The Autograph Man (24 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Discovering the Footprints

1.

It was quite a spread. The white linen cloth, as pristine as the morning, presented dreams of breakfast from around the world. Here boiled eggs sat in their china cups, pretty as Buddhas. Half a pig, sliced up and fried, had been arranged into a mountain around which scrambled egg shimmied and shook. Porridge, in a huge cauldron, sat on a piece of tartan, waiting to be ladled. Endless choice. Thin slices of waxy Dutch cheese, Italian bologna or German hams, conserves claiming Cornwall in
ye olde
earthenware jars, Philadelphia cream cheese, melted Swiss chocolate, fluffy Caribbean ackee, or twelve hot English kippers, like dismal shoe soles, laid out in starfish formation. On the side, a swan-necked jug of maple syrup, a pancake tower, baskets of croissants and moist muffins, sizzling grits, the yang of bagels split conveniently from their yins, strips of smoked salmon re-formed into the silhouette of a fish (open-mouthed, so it seemed to eat a shiny mound of its own red roe), dried cereals for the serious, unlimited coffee (but no tea), all the juices of the known world and a resplendent four-tier fruit display, kept cool by an ice sculpture of Mount Rushmore.

It had taken three return visits, but finally the battle of the buffet was drawing to a close. Tandem and Dove were doing coffee shots with tobacco chasers. Lovelear was scanning the remnants of their breakfasts while holding forth on one of his favorite topics: the Overlooked Invention. He had always believed some aspect of his breakfast could have been made simpler by technology, could have benefited from an obvious (once realized) household tool. And it was here again, this morning, absent from the table, screaming out to be invented. It would solve an (as yet unidentified) age-old chore and bring to Lovelear overnight fame, wealth. If only he could find it. He had been searching for it every breakfast since boyhood.

“Did you ever think,” said Alex-Li, checking his watch, “that historically we may have reached a saturation point as far as
ease
is concerned? So there’s actually no way you could’ve made that breakfast any easier than it was? Unless we, like, took it intravenously.”

Lovelear reached out for the guava juice and poured himself a pint of it. “Tandem, nobody thought they could improve on matchbox design? And then some guy went to the factory—”

Alex pushed for a name, any form of corroborating detail.

“
A
factory, okay? ’S not important to the overall scenario—and it’s 1926 and the guy walks into the big man’s office and he’s like—I mean, the
guy’s;
like—I’m gonna sit down here and tell you how you could save millions of dollars every year, but in
exchange
I want twenty thousand dollars a year for the rest of my natural born life—that was a lot of money back then—wouldn’t cover a year’s groceries now, but on with the story—and they’re like, what the hell, thinking this guy’s a crackhead or whatever, so, they just sit back and say okay, whatever, let’s hear it. ’Cos they got nothing to lose. And he says,
Put the sandpapery shit on one side.
Because they were putting that shit on both sides, up to that point. Put it one side, man. Lived like a king till he died.”

“I have to go,” said Alex.

“You don’t have to go anywhere. Fair’s not for another hour. Where you gonna go? You don’t know nobody in New York.”

Dove had been nose to nose these last few minutes with a milk carton, reading its side as he polished off a final bowl of cereal. Just as Alex pushed back from the table, he raised his head, slid the carton towards Alex and pointed at an image printed on its side. A fourteen-year-old missing person, one Polly Mo of the Upper East Side. Snaggle-toothed and eager against an unearthly lapis lazuli; detached, as in all school photos, from family and furniture. Alone in the big blue world. Last seen by the CCTV of a candy store, buying ten Lotto tickets. Fondly, Ian wiped a splatter of milk from her face. “They’ll find her soon, prob’ly. Hopefully. Poor love. She must be on a million of these things. ’S good idea, mind—they should do it back home. Oi, what do you reckon,” he said to Lovelear, lifting the carton and placing the girl’s face alongside Alex’s own. “The missing twin sister? A bit, don’t you think? Around the eyes?”

“Dove, if that’s your criteria, there’s another half-billion girls in the world who could be Tandem’s missing twin sister.
Jesus Christ
”—Lovelear scowled, grabbing the carton out of Dove’s hands—“what a way to become a household name. Depressing the hell out of people when they’re trying to eat breakfast.”

“Got to meet this weird woman person dealer thing,” said Alex, snatching his bag from under his chair. “Late already. A bit of business. Not expecting much. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. You go on ahead, I’ll see you in there.”

“Whatever. You’re no great loss. Me and the Doveman, here: we’re Zen, we’re down for whatever. Wax on, wax off,” said Lovelear, harpooning the remnants of a Mexican sausage with the tip of his knife, holding it up. “Just remember to put a rubber on it.”

HE KNEW INSTANTLY
that he recognized her. He had no idea why. He strained to get a better look from behind the maître d’s podium; he stepped in front of it and waved—but at that moment she rested her head against the solid, silent glass, beyond which it snowed and snowed and things looked less like themselves and more like another note in a symphony of white. This was her backdrop, this was the scene she was stealing. She was black in a red dress. She sat completely alone at the very back of the sea-themed restaurant, amidst papier-mâché starfish and plastic shrimp, the tentacles of an octopus mural stretching out to get her. Alex approached. At closer range, he could see that the dress was quite ordinary, with a high neck and motherly overtones, the earrings larvae-like clusters of pearls. There was a certain statuesque weight to her; she was maybe thirty-five or so. Alex fixed on a set of mesmeric, glossy lips, the same color as the dress, a luxurious addition to a face that had its lines and troubles. She was holding a vast pocked California orange in her right hand, and had almost succeeded in peeling the thing in one fluent corkscrew gesture.

“Hey, there. This enough fish for you? This enough
snow
for you?”

Alex took the hand she offered. If he lived to be a hundred he never expected to meet another woman wearing skin-tight black rubber gloves in a public restaurant. As he went for his seat, she made a low noise of triumph and held the orange peel up by one end. She bounced its coil above the tabletop.

“That’s nicely done.”

“I always think it’s so much
nicer
that way. Like the orange got free itself. Just went right on and slipped its skin.”

Alex smiled feebly, and continued the battle to make his coat stay draped over the hunched shoulders of his chair. She spoke, therefore, to his back. She had a husky voice, but an orotund, serious one. There was no element of flirtation in it, nor anything overtly mad. He turned and sat. There was a pause. It was all he could do not to look at the gloves, and it wasn’t working: he was looking at the gloves.

“I told you I’d be wearing these on the phone, right?” she asked, sharply. All the warmth bled from her face. She pushed her chair back from the table.

“I’m sorry? I don’t under—”

“Look, if you don’t want to do business in my fashion, then we don’t need to waste each other’s time, do we? I thought I made that clear on the telephone yesterday.”

Alex was as intimidated as he could ever remember being. He shrank in his chair and discreetly clutched the tablecloth. “No, you misunderstand—”

“I like,” she said, firmly, “to get the jokes and the curiosity out of the way before the business starts, because when I do business I do
not
enjoy comedy.”

Honey brought back her chair, looking him dead straight in the eyes, like a cowboy. Alex had the sense that she had made all these gestures, in the same order, many times before. Either that, or she had seen them in a film.

She said: “So before you ask, the answers are: about average; cut; he approached me, twenty-five dollars for the whole thing; and no, I never made much money out of it in the end. Why the hell would I be doing this if I did? As for this, I always been a movie fan, and I just kind fell into autograph work, and here I am. So. Business now?” she asked wearily, lifting a large black folder from her lap. “I’m sure the other guys have already told you, but the rules are, One, no touching any of the product, unless you’re wearing gloves, which I can provide to you; Two, if you give me cash that you’ve touched with your hands, which I’m presuming you have, I’ll have to spray it, and if it’s a lot of cash, I’d appreciate it if you helped me; Three, when I’m handling
your
items—”

She stopped and lifted her eyes from the spot on the table where she had been encircling her points with a rubber finger. Alex was nodding in that meek English way, quickly and about nothing.

“Hey. You okay?”

Alex opened his mouth, couldn’t think where to begin, and closed it again.

“Hey. Ohhh . . .”

She raised an eyebrow as her face passed rapidly through suspicion, to recognition, to something like humorous regret. “You got no damn idea who I am. Am I right?”

“You’re Ms. Richardson,” said Alex slowly. It was his even-toned voice, designed for the deaf, disabled, insane, irretrievably foreign. “I sold you a Flowers McCrae—a two-reeler contract she signed, dated 1927? Last month, I think it was. And some cigarette cards featuring the Wheelerettes. And a lot of different things last October. I’m Alex-Li Tandem.” He reached for his card. “I hope that’s not—I mean, oh
Jesus,
” he said, rising in his chair, instantly red at the possibility that it was he and not she who had a problem, “
tell
me I’m at the right table—”

She opened her eyes wide, smiled, took his card and motioned for him to sit.

“You’re fine, you’re fine. I know who you are. See, I forget,” she said, looking across the room and hailing a waiter with a quick finger, “that not everybody spends all their damn lives reading the papers. I’m gonna order us an English tea. I’m sorry I was so . . .”

The sentence got lost in a movement of her hands, a quiet bouncing gesture, as if she were weighing two identical packets of flour.

“Anyway, anyway,” she said, almost to herself. She picked up a bottle of water and filled both their glasses. “
Damn.
We should start again. I’m Honey and you’re Alex-Li. Hello, Alex-Li.”

She smiled. She had a lot of teeth. She offered him the black rubber again. He shook it.

“Just, it’s usually the English who’re the worse. One woman I met in Mar Lee Bone—is that how you say it? I always get those tube things mixed up—Mary-Lee Bone?”

Alex corrected her. She tried it out twice, gave up with a little sigh.

“However you say it, but I was there on business, minding my
own
damn business, too—this bitch spat right in my face. In the middle of the
street.
”

“Christ—I’m sorry,” said Alex, and concluded that he had just had a long and unusually opaque conversation about racism. It was at this point he began to feel more comfortable. It was like reaching the twenty-seventh minute of a French film, the point at which he usually began to have some hazy idea of what was going on.

“What you sorry about?” said Honey with a frown, and opened the folder. “You didn’t do nothing. Shall we?”

Honey pushed an Erich von Stroheim towards him, a good studio portrait, signed boldly, in excellent condition, a quality autograph item. It was the first thing Alex had truly understood since he sat down. He moved to touch it, but she snatched it away. “Let me explain again. You can’t touch nothing of
mine,
until it’s definitely
yours.
If you want this, and you’re sure, then take it, but if you change your mind I’ll have to spray it, which is a little tiresome, you know?”

Alex didn’t know.

“If you’re worried about
germs
or something—” he began, amazed; she cut him short with a low growl.

“I know, I know, you ain’t got cooties, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Everybody’s;
got cooties. You better take these gloves.”

It was a bewildering hour. Whenever he decided on an item, she would take the cash and leave with it, heading for the bathroom. When she returned, the money seemed to glisten—it had a funny smell. At one point Alex’s forearm brushed Honey’s. She leapt from her chair. It was twenty minutes before she came back, smelling like a hospital corridor and with a wild, exhausted look in her eye.

“I guess you know,” she said, on her return from the bathroom, holding his freshly slick money, “the definition of a movie producer.”

“Uh-uh, no. Tell me.”

“A man who knows what he wants but don’t know how to spell it.”

“That’s good, funny,” said Alex, laughing through a mouthful of scone. She had that disinterested charm that Alex envied in people whenever he came across it. The talent of not caring what is thought of you. He watched his own new rubber hands reaching up to his face as if someone else were feeding him.