Fridays at Enrico's (24 page)

Charlie finished his beer. Did he want another beer? He'd hoped to see Jaime in here. She'd sometimes come in at this hour to get some dinner at the USA Café or the Caffe Sport, and might stop in at G and C's for a drink or two. Jaime always got up in the morning and wrote, no matter how bad her hangover. He thought about trudging up the hill to the apartment. She might be asleep. She wouldn't work this late at night. Far more likely she was out somewhere, at a cocktail party, a book party, a dinner party, or just dinner and drinking with friends. She had a lot of friends who weren't Charlie's. Charlie had decided long ago not to attach himself to his wife's coattails, and seldom went to the literary events she seemed to like so much. Why shouldn't she? Everyone fawned, kissed her ass. Which she took as her due. Which it was.

Shig Murao worked the bookstore's tiny counter and hailed Charlie as he came in. “Your friends are downstairs,” he said.

“Thanks.” Charlie went down the narrow stair to the basement. Marty and Kenny sat at a table near the avant garde–poetry magazine rack. There were a few other people in the basement, a convenient place to hang out if you lacked money. They'd let you sit around all day reading. Not even a clerk down here. You could stuff all the magazines and paperbacks your wanted down your pants and walk past Shig, no one the wiser. Apparently nobody did that, or not enough to make Ferlinghetti change the policy.

They went next door to Vesuvio, which was already crowded and noisy. Jaime wasn't there. At a table in the middle of the room they got down to some serious drinking.

“I'll have a lemon-orange,” Charlie decided. Lemon Hart 151-proof rum and orange juice. No reason not to get entirely drunk. At worst, he'd have the Telegraph Hill apartment to sleep in, should he find himself too drunk to drive. It was one of the reasons they rented the place.

“Where's Jaime?” Marty said at last, when they were drinking their drinks.

“I have no idea.” He smiled to show it didn't matter. “She's just finishing her second book. Keeps her busy.”

“Who are you talking about?” Kenny asked. He drank a glass of beer.

“Jaime Froward,” Marty said. “
Washington Street
?”

“Jaime Froward is your wife?” Kenny asked.

“Yes, I am Mr. Jaime Froward,” Charlie said modestly.

Kenny smiled for the first time that night. “She's good,” he said.

“Thank you,” Charlie said modestly.

“Kenny is a rare book scout,” Marty said. “When he's not sucking sand.”

“What do you guys do on board when you're not working?”

“We read,” Marty said. “The ship's library is extensive. There are, I believe, six Max Brand novels, paperbacks of course, and two Rex Stout mysteries.”

“We take books out,” Kenny explained, as if Charlie might misunderstand. A literal, serious person, Charlie remembered.

“You scout books?”

Kenny explained the difference between good books and valuable books. “Value has only a slight relationship to quality,” he said, with a quick grin. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” said Charlie. To Marty he said, “Have you heard anything from the old gang in Portland?”

Marty shook his head. “What about Linda?” he asked Charlie.

Charlie shook his head. “She's probably in the South Seas. What about Stan Winger? Anybody ever heard from Stan? He just vanished one day. Jaime thinks he's in prison somewhere.”

“That's probably true,” Marty said. He told Kenny about Stan Winger, the young criminal who wanted to write pulp stories. Charlie pictured Stan sitting alone in a cell. No reason not to believe it was true. He thought about trying to write to him, cheer him up. It was none of his business.

They had one more round at Vesuvio's, then walked across to Twelve Adler Place, a tiny bar that had been a lesbian haunt for years, but was now just a bar. Charlie had gone in for the first time in the mid-fifties. He'd
been drinking with somebody and talking about women when the guy said, “You wanna see a bar that's all women, from one end to the other? Right around the corner!” and brought him in. You knew at once that these women weren't waiting for two men to walk through the door.

Tonight the place was empty. Jaime wasn't there, and Charlie wanted to turn and walk out. Instead they sat and ordered drinks, another Lemon Hart for Charlie, and talked about James Joyce. Kenny was reading
Ulysses
for the third time and thought it was the greatest novel in the English language. Marty had read only parts of it and felt it was bizarre, an Irishman trying to write about a Jew from the inside. “It's just not possible,” he maintained. Charlie had read the book and enjoyed what he could understand. He thought about the incredible life of James Joyce. The blindness. The pain. The exile. The suffering.

“James Joyce is dead,” he said finally, and hot tears ran down his cheeks.

44.

Through the mist he saw some guy at the bar, not a familiar face, grinning at Charlie's tears. Without wiping his face Charlie got up and went over. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burst into tears.” The man had a broad red homely face. Charlie hoped the guy would stand up and give him some shit, but all he did was hold out a hand.

“Sorry,” he said. They shook. The guy had a good handshake. Charlie went back and sat down, frustrated but pleased with humanity. “Not a bad guy,” he said to Marty and Kenny. They'd begun discussing Hobbes, whom Charlie had only heard about. Apparently Hobbes thought mankind was just a bunch of animals, and Marty disagreed.

“Do you believe in the supernatural?” Kenny asked. Charlie wondered what nights were like in the forecastle of the
Breckenridge
.

“You mean above the natural? More than natural? Of course I do.” Marty gestured at the crowd around them. “You can't possibly believe this is all there is. I'd kill myself if I thought that.”

“I used to believe in God,” Kenny said.

“I don't believe in God exactly,” Marty said. “But I certainly believe in some kind of agency of creation. And some kind of power beyond human power.”

“That's because you're a Jew,” Kenny said.

“No,” Marty said. “Being a Jew doesn't mean you have to believe in God. You just have to try.” He laughed. “So I try. But it's easier to believe in man.” He turned his large serious eyes on Charlie. “It's all between us, as humans.”

“What's between us?” The conversation was getting too drunk for Charlie.

“Godhood,” Marty said.

“I'll be right back.” Charlie drained his glass and stood. My goodness. Three Lemon Harts equaled at least six shots of whiskey. He walked carefully down the bar toward the entrance. The man who'd laughed at him was hunched over his drink and Charlie didn't disturb him. Obviously a good man, a real human, the kind of salt-of-the-earth person Charlie had tried to avoid becoming all his life. Hard worker. Provider. Charlie had read that before the Battle of Somme in July 1915, whole villages of young men had signed up to go to war, and over they went in a body, up and out of the trenches side-by-side, all the boys from the village, and in five seconds all of them were dead, machine-gunned. Five seconds in combat. The hometown paper would print a list of the casualties, and the villagers would realize that every single one of their sons had died.

Compared to that, what happened to Charlie had been a stroll down Park Avenue. The air outside the bar was cold, wind blowing down Columbus. It made him feel awake. He wanted to find Jaime. He was tired of philosophy. Tosca was right there, Jaime probably inside, sitting at a corner booth, holding court. They went there often. But it was still early. Charlie stood, letting the cold air sober him. Into Tosca, or up the hill to their apartment? Or both? What kept him from just pushing open the door to Tosca and
going in? Was it the fear that she'd be there? Or that she'd not be? Anyway, fear. Fear was an old friend. Well, old friend, let's go to Tosca.

The bar was noisy, opera music playing on the juke box, both brass-eagle-topped espresso machines hissing steam into the air, the babble of conversation, the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke, a wonderful place. Before he went into the back, among the booths and tables where she'd most likely be, Charlie pushed up to the bar and ordered a cappuccino from Mario. He felt the need for some hot chocolate and coffee, to hold down all the liquor. The cappuccino tasted great. The woman sitting in front of Charlie smiled up at him. She was nice-looking, about thirty, well-dressed, obviously with the guy in tweed sitting next to her.

“Hi, Charlie,” she said.

He smiled politely. Or was it leered obscenely? He wasn't sure. She talked as if they knew one another. They probably did, from one drunken evening or another. She'd just come from the symphony, that's why they were dressed up. It had been wonderful, lots of nice Stravinsky. “Now we're getting drunk,” she pointed out.

“Me too.”

“Where's Jaime Froward tonight?” the woman asked.

“Be back in a sec.” Charlie made his way through the people to the back, to survey the tables and booths. He didn't see his wife and was intensely disappointed. He wanted to see her. He hadn't in days. He wanted to hold her hand. He loved her little hands, so delicate. The sweetest pair of hands in the world. But she wasn't here, and she wouldn't be at Enrico's, or the Jazz Workshop, or El Matador, or Frank's, or even the Coffee Gallery, all places he'd intended looking, all places they both liked. He wondered who was playing at the Workshop. Last time had been the Jazz Crusaders, real hard-driving bop from four feet away. Great. Charlie himself had no particular musical tastes, but Jaime was a music fan, especially jazz, and had a great collection of records. If Charlie couldn't find her, and he knew he couldn't, he'd just run up to the Workshop and have a drink at the bar.

Charlie drained his cappuccino and left Tosca's for Twelve Adler. Kenny
and Marty sat with two girls, and Marty saw him come in and waved for him to come over, but Charlie just backed out and left the dredgers to their pickups. He'd been wrong from the beginning, Jaime wasn't out on the town. She was up in their apartment either writing or sleeping. She wasn't in town to play around, he reminded himself as he trudged up Broadway, but to finish her book. Her second book. Charlie knew only that it was about a young woman.

Jaime wrote what she wrote and kept it to herself, as did Charlie. That way they didn't drive each other crazy. Charlie showed her his manuscript years ago, and her suggestions had been very good, but they argued hotly over every sentence, and Charlie finally had to take it back from her. He walked down Broadway to Enrico's, past the all-night dirty bookstore and cigar stand. He thought about stopping in to pick up a mystery to take home and read himself to sleep, as he did on so many nights. A nice Perry Mason or something. But he didn't, and he didn't stop at Enrico's, only looking past the outdoor tables as he went by, not seeing Jaime of course, since he was certain she was at their apartment. He trudged up the Kearny steps. The first night they'd gone out together she'd run up these steps like a monkey, and he'd followed with his worthless lungs, then as now making him pant like a fish. Sweat popped on his forehead. She'd better be home.

She sat at her desk, the gooseneck lamp on, her manuscript in front of her, a red pencil in her hand. She looked up at him, her face breaking into a beautiful smile. She was so beautiful. And she was glad to see him.

He went to her and pulled her to her feet, kissing her with all the feeling he could muster. He felt her fingers on his arms, her tongue in his mouth. His love for her was like a great white light. The long kiss ended.

“I finished my book,” she said.

45.

She hadn't meant to say it, but the words just tumbled right out. Charlie's reaction last time she had finished a book was to take it well at first. The rest she didn't want to think about. She'd expected that by now he'd have finished his own novel. She'd dreamed of them both riding high on the
New York Times
' best-seller list, money pouring in, their pictures in the papers every day, articles in all the magazines about the fabulous literary couple. Invitations to Hollywood, what the heck, invitations to meet the Queen of England, who was, Jaime knew from listening to her mother, the queen of American high society as well. It was too late for an invitation to the White House, though. The only president she'd ever wanted to meet had been killed in Dallas. But Charlie couldn't finish his novel.

They made love in their little Telegraph Hill apartment and Charlie seemed fine, passionate as always, tender and kind. She herself was too exhausted to be much good, and had to pretend a little bit, so he wouldn't feel let down. When they finished they lay side by side quietly for a long time. She knew he hadn't fallen asleep because as soon as he did his mouth would come open and he'd begin to make a slight whistling sound. This lasted all night, unless he had his nightmares. Then he would begin to moan and sometimes even cry. But when he woke up he would tell her he didn't remember. “As far as I know,” he told her once with his big bland smile, “I sleep like a log.”

Now he'd be doing the same as she, lying there thinking about her book. How would he react? Her first book had been easy to write. She hadn't known what she was doing, of course, which made it easier somehow, and she'd been writing about people she'd known all her life. The only really creative thing she'd done was make up new names. The stuff had just come out of her. All she had to do was polish it up. This new book was different.
Maybe she'd bitten off too much. This time she'd made the whole thing up, instead of writing what everybody told her to write, e.g., the first book all over again only with all new people. She'd written a very internal story about a teenage girl raised in poverty in the thirties. She knew nothing about poverty except from her parents' conversations at the dinner table. And she knew nothing about the Great Depression. She was half-sure that when she sent it in to Bob Mills he'd telephone and say, “Jaime, this just won't do.” Deep in her heart she knew the book was good, for all the trouble it had caused her in coming out, the terrible hours of doubt, the passages that had to be rewritten dozens of times, while the cold sweat ran down her body telling her she was a fraud, this was shitty, she should quit, give up, go back and write another sweet little story about people with no problems. That was what one stupid reviewer had called her book, although most liked it.