The Silver Age (17 page)

A few minutes later they were saying their goodbyes.
Nathan promised to look Stephan up the next time he was in New York, and
Stephan would do the same if he found himself back up north. Stephan doubted
they’d be seeing each other anytime soon, but you never knew. Life played such
tricks sometimes, darting off on a fresh course like a sparrow in a headwind.
He hoped they did keep in touch; sure, they hardly knew each other, but Nathan
was family nevertheless. They shook hands, wished each other good luck, and
then Stephan was alone again amid the bustle and solitude of Manhattan.

He set out walking, thinking to make it much of the way
back to his apartment on foot, but the cold soon numbed his cheeks, and so he
retreated underground and took the subway out to Carroll Gardens.

His apartment was on the sixth floor of a post-war
building in a better-than-fair part of the neighborhood, even if the front door
shrieked on its hinges and the elevator was a rattling coffin. When he unlocked
the deadbolt and stepped into his own space, Gamblor 2.0 was standing just
inside the door to greet him. She slid her soft body up against his calf, then
padded off towards the bedroom.

Gamblor 2.0 was identical to the original Gamblor in most
physical respects, but her eyes were yellow instead of green. The original
Gamblor, whom he retroactively thought of as Gamblor 1.0, had died of natural
causes three years before. Stephan had felt sadness at his old companion’s
passing, but it was strange with a cat. They were distant, foreign creatures.
You never truly got to know them.

His apartment was tiny but not uncomfortable, featuring
high ceilings and a sliver-like view of Manhattan through a thicket of
buildings to the north. The living room: in addition to the couch and
standard-issue IKEA coffee table, there was a big bookcase filled with
photography texts and binders of old 35-millimetre slides. Photographs and
award certificates lined the walls, and there was a MacBook Pro on a tiny desk
by the window.

He kicked off his shoes and flung himself down on the
couch. It was barely five, and already the day was winding down like an
old-fashioned clock. So went the winter months. He couldn’t see the setting sun
with all of the cloud cover, but sensed the light growing gradually dimmer. Golden
hour, still, or at least it would have been, if the sun were there. He squinted
up at the sky, spotted after a time a faint, pinkish-yellow glow amid the
clouds, or maybe he’d just imagined it.

Jenny Wynne. He had done his best to put her out of his
mind – she was ancient history, after all – but now he permitted himself a few
recollections. That first, unforgettable photo shoot at Helmut’s studio, and
the flush of rage that had come into her cheeks when Stephan had laughed at
her. The night on the Stem’s rooftop patio after the magazine awards, watching
from the shadows as her smoke rings dissolved into nothingness. Their trip to
the country inn, and his stab of fear, standing on the overlook, that she’d
fallen into the river. Jenny in bed, asleep, her white shoulder jutting from
the sheets like an iceberg. She had brought so much happiness, hope, anger and
regret into his life while she’d been in it. Surely all of that had to mean
something.

For a brief taut moment he groped at the feeling he’d had
for her back then. That sensation of hope and energy and surprise, driving him
forward, egging him on. Almost instantly it began to die away, leaving a cold
afterglow in his chest. You heard the same song enough times and the magic
leached out of it. He never listened to the Smiths any more – that sound had
lost its hold over him. Ultimately, there was a kind of relief in letting go.

He went to the kitchen, fed Gamblor 2.0, and set about
preparing a simple meal for his own dinner. He usually went out to eat these
days. There was this one bistro up the street, run by a couple of Mexican guys
who hadn’t been able to afford a liquor license. They did a passable steak
frites, and since business wasn’t exactly booming, given the lack of wine to
accompany it, the place was peaceful. He could always get a table. But in a fit
of culinary ambition the day before, Stephan had stocked up at the organic
grocery store up the street, and if he didn’t cook now, the vegetables would go
to waste. He would make spaghetti, an old standby.

He chopped up the onions and mushrooms, got some ground
beef simmering in a frying pan. Opening a can of tomato sauce, he sliced his
finger with the jagged lid. Blood welled up from the puckered gash, and he
snatched up a couple of strips of paper towel to stanch the bleeding.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered to himself. “Fucking
thing.” He slammed his good hand down on the top of the stove. Gamblor 2.0,
who’d been circling in hope of scraps, made a run for the bedroom.

“Sorry, sweetie, sorry,” he called after her. Stephan
Stern: Emotional Abuser of Cats. “It’s okay. I promise. Come back and have your
dinner.”

It was no use, she was gone, and so he went to the
freezer, extracted a couple of shrunken ice cubes from their tray, and wrapped
them in a clean cloth. Then he turned off the stove, poured himself a large
glass of red wine, and stumbled out the the couch, leaving the ruins of his
half-cooked dinner to deal with later.

He took a sip of the wine, let his mind go blank. It was
dark now. Across the river, the lights of Manhattan, those he could see through
his viewing slit, were twinkling gorgeously. The Manhattan skyline was
beautiful, even in this mere fragment so familiar and iconic it was like
something out of a nightmare.

He woke with a start to find that he was still on the
couch, his head pounding, his mouth dry. There was a warm, soft lump of
something at the back of his knee, and he realized after a moment of confusion
that it was Gamblor 2.0, curled up in a tight ball, asleep. Forgiven, then, for
his sins. It was cold in the apartment. On the coffee table in front of him
stood the empty wine bottle and glass from the night before, the inside of the
latter coated with a thin layer of crimson residue.

He groaned, massaged his forehead, and sat up, much to
2.0’s annoyance. She swatted him a couple of times with her paw, then padded
off to the kitchen in a huff. So much for forgiveness.

Dawn was breaking over the city. In the dim half-light
the low clouds that filled the sky looked like plumes of dark smoke. He pulled
his smartphone from his hip pocket and checked the forecast. There were cute
little cloud icons next to most of the cities on the screen, every single one
spewing cartoon snow. Several featured exclamation points as well: winter storm
warnings.

He could send an email to the organizers of tonight’s
event in D.C., begging off due to unsafe driving conditions. They’d understand,
of course. It wasn’t his fault, the weather being one of the many things he did
not have control over. But no, that wouldn’t do. He was a professional, and one
of his signature qualities as such was his ability to get the job done despite
obstacles. And so he dragged himself to his feet and stumbled off to the
bathroom. He would go to the event, put in a good showing. A small but
sophisticated crowd would attend to his remarks, applaud respectfully, ask a
series of intelligent questions. Some of them would be young students,
fresh-faced and hopeful. He would do his best to encourage them.

He cleared the kitchen of the remains of the previous
evening’s aborted supper, scraping the congealed contents of the frying pan
into the garbage. The task was both dispiriting and somehow satisfying.
Afterwards, under the shower’s hot spray, he found himself musing on his
conversation the day before with Nathan. It had been seven years now since
Stephan had last seen Jenny Wynne. He wasn’t sure how the news of her decline,
if that’s what it was, was supposed to make him feel: saddened by her sorry
fate, gleeful that a kind of restitution had been achieved. Did it even matter?
Seven years was a long time, and there had been days during that period when he
had not thought of her at all.

He got dressed, zipped a few essentials into a small
nylon daypack. Over the years, he had learned to travel light. It was one of
the things you picked up as a photojournalist for hire. You had to be able to
grab your gear and go at a moment’s notice. It was amazing how little you
actually needed when you were on the road, how little remained after you pared
away the ballast.

His stomach gurgled, and he imagined, in his
half-conscious state, that it was talking to him in Muppetish growl:
“mmmmpleasefeedmemmmmbossssss.” He giggled. A fried egg on toast with salt and
pepper, tea with milk and sugar. He gobbled down this basic breakfast with real
pleasure, refilled 2.0’s food and water dishes, and headed out.

He might have taken the train, especially given the
worrisome forecast, but was determined to treat himself to the drive. There was
something about a rental car. These days, they were almost always new, clean
and uncluttered, unencumbered by the detritus of individual ownership. There
was never anything in the glove compartment besides the vehicle registration
and a copy of the owner’s manual in a translucent plastic sheath. In that sense
a rental car was like a hotel room.

There would in fact be a hotel room waiting for him at
the other end of his journey. Not a luxury suite, to be sure, but the chain was
respectable and the location close to the Capitol if he felt like a little
sightseeing. He would order up room service as soon as he arrived – something high
in carbs, the kind of fare Pete approved of, or had used to, some kind of stew
or chop. Of course Pete might have changed his ways and become a militant
vegan, for all Stephan knew. But no, that was wrong, he wouldn’t have.

He paced in a circle around his assigned car, a forest
green Ford Focus, marked down a couple of dings and scratches for the
attendant, the standard wear and tear, then signed off on the contract. The
engine gave a satisfying thrum as he started it up. His pack was on the
passenger seat beside him, for easy access. He revved the accelerator a couple
of times, then shifted into gear and pulled out onto the street.

Getting out of the city was the usual nightmare, cars
bumper to bumper, but on the southbound Turnpike the traffic was moving well,
describing a smooth arc along the perimeter of the Lower Bay. It was beginning
to snow now, as his technology had promised. Scattered pellets smacked into the
rental car’s windshield, pinging off into the void. The windshield began to ice
up, but he cranked the defroster and the sheen soon abated. He wasn’t worried.
The road was clear and dry, the traffic now as good as could be hoped.

The Jersey suburbs seemed to go on forever. Thousands
upon thousands of squat, boxy houses, their roofs dusted with snow. If there
hadn’t been so many of them, he might have thought they’d been sprayed with
white foam by a film crew shooting a Christmas movie. Passing through
Woodbridge, heading due south now, he tried to picture Jenny Wynne in her new
life, the one that Nathan had so casually ridiculed – although what did Nathan
know, really? She might have been perfectly happy. Driving her kids to soccer
practice in the family SUV. Making meatloaf, the kind with the ketchup sauce on
top, the kind he’d eaten himself when he was 10 or 12 years old. He assumed
that young moms across the continent still made that meatloaf, albeit with a
dash of irony tossed in with the chopped onions.

Maybe one day she’d be surfing around on her tablet, say,
and would happen upon some of his work. She’d flick through a photo album, her
eyes skimming over the images, pausing on a shot of a dead tree, a crowd of
protesters, a flooded-out New Orleans church, its windows blank as mine shafts,
and think... what?

The scene wasn’t coming to life in his mind. She had
always eluded him, and it was happening again now. It didn’t matter. He had
other things to worry about, needed to stay focused on the road. He had a long
drive ahead, through conditions that were shaping up to be ugly. Snow flurries
all across the northeast, blowing down from Canada right through to nightfall.
If he drove quickly, and didn’t stop, maybe he could outrun the storm, punch
through to sunshine and blue skies – or at least arrive in time to hunker down
before the worst of it set in. The snow was coming harder now, big wet flakes
that swam over the windshield, fragmenting his view of the road ahead, like
film grains, or rather pixels, in a low-resolution photograph.

He bent like an old man to the windshield, hands locked
tight to the wheel, and kept driving.

@poopychronicles (selected tweets)

by Jenny Wynne

My little guy is a Super Duper Pooper. Say that three
times fast.

Superduperpooper, superduperpooper, superduperpooper.

And yes, he really is. His little bum is like a clown car
of poops.

Hot new edition of #vanityfair with gorgeous sparkly
cover. (The novel, not the mag - check Wikipedia if necessary, philistines.)

Tall iced coffee in grande cup + extra ice + 3 pumps
hazelnut + 2 pumps classic + .5 inches of non-fat milk = first mommy orgasm in
2 long.

RIP Helmut Stumpfl, 1939-2012. Mythmaker, silver fox,
Hasselblad aficionado, rubber fetishist. U will be missed, sir.

So cute when he’s sleeping. Looks a bit like grandpa
minus the condescending facial expression.

Same to you @Blankton, you gossip-mongering b! Next time
it’ll be something much stinkier than champagne.

@Blankton - PS champers was fun too

Little dude just spit up on daddy’s vintage Black Flag
t-shirt - apparently hates hardcore music as much as mommy does!

#Urbanist mag says the burbs are the new downtown.
Cutting edge once again. #ohyay

Thinking of writing a Baudrillardian analysis of the
modern high-tech baby stroller. Might as well use semiotics MA for something.

Buff daddy picking up kid at daycare in Merc S600 says
this mommy has nice eyes. Hear that, Jonny?

Civet coffee, #nothanks I have enough poop to deal with
in my life already, literally and figuratively.

Is reality television our culture’s answer to the
Tolstoyan novel? Sorry - too deep for 5:30 a.m. diaper call.

So much polar fleece, so few mountains. Try a move to
British Columbia, wannabe ice climbers.

@poochtroop road crew: please advise Jonny to call
immediately.

@poochtroop - castration will neuter gravelly singing
voice thus costing u job. #justsaying

Baby tried to drink from mommy’s special sippy cup of
Grey Goose. Mommy feeling the shame.

Possible to burn water in the microwave? #godhelpus

I love the smell of re-excreted SweetPea in the morning.
Actually I do not.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a cultural
consumer in possession of a good intelligence must be in want of zombie
fiction.

I will say one thing: the man sings a mean Too Ra Loo Ra.

Yes I drive an #SUV, but it is one of the cute little
ones.

“Disillusion is the last illusion.” -Wallace Stevens

Found some old photos, pre-digital, in an ancient Blahnik
box. #fragments

That old alleyway swing set. Those were the daze. Wonder
if it’s still there?