The Road Narrows As You Go (13 page)

The inevitable meeting between Frank and Jonjay took place in the living room with Reagan muted on the television and one interruption from Manila Convençion who walked through after a shower with a towel around her body and another in a turban around her head. Don't mind me, she said, kicking her little wet toes up behind her.

Frank turned to Jonjay. When I saw Wendy a few weeks ago she said you were missing in action. Where have you been?

Yes, and back in the nick of time, too, said Jonjay. From what I hear you owe me one,
big
.

Frank nodded but didn't break a sweat. I do, he said. I think I owe you anything you ask for. Just say the word.

Jonjay stood and shook his hand. I'll hold you to that. I have some ideas.

No doubt you do. Are you staying here?

So far as I can see. Jonjay fell back on the sofa and lifted his legs up onto the coffee table and used the remote control to flip channels.

I like this longtable, said Frank. Reminds me of my office. It's designed in a giant X shape with my desk smack in the middle of the X and my staff spread out along the arms. Isn't your roommate the young man behind
Pan
? Frank asked.

Let's go, Wendy said. I'll explain on our walk.

She brought flashlights with her, and climbed Bernal Hill. Ice hung in the air. The only other person on the hill was a man in a brown corduroy blazer out for a walk. Within a few minutes they heard a cat mewl, then tracked its tail bounce through the brush. Further along they caught a ribby dog slavering over the residue left in some Chinese takeout boxes. And nearby a family of raccoons was sitting in a flat tire in the tall weeds, waiting a turn.

You can see why I like living here, she said.

He said this was the most fun he'd had in years.

You're not kidding, said Wendy, and he put his hands on her shoulders in preparation for an embrace. He wasn't kidding. Look, she said, this can't happen again.

Why not?

We're in business together. You're married. My roommate and best friend and total mentor died two weeks ago.

I know, this isn't rational, but I can't stop thinking about you.

Our whole relationship is supposed to be about licensing and merchandising. I don't want the start of my career to be the beginning of your betrayal. Everything will fall apart. Plus I'm not mistress material. There's too much stress in
mistress
. Plus your wife sounds cool, smarter than me, she's your high school sweetheart, wow, and you said she writes? Prose, now that is college smart, Frank. All I do is doodle humdingers and kneeslappers. The most challenging part of my day is cutting out the
zipatone screens. I'm good for a product. So sell it. You get my drift? We had our one-night fling. Flings are my thing.

I met someone this month who I feel like I've known since before I was born. Like you have been waiting for me since my gene pool took off in the cosmic soup. I wish you'd told me about your friend dying so I could share in your sadness.

Okay, that's enough. All this romance. I believed your note, what you wrote that we were back to the normal world.
Regularly scheduled programming.

I regret I wrote that. I thought it was clever of me. I meant for the moment, the time being. Until we could see each other again. What about the last line?

Something about getting to know me? I don't believe that. I think you went home and your glands got swollen up and you wanted more so you called me. Well it's still the
time being
for me. Our night together was loony-tunes, don't spoil it. We celebrated with crazy abandon, but let's remember we're professionals with obligations. Regularly scheduled programming, Frank.

The night turned cold on him. He looked away from her. The dogs on the hill barked. Cats mewled and hissed. The lights of San Francisco danced in front of them like fire on a screen at a drive-in movie and from this altitude the moon seemed ironic. He started to tremble in his cheap suit. His hair fought to keep its form. He said, You know my honest feelings, Wendy. Do you really mean what you're telling me, or are you putting up some kind of a front? Because what happened with Jonjay, that's—

You know what? Jonjay told me the math equation you stole from him doesn't work the way you think it does. How's that for you? It's not intended for the stock market, it's for other purposes. Ask him if you want to, but I guess he decided to leave you hanging. I shouldn't have said anything but I don't want you to put my comic strip at risk.

I'm in the bond market, not stocks.

See there you go. Stocks and bonds. I didn't even know there was a difference, said Wendy. I can talk about a nib or a brush. And what about kids?

What about kids?

Do you have them?

No. Why do you ask?

Because I want to know who you are. You have this entire life you suppose I can ignore. And I have a life, too, that you would discard most of, I think, just so we can fuck.

Don't say that. I want the same things you do.

Don't forget, you make this kind of deal every day, but for me, what you're giving me is this
one
shot, and it's all I get, so I have to focus on making a great comic now, not pleasing you in hotel rooms. Please, Frank, go home. San Jose needs you. No more private pitches.

And what about Friday night? Is that the kind of deal
you
make every day?

Whoever you think I am, I'm not. I'm nobody's delicacy. In the
Lady and the Tramp
. I'm a rat. There must be a dozen foxes in your typing pool you could woo if you need some wild on the side. You saw my animals with your very own eyes. They're real. They're frightened. Every last one of them. Aren't they adorable, fleas and all? I wish their lives weren't so tragic. I guess that's why I find their story funny. Now please, I say, I fondly beg you, just let me draw them. It's what I love to do.

Before he let her go back inside he grabbed her face and kissed her, held on to her face with urgency and a fiendishness that was fondness, and then instead of waiting to get slapped, slipped into the back of a limousine idling at the curb.

See you soon, he said and vanished behind a tinted window.

He was one of five people in northern California with a cellular phone. Within seconds of her walking in the door he called. Why? To say in a
businesslike manner, Listen, I loved our tour of your inspiration. I hope you'll come down to San Jose soon and visit the offices. The staff is going to want to meet you.

Not likely, Wendy said.

I'll get a secretary to make the appointment.

In the meantime we made sure to record onto a blank Beta cassette the ABC documentary that night about the assassination attempt on Reagan from a month ago. And talk about full circle, get this—the president's Secret Service bodyguard dreamed of one day becoming a Secret Service bodyguard to the president after watching Reagan play the role of a cockylipped Secret Service bodyguard to the president in an old black-and-white action-adventure propaganda film.

Check out how serene he is in the face of absolute mortal danger, said Jonjay. He was not talking about Frank Fleecen but President Reagan after being shot near the heart. Wendy came home and collapsed on the chesterfield with her head on a pillow across from Jonjay so he could massage the soles of her feet. Listen to your father figure as he cracks pitchperfect jokes with the surgeons before they put him under anaesthetic to remove a bullet from his chest, Jonjay said and aimed the remote control at the TV. He doesn't know if a madman or Soviets or his own government shot him. But he's still got the confidence of a bad stage actor. I don't get him. There's no depth to his psychology. He's always that good-humoured action figure, nothing upsets his good mood. It makes no sense. Unless Reagan believes he's trapped in an episode of
The Twilight Zone
. Someone convinced him—maybe it's the CIA, they gaslight him, convince him that our world is all a soundstage, and the
real
America is behind a brick wall he dare not visit.

That sounds like your own delusion, said Patrick.

Well, he can
have
his world, said Wendy, but she wasn't thinking about Reagan and his delusions, or Jonjay's, she was talking about Frank and his
offices in San Jose and more importantly the wife and suburban home that loomed large and shadowy in her imagination. Of the whole affair with Fleecen, Wendy had this to say: Nobody on earth who gets to know me imagines I'm better than what they already have. Even if I wanted to be with Frank, that doesn't mean I would want to spend time with him. What I do is draw. Flings are my thing. There's no time in my life for anything but professional commitments. I'm not girlfriend, mistress, or any other kind of material. I'm this night owl with a pen in her hand. Don't touch me, I'm not yours.

The glory's the stories, said Jonjay and clasped his hands together. Comics are your gusto. History rarely hails the mistress. Except Cleopatra, all the legends surround creators. Frank's a user. Use him back. Use up the use of the user, then throw him out.

12

STRAYS

Hick Elmdales used to say that in order to pay their dues the average artist with a comic strip in the newspaper had painted at least twenty-five houses inside and out, another dozen store signs, price lists, and chalk displays, sixteen homejob tattoos, designed ninety-nine advertisements, a hundred and eleven rock concert posters, fifty-six political gags, a half-inch stack of bad art, milkcrates full of sketchbooks, and at least two dozen weeks' worth of strips before a syndicate gave you a shot at the funny pages.

She should count herself lucky, then, was what Hick implied, since it took Wendy a third of the work of an average talent to get her strip syndicated.

In her mind that meant she still owed two-thirds of her credibility, it meant her luck was in arrears. She must work off that mental debt doing extra hours. Debt was a painful sort of negative reinforcement she used as daily motivation for the next three years. For it wasn't until around eighty-four that she felt she had paid her dues to the history of comic artists slaving, and that this membership into the pantheon demanded more of her than she knew how to give. So Wendy would become a business, and in so doing she employed us.

For three years we took care of all that client work she got handed. Every toy you saw, the package the toy was in, the display for the toy store, the advertisement for the magazine, we handled that, from the sketch on up to the final
final
blueprint for manufacture, that was us. Hundreds of toys and calendars. Lots of clients. But the first contract Frank signed, that will always be the most significant. It was significant because it was the first deal. And because this deal made almost all the rest of the deals possible. That's why Gabby called so early. The phone rang before ten in the morning. Wendy was asleep. Rachael took the call. Wake her up, Gabby said. She has to hear this herself. This is big.

Gabby called because Frank had signed exclusive manufacturing rights to Lupercal Plastics, of El Segundo.

Plastic company. Okay. Good stuff. Frank didn't call
me
.

I'm the business end of your stick, Wendy. You focus on your silly doodles.

Wendy picked the hard tail of a dried teardrop out of the corner of her bloodshot eye. Why wasn't she more excited? Cream bloomed and erupted as it mixed with her coffee, and sunlight through the bay window turned the kitchen nook into a greenhouse full of dead plants and hangovers. Sorry, Gabby, you woke me up. I was dreaming I was a bat hanging upside
down in a cave and flying around with thousands of other bats. I ate a centipede.

Well, it's midday in Manhattan, Wendy. Real life just ate a centipede. Frank said Lupercal is just the beginning and a long list of licences will come from this. Happy?

Yes, indeedy, said Wendy. Consider that in the month of March of eighty-one Wendy had earned a hundred and fourteen dollars and eleven cents from her comic strip. A ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus in May was a significant uptick.