Harry and Scarp sat in the bar section, near the piano, hemmed in on every side by potted plants.
Scarp was fishing for descriptions. “There’s no—”
“Business like show business!” burst out Harry.
“Yes,” said Scarp, a little taken aback. He was dressed in jeans and a linen shirt. Again he wore a broach, this time of peridot and garnet, fastened close to the collar. He was drinking a martini.
Harry wasn’t drinking. He’d ordered seltzer water and took big handfuls of mixed nuts from the bowl in front of him. He hadn’t had a cigarette since the trucks had started coming, and now he found himself needing something to put in his mouth, something to engage his hand on its journey up from the table and back down again. “So tell me about this thing you were shooting in New Jersey,” Harry began amiably, but a nut skin got caught in his throat and he began to choke, his face red and crumpling, frightening as a morel. Scarp pushed the seltzer water toward Harry, then politely looked away.
“It’s a project that belongs to an old buddy of mine,” said Scarp. Harry nodded at him, but his eyes were tearing and he was gulping down seltzer. Scarp continued, pretending not to notice, pretending to have to collect his thoughts by studying objects elsewhere. “He’s doing this film about bourgeois guilt — you know, how you can be bourgeois and an artist at the same time …”
“Really,” croaked Harry. Water filmed his eyes.
“… but how the guilt can harrow you and how in the end you can’t let it. As Flaubert said, Be bourgeois in your life so that you may be daring in your art.”
Harry cleared his throat and started to cough again. The nut skin was still down there, scratching and dry. “I don’t trust translations,” he rasped. He took an especially large swallow of seltzer and could feel the blood leave his face a bit. There was some silence, and then Harry added, “Did Flaubert ever write a play?”
“Don’t know,” said Scarp. “At any rate, I was just shooting this one scene for my friend, since he was called away by a studio head. It was a very straightforward cute meet at a pedicurist’s. Have you ever had a pedicure?”
“No,” said Harry.
“You really have to. It’s one of the great pleasures of life.…”
But I have had plantar’s warts. You have to put acid on them, and Band-Aids.…
“Do you feel all right?” asked Scarp, looking suddenly concerned.
“Fine. It’s just I quit smoking. Suddenly there’s all this air in my lungs. What’s a cute meat?”
“Cute meet? It’s Hollywood for where two lovers meet and fall in love.”
“Oh,” said Harry. “I think I liked myself better before I knew that.”
Scarp laughed. “You writers,” he said, downing his martini. “We writers, I should say. By the way, I have to tell you: I’ve ripped you off mercilessly.” Scarp smiled proudly.
“Oh?” said Harry. Something lined up in him, got in order. His back straightened and his feet unhooked from the table legs.
“You know, when we met last time, I was working on an episode for the show where Elsie and John, the two principals, have to confront all sorts of family issues, including the death of an elderly relative.”
“That doesn’t really sound like ripping me off.”
“Well, what I’ve done is use some of that stuff you told me about your family and the radon gas — well, you’ll see — and that fabulous bit about your Aunt Flora dying while you were dating the Kennedy girl. It’s due to air early next month. In fact, I’ll give you a call when I find out exactly.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. The room revolved dizzyingly away from him, dumped him and spun, because he’d never really been part of it to begin with. “Excuse me?” he stammered. His hand started to tremble, and he moved it quickly through his hair.
“I’ll give you a call. When it’s on.” Scarp frowned.
Harry gazed at the striated grain of the table — a tree split to show its innards. “What?” he said, finally, slow and muzzy. He picked up his seltzer, knocked it back fast. He set the glass down with a loud crack. “You’d do that for me? You’d really, honestly, do that for me?” He was starting to yell. The people at the table nearest the piano turned to look. “I have to go.”
Scarp looked anxiously at his watch. “Yes, I’ve gotta run myself.”
“No, you don’t understand!” said Harry loudly. He stood up, huge over the table. “I have to go.” He pushed back his chair, and it fell all the way over into a plant. He strode quickly toward the door and pushed against it hard.
The night was just beginning to come, and come warmly, the air in a sweet, garbagey thaw. Midtown was crawling with sailors. They were all youthful and ashore and excited to be this way, in their black and white-trimmed suits, exploring Manhattan and knowing it, in this particular guise, to be a movie set they had bought tickets to, knowing the park was up, the park is up! knowing there were girls, and places where there were girls, who would pull you against them, who knew what you knew though they seemed too bonelessly small to. Harry loped by the sailors, their boyish, boisterous clusters, then broke into a run. Old men were selling carnations on the corner, and they murmured indecipherably as he passed. The Hercules was showing Dirty Desiree and Throbbin’ Hood, and sailors were going in. Off-duty taxis sped from their last fares at the theaters to the Burger King on Ninth for something to eat. Putting block after block beneath his feet would clear his heart, Harry hoped, but the sailors: There was no shaking them. They were everywhere, hatless and landlubbed with eagernesses. Up ahead on his block, he saw a woman who looked like Deli strolling off with two of them, one on each arm. And then — it was Deli.
He stopped, frozen midstride, then started to walk again. “Aw, Deli,” he whispered. But who was he to whisper? He had tried to be a hooker himself, had got on the old hip boots and walked, only to discover he was just — a slut.
The Battery’s down, he thought. The Battery’s down. He stood in front of the 25 Cent Girls pavilion. Golden lights winked and dashed around the marquee.
“Wanna buy, man?” hissed a guy urinating at the curb. “I got bitches, I got rods, I got crack.”
Harry stepped toward the cashier in the entrance booth. He slid a dollar under the glass, and the cashier slid him back four tokens. “What do I do?” he said, looking at the tokens, but the cashier didn’t hear him. Two sailors came up behind, bought four dollars’ worth, and went inside, smiling.
Harry followed. The interior was lit and staircased like a discotheque, and all along the outer walls were booths with wooden doors. He passed three of them and then stumbled into the fourth. He closed the door, sat down on the bench, and, taking a deep breath, he wept, hopelessly, for Breckie and for God and for that life here that seemed always parallel to his own, never intersecting, like some opposite shore of river he could never swim across, although he kept trying. He looked at the tokens in his hand. They were leaving bluish streaks in the dampness there, melting if not used. He fumbled, placed one in the slot, and a dark screen lifted from behind the glass. Before him, lit and dancing, appeared a 25 Cent Girl, naked, thirtyish, auburn-haired and pale: National Geographic goes to Ireland. There was music playing, and she gyrated to it, sleepy and indifferent. But as he watched she seemed to lift her eyes, to spot him, to head toward his window, slow and smiling, until she was pressing her breast against his pane, his alone. He moaned, placed his mouth against the cold single rose of her nipple, against the hard smeared glass, though given time, in this, this wonderful town, he felt, it might warm beneath his labors, truly, like something real.