Envy (13 page)

inexperienced--was

"Actually, the word I used was `shallow.`"

?--to know good writing from bad. That your reading was probably limited to magazine articles."

"On how to multiply your orgasms."

"And that you probably wouldn't know a good book from a good ... uh ..."

"Fill in the blank," Parker concluded with a beatific smile.

She had listened without interrupting or altering her expression. Now she came around slowly to face Parker, and he could fully appreciate all the metaphors he'd read about sparks shooting from someone's eyes.

Maris's eyes were bluish gray, like the rain clouds that rolled in from the west on summer afternoons and benevolently blocked the hot sun. They were basically benign, their turbulence only temporary. But even if short-lived, the turbulence was occasionally fierce. Her eyes had darkened to the hue of a storm cloud about to spawn a lightning bolt.

"I'm sure you're pissed." He shrugged, an unrepentant gesture. "I did everything I could, said everything I could think of to say, to discourage you from coming down here. But you came anyway. Last night when I ..." He glanced at Mike and immediately decided not to mention kissing her. "When I tried convincing you to leave, you chose to stay."

His explanation fell short of earning her forgiveness. "You are an unmitigated son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"Pretty much, yeah," he said agreeably.

"You tried to trap me."

"Guilty."

"If I had gushed over how good your writing was, you would have known I was insincere."

"Or a lousy editor."

"But I knew better," Mike interjected.

"I've read books that you edited, Maris. I told Parker, made a fifty-dollar bet with him, that his low opinion of you was unfounded and just plain wrong."

Maris heard all this, of course, but she hadn't even glanced in Mike's direction. Her anger was fixed on Parker. He smiled the sly grin of a gator that had just devoured a nest of

#ducklings, a grin that he knew would ######223

only make her more angry. "Sorry you came?

Want to call the boat to take you back now?"

She tossed back her damp hair. "What caused Todd's father's death?"

Parker's heart gave a little flutter of gladness and relief. His wicked grin had been a lying indicator of the anxiety he'd been harboring.

"Was his death sudden or did it follow a lingering illness?" she asked.

"Does this mean you're still interested?"

"Did Todd take his death hard or was he glad to see the end of him? Was his father his idol?

Or did the death release him from years of emotional abuse?"

She pushed an armchair close to him and snatched the pages from his hands as she sat down.

"Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"The characters need to be fleshed out."

"Precisely. Where do they come from? What were their families like? Rich, poor, middle class? Did they have similar upbringings or were their childhoods vastly different? We know they want to be writers, but you haven't told us why.

Simply for the love of books? Or is writing a catharsis for Roark, a way for him to vent his anger? Is it a panacea for Todd's

unhappiness?"

"Panacea?"

"Are you listening?"

"I'll look it up later."

"You know what it means," she snapped.

He smiled again. "Yes. I do." From the corner of his eye, he noticed Mike leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind him.

Maris was still in high gear. "Life in the fraternity house--was

"There's more of that in the next chapter."

"There's a next chapter?"

"I worked on it this morning."

"Great. I liked that part. Very much. It's vivid. As I read, I could smell the gym socks." She shuddered delicately. "And the bit with the toothbrush ..."

"Yeah?"

"It's almost too outrageous to be fiction.

Personal experience?"

"What else needs work?" he asked.

"Ah. I get it. Personal questions are

#disallowed." #########################225

"If you washed out your undies last night, what did you sleep in?"

She sucked in a quick breath, opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Her teeth clicked softly when she closed her mouth.

Tilting his head, he squinted his eyes as though to bring her into sharper focus. "Nothing, right?"

She lowered her eyes to her lap. Or maybe to his lap. He was tempted to say, __Yeah, it works, but if you're curious, why not touch it and find _out? But he didn't because she just might summon that boat to the mainland after all.

"You've made your point," she said gruffly.

"No personal questions."

Picking up the manuscript pages again, she thumbed through them to refresh her memory on the notes she had jotted in the margins. "I'd like to see you expand, well, just about all of it." She glanced up at him to gauge his reaction, and when he declined to respond, she sat back with a sigh. "You expected this, didn't you? You knew what I was going to say."

He nodded. "I skimmed the surface, just as you said."

"To test my competence."

"Hmm."

"You auditioned me."

"Something like that."

Her smile was self-deprecating. She was being a good sport and letting him off more lightly than he deserved. Actually he would prefer that she rant and rave, lambast him with foul language, haul off and let him have it right in the kisser.

What he had to do would be easier to do if she were as much of a bitch as he was a bastard. They were unequally matched opponents. She was out of her league and didn't even know it.

He said, "You had every right to tell Mike and me to go fuck ourselves."

"My father would never have tolerated that kind of language from me."

"So you _are a daddy's girl?"

"Big time. Because he's such a good daddy.

He's a gentleman and a scholar. He would like you."

He laughed harshly. "Not if he's a gentleman, he wouldn't."

"You're wrong. He would admire your audacity. He'd probably even call it

#`balls.`" ######################227

Parker smiled. "A man after my own heart."

"He read your prologue and liked it. He encouraged me to pursue this project."

He gestured toward the manuscript pages.

"So pursue it."

Consulting her notes again, she resumed.

"Take your time, Parker. There's no page limit. Leave the trimming and editing to me. That's my job. You don't need to reveal all the background information in the first few chapters. It can be scattered throughout, but learn what the lives of these characters were like prior to the time they met."

"I already know." He tapped his temple.

"Up here."

"Excellent. But the reader can't read your mind."

"I understand."

"That's it, for now."

She evened up the edges of the sheets, then laid them in her lap. "I'm glad I passed that silly test of yours," she said candidly. "I've missed being involved in this stage of the process.

I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until I began making these notes last night.

I love molding the story, brainstorming with the writer, especially a talented writer."

He pointed to himself. "And that would be me?"

"That would be you. Definitely."

Her gaze, so candid and earnest, made him uncomfortable. He looked out toward the ocean so he wouldn't have to see her sincerity, wouldn't have to feel ... so he wouldn't have to feel, period.

Maybe he was the one playing out of his league.

Leaning toward him, she nudged his knee and lowered her voice to a near whisper. "I don't suppose you've changed your mind about letting me know which character--was

"Beat it, will ya?" He spun his chair away from her and pushed it toward his worktable. "I've got a bitch of an editor and she's piled a shitload of work on me."

* * *

"Envy" Child. 4

1985

That Tuesday morning two days before

Thanksgiving dawned cloudy and cold. As though on cue, as though roasted turkey and pumpkin pie would be incompatible with mild weather, a cold

#front lowered the temperature just in time ###229

for the holiday.

Roark's alarm clock was set for

seven-thirty. By seven-forty-five, he was shaved, showered, and dressed. By ten minutes to eight, he was downstairs in the residence dining hall, drinking coffee, glancing through his manuscript, and wondering how much abuse Professor Hadley was going to inflict on this creative effort into which he had poured his heart and soul.

The quality of his Thanksgiving holiday depended upon the outcome of the conference. He would either spend the long weekend relaxed and comfortable in the knowledge that his work had met with his professor's approval or foundering in the lake of misery called self-doubt.

Either way, he didn't have much longer to wait.

The verdict would be read soon. Whether Hadley's remarks were good, bad, or ugly, hearing them would be a relief. This anticipation was hell.

"Sweet roll, Roark?"

He glanced up to see the house mom standing beside his chair. "Sure, Mom, thanks."

Soon after pledging, Roark had ordained the fraternity house mother the most long-suffering woman alive. Mrs. Brenda Thompson had given up a peaceful widowhood to voluntarily move into a three-story house with eighty-two men who behaved like miscreants sent away to a nine-month summer camp.

They respected nothing, neither persons nor property. Nothing was sacred--not God or country, one's hometown, one's pet, one's sister, or one's mother. It was open season on anything an individual held near and dear.

Everything was subject to ribald ridicule.

They had the decorum of swine. As male _Homo _sapiens tend to do when gathered in groups of two or more, these eighty-two had regressed to the level of cavemen not nearly as refined as Neanderthals. Everything their mothers had forbidden them to do at home, they did in the fraternity house.

Zealously and with relish, they celebrated rude behavior.

Mrs. Thompson, a soft-spoken and

dignified lady, tolerated their language, which was foul, and their personal habits, which were fouler.

Her maternal nature invited their confidences and

#earned their affection. But, unlike a #####231

parent, she exercised no discipline over them.

She turned a blind eye to the drinking, cussing, and fornicating, in which they participated with wild abandon. Without a complaint from her they could play their sound systems as loudly as they wished. They could sleep on their sheets for a semester or longer before laundering them. When they shaved the fraternity letters into the fur of a cat belonging to a girl who had jilted one of their members, Mom's only comment was on how nicely they had lined up the letters.

In her presence, particularly on Wednesday evenings during their one formal meal of the week, where jackets and ties and some semblance of civilization was required, they apologized for their expletives, belches, and farts with an obligatory and questionably sincere, "Excuse me, Mom." With a patient little smile, she always pardoned the offender, even though a similar offense would be forthcoming seconds later.

In her they had the Dream Mom.

Roark suspected that she favored him over some of the others, although he couldn't imagine why she did. He'd been as crude and badly behaved as any. After a toga party his sophomore year, he had passed out under the baby grand piano in the downstairs parlor and woke himself up choking on Jack Daniel's-flavored vomit.

Mrs. Thompson appeared in a long

flannel robe and slippers, patting his shoulder and asking him if he was all right. "I'm fine,"

he mumbled, although clearly he wasn't.

Without censure and with the dignity of a nun, she removed the blanket that someone had tossed over an inflatable doll, the anatomically obscene, unofficial house mascot, and carried it back to Roark. She covered him with it where he lay, miserably cold, sick as a dog, and stinking to high heaven.

From that night forward, Mom seemed to have a special fondness for him. Maybe because when he had sobered up, he thanked her for the kindness and apologized for disturbing her sleep. Maybe because he'd had the rug beneath the piano cleaned at his own expense. No one else in the house had noticed

--either that he had soiled the rug or that he'd had it cleaned. But Mrs. Thompson had noticed.

He supposed these nods toward common decency demonstrated to her that he was redeemable, that he had at least some breeding.

###"You're up earlier than usual, #####233

aren't you?" she asked now as she placed a jelly doughnut on a paper plate beside his coffee mug.

Ordinarily she didn't serve the boys

food. They served themselves from a cafeteria-style line, taking what they wanted from the fare a surly cook put out for them in the manner of a farmer filling the feed trough for his herd.

"I'm meeting with my senior advisor this morning," he explained. In deference to her, he remembered to use a napkin instead of licking the doughnut's sugar glaze off his fingers.

She motioned to his manuscript. "Is that the book you're writing for your capstone?"

"Yes, ma'am. What I've got so far."

"I'm sure it'll be very good."

"Thanks, Mom. I hope so."

She wished him good luck with his meeting, then went over to say good morning to another boy who had just straggled in. He was the most handsome member in the house and attracted girls like moths to flame.

His brothers wanted to hate him for his unearned good fortune, but he was too nice a guy to hate. Rather than exploit his movie-star looks, he downplayed them, seemed almost embarrassed by them.

He glanced over at Roark and raised his cleft chin in greeting. "What's up, Shakespeare?"

"What's up, RB?"

Everyone had a nickname, and the accepted house greeting was, "What's up?" To which no one ever replied. That's just what they said.

Roark's nickname--to everyone except Todd

--was Shakespeare. His fraternity brothers knew he liked to write, and William