"What brings me to your fair land? I somehow ran away with the idea that I had a novel coming out in your fair land."
"You certainly do. Seen this?"
He was handed a slender flyleaf or bookmark. On it were listed ten or twelve tides. There he was, near the bottom. Richard Tull. Untitled. $24.95. 441pp. Richard Tull recognized Richard Tull. The other names were not familiar, were in themselves unfamiliar; even the compilers of American telephone directories, he sensed, might have been impressed by their unfamiliarity. The only thing they reminded him of was the cast
"Have you heard anything about any reviews or anything of that kind?"
"For sure," said Leslie. Smartly he flipped open a folder on his desk. "John Two Moons had some coverage in the Cape Codder. He keeps a fishing boat up there or something. And Shanana Ormolu Davis had a nice mention in the Shiny Sheet. In Miami. She's working with the hearing-impaired down there. At the Abbe L'Epee Institute?"
Two stamp-sized clippings were passed toward him. Richard looked and nodded.
"You know how John Two Moons got his name? It's kind of a nice story. Apparently-"
"Excuse me. What about Untitled?"
"Excuse me?"
"Untitled. Twenty-four-ninety-five. Four hundred and forty-one pages."
Then Leslie Evry did a terrible thing. He said "Excuse me?" again- and then lavishly blushed. "Not thus far. Insofar as we know."
"Is there a. prospect of any reviews?"
"A 'prospect'?"
"Is there anyone in the publicity department I should be talking to?"
"May I ask what this would be in regard to?"
In the past, Richard had often been known to be "difficult." Difficult was a word that applied to his person as well as his prose. Unfortunately, though, he soon failed to command much of an arena to be difficult in. There was surely no more elbow room for difficulty (difficulty was exhausted), he decided, after his yodeling stalk-out from the debating hall of the Whetstone Public Library Literary Association ("Whither the Novel?"). He stalked out because he was the only panel member who, in the cafeteria before the talk, had not been offered a biscuit with his tea. As he rode alone on the bus and, later, on the tube train, with his armpits ablaze, Richard recalled that he had been offered a biscuit. But not a chocolate one. Just a ginger-nut. And that same year he had to be expensively dissuaded from suing a reviewer of Dreams Don't Mean Anything for that dismissive filler in The Oldie . . . Richard considered being difficult now, and stalking out of Bold
Agenda. Then what? A few plangent inhalations, on Avenue B? Like all writers, Richard wanted to live in some hut on some crag somewhere, every couple of years folding a page into a bottle and dropping it limply into the spume. Like all writers, Richard wanted, and expected,
"Frankly, you surprise me. Roy Biv was full of ideas. As it happens I-"
"Ah, Roy! Roy Biv!"
"As it happens I've already fixed a few things. A reading and signing in Boston. I'm doing the Dub Traynor interview in Chicago."
"Dub Traynor? For the book?"
"For the book."
"Well that's great. Hey. May I introduce my co-director. Frances Ort. Frances? Come and say hi to Richard Tull."
Bold Agenda, as an operation, was still only half constructed. Frances Ort had not so much entered Leslie's office as wandered on to his floor-space. Behind her, big clean guys in overalls plodded about carrying sections of white wallboard. On arrival Richard had himself plodded about among them for a while, before finding Leslie. You could see how it was all going to look one day-cord carpets, white cubbyholes.
"It's certainly a pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm really looking forward to reading your novel."
"I was just telling Richard," said Leslie, "how John Two Moons got his name."
"I love this story."
In appearance Frances Ort suggested a rainbow coalition of the chromosomes. She could probably go anywhere in the five boroughs- Harlem, Little Astoria, Chinatown-and provoke no comment other than the usual incitements to immediate and rigorous sexual congress. In this she resembled her colleague. Ethnically, Evry and Ort were either everything and nothing or neither one thing nor the other. They were just Americans.
"Well. You know how Native Americans get their names."
"I think so. It's the first thing the dad sees."
"Right. Now. The night John Two Moons was born there was this beautiful full moon, and his father-"
"Was drunk," suggested Richard.
"Excuse me?"
"Was drunk. And saw two moons. Well they are meant to be incredible drunks, aren't they? Native Americans? I mean we're bad enough,
but they're…"
"… And-and his father walked out, by the lake, and saw the full moon reflected in the water."
"That's it?" said Richard. He was thinking about smoking, in direct
"Frances here has been working in Miami with Shanana Ormolu Davis," said Leslie, standing, and taking up position at her side, "updating-"
"How did she get her name? I beg your pardon. Go on."
"Updating sign language for the hearing-impaired. It's really interesting."
"African, or Afro-American," said Frances, "used to be this." She flattened her nose with her palm. "And Chinese used to be this." She tweaked her left eye slantwise with a childish fingertip. "And 'tight' or 'cheap' used to be this." She stroked her chin.
"Meaning?"
"Jewish. With a beard."
"Christ. I can see that needed some work."
"And a person of same-sex orientation," said Leslie, "used to be-"
"Queer," said Frances.
"Excuse me?"
"Queer. They're called queers now."
"Right. Queer," Leslie went on, "used to be this." He gave a languid flap of the wrist. "Can you believe?"
"And now what is it?"
"Queer?" said Leslie, turning to Frances. "What's queer now?"
"Queer? I think it's just sign language for queer."
"We've come a long way," said Richard.
"Too right," said Frances.
"Too right," said Leslie.
He took her hand. Or she took his. Or their hands joined. In a way nothing was expressed by this, no claim of love or friendship or even solidarity. But it still looked like sign language. Meaning the future, the next thing, meaning evolution, and Amelior…
Frances said good-bye and very soon Richard was being guided toward the stairs by Leslie, who was saying, "As hard as we're working here you can see we still have a way to go. Copies have been submitted for review. At the present time distribution is light going on minimal but if the reviews are perceived as positive then things may build from there. Can I ask you something? Are you just touring the States anyway'?"
Now Richard paused on the stairs. He saw no way out. "I'm writing a piece about Gwyn Barry."
"Isn't it amazing the attention he's getting?"
"Yes. Consternating. How do you account for it??
"I guess it's a book whose time has come. The Profundity Requital- that's the key for him. He's on fire. And if the Requital goes his way: abracadabra. Supernova."
Don't worry about it, he wanted to answer: the Requital will not go Gwyn's way. Richard was resolved. He owed it to Profundity. He owed it to the universe.
They moved on.