“I congratulate you,” Eddie said, his voice hollow. He held out his hand to Whelpdale, who dropped his cigar to shake it.
“You give hope to us all.” Jackson gripped Whelpdale’s hand, preventing him from rescuing his cigar before it was crushed under the foot of someone with somewhere to be.
“Great,” Henry whispered, wondering if he would ever be lucky in publishing or love — and then puzzling over which he would choose if he could only have one or the other. Love, he decided; he would choose squalor with love. The words ‘love’ and ‘squalor’ invoked Salinger for him. He realized that he hadn’t read Salinger in years and really should go back to him to see how his work intersected with New Realism. Someday he hoped to write a literary history of New Realism — after it was established — and it was possible Salinger could be seen as a precursor.
Realizing that Whelpdale had gone on his way, Henry followed Jackson and Eddie into the restaurant. The smell of slow-cooking sauces warmed the room, and breathing the air inside felt almost like eating. A stooped, square-shouldered Italian man of indeterminate but advanced age led them to a table and handed them menus listing the names but not descriptions of the establishment’s dishes. The other waiters congregated in the back of the rectangular dining room, near the kitchen’s swinging doors, in ill-fitting black suits, looking nearly as out of place as the black-and-white zebras on the shiny red wallpaper.
“I’ve never before associated zebras with Rome,” Jackson said, his smile relaxed.
Henry grabbed a breadstick and consumed it faster than he meant to. He took a slice of bread, stacked it high with butter, and ate that too.
When the waiter trudged over, Henry ordered last. “Bring me your largest meal, but no squid.”
“Bring him a steak,” Jackson said, “with a few pounds of pasta on the side.”
“So what’s up with the zebras?” Eddie asked. “Italian zebras?”
“I guess it’s fitting,” Henry said.
“And why is that?” Jackson asked, his voice louder than anyone’s.
“Your book: it’ll be black and white and read all over.”
Jackson and Eddie winced at his joke but laughed nonetheless.
Jackson called out, for the whole place to hear, “And bring us one of those really big-ass bottles of Chianti. We’ve got some toasting to do.”
Chapter seventeen
The day after he took Eddie Renfros and Henry Baffler to lunch, Jackson Miller still didn’t have a formal offer on his novel. He believed that good things generally happen quickly, that delay was most often ominous. Cursing all fifteen editors for stalling his advance, he paced his apartment and considered a very early drink. He was relieved to receive Amanda’s invitation to meet her at the Frick.
Before heading uptown, he left a message with his agent instructing her to call him on his cell phone if the news came. “Yes, I know,” he said in irritation, “I know you could have figured that out yourself, but I’m letting you know. Use the cell phone.”
“The drinks are on me,” Amanda had said when she called him, “to celebrate your imminent fame.”
He planned his reply on the subway: “Your money will never be any good when I’m in the room.” She’d go along, he was sure of it.
He found her in the Fragonard room, looking beautiful in a pale blue dress and high heels. It was so different, he thought, looking a woman eye to eye. With Margot, he had to look at the top of her head or crick his neck to meet her gaze.
“You look like you belong here, Amanda. You positively match. You’re a vision of pastel.”
Amanda smiled. “I suppose I’ll be seeing your name in the ‘Hot Deals’ section of Publishers Weekly soon. Are you holding out for six figures?”
Jackson registered that she said I’ll be seeing rather than we’ll be seeing. “That’s what my agent expects.” He rubbed his stomach. “I love saying ‘my agent.’ Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
Amanda gave him a hug and kissed him halfway between his cheek and mouth. “That’s wonderful, Jack. I’m so happy for you.”
“I just hope that it’s deserved.”
“You worked hard. You looked at what the market needed, and you sat down and wrote it. Of course you deserve every success. I’ve got a good feeling, too, about the splash you’re going to make.”
“Amanda, there’s no reception my book could meet that would make me any happier than I am seeing the smile I see now.” He delivered this line in a tone of mock charm intended to veil the truth in his words.
“Jack, I brought you here because I want to show you something.” She linked her arm in his and walked him through the rooms of the museum.
Jackson was struck by the complete absence of smell, which gave him the impression of rarified air, of life in a vacuum. “I could live in a house like this,” he said.
“In here. There.” She pointed to a landscape of a somewhat ramshackle house in the woods.
“Not there, I mean here, in this house, the Frick house.”
“I know what you mean, silly. But I want you to look at this painting. Find the people.”
Jackson focused on the canvas and, sure enough, was soon able to point out several human figures that had not been apparent on first look. “The original ‘Where’s Waldo’ game,” he said.
“This is the thing,” Amanda said, and she told him the story of the talented young painter who had traded art for bureaucracy.
“That’s a great story,” Jackson said. “A great story.”
“Exactly. I tried to sell Eddie on the idea of writing a book about Hobbema, but he doesn’t get it. I thought you might.”
“But you’re writing again. You should write about it.”
Her hair swished across her shoulders as she shook her head. The fabric of her dress was very thin, real silk under his fingertips as he held her arm, lightly, as though it meant nothing.
“I’m fishing for different trout,” she said. “I’m working on something else, going for the women’s market. But this book would be just right for you. More serious than your first, but it could still be clever. And it would appeal to your audience now in a few years. Write for them as they age, and you’ll have a career the rest of your life.”
Jackson nodded and further studied the painting, admiring the moderate use of primary color among the woodsy tones. It was accomplished, clearly, yet there were odd glitches in perspective and the texture of the paint was sometimes smooth and sometimes bumpy. The painter hadn’t got it quite right. He could have been a great, Jackson concluded, but he needed more practice. Amanda was right about everything, which had always been part of her magnetism. A beautiful woman who was practical, with instincts you could trust. Eddie had no idea what he had, none at all.
“So do spill,” he said. “What’s your book about?”
“I’ll tell you soon enough.”
“Put a dead child in it. That’s what’s selling now.”
“True, which means that won’t be selling in a year and a half, when my book will be published.”
“Will be?”
Amanda nodded readily. “Will be. Speaking of dead children, do you know the awful story of the Frick child? A little girl, I think, about three or something. It was a needle or pin that got stuck in her arm or leg. Shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it got infected and this was before antibiotics. She died, and her parents were naturally devastated.”