Earlier that day she demanded the truth from Betty about her novel’s future, now only a month from publication. Unfortunately. Betty answered her: her book had a ten-thousand-copy printing, but there would be only one shared ad in the Times Book Review, and without a book club, unless the reviews were sensational, a paperback sale was unlikely. “People like it,” Betty said sadly. “But they feel it’s a quiet book, too similar to so many others that have come out to be a big seller.”
“You mean it’s not thrilling like Fred Tatter’s book?”
“Right now Fred’s book is controversial — it wouldn’t have been fifty years ago. It’s totally retro — it says men are biologically unfaithful. Just harmless hormones, not sexism. People want to hear that, even just to get angry at it. I hear some of the feminists like it because they think it shows that men are still disgusting. They say: we can use this as something to attack. That’s why all the talk shows want him. He’s getting on the Phil Donahue show ’cause Sara Farleigh wants to be on with him and tear him to shreds. He’ll be humiliated but his novel will sell thousands.”
“Not a bad bargain.” Patty said.
“I think it is,” Betty said, frowning. “Sure Fred’ll make money, but he’ll feel like a piece of shit.”
“No.” Patty shook her head. “His book will be read. That’s really all that matters to a writer.”
“Oh!” Betty sat up, an impatient governess. “That’s disgusting. Don’t say it.”
“You’re not a writer. Betty,” Patty said. Her friend looked startled at Patty’s tone and demeanor: a trace of pity, of condescension. “You can’t understand. They may yell and scream at him, but they’re paying attention. That’s all that matters.”
“You make writing sound like it’s being a spoiled brat.”
“Maybe it is.”
Betty looked at her for a while, solemnly. “You’re upset about your novel. I understand.”
“No, you don’t. I’m not. I was lucky to get it published. If it weren’t for you, it wouldn’t have been.”
“That’s not true — it’s a terrific book.”
“Thanks. But the next time I’ll submit my manuscript to strangers — then even the failures will feel good.”
Betty no more believed this termination of their work relationship than Gelb accepted the end of their sexual one. Betty changed subjects nervously, asking how things with David were going, implying it was failed romance that had put Patty in such a bad mood. Betty immediately offered to put her up while Tony was away. These favors she would accept. But David’s sudden — and bizarre — trip had left her in limbo, wandering in a neighborhood half-changed with her life half-altered.
The phone rang. Gelb again, she thought, reaching for it wearily. She almost didn’t pick it up. “Patty?” Betty was breathless. “I just got off the phone with Paula Kramer. She called to ask my feelings about Garlands publishing Fred’s novel …”
Patty closed her eyes in despair, hearing Fred’s name mentioned again.
“… I couldn’t say anything—except I talked about your novel. Said that was the sort of thing I felt analyzed modern relationships in a way I understood them. She got quite excited about the contrast between your novel and his — you know, given the hook that you’re both at the same house, both first novels, both being published the same month. She wants to interview you. I gave her your number. There’s a possibility she’ll include you in the piece she’s doing for the Times on young novelists.”
“That’s great,” Patty said, unsure it was. Paula Kramer worried her. Her pieces, even when flattering, had an edge of smart-ass condescension that Patty enjoyed only when it was about people she disliked. “Has she read my book?”
“Read it? She’d never heard of it until I told her about it. I’m pretty proud of myself. I really did a selling job.”
She wants to be thanked again. Oh thank you thank you for helping sweet little me. Gelb was the same. When he had shown her the bookjacket cover, he boasted: “I insisted they hire Golum, best cover man in the business. Cost an extra five hundred.” She tried to forgive Betty for doing it — hers was the self-praise of insecurity; his, an itemized bill. “That’s great, Betty. Thank you.”
“Listen, you sound lonely. Don’t you want to come and stay with me?”
“I don’t want to miss Paula’s call,” Patty answered.
“Oh, right! I better hang up.”
For an hour she waited, expecting it to ring. When it did, it was Betty. “Did she call?”
“No.”
“I called to warn she might not for a few days. She asked me to messenger a copy of your novel over tomorrow. She might intend to read it first.”
“Oh,” was all Patty said. But it changed everything. No one had yet read her book and flipped over it. If Paula Kramer was looking for a counterargument to Fred. Patty’s slim sardonic observations of the conflicts arising in a young woman raised to be Doris Day in a world that wanted Superwoman wouldn’t have sufficient clarity or stridency. Her story didn’t come to a definite conclusion like Fred’s — she simply wanted the reader to ride her heroine’s roller coaster and, at the end, know only what she knew: there were other rides, but that was the only one she had a ticket for. Maybe her book was boring. At least, unlike Fred’s, it had the virtue of truth.
“So you can stay over,” Betty said. “You sound terrible.”
“I’m just tired,” Patty answered, telling the truth. She was tired of being helped. Tired of all the little lies everybody told each other. Tired of this stupid city, with its expensive slums and overpaid egotists. “I’ll be fine here,” she said.
Tony reached out of the car window and pressed the button. He glanced at the fifteen-foot-high gate, half-expecting it to open automatically. A voice squawked at him, sounding like a parody of a Japanese houseboy: “Yes? Who is?”
“It’s Tony. Tony Winters.”
“Please close behind you.”
There was a buzz and the gate unlocked, the doors separating a few inches. He got out to open them wider, drove in. and then got out again to close them. The wide sweeping driveway curved around to an entrance with white columns that supported a structural awning. He glanced up at the place. It looked huge: the plantation home of a wealthy Southern family. “Here I am at Mom’s,” he said to himself.
The Japanese who had buzzed him in opened the door as he approached. “Did you lock gate?”
“Yes.”
“Tony!” his mother called from inside the house. He wandered toward the voice, entering a large living room crowded with couches. There were four of them forming a square in the center of the room, leaving only a foot or so between them to squeeze through. The rest of the room seemed to be taken up by end tables, except for one forlorn low Victorian chair in a corner.