Corkscrew (28 page)

Wayne knew what should happen next, but he also knew it would be a very delicate crossing to get there. Bryce's hope, despite Joe's reaction, despite his own inner knowledge that kept him from looking at this junk himself, was that there was
something
here, some spark, some tiny slender filament of thread that could be picked up, and followed, until it led to a complete, full, valuable novel.

No. There was nothing in Bryce's mind but static, shards, jumbled wreckage. But Wayne couldn't tell Bryce that, couldn't let Bryce suspect it. He didn't want a Bryce Proctorr in despair, he'd be useless then. He needed a Bryce Proctorr who still retained hope.

Looking at the computer screen, he could sometimes see some faint reflection of himself. It wasn't until he turned away, at the end, that he spoke: 'I have to give him a reason to do what I need him to do. I have to give him his own reason.'

Mrs Hildebrand had not only transformed lunch, she'd transformed the dining room as well. The silver pieces on the sideboard gleamed from fresh polish, the spring flowers on the table seemed to sparkle with their own inner light, and even the dishes she used were a better set, more fanciful, than the utilitarian plates and bowls Bryce had provided last time for Wayne and himself.

Wayne was the last to walk into the dining room, finding the other two in awkward conversation at the table, both of them looking at him with relief when they were no longer alone. Wayne knew Bryce didn't care for Susan, and that Susan was distant to him in return, and he was sorry about that, but he didn't know what to do about it. He and Susan were going to be here a lot, if things worked out as he hoped; maybe Bryce and Susan would get used to one another, would stop making each other uncomfortable.

In addition to relief, Bryce looked at Wayne with hope in his eyes, but Wayne shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and turned away from Bryce's pained reaction.

He sat down, and Mrs Hildebrand brought in the three game hens, and the side dishes, and asked if anyone would like wine. Wayne looked to see what Bryce would do, but Bryce said, 'None for me today, Mrs Hildebrand,' so Wayne said, 'Not for me, either,' and so did Susan.

Mrs Hildebrand left the room, and Bryce said, 'Nothing? None of them?'

Wayne shook his head. 'You knew that already,' he said. 'You knew that when Joe told you. Come on, Bryce, you knew it before then, when you wouldn't even look at them.'

'This is delicious,' Susan said.

'We should eat,' Bryce said, and picked up his knife and fork.

They all ate for a little while, and then Wayne said, 'I have suggestions to make, if you want.'

'I'm grabbing at straws,' Bryce said.

'Well, I hope this isn't a straw. I think what the problem is, you're too isolated here.'

'This started before I moved up here full-time,' Bryce said.

Wayne said, 'The outlines?'

'No, you're right, I did those here.'

'Before you came up,' Wayne told him, 'you were distracted by too much stuff happening, but now you've cut yourself off, it's almost like you're in exile up here.'

'My Elba,' Bryce said, and laughed, and said, 'I can't go back, you know, I can't get that apartment back.'

'We're in it,' Susan said.

Wayne and Bryce both gave her astonished looks. Bryce said, 'You're in it?'

Calmly, Susan said, 'Didn't Wayne tell you?' Of course, she knew he hadn't. 'When we found out you were leaving,' she explained, 'we looked at it, not for ourselves, but because we needed a bigger place, and we wanted an idea about rents and space and all that. And then we fell in love with the place. We moved there, and Joe and Shelly moved into our old apartment.'

'They don't want to leave the Village,' Wayne said. He trusted Susan to know the right move to make, but this was all so tricky now, was this really the right time to add this complication?

Bryce looked from Susan to Wayne. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

Wayne said, 'It felt — I felt uncomfortable, like I was taking something that was yours.' He grinned, and shook his head, and said, 'If it was up to me, I wouldn't have done it, for that reason, but Susan just loves the place.'

'We don't feel strange,' Susan pointed out, 'about Joe and Shelly moving into our old place.'

Bryce said, 'My furniture?'

'We're getting rid of it,' Susan told him, 'replacing it, bit by bit. If there's anything you want…'

'No no no,' Bryce said. 'I don't want any of that, I left it there, let it stay there.' With that fitful fretful smile that had become a part of him lately, he said, 'I can come visit it. Visit the place. Visit you two. Next time I'm in the city.'

Which was, Wayne saw, his chance to get the conversation back on track. 'Bryce,' he said, 'when was the last time you were in the city?'

'What? I don't know, a while ago.'

'Some time in February, wasn't it? Early February. You left before your lease was up.'

'Around then,' Bryce agreed. 'Listen, this hen is great, if we don't eat, Mrs Hildebrand is gonna come in and ask us what's wrong.'

Again they all ate, but Wayne kept thinking about the conversation and where he needed it to go and how to get it there. At last, he said, 'You're too cut off here, Bryce, that's what it comes down to. You need input, you need to get back on track.'

'Living in New York isn't gonna—'

'That's not my idea,' Wayne told him. 'My idea is, we work together the way you told Joe we were working together. Only this time we do it for real.'

Bryce ate hen, chewed, frowned at Wayne, and said, 'How?'

'I come up here every weekend,' Wayne said. 'We talk. You think during the week, make notes, we discuss the ideas on the weekends, shape them, focus your thinking.'

'Focus,' Bryce echoed. 'That's the word Joe used. Or maybe I did.'

'That's what we need,' Wayne said. 'Maybe Susan could come up with me sometimes.'

'Sure,' Bryce said, indifferently. 'If she won't be bored.'

Susan said, 'When do you open the pool?'

The look Bryce gave her, Wayne saw, was almost hostile. He said, 'Early in May.'

'Then that's it, then,' she said. 'I love to swim, I'm a fish.'

Wayne, needing to push his idea forward, said, 'However long it takes, Bryce, every weekend we work on it, honing your ideas. You're a very talented guy, a very successful guy, you just got derailed somewhere, the two of us can get you back on track. However long it takes.'

The repetition of that phrase finally produced the response Wayne needed. Bryce said, 'It
can't
go on and on, you know. Joe says I'm a year late already. We can't just sit here every weekend forever and talk. I need a book.'

'I have a book,' Wayne said.

Bryce peered at him. 'What?'

'Half a book,' Wayne corrected himself. 'I haven't been working on it because I've been doing all these magazine pieces, to make some money. But I could go back to it on Monday. That's what I could do during the week, while you're up here working on ideas. Then every weekend I bring up what I've done, and we go over it, and we go over your ideas, and when you're ready, you start your book.'

Bryce said, 'And yours?'

'Same as before,' Wayne said.

'That's the book we give Joe, you mean. Your book.'

'That's the only one we've got,' Wayne pointed out. 'You have to give Joe
something,
you know you do. So this is the stopgap, until you get your feet under you again.'

Bryce's face had started to crumple, as though he were a little boy, who was about to cry. But he didn't cry; he said, 'I wanted a book of mine.'

'It
will
be a book of yours,' Wayne told him. 'I haven't been working on mine for a while, because there was nothing to do with it. But now there is. It's yours, the same deal as last time, only this time, there's only half a book, you can have input from here on, that'll help you, too, getting back into the details of the characters, the plot. Every weekend, we talk about the book we're working on, and we talk about your ideas for the next one.'

'I wanted my own book,' Bryce said. 'That's why I called you, that's what I said to Joe, that's what I wanted. This time, my own book. I wanted you to help me find my own book, but
mine.'

'I will,' Wayne said. 'I promise. We don't have time now to do a brand new novel from scratch, you know we don't, with no ideas for it, with Joe at the end of his patience, so this one is a, it's a collaboration, and—'

'It isn't mine.'

'The
next
one is yours. I promise.'

Bryce looked at him, silent, for a long time. Then he said, 'You promise?'

Bryce said, 'He's a traveling salesman, he sells computer equipment to school systems, he travels all over the north-east. In this one school district, the Board of Education offices are in the high school, you know, consolidated high school for the whole district.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'He's coming out of there,' Bryce said, 'late afternoon, school closed, meets this woman in the parking lot, teacher, she's unhappy, recently divorced, he asks her to come have a drink, she says okay, they have dinner, wind up in his motel room.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'In the night,' Bryce said, 'she leaves, he goes on to the next town, goes back to
that
motel, she's there.'

'Ah hah,' Wayne said.

'She's attached herself to him, she's gonna follow him, she's obsessing on him, he's like her salvation,' Bryce said. 'Only he's married.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'They go out to dinner,' Bryce said, 'he tries to talk sense to her, she won't listen, they're walking back to the motel, late, dark, all at once he starts hitting her.'

'Hah,' Wayne said.

'He can't stop,' Bryce said, 'he keeps going and going, and she's dead. He goes back to the motel, showers, gets rid of those clothes, sleeps badly.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'Nobody knows he ever even met her,' Bryce said. 'Nobody knows she followed him, there's no link, they'll never catch him.'

'Right,' Wayne said.

'So it's like he has to keep going over it,' Bryce said, 'the scene itself, the killing, going over it and over it, playing it out different ways, trying to find some resolution, but there isn't any.'

'Nobody's after him,' Wayne said.

'No, that's just it,' Bryce said. 'It's
Crime and Punishment,
or it's
Les Miserables,
but there isn't any Inspector Porfiry, no Javert. He's his
own
nemesis, he tracks
himself
down.'

Wayne said, 'What does he do when he catches himself?'

Bryce knew there was mockery in that question, but he didn't care. 'He goes to the woman's family,' he said. 'He turns himself in to them.'

'Why?' Wayne asked.

'Because he can't stand it any more. But they don't want to know about it, the dead woman's sister and her brother, they don't want the whole thing opened up again, their parents upset again, her children to know she died because she was having sex with some stranger she picked up, obsessed over. So they kill him.'

Wayne said, 'Who does?'

'The brother and the sister,' Bryce said. 'They beat him to death, and that's the end. Now he knows how it feels, how it felt to her. You see?'

Wayne sat back and shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Who does he talk to?'

'It's all interior,' Bryce said. 'It's all inside him.'

'Joe would want some action, I think,' Wayne said. 'And readers, too, they expect something else from you.'

'Oh, there's action,' Bryce said. 'It's just, the main thing is, what's going on in his mind.'

'Well, okay,' Wayne said. 'It's possible. You might have something there. Only, I wish he could have somebody to talk to, get
out
of his mind sometimes.'

'I think I could do something like that,' Bryce said.

'And I'd like to know more about the action,' Wayne said. 'I tell you what. Next week, flesh that out a little more, put it down on a disc, lay it out, and we'll be able to go over it some more next weekend.'

'Okay,' Bryce said.

'And in the meantime, you could read this.
The Shadowed Other,
the first half.'

'Okay,' Bryce said.

'Did you read the manuscript?'

'Yes, it's good, all that Guatemala stuff is very good.'

'We're gonna have to switch some of that around a little,' Wayne said, 'because I used some of it for a piece I did for the
New York Review of Books.
I can show you the stuff we can't use, and you could maybe do some work in there. I mean, if you want to work on it.'

'Oh, I do want to work on it,' Bryce said. 'It's very good, but I do have some ideas.' He laughed, and rubbed his left hand over his face, and said, 'But I don't want to make another Henry-Eleanor mistake.'

'Oh, don't worry about that,' Wayne said, 'we can always discuss things and change things around. But what about the other thing? The guy that killed the woman?'

'Oh, no,' Bryce said, dismissing it. 'Not that.'

'What? You were going to add to it, write it out. The action, somebody to talk to.'

'No, forget that,' Bryce said. 'I looked it over, and you were right, it's too interior, so I've got another idea.'

'Okay, fine.'

'I want to use the same guy,' Bryce said, 'the background, selling computers to schools, traveling around, all that, but a completely different story.'

'Okay,' Wayne said. 'That's a good character, the salesman, he's very modern, with the computers and the school systems and all that, but he's classic, too, the wanderer.'

'Exactly,' Bryce said. 'And what happens is, the book opens, he's coming to in the hospital. At first, he doesn't even know who he is.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'What happened was,' Bryce said, 'somebody beat him up, almost killed him, they got him into the hospital just in the nick of time.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'His memory comes back,' Bryce said, 'except for that. The beating. He doesn't remember anything about that.'