“No I don’t.”
“You said you did.”
“I was angry! You broke up with me. Don’t tease it out of me. I love you. I’ve missed you horribly. I tried to hate you. I can’t. I tried to convince myself you were just an opportunistic bitch—”
“I am,” she interrupted.
“I don’t care. That’s what I’ve come up with. I don’t care what your motives are. I want you. If I”—he nodded toward the monolithic Riverside Drive buildings that stood like mute gods frowning down on the dull oppressed river— “have to divorce and lose my kids, I will.”
“Jesus!” Patty turned away. She felt tears in her eyes. “Great! If we destroy your children’s lives I can have you.” She began to walk, the broad space of the sky scaring her. The river’s motion nauseated her. She walked quickly away. She heard him run behind her. She expected him to grab her, but he only moved in front, blocking her path.
“I don’t mean it that way. I don’t like admitting I’m beaten — that I need you. I’ll see my kids as much as I ever have. Even if you say no, I’ll leave her. I can’t stand living there. She’s miserable, and I’ve gone from being bored by her to hating her. I have to get out. It has nothing to do with you.”
She was crying. The damn tears were coming out of her and she had no idea why. She felt acutely nervous. Her breath was short. Gelb seemed so big and awkward, looming over her as though he were another of Riverside Drive’s buildings, his words cold and restless like the river: she skidded on its slick surface waiting to drown. She couldn’t love him — being with him never felt wholesome; sometimes thrilling, often morally disgusting, but never simple and pleasant.
Gelb tentatively put his arms out, coaxing her to him. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so great to be with. I can’t stop thinking about you — you have to say yes. I love you. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before—”
“Shut up,” Patty said while blubbering into his chest. “I can’t take this. I’m not strong enough.” She tried to pull away, but he stopped her, effortlessly, with one hand. She felt so weak pulling against him. She was stuck out there in deep water, helpless against his invisible relentless undertow. The memory of the peace of the shore had faded— there was only this water rising up to choke her, while below she was steadily seduced out into the overwhelming ocean.
She wanted fame. She wanted money. She wanted power: to strengthen her, to allow her to break the iron grip of his fingers with an easy gesture. Either that — or surrender: to stop the pathetic flailing of her arms and let the drowning come, fill her ears and nose and mouth with their oppressive demands and possession. “What do you want me to say?” she pleaded, sobbing. “What am I supposed to say? I love you! I love you!” she shouted. “Is that enough?”
She saw a face clearly. It belonged to a middle-aged woman, twenty feet away, walking a white terrier. She looked at Patty with horror and longing in her eyes, as though she were empathetically feeling each of her emotions. When they made contact with their eyes, the woman looked down at the dog.
Gelb suddenly became yielding. He hugged her, whispering, “It’s all right, it’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry. I’ve put too much pressure on you. I just wanted to tell you how I felt. You don’t have to respond.”
She trembled in his arms. He held her for a while, rubbing her shoulders and back as though drying her after a dip in the ocean. When she stopped shivering she leaned her head against his chest and felt sleepy. She could close her eyes and rest there, let him make the decisions and move her through life, abandoning thought, effort, and will.
“I have to go,” he whispered finally in her ear.
“Okay,” she said weakly, beginning to move.
“I’m going to tell her tonight,” he said.
“I know,” she said, not wanting to hear it. All the fuss and fury had been a waste.
“I really am going to leave her,” he insisted.
A waste. There they were, back at the beginning. All the upheaval was merely noise and nonsense. Nothing had been settled.
Paula Kramer answered the door herself. The apartment was huge, decorated sparsely — to Fred’s mind, like a museum. A few superb antiques were in each room, set far apart from each other, the enormous Oriental rug stretching across the living-room floor with only a single object on it— a coffee table that seemed to be some sort of chest — the beautiful Victorian couches way off, beyond the border of the rug. Paula greeted him warmly. She was thin and energetic, her long frizzy hair sprouting off her head as though her brain were electrifying it, her wide mouth flashing big bright teeth in a cheerful, welcoming smile.
Life had been dreamily successful since the end of summer and his return to New York. Holder was on the phone almost every other day with more talk of how hot Fred’s book was becoming. Using the hook that The Locker Room was a statement of the “new man’s” sexuality. Holder seemed to have created the possibility of a book tour (making the rounds of television and radio talk shows), a common promotional technique with nonaction, but rare or nonexistent with novels. In the midst of these bulletins, Paula Kramer had phoned to say she loved his book, was fascinated by its frank revelation of the male response to feminism. She had talked to New York Times Book Review about doing a piece on the emerging novelists under thirty-five, had gotten approval for the piece, and she wanted to use Fred as the central focus, since she felt his book was the most dynamic and important of the first-novels of the season.
Holder’s reaction to this news was unrestrained: “Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Unfucking-believable! Do you know how much free publicity that is! Fred, I’ve got to tell the people here now! Right away! This is going to affect the entire campaign.”
Paula asked him if he wanted coffee and went to get him some when he said yes. He felt intimidated by her and her living room. He also had no idea what to say about his book. Obviously she expected some sort of intellectual discussion, that his novel had a point to make. Did it? Men aren’t monogamous, women are. That had been his original idea. But Holder’s changes had occupied him during the writing, alterations that concentrated on keeping the story lively and sexy, with surprising twists and turns of fortune.
“My husband,” she said, entering with the coffee in a large china cup and saucer, “is a fan of your sportswriting.” Her husband, Brian Stoppard, was one of the most famous criminal lawyers in the country. “So many good American novelists began as sportswriters — why do you think that is?”
She was so charming and friendly that he forgot his nervousness. “’Cause it pays steady,” he answered.
She laughed, a quick ringing chime. He guffawed back at her. “I thought it was an interesting arena — pardon the pun — for you to come out of, given The Locker Room’s theme. You know, the machismo of sports, modern male sexuality.”
“You know, the athletes aren’t really macho. They’re little boys putting it on. ‘Mine is bigger than yours.’ The biggest shock you get when you first meet a team, first time you meet an athlete face to face, is that they’re kids!” She nodded eagerly at this observation, her eyes opening with surprise. “You know, twenty, twenty-one. Babies. And they stay babies, ’cause their life is playing.”
“Fascinating,” she said. “Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?”
“No, I always use one.”
Paula walked to built-in shelves (they were so discreet, painted the same white as the walls, that he hadn’t noticed them) and brought out a machine, turning it on and placing it on the table between them. “Is your book autobiographical?”