I guess my failing is, my books are attempts at imitations of Rod’s, but they’re really only the yellow pages. What I have when I’m done is what I wrote, no more. Sometimes less.
Like now, for instance.
I really have to do a sex book, you know. Half of my life has suddenly crumbled into the ocean, if the other half goes what’s left? All I had was a family and an occupation, and now the family is gone and the occupation is fading fast. So I’ve got to get back to work. I mean work, real work. A dirty book.
The question is, what’s my second chapter? God help me, I do want to use that first chapter, I need that feeling of accomplishment, I need to believe I’ve gotten something done in this week of furious peckery.
But I can’t do the Beth chapter, I just can’t. I absolutely cannot write about Betsy in bed with somebody else.
Do you think she’d do that? She wouldn’t do that, would she? There was a local guy she’d gone with in high school, but she hasn’t seen him for years, not since we started going together. She wouldn’t look him up, would she? Back up there in Monequois, mad at me, thinking I was unfaithful to her, wanting to get back at me, she calls this guy, he takes her for a date, the first thing you know he’s screwing her in the back of her brothers’ truck, the smell of Christmas trees perfuming the air around them.
I just went and called her. On the phone. So now I’m the kind of house guest makes long distance calls when the host’s away.
She wouldn’t come to the phone. Her mother answered and insisted she wasn’t there. She sounded frail and embarrassed and fading away, the way she always does, but more so. And the situation is so severe she didn’t even tell me about anything she’d seen on the television.
I kept saying, “Would you please tell her it isn’t true, what I wrote isn’t true and I can prove it?” I said that, with variations about a dozen times.
So what did she say to me? “If you see Birge and Johnny, would you ask them to call me? There’s a couple of things I want them to get for me while they’re in New York.”
I said, “They came to beat me up, Mrs. Blake. I just barely got away from them.”
Bland and mild, she said, “They always have had a strong feeling for their sister, those two.”
“So have I,” I said. “Would you please tell her—”
And so forth.
Well, it didn’t do any good. I’m back, and I look at the last page I wrote, and I must admit it seems likely. Betsy and some other man.
But not in the truck, of course, the truck is out on Long Island. The guy probably has a car of his own, maybe even an apartment of his own. Maybe he’s a dentist now, and they’ll make it on the couch in his waiting room.
I can’t stand thoughts like that.
The phone is ringing. Rod has an answering service and they’re supposed to pick it up after four rings, but this time it’s going on and on. It’s rung a few times in the course of the day and the service has always come on after four rings, or at least the ringing has stopped after four rings, but this time it’s going on and on. Very distracting. I’m counting rings, I can’t help it. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
I should be doing those numbers as paragraphs, fill these pages up fast. Like so:
Twenty-three.
Twenty-four.
When the hell is it going to stop?
I just turned the radio on, WNCN, longhair music so the interruptions are widely spaced. They’re playing Vivaldi now, it drowns out the ringing.
So let’s think about the sex novel I’m failing to write. We’ve established pretty well, I think, that I can’t do a husband-wife alternation book and I can’t do La Ronde, because they both require a second chapter from Beth’s point of view, which is impossible. Impossible. In fact, I’m not even going to think about it.
Can I do the chapter about Paul and the hooker? I don’t think so. I really don’t think I can do that.
So I need something else. Paul calls a friend, and the friend’s wife answers, and she comes over to console him, and they make it.
That’s Kay. I can’t do that either.
I need something away from me, damn it, I need Paul to do something that isn’t full of associations in my own life.
He could shoot himself in the head.
The baby-sitter!
Why didn’t I think of that before? Chapter 2 is the babysitter, we meet her necking with some guy at a drive-in, we find out she’s a real nymphomaniac and she’s had a sort of a secret letch for Paul. She screws with the guy at the drive-in, he takes her home, and there’s Paul. Then the third chapter is Paul’s point of view again, he’s there to ask her to tell his wife it was all false. He stumbles along, explaining and explaining, and gradually the baby-sitter seduces him.
That’s it! I’m saved, I’m saved, I can do it! Chapter 4 is the baby-sitter, she calls Beth but instead of telling her what Paul wants she says that she and Paul have been having an affair forever. She masturbates while she’s on the phone, we get our sex scenes from everywhere.
Chapter 5.
I’ll worry about that when I get to it. The point is, I can still do this. I can do Chapter 2, that’s no sweat, and I can do Chapter 3, and I can even do Chapter 4. By then I’ll have thought of Chapter 5.
There’s no reason I can’t do Chapters 2 and 3 today. It isn’t even three o’clock yet. I’ll take a little break now, make myself a cup of coffee, be back to work by three-thirty. There’s no reason on earth I can’t get Chapter 2 done by eight o’clock, take another break, go out to dinner with Rod or something, be back to work by ten, have Chapter 3 done by two in the morning. Go to bed, get up before noon, do 4 and 5 and 6 tomorrow. Then—
I can’t do it. The thing’s supposed to be in Thursday afternoon. That’s the day after tomorrow, and no matter how I push it I’ll never get farther than Chapter 6 by tomorrow night, which means four chapters left to do on Thursday. All in the daytime.
Impossible.
What if I talk to Rod? What if I ask Rod to talk to Samuel? Tell him I’ve been having problems, it’s not my fault, my wife left me, I’ve been run out of my house, I’m probably having a nervous breakdown — you know, I probably am — and so I’ll be a little late with the book. One day.
Now there’s somebody at the door. And the phone’s ringing again, I can hear it through the Vivaldi.
I’ve got to answer the phone.
Good Christ. It was Rod. He was calling from my house, he sounded upset, I’ve never heard him upset before in my life. Rod never gets upset, but he sounded upset on the phone. He said he’d talked to Birge and Johnny, they suspected I was at his place, they were coming in, they were probably here by now, I shouldn’t answer the doorbell. I said it was ringing right now. He said don’t answer it. He said call the police. I said I didn’t see how I could do that, they hadn’t done anything yet. He got more upset than before, he said CALL THE POLICE, he said I DON’T WANT THEM THERE WHEN I GET THERE, finally he said he’d call the police himself. I said fine, I hung up, I made myself a cup of coffee.
The doorbell stopped ringing, then the phone rang again. I almost answered it, thinking it might be Rod again, but then I realized it would have to be Birge and Johnny.