The Autograph Man (32 page)

The plan, for Alex, was formulating as he spoke it. It was growing as he spoke it. His own perceived heroism was filling the room like a giant airbag. He couldn’t see any way that either of them might be hurt.

3.

A late lunch was taken in the piano bar of the hotel. Lovelear and Dove sat on painful stools, waiting for two slovenly blond waitresses to get off work. They had been pleading with these women, Alex was informed, since breakfast. As evidence of this, a stack of empty tissue-lined raffia bowls, soaked in the sweat of thirty hot chicken wings, awaited collection. To this, industrious Alex had since added one empty bottle of red wine, three glasses sticky with the residue of whiskey, a cocktail that had only managed to save its cherry, and a can of beer with a cigarette in it. A dimpled red arm and a sallow pinch of cleavage swung into view, come to collect the ketchup.

“They’re something, aren’t they?” said Lovelear.

Alex took Lovelear’s violent nudge in the ribs silently, and then released a musical burp, for he alone was the Zen Master. He patted his belly. Across the room, a very old gentleman called Mr. Martins fatally extended the final chords of “Some Enchanted Evening,” meaning to wring some applause out of what was left of his audience: three drunk men, two waitresses and one busboy. Alex clapped, gamely, and with some accuracy, considering. The old guy turned and bowed, only for Alex. Tugging at his raggedy purple tuxedo like a butler. And this is what an audience is when you get down to it, thought Alex; this gruesome, banal exchange. No-talent applauded by no-taste. Martins closed the lid of his piano with unsteady hands, removed his name card from the top, and replaced it with one which said
BACK AT 5:30 P.M.
! One of Lovelear’s waitresses wheeled in an ice sculpture, freshly cut. A heavy-hipped Venus in her shell.

“We’re going skating,” said Lovelear, licking round his fingers for fugitive sauce, “when Della and Maude get off. We’re all skating. It’s our last afternoon. You’re coming. We’re skating and then, very quickly, we’re getting laid, and then we’ve got a flight outta here so we’re gonna have to love ’em and leave ’em.
Literally.
That’s the plan.”

Alex had not told them of his own plan; the thought of Lovelear’s redoubtable enthusiasm was too much. And he didn’t feel that he could trust either of them to keep quiet. Beyond these two facts, Alex had not progressed. He had booked Kitty on a flight an hour earlier than his own. He meant to drop her off at the airport and then pick her up at the other end. In the interim, as the consultants like to say, skating seemed viable.

“Oh. Fine,” said Lovelear, wrong-footed by lack of resistance. “Well, you’re gonna need a sweater.”

“Fine.”

“And a girl—you can’t have ours. Get Honey Smith, and then if our two don’t put out, you know, we can always get her to—”

Dove, who adored slapstick, had already begun to snigger as Alex reached into a neighboring umbrella stand. Alex pulled out one of the golfing breed and thwacked Lovelear across the shoulders with it.

“You’ve got dog-mind,” said Alex, still wielding the umbrella, as Lovelear stared at him like cinema. “Dog-mind. All you do is howl after the moon. Chase your own tail. Thasswhayoudo. That’s the dog—see,” stumbled Alex, alcohol flooding his moral high ground. “A dog—like this is a dog—and just chasing, chasing its tail, that’s you.”

“Damn right I chase tail,” asserted Lovelear, slipping off his stool and switching all his dead-eyed attention to Della, the fat one, who had just thrown her apron over the bar.

IN HIS ROOM
, Alex washed his hands and head. With his hair wet, there was something of the Russian monk about him. It fell, the hair, in two black uneven sections, flat against his head, and through this poked his fanatic’s ears, pointed and prominent. Unable to improve things, he left the room and went next door.

“Skating?” queried Honey, stepping back from the doorway. “With you?”

“And others, yes.”

“Are you okay? You look funny.”

“Yes. My hair is wet. I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes. Bring a jumper.”

“A what?”

“A sweater. The snow keeps coming. Oh, how it comes.”

“Uh-huh. It’s a little early to be this drunk, isn’t it?”

“No, no,
no,
Mrs. Buddhist, let me ask
you
a question. Did you know in a book by a famous Jew someone asks someone what his name is and the person says, ‘Negro’?”

“Excuse me?”

“And here’s another question,” said Alex, leaning into the door. “Do you think that because you are a woman of black—no, start again: I mean, a black woman, that I can’t understand what you, you know,
are
or something?”

Honey put a rubber finger to his sternum and pushed. “Do you wanna try moving your breath back a little? Please?”

“Because you know actually as it happens my girlfriend is black. My best friend is. Too. You know? So. There’s that. To consider.”

“Congratulations,” said Honey, smiling. “Well, I guess it’s our last few hours together,
darling.
I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes, okay? Try putting your head back in the water again.”

Returning, Alex noticed what he had missed the first time: his room had been returned to its pre-Tandem state. Two days perfectly rewound.

IT TURNED OUT
the girls were not natural skaters. Della was the worse of the two, collapsing spectacularly, every few minutes, into Lovelear, who struggled to put the quaking giggler together again, like a man setting jelly back in its mold. Maude, in Ian’s stiff and adulterous arms, lifted each foot as if walking through sludge and let out a birdy screech whenever he tried to coax her from the safety barrier. Honey did not need Alex. A stately skater, she made her way round the circle smoothly and without incident, occasionally executing a turn with a neat flourish. Alex himself sat on the side and smoked a cigarette. The edges of skates are very thin and very sharp, he felt, the opposite of human feet. It takes an optimistic man to put them on. Skating is not to be undertaken lightly.

But there existed pleasures for the non-skater at this rink. Not normally moved by a scene, he was provoked into admiration by this ingenious piece of city planning, up on its hill with panoramic views. It gave to you a sensation you never even knew you wanted: skating on top of the world. From here he could see Roebling. He thought of an open suitcase with Kitty bent over it, folding her dressing gown. He could see the airport, he could see the top of the hotel. Briefly, he considered his minibar bill. He could see where the Jews lived and the Poles and the Hispanics and the Blacks and the Russians and the Indians and the Punks and the Lunching Ladies. He could see flags, silk, being carried on the breeze.

Over on the rink, he could see Honey in the center of a crowd of kids. They were tugging at her. One of them kept putting something long and sharp-looking into her face. Alex lifted a hand to see if she was okay, but she waved him off and smiled. Two kids tumbled to the ice and now he could see what she was doing. She was signing. There were about ten of them, arguing over a pen and looking for receipts to write on. It got larger. Husbands came, then wives. She had to skate to the barrier and take them in a messy kind of queue. Alex felt something wet and brought his hand down from the air. On the crease of his lifeline, one of those unlikely snowflakes had landed, the size of a sweet. He watched it melt. Laughed. He laughed like a loon. Then the trees were kings in ermine and every building was an achievement and the sun was demanding that the clouds move, and light made film stars of everyone, and Della’s breasts became marvels, and the sky grew pink and Sinatra was singing! Sinatra was making a list of the things he loved. A fireside. Potato chips. Good books.

Conditions were favorable. Alex threw his finished cigarette into a bush, laced his boot and stomped onto the ice. He’d made barely a step when Honey came behind him and he was away.

“Did you see that?” she asked hotly in his ear.

“I feared for the lives of those children. I thought you were going to stab them with their own pens.”

“Nah, I decided to give ’em a break. It’s just a name,” she said, guiding the two of them through the arch made by another couple’s stretched arms. “It’s not me. It doesn’t take from me. It’s just ink.”

“That’s very enlightened of you, Miss Richardson.”

“I thought so. Now. Mr. Tandem. If you were staying in town, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, don’t you think?”

After that they took one more revolution perfectly, uninterrupted, performing that fantasy of flight. Both knew this was their version of good-bye and the bottom line is there was something godly in it and here is Alex’s (partial) list:

Sinatra’s voice between 1948 and 1956

Donald O’Connor’s right foot

The old route to school on a March morning

The letter

Being inside her with her legs crossed round my hips

People falling over

Jokes

Overweight cats

Food

The films of Kitty Alexander

Relationships that do not involve blood or other fluids

Tobacco

Telling children that all life is suffering

Alcohol

God

Smell of cinnamon

Esther

4.

Last call. That ominous point where only the right piece of paper will let you go a step further.

“Now,” she said, holding his chin, “you will be there, this you promise me.”

“I’ll be there. An hour later. I’ll be there.”

“An hour, can you imagine? What is one to do in an airport for an hour?”

“Watch people come,” suggested Alex. “Watch people go.”

Kitty shuddered. “This I’ve seen plenty, including the version where they don’t come back.”

Alex gave Kitty a kiss on her powdery forehead. She smelt of theatrical makeup. She was dressed in a red suit with diamonds in her ears and a sparkle of green on her eyelids. Her hair was curled. Inside her holdall, even Lucia had a nice tartan jacket. The two of them are from that age when travel was still performance.

“Poor Lucia. In a bag for seven hours. It is indecent for a lady to travel this way.”

“She’ll be all right,” said Alex, sneaking a hand in to stroke Lucia’s back. “Just keep her quiet.”

“Max has probably already called the police department. He will think the stalker take me away to rape me or something crazy.”

“I’ll deal with Max,” said Alex and, without any confidence in this final proposition, kissed her once more and said good-bye.

AN HOUR LATER
, a piece of good luck befell him: he got bumped up to business class. He had never been there before, and though he understood he was meant to take it with good humor, something about it terrified him. The
effort
that had been taken. And all to identify and assert a few tiny differences: between orange juices, serviettes (cotton or paper), thickness of blanket, sharpness of pencil. The distinctions between coach and business class seemed to him worldly manifestions of the goyish conception of heaven. Which is a place for the kind of child who exults in his own lofty tower of ice cream the instant his friend’s cone falls to the ground.

On the other hand, in business class you get phones. Alex swept his credit card through one and at a rate of nine dollars a minute listened to Esther tell him that while she was being operated on, during a lucid spell, she had felt his father’s presence at the end of her bed.

“I s’pose,” she said, her voice almost unrecognizable, weak, “that sounds completely mental.”

Alex was silent. Esther had her moments of what she called “spirituality,” which ranged from inconstant trust in back-page star signs all the way to creative discussions with her African ancestors via poetry. In this area, Alex kept his counsel. He was barely capable of faith. Confronted with spiritualism, he found only humor.

“Go on,” she said. “Say it. Whatever it is.”

“No, I . . . nothing. Just.
My
father? Not
your
father?”

“Your father. He was holding my feet.”

“Right, because he was a big foot-holder in life, feet were a very important—”

“Oh, forget it. Forget it. Look, I can’t raise my voice, I’m all bruised. I’ve got to go.”

A stewardess brought her face very close to Alex’s and asked if he wanted cocoa.

“Esther, wait. Wait. When are you getting out?”

“Morning. Soon. I’m ready. I want to get out.”

“I’ve got something huge to tell you.”

“Save it for tomorow. I’ve got a load of stitches to show you. We can play Show and Tell. Where are you, anyway?”

“Direct course to Mountjoy. I’m flying over water. In the event of a crash, what do you think’s a better chance—water or land?”

“Alex, what’s wrong with you? Touch wood right now.”

“None about—I’m in business class, it’s all high-tech. Flash.”

“Touch it.”

“Okay, okay, chill. How about wood derivative?”

“That’ll do.”

Alex touched his menu, from which he had the choice of five kinds of mushroom.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Bull Transcended

1.

It was a three-seater couch, covered in red velvet. Rabbi Darvick held one end and Rabbi Green the other, the two of them in lively conversation. As Alex approached they positioned the thing squarely in front of Mountjoy’s war memorial, placed it on the ground and sat on it.

“And of course, the marvel is they did it all indoors,” Rabbi Green was saying, pointing at the busy road. “The whole street made from scratch!”

It was Darvick who spotted Alex first. He stood up to shake his hand.

“Tandem! Home! What a city, right? So! Good morning, or should I say”—he looked at a bare patch on his wrist—“good afternoon?”

“Where’s Rubinfine?” asked Alex, looking around.

“As a matter of fact, the rabbi has taken the car to run an errand for
you,
” said Green, and from his sitting position he seized Alex’s hand, which Alex did not withdraw quickly enough. “He’s gone to the Mulberry Road synagogue to talk to Rabbi Burston. About Thursday. And how things shall proceed.”

“He didn’t have to do that,” said Alex irritably. “I could have done that.”

“Yes, of course,” said Green, smiling. “Only you didn’t.”

The clock above the station struck noon, and an unruly crocodile of schoolboys passed under it. The trees, newly cut back, thrust their twisted fists into the air. Alex could see that it was Mountjoy, only it was outlined and strange to him, more sharply defined, as if he had just left an optician.

“You look bad,” said Darvick, whistling. “Jet lag. Better sit down for a moment.”

“Actually, I’m just nipping to the shops—”

“Sit down a moment,
please,
” said Green, and patted a space on the sofa between him and Darvick. Alex complied, but sat cross-legged and kept his eyes set on his feet.

“We—Rabbi Green and I—we will be joining the minyan on Thursday evening, did you know that?” said Darvick, placing a hand on Alex’s knee. “As will many of your friends. At every side, familiar faces.”

“That’s great,” said Alex, trying to remember the brand of dog food Kitty had sent him out for. “Really. I appreciate it a lot, because, you know, a minyan with fewer than ten people, it’s not really on. It’s not kosher. As I understand it. So, thanks. Tell Rubinfine thanks.”

“It’s much better than that other stuff, for you,” said Darvick, in a conspiratorial whisper. “
This
is true faith. This is getting something
done.
”

“Yes. I see that,” said Alex, rising to go.

“Living,” said Green, his voice gaining the pitch of quotation, “is the little that is left over from dying. Do you know the poet?”

“I don’t read poetry, Rabbi. I can’t find the time.”

“Attend to the dead,” said Green, in a quite different, frosty tone.

“I’ll do what’s required of me,” said Alex, with equal froideur.

“And how’s that book of yours?” inquired Darvick, very jolly in his voice, but unmoving in every other way. “The one about this is the opposite of that, yada yada and so on.”

“I got tired of it, finished it,” said Alex, performing a mock salute before walking away.

BACK INDOORS, HE PASSED
her a coffee and apologized once again for his flat. “In Iran,” said Kitty brightly, “I live in a tent for three weeks. In Ethiopia, a building made out of nothing, of animal waste! You don’t know, but I am a great traveler. When the movies were finished I drag my third husband around the globe from boredom. Your bedroom is no great adventure, believe me. The only thing we want to know, Lucia and I, is the whereabouts of this famous cat of yours.”

“I can’t explain to you,” said Alex, taking the seat opposite her, getting her in frame, “how bizarre it is, to have you sitting there. Right there. Just
there.
”

Kitty drew her legs up into her armchair and shook her head.

“What is bizarre? Think of it like a grandmother comes to stay. And now, please, stop this avoidance—where is this Jewish cat? You talk about her so vigorously in the taxi! I sense the possibility,” she said, nodding at Lucia, busy running a frenzied circle round the coffee table after a broken-necked cloth mouse of Grace’s, “of a friendship between opposites, yin and yang, which is something—”

But here the telephone in the hall demanded attention, and Kitty with adamant hands motioned him out of the room.

“Alex,”
said Adam’s voice, as if he had found him in a maze. “Back. And in time. We’re having lunch. Joseph’s on his way from the office to pick you up.”

“Joseph? What? No, I can’t go for lunch, Ads—I’m busy. I’m completely—no, look—can I call you later, or something?”

Three thuds came through the earpiece, Adam striking his phone against the table in frustration.

“Hello? Mr. Gaylord? No, you can’t call me later. It’s lunch. It’s a summit meeting, I’ve called it—and everyone’s coming. Including Grace—you’ve got to pick her up, we’ve had enough of each other. It’s too late, anyway, Joseph’ll be at yours any minute—”

“No, Ads, listen, I can’t—lunch is just not—I’ve got to—well, see Esther, apart from anything—” began Alex, and had the unpleasant realization that this was the first time he had considered her since he landed.

“She’s napping at home. Let her sleep. Come to lunch.”

“Look, a sort of thing has happened. I’ve got to talk to you—”

“You’re talking to me.”

“In person.”

“Then come to bloody lunch!”

The phone switched to its humiliating monotone.

“Go, of course,” said blushing Kitty, the second he appeared at the door. “Go to lunch. I am so jet-lagged I was soon to excuse myself, anyway. Please, go, go. Take Lucia—she goes crazy for a walk. She is terribly overexcited.”

Compulsively apologizing, Alex gripped the banister and watched Kitty climb the stairs. Lucia, scuttling behind her, got halfway up before he grabbed her round her middle, pressed her to his chest and with one hand held her mouth shut.

“Just so. Be a man with her, otherwise she does not take seriously anything. Her lead is hanging from the banister.”

The doorbell, in which the battery was coming loose, gave out its strangulated whine.

“Whose dog is that?” asked Joseph. He wore a gray suit with a long black coat and a black briefcase. His hair was slicked back; he was absolutely clean-shaven. He looked like an undertaker.

“Mine,” said Alex, affixing the lead. “I felt it was time. For a dog.”

“Interesting decision,” said Joseph, closing the door behind them. “Good to see you both. What’s his name?”

“Endelmann.”

“Pretty.” Joseph walked down the path and opened the front gate. “Come on, Endelmann, let’s go, there’s a good boy.”

The three of them crossed the street.

“Surprise,” said Joseph without inflection, and walked directly to the driver’s side of a perfectly beautiful red MG. He put his key in the lock.

Alex picked Lucia up, pressing his and the dog’s head up to the window.

“Joseph, whose car is this?”

“Yours,” replied Joseph, opening the door. He paused, looked up and over Alex’s head. “Alex, who’s that old woman at your window?”

“You know . . .” said Alex vaguely, waving back to Kitty, who was waving at Lucia, “Mum’s mum. Like, my grandmother. Whose car is this?”

“Yours. Shall we go round one more time, or is that enough?”

“Fixed?” murmured Alex, stepping back from it as Lucia dived to the ground and sniffed the wheels.

“No, new. Adam is a prophet. He insured the old one three weeks ago, with me, at Heller’s. He didn’t tell you, because he wanted you to stew for a while. And he got this relatively cheap, I understand, so there’s some money left over. For a religious man he has a business nose. I’m going to drive it, you take shotgun—jet lag and heavy machinery don’t go. We’ll have the top down, don’t you think? And rap music, yes?”

“It’s immoral, of course,” said Alex a few minutes later, as they passed down Mountjoy’s high street to appreciative looks. “The whole idea of insurance. Things break. People die. It’s paganism, basically. Insurance is like this mystic rite we throw at the inevitable.”

“You’re wrong. Part of the inevitable,” said Joseph, taking a right turn, “is the need for compensation. It’s a sin to get it, but an act of faith to want it. That’s where God is. In the wanting.”

“But it’s still a lie,” said Alex, stubbornly.

“It’s a moment of grace, like your health, or a woman. It’s not yours by right—it’s a loan, a partial repayment on the everyday misery.”

“Where are we going?” asked Alex, grumpy and out of practice as far as a Jewish argument was concerned.

The rapper on the stereo explained how he felt about the Real. He was attached to it. He’d never give it up.

Alex put his foot on Lucia’s backside to make her sit still down there. “Why lunch, anyway?”

“Russian restaurant in the East. Lunch because it’s been a while, I suppose. Because you wait for one and three come along at once. Because Adam’s learning Russian. Because if it doesn’t rain, it pours. Et cetera.”

“It’d be nice to get a bit of forewarning. Instead of being bloody
summoned.
How’s Boot?” Alex asked cruelly, and looked away. Joseph blushed.

“There was never any progression,” he said quietly. “I wrote her a few letters. The more I write, the less physical resolve I seem to have. I’ve only embarrassed myself in that department, if that pleases you.”

“ ’Course it doesn’t
please
me,” muttered Alex, suddenly ashamed. “Seems a pity, really. She’s nice, Boot. What
is
it, anyway, with you and women? Never seems to get off the ground.”

To this there was no reply. Alex turned a little in his seat and watched the walking people get sucked backwards into where they had just been. Lucia yapped.

“I don’t know what’s been wrong with you and me lately,” said Alex at last. “You’ve been acting . . . just weird.”

Joseph smiled bitterly. He tapped his fingers on the leather wheel.

“We’ve turned into abstractions of each other, it’s obvious,” he said, rather high-handedly. “We fear each other as symbols of one thing or another. We don’t tell the truth.”

“Look, it’s
exactly
that sort of thing,” said Alex, exasperated. “That’s just what I’m talking about. I don’t know what you mean. Part of the problem is the way you express yourself. We used to be friends. There was none of . . . this. It used to be easy, between us.”

“I used to be an Autograph Man,” said Joseph coolly, adjusting his wing mirror. “And that dog has no male genitalia. And your grandmother died the day the Germans marched into Paris.”

He turned his eyes completely from the road to look at Alex.

“Well, I think you resent me,” said Alex evenly, not looking back, brazening the moment out, “because I don’t suffer like you or something. Specially recently. You’ve completely had it in for me, like I’m being judged. And punished. I feel like you’re furious at me for being able to do this thing, to do this thing that I
love,
well, at least, if I don’t exactly love it, you know . . . it’s something I can tolerate. And I know you loved to do it, I mean it was you who
started
me—and now you’re stuck in that office. But that’s not my
fault,
Joe. That’s not my bloody
fault.
”

One of Alex’s words hung infuriatingly in the air, as surely as if he had placed it in a cartoon bubble. And now Joseph took one hand off the wheel and laid it speculatively over Alex’s, restoring, with this one touch, a knowledge Alex had possessed from the beginning. A responsibility he had never wanted, never been equal to.

“It’s the opposite of resentment,” said Joseph, in a low, breaking voice. “It’s
wonder.
You don’t see it. You have the
power
with things. I document the acts of God. I give out the insurance when things mess up. But you’re
in
the world, with things. You sell them, you exchange them, you deal with them, you identify them, name them, categorize them”—Alex freed his hand and slapped the dashboard in protest, amazed, as most people would be, by another man’s laudatory description of the accident we call our lives—“you write a bloody
book
about them. I’m sort of horrified by it, actually—you’re so determined to shape what to me is fundamentally without any shape—and the joke is, you don’t even realize it. You always go on about despair, but you don’t even know what color it is. You have Esther, apart from anything else. You
have
someone. Try,” said Joseph, with a choking laugh, “fifteen years of unrequited.”

“There are a million other girls in the—”

“Unrequited,” repeated Joseph, loudly. “For a man who barely knows you’re alive. Try that.”

They stopped at the traffic lights. The larger part of Alex had always stood resistant to any story in which he was not the victim, but now the stone rolled away from the mouth of the cave and he looked in. An indigo parade of memories went by with the cross traffic, snapshots of a passionate, difficult friendship, performed almost entirely in gesture over the years (as two boys in a red bathroom, bent over a sink full of developing photographs; as teenagers, pressing up against the purple velvet rope outside a cinema, clutching the brass posts, waiting for a star; as men, turning simultaneously the pages of two green leather-bound albums, exchanging this for that and back again). In all these reminiscences Joseph seemed in the edge of the frame, with his hands open, waiting for something to come to him. All that had happened these last few years was that these gestures grew further apart, less frequent and, consequently, more violent. Photographs to end the film.