Corkscrew (24 page)

'Oh, fine.' Bryce was back to telling Joe the vague non-truths about his progress on the alleged new book. 'Slow, you know, but getting there.'

'Terrific. But what I'm calling about is not to nag you, at least
primarily
not to nag you—'

'You don't nag,' Bryce lied. 'And anyway, I need it.'

Joe laughed. 'Very Talmudic,' he said. 'No, what I want to talk to you about is
Two Faces,
promotion thereof.'

'Oh, sure.' Because
Two Faces in the Mirror
would be coming out in June, three months from now.

'The first question is,' Joe said, 'a tour.'

'If I have to,' Bryce told him. 'I'd rather do phoners, you know that.'

'You can talk that over with Ricki Sussman,' Joe said, she being head of the Pegasus publicity department. 'She'll give you a call.'

'Ricki's only happy when she knows I'm on an airplane,' Bryce said.

'Talk it over with her,' Joe advised, 'and leave me out. And the other thing is, the
New York Review of Books
would like to do an interview with you.'

'Review of Books?
Aren't they a little … academic for me?'

'It's been a while since you've had a book out,' Joe explained, 'you're part of the culture, part of the Zeitgeist, and they won't put you down, or why should you do it?'

'Gore Vidal won't be the interviewer, in other words.'

Joe laughed. 'No, we'll have approval.'

'Sometimes,' Bryce said, 'I think the worst part of writing is getting published.'

'Other people,' Joe said, 'have suggested that's the second worst.'

'Okay,' Bryce said. 'Okay.'

'Time is short,' Joe told him, 'so the interview will have to be this month. Up at your place, okay?'

'Sure, I'd prefer that.'

'I thought you would. Let me get off now, I don't want to keep you from the new book.'

'That wasn't nagging either,' Bryce assured him, and hung up, and turned back to the hole he was digging.

Lucie had gone on tour with him, just once. Six cities in eight days. Chicago was one of them that time, and Houston, and Seattle. Was that San Francisco?

In any event, it had been her idea to come along, for what she'd thought was the glamour of it, staying in the hotels, being squired around, being the lion, being the big fish in a succession of small ponds. But then she was there for the reality, and she hated it. She hated it, and she made life on tour even more complicated for Bryce as a result. She fought with the staff at most of the hotels where they stayed, was difficult to bookstore clerks — a thing you don't do — and generally made her disaffection felt at every turn.

The problem was, she was used to attention, usually a lot of attention, but always at least
some
of the attention in the room, but in this context there was no attention left over for her at all. She was used to Bryce being famous, and very used to him being rich, but she wasn't at all used to him being a star, being the one who used up all the oxygen in the room, and she didn't like it. All the press interviews, all the television talk shows, all the fans, all the bookstore clerks, everybody everywhere had eyes and attention only for that person standing to Lucie's left. She was bad-tempered for weeks afterward, more bad-tempered than usual, and never again suggested she join him on tour.

Maybe he wouldn't have to tour this time. He'd rather not, he'd rather stay here. Looking down into the hole he was digging, thinking about the rigors of book tours, he lifted the posthole digger by its two long wooden poles as high as his arms would reach, so that the two curved metal shovel heads facing one another at the bottom were completely up out of the hole. Then he
drove
it down, the shovels punching into the packed soil at the bottom, breaking some dirt and small stones loose. When he spread the poles, it made the shovel faces scoop in toward one another, gathering the loosened soil. He lifted it out, moved it to the side, brought the poles closer together, and the dirt fell on to the mound he was building on a piece of burlap. Then he repeated the operation,
driving
the digger down into the hole.

It hit a rock. The
clang
came with a tremor that ran up the poles to vibrate inside his arms, and all at once he saw that figure again, that dark figure, crouched, seen from behind, punching, punching. That was all he could see, the crouched and punching figure, from the back. Why could he never see Lucie?

He shifted position, to flank the rock rather than hit it, and
drove
downward again. Was
this
what it was like? He lifted the digger and
drove
it down. Was
this
what it was like? He
drove
it down. Was
this what it was like?
Was
this
what it was like? Was
this
what it was like?

It had probably been a mistake to take the apartment, but Susan had been so determined that Wayne hadn't seen any way to argue about it. In fact, at that time, he hadn't even wanted to argue. The idea of living in Bryce's apartment, taking over Bryce's apartment, might have occurred to him as well, but he would have brushed it away as embarrassing and improper. But when the idea came from Susan, and so forcefully, as though she knew without a question it was the right thing to do, he could only go along with her, feeling a little sneaky private pleasure in what they were up to.

But now here they were, with a rent that was almost quadruple what they used to pay, and an income that had drastically shrunk. Susan still had her job, and Wayne seemed to have created this new career for himself in magazines, but it wasn't enough to keep them on Central Park West. He'd have to sell three articles to the slick magazines a month in order to net enough after taxes just to pay the rent, and there was no way he could turn out that much salable work month after month. It's true Mark Steiner was holding half a million dollars for them, investing much of it, doling out a four-thousand-dollar-a-month deposit into their checking account for their daily expenses, but eventually even that well would run dry, and then what? And why permit it to run dry at all?

If it weren't for the money question, he'd be enjoying this new career. The other difference he'd discovered between writing novels and writing magazine non-fiction was the fact that when you wrote for magazines you
knew
you were turning out forgettable words, disposable, gone forever in a month, but when you were working on a novel you were always aware, in the back of your mind, that this just might be deathless prose; think of that. To be absolutely certain that what you were writing had a shorter shelf life than yogurt was a great relief.

But there was the money question, and so he'd decided to try something else. He'd decided to take a little time off to write a screenplay. He was well aware that the world was awash in screenplays written on spec, hopeless, doomed, never to be anything more than Xeroxed pages gathering dust on a shelf, orphans, almost every shelf in Hollywood a complete orphanage in itself, but
somebody
hit.
Some
movies were made. Yes, and the losers also told themselves the same thing, and Wayne was aware of that, too.

But he had to try, and he thought he did have a leg up on the orphans out there, in that he was a published novelist. He was a man with a body of work, a packet of good reviews, a bunch of actual hardcover books you could hold in your hand. Hollywood might be sharp about a lot of things, but they wouldn't be sharp about the chain-store computers.
They
wouldn't know he was road-kill. All they'd know is that he was a novelist, and not only that, a New York novelist. They would at least give him a respectful hearing, which is more than they would do for the screenwriters in their midst.

When his first novel,
The Pollux Perspective,
had been published, there'd been some movie interest, and in fact a small one-year option that had not been renewed. That novel was now over twenty years old, but he'd read it through again and it seemed to him the story still worked, the updating would not be at all difficult.

There were, it seemed to him, nine strong cinematic scenes in the novel, and the connecting matter could be condensed without a problem. He could convert this book into a screenplay in a month, less than a month. Willard Hartman had a corresponding agent on the West Coast who handled film deals for him, and to whom Willard would surely send the screenplay if it came out as well as Wayne expected it to. If it sold, wonderful. If it didn't, it would still be his calling card, it would still show Willard's associate out there what he could do, and that he was ready to do more.

He knew, of course, that
The Pollux Perspective
was not a movie title, and the speed with which he thought of a movie title to put on it — instantaneous — struck him as a good omen.
'Double Impact,'
he typed, and got to work.

His fourth day on
Double Impact,
the work going even more smoothly than he'd expected, the phone rang at eleven in the morning, and it was Willard. Wayne hadn't told him about the screenplay yet, had decided to wait until it was finished and Susan had approved of it before letting anybody else know it was in the works.

'The first thing,' Willard said, 'the
Review
has scheduled your Guatemala piece for the Sunday after next.'

'Oh, great.' The shadow of
The Shadowed Other
would see print, while its parent sank into the cold dark water of the past.

The next thing Willard said brought Wayne up short. 'You used to know Bryce Proctorr, didn't you?'

A few people knew something of the current relationship between Wayne and Bryce — Joe Katz, Detective Johnson, a few others — but Wayne hadn't gone out of his way to let people know that that particular old friendship had come back to life. Tell Willard now? But minimize it. 'Oh, I still see him from time to time.'

'You do?' Willard was surprised.

'But we don't really travel in the same circles.'

'Well, the
Review
wants an interview with him, and they wonder if you'd be the interviewer. Because you've written the same sort of novel in the past. Unless you think you're too close to him.'

Astonished, Wayne said, '
The New York Review of Books?
They want something on Bryce Proctorr?' Their having taken his piece on the American literary uses of Central American political turmoil had been somewhat surprising, though not out of character for the paper, but what did they want with Bryce?

'He's a part of the popular culture of this moment,' Willard said, 'and he has a new book coming out, his first in some time. They'd like an interview that fits him into American society now.'

'Sure,' Wayne said. 'Easy.'

'I'll have the publisher send you galleys of the book,' Willard said. 'It's called
Two Faces in the Mirror.'

Wayne just barely managed to cover the mouthpiece before he laughed. The publisher will send him galleys! He took a deep breath, released the mouthpiece, and said, 'Good.'

'Do you have Proctorr's phone number? Apparently, he's up in Connecticut somewhere, you can call him, set up a date.'

'Sure, give me the number.'

Willard did, and said, 'I understand he used to live somewhere in the neighborhood where you've just moved. That would have been a lot more convenient.'

'Oh, well,' Wayne said.

The final Tuesday in March, and Wayne stepped off the train at ten minutes past eleven; six minutes late. Bryce was waiting for him on the platform, looking formal, as though here to meet a foreign delegation. His smile when he greeted Wayne was fitful. 'How was the trip?'

'Easy.'

This was the first Wayne had seen of Bryce since the Pegasus-Regent Christmas party, over three months ago, and he was surprised by the change. Bryce seemed to have lost a lot of weight, maybe twenty pounds or more. His face was lined, and his clothes hung loosely on him. And as he led Wayne to the little parking lot, that fitful smile kept coming and going.

Wayne still hadn't told Bryce about his move to the Central Park West apartment. Would he ever? Was it necessary? What if Bryce heard about it from somebody else? Maybe, while he was here, there'd be a way to deal with that.

Bryce stuffed Wayne's suitcase into the backseat of a good-looking black BMW. Wayne was to spend at least one night, possibly two, depending on how long he needed to complete the interview. His tape recorder and notepads were in the suitcase.

As they drove away from the station and out of the little town, they talked about the weather, and train travel, and conditions in New York, and how much Bryce enjoyed not being in all that hustle and bustle any more. There were a couple of opportunities for Wayne to mention where he lived now, but he kept silent.

Somehow, his living in Bryce's old apartment was completely different from Joe Katz moving into Wayne's former place. He felt that what he had done was more like an invasion, something that Bryce would have a right to resent, though why he felt that way he wasn't sure.

Maybe it was all about contempt. When he'd first run into Bryce in the library last year, he'd felt awkward, embarrassed, because he was at the very nadir of his life and career. Career, that was the point. They'd started out more or less even, and Bryce had become a winner, famous, rich, married to a beautiful woman, written up in
People,
while Wayne had faltered and stumbled and failed.

Even in the matter of wives: Susan was right for Wayne, he knew she was, but she wasn't glamorous. There would never be a photo of a triumphantly laughing Susan in
People
magazine.

So what he'd felt in that first meeting, in the library and in the bar afterward, was that what Bryce had a
right
to feel toward him was contempt. Whatever he actually felt, whatever their relationship was or would turn out to be, in Wayne's eyes Bryce had a right to be contemptuous of Wayne.

Which he must have been, to some extent, mustn't he, to even have made that offer. Had
that
shown respect, or friendship? Or had it shown contempt? 'Here's an ugly job, beneath me.
You
do it.'