The Autograph Man (21 page)

“Don’t go, Boot,” said Joseph flatly, still looking at the low coffee table in front of him. “It’ll just be boys left if you leave. No good if it’s just boys. Let’s watch a movie or something. Be fun.”

“Thanks, Joe, but I think I better . . .”

Alex licked the joint he was rolling and looked around him. “Where’d the rabbi piss off to, then?”

Boot shrugged. “Don’t know. Upstairs, I think.”

“Missing,” said Joseph. “Presumed dead.”

“You leave,” said Alex in the drawl of the popular actor John Wayne, “and the rabbi gets it.”

UPSTAIRS, RABBI MARK RUBINFINE
contrived to go missing for some time. He had phoned Rebecca, but the conversation proved short and ill-tempered thanks to his inability to take the phrase
novelty chicken swizzle sticks
in the serious spirit in which it was meant. He had drunk a little too much wine, possibly. And he had reached that point which anyone who has organized even so much as a four-person dinner party reaches in the end:
Why can they not cook their own food, hire their own DJ, eat and dance in their own damn homes?
For Rubinfine this feeling was now magnified exactly forty-eight times, once for each of these miniature troublemakers he was being railroaded into entertaining.

He’d replaced the receiver with Rebecca still talking. Now, instead of returning downstairs, he found himself sitting aimlessly on Alex’s bed. Reaching for the chocolate coins, he got a good quantity in his palm and began the fiddly process of relieving them of their metallic skins. Imagine living like this! Rubinfine shuddered and placed his free hand into the yellow hand-shaped stain on the wall. His fondness for Alex had never stopped him from being frank with himself about the inherent superiority of his own situation next to poor Tandem’s. Rabbi Mark Rubinfine had a patio and a wife, curtains and carpets, a power shower and a twelve-seater dinner table. As soon as Dr. Guy Glass cured Rebecca of her tokophobia, the place would be full of children. See? He had collected things in his life, which is what you’re meant to do, placing them carefully between you and death, as on an obstacle course. Alex’s room was like a student’s bedsit. There was no discernible difference between Alex’s room when he was sixteen and Alex’s room now. Pants still formed a mountain. Socks still cried out for their fellows.

Rubinfine leant forward to look out at Mountjoy. Out there, that was his world. He couldn’t conceive of having no power in Mountjoy, no audience. Alex and Adam, like Akiva, hiding in their caves! Rubinfine smiled affectionately at the eccentricity of his oldest friends. He turned and looked up at the famous note, Blu-Tacked above the door. It had been torture for Rubinfine, remembering not to spend his note. And then they discontinued pound notes altogether, and relieved him of the responsibility.

NOW HE KICKED OFF
his slip-on shoes, grabbed his right foot and brought the hard skin on his heel up for inspection. He peeled off a thick ridge and flicked it in the direction of an overflowing bin. Will you look at this place! Some of the posters were fifteen years old. Still there, above the bed, the fake advertisement that promised four young matadors—Mark
y
Joseph
y
Alex
y
Adam—against a huge Spanish bull. Gulping down his last chocolate coin, he walked over to peer at a reproduction of a sixteenth-century Mantuan Kabbalistic text, a single page from the Zohar, maybe, or the Sefer Yetzirah. Rubinfine, to himself at least, did not pretend to be an expert. The text was written inside a pair of hands with pointed thumbs. Birds in rosebushes fluttered up the margins on either side. God’s name, circled by flowers, sat at the top. It was delicate, superb.
And what things we have done, over the ages!
murmured Rubinfine’s happy heart, for no matter what Mountjoy thought, he had not become a rabbi solely to please his father. In his own small way he had wanted to
carry things forward.
Like the continuity man on a film set. At the time, this was an analogy that had not satisfied Adam, who thought the call to the rabbinate should be entirely pure, a discussion a man has with God. But God had never spoken to Rubinfine, really. Rubinfine was simply, and honestly, a fan of the people he had come from. He loved and admired them. The books they wrote, the films they made, the songs they had sung, the things they had discovered, the jokes they told. This was the only way he had ever found to show it, that affection. His childhood therapy had pinpointed the Rubinfine problem; personal relationships were not his strength. He was always happiest dealing with a crowd. The people of Mountjoy! The people! He never expected to add anything to them, to the people, never imagined he could offer any great rabbinical insight—he hoped only to carry them for a short time. Between the rabbi who came before him and the one who would come after.

Tripping backwards over his feet, Rubinfine hiccoughed, giggled, righted himself, and shadow-boxed the Ali poster, picking up Alex’s bag from the floor and heaving it to the bed. Checking the door every few minutes, he hurried through the pockets, looking. He thought for a moment that Louise Brooks was Kitty, but Kitty was later, no? And her face was different. More modern. So many in here. There is so much fame in the world. Taylor, Pickford, Grayson, Cagney, Chevalier. And here we are.

Rubinfine drew Duchamp’s photograph out of its plastic sheath and took a moment to concede that the woman was astonishing. If one were to become dangerously delusional about a woman and her signature, one could do worse. He looked a little longer, marveling at the architecture of her cheeks. And then he ripped the thing into six pieces.

The exhilaration was considerable. It was what he and Joseph had agreed on during the drive here, though they had never imagined it would be so easy. They had envisioned an all-nighter, a twelve-tissue bout with tears and drama. They were going to walk right in and harass him until he handed it over. Because until the thing was gone, he would not be able to stop fixating on it. That was Joseph’s formulation, and Rubinfine had agreed with it or decided to agree with it. So. Now it was gone.

Enormously pleased with himself, Rubinfine gathered the scraps into his hands and stood up. He toyed with the analogy of the parents who force their heroin-ravaged child into cold turkey. He reflected with pleasure upon the axioms “tough love” and “all for the best.” He was just about to leave the room when three photographs on the near wall caught his eye: Norma Shearer, Debbie Reynolds and Deanna Durbin. Which reminds me, thought Rubinfine (Debbie Reynolds • Eddie Fisher • Carrie Fisher • Princess Leia • Han Solo • Harrison Ford): I bet he’s not telling me something. Bet the sneaky bastard’s hiding a Ford, waiting to sell it to someone else, someone richer.

Rubinfine went back to the bed and opened the bag. He found a Ford quickly enough. Silently, he cursed Alex. Then he looked closer. Rubinfine rocked back on the bed, yelped ecstatically behind his hand. To Mark! For a long minute, Rubinfine thought he might cry. He had a birthday coming up, two weeks from now. And to think how Alex had hidden this from him, and so well! The trouble he must have gone to, getting this for him, personalized, perfect! Rubinfine was more than touched. He felt like taking this autograph and showing it to every one of those teachers and therapists and rabbis who had told him he had no interpersonal skills. Look what my friend has done for me! Look what my good friend Alex-Li Tandem has done for
me
! Reluctantly, Rubinfine put it back where he had found it. He would act surprised next time he saw it. Surprised and overjoyed, which was the truth, even if he had to replay it one more time for an audience.

On the bed, a small mound of torn photograph. For a minute, he had forgotten all about it, but there it was, reproaching him. Rubinfine collected it and shoved it in his pockets and left the room. Standing in the hallway, he could hear Joseph and Alex, all guns blazing. Boot was, unsuccessfully, trying to calm them down. The gist was
Give it to me.
And the other gist was
Over my dead body. If this house was burning,
Alex was saying,
I’d take my autographs before anything else here, including you.

Agonized, Rubinfine took a step forward and then one back and then slowly walked down the stairs. Now he stood at the threshold. As clear as the world he heard his friend say: “Look, you have your work, Joseph, yes? And Rubinfine has his family. And Adam has his God. And this is what I have. My little obsessions. You used to have them too, but you grew out of them. Lucky you. But I didn’t, all right? Do you understand? This is what is between me and my grave. This is what I
have.
”

Poor Rubinfine. He tucked his head round the door, told the assembled company that Rebecca’s eczema had flared up again, that Joseph should come now if he wanted a lift, and disappeared out of the front door.

2.

A much later stage of the party; only two people are in attendance. The video is rolling. Alex and Boot are collapsed on the sofa, having a silent misunderstanding about sex. Boot has removed her tights and is waiting to be groped, for no reason she can put her finger on. (Certainly not out of
desire,
for example. More out of a kind of
indignation.
) Alex is resolute in his intention not to grope, for no reason he understood. (Not really out of
lack of desire,
as such. Maybe it is a moral objection. Maybe it’s the drink.) Boot is pretending to be asleep, although she’s wide awake. Alex is pretending to be awake, although he can barely keep his eyes open. Boot is perfectly comfortable, but keeps shifting her position in an attempt to reignite the debate. Alex has terrible cramp but daren’t move. Kitty is in the final minutes of her journey, her closing song:

You were my lucky star. . . .

You said that I’d go far. . . .

Finally, as the credits roll, Boot turns her back to him. This is one of the great unequivocal International Gestures, the kind that cannot be misread.

autographman has enabled messenger (02:03)

autographman:
Es, I can see your icon. Are u there?

autographman:
Esther?

autographman:
I’m not totally beneath contempt, am I?

autographman:
I can be spoken to, can’t I? I CAN BE TYPED 2 at least???

MissTicktock:
You can be spoken to.

autographman:
Hi!

MissTicktock:
Hi

autographman:
You’re up late. hello.

autographman:
Knock knock.

MissTicktock:
Not interested.

autographman:
horse walks into a bar . . .

MissTicktock:
Ads says he saw u today. says u were acting like

autographman:
barman says: why the long face?

MissTicktock:
a complete fool.

autographman:
Hmmm . . .

MissTicktock:
I have to go 2 bed.

MissTicktock:
tired, feddup

MissTicktock:
Adam’s had me staring at walls all night

MissTicktock:
freaking madmen, all of you

autographman:
wait—

MissTicktock:
goodnight Alex

autographman:
wait!

autographman:
PLEASE!

MissTicktock:
what?

autographman:
just wait a minute.

MissTicktock:
. . . . . . . ?

autographman:
going to NY tomorrow. Haven’t even packed.

MissTicktock:
having surgery on Sunday. haven’t even submitted to the principles of a major religion.

autographman:
hello. My name is Alex-Li. I am a total waste of space.
•Sorry•

MissTicktock:
At least it means I miss Rubinfine’s barn dance.

autographman:
thank heavens

autographman:
for small mercies.

MissTicktock:
very small. Four foot three.

MissTicktock:
Badoom boom boom.

MissTicktock:
thanguuuuverymuch

autographman:
u funny. I miss u.

autographman:
so much.

MissTicktock:
say hello to Ny for me

autographman:
everything stinks

MissTicktock:
say hello to Kitty for me (she lives there right? 109 years old—

autographman:
without you. Seriously. nothing works.

MissTicktock:
on 109th street.

autographman:
I’m serious. The world is broken.

MissTicktock:
my centagenerian (sp?) white woman competition.

MissTicktock:
goodnight alex.

MissTicktock:
yeah, but who’s gonna fix it, baby?

Missticktock has disabled messenger
(02:18)

autographman:
esther??

autographman has disabled messenger
(02:19)

3.

Friday morning was blue and without blemish. The long shadows made the coy pastel houses lean forward and kiss each other. The trees reached out for a fight with the fingers of wrestlers.

“That? That was Boot,” explained Alex to his milk operative, Marvin, who was on the doorstep.

“And? Does she fit?”

“What?”

“Boot. Does she fit?”

“Oh, got you. No. Not quite. Nice woman, though. Great, really.”

Turning together, Marvin and Alex watched Boot, in yesterday’s clothes, mooch down the street and vanish at that point where Alex’s pretty yellow road met Mountjoy’s high street and all the dark, contesting facts of the world.

“Mate, if I had what you have . . .” said Marvin, and whistled. Marvin was a great fan of Esther’s and pursued her frankly and relentlessly. He was one of those who called her African Princess, a description she considered an insult, along with the rest of the feminine diminutives: Baby Doll, Hot Stuff, Glamour Puss, Sex Kitten, Girlfriend.