Doctor’s reports prove that Limpo will positively loosen your stool in twenty-four hours or ...” The Trustworthy Face.

“Where’s your pipe?” Aaron said.

“Pardon?”

“All editors smoke pipes, didn’t you know that? Union regulations.”

Boardman laughed. It was a good laugh. Rich. Sincere. “I thought I knew most of the boys from
Time
. You must be new over there.”

Aaron smiled.

“You are from
Time
.”

Aaron laughed.

“The receptionist said—”

“I lied.”

“Oh my God, don’t tell me. You’re a writer.”

Aaron bowed.

“For crissake, why the subterfuge?”

“If I’d called for an appointment, would you have seen me?”

“No.”

“Next question,” Aaron said.

Boardman smiled and sat straight, examining Aaron. “How’d you know it’d work?”

“Vanity. I researched you. You like getting your name in the papers. You’re vain.”

“So I am. So I am. Your name is ... ?”

“Aaron Fire.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Fire.”

“Goodbye.” Aaron stood, grabbed his briefcase, started for the door. “One thing, though.” He stopped. “How do you know my book isn’t good?”

“That’s a risk I’m taking.”

Aaron nodded. “You,” he said, “are a stupid son of a bitch,” and he was out the door.

“Fire!”

Aaron let him yell it again—“
Fire
”—before he re-entered the office. “You called?”

Boardman was up, mad, but you couldn’t tell it from his face. The body was angry but the face was serene, trustworthy. “You rude little bastard, who the hell do you think you are?” Boardman paced back and forth, back and forth.

Aaron moved back to the chair and sat down.

“How old are you, Fire?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two” Boardman grunted, continuing to pace. From somewhere a golf ball appeared and he tossed it from hand to hand as he moved. “That’s about how long I’ve been in this business. Twenty-two years of writers.”
Whap!
He threw the golf ball against the wall, caught it without breaking stride. “I don’t like writers, Fire. I hate writers. Not because I’m jealous. Not because of their egos. Plumbers have egos.”
Whap!
“I hate them because they are so childish.”
Whap!
“I understand you, Fire. You fake your way in here and then when you’re about to get tossed out on your ass you try a little shock treatment. Hoping to intrigue me.”