Kissing the Beehive (2 page)

"My name is Veronica. I have a whole bunch, so it's fine if you just sign them and . . . well, you know, just sign them."

Hans was handing me a Coke when she came to the table, so I didn't look when she spoke. I put the glass down and saw the book on top of her pile: the German edition of my first novel.

"Jeez, where'd you get this?" I smiled, looked up at her and froze. She was a California blond with great waves of hair down to her shoulders. Skin so radiant and fine that if you hung around her too long you'd have to sit on your hands or end up in trouble. Her eyes were large, green and friendly but with a depth and intelligence to them that sized you up while welcoming you at the same time. The lips were heavy and almost purple, although it was clear she wore no lipstick.

It was a decadent mouth, much too decadent for the sunniness of the rest of the face. It was a contradiction I didn't know if I

liked. It turned me _on_, but I didn't know if I liked it.

"I bought it in Germany when I was there. I'm trying to collect all editions of your work, but it's difficult."

"Are you a collector?"

"Not really. I just love your books."

I opened the cover and turned to the title page. "And your name is --"

"Veronica. Veronica Lake."

My pen stopped. "_What_?"

She laughed and it was as deep as a man's. "Yup, that's the name. I guess my mother was kind of a sadist."

"And you look so much like her! That's like naming your son Clark Gable."

Page 5

"Well, in South America they name their kids Jesus."

"Yeah, so when they die they can go to heaven. When _you_ die, you're going to Hollywood, Veronica."

I signed the book and reached for the next. The Japanese edition. Then came the Spanish.

Outside my own shelves, I'd never seen such a collection.

"You write the kind of books I would, if I could write. I understand them."

"Will you marry me?"

She pouted sweetly. "You're already married."

I went back to signing. "Not for long."

Before we could say anything else, I felt a hand on my shoulder and smelled the memorable cologne of my memorable editor, Aurelio Parma. "Sam the Sham. Where are the pharaohs?"

Instantly on guard, I tensed and said, "The _sham_? Are you telling me something, Aurelio?"

"Nope. I just came down to watch you." Aurelio turned to Veronica. "I'm his editor," he said condescendingly in his best "L'etat, c'est moi" voice.

Then he flashed his dazzling Italian smile at her.

"I'm his fan." She didn't smile back.

"She's got you there, boss."

Aurelio doesn't like being one-upped. He shot her a glare that would melt Parmesan, but she looked back at him as if he were an asterisk on a page.

She won and he walked away.

"So Veronica, you're in the diplomatic corps?"

"I came here to see you, Mr. Bayer. I want my five minutes. He gets to be with you all the time."

"Not if I can help it." I mumbled and picked up my pen again.

"I know this isn't the place to do business, but I'm a documentary filmmaker. I would really like to do something on you. Here's my card. If you're interested, please call me. Even if you don't want to be filmed, I'd love you to call me anyway."

"I'm flattered." I was finished with her books.

She scooped them up and bent down toward me. "And I'm serious."

She looked as good going as she did coming. Her directness was a little scary, but thrilling at the same time. The next person put a book down on the table and huffed, "It's about time!"

"Sorry about that. Tell me your name."

Chatting with Veronica had slowed things way down, so I worked fast and tried to keep my mind on what I was doing. It wasn't till a half hour later that I looked at the card she had handed me. Another big jolt.

In my novel _The Tattooed City_, the most important moment in the story comes when the bad guy takes off his shirt and the heroine sees his back for the first time. In Russian prisons, convicts who have done a lot of time have their backs tattooed with the most elaborate and Byzantine designs imaginable.

The work is done with a combination of razor blades, needles and inks made from urine and burned shoe heels. The illustration is the convict's autobiography -- what crimes he has committed, whether he is addicted to drugs, where he stands in the prison hierarchy. Each image is symbolic -- a diamond means he's spent half his life in jail, a spider that he specializes in burglary, and so on. On my villain, angels, the Russian church, bridges, dragons, clouds, trees . .

. take up almost every inch of his back so that it looks like a kind of naive painting of the City of God.

Somehow Veronica Lake had gotten hold of the same photograph that inspired me years ago and used it for her calling card. The exact same picture, with only her name and telephone number embossed in silver letters over it. The picture, the memory of how I had worked it into
Page 6

my story, Veronica's boldness . . . all of them combined to send a big shiver up my spine. I hadn't been so intrigued by a woman since meeting my last wife.

But the day wasn't finished playing tricks on me. After the signing was over and I had bullshited my way past Aurelio with a Mormon's zeal about the new book, assuring him that everything was hunky-dory and boy, wait till you see it, I hurried out the door. I took a cab uptown to the garage where I'd parked my car, hoping to beat the rush-hour traffic out of the city. The drive to my house in Connecticut took a good two hours if there was no holdup, but gridlock hit as soon as I got on to the West Side Highway. If you have to be held up anywhere, this road was the most bearable because of its beautiful view of the Hudson River and the boats of all sizes moving up and down it. I

plugged in a tape of a current bestseller and listened to two chapters of someone else's words before the cars started moving again. Things got better once we passed the George Washington Bridge. I sped up, reveling in the knowledge that this day of forced smiles and false promises was over for me.

However the more I thought, the more I realized no matter how far or fast I drove up the parkway, my life would still be waiting for me at home.

What the hell _was_ I going to do about this stillborn novel that sat so lifeless on my desk? For the first time in my writing career, I had discovered that a novel could be like a love affair that starts off with long kisses and dancing in fountains, but then turns into your sixth-grade teacher before you're even aware of what's happening. It had reached the point when I didn't even like to go into my study because I'd take one look at that pile of pages and desperately want to beam up to another planet. Any planet, so long as there were no books, deadlines or Italian editors there.

Evil Irene had said it best: "All the rats are jumping ship, Sam. Even your best friend in the world -- your imagination."

That was what astonished me most. Until recently it had been so simple.

Every couple of years I would sit down with a couple of characters in mind and start typing. As I got to know them, got to know their habits and the way they saw the world, their story would walk out of the fog and right onto the page.

I think it had also been easy because I was nice to them. I never forced them to do anything. Not all of these characters were my heroes, but I respected all of them and allowed them to follow whatever course they chose. Some writer said that in every book he wrote, there came a point when the character took over and he just let them do what they wanted. For me that happened on the first page.

What was most disturbing about this new one was how embarrassingly flat it was. Characters said and did things but you didn't believe any of it because I hadn't been able to put any blood in their veins or a beating heart into their fates. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, who had sort of succeeded at creating life, but not really. Like the doctor's monster, I could see how patched together and badly stitched my creation was. I knew it was going to go awry if it ever got up enough energy to stagger off the operating table and walk into the world.

I was hungry. Hungry and tired and worried. I was going home to a house that was too big for just me and my dog, Louie. I'd bought the place when a house in the country with wonderful new wife Irene, a white puppy and a big room to work in sounded like the best things on earth. Now the house was haunted, the dog was a misanthrope and my study had turned into Room 101

from

_1984_.

With these cheerful thoughts marching through my head as I entered Westchester County, I suddenly had an inspiration: I was going to go home.

Home to Crane's View, New York, where I'd spent the first fifteen years of my life.

Page 7

Although I passed near the town every time I drove to New York, I hadn't been back there for at least a decade. I'd never been very nostalgic and spent almost no time thinking about my old days. My second wife Michelle once said she'd never known anyone who spoke less about their past. I thought about that, then said I was frankly suspicious of people who went to too many class reunions or pored over photo albums and high school yearbooks. It seemed to me something was wrong there -- as if they had left something essential behind, or were realizing life was never better than back whenever. So I skipped all of my reunions, lost the few yearbooks I'd kept, and indifferently shrugged at who I had been growing up.

The last time I'd been to Crane's View was when Michelle and I were married and she insisted I take her on a guided tour. She was a fanatical romantic and wanted to see everything. We visited the high school, had lunch at Charlie's Pizza, and walked up and down Main Street until even she grew bored of what little there was to see. But those were the days when I was happy and didn't need a history to sail on into my wonderful future.

It was already seven o'clock when I drove off at the exit, but since it was high summer, the sky had the golden light of fresh-baked bread. The winding road to town went past beautiful trees and large estates hidden behind high stone walls. When I was young, my parents used to take my sister and me on Sunday drives. How many times had we ridden past these impressive houses and heard my father proudly announce the names of the people who owned them as if he knew them personally?

And whatever happened to _that_ nice institution, getting into the family car and just taking a drive? Sometimes you'd be out for hours, the parents talking quietly in the front seat, the kids swapping punches or whispers in the back, all of you delighted to be out together for the day in the big old black Ford or gold Dodge station wagon. Sometimes you'd stop for an ice cream or even better at the miniature golf course three towns over where other families out for _their_

rides had stopped too.

Memories like slow-moving tropical fish swam through my mind as I rolled toward Crane's View. That's the corner where Dave Hughes fell off his bike, Woody Barr's house, St. Jude's Church where all my Catholic friends crossed themselves whenever we walked by. As expected, everything seemed smaller and

gave off the faint aroma of a cologne you had once used but not for years.

It struck me I didn't think much about my childhood because I had had a good one, albeit nothing special. A wholesome meal that filled me but didn't stand out in any way. My father worked for Shell Oil all his life and liked nothing more than to pad around our house in sneakers and khakis, smoking his pipe and fixing things that didn't always need to be fixed. My mother was a homemaker in the days when that wasn't a dirty word. They married straight out of college and enjoyed each other's company for thirty-four years.

We spent our summers in a small house in a town called Sea Girt on the New Jersey shore. We had a dog named Jack, a series of station wagons; we ate dinner together in front of the television set watching either Walter Cronkite or Perry Mason. For dessert we'd have Breyers vanilla ice cream covered with

Bosco chocolate sauce. Television was black-and-white, your hair was a crew cut, girls wore dresses. What could be simpler?

Just past the high school, Scrappy's Diner was my first stop of the evening. Decent food, the closest pay telephone to the school, and the patient good humor of its owners made it one of the two important places for kids in

Crane's View. The other was Charlie's Pizza, but it was so small all you could do there was buy your slices of pizza and hang around outside on the street while you ate.

The diner, on the other hand, was large, air-conditioned and full of comfortable screaming-turquoise Naugahyde booths. There was music and a menu we could afford. It was
Page 8

ours. Kids own nothing -- everything is either promised, borrowed, longed for or exaggerated.

Scrappy's gave us a place to plan, dream and regroup. The way it broke down, if you needed to meet on your way to somewhere else, see you in front of Charlie's. If you needed to talk, it was Scrappy's.

The place was almost empty when I entered. I stood a moment in the doorway and let a quazillion memories hit me square in the brain. Every corner and booth was full of my life. Just seeing the room and smelling the familiar aroma of Bunn-O-Mat coffee, frying meat, body odor, floor cleaner and wiped tables reminded me so vividly of another now that had once been as important as today's. I sat at the counter and turned the revolving seat left and right.

A young waitress wearing too much lipstick and too little energy came over. Everything about her emanated that slumping spirit that comes from being on your feet too long or just being eighteen years old and life weighs too much for you.

"What'll you have?"

"A menu, please."

She opened her mouth to say something but stopped and closed it. Instead she slowly reached under the counter and came up with a long red menu.

"Today's specials are turkey pot pie and meat loaf." She sighed.

"Do you still make the California burger?"

"Sure! You want one?" To my surprise, her eyes brightened and she let loose a very friendly smile. Watching her, I saw that this young woman had only so much energy in her and would consume it all by the time she was only thirty-five or forty. After that, her life would be sighs and tired gestures but enough intelligence to realize she'd used up her share long before she should have. The thought crossed my mind like a shooting star and then was gone. I looked at the name plate over her breast. Donna.