“At least he’s trying to succeed,” Amanda met Jackson’s eyes as she poured more Pinot Gris into his glass.
“At what?” Eddie’s tone echoed the contempt in his wife’s.
“That’s funny,” Jackson said, stepping around the palpable tension between his married friends. “Doreen had a copy of a pamphlet called The Crystal Method of Novel Writing. I hope that means she’s going to write some romances or children’s books so she can quit her godawful job.”
“What’s most scandalous,” added Amanda, “is that the advertisements for Whelpdale’s workshops suggest that he can help his victims get their dreadful little novels published. The ads have lines like ‘instructor has extensive contacts in the publishing world’ and ‘instructor will evaluate completed novels for suitable agents.’”
Jackson set his spoon down in his empty bowl and sipped the wine. “Speaking of literary enterprises,” he continued, “what’s up with Henry? Any news?”
“He says he’s close to finishing his novel. He read some pages to me. He really is a first-rate writer. It will be unfair if he can’t find a publisher.”
“I, for one, will be quite disappointed if I never get to read it.” Amanda spoke with such charm that it was unclear whether she was serious or making fun of Henry.
“I’m not sure it’s your cup of tea, Amanda,” Eddie said. “You’d likely call it too quiet.”
“The hero’s actually a bailiff, right?” Jackson said, amused. “What does Henry call him? The decently ignoble or the ignobly decent? Something like that.”
“No doubt your sales will dwarf his, but he’s like me,” Eddie said. “He’s not in it for the money.”
“Art and money are not antonyms,” Jackson replied, “but I freely admit that money does motivate me. I’m not a martyr for literature like you. I plan to develop an extravagant lifestyle and lead it into deep old age.”
“Did you tell your family about your book?” Amanda asked him.
Jackson saw his father compulsively touching the tops of his sailing trophies, counting them forwards and backwards. He shook his head. “When it’s published, I’ll send a copy to my mother. She can tell my father or not. I don’t give a damn.”
“Really?” She paused for his answer but quickly moved on when he didn’t respond. “Are you dedicating it to anyone?”
Again he shook his head, thinking that he had no one he could dedicate his first novel to. “No one helped me write it,” he said, his voice buoyant. “I’m taking all the credit.”
Two bottles of wine later, Amanda excused herself to go to bed. “Merry Christmas, Jackson,” she said as she hugged him. “I’m glad you still have time for your ordinary friends.”
“There’s nothing ordinary about you, my dear,” he said, holding the embrace for what felt like a few seconds too long, his hands spanning her shoulder blades, his fingertips only a layer of angora from her skin.
The two men finished another bottle of wine. Jackson felt remarkably even and fresh, but clearly Eddie was feeling the wine’s effect; he was beginning to slur his words and was now pacing the room erratically.
“You know,” Eddie said, “it’s all well and good for you to worship Mammon, but you should at least try to notice what it costs me when you’re always praising success in front of someone else.” He emphasized the final two words.
“Oh, Eddie, let’s skip this and talk about anything else you wish.”
“Your way of talking isn’t much to my taste just now. It comes with a price tag, you know.”
“Price tag? What do you mean?” Jackson watched his once-easygoing friend.
Eddie thrust his hands deep into his pockets and leaned forward at the waist, as though observing something on the floor. He straightened and said, in a thick voice, “Your way of talking glorifies success at the expense of quality — as though success is the only goal. If you’d talked this way in front of just me, we could have just argued and it wouldn’t have mattered. But you know as well as I do that there’s usually someone else in earshot. Frankly, I’m guessing she’s your real audience, so you’ll be glad to hear that your words have had their effect. Where Amanda once saw talent, now she sees only failure.”
Jackson summoned his anger for a protest, but Eddie looked so wretched that he could muster little emotion other than pity. “That’s an astonishing thing to say, Eddie. I have no idea what’s going on with you and Amanda, but I assure you that it’s more about you than me.”
“Your words, your words have turned Amanda against me. I shouldn’t have implied that that’s what you intended. Maybe it’s just my bad luck.” Eddie looked up and finally made eye contact. “She can hardly stand to look at me, Jack, and we almost never have sex anymore.”
“I always figured you two were after each other like rabbits.” Jackson smiled, hoping to turn the conversation. Seeing that his attempt at levity failed, he said, “Look, Eddie, you shouldn’t tell me about that. But do you remember what I told you when you got engaged? That your success would make her happy?”
“So you’ve always guessed that Amanda wasn’t a for-better-or-worse kind of girl. You think she married me just because my book was being published?”
“I’m not going to answer that. Look, I’m your friend, but if we can’t talk like friends, we’d better not talk about this sort of thing at all.” Jackson paused. “I will say this: what you’re thinking isn’t true. My words don’t have that kind of influence on her. If you two are really having serious trouble, maybe you should see a counselor or something.”
Both men concentrated more on drinking than talking for the next half hour. Jackson mentally replayed his meeting with Amanda at the Frick, their talk about Hobbema, the drink after, imagining how Eddie would view that encounter. Jackson knew that he sometimes said things to Amanda when they were alone in a room that he wouldn’t say in Eddie’s earshot, things wrong in tone more than in the words themselves. It stemmed from his vanity, from his own form of weakness. Yet he was convinced that any troubles in the Renfros marriage had little to do with him and likely much to do with Eddie himself. If a marriage can’t withstand a little harmless outside flirting, it isn’t much of a union in the first place.
Finally Jackson said, “If you love her, talk to her. Work it out.”
“Work it out,” Eddie repeated dully.
It took only one more glass of wine to put Eddie to sleep in his chair, granting Jackson his chance to escape.
Chapter thirty
Late on New Years Eve, Henry Baffler was a single paragraph away from completing Bailiff. He toyed with the idea of waiting until morning to finish. Or perhaps he should take the entire day to get the final few sentences just right. Ultimately, he told himself that would be silly — he’d planned the paragraph for weeks now — and he was quite fond of the idea of finishing the novel in the same year he had started it.
And so he composed the last paragraph, noticing that the ink was growing pale, that he needed a new ribbon. He typed The End. He took pleasure in the fact that the novel concluded essentially where it began: his bailiff, unchanged despite his brief love affair, still fed pigeons on his lunch hour while contemplating the ways in which the stout birds represented the human types that made their way through petty-claims court.
Life had proved art and theory right. Henry’s real-world bailiff had illustrated a key tenet of New Realism, which debunked the popular attitude that novels were stories of character change. Henry believed that novels should reflect human character. And people rarely change; they only become more themselves. In his final paragraph, his bailiff was precisely the same as he was in the opening sentence — only more so.