“Did you ever have folks bother you?”
“We’ve had occasion to hire a private investigator.”
“Sounds like a nightmare.”
She shrugged. “It’s all relative. Remember where we live. Around here nobody gives a damn about a writer. I’ll tell you another story. Don’t worry, this one’s not going to embarrass you. One time we went into a bookstore. I think I wanted a cookbook and we happened to be passing one of the chains, so we went in and got the book and stood in line for the register. Now, behind the counter is this big”—she spread her hands—“I mean absolutely huge display of his new book. There’s a photo of him on top, and it’s got his name on it. You’d think the clerk would put two and two together. Smile, at least. But—no reaction. We step up to pay for the book and she doesn’t bat an eye. Bill hands her a credit card with his name on it, and again—nothing. She swipes the card and puts the book in a bag and tells us to have a nice day.” Carlotta sat back. “It was five feet away.”
“I wish I could say I was surprised,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Well, look, better that than being mobbed every time you go outside. I don’t know how these movie stars deal with it.”
“They like it.”
“Yes, they must, mustn’t they? They’re exhibitionists.”
The waiter approached. “I dolci, signora.”
“Cappuccino, please.”
“And for the signore?”
“Regular coffee, thanks.”
“Arthur. Aren’t we working-class.”
In the car, Carlotta loaned Pfefferkorn her cell phone.
“Daddy? What time is it?”
Pfefferkorn had forgotten about the time difference. “Sorry, sweetheart.”
“You sound funny. Is everything okay?”
“It’s just fine.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I wanted to let you know that I moved my flight. I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon.”
“Daddy? What’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine. I’m catching up with Carlotta.”
“All right. Have a good time.”
He closed the phone.
“She must be beautiful,” Carlotta said.
He nodded.
“The last time I saw her was—God, it must have been her bat mitzvah.” Carlotta looked over her shoulder to change lanes. “Every so often I wish we’d had children. Not that often. It was my decision. Bill wanted them. But I was afraid they would turn me into my mother. Which is funny because”—she changed lanes again—“I turned into her anyway.”
Back at the house, they made love twice. Then Carlotta showed Pfefferkorn to his own room, where he could rise for his morning flight without disturbing her.
16.
Pfefferkorn couldn’t sleep. He switched on the bedside light and reached for the remote control on the nightstand, turning to the news channel. A coiffed woman told him that the prime minister of West Zlabia had released a statement condemning capitalist exploitation and announcing the sale of exclusive rights to the gas field to the Chinese. The East Zlabians were up in arms. He watched for a few more minutes, then turned the television off and leaned back against the headboard, feeling completely awake. His insomnia had nothing to do with guilt, of which he felt none, or none that he was consciously aware of. He supposed he might have suppressed his guilt and that insomnia was the form it took in escaping. To his mind, however, a better explanation was that he was in the grip of newfound possibility. It was irrational, he knew. Nothing had changed. He was still Pfefferkorn, adjunct professor of creative writing. At the same time, making love to Carlotta—something he had fantasized about his entire adult life—had brought him into a state of mind dormant since his early twenties. It takes a woman to make a man feel this way, he thought. Then he corrected himself. It didn’t take just any woman. It took Carlotta.
Seized by a romantic impulse, he pulled back the comforter, put on his dressing gown, and padded downstairs to the terrace, along the way swiping a handful of pebbles from a potted bamboo. His plan was to throw them, one by one, at Carlotta’s window, waking her and perhaps arousing a third bout of lovemaking. Once outside in the cold, he felt ridiculous. Even if he successfully determined which of the many darkened windows was hers, he would probably end up breaking the glass.
He scattered the pebbles and sat down on the flagstone, gazing out at the silvery lawns. The night was splendid, the air sweet as nectar. The soothing gurgle of fountains came from points distant. Even a stray chew toy seemed artfully placed, a charming visual blip there to remind the viewer that this was a home, not a museum. Carlotta had called the house grotesque, and while that was partially true, there was also a kind of seemliness to it, a sense that if mansions had to exist, they ought to be just like this. It was probably for the best that Bill had been the one to get rich, as Pfefferkorn’s own relationship with money was characterized by that mixture of desire and contempt that comes from never having enough.
Growing up, he hadn’t felt jealous of Bill. For one thing, the gap between them hadn’t been so glaring. Bill’s parents never faced ruin, as Pfefferkorn’s often did, but neither were they the Rockefellers. Moreover, having Bill for a best friend enabled Pfefferkorn to thumb his nose at middle-class morality while still getting to ride around in a Camaro. He didn’t need money to feel on an equal footing with Bill, because he had his own form of power. Of the two of them, he was the intellectual. He was the Writer.
This paradigm held for so long that he continued to hide behind it long after it had proven false. It didn’t matter how many rejection notices he got or how many best-seller lists Bill made. There was one Writer, and it was him. It had to be thus, because otherwise he had no way to exist in their friendship. He quarantined those parts of his brain that whispered No, he’s the writer, you’re a failure, and as a result he had no concept of how much resentment he had stored up until one night, six years back, when Bill called to say he was coming into town and wanted to get dinner. Pfefferkorn hemmed and hawed. He claimed to have a mountain of papers to grade.
“You have to eat,” Bill said. “Come on, Yankel. We’ll get steaks. On me.”
Looking back, Pfefferkorn was hard-pressed to explain his reaction. Had he been struggling to figure out how he would pay his credit card bill? Had he just gotten off the phone with his agent? Whatever the reason, all the venom came spilling forth.
“I don’t want dinner,” he said.
“What?” Bill said. “Why not?”
“I don’t want dinner,” he said again. In a way, it was worse that he wasn’t yelling. “I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything, just enough already.”
“Yankel—”
“No,” Pfefferkorn said. “No. No. Enough.” He was up and moving now, pacing around his kitchen, squeezing the phone so tightly that he could feel the plastic housing starting to come apart. “Christ, you’re arrogant. You know that? Did you ever bother to ask yourself if I liked that name? No, you just assumed. Well, here’s news: I don’t like it. I can’t stand it. It drives me up the goddamned wall. You drive me up the goddamned wall. Just—leave it alone. Leave me alone.”
There was a silence. Hurt seeped over the line.
“All right,” Bill said. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
There was another silence, longer and more ominous.