Just Friends (10 page)

“Wonderful. I can’t wait to read it.”

Mercifully, Leo changed the subject. “How do you like the club?”

“Great spot. Is it easy to get membership?”

“Almost impossible. But I know the owner. I could probably swing it for you. You want to get in soon, though, before they increase the fee again.”

“How much is it now?”

“Four thousand dollars.”

“Whoooh! I think I’ll have to wait for my inheritance.”

“With your talent? I could get you an advance tomorrow, so big you wouldn’t have to worry about such things.”

Jack stared at Leo. Could he really do that?

“Of course, I know you already have an agent,” Leo said.

“Well . . .”

“Ella Fogarty, isn’t it?”

“She’s—I—We go way back.”

“A really nice woman, no question. I admire your loyalty, Jack. Now what about dessert? I recommend the
tarte tatin
.”

Jack nodded his acceptance and fell silent. He felt crushed. It seemed that Leo was not interested in him after all.

After lunch Leo suggested they go downstairs again to “The Den” and shoot some pool. In the corridor Jack paused to admire an Annie Leibowitz portrait of Truman Capote. Hurrying to catch up, he bumped into someone, a man wearing a peacock-colored shirt that marked out the club staff.

“Excuse me.”

“That’s okay.”

For a moment the two men looked at each other. Jack felt a jolt of recognition, and on its heels something else—a backlash of embarrassment that made him hesitate. Before he could say hello, the other man turned abruptly and walked away.

“Someone you know?” Leo was holding the door open for Jack, one eyebrow raised.

“Not really.”

But as they busied themselves putting the balls out on the table and gathering them into the wooden triangle, Jack reflected uneasily on his small lie. The man was Howard Gurnard—Howie—someone he’d known years ago when he first came to New York, an aspiring writer like himself. But Howie had never gotten anything published. When Jack sold his first story, Howie had been flatteringly in awe of Jack’s success, and Jack had been willing, even gratified, to be quizzed about editors and agents and writing methods. Then Howie became a pest. He learned about “the gang” and Ambrosio’s, and turned up there so often that Freya had nicknamed him Howdy Doody. He’d bring his rejection letters and harangue them all about the death of literature until they felt obliged to pay for his coffee and food. They began to dread his appearance—hangdog, needy, sour with desperation. Jack started to avoid him, and had gradually, guiltily, dropped him. And now here he was, a
waiter
or minion of some kind at Club SoHo, probably the nearest he would ever get to fame and success.

Leo tossed a dime to see who would break first. Jack won. Still upset, he put far too much power behind his cue and scattered the balls in all directions without pocketing a single one.

“Hmmm,” murmured Leo. He chalked his cue and blew off the dust, then prowled around the table, planning his attack. He lined up his cue on the chosen ball, then checked the angle from the pocket side before returning to his original position. He sighted along the cue again. There was a sharp
crack!
, and a red ball spotted with white shot into a corner pocket.

“See, positioning is all.” Leo grinned. “Stripes for you, spots for me.”

Jack was still thinking about Howie. “Tell me, Leo, what do you think makes a successful author?” he asked.

“Four things.” Leo sank a second ball. “First, youth. Young is good; young is fabulous. If you can get a book out before an author turns twenty-five, you’re home. And if they’re that young, they’re probably single, which means you can get pictures of them into the magazines, posing with models or movie actors or media movers, with no husbands or wives to make trouble. Shit!” His next ball had spun around the edge of a pocket and bounced out again. “Though trouble can be good copy, too, of course.”

Now it was Jack’s turn. He pocketed an easy ball, while Leo leaned on his cue like a warrior on his spear and continued his lecture.

“Second is looks. Natural good looks are best, but you can do a lot with accessories and camera angles. Oh, too bad! . . . If they’re women and you can get them to pose naked, great. Tasteful pictures, obviously.”

He positioned himself at the table again and dispatched another ball. “Third, contacts. That’s basically anyone you know who’s rich, famous, or influential. It’s generally better if you aren’t any of these things yourself. No one likes a smart-ass.”

Leo attempted a fancy ricochet shot off the side, but he mishit and almost sank the white. Jack circled the table looking for something he could hit; he was distracted, and playing badly.

“Finally, there’s the gimmick,” said Leo. “This can be anything, though it’s usually something sad or bad. Former drug addiction, kooky religions, sexual abuse—though that’s a little passé now. Lesbianism sometimes works; male homosexuality is okay, but limited. Diseases can be great, so long as they’re not contagious or—what’s the word?” He snapped his fingers.

“Terminal?”

“Disfiguring. Funnily enough, terminal can be quite successful if death coincides with publication. No backlist, of course.”

Leo watched critically as Jack leaned so far across the table that he was practically lying down. “If you’re going for the blue, you need the rest.” He unhooked it from the wall and handed it to Jack, then continued. “For a woman, confessing to gross overweight is a surefire winner, providing she’s now whip-thin and comes across with the fatso pictures for the promo.

“Yup. Those are the crucial things, my golden four: youth, looks, contacts, gimmick. I made up an acronym to remind me. You Love Counting Greenbacks.” Leo chuckled. “Uh-oh, I think you’re snookered.”

But what about talent? What about style? What about passion and wit and humanity?
Jack kept the words to himself. He didn’t want to appear foolish. Instead he asked, “What if the author’s sort of boring—over twenty-five, ordinary looking, no contacts, no scandal?”

“There’s always a way.” Leo spun a ball out of trouble. “I’ll give you an example. ‘Simple Kentucky rancher writes novel of love and betrayal, and is tipped for the Pulitzer.’ ”

“That’s McGuire, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. In fact, Carson is rather well educated, and he’s a horse-owner, not a hired hand. He’s sent himself on scads of Creative Writing courses; that’s how I found him. I could see the fiction market was tiring of urban sophistication—drugs, models, mutilation—so I was hunting for some down-home macho realism. Carson was perfect, but it took me a while to figure out how to sell him. There were downsides. He’s not exactly young, and he’s no Adonis, and his real name’s Carson Blossom.”

“Blossom?” Jack couldn’t help smirking.

“I know: a real killer. With a name like that the poor guy was never going to win anything besides a dairy-cow competition. But then I discovered that his middle name was McGuire, and bingo! Look at all the writers who’ve been successful recently—Cormac McCarthy, Tom McGuane, Jay McInerney, Frank McCourt. So we dropped the Blossom, dug out Carson’s old grandmammy—a crazy Kentucky character, great copy—sent down a top photographer, and the press ran with it. We never claimed that Carson was a ranch hand; people deduced it from the cowboy hat, though we only used the hat to hide his baldness. Serendipity.”

“I guess.” Jack was reeling from these revelations. “But isn’t that kind of crass?”

“It totally sucks! But that’s the way the world is. You have to use dirty means to achieve a pure end.”

“Even lying?”

“Lying is just a different way of telling the truth.” Leo gave his leprechaun grin. “My game, by the way.”

It was true: Leo had won.

“Of course, you have to have the right product. And you”—Leo pointed his cue at Jack—“are terrific product.”

“I am?” Jack couldn’t stop a gratified smile tugging at his mouth.

“Yup. Because you are the real thing. In fact, you’re
better
than Carson.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“But I do.” Leo laid down his cue along the edge of the table and looked across at Jack, controlled and confident. “Listen to me, Jack. You have talent. You are going to be a star. All you need is a little help. If you want it, I’m here. Understand?”

Jack met Leo’s intense gaze and nodded solemnly. “Thanks. I—I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. Now, what do you say to another game?”

It was past three by the time Jack stumbled out into the daylight. He walked down the street with a vague, foolish smile on his face, oblivious of passersby. His chest swelled. He was going to be a star!—not a loser like Howie. He was going to be rich!—in his own right, not dependent on his dad. There would be book signings and a coast-to-coast publicity tour. Television interviews. Fan letters.
(Dear Mr. Madison, I cannot tell you how much . . .)
People would no longer ask him what he “did”; they would know. Jack pictured himself dropping by Club SoHo—
his
club. The bartenders would get to know him. “Hey, Jack!” they’d shout in welcome (he wouldn’t object to the familiarity), setting up his favored tipple as he pushed his way through a backslapping crowd. While he waited for his dazzling lunch partner to show up, he would bitch with other writers about the hell of creative struggle. Or would he be too grand to mingle?
“Better than Carson”
. . . Carson Blossom! Jack guffawed loudly. A woman approaching him gave him a suspicious look and veered around him as if he were a nutcase.

Little did she know. He was an artist; artists were allowed to behave in weird and lordly ways. Jack smiled gleefully up into the sky and walked slap into a small tree. His thoughts returned to earth. He’d never leave Ella—of course he wouldn’t. He’d finish his novel and let Ella sell it for what it was worth. But what was it worth? What was
he
worth, without a Leo to spin him to success.
“The pitch is everything”:
Could that be right? Jack frowned: of course not.

But as he wandered through the streets, inhaling the smell of springtime, woozy with drink and flattery, he couldn’t help trying out something in his head.
And the winner of this year’s Pulitzer prize is . . . Jack McMadison!

CHAPTER 7

Freya twisted her key in the familiar lock and pushed open the door of apartment 12B. She took a tentative step inside. There was the stale smell of trapped air, a faint purr from the refrigerator, nothing else.

“Hello?” she called out.

But of course there was no answer. Michael was safely at work. She had the place to herself.

Letting the heavy door snick shut, she walked quietly into the apartment and looked around her, feeling like an interloper. In the galley kitchen Michael’s breakfast cup and cereal bowl (muesli with extra bran) sat upturned on the drainer. The cushions on the living-room couch were rumpled and squashed where he had last sat on them. A copy of the
Harvard Law Review
lay folded open on the low table alongside. She noticed with a shock that all her art magazines were gone. Could he already have packed up her things, perhaps even thrown them away?

Swiftly she crossed the living room and opened the bedroom door, but no, everything in here was the same—the clutter of bottles and makeup tubes on her chest of drawers, her kimono hooked on the back of the door, a single black stocking—where had that come from?—draped over a chair. The bed was unmade. Freya was strangely touched to see that Michael still slept on “his” side. She walked over to the window and leaned her forehead across the glass, staring out. This was what she had always liked best about the apartment: its wide, calming view over Riverside Park and across the Hudson to the smokestacks of New Jersey. It was exhilarating to float here above the swarming streets, to escape the maze of dwarfing, cliff-faced buildings that blocked out the sky. Sometimes Michael used to find her like this at night, standing silent and alone in the dark, and he would exclaim in alarm and switch on lights, as if he found her behavior weird.

Michael. She sighed. Another era over. She wasn’t exactly heartbroken, but she felt . . . tired. Why was it that her life no longer seemed to progress? When she looked back over the last few years, there seemed to be no development, just one damned thing after another: another man, another job, another apartment. Something must be the matter with her.

Michael was one of the few single men in New York actively seeking a long-term partner—okay,
wife
—yet he had discounted her as a possibility. Why? Was she too tall? Too thin? Were her breasts too small? Her knees too bony? Had she teased him too much about his funny little habits? Or was she simply too old—not only to win someone else’s heart, but to give her own? In the restaurant, Michael had turned sad brown eyes to hers and said simply, devastatingly: “You don’t love me.” It was true.