The Man Who Lived by Night (27 page)

“The name is Lulu,” I explained.

“Of course it is,” he said pleasantly.

He hoisted her up with one arm. She made a complete circuit around the bed, snuffling happily, flopped down next to him, and immediately began to sneeze like crazy, her big floppy ears pinwheeling around almost fast enough to lift her off the bed.

He watched her curiously. “Why is she doing that?”

“She happens to be allergic to a certain perfume.”

Calvin Klein’s Obsession, to be exact. The bedcovers reeked of it. She had not, I recalled, sneezed when she met Charlie.

He patted her. “I had a dog when I was a boy,” he said, his voice tinged now with a kind of remote, aristocratic sadness. “A cocker spaniel named Johnny. I loved Johnny more than anything. He died when I was away at camp one summer. Mother was so distressed that I’d not been able to say a proper good-bye that she saved him for me. When I got home, she took me straight to the cellar and opened the freezer door and said, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ And there he was, shoved in there with the Hummel skinless franks and Minute Maid frozen orange juice, teeth bared, his paws all stiff … ” He shuddered at the memory, then looked down and realized he was petting the wet blanket. Lulu was long gone — under the bed. Not her kind of story.

“Get dressed,” I said. “We’ll put some food and coffee into you. Talk business.”

He sniffed at his armpits. “Perhaps I ought to shower.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

He came downstairs a few minutes later wearing a stylishly dowdy white planter’s suit, striped tie, pink oxford button-down shirt, and paint-spattered Top-Siders with no socks. His wet hair was slicked straight back. He looked scrubbed and healthy and ready for anything. He was still young enough to not show the effects of the life he was leading. It had been a long time since I was that young.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped to light a cigarette from his lighter. Again I noticed how self-conscious his gestures seemed. He posed there for me, one hand in his pants pocket, looking as if he were straight out of one of those Ralph Lauren ads, the ones where the members of an ultracivilized master-race family are lounging about their baronial country manse with their hunting dogs and their croquet mallets. There was a good reason for this — he had actually been a Lauren model before he took up writing.

“Forgot to give your key back,” I said, tossing it to him. “Charlie’s key, I mean.”

He caught it and looked at it. “You met Charlie?”

“I did. She seems —”

“Brilliant? She is.” He sighed. “She’s also in love with me, the poor thing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m no good for her. Or for anyone. I can’t love them back. You were married to Merilee Nash, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“What was it like?”

“Being married or being married to Merilee Nash?”

“Being married.”

I tugged at my ear. “When it’s going well, it’s not the worst thing there is. When it isn’t … it is.”

“She seems like the perfect woman.”

“Only because she is.”

“How do you know when you’re ready for it? Marriage, I mean.”

“You’re never ready. You just kind of feel it sneaking up on you, like the punch line to a bad joke. Not a terrible house, by the way.”

“Thanks. Still no kitchen or terrace, as you can see. Charlie can’t seem to get the damned contractor back for more than thirty minutes at a time, and at that only when we’re not here to put our foot down. The man’s uncanny. Friend of hers at
Architectural Digest
wants to do a spread when it’s all done. He says it’s a breakthrough in Found Minimalism.”

“Play a lot of golf?” I asked, indicating the putting green. “Or is that the ‘found’ part?”

He went over to the putter and fingered it fondly. “One of my first loves, actually. As a boy I dreamt of being a pro. Do you play the game?”

“Some. Javelin was always more my style.”

“What’s your handicap?”

“An exceedingly low bullshit threshold. Yours?”

He grinned. “I don’t know how to say no.”

“That’s not so hard. I’ll teach you.”

It was still sunny outside. The air was fragrant from the blossoms on the trees across the street in the park, where a black nanny was pushing a baby in a pram down one of the spotless gravel paths. An elderly couple sat on a bench together reading. They waved to the nanny as she passed. She waved back.

“Not a terrible neighborhood either,” I observed.

“And steeped in a tradition of literary greatness,” he agreed enthusiastically. “Henry James lived here in Gramercy Park. So did Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Nathaniel West, S. J. Perelman … and now me.”

Lulu stopped in her tracks and began to cough. Violently.

“What’s she allergic to now?” Cam asked, frowning down at her.

“I’m afraid she got it from me.”

“Got what?”

“The low bullshit threshold.”

He froze, taken aback. Then he laughed and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Boyd always says that if you keep telling people you’re great, they’ll eventually believe you. I take it you think that’s bush.”

“I think the work speaks for itself.”

“As do I, coach.” He flashed that disarming smile at me. “But it never hurts to turn up the volume a little, does it?”

We hopped into his bright-pink Loveboat. It had a white interior and plenty more chrome all over the dash. Also enough room inside to seat six with space for a skating rink left over. He lowered the top as soon as he started her up. I put down my window. Lulu planted her back paws firmly in my groin and stuck her large black nose out.

“Unassuming little set of wheels,” I observed.

“Yeah, I try to keep a low profile.”

He pulled away from the curb without bothering to look and almost got nailed by an onrushing cabbie, who slammed on his brakes and gave us a sample of his horn and his upraised middle finger. Cam seemed quite oblivious of him — he ignored all of the other cars on the road, as well as things like lanes, street signs, and traffic lights. He just rolled along in the giant Olds as if the road were his and his alone.

“You spoke with Boyd about the book?” he asked.

“I did,” I replied as he calmly drifted through a red light at Park, cut off three oncoming cars, and made a left onto it. “He wasn’t entirely specific about what your concept is.”

“Haven’t got one.”

“That might explain it.”

He pulled up a whopping two blocks away on Park and Nineteenth in front of the Cafe Iguana and killed the engine and started to get out.

“Going to leave it right here?” I asked. The car wasn’t exactly double-parked — it was more like in the middle of the street.

“Too big to take inside with us,” he answered simply as he headed in.

Cafe Iguana was a big, multilevel Yushie hangout colored in peach and turquoise. Its trademark was a sixteen-foot crystal iguana suspended in the air over the bar, where Rob Lowe stood by himself drinking a beer and trying to look grown-up and deep. Seeing him there reminded me just how much I missed Steve McQueen. It was nearly six o’clock so the place was practically teeming with the Young Urban Shitheads — the power-suited male variety displaying plenty of teeth and swagger, the females showing a lot of treadmill-enhanced leg and stony gazes. A few artists and models and record producers were sprinkled around for flavor. There were tables, but no one was eating yet.

Cam made straight for the bar where he exchanged low-fives and a few lusty whoops with Lowe before finding us a couple of empty stools at the end. The bartender was ready for him with two shot glasses of tequila and a wedge of lime. The man wasn’t unknown here. He took a bite out of the lime and threw one of the shots down his throat. Then a bite. Then the second shot.

Then the bartender turned to me for my order, his eyes flickering slightly when he heard the soft, low growl coming from under the bar.

“Make it a bellini,” I said.

He frowned, shook his head. “Don’t know it.”

“Three parts champagne, one part fresh peach juice. It was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice in the forties.”

He nodded. “Sounds perversely good, ace, but where am I gonna get fresh peach juice?”

I dug into my trench coat. “Where do you think?” I replied, rolling two ripe peaches onto the counter. “And don’t call me ace.”

Cam grinned at me approvingly as the bartender retreated to make my drink. “I’m beginning to like you, coach. You have style.”

“Slow down. I’m complex.”

“Tell me, is Harry’s Bar still there?”

“Was the last time I looked.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I was just out there for the Oscar parties, and we ate down at the beach one night, place called Chinois. Stupendous eats. But I don’t remember seeing any Harry’s.”

“Italy,” I said tugging at my ear. “It’s in Venice, Italy. Not Venice, California.”

He nodded. “That explains it. Never been to Italy. Or anywhere in Europe. Would I like it?”

“There’s nothing not to like.”

The bartender came back with my bellini in a tall champagne flute and with two more shots of tequila for Cam. I took a sip. It was excellent — the champagne cold and dry and enlivened by the sweetness of the peach juice.

Cam drained another shot of tequila with a bite of lime. “Listen, when I said there was no concept for my book, I didn’t mean I haven’t given it a great deal of thought. I have. I just don’t believe there should be one. Know what I mean?”

Before I could answer, an uncommonly leggy and lovely young blonde approached him from behind, ran her fingers through his hair, and leaned into him. “You didn’t call me,” she said. Then she kept on going down the bar, hips swiveling.

He gazed after her wistfully until she looked back at him over her shoulder and wiggled her fingers at him. He wiggled his back, groaning softly. “She models see-through lingerie for the catalogs. Not very high up on the food chain intellectually, but she happens to like it up the ass.”

I sipped my drink. “I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Get what you mean.”

“Oh, right.” He lit a cigarette, dragged deeply on it. “I mean, I’m not interested in doing something that has quote-unquote form. I want this book’s energy to be the energy of unvarnished chaos.” He was warming up now — his voice was getting louder, his eyes brighter. Certainly the tequila wasn’t hurting. “I want to surprise the reader. Ask them questions nobody’s ever asked them before, like, say, do blind people
see
in their dreams? I want to have them turn the page and run smack into, say, the photographs Charlie has taken of dead bodies she’s found on the streets of Manhattan.” He laughed, tremendously pleased by his own brilliance. He had that special brand of cockiness that comes from never having known failure. Nobody had ever said no to Cam Noyes. Nobody had ever told him to shut up. He drained his tequila. “What do you think, coach? Don’t you think it sounds stupendous?”

I glanced over at him. He was waiting for an answer. I gave him one. “I think,” I replied, “that it sounds like one of the two or three biggest loads of bullshit I’ve heard in a very long time.”

I never saw the punch coming. It caught me square on the jaw. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor watching that damned iguana swirl around somewhere up near the ceiling. Fireworks were going off, and somebody was ringing the bells up at St. Patrick’s. And then the bartender was waving ammonia under my nose and Lulu was licking my hand. A bunch of Yushies were standing over me, murmuring. Personal-injury lawyers smelling a lawsuit, no doubt.

Cam Noyes knelt before me, his brow creased with concern. “Christ, I’m sorry.” He sounded contrite.

“Kind of a short fuse you have there.”

“I know,” he acknowledged readily. “I’ve never been good at taking criticism. Ask anyone.”

“That’s okay. I believe you.”

“Besides, you’re not exactly gentle.”

“You want gentle, get Sally Jessy Raphael.” I sat up, rubbing my jaw.

“Care to punch me back?” he offered, quite seriously. “I deserve it.”

“Not my style. But thanks.”

He hoisted me up onto my feet. I was a bit wobbly, but okay. The Yushies dispersed. I got back up onto my stool. Cam started to climb back onto his. Just as his butt was about to land, I yanked it from under him. He hit the floor with a thud and a loud, surprised “Oof.”

“Damn, that felt good,” I exclaimed, grinning down at him.

“Is
this
your style?” he demanded crossly, glowering up at me.

“Generally.”

“We even now?”

“As far as I’m concerned we are.”

I helped him up. We shook hands. We ordered another round of drinks. He drained one of his shots after they came, gazed into his empty glass, and oh-so-casually remarked, “You’ve had it, haven’t you? Writer’s block?”

My stomach muscles tightened involuntarily. They always do when I think about the void. And the fear. I glanced over at him and swallowed. I nodded.

“How do you know when you have it?” he asked, his eyes still on his empty glass.

“You know,” I said softly.

He looked up at me. The twinkle was gone from his eyes. There was only a hollowness, a hurt there now. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Just can’t seem to start anything. Doesn’t matter what it is. The novel. A short story. Even a letter. I keep thinking — hold on, don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget you have to be brilliant, outrageous, natural, hip … You have to be
Cam Noyes
.’ He ran his hands through his wavy blond hair. “They’ve set this impossibly high standard for me, you know? And they’ll only be happy if I exceed it. I’m not allowed to fail. They won’t let me. So I end up sitting there. And sitting there. And … I don’t know. I feel like I’m … ”

“Exposing yourself in public?”

“Well, yeah. Kind of.”

“That’s what writing is.”

“I suppose it is.” He shook his head. “Christ, how did you survive this?”

“I didn’t. I wrecked myself and my marriage. Drove all of my friends away — except for the real ones, the ones who were there before.”

“I don’t have many friends like that.”

“No one does.”