An hour later, he was on the phone to his editor. “Brilliant!” she cooed. “You made the news. The on-line sales spike is unbelievable.”
Two hours later, he completed his revision of Hide and Seek.
Chapter forty-eight
Henry Baffler returned to a grueling schedule, writing his “open and circular” novel from six until noon each morning, breaking for a small lunch, and then writing until his stomach could wait for dinner no longer. If he ate dinner in his apartment, he usually went straight to bed afterwards. If he went out, the stimulation was enough to allow him to work a few more hours upon his return. Even when he wrote deep into the night, he never failed to rise at six to begin the next day’s work. If pressed, he couldn’t have said what day of the week it was; he worked all seven.
His only distraction was Clarice Aames. As the date of her public reading neared, his excitement grew and his work ethic eroded. To the best of his knowledge, no picture of Clarice Aames had been published. Sometimes he imagined her as a dominatrix — tall, dark, wrapped in tight black clothes — but sweet-natured. Other times he fantasized about the opposite combination: pretty and petite and innocent-looking, but with a mouth full of biting sarcasm. He knew that speaking to her was a long shot, but he prepared lines anyway. Just in case he got the chance, he wanted to make sure that he didn’t sound like some obsessed or groveling fan. No, he’d speak to her as an equal, only less so, and get her ideas on the triangular relationship between her work, anti-realism, and the nouveau roman. He had no doubt, none whatsoever, that she’d read Robbe-Grillet, but preferred Sarraute. He wondered if he would sound immature or mystical if he mentioned that his birthday was the same as Sarraute’s: July 18.
On the appointed day, he took the subway down to Murray Hill to meet up with Eddie and Jackson at Eddie’s place. He made his way past the miniature police post that had sat outside the Cuban embassy in this wasp and East Indian neighborhood since Castro’s bell-bottom-era visit, and waited with Eddie for Jackson to show up.
“My book’s reviewed in there?” Henry reached for the paper folded on the Renfros’ coffee table before Eddie could snatch it away.
Not only had he not been reading his reviews, it hadn’t even occurred to him that his book was being reviewed until he saw his name on the newsprint.
“Don’t read it, Henry. It’s better not to read your reviews ever, even when they’re good.”
“So it’s a good review?” Henry asked.
Eddie shook his head as Henry read:
This poor creature was so deluded as to the quality of his novel that he risked his life to save the manuscript. Anyone who has managed to read a hundred pages of it — it is impossible, I assure you, to read much more — wishes that this young writer would take fewer chances with his life.
“I certainly didn’t mean to risk my life,” Henry said. “What a way to die: in a fire started by some mawkish drunk. That’s not how I want to go.”
“How would you like to go? Not like that poor writer Hinks, I hope?”
As a man who owned neither television nor computer, Henry was accustomed to not understanding cultural references, and continued, “At home, I think. I mean a real home. A cabin in the woods. That’s what I’d like to have, and then die there.”
“Is that where you’d be living if you’d never come to New York?”
Henry tried to recall his mother’s face while avoiding the image of his brother’s. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe I could have taught school somewhere — maybe on Lake Superior or somewhere like that. Just teach and write by the fire. What about you?”
Eddie scratched the stubble on his cheeks. “I should have lived a quiet life, working some day job and married to some unambitious girl who’d never even been to New York. But I made the mistake so many of us make. We think we’re writers and so we have to live in New York. The art, the libraries, the concerts, the museums, the plays. The truth is that I never go anywhere but the bar. Hell, I might as well live in Idaho or somewhere. I mean if I wrote specifically about New York, it might matter. Otherwise it’s a disaster. Writers come here to be degraded or to perish. It would make a lot more sense to live somewhere remote if you want to write.”
Henry nodded. “And somewhere cheaper.”
“We should go be expatriate writers somewhere.”
“The Midwest?”
“No, a real other country. Hemingway in Paris. But somewhere less expensive and warmer. We should all move to Greece!”
Henry was about to ask Eddie if he’d already started drinking, when Jackson’s voice boomed through the intercom.
“Get your asses down here and let’s get that curry in a hurry.”
By the time they’d eaten Afghan food and made their way down to the CIA Bar, a young, black-clad, and mostly bespectacled crowd had gathered.
“Don’t worry.” Jackson patted Henry on the back.
In a few minutes, he returned with the manager, who led them to a table near the front and took their drink orders.
“You slip him a hundred?” Eddie asked.
Jackson shook his head, his bangs flopping to the side. “Much higher price. I have to read here next month.”
Eddie folded his arms and looked over his shoulder at the bar.
The three writers sipped their way through a few rounds of drinks as the room filled, seemingly past capacity, and grew loud with conversation. Several people came to the table to introduce themselves to Jackson, praise Oink, or solicit an opinion about this or that agent. All of them made comments about the bar’s Cold-War-era spy décor. Jackson consistently introduced his friends and plugged their books, a gesture that Henry appreciated but seemed to annoy Eddie.
“They aren’t here to schmooze about Conduct,” Eddie snarled, “so just leave me out of it.”
“Oh no,” Jackson whispered as a slight girl with hair like a cap wisped by the table. He watched her as she moved away, toward the podium and microphone.
Butterflies rose in Henry’s stomach. “That’s not Clarice Aames?”
Jackson shook his head. “Warm-up act, I guess.”
The manager slid behind the microphone and thanked the crowd for coming. “Welcome, welcome to this great line-up. Yes, it’s true, we do have Clarice Aames, and I guarantee she’ll flatten this room.”
The crowd whistled and clapped. The atmosphere was like that of a rock concert. Henry realized that Clarice would never even make eye contact with him, that he certainly wouldn’t get to talk to her.
“But first, first, I’ve got a terrific new novelist for you to hear. Any writer here would die for the reviews she’s been getting.”
The crowd stayed noisy, but its sounds returned to conversation.
“Reading from her novel Pontchartrain—Margot Yarborough.”
A few people, including Jackson but not Eddie, offered subdued applause, but most continued talking, drinking, and bustling to the bar for more drinks.
The writer was small, her face barely clearing the podium, and Henry strained to hear her over the crowd and the feedback from the microphone. He couldn’t make out all her words, but she seemed to be reading about a man confined to a leper colony somewhere in the deep south.
“So am I to understand that leprosy isn’t too quiet?” Eddie said under his breath.
Jackson kept his gaze on the writer, who didn’t look up from the book she was reading from.
Henry closed his eyes. Unable to hear whole sentences, he concentrated on picking out words. Even the shortest ones seemed rare and faceted, like poems unto themselves: moss, glide, muskrat, pirogue, heartache.